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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January,
+1861, by Various
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: February 16, 2004  [eBook #11118]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ATLANTIC MONTHLY VOLUME 7, NO. 39,
+JANUARY, 1861***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Joshua Hutchinson, Tonya Allen, and Project Gutenberg
+Distributed Proofreaders
+
+
+
+THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY.
+
+A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS.
+
+VOL. VII.--JANUARY, 1861.--NO. XXXIX.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+WASHINGTON CITY.
+
+
+Washington is the paradise of paradoxes,--a city of magnificent
+distances, but of still more magnificent discrepancies. Anything may be
+affirmed of it, everything denied. What it seems to be it is not; and
+although it is getting to be what it never was, it must always remain
+what it now is. It might be called a city, if it were not alternately
+populous and uninhabited; and it would be a wide-spread village, if it
+were not a collection of hospitals for decayed or callow politicians. It
+is the hybernating-place of fashion, of intelligence, of vice,--a resort
+without the attractions of waters either mineral or salt, where there is
+no bathing and no springs, but drinking in abundance and gambling in
+any quantity. Defenceless, as regards walls, redoubts, moats, or other
+fortifications, it is nevertheless the Sevastopol of the Republic,
+against which the allied army of Contractors and Claim-Agents
+incessantly lay siege. It is a great, little, splendid, mean,
+extravagant, poverty-stricken barrack for soldiers of fortune and
+votaries of folly.
+
+Scattered helter-skelter over an immense surface, cut up into scalene
+triangles, the oddity of its plan makes Washington a succession of
+surprises which never fail to vex and astonish the stranger, be he ever
+so highly endowed as to the phrenological bump of locality. Depending
+upon the hap-hazard start the ignoramus may chance to make, any
+particular house or street is either nearer at hand or farther off than
+the ordinary human mind finds it agreeable to believe. The first duty of
+the new-comer is to teach his nether extremities to avoid instinctively
+the hypothenuse of the street-triangulation, and the last lesson the
+resident fails to learn is which of the shortcuts from point to point
+is the least lengthy. Beyond a doubt, the corners of the streets were
+constructed upon a cold and brutal calculation of the greatest possible
+amount of oral sin which disappointed haste and irritated anxiety are
+capable of committing; nor is any relief to the tendency to profanity
+thus engendered afforded by the inexcusable nomenclature of the streets
+and avenues,--a nomenclature in which the resources of the alphabet, the
+arithmetic, the names of all the States of the Union, and the Presidents
+as well, are exhausted with the most unsystematic profligacy. A man not
+gifted with supernatural acuteness, in striving to get from Brown's
+Hotel to the General Post-Office, turns a corner and suddenly finds
+himself nowhere, simply because he is everywhere,--being at the instant
+upon three separate streets and two distinct avenues. And, as a further
+consequence of the scalene arrangement of things, it happens that the
+stranger in Washington, however civic his birth and education may have
+been, is always unconsciously performing those military evolutions
+styled marching to the right or left oblique,--acquiring thereby, it is
+said, that obliquity of the moral vision--which sooner or later afflicts
+every human being who inhabits this strange, lop-sided city-village.
+
+So queer, indeed, is Washington City in every aspect, that one
+newly impressed by its incongruities is compelled to regard Swift's
+description of Lilliputia and Sydney Smith's account of Australia as
+poor attempts at fun. For, leaving out of view the pigmies of the former
+place, whose like we know is never found in Congress, what is there in
+that Australian bird with the voice of a jackass to excite the feeblest
+interest in the mind of a man who has listened to the debates on Kansas?
+or what marvel is an amphibian with the bill of a duck to him who has
+gazed aghast at the intricate anatomy of the bill of English? It is true
+that the ignorant Antipodes, with a total disregard of all theories of
+projectiles, throw their boomerangs behind their backs in order to kill
+an animal that stands or runs before their faces, or skim them along
+the ground when they would destroy an object flying overhead. And these
+feats seem curious. But an accomplished "Constitutional Adviser" can
+perform feats far more surprising with a few lumps of coal or a number
+of ships-knees, which are but boomerangs of a larger growth. Another has
+invented the deadliest of political missiles, (in their recoil,) shaped
+like mules and dismantled forts, while a third has demolished the
+Treasury with a simple miscalculation. Still more astonishing are the
+performances of an eminent functionary who encourages polygamy by
+intimidation, purchases redress for national insult by intercepting his
+armies and fleets with an apology in the mouth of a Commissioner, and
+elevates the Republic in the eyes of mankind by conquering at Ostend
+even less than he has lost at the Executive Mansion.
+
+In truth, the list of Washington anomalies is so extensive and so
+various, that no writer with a proper regard for his own reputation or
+his readers' credulity would dare enumerate them one by one. Without
+material injury to the common understanding, a few may be mentioned; but
+respect for public opinion would urge that the enormous whole be summed
+up in the comparatively safe and respectful assertion, that the one only
+absolutely certain thing in Washington is the absence of everything
+that is at all permanent. The following are some of the more obnoxious
+astonishments of the place.
+
+Traversing a rocky prairie inflated with hacks, you arrive late in the
+afternoon at a curbed boundary, too fatigued in body and too suffocated
+with dust to resent the insult to your common-sense implied in the
+announcement that you have merely crossed what is called an Avenue.
+Recovered from your fatigue, you ascend the steps of a marble palace,
+and enter but to find it garrisoned by shabby regiments armed with
+quills and steel pens. The cells they inhabit are gloomy as dungeons,
+but furnished like parlors. Their business is to keep everybody's
+accounts but their own. They are of all ages, but of a uniformly
+dejected aspect. Do not underrate their value. Mr. Bulwer has said,
+that, in the hands of men entirely great, the pen is mightier than the
+sword. Suffer yourself to be astonished at their numbers, but permit
+yourself to withdraw from their vicinity without questioning too closely
+their present utility or future destination. No personal affront to the
+public or the nineteenth century is intended by the superfluity of their
+numbers or the inadequacy of their capacities. Their rapid increase is
+attributable not to any incestuous breeding in-and-in among themselves,
+but to a violent seduction of the President and the Heads of Department
+by importunate Congressmen; and you may rest assured that this criminal
+multiplication fills nobody with half so much righteous indignation and
+virtuous sorrow as the clerks themselves. Emerging from the palace of
+quill-drivers, a new surprise awaits you. The palace is surmounted by
+what appear to be gigantic masts and booms, economically, but strongly
+rigged, and without any sails. In the distance, you see other palaces
+rigged in the same manner. The effect of this spectacle is painful in
+the extreme. Standing dry-shod as the Israelites were while crossing the
+Red Sea, you nevertheless seem to be in the midst of a small fleet of
+unaccountable sloops of the Saurian period. You question whether these
+are not the fabulous "Ships of State" so often mentioned in the elegant
+oratory of your country. You observe that these ships are anchored in an
+ocean of pavement, and your no longer trustworthy eyes search vainly
+for their helms. The nearest approach to a rudder is a chimney or an
+unfinished pillar; the closest resemblance to a pilot is a hod-carrying
+workman clambering up a gangway. Dismissing the nautical hypothesis,
+your next effort to relieve your perplexity results in the conjecture
+that the prodigious masts and booms may be nothing more than curious
+gibbets, the cross-pieces to which, conforming rigidly to the Washington
+rule of contrariety, are fastened to the bottom instead of the top of
+the upright. Your theory is, that the destinies of the nation are to be
+hanged on these monstrous gibbets, and you wonder whether the laws of
+gravitation will be complaisant enough to turn upside down for the
+accommodation of the hangman, whoever he may be. It is not without
+pain that you are forced at last to the commonplace belief that these
+remarkable mountings of the Public Buildings are neither masts nor
+booms, but simply derricks,--mechanical contrivances for the lifting of
+very heavy weights. It is some consolation, however, to be told that
+the weakness of these derricks has never been proved by the endeavor
+to elevate by means of them the moral character of the inhabitants of
+Washington. Content yourself, after a reasonable delay for natural
+wonderment, to leave the strange scene. This shipping-like aspect of the
+incomplete Departments is only a nice architectural tribute to the fact
+that the population of Washington is a floating population. This you
+will not be long in finding out. The oldest inhabitants are here to-day
+and gone tomorrow, as punctually, if not as poetically, as the Arabs of
+Mr. Longfellow. A few remain,--parasitic growths, clinging tenaciously
+to the old haunts. Like tartar on the teeth, they are proof against the
+hardest rubs of the tooth-brush of Fortune.
+
+As with the people, so with the houses. Though they retain their
+positions, seldom abandoning the ground on which they were originally
+built, they change almost hourly their appearance and their
+uses,--insomuch that the very solids of the city seem fluid, and even
+the stables are mutable,--the horse-house of last week being an office
+for the sale of patents, or periodicals, or lottery-tickets, this week,
+with every probability of becoming an oyster-cellar, a billiard-saloon,
+a cigar-store, a barber's shop, a bar-room, or a faro-bank, next week.
+And here is another astonishment. You will observe that the palatial
+museums for the temporary preservation of fossil or fungous penmen join
+walls, virtually, with habitations whose architecture would reflect
+no credit on the most curious hamlet in tide-water Virginia. To your
+amazement, you learn that all these houses, thousands in number, are
+boarding-houses. Of course, where everybody is a stranger, nobody
+keeps house. It would be pardonable to suppose, that, out of so many
+boarding-houses, some would be in reality what they are in name. Nothing
+can be farther from the fact. These houses contain apartments more or
+less cheerless and badly furnished, according to the price (always
+exorbitant, however small it may be) demanded for them, and are devoted
+exclusively to the storage of empty bottles and demijohns, to large
+boxes of vegetable- and flower-seeds, to great piles of books, speeches,
+and documents not yet directed to people who will never read them, and
+to an abominable odor of boiling cabbages. This odor steals in from
+a number of pitch-dark tunnels and shafts, misnamed passages and
+staircases, in which there are more books, documents, and speeches,
+other boxes of seeds, and a still stronger odor of cabbages. The piles
+of books are traps set here for the benefit of the setters of broken
+legs and the patchers of skinless shins, and the noisome odors are
+propagated for the advantage of gentlemen who treat diseases of the
+larynx and lungs.
+
+It would appear, then, that the so-called boarding-houses are, in point
+of fact, private gift-book stores, or rather, commission-houses for the
+receiving and forwarding of a profusion of undesirable documents and
+vegetations. You may view them also in the light of establishments for
+the manufacture and distribution of domestic perfumery, payment for
+which is never exacted at the moment of its involuntary purchase, but is
+left to be collected by a doctor,--who calls upon you during the winter,
+levies on you with a lancet, and distrains upon your viscera with a
+compound cathartic pill.
+
+It is claimed, that, in addition to the victims who pay egregious rents
+for boarding-house beds in order that they may have a place to store
+their documents and demi-johns, there are other permanent occupants of
+these houses. As, for example, Irish chambermaids, who subtract a few
+moments from the morning half-hour given to drinking the remnants of
+your whiskey, and devote them to cleaning up your room. Also a very
+strange being, peculiar to Washington boarding-houses, who is never
+visible at any time, and is only heard stumbling up-stairs about four
+o'clock in the morning. Also beldames of incalculable antiquity,--a
+regular allowance of one to each boarding-house,--who flit noiselessly
+and unceasingly about the passages and up and down the stairways,
+admonishing you of their presence by a ghostly sniffle, which always
+frightens you, and prevents you from running into them and knocking them
+down. For these people, it is believed, a table is set in the houses
+where the boarders proper flatter their acquaintances that they sleep.
+It must be so, for the entire male population is constantly eating in
+the oyster-cellars. Indeed, if ocular evidence may be relied on, the
+best energies of the metropolis are given to the incessant consumption
+of "half a dozen raw," or "four fried and a glass of ale." The bar-rooms
+and eating-houses are always full or in the act of becoming full. By a
+fatality so unerring that it has ceased to be wonderful, it happens that
+you can never enter a Washington restaurant and find it partially empty,
+without being instantly followed by a dozen or two of bipeds as hungry
+and thirsty as yourself, who crowd up to the bar and destroy half the
+comfort you derive from your lunch or your toddy.
+
+But, although, everybody is forever eating oysters and drinking ale in
+myriads of subterranean holes and corners, nobody fails to eat at other
+places more surprising and original than any you have yet seen. In all
+other cities, people eat at home or at a hotel or an eating-house; in
+Washington they eat at bank. But they do not eat money,--at least, not
+in the form of bullion, or specie, or notes. These Washington banks,
+unlike those of London, Paris, and New York, are open mainly at night
+and all night long, are situated invariably in the second story, guarded
+as jealously as any seraglio, and admit nobody but strangers,--that is
+to say, everybody in Washington. This is singular. Still more singular
+is the fact, that the best food, served in the most exquisite manner,
+and (with sometimes a slight variation) the choicest wines and cigars,
+may be had at these banks free of cost, except to those who choose
+voluntarily to remunerate the banker by purchasing a commodity as costly
+and almost as worthless as the articles sold at ladies' fairs,--upon
+which principle, indeed, the Washington banks are conducted. The
+commodity alluded to is in the form of small discs of ivory, called
+"chips" or "cheeks" or "shad" or "skad," and the price varies from
+twenty-five cents to a hundred dollars per "skad."
+
+It is expected that every person who opens an account at bank by eating
+a supper there shall buy a number of "shad," but not with the view of
+taking them home to show to his wife and children. Yet it is not an
+uncommon thing for persons of a stingy and ungrateful disposition to
+spend most of their time in these benevolent institutions without ever
+spending so much as a dollar for "shad," but eating, drinking, and
+smoking, and particularly drinking, to the best of their ability. This
+reprehensible practice is known familiarly in Washington as "bucking
+ag'inst the sideboard," and is thought by some to be the safest mode of
+doing business at bank.
+
+The presiding officer is never called President. He is called
+"Dealer,"--perhaps from the circumstance of his dealing in ivory,--and
+is not looked up to and worshipped as the influential man of
+banking-houses is generally. On. the contrary, he is for the most part
+condemned by his best customers, whose heart's desire and prayer are to
+break his bank and ruin him utterly.
+
+Seeing the multitude of boarding-houses, oyster-cellars, and
+ivory-banks, you may suppose there are no hotels in Washington. You are
+mistaken. There are plenty of hotels, many of them got up on the scale
+of magnificent distances that prevails everywhere, and somewhat on the
+maritime plan of the Departments. Outwardly, they look like colossal
+docks, erected for the benefit of hacks, large fleets of which you will
+always find moored under their lee, safe from the monsoon that prevails
+on the open sea of the Avenue. Inwardly, they are labyrinths, through
+whose gloomy mazes it is impossible to thread your way without the
+assistance of an Ariadne's clue in the shape of an Irishman panting
+under a trunk. So obscure and involved are the hotel-interiors, that it
+would be madness for a stranger to venture in search of his room without
+the guidance of some one far more familiar with the devious course of
+the narrow clearings through the forest of apartments than the landlord
+himself. Now and then a reckless and adventurous proprietor undertakes
+to make a day's journey alone through his establishment. He is never
+heard of afterwards,--or, if found, is discovered in a remote angle or
+loft, in a state of insensibility from bewilderment and starvation.
+If it were not for an occasional negro, who, instigated by charitable
+motives or love of money, slouches about from room to room with an empty
+coal-scuttle as an excuse for his intrusions, a gentleman stopping at a
+Washington hotel would be doomed to certain death. In fact, the lives of
+all the guests hang upon a thread, or rather, a wire; for, if the bell
+should fail to answer, there would be no earthly chance of getting into
+daylight again. It is but reasonable to suppose that the wires to many
+rooms have been broken in times past, and it is well known in Washington
+that these rooms are now tenanted by skeletons of hapless travellers
+whose relatives and friends never doubted that they had been kidnapped
+or had gone down in the Arctic.
+
+The differential calculus by which all Washington is computed obtains at
+the hotels as elsewhere, with this peculiarity,--that the differences
+are infinitely great, instead of infinitely small. While the fronts are
+very fine, showy, and youthful as the Lecompton Constitution, the rears
+are coarse, common, and old as the Missouri Compromise. The furniture in
+the rooms that look upon Pennsylvania Avenue is as fresh as the dogma
+of Squatter Sovereignty; that in all other rooms dates back to the
+Ordinance of '87. Some of the apartments exhibit a glaring splendor; the
+rest show beds, bureaus, and washstands which hard and long usage has
+polished to a sort of newness. Specimens of ancient pottery found on
+these washstands are now in the British Museum, and are reckoned among
+the finest of Layard's collections at Nineveh.
+
+The dining rooms are admirable examples of magnificent distance. The
+room is long, the tables are long, the kitchen is a long way off, and
+the waiters a long time going and coming. The meals are long,--so
+long that there is literally no end to them; they are eternal. It is
+customary to mark certain points in the endless route of appetite with
+mile-stones named breakfast, dinner, and supper; but these points have
+no more positive existence than the imaginary lines and angles of the
+geometrician. Breakfast runs entirely through dinner into supper, and
+dinner ends with coffee, the beginning of breakfast. Estimating the
+duration of dinner by the speed of an ordinary railroad-train, it is
+twenty miles from soup to fish, and fifty from turkey to nuts. But
+distance, however magnificent, does not lend enchantment to a meal. The
+wonder is that the knives and forks are not made to correspond in length
+with the repasts,--in which case the latter would be pitchforks, and the
+former John-Brown pikes.
+
+The people of Washington are as various, mixed, dissimilar, and
+contrasted as the edifices they inhabit. Within the like area, which is
+by no means a small one, the same number of dignitaries can be found
+nowhere else on the face of the globe,--nor so many characters of
+doubtful reputation. If the beggars of Dublin, the cripples of
+Constantinople, and the lepers of Damascus should assemble in
+Baden-Baden during a Congress of Kings, then Baden-Baden would resemble
+Washington. Presidents, Senators, Honorables, Judges, Generals,
+Commodores, Governors, and the Ex's of all these, congregate here as
+thick as pick-pockets at a horse-race or women at a wedding in church.
+Add Ambassadors, Plenipotentiaries, Lords, Counts, Barons, Chevaliers,
+the great and small fry of the Legations, Captains, Lieutenants,
+Claim-Agents, Negroes, Perpetual-Motion-Men, Fire-Eaters, Irishmen,
+Plug-Uglies, Hoosiers, Gamblers, Californians, Mexicans, Japanese,
+Indians, and Organ-Grinders, together with females to match all
+varieties of males, and you have vague notion of the people of
+Washington.
+
+It is an axiom in physics, that a part cannot be greater than the whole;
+and it will be recollected, that, after Epistemon had his head sewed on,
+he related a tough story about the occupations of the mighty dead, and
+swore, that, in the course of his wanderings among the damned, he found
+Cicero kindling fires, Hannibal selling egg-shells, and Julius Caesar
+cleaning stoves. The story holds good in regard to the mighty personages
+in Washington, but the axiom does not. Men whose fame fills the
+land, when they are at home or spouting about the country, sink into
+insignificance when they get to Washington. The sun is but a small
+potato in the midst of the countless systems of the sidereal heavens.
+In like manner, the majestic orbs of the political firmament undergo
+a cruel lessening of diameter as they approach the Federal City. The
+greatest of men ceases to be great in the presence of hundreds of his
+peers, and the multitude of the illustrious dwindle into individual
+littleness by reason of their superabundance. And when it comes to
+occupations, it will hardly be denied that the stranger who beholds a
+Senator "coppering on the ace," or a Congressman standing in a bar-room
+with a lump of mouldy cheese in one hand and a glass of "pony whiskey"
+in the other, or a Judge of the Supreme Court wriggling an ugly woman
+through the ridiculous movements of the polka in a hotel-parlor, must
+experience sensations quite as confounding as any Epistemon felt in
+Kingdom Come.
+
+In spite of numberless receptions, levees, balls, hops, parties,
+dinners, and other reunions, there is, properly speaking, no society in
+Washington. Circles are said to exist, but, like that in the vortex of
+the whirlpool, they are incessantly changing. Divisions purely arbitrary
+may be made in any community. Hence the circles of Washington society
+may be represented sciagraphically in the following diagram.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+The Circle of the Mudsill includes Negroes, Clerks, Irish Laborers,
+Patent and other Agents, Hackmen, Faro-Dealers, Washerwomen, and
+Newspaper-Correspondents. In the Hotel Circle, the Newest Strangers,
+Harpists, Members of Congress, Concertina-Men, Provincial Judges,
+Card-Writers, College-Students, Unprotected Females, "Star" and "States"
+Boys, Stool-Pigeons, Contractors, Sellers of Toothpicks, and Beau
+Hickman, are found. The Circle of the White House embraces the
+President, the Cabinet, the Chiefs of Bureaus, the Embassies, Corcoran
+and Riggs, formerly Mr. Forney, and until recently George Sanders and
+Isaiah Rynders. The little innermost circle is intended to represent a
+select body of residents, intense exclusives, who keep aloof from the
+other circles and hold them all in equal contempt. This circle is known
+only by report; in all probability it is a myth. It is worthy of remark
+that the circles of the White House and the Hotels rise higher and sink
+lower than that of the Mudsill, but whether this is a fact or a mere
+necessity of the diagram is not known.
+
+Society, such as it is, in the metropolis, is indulgent to itself. It
+intermeddles not, asks no impertinent questions, and transacts
+its little affairs in perfect peace and quietude. Vigilant as the
+Inquisition in matters political, it is deaf and blind, but not dumb, as
+to all others. It dresses as it pleases, drinks as much as it chooses,
+eats indiscriminately, sleeps promiscuously, gets up at all hours of
+the day, and does as little work as possible. Its only trouble is that
+"incomparable grief" to which Panurge was subject, and "which at that
+time they called lack of money." In truth, the normal condition of
+Washington society is, to use a vernacular term, "busted." It is not an
+isolated complaint. Everybody is "busted." No matter what may be the
+state of a man's funds when he gets to Washington, no matter how long he
+stays or how soon he leaves, to this "busted" complexion must he come at
+last. He is in Rome; he must take the consequences. Shall he insult the
+whole city with his solvency? Certainly not. He abandons his purse and
+his conscience to the madness of the hour, and, in generous emulation of
+the prevailing recklessness and immorality, dismisses every scruple and
+squanders his last cent. Then, and not till then, does he feel himself
+truly a Washington-man, able to look anybody in the face with the serene
+pride of an equal, and without the mortification of being accused or
+even suspected of having in all the earth a dollar that he can call his
+own.
+
+Where morals are loose, piety is seldom in excess. But there are a
+half-dozen of churches in Washington, besides preaching every Sunday
+in the House of Representatives. The relative size and cost of the
+churches, as compared with the Public Buildings, indicates the true
+object of worship in Washington. Strange to say, the theatre is smaller
+than the churches. Clerical and dramatic entertainments cannot compete
+with the superior attractions of the daily rows in Congress and the
+nightly orgies at the faro-banks. Heaven is regarded as another
+Chihuahua or Sonora, occupied at present by unfriendly Camanches, but
+destined to be annexed some day. In the mean time, a very important
+election is to come off in Connecticut or Pennsylvania. That must be
+attended to immediately. Such is piety in Washington.
+
+The list of the unique prodigies of Washington is without limit. But
+marvels heaped together cease to be marvellous, and of all places in
+the world a museum is the most tiresome. So, amid the whirl and roar
+of winter-life in Washington, when one has no time to read, write, or
+think, and scarcely time to eat, drink, and sleep, when the days fly by
+like hours, and the brain reels under the excitement of the protracted
+debauch, life becomes an intolerable bore. Yet the place has an intense
+fascination for those who suffer most acutely from the _tedium vitae_ to
+which every one is more or less a prey; and men and women who have lived
+in Washington are seldom contented elsewhere. The moths return to the
+flaming candle until they are consumed.
+
+In conclusion, it must be admitted that Washington is the Elysium of
+oddities, the Limbo of absurdities, an imbroglio of ludicrous anomalies.
+Planned on a scale of surpassing grandeur, its architectural execution
+is almost contemptible. Blessed with the name of the purest of men, it
+has the reputation of Sodom. The seat of the law-making power, it is the
+centre of violence and disorder which disturb the peace and harmony
+of the whole Republic,--the chosen resort for duelling, clandestine
+marriages, and the most stupendous thefts. It is a city without commerce
+and without manufactures; or rather, its commerce is illicit, and its
+manufacturers are newspaper-correspondents, who weave tissues of fiction
+out of the warp of rumor and the web of prevarication. The site of the
+United States Treasury, it is the home of everything but affluence. Its
+public buildings are splendid, its private dwellings generally squalid.
+The houses are low, the rents high; the streets are broad, the crossings
+narrow; the hacks are black, the horses white; the squares are
+triangles, except that of the Capitol, which is oval; and the water is
+so soft that it is hard to drink it, even with the admixture of alcohol.
+It has a Monument that will never be finished, a Capitol that is to have
+a dome, a Scientific Institute which does nothing but report the rise
+and fall of the thermometer, and two pieces of Equestrian Statuary
+which it would be a waste of time to criticize. It boasts a streamlet
+dignified with the name of the river Tiber, and this streamlet is of the
+size and much the appearance of a vein in a dirty man's arm. It has a
+canal, but the canal is a mud-puddle during one half the day and an
+empty ditch during the other. In spite of the labors of the Smithsonian
+Institute, it has no particular weather. It has the climates of all
+parts of the habitable globe. It rains, hails, snows, blows, freezes,
+and melts in Washington, all in the space of twenty-four hours. After a
+fortnight of steady rain, the sun shines out, and in half an hour the
+streets are filled with clouds of dust. Property in Washington is
+exceedingly sensitive, the people alarmingly callous. The men are
+fine-looking, the women homely. The latter have plain faces, but
+magnificent busts and graceful figures. The former have an imposing
+presence and an empty pocket, a great name and a small conscience.
+Notwithstanding all these impediments and disadvantages, Washington
+is progressing rapidly. It is fast becoming a large city, but it must
+always remain a deserted village in the summer. Its destiny is that of
+the Union. It will be the greatest capital the world ever saw, or
+it will be "a parched place in the wilderness, a salt land and not
+inhabited," and "every one that passeth thereby shall be astonished and
+wag his head."
+
+
+
+
+MIDSUMMER AND MAY.
+
+
+[Concluded.]
+
+Spring at last stole placidly into summer, and Marguerite, who was
+always shivering in the house, kept the company in a whirl of out-door
+festivals.
+
+"We have not lived so, Roger," said Mrs. McLean, "since the summer when
+you went away. We all follow the caprice of this child as a ship follows
+the little compass-needle."
+
+And she made room for the child beside her in the carriage; for Mr.
+Raleigh was about driving them into town,--an exercise which had its
+particular charm for Marguerite, not only for the glimpse it afforded of
+the gay, bustling inland-city-life, but for opportunities of securing
+the reins and of occasioning panics. Lately, however, she had resigned
+the latter pleasure, and sat with quiet propriety by Mrs. McLean.
+Frequently, also, she took long drives alone or with one of the
+children, holding the reins listlessly, and ranging the highway
+unobservantly for miles around.
+
+Mrs. Purcell declared the girl was homesick; Mrs. Heath doubted if
+the climate agreed with her: she neither denied nor affirmed their
+propositions.
+
+Mr. Heath came and went from the city where her father was, without
+receiving any other notice than she would have bestowed on a peaceful
+walking-stick; his attentions to her during his visits were unequivocal;
+she accepted them as nonchalantly as from a waiter at table. On the
+occasion of his last stay, there had been a somewhat noticeable change
+in his demeanor: he wore a trifle of quite novel assurance; his supreme
+bearing was not mitigated by the restless sparkle of his eye; and in
+addressing her his compliments, he spoke as one having authority.
+
+Mrs. Laudersdale, so long and so entirely accustomed to the reception
+of homage that it cost her no more reflection than an imperial princess
+bestows on the taxes that produce her tiara, turned slowly from the
+apparent apathy thus induced on her modes of thought, passivity lost in
+a gulf of anxious speculation, while she watched the theatre of events
+with a glow, like wine in lamplight, that burned behind her dusky eyes
+till they had the steady penetration of some wild creature's. She may
+have wondered if Mr. Raleigh's former feeling were yet alive; she may
+have wondered if Marguerite had found the spell that once she found,
+herself; she may have been kept in thrall by ignorance if he had ever
+read that old confessing note of hers: whatever she thought or hoped or
+dreaded, she said nothing, and did nothing.
+
+Of all those who concerned themselves in the affair of Marguerite's
+health and spirits, Mr. Raleigh was the only one who might have solved
+their mystery. Perhaps the thought of wooing the child whose mother
+he had once loved was sufficiently repugnant to him to overcome the
+tenderness which every one was forced to feel for so beautiful a
+creation. I have not said that Marguerite was this, before, because,
+until brought into contrast with her mother, her extreme loveliness was
+too little positive to be felt; now it was the evanescent shimmer of
+pearl to the deep perpetual fire of the carbuncle. Softened, as she
+became, from her versatile cheeriness, she moved round like a moonbeam,
+and frequently had a bewildered grace, as if she knew not what to make
+of herself. Mr. Raleigh, from the moment in which he perceived that she
+no longer sought his company, retreated into his own apartments, and was
+less seen by the others than ever.
+
+Returning from the drive on the morning of Mrs. McLean's last recorded
+remark, Mr. Raleigh, who had remained to give the horses in charge to a
+servant, was about to pass, when the _tableau_ within the drawing-room
+caught his attention and altered his course. He entered, and flung his
+gloves down on a table, and threw himself on the floor beside Marguerite
+and the children. She appeared to be revisited by a ray of her old
+sunshine, and had unrolled a giant parcel of candied sweets, which their
+mother would have sacrificed on the shrine of jalap and senna, the
+purchase of a surreptitious moment, and was now dispensing the brilliant
+comestibles with much ill-subdued glee. One mouth, that had bitten off
+the head of a checkerberry chanticleer, was convulsed with the
+acidulous tickling of sweetened laughter, till the biter was bit and a
+metamorphosis into the animal of attack seemed imminent; at the hands of
+another a warrior in barley-sugar was experiencing the vernacular for
+defeat with reproving haste and gravity; and there was yet another
+little omnivorous creature that put out both hands for indiscriminate
+snatching, and made a spectacle of himself in a general plaster of
+gum-arabic-drop and brandy-smash.
+
+"Contraband?" said Mr. Raleigh.
+
+"And sweet as stolen fruit," said Marguerite. "Ursule makes the
+richest comfits, but not so innumerable as these. Mamma and I owe our
+sweet-tooth and honey-lip to bits of her concoction."
+
+"Mrs. Purcell," asked Mr. Raleigh, as that lady entered, "is this little
+banquet no seduction to you?"
+
+"What are you doing?" she replied.
+
+"Drinking honey-dew from acorns."
+
+"Laudersdale as ever!" ejaculated she, looking over his shoulder. "I
+thought you had 'no sympathy with'"----
+
+"But I 'like to see other folks take'"----
+
+"Their sweets, in this case. No, thank you," she continued, after this
+little rehearsal of the past. "What are you poisoning all this brood
+for?"
+
+"Mrs. Laudersdale eats sweetmeats; they don't poison her," remonstrated
+Katy.
+
+"Mrs. Laudersdale, my dear, is exceptional."
+
+Katy opened her eyes, as if she had been told that the object of her
+adoration was Japanese.
+
+"It is the last grain that completes the transformation, as your
+story-books have told; and one day you will see her stand, a statue
+of sugar, and melt away in the sun. To be sure, the whole air will be
+sweetened, but there will be no Mrs. Laudersdale."
+
+"For shame, Mrs. Purcell!" cried Marguerite. "You're not sweet-tempered,
+or you'd like sweet dainties yourself. Here are nuts swathed in syrup;
+you'll have none of them? Here are health and slumber and idle dreams
+in a chocolate-drop. Not a chocolate? Here are dates; if you wouldn't
+choose the things in themselves, truly you would for their associations?
+See, when you take up one, what a picture follows it: the plum that has
+swung at the top of a palm and crowded into itself the glow of those
+fierce noon-suns; it has been tossed by the sirocco, it has been steeped
+in reeking dew; there was always stretched above it the blue intense
+tent of a heaven full of light,--always below and around, long level
+reaches of hot shining sand; the phantoms of waning desert moons have
+hovered over it, swarthy Arab chiefs have encamped under it; it
+has threaded the narrow streets of Damascus--that city the most
+beautiful--on the backs of gaunt gray dromedaries; it has crossed the
+seas,--and all for you, if you take it, this product of desert freedom,
+torrid winds, and fervid suns!"
+
+"I might swallow the date," said Mrs. Purcell, "but Africa would choke
+me."
+
+Mr. Raleigh had remained silent for some time, watching Marguerite as
+she talked. It seemed to him that his youth was returning; he forgot his
+resolves, his desires, and became aware of nothing in the world but her
+voice. Just before she concluded, she grew conscious of his gaze, and
+almost at once ceased speaking; her eyes fell a moment to meet it, and
+then she would have flashed them aside, but that it was impossible;
+lucid lakes of light, they met his own; she was forced to continue it,
+to return it, to forget all, as he was forgetting, in that long look.
+
+"What is this?" said Mrs. Purcell, stooping to pick up a trifle on the
+matting.
+
+"_C'est à moi!_" cried Marguerite, springing up suddenly, and spilling
+all the fragments of the feast, to the evident satisfaction of the
+lately neglected guests.
+
+"Yours?" said Mrs. Purcell with coolness, still retaining it. "Why do
+you think in French?"
+
+"Because I choose!" said Marguerite, angrily. "I mean--How do you know
+that I do?"
+
+"Your exclamation, when highly excited or contemptuously indifferent, is
+always in that tongue."
+
+"Which am I now?"
+
+"Really, you should know best. Here is your bawble"; and Mrs. Purcell
+tossed it lightly into her hands, and went out.
+
+It was a sheath of old morocco. The motion loosened the clasp, and the
+contents, an ivory oval and a cushion of faded silk, fell to the floor.
+Mr. Raleigh bent and regathered them; there was nothing for Marguerite
+but to allow that he should do so. The oval had reversed in falling, so
+that he did not see it; but, glancing at her before returning it, he
+found her face and neck dyed deeper than the rose. Still reversed, he
+was about to relinquish it, when Mrs. McLean passed, and, hearing the
+scampering of little feet as they fled with booty, she also entered.
+
+"Seeing you reminds me, Roger," said she. "What do you suppose has
+become of that little miniature I told you of? I was showing it to
+Marguerite the other night, and have not seen it since. I must have
+mislaid it, and it was particularly valuable, for it was some nameless
+thing that Mrs. Heath found among her mother's trinkets, and I begged it
+of her, it was such a perfect likeness of you. Can you have seen it?"
+
+"Yes, I have it," he replied. "And haven't I as good a right to it as
+any?"
+
+He extended his arm for the case which Marguerite held, and so touching
+her hand, the touch was more lingering than it needed to be; but he
+avoided looking at her, or he would have seen that the late color had
+fled till the face was whiter than marble.
+
+"Your old propensities," said Mrs. McLean. "You always will be a boy. By
+the way, what do you think of Mary Purcell's engagement? I thought she
+would always be a girl."
+
+"Ah! McLean was speaking of it to me. Why were they not engaged before?"
+
+"Because she was not an heiress."
+
+Mr. Raleigh raised his eyebrows significantly.
+
+"He could not afford to marry any but an heiress," explained Mrs.
+McLean.
+
+Mr. Raleigh fastened the case and restored it silently.
+
+"You think that absurd? You would not marry an heiress?"
+
+Mr. Raleigh did not at once reply.
+
+"You would not, then, propose to an heiress?"
+
+"No."
+
+As this monosyllable fell from his lips, Marguerite's motion placed
+her beyond hearing. She took a few swift steps, but paused and leaned
+against the wall of the gable for support, and, placing her hand upon
+the sun-beat bricks, she felt a warmth in them which there seemed to be
+neither in herself nor in the wide summer-air.
+
+Mrs. Purcell came along, opening her parasol.
+
+"I am going to the orchard," said she; "cherries are ripe. Hear the
+robins and the bells! Do you want to come?"
+
+"No," said Marguerite.
+
+"There are bees in the orchard, too,--the very bees, for aught I
+know, that Mr. Raleigh used to watch thirteen years ago, or their
+great-grand-bees,--they stand in the same place."
+
+"You knew Mr. Raleigh thirteen years ago?" she asked, glancing up
+curiously.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Very well."
+
+"How much is very well?"
+
+"He proposed to me. Smother your anger; he didn't care for me; some one
+told him that I cared for him."
+
+"Did you?"
+
+"This is what the Inquisition calls applying the question?" asked Mrs.
+Purcell. "Nonsense, dear child! he was quite in love with somebody
+else."
+
+"And that was----?"
+
+"He supposed your mother to be a widow. Well, if you won't come, I shall
+go alone and read my 'L'Allegro' under the boughs, with breezes blowing
+between the lines. I can show you some little field-mice like unfledged
+birds, and a nest that protrudes now and then glittering eyes and cleft
+fangs."
+
+Marguerite was silent; the latter commodity was _de trop_. Mrs. Purcell
+adjusted her parasol and passed on.
+
+Here, then, was the whole affair. Marguerite pressed her hands to her
+forehead, as if fearful some of the swarming thoughts should escape;
+then she hastened up the slope behind the house, and entered and hid
+herself in the woods. Mr. Raleigh had loved her mother. Of course, then,
+there was not a shadow of doubt that her mother had loved him. Horrible
+thought! and she shook like an aspen, beneath it. For a time it seemed
+that she loathed him,--that she despised the woman who had given him
+regard. The present moment was a point of dreadful isolation; there was
+no past to remember, no future to expect; she herself was alone and
+forsaken, the whole world dark, and heaven blank. But that could not be
+forever. As she sat with her face buried in her hands, old words, old
+looks, flashed on her recollection; she comprehended what long years of
+silent suffering the one might have endured, what barren yearning the
+other; she saw how her mother's haughty calm might be the crust on a
+lava-sea; she felt what desolation must have filled Roger Raleigh's
+heart, when he found that she whom he had loved no longer lived, that he
+had cherished a lifeless ideal,--for Marguerite knew from his own lips
+that he had not met the same woman whom he had left.
+
+She started up, wondering what had led her upon this train of thought,
+why she had pursued it, and what reason she had for the pain it gave
+her. A step rustled among the distant last-year's leaves; there in the
+shadowy wood, where she did not dream of concealing her thoughts, where
+it seemed that all Nature shared her confidence, this step was like
+a finger laid on the hidden sore. She paused, a glow rushed over her
+frame, and her face grew hot with the convicting flush. Consternation,
+bitter condemnation, shame, impetuous resolve, swept over her in one
+torrent, and she saw that she had a secret which every one might touch,
+and, touching, cause to sting. She hurried onward through the wood,
+unconscious how rapidly or how far her heedless course extended. She
+sprang across gaps at which she would another time have shuddered; she
+clambered over fallen trees, penetrated thickets of tangled brier, and
+followed up the shrunken beds of streams, till suddenly the wood grew
+thin again, and she emerged upon an open space,--a long lawn, where the
+grass grew rank and tall as in deserted graveyards, and on which the
+afternoon sunshine lay with most dreary, desolate emphasis. Marguerite
+had scarcely comprehended herself before; now, as she looked out on the
+utter loneliness of the place, all joyousness, all content, seemed wiped
+from the world. She leaned against a tree where the building rose before
+her, old and forsaken, washed by rains, beaten by winds. A blind slung
+open, loose on a broken hinge; the emptiness of the house looked through
+it like a spirit. The woodbine seemed the only living thing about
+it,--the woodbine that had swung its clusters, heavy as grapes of
+Eshcol, along one wall, and, falling from support, had rioted upon the
+ground in masses of close-netted luxuriance.
+
+Standing and surveying the silent scene of former gayety, a figure
+came down the slope, crushing the grass with lingering tread, checked
+himself, and, half-reversed, surveyed it with her. Her first impulse was
+to approach, her next to retreat; by a resolution of forces she remained
+where she was. Mr. Raleigh's position prevented her from seeing the
+expression of his face; from his attitude seldom was anything to be
+divined. He turned with a motion of the arm, as if he swung off a
+burden, and met her eye. He laughed, and drew near.
+
+"I am tempted to return to that suspicion of mine when I first met you,
+Miss Marguerite," said he. "You take shape from solitude and empty air
+as easily as a Dryad steps from her tree."
+
+"There are no Dryads now," said Marguerite, sententiously.
+
+"Then you confess to being a myth?"
+
+"I confess to being tired, Mr. Raleigh."
+
+Mr. Raleigh's manner changed, at her petulance and fatigue, to the old
+air of protection, and he gave her his hand. It was pleasant to be the
+object of his care, to be with him as at first, to renew their former
+relation. She acquiesced, and walked beside him.
+
+"You have had some weary travel," he said, "and probably not more than
+half of it in the path."
+
+And she feared he would glance at the rents in her frock, forgetting
+that they were not sufficiently infrequent facts to be noticeable.
+
+"He treats me like a child," she thought. "He expects me to tear my
+dress! He forgets, that, while thirteen years were making a statue of
+her, they were making a woman of me!" And she snatched away her hand.
+
+"I have the boat below," he said, without paying attention to the
+movement. "You took the longest way round, which, you have heard, is the
+shortest way home. You have never been on the lake with me." And he was
+about to assist her in.
+
+She stepped back, hesitating.
+
+"No, no," he said. "It is very well to think of walking back, but it
+must end in thinking. You have no impetus now to send you over another
+half-dozen miles of wood-faring, no pique to sting, Io."
+
+And before she could remonstrate, she was lifted in, the oars had
+flashed twice, and there was deep water between herself and shore. She
+was in reality too much fatigued to be vexed, and she sat silently
+watching the spaces through which they glanced, and listening to the
+rhythmic dip of the oars. The soft afternoon air, with its melancholy
+sweetness and tinge of softer hue, hung round them; the water, brown and
+warm, was dimpled with the flight of myriad insects; they wound among
+the islands, a path one of them knew of old. From the shelving rocks a
+wild convolvulus drooped its twisted bells across them, a sweet-brier
+snatched at her hair in passing, a sudden elder-tree shot out its creamy
+panicles above, they ripped up drowsy beds of folded lily-blooms.
+
+Mr. Raleigh, suddenly lifting one oar, gave the boat a sharp curve and
+sent it out on the open expanse; it seemed to him that he had no right
+thus to live two lives in one. Still he wished to linger, and with now
+and then a lazy movement they slipped along. He leaned one arm on the
+upright oar, like a river-god, and from the store of boat-songs in his
+remembrance sang now and then a strain. Marguerite sat opposite and
+rested along the side, content for the moment to glide on as they were,
+without a reference to the past in her thought, without a dream of the
+future. Peach-bloom fell on the air, warmed all objects into mellow
+tint, and reddened deep into sunset. Tinkling cow-bells, where the kine
+wound out from pasture, stole faintly over the lake, reflected dyes
+suffused it and spread around them sheets of splendid color, outlines
+grew ever dimmer on the distant shores, a purple tone absorbed all
+brilliance, the shadows fell, and, bright with angry lustre, the planet
+Mars hung in the south and struck a spear, redder than rubies, down the
+placid mirror. The dew gathered and lay sparkling on the thwarts as they
+touched the garden-steps, and they mounted and traversed together the
+alleys of odorous dark. They entered at Mr. Raleigh's door and stepped
+thence into the main hall, where they could see the broad light from the
+drawing-room windows streaming over the lawn beyond. Mrs. Laudersdale
+came down the hall to meet them.
+
+"My dear Rite," she said, "I have been alarmed, and have sent the
+servants out for you. You left home in the morning, and you have not
+dined. Your father and Mr. Heath have arrived. Tea is just over, and
+we are waiting for you to dress and go into town; it is Mrs. Manton's
+evening, you recollect."
+
+"Must I go, mamma?" asked Marguerite, after this statement of facts.
+"Then I must have tea first. Mr. Raleigh, I remember my wasted
+sweetmeats of the morning with a pang. How long ago that seems!"
+
+In a moment her face told her regret for the allusion, and she hastened
+into the dining-room.
+
+Mr. Raleigh and Marguerite had a merry tea, and Mrs. Purcell came and
+poured it out for them.
+
+"Quite like the days when we went gypsying," said she, when near its
+conclusion.
+
+"We have just come from the Bawn, Miss Marguerite and I," he replied.
+
+"You have? I never go near it. Did it break your heart?"
+
+Mr. Raleigh laughed.
+
+"Is Mr. Raleigh's heart such a delicate organ?" asked Marguerite.
+
+"Once, you might have been answered negatively; now, it must be like the
+French banner, _percé, troué, criblé,"--
+
+"Pray, add the remainder of your quotation," said he,--"_sans peur et
+sans reproche_."
+
+"So that a trifle would reduce it to flinders," said Mrs. Purcell,
+without minding his interruption.
+
+"Would you give it such a character, Miss Rite?" questioned Mr. Raleigh
+lightly.
+
+"I? I don't see that you have any heart at all, Sir."
+
+"I swallow my tea and my mortification."
+
+"Do you remember your first repast at the Bawn?" asked Mrs. Purcell.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"And the jelly like molten rubies that I made? It keeps well." And she
+moved a glittering dish toward him.
+
+"All things of that summer keep well," he replied.
+
+"Except yourself, Mr. Raleigh. The Indian jugglers are practising upon
+us, I suspect. You are no more like the same person who played sparkling
+comedy and sang passionate tragedy than this bamboo stick is like that
+willow wand."
+
+"I wish I could retort, Miss Helen," he replied. "I beg your pardon!"
+
+She was silent, and her eye fell and rested on the sheeny damask
+beneath. He glanced at her keenly an instant, then handed her his cup,
+saying,--
+
+"May I trouble you?"
+
+She looked up again, a smile breaking over the face wanner than
+youth, but which the hour's gayety had flushed to a forgetfulness of
+intervening years, extended her left hand for the cup, still gazing and
+smiling.
+
+Various resolves had flitted through Marguerite's mind since her
+entrance. One, that she would yet make Mr. Raleigh feel her power,
+yielded to shame and self-contempt, and she despised herself for a woman
+won unwooed. But she was not sure that she was won. Perhaps, after all,
+she did not care particularly for Mr. Raleigh. He was much older than
+she; he was quite grave, sometimes satirical; she knew nothing about
+him; she was slightly afraid of him. On the whole, if she consulted her
+taste, she would have preferred a younger hero; she would rather be the
+Fornarina for a Raffaello; she had fancied her name sweetening the songs
+of Giraud Riquier, the last of the Troubadours; and she did not believe
+Beatrice Portinari to be so excellent among women, so different from
+other girls, that her name should have soared so far aloft with that
+escutcheon of the golden wing on a field azure. "But they say that there
+cannot be two epic periods in a nation's literature," thought Marguerite
+hurriedly; "so that a man who might have been Homer once will be nothing
+but a gentleman now." And at this point, having decided that Mr. Raleigh
+was fully worth unlimited love, she added to her resolves a desire for
+content with whatever amount of friendly affection he chose to bestow
+upon her. And all this, while sifting the sugar over her raspberries.
+Nevertheless, she felt, in the midst of her heroic content, a strange
+jealousy at hearing the two thus discuss days in which she had no share,
+and she watched them furtively, with a sharp, hateful suspicion dawning
+in her mind. Now, as Mrs. Purcell's eyes met Mr. Raleigh's, and her hand
+was still extended for the cup, Marguerite fastened her glance on its
+glittering ring, and said abruptly,--
+
+"Mrs. Purcell, have you a husband?"
+
+Mrs. Purcell started and withdrew her hand, as if it had received a
+blow, just as Mr. Raleigh relinquished the cup, so that between them the
+bits of pictured porcelain fell and splintered over the equipage.
+
+"Naughty child!" said Mrs. Purcell. "See now what you've done!"
+
+"What have I to do with it?"
+
+"Then you haven't any bad news for me? Has any one heard from the
+Colonel? Is he ill?"
+
+"Pshaw!" said Marguerite, rising and throwing down her napkin.
+
+She went to the window and looked out.
+
+"It is time you were gone, little lady," said Mr. Raleigh.
+
+She approached Mrs. Purcell and passed her hand down her hair.
+
+"What pretty soft hair you have!" said she. "These braids are like
+carved gold-stone. May I dress it with sweet-brier to-night? I brought
+home a spray."
+
+"Rite!" said Mrs. Laudersdale sweetly, at the door; and Rite obeyed the
+summons.
+
+In a half-hour she came slowly down the stairs, untwisting a long string
+of her mother's abandoned pearls, great pear-shaped things full of the
+pale lustre of gibbous moons. She wore a dress of white samarcand, with
+a lavish ornament like threads and purfiles of gold upon the bodice, and
+Ursule followed with a cloak. As she entered the drawing-room, the great
+bunches of white azalea, which her mother had brought from the swamps,
+caught her eye; she threw down the pearls, and broke off rapid dusters
+of the queenly flowers, touching the backward-curling hyacinthine
+petals, and caressingly passing her finger down the pale purple shadow
+of the snowy folds. Directly afterward she hung them in her breezy hair,
+from which, by natural tenure, they were not likely to fall, bound them
+over her shoulders and in her waist.
+
+"See! I stand like Summer," she said, "wrapped in perfume; it is
+intoxicating."
+
+Just then two hands touched her, and her father bent his face over her.
+She flung her arms round him, careless of their fragile array, kissed
+him on both cheeks, laughed, and kissed him again. She did not speak,
+for he disliked French, and English sometimes failed her.
+
+"Here is Mr. Heath," her father said.
+
+She partly turned, touched that gentleman's hand with the ends of her
+fingers, and nodded. Her father whispered a brief sentence in her ear.
+
+"_Jamais, Monsieur, jamais!_" she exclaimed; then, with a quick gesture
+of deprecation, moved again toward him; but Mr. Laudersdale had coldly
+passed to make his compliments to Mrs. Heath.
+
+"You are not in toilet?" said Marguerite, following him, but speaking
+with Mr. Raleigh.
+
+"No,--Mrs. Purcell has been playing for me a little thing I always
+liked,--that sweet, tuneful afternoon chiding of the Miller and the
+Torrent."
+
+She glanced at Mrs. Purcell, saw that her dress remained unaltered, and
+commenced pulling out the azaleas from her own.
+
+"I do not want to go," she murmured. "I need not! Mamma and Mrs. McLean
+have already gone in the other carriage."
+
+"Come, Marguerite," said Mr. Laudersdale, approaching her, as Mr. Heath
+and his mother disappeared.
+
+"I am not going," she replied, quickly.
+
+"Not going? I beg your pardon, my dear, but you are!" and he took her
+hand.
+
+She half endeavored to withdraw it, threw a backward glance over her
+shoulder at the remaining pair, and, led by her father, went out.
+
+Marguerite did her best to forget the vexation, was very affable with
+her father, and took no notice of any of Mr. Heath's prolonged remarks.
+The drive was at best a tiresome one, and she was already half-asleep
+when the carriage stopped. The noise and light, and the little vanities
+of the dressing-room, awakened her, and she descended prepared for
+conquest. But, after a few moments, it all became weariness, the air
+was close, the flowers faded, the music piercing. The toilets did
+not attract nor the faces interest her. She danced along absent and
+spiritless, when her eye, raised dreamily, fell on an object among the
+curtains and lay fascinated there. It was certainly Mr. Raleigh: but so
+little likely did that seem, that she again circled the room, with her
+eyes bent upon that point, expecting it to vanish. He must have come in
+the saddle, unless a coach had returned for him and Mrs. Purcell,--yes,
+there was Mrs. Purcell,--and she wore that sweet-brier fresh-blossoming
+in the light. With what ease she moved!--it must always have been the
+same grace;--how brilliant she was! There,--she was going to dance with
+Mr. Raleigh. No? Where, then? Into the music-room!
+
+The music-room lay beyond an anteroom of flowers and prints, and
+was closed against the murmur of the parlors by great glass doors.
+Marguerite, from her position, could see Mr. Raleigh seated at the
+piano, and Mrs. Purcell standing by his side; now she turned a leaf, now
+she stooped, and their hands touched upon the keys. Marguerite slipped
+alone through the dancers, and drew nearer. There were others in the
+music-room, but they were at a distance from the piano. She entered
+the anteroom and sat shadowed among the great fragrant shrubs. A group
+already stood there, eating ices and gayly gossiping. Mr. Laudersdale
+and Mr. Manton sauntered in, their heads together, and muttering occult
+matters of business, whose tally was kept with forefinger on palm.
+
+"Where is Raleigh?" asked Mr. Manton, looking up. "He can tell us."
+
+"At his old occupation," answered a gentleman from beside Mrs.
+Laudersdale, "flirting with forbidden fruit."
+
+"An alliterative amusement," said Mrs. Laudersdale.
+
+"You did not know the original Raleigh?" continued the gentleman. "But
+he always took pleasure in female society; yet, singularly enough,
+though fastidious in choice, it was only upon the married ladies that he
+bestowed his platonisms. I observe the old Adam still clings to him."
+
+"He probably found more liberty with them," remarked Mrs. Laudersdale,
+when no one else replied.
+
+"Without doubt he took it."
+
+"I mean, that, where attentions are known to intend nothing, one is not
+obliged to measure them, or to calculate upon effects."
+
+"Of the latter no one can accuse Mr. Raleigh!" said Mr. Laudersdale,
+hotly, forgetting himself for once.
+
+Mrs. Laudersdale lifted her large eyes and laid them on her husband's
+face.
+
+"Excuse me! excuse me!" said the gentleman, with natural misconception.
+"I was not aware that he was a friend of yours." And taking a lady on
+his arm, he withdrew.
+
+"Nor is he!" said Mr. Laudersdale, in lowest tones, replying to his
+wife's gaze, and for the first time intimating his feeling. "Never,
+never, can I repair the ruin he has made me!"
+
+Mrs. Laudersdale rose and stretched out her arm, blindly.
+
+"The room is quite dark," she murmured; "the flowers must soil the air.
+Will you take me up-stairs?"
+
+Meanwhile, the unconscious object of their remark was turning over a
+pile of pages with one hand, while the other trifled along the gleaming
+keys.
+
+"Here it is," said he, drawing one from the others, and arranging it
+before him,--a _gondel-lied_.
+
+There stole from his fingers the soft, slow sound of lapsing waters, the
+rocking on the tide, the long sway of some idle weed. Here a jet of tune
+was flung out from a distant bark, here a high octave flashed like a
+passing torch through night-shadows, and lofty arching darkness told in
+clustering chords. Now the boat fled through melancholy narrow ways of
+pillared pomp and stately beauty, now floated off on the wide lagoons
+alone with the stars and sea. Into this broke the passion of the gliding
+lovers, deep and strong, giving a soul to the whole, and fading away
+again, behind its wild beating,--with the silence of lapping ripple and
+dipping oar.
+
+Mrs. Purcell, standing beside the player, laid a careless arm across the
+instrument, and bent her face above him like a flower languid with
+the sun's rays. Suddenly the former smile suffused it, and, as the
+gondel-lied fell into a slow floating accompaniment, she sang with a
+swift, impetuous grace, and in a sweet, yet thrilling voice, the Moth
+Song. The shrill music and murmur from the parlors burst all at once in
+muffled volume upon the melody, and, turning, they both saw Marguerite
+standing in the doorway, like an angry wraith, and flitting back again.
+Mrs. Purcell laughed, but took up the thread of her song again where it
+was broken, and carried it through to the end. Then Mr. Raleigh tossed
+the gondel-lied aside, and rising, they continued their stroll.
+
+"You have more than your share of the good things of life, Raleigh,"
+said Mr. McLean, as the person addressed poured out wine for Mrs.
+Purcell. "Two affairs on hand at once? You drink deep. Light and
+sparkling,--thin and tart,--isn't it Solomon who forbids mixed drink?"
+
+"I was never the worse for claret," replied Mr. Raleigh, bearing away
+the glittering glass.
+
+The party from the Lake had not arrived at an early hour, and it was
+quite late when Mr. Raleigh made his way through ranks of tireless
+dancers, toward Marguerite. She had been dancing with a spirit that
+would have resembled joyousness but for its reckless _abandon_. She
+seemed to him then like a flame, as full of wilful sinuous caprice. At
+the first he scarcely liked it, but directly the artistic side of his
+nature recognized the extreme grace and beauty that flowed through every
+curve of movement. Standing now, the corn-silk hair slightly disordered
+and still blown about by the fan of some one near her, her eyes
+sparkling like stars in the dewdrops of wild wood-violets, warm, yet
+weary, and a flush deepening her cheek with color, while the flowers
+hung dead around her, she held a glass of wine and watched the bead swim
+to the brim. Mr. Raleigh approached unaware, and startled her as he
+spoke.
+
+"It is _au gré du vent_, indeed," he said,--"just the white fluttering
+butterfly,--and now that the wings are clasped above this crimson
+blossom, I have a chance of capture." And smiling, he gently withdrew
+the splendid draught.
+
+"_Buvez, Monsieur_," she said; "_c'est le vin de la vie!_"
+
+"Do you know how near daylight it is?" he replied. "Mrs. Laudersdale
+fainted in the heat, and your father took her home long ago. The Heaths
+went also; and the carriage has just returned for the only ones of us
+that are left, you and me."
+
+"Is it ready now?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"So am I."
+
+And in a few moments she sat opposite him in the coach, on their way
+home.
+
+"It wouldn't be possible for me to sit on the box and drive?" she asked.
+
+"I should like it, in this wild starlight, these flying clouds, this
+breath of dawn."
+
+Meeting no response, she sank into silence. No emotion can keep one
+awake forever, and, after all her late fatigue, the roll of the easy
+vehicle upon the springs soon soothed her into a dreamy state. Through
+the efforts at wakefulness, she watched the gleams that fell within from
+the carriage-lamps, the strange shadows on the roadside, the boughs
+tossing to the wind and flickering all their leaves in the speeding
+light; she watched, also, Mr. Raleigh's face, on which, in the fitful
+flashes, she detected a look of utter weariness.
+
+"_Monsieur_," she exclaimed, "_il faut que je vous gêne!_"
+
+"Immensely," said Mr. Raleigh with a smile; "but, fortunately, for no
+great time."
+
+"We shall be soon at home? Then I must have slept."
+
+"Very like. What did you dream?"
+
+"Oh, one must not tell dreams before breakfast, or they come to pass,
+you know."
+
+"No,--I am uninitiated in dream-craft. Mr. Heath"----
+
+"_Monsieur_," she cried, with sudden heat, "_il me semble que je
+comprends les Laocoons! J'en suis de même!_"
+
+As she spoke, she fell, struck forward by a sudden shock, the coach was
+rocking like a boat, and plunging down unknown gulfs. Mr. Raleigh seized
+her, broke through the door, and sprang out.
+
+"_Qu'avez vous?_" she exclaimed.
+
+"The old willow is fallen in the wind," he replied.
+
+"_Quel dommage_ that we did not see it fall!"
+
+"It has killed one of the horses, I fear," he continued, measuring, as
+formerly, her terror by her levity. "Capua! is all right? Are you safe?"
+
+"Yah, massa!" responded a voice from the depths, as Capua floundered
+with the remaining horse in the thicket at the lake-edge below. "Yah,
+massa,--nuffin harm Ol' Cap in water; spec he born to die in galluses;
+had nuff chance to be in glory, ef 'twasn't. I's done beat wid dis yer
+pony, anyhow, Mass'r Raleigh. Seems, ef he was a 'sect to fly in de face
+of all creation an' pay no 'tention to his centre o' gravity, he might
+walk up dis yer hill!"
+
+Mr. Raleigh left Marguerite a moment, to relieve Capua's perplexity.
+Through the remaining darkness, the sparkle of stars, and wild fling of
+shadows in the wind, she could but dimly discern the struggling figures,
+and the great creature trampling and snorting below. She remembered
+strange tales out of the "Arabian Nights," "Bellerophon and the
+Chimaera," "St. George and the Dragon"; she waited, half-expectant, to
+see the great talon-stretched wings flap up against the slow edge of
+dawn, where Orion lay, a pallid monster, watching the planet that
+flashed like some great gem low in a crystalline west, and she stepped
+nearer, with a kind of eager and martial spirit, to do battle in turn.
+
+"Stand aside, Una!" cried Mr. Raleigh, who had worked in a determined
+characteristic silence, and the horse's head, sharp ear, and starting
+eye were brought to sight, and then his heaving bulk.
+
+"All right, massa!" cried Capua, after a moment's survey, as he patted
+the trembling flanks. "Pretty tough ex'cise dat! Spect Massam Clean be
+mighty high,--his best cretur done about killed wid dat tree;--feared he
+show dis nigger a stick worf two o' dat!"
+
+"We had like to have finished our dance on nothing," said Mr. Raleigh
+now, looking back on the splintered wheels and panels. "Will you mount?
+I can secure you from falling."
+
+"Oh, no,--I can walk; it is only a little way."
+
+"Reach home like Cinderella? If you had but one glass slipper, that
+might be; but in satin ones it is impossible." And she found herself
+seated aloft before quite aware what had happened.
+
+Pacing along, they talked lightly, with the gayety natural upon
+excitement,--Capua once in a while adding a cogent word. As they opened
+the door, Mr. Raleigh paused a moment.
+
+"I am glad," he said, "that my last day with you has been crowned by
+such adventures. I leave the Lake at noon."
+
+She hung, listening, with a backward swerve of figure, and regarding
+him in the dim light of the swinging hall-lamp, for the moment
+half-petrified. Suddenly she turned and seized his hand in hers,--then
+threw it off.
+
+"_Cher ami_," she murmured hastily, in a piercing whisper, like some
+articulate sigh, "_si tu m'aimes, dis moi!_"
+
+The door closed in the draught, the drawing-room door opened, and Mr.
+Laudersdale stepped out, having been awaiting their return. Mr. Raleigh
+caught the flash of Marguerite's eye and the crimson of her cheek, as
+she sprang forward up the stairs and out of sight.
+
+The family did not breakfast together the next day, as politeness
+chooses to call the first hour after a ball, and Mr. Raleigh was making
+some arrangements preliminary to his departure, in his own apartments,
+at about the hour of noon. The rooms which he had formerly occupied Mrs.
+McLean had always kept closed, in a possibility of his return, and he
+had found himself installed in them upon his arrival. The library was
+today rather a melancholy room: the great book-cases did not enliven it;
+the grand-piano, with its old dark polish, seemed like a coffin, the
+sarcophagus of unrisen music; the oak panelling had absorbed a richer
+hue with the years than once it wore; the portrait of his mother seemed
+farther withdrawn from sight and air; Antinoüs took a tawnier tint in
+his long reverie. The Summer, past her height, sent a sad beam, the
+signal of decay, through the half-open shutters, and it lay wearily on
+the man who sat by the long table, and made more sombre yet the faded
+carpet and cumbrous chair.
+
+There was a tap on the door. Mr. Raleigh rose and opened it, and invited
+Mr. Laudersdale in. The latter gentleman complied, took the chair
+resigned by the other, but after a few words became quiet. Mr. Raleigh
+made one or two attempts at conversation, then, seeing silence to be his
+visitor's whim, suffered him to indulge it, and himself continued his
+writing. Indeed, the peculiar relations existing between these men made
+much conversation difficult. Mr. Laudersdale sat with his eyes upon
+the floor for several minutes, and his countenance wrapped in thought.
+Rising, with his hands behind him, he walked up and down the long room,
+still without speaking.
+
+"Can I be of service to you, Sir?" asked the other, after observing him.
+
+"Yes, Mr. Raleigh, I am led to think you can,"--still pacing up and
+down, and vouchsafing no further information.
+
+At last, the monotonous movement ended, Mr. Laudersdale stood at the
+window, intercepting the sunshine, and examined some memoranda.
+
+"Yes, Mr. Raleigh," he resumed, with all his courtly manner, upon close
+of the examination, "I am in hopes that you may assist me in a singular
+dilemma."
+
+"I shall be very glad to do so."
+
+"Thank you. This is the affair. About a year ago, being unable to make
+my usual visit to my daughter and her grandmother, I sent there in my
+place our head clerk, young Heath, to effect the few transactions, and
+also to take a month's recreation,--for we were all overworked and
+exhausted by the crisis. The first thing he proceeded to do was to fall
+in love with my daughter. Of course he did not mention this occurrence
+to me, on his return. When my daughter arrived at New York, I was again
+detained, myself, and sent her to this place under his care. He lingered
+rather longer than he should have done, knowing the state of things; but
+I suspected nothing, for the idea of a clerk's marriage with the heiress
+of the great Martinique estate never entered my mind; moreover, I have
+regarded her as a child; and I sent him back with various commissions at
+several times,--once on business with McLean, once to obtain my wife's
+signature to some sacrifice of property, and so on. I really beg your
+pardon, Mr. Raleigh; it is painful to another, I am aware, to be thrust
+upon family confidences"----
+
+"Pray, Sir, proceed," said Mr. Raleigh, wheeling his chair about.
+
+"But since you are in a manner connected with the affair, yourself"----
+
+"You must be aware, Mr. Laudersdale, that my chief desire is the
+opportunity you afford me."
+
+"I believe so. I am happy to afford it. On the occasion of Mr. Heath's
+last visit to this place, Marguerite drew attention to a coin whose
+history you heard, and the other half of which Mrs. Purcell wore. Mr.
+Heath obtained the fragment he possessed through my wife's aunt, Susanne
+Le Blanc; Mrs. Purcell obtained hers through her grandmother, Susan
+White. Of course, these good people were not slow to put the coin and
+the names together; Mr. Heath, moreover, had heard portions of the
+history of Susanne Le Blanc, when in Martinique.
+
+"On resuming his duties in the counting-house, after this little
+incident, one day, at the close of business-hours, he demanded from me
+the remnants of this history with which he might be unacquainted. When
+I paused, he took up the story and finished it with ease, and--and
+poetical justice, I may say, Mr. Raleigh. Susanne was the sister of
+Mrs. Laudersdale's father, though far younger than he. She met a young
+American gentleman, and they became interested in each other. Her
+brother designed her for a different fate,--the governor of the island,
+indeed, was her suitor,--and forbade their intercourse. There were
+rumors of a private marriage; her apartments were searched for any
+record, note, or proof, unsuccessfully. If there were such, they had
+been left in the gentleman's hands for better concealment. It being
+supposed that they continued to meet, M. Le Blanc prevailed upon the
+governor to arrest the lover on some trifling pretence and send him out
+of the island. Shortly afterward, as he once confessed to his wife, he
+caused a circumstantial account of the death and funeral obsequies of
+each to reach the other. Immediately he urged the governor's suit again,
+and when she continued to resist, he fixed the wedding-day, himself, and
+ordered the _trousseau_. Upon this, one evening, she buried the box of
+trinkets at the foot of the oleanders, and disappeared the next, and no
+trace of her was found.
+
+"When I reached this point, young Heath turned to me with that
+impudently nonchalant drawl of his, saying,--
+
+"'And her property, Sir?'
+
+"'That,' I replied innocently, 'which comprised half the estate, and
+which she would have received, on attaining the requisite age, was
+inherited by her brother, upon her suicide.'
+
+"'Apparent suicide, you mean,' said he; and thereupon took up the story,
+as I have said, matched date to date and person to person, and informed
+me that exactly a fortnight from the day of Mademoiselle Susanne Le
+Blanc's disappearance, a young lady took rooms at a hotel in a Southern
+city, and advertised for a situation as governess, under the name of
+Susan White. She gave no references, spoke English imperfectly, and had
+difficulty in obtaining one; finally, however, she was successful, and
+after a few years married into the family of her employer, and became
+the mother of Mrs. Heath. The likeness of Mrs. Purcell, the grandchild
+of Susan White, to Susanne Le Blanc, was so extraordinary, a number of
+years ago, that, when Ursule, my daughter's nurse, first saw her, she
+fainted with terror. My wife, you are aware, was born long after these
+events. This governess never communicated to her husband any more
+specific circumstance of her youth than that she had lived in the West
+Indies, and had left her family because they had resolved to marry
+her,--as she might have done, had she not died shortly after her
+daughter's birth. Among her few valuables were found this half-coin of
+Heath's, and a miniature, which his mother recently gave your cousin,
+but which, on account of its new interest, she has demanded again; for
+it is probably that of the ancient lover, and bearing, as it does, a
+very striking resemblance to yourself, you have pronounced it to be
+undoubtedly that of your uncle, Reuben Raleigh, and wondered how it came
+into the possession of Mrs. Heath's mother. Now, as you may be aware,
+Reuben Raleigh was the name of Susanne Le Blanc's lover."
+
+"No,--I was not aware."
+
+Mr. Laudersdale's countenance, which had been animated in narration,
+suddenly fell.
+
+"I was in hopes," he resumed,--"I thought,--my relation of these
+occurrences may have been very confused; but it is as plain as daylight
+to me, that Susanne Le Blanc and Susan White are one, and that the
+property of the first is due to the heirs of the last."
+
+"Without doubt, Sir."
+
+"The same is plain, to the Heaths. I am sure that Marguerite will accept
+our decision in the matter,--sure that no daughter of mine would
+retain a fraudulent penny; for retain it she could, since there is not
+sufficient proof in any court, if we chose to contest; but it will
+beggar her."
+
+"How, Sir? Beggar her to divide her property?"
+
+"It is a singular division. The interest due on Susanne's moiety swells
+it enormously. Add to this, that, after M. Le Blanc's death, Madame Le
+Blanc, a much younger person, did not so well understand the management
+of affairs, the property depreciated, and many losses were encountered,
+and it happens that the sum due Mrs. Heath covers the whole amount that
+Marguerite possesses."
+
+"Now, then, Sir?" exclaimed Mr. Raleigh, interrogatively.
+
+"Now, then, Mrs. Heath requests my daughter's hand for her son, and
+offers to set off to him, at once, such sum as would constitute his half
+of her new property upon her decease, and allow him to enter our house
+as special partner."
+
+"Ah!"
+
+"This does not look so unreasonable. Last night he proposed formally to
+Marguerite, who is still ignorant of these affairs, and she refused him.
+I have urged her differently,--I can do no more than urge,--and she
+remains obdurate. To accumulate misfortunes, we escaped 1857 by a
+miracle. We have barely recovered; and now various disasters striking
+us,--the loss of the Osprey the first and chief of them,--we are to-day
+on the verge of bankruptcy. Nothing but the entrance of this fortune can
+save us from ruin."
+
+"Unfortunate!" said Mr. Raleigh,--"most unfortunate! And can I serve you
+at this point?"
+
+"Not at all, Sir," said Mr. Laudersdale, with sudden erectness. "No,--I
+have but one hope. It has seemed to me barely possible that your uncle
+may have communicated to you events of his early life,--that you may
+have heard, that there may have been papers telling of the real fate of
+Susanne Le Blanc."
+
+"None that I know of," said Mr. Raleigh, after a pause. "My uncle was
+a very reserved person. I often imagined that his youth had not been
+without its passages, something to account for his unvarying depression.
+In one letter, indeed, I asked him for such a narration. He promised to
+give it to me shortly,--the next mail, perhaps. The next mail I received
+nothing; and after that he made no allusion to the request."
+
+"Indeed? Indeed? I should say,--pardon me, Mr. Raleigh,--that your
+portion of the next mail met with some accident. Your servants could not
+explain it?"
+
+"There is Capua, who was major-domo. We can inquire," said Mr. Raleigh,
+with a smile, rising and ringing for that functionary.
+
+On Capua's appearance, the question was asked, if he had ever secretly
+detained letter or paper of any kind.
+
+"Lors, massa! I alwes knew 'twould come to dis!" he replied. "No, massa,
+neber!" shaking his head with repeated emphasis.
+
+"I thought you might have met with some accident, Capua," said his
+master.
+
+"Axerden be ----, beg massa's parden; but such s'picions poison any
+family's peace, and make a feller done forgit hisself."
+
+"Very well," said Mr. Raleigh, who was made to believe by this vehemence
+in what at first had seemed a mere fantasy. "Only remember, that, if you
+could assure me that any papers had been destroyed, the assurance would
+be of value."
+
+"'Deed, Mass Roger? Dat alters de case," said Capua, grinning. "Dere's
+been a good many papers 'stroyed in dis yer house firs' an' last."
+
+"Which in particular?"
+
+"Don' rekerlek, massa, it's so long ago."
+
+"But make an effort."
+
+"Well, Massa Raleigh,--'pears to me I _do_ remember suthin',--I do
+b'lieve--yes, dis's jist how 'twas. Spect I might as well make a crean
+breast ob it. I's alwes had it hangin' roun' my conscious; do'no' but
+I's done grad to git rid ob it. Alwes spected massa 'd be 'xcusin' Cap
+o' turnin' tief."
+
+"That is the last accusation I should make against you, Capua."
+
+"But dar I stan's convicted."
+
+"Out with it, Capua!" said Mr. Laudersdale, laughing.
+
+"Lord! Massa Lausdel! how you do scare a chile! Didn' know mass'r was
+dar. See, Mass Roger, dis's jist how 'twas. Spec you mind dat time
+when all dese yer folks lib'd acrost de lake dat summer, an' massa was
+possessed to 'most lib dar too? Well, one day, massa mind Ol' Cap's
+runnin' acrost in de rain an' in great state ob excitement to tell him
+his house done burnt up?"
+
+"Yes. What then?"
+
+"Dat day, massa, de letters had come from Massa Reuben out in Indy, an'
+massa's pipe kinder 'tracted Cap's 'tention, an' so he jist set down in
+massa's chair an' took a smoke. Bimeby Cap thought,--'Ef massa come an'
+ketch him!'--an' put down de pipe an' went to work, and bimeby I smelt
+mighty queer smell, massa, 'bout de house, made him tink Ol' Nick was
+come hissef for Ol' Cap, an' I come back into dis yer room an' Massa
+Reuben's letters from Indy was jist most done burnt up, he cotched 'em
+in dese yer ol' brack han's, Mass Roger, an' jist whipt 'em up in dat
+high croset."
+
+And having arrived at this confusion in his personal pronouns, Capua
+mounted nimbly on pieces of furniture, thrust his pocket-knife through
+a crack of the wainscot, opened the door of a small unseen closet, and,
+after groping about and inserting his head as Van Amburgh did in the
+lion's mouth, scrambled down again with his hand full of charred and
+blackened papers, talking glibly all the while.
+
+"Ef massa'd jist listen to reason," he said, "'stead o' flyin' into one
+ob his tantrums, I might sprain de matter. You see, I knew Mass Roger'd
+feel so oncomforble and remorseful to find his ol' uncle's letters done
+'stroyed, an 'twas all by axerden, an' couldn' help it noways, massa,
+an' been done sorry eber since, an' wished dar warn't no letters dis
+side de Atlantic nor torrer, ebery day I woke."
+
+After which plea, Capua awaited his sentence.
+
+"That will do,--it's over now, old boy," said Mr. Raleigh, with his
+usual smile.
+
+"Now, massa, you a'n't gwine"----
+
+"No, Capua, I'm going to do nothing but look at the papers."
+
+"But massa's"----
+
+"You need not be troubled,--I said, I was not."
+
+"But, massa,--s'pose I deserve a thrashing?"
+
+"There's no danger of your getting it, you blameless Ethiop!"
+
+Upon which pacific assurance, Capua departed.
+
+The two gentlemen now proceeded to the examination of these fragments.
+Of the letters nothing whatever was to be made. From one of them dropped
+a little yellow folded paper that fell apart in its creases. Put
+together, it formed a sufficiently legible document, and they read the
+undoubted marriage-certificate of Susanne Le Blanc and Reuben Raleigh.
+
+"I am sorry," said Mr. Laudersdale, after a moment. "I am sorry, instead
+of a fortune, to give them a bar-sinister."
+
+"Your daughter is ignorant?--your wife?"
+
+"Entirely. Will you allow me to invite them in here? They should see
+this paper."
+
+"You do not anticipate any unpleasant effect?"
+
+"Not the slightest Marguerite has no notion of want or of pride.
+Her first and only thought will be--_sa cousine Hélène_." And Mr.
+Laudersdale went out.
+
+Some light feet were to be heard pattering down the stairs, a mingling
+of voices, then Mr. Laudersdale passed on, and Marguerite tapped,
+entered, and closed the door.
+
+"My father has told me something I but half understand," said she, with
+her hand on the door. "Unless I marry Mr. Heath, I lose my wealth? What
+does that signify? Would all the mines of Peru tempt me?"
+
+Mr. Raleigh remained leaning against the corner of the bookcase. She
+advanced and stood at the foot of the table, nearly opposite him. Her
+lips were glowing as if the fire of her excitement were fanned by every
+breath; her eyes, half hidden by the veiling lids, seemed to throw a
+light out beneath them and down her cheek. She wore a mantle of swan's
+down closely wrapped round her, for she had complained ceaselessly of
+the chilly summer.
+
+"Mr. Raleigh," she said, "I am poorer than you are, now. I am no longer
+an heiress."
+
+At this moment, the door opened again and Mrs. Laudersdale entered. At
+a step she stood in the one sunbeam; at another, the shutters blew
+together, and the room was left in semi-darkness, with her figure
+gleaming through it, outlined and starred in tremulous evanescent
+light. For an instant both Marguerite and Mr. Raleigh seemed to be
+half awe-struck by the radiant creature shining out of the dark;
+but directly, Marguerite sprang back and stripped away the torrid
+nasturtium-vine which her mother had perhaps been winding in her hair
+when her husband spoke with her, and whose other end, long and laden
+with fragrant flame, still hung in her hand and along her dress.
+Laughing, Marguerite in turn wound it about herself, and the flowers, so
+lately plucked from the bath of hot air, where they had lain steeping in
+sun, flashed through the air a second, and then played all their faint
+spirit-like luminosity about their new wearer. She seemed sphered in
+beauty, like the Soul of Morning in some painter's fantasy, with all
+great stars blossoming out in floral life about her, colorless, yet
+brilliant in shape and light. It was too much; Mr. Raleigh opened the
+window and let in the daylight again, and a fresh air that lent the
+place a gayer life. As he did so, Mr. Laudersdale entered, and with him
+Mr. Heath and his mother. Mr. Laudersdale briefly recapitulated the
+facts, and added,--
+
+"Communicating my doubts to Mr. Raleigh, he has kindly furnished me with
+the marriage-certificate of his uncle and Mademoiselle Le Blanc. And as
+Mr. Reuben Raleigh was living within thirteen years, you perceive that
+your claims are invalidated."
+
+There was a brief silence while the paper was inspected.
+
+"I am still of opinion that my grandmother's second marriage was legal,"
+replied Mr. Heath; "yet I should be loath to drag up her name and
+subject ourselves to a possibility of disgrace. So, though the estate is
+ours, we can do without it!"
+
+Meanwhile, Marguerite had approached her father, and was patching
+together the important scraps.
+
+"What has this to do with it?" said she. "You admitted before this
+discovery--did you not?--that the property was no longer mine. These
+people are Aunt Susanne's heirs still, if not legally, yet justly. I
+will not retain a _sous_ of it! My father shall instruct my lawyer, Mrs.
+Heath, to make all necessary transfers to yourself. Let us wish you
+good-morning!" And she opened the door for them to pass.
+
+"Marguerite! are you mad?" asked her father, as the door closed.
+
+"No, father,--but honest,--which is the same thing," she responded,
+still standing near it.
+
+"True," he said, in a low tone like a groan. "But we are ruined."
+
+"Ruined? Oh, no! You are well and strong. So am I. I can work. I shall
+get much embroidery to do, for I can do it perfectly; the nuns taught
+me. I have a thousand resources. And there is something my mother can
+do; it is her great secret; she has played at it summer after summer.
+She has moulded leaves and flowers and twined them round beautiful faces
+in clay, long enough; now she shall carve them in stone, and you will be
+rich again!"
+
+Mrs. Laudersdale sat in a low chair while Marguerite spoke, the
+nasturtium-vine dinging round her feet like a gorgeous snake, her hands
+lying listlessly in her lap, and her attitude that of some queen who has
+lost her crown, and is totally bewildered by this strange conduct on the
+part of circumstances. All the strength and energy that had been the
+deceits of manner were utterly fallen away, and it was plain, that,
+whatever the endowment was which Marguerite had mentioned, she could
+only play at it. She was but a woman, sheer woman, with the woman's one
+capability, and the exercise of that denied her.
+
+Mr. Laudersdale remained with his eyes fixed on her, and lost, it
+seemed, to the presence of others.
+
+"The disgrace is bitter," he murmured. "I have kept my name so proudly
+and so long! But that is little. It is for you I fear. I have stood in
+your sunshine and shadowed your life, dear!--At least," he continued,
+after a pause, "I can place you beyond the reach of suffering. I must
+finish my lonely way."
+
+Mrs. Laudersdale looked up slowly and met his earnest glance.
+
+"Must I leave you?" she exclaimed, with a wild terror in her tone. "Do
+you mean that I shall go away? Oh, you need not care for me,--you need
+never love me,--you may always be cold,--but I must serve you, live with
+you, die with you!" And she sprang forward with outstretched arms.
+
+He caught her before her foot became entangled in the long folds of her
+skirt, drew her to himself, and held her. What he murmured was inaudible
+to the others; but a tint redder than roses are swam to her cheek, and a
+smile broke over her face like a reflection in rippling water. She held
+his arm tightly in her hand, and erect and proud, as it were with a new
+life, bent toward Roger Raleigh.
+
+"You see!" said she. "My husband loves me. And I,--it seems at this
+moment that I have never loved any other than him!"
+
+There came a quick step along the matting, the handle of the door turned
+in Marguerite's resisting grasp, and Mrs. Purcell's light muslins swept
+through. Mr. Raleigh advanced to meet her,--a singular light upon his
+face, a strange accent of happiness in his voice.
+
+"Since you seem to be a part of the affair," she said in a low tone,
+while her lip quivered with anger and scorn, "concerning which I have
+this moment been informed, pray, take to Mr. Lauderdale my brother's
+request to enter the house of Day, Knight, and Company, from this day."
+
+"Has he made such a request?" asked Mr. Raleigh.
+
+"He shall make it!" she murmured swiftly, and was gone.
+
+That night a telegram flashed over the wires, and thenceforth, on the
+great financial tide, the ship Day, Knight, and Company lowered its peak
+to none.
+
+The day crept through until evening, deepening into genuine heat, and
+Marguerite sat waiting for Mr. Raleigh to come and bid her farewell.
+It seemed that his plans were altered, or possibly he was gone, and at
+sunset she went out alone. The cardinals that here and there showed
+their red caps above the bank, the wild roses that still lined the way,
+the grapes that blossomed and reddened and ripened year after year
+ungathered, did not once lift her eyes. She sat down, at last, on an old
+fallen trunk cushioned with moss, half of it forever wet in the brook
+that babbled to the lake, and waited for the day to quench itself in
+coolness and darkness.
+
+"Ah!" said Mr. Raleigh, leaping from the other side of the brook to the
+mossy trunk, "is it you? I have been seeking you, and what sprite sends
+you to me?"
+
+"I thought you were going away," she said, abruptly.
+
+"That is a broken paving-stone," he answered, seating himself beside
+her, and throwing his hat on the grass.
+
+"You asked me, yesterday, if I confessed to being a myth," she said,
+after a time. "If I should go back to Martinique, I should become one in
+your remembrance,--should I not? You would think of me just as you would
+have thought of the Dryad yesterday, if she had stepped from the tree
+and stepped back again?"
+
+"Are you going to Martinique?" he asked, with a total change of face and
+manner.
+
+"I don't know. I am tired of this; and I cannot live on an ice-field. I
+had such life at the South! It is 'as if a rose should shut and be a bud
+again.' I need my native weather, heat and sea."
+
+"How can you go to Martinique?"
+
+"Oh, I forgot!"
+
+Mr. Raleigh did not reply, and they both sat listening to the faint
+night-side noises of the world.
+
+"You are very quiet," he said at last, ceasing to fling waifs upon the
+stream.
+
+"And you could be very gay, I believe."
+
+"Yes. I am full of exuberant spirits. Do you know what day it is?"
+
+"It is my birthday."
+
+"It is _my_ birthday!"
+
+"How strange! The Jews would tell you that this sweet first of August
+was the birthday of the world.
+
+  "''Tis like the birthday of the world,
+  When earth was born in bloom,'"--
+
+she sang, but paused before her voice should become hoarse in tears.
+
+"Do you know what you promised me on my birthday? I am going to claim
+it."
+
+"The present. You shall have a cast which I had made from one of
+my mother's fancies or bas-reliefs,--she only does the front of
+anything,--a group of fleurs-de-lis whose outlines make a child's face,
+my face."
+
+"It is more than any likeness in stone or pencil that I shall ask of
+you."
+
+"What then?"
+
+"You cannot imagine?"
+
+"_Monsieur_" she whispered, turning toward him, and blushing in the
+twilight, "_est ce que c'est moi?_"
+
+There came out the low west-wind singing to itself through the leaves,
+the drone of a late-carousing honey-bee, the lapping of the water on the
+shore, the song of the wood-thrush replete with the sweetness of its
+half-melody; and ever and anon the pensive cry of the whippoorwill
+fluted across the deepening silence that summoned all these murmurs
+into hearing. A rustle like the breeze in the birches passed, and Mrs.
+Purcell retarded her rapid step to survey the woods-people who rose out
+of the shade and now went on together with her. It seemed as if the
+loons and whippoorwills grew wild with sorrow that night, and after a
+while Mrs. Purcell ceased her lively soliloquy, and as they walked they
+listened. Suddenly Mr. Raleigh turned. Mrs. Purcell was not beside him.
+They had been walking on the brook-edge; the path was full of gaps and
+cuts. With a fierce shudder and misgiving, he hurriedly retraced his
+steps, and searched and called; then, with the same haste, rejoining
+Marguerite, gained the house, for lanterns and assistance. Mrs. Purcell
+sat at the drawing-room window.
+
+"_Comment?_" cried Marguerite, breathlessly.
+
+"Oh, I had no idea of walking in fog up to my chin," said Mrs. Purcell;
+"so I took the short cut."
+
+"You give me credit for the tragic element," she continued, under her
+breath, as Mr. Raleigh quietly passed her. "That is old style. To be
+sure, I might as well die there as in the swamps of Florida. Purcell is
+ordered to Florida. Of course, I am ordered too!" And she whirled him
+the letter which she held.
+
+Other letters had been received with the evening-mail, and one that made
+Mr. Raleigh's return in September imperative occasioned some discussion
+in the House of Laudersdale. The result that that gentleman secured
+one more than he had intended in the spring; and if you ever watch the
+shipping-list, the arrival of the Spray-Plough at Calcutta, with Mr. and
+Mrs. Raleigh among the passengers, will be seen by you as soon as me.
+
+Later in the evening of this same eventful day, as Mr. Raleigh and
+Marguerite sat together in the moonlight that flooded the great window,
+Mrs. Laudersdale passed them and went down the garden to the lake.
+She wore some white garment, as in her youth, and there was a dreamy
+sweetness in her eye and an unspoken joy about her lips. Mr. Raleigh
+could not help thinking it was a singular happiness, this that opened
+before her; it seemed to be like a fruit plucked from the stem and left
+to mature in the sunshine by itself, late and lingering, never sound at
+heart. She floated on, with the light in her dusky eyes and the seldom
+rose on her cheek,--floated on from moonbeam to moonbeam,--and the
+lovers brought back their glances and gave them to each other. For one,
+life opened a labyrinth of warmth and light and joy; for the other,
+youth was passed, destiny not to be appeased: if his affection enriched
+her, the best he could do was to bestow it; in his love there would yet
+be silent reservations.
+
+"Mr. Raleigh," said Marguerite, "did you ever love my mother?"
+
+"Once I thought I did."
+
+"And now?"
+
+"Whereas I was blind, now I see."
+
+"Listen! Mrs. Purcell is singing in the drawing-room."
+
+  "Through lonely summers, where the roses blow
+  Unsought, and shed their tangled sweets,
+  I sit and hark, or in the starry dark,
+  Or when the night-rain on the hill-side beats.
+
+  "Alone! But when the eternal summers flow
+  And refluent drown in song all moan,
+  Thy soul shall waste for its delight, and haste
+  Through heaven. And I shall be no more alone!"
+
+"What a voice she sings with to-night!" said Marguerite. "It is stripped
+of all its ornamental disguises,--so slender, yet piercing!"
+
+"A needle can pain like a sword-blade. There goes the moon in clouds.
+Hark! What was that? A cry?" And he started to his feet.
+
+"No," she said,--"it is only the wild music of the lake, the voices of
+shadows calling to shadows."
+
+"There it is again, but fainter; the wind carries it the other way."
+
+"It is a desolating wind."
+
+"And the light on the land is like that of eclipse!"
+
+He stooped and raised her and folded her in his arms.
+
+"I have a strange, terrible sense of calamity, _Mignonné!_" he said.
+"Let it strike, so it spare you!"
+
+"Nothing can harm us," she replied, clinging to him. "Even death cannot
+come between us!"
+
+"Marguerite!" said Mr. Laudersdale, entering, "where is your mother?"
+
+"She went down to the lake, Sir."
+
+"She cannot possibly have gone out upon it!"
+
+"Oh, she frequently does; and so do we all."
+
+"But this high wind has risen since. The flaws"----And he went out
+hastily.
+
+There flashed on Mr. Raleigh's mental sight a vision of the moonlit
+lake, one instant. A boat, upon its side, bending its white sail down
+the depths; a lifted arm wound in the fatal rope; a woman's form,
+hanging by that arm, sustained in the dark transparent tide of death;
+the wild wind blowing over, the moonlight glazing all. For that instant
+he remained still as stone; the next, he strode away, and dashed down
+to the lake-shore. It seemed as if his vision yet continued. They had
+already put out in boats; he was too late. He waited in ghastly suspense
+till they rowed home with their slow freight. And then his arm supported
+the head with its long, uncoiling, heavy hair, and lifted the limbs,
+round which the drapery flowed like a pall on sculpture, till another
+man took the burden from him and went up to the house with his dead.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When Mr. Raleigh entered the house again, it was at break of dawn. Some
+one opened the library-door and beckoned him in. Marguerite sprang into
+his arms.
+
+"What if she had died?" said Mrs. Purcell, with her swift satiric
+breath, and folding a web of muslin over her arm. "See! I had got out
+the shroud. As it is, we drink _skål_ and say grace at breakfast. The
+funeral baked-meats shall coldly furnish forth the marriage-feast. You
+men are all alike. _Le Roi est mort? Vive la Reine!_"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+PAUL REVERE'S RIDE.
+
+
+  Listen, my children, and you shall hear
+  Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
+  On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-Five:
+  Hardly a man is now alive
+  Who remembers that famous day and year.
+
+  He said to his friend,--"If the British march
+  By land or sea from the town to-night,
+  Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry-arch
+  Of the North-Church-tower, as a signal-light,--
+  One if by land, and two if by sea;
+  And I on the opposite shore will be,
+  Ready to ride and spread the alarm
+  Through every Middlesex village and farm,
+  For the country-folk to be up and to arm."
+
+  Then he said good-night, and with muffled oar
+  Silently rowed to the Charlestown shore,
+  Just as the moon rose over the bay,
+  Where swinging wide at her moorings lay
+  The Somersett, British man-of-war:
+  A phantom ship, with each mast and spar
+  Across the moon, like a prison-bar,
+  And a huge, black hulk, that was magnified
+  By its own reflection in the tide.
+
+  Meanwhile, his friend, through alley and street
+  Wanders and watches with eager ears,
+  Till in the silence around him he hears
+  The muster of men at the barrack-door,
+  The sound of arms, and the tramp of feet,
+  And the measured tread of the grenadiers
+  Marching down to their boats on the shore.
+
+  Then he climbed to the tower of the church,
+  Up the wooden stairs, with stealthy tread,
+  To the belfry-chamber overhead,
+  And startled the pigeons from their perch
+  On the sombre rafters, that round him made
+  Masses and moving shapes of shade,--
+  Up the light ladder, slender and tall,
+  To the highest window in the wall,
+  Where he paused to listen and look down
+  A moment on the roofs of the town,
+  And the moonlight flowing over all.
+
+  Beneath, in the churchyard, lay the dead
+  In their night-encampment on the hill,
+  Wrapped in silence so deep and still,
+  That he could hear, like a sentinel's tread,
+  The watchful night-wind, as it went
+  Creeping along from tent to tent,
+  And seeming to whisper, "All is well!"
+  A moment only he feels the spell
+  Of the place and the hour, the secret dread
+  Of the lonely belfry and the dead;
+  For suddenly all his thoughts are bent
+  On a shadowy something far away,
+  Where the river widens to meet the bay,--
+  A line of black, that bends and floats
+  On the rising tide, like a bridge of boats.
+
+  Meanwhile, impatient to mount and ride,
+  Booted and spurred, with a heavy stride,
+  On the opposite shore walked Paul Revere
+  Now he patted his horse's side,
+  Now gazed on the landscape far and near,
+  Then impetuous stamped the earth,
+  And turned and tightened his saddle-girth;
+  But mostly he watched with eager search
+  The belfry-tower of the old North Church,
+  As it rose above the graves on the hill,
+  Lonely, and spectral, and sombre, and still.
+
+  And lo! as he looks, on the belfry's height,
+  A glimmer, and then a gleam of light!
+  He springs to the saddle, the bridle he turns,
+  But lingers and gazes, till full on his sight
+  A second lamp in the belfry burns!
+
+  A hurry of hoofs in a village-street,
+  A shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark,
+  And beneath from the pebbles, in passing, a spark
+  Struck out by a steed that flies fearless and fleet:
+  That was all! And yet, through the gloom and the light,
+  The fate of a nation was riding that night;
+  And the spark struck out by that steed, in his flight,
+  Kindled the land into flame with its heat.
+
+  It was twelve by the village-clock,
+  When he crossed the bridge into Medford town.
+  He heard the crowing of the cock,
+  And the barking of the farmer's dog,
+  And felt the damp of the river-fog,
+  That rises when the sun goes down.
+
+  It was one by the village-clock,
+  When he rode into Lexington.
+  He saw the gilded weathercock
+  Swim in the moonlight as he passed,
+  And the meeting-house windows, blank and bare,
+  Gaze at him with a spectral glare,
+  As if they already stood aghast
+  At the bloody work they would look upon.
+
+  It was two by the village-clock,
+  When he came to the bridge in Concord town.
+  He heard the bleating of the flock,
+  And the twitter of birds among the trees,
+  And felt the breath of the morning-breeze
+  Blowing over the meadows brown.
+  And one was safe and asleep in his bed
+  Who at the bridge would be first to fall,
+  Who that day would be lying dead,
+  Pierced by a British musket-ball.
+
+  You know the rest. In the books you have read
+  How the British regulars fired and fled,--
+  How the farmers gave them ball for ball,
+  From behind each fence and farmyard-wall,
+  Chasing the red-coats down the lane,
+  Then crossing the fields to emerge again
+  Under the trees at the turn of the road,
+  And only pausing to fire and load.
+
+  So through the night rode Paul Revere;
+  And so through the night went his cry of alarm
+  To every Middlesex village and farm,--
+  A cry of defiance, and not of fear,--
+  A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,
+  And a word that shall echo forevermore!
+  For, borne on the night-wind of the Past,
+  Through all our history, to the last,
+  In the hour of darkness and peril and need,
+  The people will waken and listen to hear
+  The hurrying hoof-beat of that steed,
+  And the midnight-message of Paul Revere.
+
+
+
+
+A NIGHT UNDER GROUND.
+
+
+My dear Laura Matilda, have you ever worked your way under ground, like
+the ghost Hamlet, Senior? On the contrary, you confess, but a dim idea
+of that peculiar mode of progression abides in the well-ordered mansion
+of your mind?
+
+Well, I do not wonder at it; you are civilized beyond the common herd;
+your mamma, careful of her own comfort and the beauty of her child,
+guards both. Your sunny summer-times go by in the shade of sylvan
+groves, or amid the whirl of Saratoga or Newport ball-rooms. I accept
+your ignorance; it is a pretty blossom in your maiden chaplet. For
+myself, I blush for my own familiarity with rough scenes chanced upon in
+wayward wanderings.
+
+Let me tell you of a path among the "untrodden ways." Transport yourself
+with me.
+
+Fancy a low, level, drowsy point of land, stretching out into the
+unbroken emerald green of Lake Superior, at the point where a narrow,
+yellowish river offers its tribute. The King of Lakes is exclusive; he
+disdains to blend his brilliant waters with those of the muddy river; a
+wavy line, distinctly and clearly defined, but seeming as if drawn by
+a trembling hand, undulates at their junction,--no democratic,
+union-seeking boundary, but the arbitrary line of division that
+separates the Sultan from the slave, the peer from the peasant.
+
+Along this shore are scattered various buildings that seem to nod in the
+indolent sunshine of the bright, clear, quiet air of midsummer. One of
+these, differing from the rest in its more modern construction, is a
+spacious hotel that holds itself proudly erect, and from its summit the
+gay flag of my country floats flauntingly.
+
+We must pass this by, and go down a plank-covered walk to reach the
+sandy-golden beach where the green waves dash with silent dignity,
+in these long calms of July. Before the hotel the river flows also
+sleepily; but both shores are vocal with ladies' laughter and
+the singing of young girls, the lively chatter of a party of
+pleasure-tourists.
+
+The fine steamer that brought us to this point has gone,
+
+  "Sailing out into the west,
+  Out into the west, as the sun went down";
+
+but no "weeping and wringing of hands" was there; we knew it must "come
+back to the town,"--that we are merely transient waifs cast upon this
+quiet beach, flitting birds of passage who have alighted in the porticos
+of the "Bigelow House," Ontonagon, Michigan.
+
+A long, low flat-boat, without visible sails, steam-pipes, or oars,--a
+narrow river-craft, with a box-like cabin at one end, the whole rude
+in its _ensemble_, and uncivilized in its details,--is the object that
+meets the gaze of those who would curiously inspect the means by which
+the adventurous novelty-seeking portion of our party are to be conveyed
+up this Ontonagon river to the great copper-mines that form the
+inestimable wealth of that region. For the metallic attraction has
+proved magnetic to the fancies of a few. A mine is a mystery; and
+mysteries, to the female mind, are delights.
+
+What is the boat to us but a means? If it seem prosaic, what care we?
+Have we escaped the French fashions of _à-la-mode_ watering-places, to
+be fastidious amid wigwams and unpeopled shores?
+
+We all know what it is to embark for a day's travel, but we do not all
+understand the charm of being stowed away like freight in a boat such as
+the one here faintly sketched; how seats are improvised; how umbrellas
+are converted into stationary screens, and awnings grow out of
+inspiration; how baskets are hidden carefully among carpet-bags, and
+camp-stools, and water-jugs, and stowed-in-shavings ice; how the
+long-suffering, patient ladies shelter themselves in the tiny, stifling
+cabin, while those of the merry, complexion-careless sort lounge in
+the daylight's glare, and one couple, fond of seclusion and sentiment,
+discover a good place for both, at the rudder-end.
+
+There is an oar or two on board, it appears, as we push off in the early
+dawn; and these are employed for a mile or so at the mouth of the river;
+then the current begins to quicken in a narrower bed, and a group of
+sinewy men betake themselves to their poles, lazily at first, until----
+
+But you do not know exactly what these implements are?
+
+They are heavy, wooden, sharp-pointed poles, ten or twelve feet long. On
+either side of the boat runs a "walk," arranged as if a ladder were laid
+horizontally; but in reality the bars or rungs are firmly fastened to
+the walk, to be used as rests for the feet. Here the men, five on a
+side, march like a chain-gang, backward and forward; placing one end of
+the pole in the bed of the stream, resting the other in the hollow of
+the shoulder near the arm-pit, and bracing themselves by their feet
+against these bars, they pry the boat along.
+
+Progression by such means is unavoidably slow; but no steamboat-race
+on our Western rivers, blind and reckless, boiler-defying and
+life-despising, ever produced more excitement than this same poling.
+
+Wait till the current runs rapidly, fretting and seething in its angry
+haste, when for a moment's delay the boat must lose ground; when the
+poles are plunged into the rocky bed like harpoons into the back of an
+escaping whale; when the athletic forms of the men are bent forward
+until each prostrates himself in the exertion of his full powers; when
+not a false step--each step a run--can be hazarded; when that monotonous
+unanimity of labor is at its height, in which each boatman becomes
+possessed as if by a devil of strife; when their faces lose every gentle
+semblance of humanity, and become distorted to a simple expression
+of stubborn brute force; when the muscles of their arms are knitted,
+rope-like, and every nerve stretched to its utmost;--wait till you have
+seen all this, and you will confess that a woman's lazy life can know no
+harder toil than that of the mind's sympathetic coexertion,--that is, if
+she be excitable or impressible.
+
+The stream is tortuous, erratic, shallow, and narrow. Sometimes, as we
+glide, always noiselessly, beneath the overhanging foliage and tangled
+vines along shore, what myriads of gayly winged insects--brilliant
+dragon-flies, mammoth gnats, preposterous mosquitoes--swarm about our
+heads, disturbed from their gambols by the laughter and songs aboard our
+moving craft!
+
+Only one halt in our journey, and that to dine. Just above this point we
+pass the swiftest rapids on the route, where the river widens, and each
+side of the bank is beautiful in its wooded picturesqueness, while the
+waters rush, in foaming, surging, tumbling confusion, over the rugged
+rocks, or dart between them like a merry band of water-sprites chasing
+each other in gleesome frolic.
+
+It seems a desecration of these rapids thus to subdue and triumph over
+them. They are as if placed there by Nature as a sportive check to man's
+further intrusion; and as the waters come hurrying down, led, as it
+were, by some Undine jealous for her realm, their murmurings seem to
+say, in playful, yet earnest remonstrance,--"Let our gambols divert
+you; we will hasten to you; but approach no nearer! Permit us to guard
+the sanctuary of our hidden sources, our beloved and holy solitudes!"
+
+But vain appeal! Our men pole frantically onward, and so the day passes.
+By mid-afternoon their labors cease, and we come to anchor at the bank,
+having achieved seventeen miles in nine hours! Let those of us to whom
+lightning-express-trains have been slow grumble hereafter at their fifty
+miles an hour!
+
+A country-wagon receives most of the ladies; the majority of their
+attendant cavaliers walk; of two horses, the side-saddled one has about
+one hundred pounds avoirdupois for his share, and, in spite of the lack
+of habit and equestrian "pomp and circumstance" generally, I cannot term
+it the most unpleasant three miles I ever travelled. The road is a wild,
+rugged ascent up a well-wooded hill-side. There is a tonic vigor in
+the atmosphere, which communicates itself irresistibly to one's mental
+state; the gladdened lungs inhale it eagerly, as a luxury. When one
+walks in this air, one seems to gain wings; to ride is to float at will.
+
+Presently, at the top, a low village comes in sight; yelping curs start
+from wayside cabins; coarse, dull-featured women gape at half-opened
+doors or sit idly on rude steps; and the men we chance to meet wear that
+cadaverous pallor inseparable from the mere idea of a miner. We do not
+regret that the pert dogs have imparted speed to our horses' heels;--a
+swift, exhilarating gallop brings us in sight of a large, comfortable
+house, perched like a bird-box in the hills; then others are discerned;
+and in a few more bounds, we are at the gate. Here, where all visitors
+to the Minnesota Mines are received and entertained, we prove
+_avant-couriers_ of the slowly advancing wagon-load,--"the largest party
+of ladies ever met there," they tell us, as we forewarn our hosts of the
+band so boldly invading their copper-bound country.
+
+Very soon we are rambling over the hills,--those of Nature's rearing,
+and others formed by the accumulation of refuse brought up from the
+mine. We discover and secure some fine specimens of the metal; sundry
+of the knowing ones, after mysterious interviews with rascally-looking
+miners, appear with curious bits of pure silver ore mingled with
+crystals of quartz and tinted with tiny specks of copper. These, being
+the most valuable curiosities of the region, are usually secreted by the
+miners for the purpose of private speculation.
+
+We feel a reverence for this ground, so teeming with metallic
+wealth,--and yet a certain timorousness, as we remember that we walk on
+a crust, that beneath us are great caves and subterranean galleries.
+
+This outer shell, this surface-knowledge of what lies below, does not
+content me. I have also a brave friend who shares my feeling. We agree,
+that, despite the interest of this crust, to know of the fruit beneath
+and not taste it is worse than aggravating; we grow reckless in our
+thirst for the forbidden knowledge.
+
+We have entertained a little plot in our headstrong minds all the way,
+which we have hardly dared to name before. It is surely not feminine to
+look longingly on those ladders made for the descent of hardy miners
+only; visitors beneath the surface are rare; only gentlemen interested
+in seeing for themselves the richness of these vaunted mines have
+essayed the tour; even many of these failing to penetrate farther than
+the first level, and bravely owning their faint-heartedness. In spite of
+this, we feel our way cautiously. A descent is to be made this night,
+when the Captain of the Mine goes his nightly round of inspection; a
+gentleman, the head and front of our expedition, whom we shall call the
+"Colonel," proposes to accompany him.
+
+Why may we not form an harmonious quartette? We have nerve; has it not
+been tested throughout the somewhat arduous journey of the preceding
+weeks? We have presence of mind; we are passable _gymnastes_.
+
+In fact, viewing _Mon Amie_ and me from our own point of view, than
+ourselves never did there exist two mortals more manifestly fashioned
+straight from the hand of Nature, and educated by previous physical
+culture and mental discipline for the performance of a feat at once
+perilous and daring, one unknown to the members of "our set," and which
+might have been thought impracticable by all who had known us only in
+the gas-light glare of Society, and the circumspection of crinoline's
+confining circle.
+
+Does it matter by what cunning wiles of pretty pleading and downright
+demonstrations of the project's reasonableness we succeeded (for we did
+succeed) in being allowed to take our fates in our own hands or trust
+them to our own sure-footedness? I think not.
+
+  "For when a woman will, she will, you may
+  depend on't."
+
+But you should have seen the robing! We are to start at ten, P.M.
+Previously we betake ourselves to our chambers, and, entertaining a
+vague notion that Fashion's expanse may prove inconvenient, we are
+looping up our trailing robes in fantastic folds, when a tap at the
+door.
+
+_Voila!_ a servant with two full suits of new, but coarse, miners'
+clothes,--with a modest intimation from our companions of their
+advisability,--in fact, their absolute necessity. We pause aghast! Ah!
+the renewed shouts of laughter from those merry, but more timorous
+damsels, who, from their secure surroundings,--those becoming barriers
+adopted at the dictate of Parisian caprice and retained with feminine
+pertinacity,--had poked fun at our forlorn limpness!
+
+This climax of costume is startling, but the laughter rouses our
+courage. We stand on the brink of our Rubicon. Shall trousers deter us
+from the passage? Shall a coat be synonymous with cowardice? No,--we
+rise superior to the occasion; we pant to be free; we in-breathe the
+spirit of liberty, as we don our blouses. We loop our long tresses under
+such head-coverings as would drive any artist hatter to despair; to us
+they prove a weighty argument against hats in general, as we feel their
+heavy rims press on our tender brain-roofs. However, when the saucy eyes
+of _Mon Amie_ look out sparkling from under her begrimed helmet, the
+effect is not bad; on the contrary, the masquerade is piquant. No need
+to mention the ribbons that we knot under our wide, square collars for
+becomingness, our coquetry "under difficulties," nor the gauntleted
+gloves wherewith we protect our hands, nor the daintiness of the little
+boots that peep from the loose trousers, which have something Turkish
+in their cut. _Mon Amie_, with her rosy blushes, reminds me of a jocund
+miller's boy;--as for myself, well, I do not think the Bloomer dress so
+very bad, after all!
+
+A torch-bearing band have stationed themselves at the doors to bid us
+god-speed,--to make merry at our droll masquerade,--to quiz our odd
+head-gear,--to criticize us from head to foot, in short,--but between
+all, to offer words of caution. Then we go out into the starlit, but not
+over-bright night,--such a one as is friendly to lovers and to thieves,
+friendly to religion and to thought, the beloved of sentimentalists, and
+the adored of this particular group of adventurous miners. In Indian
+file, lantern-led, we traverse the narrow, beaten path that leads to
+one of the openings of the mine. These are covered by a rough-plank
+house,--too much like a shed to merit that pretentious term, which
+implies something fit to live in; in the centre of this shelter is
+an open space, perhaps a yard square, and similar in appearance to a
+trap-door in a roof. Here we wait a few moments, while the Captain of
+the Mine and the Agent of the Mining Company,--who has joined our party
+at the last moment, to afford us the undivided services of the Captain
+as guide,--are engaged in some mysterious process of moulding; an odor,
+not attar of rose, nor yet Frangipanni, salutes our nostrils; then our
+companions approach. Both the Colonel and the Agent are "lit up,"--in
+fact, all-luminous with the radiance of tallow "dips"; one of these,
+stuck in a lump of soft clay, adheres to the front of each hat, and in
+their hands they have others.
+
+We also are to wear a starry flame on our brows; and, not content with
+this, are invested with several short unlighted candles, which are to
+dangle gracefully by their wicks from a buttonhole of our becoming
+blouses. Thus our costume is complete; and I doubt if Buckingham sported
+the diamond tags of Anne of Austria with more satisfaction than do we
+our novel and odorous decoration: we dub ourselves the Light Guard on
+the instant.
+
+In the delay before starting, we observe several miners descend through
+the black and most suggestive trap-door, each bearing a tin can in his
+mouth, as a good dog carries a basket at the bidding of his master.
+
+The flame of the candle, bright in the density of the pit's darkness, as
+its bearer descends step by step with the rapidity which custom has
+made easy, becomes in a few seconds like the tiniest glow-worm: one can
+follow the spark only; the man disappears within the moment.
+
+I cannot describe, nor, indeed, convey the least idea of this peculiar
+effect. We feel our hearts tremble at the thought that whither that
+light has gone we must follow. For the first time I realize that we
+are about to go _into_ the earth,--that we shall presently crawl like
+insects, burrow like underground vermin, beneath the surface, man's
+proper place. But such thoughts are not for long indulgence.
+
+"Now let us descend!" says the Colonel.
+
+Grasping the round of the ladder where it rose slightly above the floor,
+the Captain, our guide, with that air of assurance which practice
+bestows, swings himself from sight. To him succeeds the Colonel. Next
+comes my own turn. This is not the first time my feet have tried
+ladder-bars; in the country-spent vacations of my school-days, how
+many times have I alertly scaled the highest leading to granaries, to
+barn-lofts, to bird-houses, to all quasi-inaccessible places, whither my
+daring ignorance--reckless, because unconscious of danger--had tempted
+me! But mounting a clean, strong, wide ladder, in the full flood of day,
+light below, above, around, promising you security by its very fulness
+of effulgence, is a far different thing from groping your way, step by
+step, down a slimy, muddy frame which hangs in a straight line from the
+very start. I shake off a first tremor, draw a full breath, and with
+fortitude follow my leader carefully. As I look above, after fairly
+getting committed, I can behold _Mon Amie's_ feet, whose arched in-steps
+cling round each bar with a pretty dependence that is in the highest
+degree appealing. Above her I hear the deep voice of the Agent.
+
+And so the quintette, in grim harmony of enterprise, go down, down,
+down, like so many human buckets, into a bottomless well.
+
+Alas, and alas! our own arms, with their as yet untried muscles, must be
+our only windlass to bring us to the surface again! Down, down, down,
+deeper, deeper, deeper! Will this first ladder never end?
+
+Ah, at last! At the foot, on either side, stand the Captain and the
+Colonel, like sentries. We have reached a shelf of rock, and we may
+rest. Here we perch ourselves, like sea-birds on a precipice that
+overlooks the sea.
+
+By the light of our flickering candles we behold each other's faces,
+and we can talk together. We are but two hundred feet under ground. A
+desolate stillness reigns here; no sound reaches us, either of labor or
+the steps of passing workmen. A cold stream of water trickles from a
+cleft rock behind us; we bathe our foreheads in it, and betake ourselves
+to the ladder again.
+
+From our next resting-place we proceed through a gallery, an exhausted
+vein, kept open as a passage from one shaft to another. As we turn a
+corner, we seem to plunge into a rocky cavern; our feet tread on
+roughly imbedded rocks; the sides of the cave jut out in refuse
+boulders,--harsh, dark-colored, ashen; overhead are beams of hard wood,
+bracing and strengthening the excavation. We traverse this gallery
+hastily.
+
+Now that we are here, we are conscious of excitement. _Mon Amie_
+manifests hers by her steady, deliberate tones, a sort of exaltation
+foreign to her usually vibrating voice, her tremulous cadences; she
+seems borne along, despite and above herself. For my own part, as my
+lungs inflate themselves with this pure, dry, bracing air, exquisitely
+redolent of health, and testifying at once to a total exemption
+from noxious exhalations or mephitic vapors, I grow _tête-montée_,
+rattle-brained; my laugh echoes through these stony chambers, wild
+snatches of song hover on my lips, odd conceits flit through my brain,
+I joke, I dash forward with haste; my excitement endows me with a
+superfeminine self-possession.
+
+But now we hear an ominous rattle, a clanking of chains, a rumbling as
+of distant thunder; we are approaching a shaft. The shafts in this
+mine are not sunk perpendicularly, but are slightly inclined: the huge
+buckets, lowered and raised by means of powerful machinery, are but
+ancient caldrons, counterparts of those in which the weird witches in
+"Macbeth" might have brewed their unholy decoctions, or such as the
+dreadful giants that formed the nightmare of my childhood might have
+used in preparing those Brobdignagian repasts among the ingredients of
+which a plump child held the same rank as a crab in ours.
+
+The sounds grow nearer; presently our guide disappears; then I behold
+the Colonel, in whose steps I follow, faithful as his shadow, crouch
+sidewise: we must pass behind this inclined plane, which rests on
+roughly hewn rocks, that protrude till it appears impossible that any
+living thing, except a lizard, can find a passage. I am sure we must
+shrink from the original rotundity with which Nature blessed us. I
+feel as the frog in the fable might have felt, if, after successfully
+inflating himself to the much-envied dimensions of the ox, he had
+suddenly found himself reduced to his proper proportions. Edging
+sidewise, accommodating the inequalities of the damp surfaces to the
+undulations of our forms, deafened, crazed by the roar of the caldrons
+that dash madly from side to side, we fairly _ooze_ through.
+
+More ladders! This time they are not hung quite perpendicularly, are
+shorter, and some lean, a little, which affords rest; others have one
+side higher than the other: to these my already aching palms cling with
+desperation. So have I seen insects adhere, through sheer force of fear,
+to a shaken stem, or a perilous branch beaten by a storm-wind.
+
+The voices of my companions come to me from above, though I cannot see
+the soles of _Mon Amie's_ friendly feet, which at first preserved an
+amiable companionship with my own hands; but, looking far upward, I
+behold a tiny, star-like spark. When I was a child, I used to think that
+fire-flies were the crowns of the fairies, which shone despite their
+wearers' invisibility: this idea was recalled to me.
+
+Hark! booming from unthought-of depths, a roar rolls up in majestic
+waves of echoing thunder. At this resonant burst, I tremble,--I think a
+prayer.
+
+"They are blasting below us," cries the Colonel, _de profundis_.
+
+Then up rushes a volume of thick, white smoke, and we are enveloped as
+in shrouds. I have no more fear,--but the odor, ah! that sulphureous,
+sickening, deathly odor! Faintness seizes me,--the ladder swims before
+my eyes,--I am paralyzed,--Death has me, I think!
+
+But the very excess of the danger has in it something of reviving power.
+I remember, that, just as I left my room,--whose quiet safety never
+before appeared so heavenly,--prompted by some instinctive impulse, I
+had placed a small vial of ammonia in the breast-pocket of my coat.
+
+I have wellnigh swooned with ecstasy, as I have inhaled the overcoming
+odors of some rare bouquet, love-bestowed and prized beyond gems; my
+senses have reeled in the intoxication of those wondrous extracts whose
+Oriental, tangible richness of fragrance holds me in a spell almost
+mystical in its enthralment; but I dare aver that no blossom's breath,
+no pungent perfume distilled by the erudite inspiration of Science, ever
+possessed a tithe of the delicious agony of that whiff of unromantic
+ammonia, which, powerful as the touch of magic, and thrilling as the
+kiss of love, snatched me back to life, arrested my tottering senses, as
+they blindly staggered on the very brink of certain death.
+
+When we reach the next level, and our faces are revealed to each other,
+with one voice they exclaim, "How frightfully pale you are!" But I say
+nothing. In fact, their familiar features, wearing no longer their
+daylight semblance, present an aspect at once grim and grotesque, and
+more like the spirits of my friends than their incorporated substances.
+
+Traversing the wild, rude corridors, we find that the path grows more
+perilous, the way more intricate; we have words of warning from our
+protectors, who often look back anxiously. They have begun to realize
+what they have done in yielding to a woman's odd caprice.
+
+In this level we are shown the spots from which famous masses of copper
+have been removed, and are granted useful, but fleeting statistics
+of weight; we are also so fortunate as to discover some chips of the
+wonderful block, raised in '54, I think, which weighed five hundred
+tons. Then we chance upon chasms, which, seen so dimly, though dreadful
+enough in reality, are made a thousand times more so by the terrors of
+imagination; we creep along the brinks of these, scarcely daring to look
+down; above, the heavy boulders lie heaped in frightful confusion. When
+we have crawled past these death-traps and stand in safety once more,
+we throw down bits of stone, and seconds elapse before we hear the dull
+_thump_ with which each signals its arrival in the depths. Along the
+edges of some of these gloomy pits we cannot pick our way; therefore a
+plank is thrown across, and, trusting to so slender a bridge, we pass,
+one by one. A single false step were enough to dash one to atoms,--so
+to be transformed to a bruised and mangled mass, to perform one's own
+sepulture, and lie in a grander grave than will ever be hollowed by
+mortal hands to hide our useless bodies.
+
+The deeper one penetrates into these mines, the wilder, more dangerous
+the paths. It is as though the upper regions were kept in "company"
+order, but lower down we meet with the every-day roughnesses of
+veritable miners'-life; we follow their hazardous, but familiar steps;
+we behold all the hardships these toiling, burrowing workers undergo,
+that the hidden coffers of Earth may yield their tribute of treasure to
+Man, its self-appointed, arrogant master.
+
+Occasionally we meet a passing miner. Grasping his ponderous tools, he
+flits by like a phantom; even in the momentary glance, we can perceive
+how livid his sunless labor has left him; he is blanched as a ghoul,
+and moves as noiselessly, with feather-light step. Each with a motion
+salutes the Captain; but they do not heed the little group of strangers
+who have braved so many dangers to behold the wonders which to them
+are as commonplace as the forge to a blacksmith, or to a carpenter his
+work-bench.
+
+Still farther below us we hear the clink and clatter of real work. Down
+we plunge,--another ladder, "long drawn out." Some of its rounds are
+wanting; others are loose and worn to a mere splinter. Warned by the
+voice below me, I proceed with a trembling caution, tenfold more
+exciting to the strained nerves than the wildest bound on a mettled
+racer, the fiercest rush that ever tingled through every fibre of the
+rider's frame.
+
+The water has saturated the banks by which our crazy ladder hangs, and
+every round is damp and slimy with clayey mud. Alas, for my poor pretty
+gantlets! _Mon Amie_ has thrown away hers, as useless.
+
+Finally the ladder ceases abruptly. My feet in vain seek a
+resting-place. There is none.
+
+A voice says,--that kindly, earnest voice, the symbol of protective
+care, and our smoother of all difficulties,--"We have swung ourselves
+down by a chain that hangs from the side of the last round. We are too
+far below to reach or assist you. Take the chain firmly; it is the only
+route, and we cannot return!"
+
+_Que faire?_ Behold a pleasant predicament for two city-bred ladies, not
+"to the manner born," of swinging themselves from the end of a ladder
+by means of a rusty iron chain, from which they would alight--where?
+Surely, we know not.
+
+I am very sure I could not reproduce in description, and probably not
+by practice, the inevitable monkey-contortions, the unimaginable animal
+agility, by which I transfer my weight to the clumsy links of this
+almost invisible chain. The size of the staple from which it hangs
+dissipates all fears in respect to its strength. Hand over hand, my feet
+sliding on the slippery bank, remembering sailors in the shrouds, and
+taking time to pity them, at last I reach friendly hands, and stand
+breathless on another level.
+
+How the soft, white, dimpled palms of _Mon Amie_ testify to the hardship
+of this episode, as she bathes them in the cooling water! But, because
+one's hands are tender, cannot one's nerves be strong, one's will
+indomitable?
+
+Again on the tramp. The cavernous passages are sublime in height, the
+chasms fearful in their yawning gulfs. We pick our way daintily, at
+intervals pausing to listen to the distant reverberations of exploding
+blasts. The atmosphere here, as above, is fairly heavenly in its purity
+and invigorating freshness; it girds us with singular strength,
+and clothes us as in a garment of enchanted armor that defies all
+soul-sinking.
+
+Creeping behind another shaft, we reach still another chasm, above which
+piles of dark rocks lie heaped in such confusion as might result from a
+great convulsion. There is a narrow path along its edge, and here the
+stones are small; but, as we look up, the mighty masses frown down upon
+us with threatening grandeur. Along this path, treading lightly, as
+if gifted with wings, the Captain passes; then the Agent (for we had
+slightly altered our order of march); _Mon Amie_ follows. She is
+half-way past the danger, when an ominous pause,--we are ordered to
+stop.
+
+Down into the chasm rolls a stone, displaced by an unlucky step of our
+pioneer. One stone is nothing,--but more follow that had been supported
+by this: small ones at first,--but the larger rocks threaten a slide. If
+they are not arrested in their course, she is lost!
+
+What a moment that is! I dare not breathe. _Mon Amie_ stands
+statue-like, awaiting the death which she believes is upon her. Not many
+words are spoken. I think I feel all that her one glance conveys.
+But the brave men beyond her, with instant unanimous action bracing
+themselves against the sliding rocks, oppose their feeble force to the
+down-sweeping agents of destruction; a moment more, and they would
+have been too late. With the step of a frightened antelope _Mon Amie_
+trembles past them. I see her safe, and hasten on. "Step lightly!" says
+a voice full of suspense and fear, despite its calmness.
+
+Step, indeed! As if I rest on those treacherous stones! My feet brush
+them no more than the wing of a butterfly grazes the roses among which
+it flutters. Step, forsooth! If ever the angels concerned themselves for
+this atom in Creation's myriads, they hover round me now, they bear me
+up, they teach me how to fly! Deprived now of their human props, how
+the angry fragments leap and tumble and chase one another through the
+echoing abyss below! These reverberations seem freighted with elfin
+voices that jeer the insensate rocks for their baffled scheme of
+mischief.
+
+But they chanted a far different chorus, and the darkness saw another
+sight, when, a few moons later, they dashed themselves down in
+irresistible array, and bore with them in their desperate plunge the
+lifeless bodies of two passing miners, in whose hearts, it may be, dwelt
+at the moment only happy thoughts of the homes 'neath the blue skies to
+which they were hurrying, the dear familiar sunlit Paradise that would
+succeed the endless night of their _Inferno_ of toil.
+
+  "But men must work, and women must weep;
+  And the sooner 'tis over, the sooner to sleep!"
+
+Well, we take up our march again presently, and, led by a monotonous
+hammering, proceed toward the sound. Some of the miners are at work
+here, clearing a mass of ore from the stubborn rock. Their strokes fall
+as regularly as those of machinery, and the grim men who wield the
+ponderous hammers accompany each blow with a peculiar loud indrawing of
+the breath, like the pant of a blacksmith at his anvil. So strong is
+this resemblance, that we burst forth all together in the strains of
+the "Anvil Chorus"; and the accompaniment is beaten with tenfold more
+regularity and effect than on the stage, in the glare of the footlights,
+by "Il Trovatore's" gypsy-comrades. I doubt if Verdi's music was ever
+so rendered before, amid such surroundings. The compliment may be the
+higher, coming from so low a region.
+
+Beyond this group are a few miners resting from toil. One of these, as
+he stands leaning his folded arms on a jutting rock, upon which he has
+placed his candle, elicits our spontaneous admiration. His beauty is
+Apollo-like,--every chiselled feature perfect in its classic regularity;
+his eyes sad, slumberous, and yet deep and glowing, are quite enough
+for any susceptible maiden's heart; about a broad expanse of forehead
+cluster thick masses of dark brown hair; his shirt, open at the throat,
+reveals glimpses of ivory; altogether he is statuesque and beautiful.
+Even his hands, strongly knit as they are, have not been rendered coarse
+by labor; they bear the same pallid hue as his face, and he looks like
+some nobly-born prisoner. "What untoward fate cast him there?" I often
+ask myself. He exists in my memory as a veritable Prince Charming, held
+captive in those gloomy caves of enchantment that yielded up to me their
+unreal realities in that nightmarish experience. I never fancy him on
+upper earth living coarsely, even, it may be, talking ungrammatically,
+defying Horne Tooke and outraging Murray, among beings of a lower order
+of humanity; but he rises like a statue, standing silent and apart.
+
+Some one throws away a nearly burnt-out candle at this spot. It falls
+but a few inches from a can of gunpowder, which is not too securely
+closed. As I utter a quick word of warning to the careless one, a miner
+starts. "Good Heaven!" I hear him exclaim, as we disappear,--"that was a
+woman!"
+
+When we reach the next shaft, the Captain deposits himself in the
+descending bucket, and, irregularly tossing from side to side, goes down
+to overlook some work, and leave fresh orders with the miners. We await
+his return before again betaking ourselves to the ladders.
+
+On the next level, we behold scores of men in busy action. I can think
+only of ants in an ant-hill: some are laden with ore; others bearing the
+refuse rocks and earth, the _débris_ of the mine, to the shafts; others,
+again, are preparing blasts,--we do not tarry long with these; others
+with picks work steadily at the tough ore. In some places, the copper
+freshly broken glitters like gold, and the specks on the rocks, or in
+the earth-covered mass, as our candle-light awakens their sparkles,
+gleam like the spangles on a dancer's robe or stars in a midnight sky.
+All the while we hear the dreadful rattle of the down-sinking caldrons,
+or the heavy labor of the freighted ones, as they ascend from level to
+level.
+
+Suddenly our path conducts us past a seated bevy of miners taking their
+"crib," as it is termed, from the food-can, which stands at hand,--a
+small fire blazing in the midst of them. Weary and sore, we seat
+ourselves near them, while our hardier companions talk with the
+respectful group.
+
+They work eight hours at a time, they tell us,--ascending at the
+expiration of that period to betake themselves to their homes, which are
+mostly in the little village where the yelping curs also reside. They
+enjoy unusual health, and pity the upper-world of surface-laborers,
+whom they regard with a kind of contempt. Accidents are not frequent,
+considering the perils of their occupation. The miners here are
+generally Cornish-men, with some Germans.
+
+I sit silent, thinking of my Prince Charming, with many vague
+conjectures.
+
+At first, these men have paused in their repast in presence of the
+strangers; but now, with rude courtesy, noticing our weariness, they
+offer a portion to us. Faint and famishing, we by no means disdain it. I
+wonder what Mrs. Grundy would say, could her Argus-eyes penetrate to
+the spot, where we,--bound to "die of roses in aromatic pain,"--in
+miners'-garb, masculine and muddy, sit on stones with earthy delvers,
+more than six hundred feet under ground,--where the foot of woman has
+never trod before, nor the voice of woman echoed,--and sip, with the
+relish of intense thirst, steaming black tea from an old tin cup!
+
+_Eh, bien!_ for all that, let me do it justice. Never was black tea
+less herb-like; never draught of sillery, quaffed from goblet of rare
+Bohemian glass, more delicious! And so, with thank-yous that were not
+only from the lip, we toil on some distance yet, to the shaft by which
+we are to ascend,--one quite remote from that by which we began our
+trip.
+
+Halting at the foot of the ladder, we pour forth the "Star-spangled
+Banner" with the full strength of lungs inflated by patriotism, until
+the stirring staves ring and resound through those dim caves. The
+miners, who hold the superstition, that to whisper bodes ill-luck, must
+have imagined we were exorcising evil spirits with an incantation.
+
+Then begins our weary way upward. We sing "Excelsior" in our hearts, and
+forget our aching limbs, for the most laborious portion of the night's
+toil is before us. The almost perpendicular ladder is just beside the
+powerful pump, which, worked by a steam-engine, exhausts the water from
+the mine, and its busy piston, in monotonous measure, keeps time to our
+climbing.
+
+Two rests during the entire distance, which we travel in brave silence.
+Indeed, we cannot speak,--the oppressive strain upon the chest is so
+great. Step after step, hand over hand, up we go. At last, warmer air
+greets us, lights flicker from above; the trap-door is reached; we are
+on the surface again; we are out of the depths,--and our hearts whisper
+a _Te Deum_ of thanksgiving.
+
+I think well of the establishment of a chapel, such as exists at the
+entrance to the Valenciana mine in Mexico, where each miner spends half
+an hour, going to or returning from his labors. Such a union of work and
+worship seems a proper adjunct to the profit and the peril.
+
+There is a faint glimmer of coming dawn far away in the east, as we
+go forth into the midsummer-night, and we catch the distant notes of
+chanticleer, as he sounds his shrill _réveille_ to the day.
+
+As my confused brain seeks repose, and my weary limbs sink into the
+softness of the never-so-welcome bed, my thoughts fly to distant ones,
+to whom I would whisper,--as I do to you who have so patiently burrowed
+with me,--"Only love me for the dangers I have passed!"
+
+But it is in vain that you long for a similar experience, my dear Laura
+Matilda. Being the first, we are also the last women to whom these
+subterranean passages will yield their mysteries, their windings, and
+their wonders. Against all of my own sex the Pandemonian depths of the
+Minnesota Mines are henceforth as obstinately barred as ever were the
+golden gates of the Mohammedan Paradise.
+
+
+
+
+A LONELY HOUSE.
+
+
+  "Some weighty crime that Heaven could not pardon,
+  A secret curse, on that old building hung,
+  And its deserted garden."
+
+HOOD'S _Haunted House_.
+
+One autumn evening, not very long ago, I was driving out with my uncle.
+I had been spending several weeks at his house, and in that time had
+driven with him very often, so that I supposed myself familiar with
+nearly all the roads that stretched away from the pleasant village where
+he resided; but on this occasion he proposed taking me in an entirely
+new direction, over a tract of country I had never before seen.
+
+For a mile or two after we left home, we bowled rapidly along on a
+well-travelled turnpike; then a sudden turn to the right brought us,
+with slackened speed, into a quiet country-road. Passing through the
+fields that bordered the highway, we came into a wild, romantic region
+of hill and dale that fully deserved all that my uncle had said in its
+praise.
+
+Giving ourselves up to the sweet influences of the scene, we trotted our
+horses slowly, past dusky bits of forest that made the air fragrant with
+the damp smell of the woods, and by occasional shining pools adorned
+with floating pond-lilies, and shaded with thick, low bushes of
+witch-hazel. The sunlight had that orange glow that comes only on autumn
+evenings, the long, slant rays striking across the yellow fields and
+lighting up the dark evergreens which dotted the landscape with a tawny
+illumination, like dull flames. The locusts hummed drowsily, as if they
+were almost asleep, and the frogs in the ponds sent out an occasional
+muffled croak. Altogether, it was deliciously calm and deserted; we did
+not meet a human being or a habitation for miles, as we wound along
+the secluded path, now up and now down, but on the whole gradually
+ascending, till we reached the summit of a hill larger and steeper than
+the rest.
+
+Here there stood a lonely house.
+
+Pausing to allow our horses a moment's rest, my eye was caught by its
+deserted and dilapidated appearance. It had evidently been uninhabited
+for years. The fence had gone to decay, the gate lay rotting on the
+ground, and a forlorn sleigh, looking strangely out of place in contrast
+with the summer-flowers that had over-grown it, was drawn up before the
+entrance. The grass had obliterated every trace of the path that once
+led to the decayed steps, bushes had grown up thickly around the lower
+story of the house, and tangled vines, creeping in through the broken
+panes of the windows, hung in festoons from the moss-covered sills.
+The door had dropped from its hinges, and on one side of the front the
+boards had fallen off, so that I could see quite into the interior,
+where I noticed, with surprise, some furniture yet remained, though in
+great confusion, a broken chair and an overturned table being the most
+prominent objects. Outside, the same disorder was manifest in the great
+farm-wagon, left standing where it had last been used, and the neglected
+out-buildings fast going to decay. About the whole place there was an
+aspect of peculiar gloom, and the house itself stood on this bleak hill
+looking out over the lonesome landscape with a sort of tragic melancholy
+in its black and weather-beaten front.
+
+Now such a sight as this is very rare in our busy New England, where
+everything is turned to advantage, and where the thrifty owner of a
+tenement too old for habitation is sure to tear it down and convert the
+materials of which it is built to some other use. My curiosity was,
+therefore, at once excited regarding this place, and I turned to my
+uncle with an inquiry as to its history.
+
+"It is a very sad one," he answered,--"so sad that it gives a terrible
+dreariness to this solitary spot."
+
+"Then I am sure you will tell me the causes which led to its desertion.
+You know how much I like a story."
+
+My uncle complied with the request, and, as we wended our way home
+through the deepening twilight, related a series of strange facts,
+which, at the time, took a powerful hold on my imagination, and which I
+have since endeavored to group into a continuous narrative.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+This house, now so forlorn, was once a neat and happy home. It was built
+by a young farmer named James Blount, who went into it with his young
+wife when he brought her home from the distant State where he had
+married her. For several years they seemed very prosperous and happy;
+then a heavy affliction came. The healthy young farmer was thrown from
+his horse, and carried to his home only to linger a few terrible hours
+and expire in great agony. Thus early in its history was the doomed
+house overshadowed with the gloom of sudden and violent death.
+
+Every one was heartily sorry for the widow with her two little boys,
+and the people of the country-side did all that they could to cheer
+her loneliness and lighten her grief. But, as I have said, she was a
+stranger among them, and she seems to have been naturally of a reserved
+disposition, preferring solitude in her affliction; for she so repelled
+their attentions, that, one by one, even her husband's friends deserted
+her. Then, too, her house was three miles from the nearest neighbor, and
+this was necessarily a barrier to frequent social intercourse. She very
+rarely went into the village, even to church, and thus people came to
+know very little of her manner of life; it was only guessed at by those
+few acquaintance who, at rare intervals, made their way to the Blount
+farm-house.
+
+Among them it was remarked, that the widow, still quite young, was
+unnaturally stern and cold, and that her two sons, who were growing up
+in this sad isolation, were strangely like their mother, not only in
+appearance, but in manners. Their names were James and John. There was
+but little over a year between them, and they were so much alike that
+most persons found a difficulty in distinguishing one from the other.
+Both had fierce, black eyes, short, crisp, black hair, and swarthy
+skins,--quite unlike our freckled-face Yankee boys,--so that the older
+villagers declared, with a sigh, that there was not a trace of the
+good-hearted father about them; they wholly resembled their strange
+mother. The boys themselves did nothing to lessen this disagreeable
+impression; they were unusually grave and reserved for their years,
+taking no interest in the sports of other children; and after a time,
+it became painfully evident to those who watched them that they had no
+fondness for each other; on the contrary, that affection which would
+naturally have sprung from their nearness in age and their constant
+companionship seemed to be entirely wanting, and its place usurped by an
+absolute dislike.
+
+When this was first discovered, it was supposed to account for the
+widow's aversion to society. This idea, being once started, made those
+idle busybodies there are in every village eager to discover if the
+suspicion were correct. Through the men hired to work on the farm, it
+was ascertained that the poor mother, with all her sternness and her
+iron law, had difficulty in keeping peace between the boys. Twenty times
+a day they would fall into angry dispute about some trifle; and so
+violent were these altercations, that it was said that she durst not for
+a moment have them both out of her sight, lest one should inflict some
+deadly injury upon the other. That this was no ill-founded fear was
+evinced by a quarrel that took place between them, when John was perhaps
+eleven, and James twelve years old.
+
+It was witnessed by a village lad named Isaac Welles. He was an alert,
+active person, who liked to earn a penny or two on his own account, out
+of work-hours. With this notable intention, he arose soon after dawn of
+a pleasant summer-morning, for the purpose of picking blackberries.
+Now he knew that they were very plentiful in a field near the Blount
+farmhouse, and, thinking such small theft no robbery, he made his
+way thither with all speed, and was soon filling his basket with the
+dew-sprinkled fruit. Early as it was, however, he soon discovered that
+there was some one up before him. He heard a sound of talking in low,
+caressing tones, and, glancing in the direction whence it came, he saw
+John Blount sitting under a tree near by, and playing with a little
+black squirrel, which appeared to be quite tame. Not caring to be
+discovered and warned off, Isaac went on with his work quietly, taking
+care to keep where he could see without being seen.
+
+John was not long left alone in his innocent amusement, for in a few
+moments James Blount came running down from the house towards him. As he
+approached, John's face darkened; he caught up the squirrel, and made an
+endeavor to hide it under his jacket.
+
+"No, you don't!" said James, as he came up, breathless. "I see you have
+got him, plain enough; he sha'n't get away this time,--so you might as
+well give him to me."
+
+"No, I won't!" replied John, sullenly.
+
+"You won't?"
+
+"No!" said John, more fiercely, and then burst out, passionately,--"I
+don't see why you want to tease me about it; he a'n't your pet; I have
+found him and tamed him; he knows me and loves me, and he don't care for
+you; besides, you only want him to torment him. No! you sha'n't have
+him!"
+
+"Sha'n't I? we'll see!" And James made a step forward.
+
+John drew back several paces, at the same time trying to soothe the
+squirrel, which was becoming impatient of its confinement. His face
+quivered with excitement, as he went on, passionately,--
+
+"I know what you want him for: you want him to hurt some way. You wrung
+my black kitten's neck, and now you want to kill my squirrel. You are a
+bad, wicked boy, and I hate you!"
+
+With the last words he started to run; but he had not gone far when his
+foot struck a stone, and he fell. At this, the squirrel, terrified,
+jumped from his arms; but James was close by, and before it could
+escape, he had caught it. John was up in an instant, and James, seeing
+that he could not avoid him, gave the poor little creature's neck a
+sudden twist and flung it gasping at his brother's feet, exclaiming,--
+
+"There, now, you may have it!"
+
+For one moment John stood still, white with rage and grief; then he
+uttered a sort of choking howl, and sprang at James,--
+
+"You cruel coward!"
+
+The words were accompanied with a half-articulate curse, as he struck
+at him, blindly, fiercely, and they closed in what seemed a deadly
+struggle. John, being the younger, had a slight disadvantage in size and
+weight, but wrath gave him more than his usual strength; while James
+fought desperately, as if for life. After a few moments they rolled on
+the ground together.
+
+It was a fearful sight, those two brothers, boys though they were,
+fighting in that mad way. Their faces, so much alike that they seemed
+almost reflections of each other, were crimson with anger; their eyes
+shot fire; their breath came in sobbing pants; and very soon blood was
+drawn on both. After a brief contest, John, with a tremendous effort,
+threw James under him. With one hand he pinioned his arms, while the
+other was at his throat, where it closed with a deadly gripe. James made
+one last effort to save himself; with a violent wrench he succeeded in
+fixing his teeth in his brother's arm, but he failed in making him relax
+his hold, though they met in the firm flesh. John's brow grew darker,
+but he only tightened his clasp closer and closer, muttering,--
+
+"So help me, God! I will kill you!"
+
+His words were near being verified; already the fallen boy's mouth had
+unclosed, the red of his face turned to livid purple, and his eyes
+stared wildly, when Mrs. Blount, pale, with disordered attire, as if she
+had but just risen and dressed hastily, ran, screaming, down the hill.
+Seizing John around the waist, she dragged him back, and flung him to
+the ground, exclaiming,--
+
+"Oh, my sons! my sons! are you not brothers? Will you never be at
+peace?"
+
+At this moment, Isaac arrived, breathless with running, at the spot.
+When she saw him, the widow ceased speaking, and made no further
+allusion to the quarrel while he remained. However, she gladly accepted
+his offered assistance in lifting James, who lay gasping, and wellnigh
+dead. As they turned towards the house, John rose, sullenly, and
+wrapping a handkerchief round his wounded arm, which was bleeding
+profusely, he glanced scowlingly at his brother.
+
+"He will get over this," he muttered, with an oath; "but, sooner or
+later, I swear I will kill him!"
+
+Without noticing his mother's appealing look, he walked back to the tree
+where the dead pet lay.
+
+The half-strangled boy was carried to his bed, and a few simple remedies
+restored him to consciousness. As soon as possible, Mrs. Blount
+dismissed Isaac, declining his offers of going for a doctor, with cold
+thanks. As he went back to resume his interrupted blackberrying, he saw
+John sitting at the foot of the tree. He had dug a hole in which to bury
+the poor squirrel; it lay on his knee, a stream of dark gore oozing
+through its tiny white teeth. John was vainly endeavoring to wipe this
+with the handkerchief already stained with his own blood, while his hot
+tears fell fast and heavy.
+
+As John had said, James recovered from the choking, and the only
+apparent results of the fight were that both boys were scarred for life.
+John bore on his right wrist the impression of his brother's teeth; and
+James's throat was disfigured by two deep, black marks, on each side,
+which were quite visible till his beard concealed them. Yet, I doubt
+not, that desperate struggle, in that dawning summer-day, laid the
+foundation of the inextinguishable hatred that blasted those men's lives
+and was to be quenched only in death.
+
+Several years passed after this, in which very little was known of what
+passed at the lonely house. The boys were old enough to perform most of
+the work of the farm, so that they no longer hired laborers except at
+harvest. Mrs. Blount had herself given her sons all the instruction they
+had ever received, and, being a woman of attainments beyond those usual
+in her station, she seemed quite competent to the task. Nothing more was
+heard of their quarrels; they were always coldly civil to each other,
+when in the presence of others, and were regarded by their companions
+with respect, though, I imagine, never with any cordial liking. So they
+grew up to be grave, taciturn men, still retaining the same strong
+resemblance of face and figure, though time had somewhat altered the
+features, by fixing a different expression on each, giving to John a
+fierce resolution, and to James a lurking distrustfulness of look. These
+years made less change in Mrs. Blount than in her sons; she was the same
+active, black-eyed woman, only that her sternness and reserve seemed to
+increase with her age, and a few silver threads appeared in her raven
+hair.
+
+I have said that it was three miles from the Blount place to the nearest
+house. This was at the toll-gate, which was kept by a man named Curtis.
+He was a person of progressive tastes, supposed to have aristocratic
+inclinations. As he was a well-to-do man, these were evinced in a
+Brussels carpet and a piano-forte which figured in his small parlor, and
+by his sending his only child, a daughter, to a city boarding-school.
+She returned, as might have been expected, with ideas and desires far
+beyond the hill-side cottage where she was condemned to vegetate. Now
+she was very pretty, with dancing blue eyes and a profusion of golden
+curls; she had, too, a most winning manner, hard for any one to resist;
+and these personal attractions, added to style of dress that had never
+been seen or imagined among the simple country-folk, rendered her a
+most important person, so that no "tea-fight" or merry-making was
+complete without Nelly Curtis.
+
+However, it might have been long enough before the recluse young Blounts
+would have encountered the gay little belle, had it not been that they
+were of necessity obliged to pass through the toll-gate, and sometimes
+forced to stop there. From some of her friends Nelly heard what a
+secluded life the two brothers led, and how especially averse they
+seemed to female society, and, with the appetite for conquest of a true
+flirt, she at once determined on adding them to the list of her victims.
+It was not long before she had an opportunity for beginning her wiles.
+
+One fine spring morning, John Blount started on horseback to go to the
+village. The sun shone very brightly, the hedge-rows blushed with early
+blossoms, and the birds sang a song of rejoicing. It was one of those
+clear, soft days when one feels new life and vigor at the thought of the
+coming summer. Arrived at the toll-gate, John was surprised at seeing no
+one there to open it; he waited a moment, somewhat impatiently, and then
+called out,--
+
+"Holloa!"
+
+At this, as if startled at his voice, there appeared in the cottage
+door-way a slender, rosy-cheeked maiden, who looked blooming and
+graceful enough to be the incarnation of the fresh and beautiful May.
+
+"Excuse me," she said, with a little curtsy; "I did not see you come
+up."
+
+This, as Nelly informed the friend to whom she related the adventure,
+was a fib,--for Mr. Curtis was away, and she had been watching all the
+morning, in hopes one of the Blounts would pass; but she considered it a
+justifiable stratagem, as likely to secure his attention.
+
+Meantime John was gazing spellbound at this apparition, which appeared
+to him charming beyond anything he had ever imagined. He was so far
+carried away, that he was quite speechless and wholly oblivious of the
+toll, until she came up to the side of the horse and held out her hand.
+Then he colored, and, with awkward apology, gave her the change.
+
+"Thank you, Sir."
+
+Nelly smiled sweetly, and was just about to undo the latch of the gate,
+when John anticipated her by springing from his horse, and laying his
+powerful brown hand over her small white one, saying,--
+
+"You can't do anything with this great, heavy gate. Stand aside, and let
+me open it."
+
+Of course the offer was kindly accepted, and Nelly fairly overwhelmed
+him with her thanks, being herself somewhat touched by the unusual
+civility. John appeared quite overcome with confusion, and, remounting
+his horse, he rode off with a gruff "Good day." However, I fancy, that
+pleasant voice, and the accidental touch of that little hand, made an
+impression that never was effaced.
+
+Having thus enslaved John, it was not long before a similar opportunity
+occurred for captivating James; though it would seem from Nelly's
+confessions to her confidante that this was not so easily accomplished
+with him as with his brother. The first time she opened the gate for
+him, he paid but little more heed to her than he would have to her
+father, and she never considered her conquest complete until one day
+when Mr. Curtis availed himself of a vacant seat in James's wagon to
+get Nelly taken into the village: that ride, she fancied, insured the
+wished-for result. Whether this was a correct supposition or not,
+certain it is that not many weeks elapsed before both the Blounts were
+completely fascinated by the gay coquette.
+
+For some time the passion of each brother remained a secret to the
+other. Accident revealed it.
+
+One soft summer-evening, John rode down to the village for letters. As
+he passed through the toll-gate, he succeeded in making an appointment
+with Nelly for a walk on his return. He came back an hour later, and
+soon after sunset the two strolled down a shady path into the woods. It
+was moonlight, and Nelly was doubtless very charming in the mysterious
+radiance,--certainly her companion thought so,--for, when their walk
+was over, he induced her to sit with him on a fallen log that lay just
+within the shade of the trees, instead of returning to the house. They
+had been chatting there perhaps half an hour, when they were interrupted
+by the girl the Curtises kept to do "chores."
+
+"Please, Miss Nelly, there's a gentleman wants to see you."
+
+"Very well, tell him I will be there in a moment."
+
+When the girl was gone, Nelly suddenly exclaimed, rather regretfully,--
+
+"How stupid of me, not to ask who it was!"
+
+John's answer is not reported, only that he succeeded in lengthening the
+"moment" into a quarter of an hour, and then half an hour; and it might,
+perhaps, have lasted the whole evening, had they not, in the midst of a
+most interesting conversation, been startled by a rustling in the bushes
+behind them.
+
+"There is some one watching us!" cried John, excitedly, and half rising.
+
+"Nonsense!" said Nelly; "it is only a cat. Sit down again."
+
+This invitation was not to be declined. John sat down again, though
+still a little restless and uneasy. For some moments all was still. John
+had concluded that Nelly's suggestion was a correct one, and they had
+begun to chat quite unconcernedly, when they were again interrupted.
+This time the sound was that of an approaching footstep, and for an
+instant a dark shadow fell across the moonlit path in front of them.
+Nelly was now fairly frightened, she uttered a faint shriek, and clung
+to John for protection. Doubtless this was a very pleasant appeal to the
+young farmer, but just now wrath mastered every other feeling. He was
+ever easily angered, and, to be sure, the thought that they were watched
+was by no means agreeable. So, with a quick caress, he loosened her
+clasp and started to his feet, exclaiming,--
+
+"Don't be frightened, dear! I'll punish the rascal!"
+
+He made a dash in the direction whence the sound had come. In the shade
+of the trees stood the intruder quite still, making no attempt to avoid
+the furious onset. Mad with rage, John seized him by the collar, and,
+striking him repeatedly, and muttering curses, dragged him towards the
+bench where Nelly sat trembling. A few staggering steps, and they were
+on the path, with the pure, peaceful light of the moon falling full on
+the stranger's face.
+
+"Good God!" cried John, loosening his hold,--"it is my brother!"
+
+James drew himself up, tossing back his disordered hair, and for a
+moment the two men regarded each other with stern, fixed looks, as if
+they were preparing for another encounter. By this time, Nelly, who was
+completely terrified, had begun to weep convulsively, and her sobs broke
+the ominous silence, as she gasped,--
+
+"Oh, John, please don't strike him again!"
+
+At these words, John started, as if stung, and, looking at her with
+indignant sadness, said,--
+
+"There, you needn't cry, Nelly! I won't hurt him; I will leave him to
+you safely."
+
+Then, overcome by the rush of recollection, he burst out,
+passionately,--
+
+"Oh, James! James! you have rendered my life miserable by your
+treacheries, and now you have robbed me of her! This is no place to
+settle our quarrels; but I have sworn it once, and I swear it again now,
+some day I will be revenged!"
+
+He would not stop to hear Nelly's entreating voice; but, full of the one
+dreadful thought, that all her anxieties had been for another, while he
+was indifferent to her, he mounted his horse, without one backward look,
+and galloped fast away. I can fancy there was a wild whirl of emotion
+in his passionate heart: deadly hatred, jealousy, and crossed love are
+enough to drive any man mad.
+
+Meantime, James apologized to Nelly for his intrusion, on the ground,
+that, becoming tired of waiting, and hearing she had gone out for a
+wait, he had started to meet them, but was about to turn back, fearing
+to interrupt them, when John's rudeness compelled him to appear. The
+excuse was accepted; and James soon occupied the seat recently vacated
+by poor John. So well did he avail himself of the circumstances, that he
+succeeded in convincing Nelly that his brother was a very ill-tempered
+person, whom it would be well for her to avoid. On this, with the true
+instinct of a flirt, she endeavored to persuade him that she had never
+really cared for John's attentions. James was but too willing to be
+convinced of this; and he parted from her, feeling satisfied that his
+suit would be successful.
+
+Knowing well that his life was scarcely safe, if he were for a moment
+alone with John, after that night, James constantly exercised such
+caution as prevented the possibility of an encounter. He was determined
+as soon as possible to leave that neighborhood, always provided that
+Nelly would go with him. For some time he considered this as certain.
+John carefully avoided her, and no new suitor appeared.
+
+I fear that pretty Nelly was a thorough coquette; for, having nearly
+broken one brother's heart, she very soon tired of the other, for whom
+she had never really cared a straw. These two men being the last to fall
+into her toils, she began to sigh wearily over her too easily captured
+victims, when her fickle fancy was caught by game more worthy so expert
+a sportsman.
+
+It happened that at this time there came to the village a gentleman from
+New York, named Brooke, a bachelor of known wealth. He was perhaps forty
+years old, and had run through a course of reckless dissipation which
+had rendered him thoroughly tired of city ways and city women. On the
+very first Sunday after his arrival, as he stood idly lounging at the
+church-door, his eye was caught by Nelly's fresh, rosy face. He followed
+her into church, and spent the time of service in staring her out of
+countenance. It will be readily imagined that she was not slow to
+follow up this first impression; and but few days elapsed before their
+acquaintance had ripened into intimacy.
+
+Of course, his unceasing attentions could not fail of attracting notice
+and exciting remark; and it was not long before they came to the ears
+of the Blounts. John received the news with sullen indifference. It
+mattered little to him whom she liked now. James, however, refused to
+believe that there could be anything in it, regarding it as a mere
+passing caprice. In this view most of the village-people coincided; they
+considered it absurd to suppose that there could be anything serious in
+Mr. Brooke's devotion. Time would probably have proved the correctness
+of this supposition, had it not been, fortunately for Nelly, that she
+had a father with more steadiness of mind than her giddy brain was
+capable of. Mr. Curtis succeeded in turning the rapid attachment to such
+advantage, that in three weeks from the time of their first meeting they
+were not only engaged, but actually married.
+
+It had been Nelly's intention, with the vanity of a true woman, to
+postpone the wedding a month longer, and then to have it on such a scale
+as would excite the admiration and envy of all her companions; but Mr.
+Curtis was too shrewd for this. He durst not put this rapid love to the
+test of waiting; and he so worked upon his daughter's fears, that she
+consented to a more hasty union. Mr. Brooke, too, showed some aversion
+to any public demonstration. Perhaps he was conscious that his friends
+would think he was doing a foolish thing, and he was therefore desirous
+of having it over before they had time to remonstrate. So, on a fine
+bright Sunday, early in September, the drowsy congregation, who were
+dozing away the afternoon-service, were aroused by the publication
+of the banns of marriage between Henry Brooke and Nelly Curtis. It
+occasioned great whispering and tittering. But no one suspected that the
+wedding was near at hand; and there were very few lingerers after the
+service was over, when Kelly came in at the side-door with her father,
+was joined by Mr. Brooke, and actually married then and there.
+
+The Blount brothers never went to church, but they almost always came
+into the village of a Sunday afternoon, and on this memorable day they
+were there as usual, but not together. John was earnestly discussing a
+new breed of cattle with a neighboring farmer, wholly oblivious of
+the false Nelly. James was standing with a group of young men on the
+village-green, when Isaac Welles, the whilom blackberry-boy, rushed
+up, breathless, to say that he had been detained in the church and had
+actually seen Nelly and Mr. Brooke married.
+
+In the first eager questions that followed this announcement, no one
+noticed James, until they were astonished to see him fall heavily to the
+ground. He had fainted. They had not mentioned the publication of the
+banns to him, and he was wholly unprepared for this utter annihilation
+of all his hopes. Welles sprang to his side, and they raised him
+quickly. He was a strong man, and before they could bring any
+restoratives he had recovered.
+
+"It is nothing," he said, with a sickly smile. "I think it must have
+been a sunstroke. It is confoundedly hot."
+
+This lame explanation was accepted, and James refused to go into any of
+the neighbors' houses, though he consented to seat himself, for a few
+moments, on a rustic bench in the shade of the trees.
+
+Half an hour later, John, having finished his chat, strolled to the
+green and approached the group. He looked surprised when he caught
+sight of his brother, who of late had so carefully avoided him. His
+astonishment increased when James rose, and, advancing a step, said,--
+
+"John, Nelly Curtis is married to that Brooke!"
+
+An angry flush rose to John's brow, and his black eyes flashed
+ominously, as he answered, in a hoarse, low voice,--
+
+"So much the better, for now she will never be your wife."
+
+"Neither mine nor yours," said James, maliciously;--then, after a
+moment, he added, "She was a worthless thing, and we are well rid of
+her."
+
+At this, a tornado of passion seemed to seize John. He sprang forward,
+crying,--
+
+"She was not worthless, and I will kill the first man who dares to say
+so."
+
+There was an interval of dead silence; the brothers regarded each other
+for a moment, then James shrugged his shoulders contemptuously, and
+turned away. John glanced around him defiantly on the astonished crowd,
+and, seeing no one there likely to dispute with him, he seemed to have
+formed a sudden resolution, for he walked off rapidly after his brother.
+
+Isaac Welles had stood by, no unobservant witness of this scene. He
+noted something in those two men's eyes that recalled the fierce quarrel
+of the two boys; and as soon as it was possible for him to get away,
+he went off after the Blounts, determined, if possible, to prevent
+mischief.
+
+Meantime John had not met his brother; but, seeing James's horse was
+gone, he mounted his own and rode away towards home, determining to
+catch James before he could reach there. However, he did not overtake
+him. James was too cunning to ride directly to the farm-house, and
+John's headlong speed availed only to bring him there in time to find
+his mother alone and dangerously ill.
+
+In a moment all other thoughts were laid aside. The pent-up affection of
+John's heart had centred itself on his only parent. She had always been
+cold and stern with her sons, yet they loved her with a tender devotion
+which reclaimed natures that might otherwise have been wholly bad.
+
+With all the tenderness of a woman, John assisted his mother to her bed,
+and, not daring to leave her, awaited eagerly the coming of the only
+other person who could summon aid,--his brother James.
+
+At last he came,--riding slowly, with bowed head, up the lonely road.
+John went out to meet him. James looked up angry and astonished, and
+immediately threw himself into a position of defence. John shook his
+head.
+
+"James," he said, "I cannot settle our quarrel now. Mother is very
+ill,--perhaps dying."
+
+James started forward.
+
+"Where is she? What is the matter?" he cried, eagerly.
+
+"I do not know," answered John. "I will go for the doctor, now that you
+are come. I durst not leave her before. But, James, stop one moment. As
+long as she lives, you are safe,--I will not hurt you by word or act;
+but when she is gone,--beware!"
+
+James did not answer, except by a nod, and John, turning, saw Isaac
+Welles standing at the gate. He had overheard the conversation and felt
+that there was no danger of a quarrel, and he now came eagerly forward
+with offers of assistance. They were gratefully accepted; for even the
+taciturnity of the brothers seemed to give way before the pressing fear
+that beset them.
+
+There is ever great good-will and kindness in the scattered community of
+a village, and, despite the unpopularity of the Blounts, neighbors and
+friends soon came to them, ready and willing to aid them by every means
+in their power.
+
+Mrs. Blount's illness proved to be quite as alarming as John had
+feared. The physician, from the first, held out very little hope of her
+recovery. The strong, healthy woman was stricken, as if in a moment;
+it was the first real illness she had ever had, and it made fearful
+progress. Yet her naturally iron constitution resisted desperately, so
+that, to the astonishment of all who saw her sufferings, she lingered
+on, week after week, with wonderful tenacity of life. The summer faded
+into autumn, and autumn died into winter, and still she lived, failing
+slowly, each day losing strength, growing weaker and weaker, until it
+seemed as if she existed only by the force of will.
+
+Of course it had long ago been found necessary to have some other
+dependence than the kindness of neighbors, and a stout Irish girl had
+been hired for the kitchen, while Mrs. Clark, a good, responsible woman,
+occupied the post of nurse. From these persons, and from Isaac Welles,
+the rest of the story is collected.
+
+During all these months of her illness, the two brothers had been
+unfailing in their devotion to their poor suffering mother. Night and
+day they never tired, watching by her bedside for hours, and seeming
+scarcely to sleep. Of course they were much together, but no words of
+harshness ever passed their lips. When out of Mrs. Blount's presence,
+they spoke to each other as little as possible; in her presence, there
+was a studied civility that might have deceived any one but a mother.
+Even she was puzzled. She would lie and watch them with burning, eager
+eyes, striving to discover if it was a heartfelt reconciliation or only
+a hollow truce. It was the strong feeling she had that only her life
+kept them apart, which gave her power to defy death. Perhaps on this
+very account his stroke was all the more sudden at last.
+
+It was a dark, lowering afternoon in December when the summons came.
+Mrs. Blount had been lying in a half-doze for more than an hour. Her
+sons had taken advantage of this sleep to attend to some necessary
+duties. The nurse sat beside the fire, watching the flames flicker on
+the dark walls, and idly wondering if the leaden-hued sky portended a
+snow-storm. Her musings were broken by the voice of the invalid, very
+faint, but quite distinct,--
+
+"Nurse! nurse! Call my sons. I am dying!"
+
+Mrs. Clark ran to the bed.
+
+"Quick! quick!" cried Mrs. Blount. "Do not stop for me. You cannot help
+me now. Call my sons before it is too late!"
+
+Her tone and action were so imperative that they enforced obedience, and
+the nurse ran down-stairs with all speed. She found no one but the hired
+girl in the kitchen, who said, in answer to her hurried inquiries, that
+both brothers were out, gone to bring in the cattle before the storm.
+Mrs. Clark sent her in all haste to recall them, and then returned to
+the sick-room. As she entered, the dying woman looked up quickly, her
+face clouded with disappointment when she saw that she was alone. The
+nurse said all in her power to assure her that her sons would soon be
+there, but she could not allay the strange excitement into which their
+absence seemed to have thrown her.
+
+"My strength is failing," she said, sadly; "every moment is precious;
+if I die without that promise which they could not refuse to a dying
+mother's prayer, God knows what will become of them!"
+
+Mrs. Clark urged the necessity of quiet, but the sufferer paid no heed
+to the caution. She talked on, wildly, and sometimes incoherently,
+about the hopes she built upon the reconciliation her death-bed would
+effect,--showing, in these few moments of unnatural loquacity, how
+deeply she had felt the animosity between her sons, and how great had
+been the effort to conquer it. This excitement could not continue long;
+her voice soon grew weaker, and at last she ceased speaking, appearing
+to sink into a stupor of exhaustion.
+
+An instant after, the door opened and John ran eagerly to the couch,
+closely followed by James. Already the poor widow's eyes were closed;
+the livid hue that is so fatally significant overspread her face; her
+breath came in quick gasps.
+
+"Mother! mother!" cried John, flinging himself on his knees beside her,
+and seizing the thin, hard hand.
+
+At that sound, she opened her eyes, but it was too late; she no longer
+had the power of utterance. She glanced from one brother to the other
+with a piteous, entreating look; her mouth moved convulsively; in the
+effort to speak, she sat upright for an instant, ghastly and rigid, and
+then fell heavily back.
+
+All was over; her life of labor was changed for eternal rest; and the
+two men, whom only her power had restrained, stood with the last barrier
+between them removed, avowed and deadly enemies.
+
+Yet, for all that, they were sincere mourners for the sole parent they
+had ever known, though it seemed, that, jealous even in their grief,
+neither cared to have the other see how much he suffered; for, after
+the first few moments, when the heart refuses to be satisfied of the
+certainty which it knows only too well, they turned away, and each
+sought his own room. Afterwards, when all was prepared and the room
+decently arranged, they returned, and alternately through the long night
+kept their vigil beside the corpse. It is strange, that, in those quiet
+hours of communion with the loved dead, no thought of relenting towards
+each other ever suggested itself.
+
+The snow that had been hanging all day in the dark clouds above them
+towards evening began to fall. Stilly and continually the tiny flakes
+came down, hiding all the ruggedness of earth under a spotless mantle,
+even as the white shroud covered the toil-worn frame of the released
+sufferer.
+
+In the morning the news spread rapidly, and neighbors came to the
+afflicted house. But the brothers seemed to resent their offers of
+assistance as an intrusion, refusing to allow any other watchers,
+themselves continuing night and day to watch beside the corpse; and that
+awful vigil, instead of softening their hearts, seemed to harden them
+into a more deadly hatred.
+
+The third afternoon, when all the country-side was ghastly in its
+winding-sheet of snow, and the clouds hung heavy as a pall over the
+stricken earth, the little funeral held its way from the lonely
+farm-house to the village-churchyard. As a last tribute of respect to
+their mother, the two brothers drove side by side in the same sleigh.
+Those who saw them said that it was a sight not to be forgotten,--those
+two black figures, with their stern, pale faces, so much alike, yet so
+unsympathizing, sitting motionless, not even leaning on each other in
+that moment of grief. So they were together, yet apart, during the
+ceremony that consigned the wife to the grave where five-and-twenty
+years before they had laid the husband. So they were together, yet
+apart, when they turned their horse's head towards their home and rode
+away silently into the sombre twilight.
+
+The last person who saw them that night was Mrs. Clark. The brothers
+had insisted that both she and the Irish girl should leave early in the
+day,--replying to all offers of putting the house in order, that they
+preferred to be alone. But on her way home after the funeral, Mrs. Clark
+passed the house in a friend's sleigh and stopped a moment for her
+bundle, which in the hurry of the morning had been forgotten. To her
+surprise, as she approached the door, she saw that there were no lights
+visible in any of the windows, although it was already very dark.
+Thinking the brothers were in the back part of the house, she pushed
+open the door, which yielded to her touch, and was just about to make
+her way towards the kitchen, when she heard a sound in the parlor, and
+then these words, quite distinctly:--
+
+"Are you ready, James?"
+
+"Yes,--only one word. It is a long account we have to settle, and it
+must be final."
+
+"It shall be. Mine is a heavy score. Years ago I swore to wipe it out,
+and now the time has come."
+
+Mrs. Clark's knock interrupted them. There was an angry exclamation, and
+the door was opened. To her intense surprise, no light came from within.
+She could not understand how they could settle their accounts in the
+darkness; but they gave her no time for reflection; an angry voice, in
+answer to her inquiries, bade her go on to the kitchen, and she hastened
+off. There she found a single candle burning dimly; by its light she
+picked up her bundle, and, leaving the door open to see her way,
+returned to the front of the house. Though not a nervous woman, she felt
+an undefined fear at the mysterious darkness and silence; and as she
+passed the brothers standing in the doorway, she was struck with fresh
+terror at the livid pallor of those two stern faces that looked out from
+the black shadow. When she was going out, she heard the door of the
+parlor bolted within, and she rejoined her friends, right glad to be
+away from the sad house.
+
+So those two men were left alone, locked into the dark room together, in
+the horrible companionship of their inextinguishable hatred and their
+own bad hearts. It will forever remain unknown what passed between them
+through the long hours of that awful night, when the wind howled madly
+around the lightless house, and the clouds gathered blacker and thicker,
+shrouding it in impenetrable gloom.
+
+Three days passed before any living creature approached the spot,--three
+days of cold unparalleled in the annals of that country,--cold so severe
+that it compelled even the hardy farmers to keep as much as possible by
+the fireside. On the fourth day, Isaac Welles began to think they had
+been quite long enough alone, and he started with a friend to visit the
+Blount brothers. Arrived at the farm-house, they saw the sleigh standing
+before the door, but no sign of any one stirring. The shutters of the
+windows were closed, and no smoke came out of the chimney. They knocked
+at the door. No answer. Surprised at the silence, they at length tried
+to open it. It was not locked, but some heavy substance barred the way.
+With difficulty they forced it open wide enough to go in.
+
+To this day those men shudder and turn pale, as they recall the awful
+scene that awaited them within that house, which was, in fact, a tomb.
+
+The obstacle which opposed their entrance was the dead body of John
+Blount. He lay stretched on the floor,--his face mutilated by cuts and
+disfigured with gore, his clothes disordered and bloody, and one hand
+nearly severed from the arm by a deep gash at the wrist; yet it was
+evident that none of these wounds were mortal. After that terrible
+conflict, he had probably crawled to the door and fallen there, faint
+with loss of blood; the silent, cruel cold had completed the work of
+death.
+
+Following the blood-track, the two men entered the parlor, with
+suspended breath and hearts that almost ceased to beat. There they
+found the dead body of James Blount,--his clothes half torn off, in the
+violence of the strife that could end only in murder. A long, deep cut
+on the throat had terminated that awful struggle, though many other less
+dangerous wounds showed how desperate it had been. He lay just as he
+fell,--his features still contracted with a look of defiance and
+hatred, and in his right hand still clasped a long, sharp knife. He had
+succumbed in that mortal conflict, which quenched a lifelong quarrel,
+and was to prove fatal alike to victor and vanquished. Thus the vow of
+John Blount was fulfilled,--the pent-up hatred of years satisfied in his
+brother's murder.
+
+The room was in the wildest disorder,--chairs thrown down and broken,
+tables overturned, and the carpet torn. In one corner they found a
+second long, sharp knife. It had been at least a fair fight.
+
+They laid the two ghastly corpses side by side: they had been chained
+together all their lives; they were chained together in death. The two
+fratricides are buried in one grave.
+
+This terrible tragedy blighted the spot where it took place. No one
+would ever inhabit that house again. The furniture was removed, except
+from the one room which to this day remains unchanged, and the building
+left to fall to decay. The superstitious affirm, that, in the long
+winter nights, oaths and groans steal out, muffled, on the rising wind,
+from the dark shadows of the Lonely House.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+BARBARISM AND CIVILIZATION.
+
+
+In the interior of the island of Borneo there has been found a certain
+race of wild creatures, of which kindred varieties have been discovered
+in the Philippine Islands, in Terra del Fuego, and in Southern Africa.
+They walk usually almost erect upon two legs, and in that attitude
+measure about four feet in height; they are dark, wrinkled, and hairy;
+they construct no habitations, form no families, scarcely associate
+together, sleep in trees or in caves, feed on snakes and vermin, on ants
+and ants' eggs, on mice, and on each other; they cannot be tamed, nor
+forced to any labor; and they are hunted and shot among the trees, like
+the great gorillas, of which they are a stunted copy. When they are
+captured alive, one finds, with surprise, that their uncouth jabbering
+sounds like articulate language; they turn up a human face to gaze upon
+their captor; the females show instincts of modesty; and, in fine, these
+wretched beings are Men.
+
+Men, "created in God's image," born immortal and capable of progress,
+and so differing from Socrates and Shakspeare only in degree. It is but
+a sliding scale from this melancholy debasement up to the most regal
+condition of humanity. A traceable line of affinity unites these outcast
+children with the renowned historic races of the world: the Assyrian,
+the Egyptian, the Ethiopian, the Jew,--the beautiful Greek, the strong
+Roman, the keen Arab, the passionate Italian, the stately Spaniard, the
+sad Portuguese, the brilliant Frenchman, the frank Northman, the wise
+German, the firm Englishman, and that last-born heir of Time, the
+American, inventor of many new things, but himself, by his temperament,
+the greatest novelty of all,--the American, with his cold, clear eye,
+his skin made of ice, and his veins filled with lava.
+
+Who shall define what makes the essential difference between those
+lowest and these loftiest types? Not color; for the most degraded races
+seem never to be the blackest, and the builders of the Pyramids were far
+darker than the dwellers in the Aleutian Islands. Not unmixed purity of
+blood; since the Circassians, the purest type of the supreme Caucasian
+race, have given nothing to history but the courage of their men and the
+degradation of their women. Not religion; for enlightened nations have
+arisen under each great historic faith, while even Christianity has its
+Abyssinia and Arkansas. Not climate; for each quarter of the globe has
+witnessed both extremes. We can only say that there is an inexplicable
+step in progress, which we call civilization; it is the development of
+mankind into a sufficient maturity of strength to keep the peace and
+organize institutions; it is the arrival of literature and art; it is
+the lion and the lamb beginning to lie down together, without having, as
+some one has said, the lamb inside of the lion.
+
+There are innumerable aspects of this great transformation; but there is
+one, in special, which has been continually ignored or evaded. In the
+midst of our civilization, there is a latent distrust of civilization.
+We are never weary of proclaiming the enormous gain it has brought
+to manners, to morals, and to intellect; but there is a wide-spread
+impression that the benefit is purchased by a corresponding physical
+decay. This alarm has had its best statement from Emerson. "Society
+never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the
+other.... What a contrast between the well-clad, reading, writing,
+thinking American, with a watch, a pencil, and a bill of exchange in his
+pocket, and the naked New-Zealander, whose property is a club, a spear,
+a mat, and the undivided twentieth part of a shed to sleep under! But
+compare the health of the two men, and you shall see that his aboriginal
+strength the white man has lost. If the traveller tell us truly, strike
+the savage with a broad-axe, and in a day or two the flesh shall unite
+and heal as if you struck the blow into soft pitch; and the same blow
+shall send the white man to his grave."
+
+Were this true, the fact would be fatal. Man is a progressive being,
+only on condition that he begin at the beginning. He can afford to wait
+centuries for a brain, but he cannot subsist a second without a body. If
+civilization sacrifice the physical thus hopelessly to the mental, and
+barbarism merely sacrifice the mental to the physical, then barbarism is
+unquestionably the better thing, so far as it goes, because it provides
+the essential preliminary conditions, and so can afford to wait.
+Barbarism is a one-story log-hut, a poor thing, but better than nothing;
+while such a civilization would be simply a second story, with a first
+story too weak to sustain it, a magnificent sky-parlor, with all heaven
+in view from the upper windows, but with the whole family coming down in
+a crash presently, through a fatal neglect of the basement. In such a
+view, an American Indian or a Kaffir warrior may be a wholesome object,
+good for something already, and for much more when he gets a brain
+built on. But when one sees a bookworm in his library, an anxious
+merchant-prince in his counting-room, tottering feebly about, his thin
+underpinning scarcely able to support what he has already crammed
+into that heavy brain of his, and he still piling in more,--one feels
+disposed to cry out, "Unsafe passing here! Stand from under!"
+
+Sydney Smith, in his "Moral Philosophy," has also put strongly this case
+of physiological despair. "Nothing can be plainer than that a life of
+society is unfavorable to all the animal powers of men.... A Choctaw
+could run from here to Oxford without stopping. I go in the mail-coach;
+and the time the savage has employed in learning to run so fast I have
+employed in learning something useful. It would not only be useless in
+me to run like a Choctaw, but foolish and disgraceful." But one may well
+suppose, that, if the jovial divine had kept himself in training for
+this disgraceful lost art of running, his diary might not have recorded
+the habit of lying two hours in bed in the morning, "dawdling and
+doubting," as he says, or the fact of his having "passed the whole day
+in an unpleasant state of body, produced by laziness"; and he might
+not have been compelled to invent for himself that amazing rheumatic
+armor,--a pair of tin boots, a tin collar, a tin helmet, and a tin
+shoulder-of-mutton over each of his natural shoulders, all duly filled
+with boiling water, and worn in patience by the sedentary Sydney.
+
+It is also to be remembered that this statement was made in 1805,
+when England and Germany were both waking up to a revival of physical
+training,--if we may trust Sir John Sinclair in the one case, and
+Salzmann in the other,--such as America is experiencing now. Many years
+afterwards, Sydney Smith wrote to his brother, that "a working senator
+should lead the life of an athlete." But supposing the fact still true,
+that an average red man can run, and an average white man cannot,--who
+does not see that it is the debility, not the feat, which is
+discreditable? Setting aside the substantial advantages of strength
+and activity, there is a melancholy loss of self-respect in buying
+cultivation for the brain by resigning the proper vigor of the body. Let
+men say what they please, they all demand a life which shall be whole
+and sound throughout, and there is a drawback upon all gifts that are
+paid for in infirmities. There is no thorough satisfaction in art or
+intellect, if we yet feel ashamed before the Indian because we cannot
+run, and before the South-Sea Islander because we cannot swim. Give us a
+total culture, and a success without any discount of shame. After all,
+one feels a certain justice in Warburton's story of the Guinea trader,
+in Spence's Anecdotes. Mr. Pope was with Sir Godfrey Kneller one day,
+when his nephew, a Guinea trader, came in. "Nephew," said Sir Godfrey,
+"you have the honor of seeing the two greatest men in the world." "I
+don't know how great you may be," said the Guinea-man, "but I don't like
+your looks; I have often bought a man, much better than both of you
+together, all muscles and bones, for ten guineas."
+
+Fortunately for the hopes of man, the alarm is unfounded. The advance
+of accurate knowledge dispels it. Civilization is cultivation, whole
+cultivation; and even in its present imperfect state, it not only
+permits physical training, but promotes it. The traditional glory of
+the savage body is yielding before medical statistics: it is becoming
+evident that the average barbarian, observed from the cradle to the
+grave, does not know enough and is not rich enough to keep his body in
+its highest condition, but, on the contrary, is small and sickly and
+short-lived and weak, compared with the man of civilization. The great
+athletes of the world have been civilized; the long-lived men have been
+civilized; the powerful armies have been civilized; and the average of
+life, health, size, and strength is highest to-day among those races
+where knowledge and wealth and comfort are most widely spread. And yet,
+by the common lamentation, one would suppose that all civilization is a
+slow suicide of the race, and that refinement and culture are to leave
+man at last in a condition like that of the little cherubs on old
+tomb-stones, all head and wings.
+
+It must be owned that the delusion has all the superstitions of history
+in its favor, and only the facts against it. If we may trust tradition,
+the race has undoubtedly been tapering down from century to century
+since the Creation, so that the original Adam must have been more than
+twice the size of the Webster statue. However far back we go, admiring
+memory looks farther. Homer and Virgil never let their hero throw a
+stone without reminding us that modern heroes only live in glass houses,
+to have stones thrown at them. Lucretius and Juvenal chant the same
+lament. Xenophon, mourning the march of luxury among the Persians, says
+that modern effeminacy has reached such a pitch, that men have even
+devised coverings for their fingers, called gloves. Herodotus narrates,
+that, when Cambyses sent ambassadors to the Macrobians, they asked what
+the Persians had to eat and how long they commonly lived. He was told
+that they sometimes attained the age of eighty, and that they ate a mass
+of crushed grain, which they termed bread. On this, they said that it
+was no wonder, if the Persians died young, when they partook of such
+rubbish, and that probably they would not survive even so long, but for
+the wine they drank; while the Macrobians lived on flesh and milk, and
+survived one hundred and twenty years.
+
+But, unfortunately, there were no Life Insurance Companies among the
+Macrobians, and therefore nothing to bring down this formidable average
+to a reliable schedule,--such as accurately informs every modern man how
+long he may live honestly, without defrauding either his relict or his
+insurers. We know, moreover, precisely what Dr. Windship can lift, at
+any given date, and what the rest of us cannot; but Homer and Virgil
+never weighed the stones which their heroes threw, nor even the words in
+which they described the process. It is a matter of certainty that
+all great exploits are severely tested by Fairbanks's scales and
+stop-watches. It is wonderful how many persons, in the remoter
+districts, assure the newspaper-editors of their ability to lift twelve
+hundred pounds; and many a young oarsman can prove to you that he has
+pulled his mile faster than Ward or Clark, if you will only let him give
+his own guess at time and distance.
+
+It is easy, therefore, to trace the origin of these exaggerations. Those
+old navigators, for instance, who saw so many fine things which were
+not to be seen, how should they help peopling the barbarous realms with
+races of giants? Job Hartop, who three times observed a merman rise
+above water to his waist, near the Bermudas,--Harris, who endured such
+terrific cold in the Antarctics, that once, perilously blowing his nose
+with his fingers, it flew into the fire and was seen no more,--Knyvett,
+who, in the same regions, pulled off his frozen stockings, and his toes
+with them, but had them replaced by the ship's surgeon,--of course
+these men saw giants, and it is only a matter for gratitude that they
+vouchsafed us dwarfs also, to keep up some remains of self-respect in
+us. In Magellan's Straits, for instance, they saw, on one side, from
+three to four thousand pigmies with mouths from ear to ear; while on the
+other shore they saw giants whose footsteps were four times as large as
+an Englishman's,--which was a strong expression, considering that the
+Englishman's footstep had already reached round the globe.
+
+The only way to test these earlier observations is by later ones. For
+instance, in the year 1772, a Dutchman named Roggewein discovered Easter
+Island. His expedition had cost the government a good deal, and he
+had to bring home his money's worth of discoveries. Accordingly, his
+islanders were all giants,--twice as tall, he said, as the tallest of
+the Europeans; "they measured, one with another, the height of twelve
+feet; so that we could easily,--who will not wonder at it?--without
+stooping, have passed between the legs of these sons of Goliath.
+According to their height, so is their thickness." Moreover, he "puts
+down nothing but the real truth, and upon the nicest inspection," and,
+to exhibit this caution, warns us that it would be wrong to rate the
+women of those regions as high as the men, they being, as he pityingly
+owns, "commonly not above ten or eleven feet." Sweet young creatures
+they must have appeared, belle and steeple in one. And it was certainly
+a great disappointment to Captain Cook, when, on visiting the same
+Island, fifty years later, he could not find man or woman more than six
+feet tall. Thus ended the tale of this Flying Dutchman.
+
+Thus lamentably have the inhabitants of Patagonia been also dwindling,
+though, there, if anywhere, still lies the Cape of Bad Hope for the
+apostles of human degeneracy. Pigafetta originally estimated them at
+twelve feet. In the time of Commodore Byron, they had already grown
+downward; yet he said of them that they were "enormous goblins," seven
+feet high, every one of them. One of his officers, however, writing an
+independent narrative, seemed to think this a needless concession; he
+admits, indeed, that the women were not, perhaps, more than seven feet,
+or seven and a half, or, it might be, eight, "but the men were, for
+the most part, about nine feet high, and very often more." Lieutenant
+Cumming, he said, being but six feet two, appeared a mere pigmy among
+them. But it seems, that, in after-times, on some one's questioning this
+diminutive lieutenant as to the actual size of these enormous goblins,
+the veteran frankly confessed, that, "had it been anywhere else but in
+Patagonia, he should have called them good sturdy savages and thought no
+more on't."
+
+But, these facts apart, there are certain general truths which look
+ominous for the reputation of the _physique_ of savage tribes.
+
+First, they cannot keep the race alive, they are always tending to
+decay. When first encountered by civilization, they usually tell stories
+of their own decline in numbers, and after that the downward movement is
+accelerated. They are poor, ignorant, improvident, oppressed by others'
+violence, or exhausted by their own; war kills them, infanticide and
+abortion cut them off before they reach the age of war, pestilences
+sweep them away, whole tribes perish by famine and smallpox. Under the
+stern climate of the Esquimaux and the soft skies of Tahiti, the same
+decline is seen. Parkman estimates that in 1763 the whole number of
+Indians east of the Mississippi was but ten thousand, and they were
+already mourning their own decay. Travellers seldom visit a savage
+country without remarking on the scarcity of aged people and of young
+children. Lewis and Clarke, Mackenzie, Alexander Henry, observed this
+among Indian tribes never before visited by white men; Dr. Kane remarked
+it among the Esquimaux, D'Azara among the Indians of South America, and
+many travellers in the South-Sea Islands and even in Africa, though the
+black man apparently takes more readily to civilization than any other
+race, and then develops a terrible vitality, as American politicians
+find to their cost.
+
+Meanwhile, the hardships which thus decimate the tribe toughen the
+survivors, and sometimes give them an apparent advantage over civilized
+men. The savages whom one encounters are necessarily the picked men of
+the race, and the observer takes no census of the multitudes who have
+perished in the process. Civilization keeps alive, in every generation,
+multitudes who would otherwise die prematurely. These millions of
+invalids do not owe to civilization their diseases, but their lives. It
+is painful that your sick friend should live on Cherry Pectoral; but if
+he had been born in barbarism, he would neither have had it to drink nor
+survived to drink it.
+
+And again, it is now satisfactorily demonstrated that these picked
+survivors of savage life are commonly suffering under the same diseases
+with their civilized compeers, and show less vital power to resist them.
+In barbarous nations every foreigner is taken for a physician, and the
+first demand is for medicines; if not the right medicines, then the
+wrong ones; if no medicines are at hand, the written prescription,
+administered internally, is sometimes found a desirable restorative. The
+earliest missionaries to the South-Sea Islands found ulcers and dropsy
+and hump-backs there before them. The English Bishop of New Zealand,
+landing on a lone islet where no ship had ever touched, found the
+whole population prostrate with influenza. Lewis and Clarke, the first
+explorers of the Rocky Mountains, found Indian warriors ill with fever
+and dysentery, rheumatism and paralysis, and Indian women in hysterics.
+"The tooth-ache," said Roger Williams of the New England tribes, "is the
+only paine which will force their stoute hearts to cry"; even the Indian
+women, he says, never cry as he has heard "some of their men in this
+paine"; but Lewis and Clarke found whole tribes who had abolished this
+source of tears in the civilized manner, by having no teeth left. We
+complain of our weak eyes as a result of civilized habits, and Tennyson,
+in "Locksley Hall," wishes his children bred in some savage land, "not
+with blinded eyesight poring over miserable books." But savage life
+seems more injurious to the organs of vision than even the type of a
+cheap edition; for the most vigorous barbarians--on the prairies, in
+Southern archipelagos, on African deserts--suffer more from different
+forms of ophthalmia than from any other disease; without knowing the
+alphabet, they have worse eyes than if they were professors, and have
+not even the melancholy consolation of spectacles.
+
+Again, the savage cannot, as a general rule, endure transplantation,--he
+cannot thrive in the country of the civilized man; whereas the latter,
+with time for training, can equal or excel him in strength and endurance
+on his own ground. As it is known that the human race generally can
+endure a greater variety of climate than the hardiest of the lower
+animals, so it is with the man of civilization, when compared with the
+barbarian. Kane, when he had once learned how to live in the Esquimaux
+country, lived better than the Esquimaux themselves; and he says
+expressly, that "their powers of resistance are no greater than those of
+well-trained voyagers from other lands." Richardson, Parkyns, Johnstone,
+give it as their opinion, that the European, once acclimated, bears
+the heat of the African deserts better than the native negro. "These
+Christians are devils," say the Arabs; "they can endure both cold and
+heat." What are the Bedouins to the Zouaves, who unquestionably would be
+as formidable in Lapland as in Algiers? Nay, in the very climates where
+the natives are fading away, the civilized foreigner multiplies: thus,
+the strong New-Zealanders do not average two children to a family, while
+the households of the English colonists are larger than at home,--which
+is saying a good deal.
+
+Most formidable of all is the absence of all recuperative power in
+the savage who rejects civilization. No effort of will improves his
+condition; he sees his race dying out, and he can only drink and forget
+it. But the civilized man has an immense capacity for self-restoration;
+he can make mistakes and correct them again, sin and repent, sink and
+rise. Instinct can only prevent; science can cure in one generation, and
+prevent in the next. It is known that some twenty years ago a thrill
+of horror shot through all Anglo-Saxondom at the reported physical
+condition of the operatives in English mines and factories. It is not so
+generally known, that, by a recent statement of the medical inspector of
+factories, there is declared to have been a most astounding renovation
+of female health in such establishments throughout all England since
+that time,--the simple result of sanitary laws. What science has done
+science can do. Everybody knows which symptom of American physical decay
+is habitually quoted, as most alarming; one seldom sees a dentist who
+does not despair of the republic. Yet this calamity is nothing new; the
+elder branch of our race has been through that epidemic, and outlived
+it. In the robust days of Queen Bess, the teeth of the court ladies were
+habitually so black and decayed, that foreigners used constantly to ask
+if Englishwomen ate nothing but sugar. Hentzner, who visited the country
+in 1697, speaks of the same calamity as common among the English of all
+classes. Two centuries and a half have removed the stigma,--improved
+physical habits have put fresh pearls between the lips of all England
+now; and there seems no reason why we Americans may not yet be healthy,
+in spite of our teeth.
+
+Thus much for general considerations; let us come now to more specific
+tests, beginning with the comparison of size. The armor of the knights
+of the Middle Ages is too small for their modern descendants: Hamilton
+Smith records that two Englishmen of average dimensions found no suit
+large enough to fit them in the great collection of Sir Samuel Meyrick.
+The Oriental sabre will not admit the English hand, nor the bracelet of
+the Kaffir warrior the English arm. The swords found in Roman tumuli
+have handles inconveniently small; and the great mediaeval two-handed
+sword is now supposed to have been used only for one or two blows at the
+first onset, and then exchanged for a smaller one. The statements given
+by Homer, Aristotle, and Vitruvius represent six feet as a high standard
+for full-grown men; and the irrefutable evidence of the ancient
+doorways, bedsteads, and tombs proves the average size of the race to
+have certainly not diminished in modern days. The gigantic bones have
+all turned out to be animal remains; even the skeleton twenty-five
+feet high and ten feet broad, which one _savant_ wrote a book called
+"Gigantosteologia" to prove human, and another, a counter-argument,
+called "Gigantomachia," to prove animal,--neither of the philosophers
+taking the trouble to draw a single fragment of the fossil. The enormous
+savage races have turned out, as has been shown, to be travellers'
+tales,--even the Patagonians being brought down to an average of five
+feet ten inches, and being, moreover, only a part of a race, the
+Abipones, of which the other families are smaller. Indeed, we can all
+learn by our own experience how irresistible is the tendency of the
+imagination to attribute vast proportions to all hardy and warlike
+tribes. Most persons fancy the Scottish Highlanders, for instance, to
+have been a race of giants; yet Charles Edward was said to be taller
+than any man in his Highland army, and his height was but five feet
+nine. We have the same impression in regard to our own Aborigines. Yet,
+when first, upon the prairies of Nebraska, I came in sight of a tribe of
+genuine, unadulterated Indians, with no possession on earth but a
+bow and arrow and a bear-skin,--bare-skin in a double sense, I might
+add,--my instinctive exclamation was, "What race of dwarfs is this?"
+They were the descendants of the glorious Pawnees of Cooper, the heroes
+of every boy's imagination; yet, excepting the three chiefs, who were
+noble-looking men of six feet in height, the tallest of the tribe could
+not have measured five feet six inches.
+
+The most careful investigations give the same results in respect to
+physical strength. Early travellers among our Indians, as Hearne and
+Mackenzie, and early missionaries to the South-Sea Islands, as Ellis,
+report athletic contests in which the natives could not equal the
+better-fed, better-clothed, better-trained Europeans. When the French
+_savans_, Péron, Regnier, Ransonnet, carried their dynamometers to the
+islands of the Indian Ocean, they found with surprise that an average
+English sailor was forty-two per cent, stronger, and an average
+Frenchman thirty per cent, stronger, than the strongest island tribe
+they visited. Even in comparing different European races, it is
+undeniable that bodily strength goes with the highest civilization.
+It is recorded in Robert Stephenson's Life, that, when the English
+"navvies" were employed upon the Paris and Boulogne Railway, they used
+spades and barrows just twice the size of those employed by their
+Continental rivals, and were regularly paid double. Quetelet's
+experiments with the dynamometer on university students showed the same
+results: first ranked the Englishman, then the Frenchman, then the
+Belgian, then the Russian, then the Southern European: for those races
+of Southern Europe which once ruled the Eastern and the Western worlds
+by physical and mental power have lost in strength as they have paused
+in civilization, and the easy victories of our armies in Mexico show us
+the result.
+
+It is impossible to deny that the observations on this subject are yet
+very imperfect; and the only thing to be claimed is, that they all point
+one way. So far as absolute statistical tables go, the above-named
+French observations have till recently stood almost alone, and have been
+the main reliance. The just criticism has, however, been made, that the
+subjects of these experiments were the inhabitants of New Holland and
+Van Diemen's Land, by no means the strongest instances on the side of
+barbarism. It is, therefore, fortunate that the French tables have now
+been superseded by some more important comparisons, accurately made by
+A.S. Thomson, M.D., Surgeon of the Fifty-Eighth Regiment of the British
+Army, and printed in the seventeenth volume of the Journal of the London
+Statistical Society.
+
+The observations were made in New Zealand,--Dr. Thomson being stationed
+there with his regiment, and being charged with the duty of vaccinating
+all natives employed by the government. The islanders thus used for
+experiment were to some extent picked men, as none but able-bodied
+persons would have been selected for employ, and as they were, moreover,
+(he states,) accustomed to lifting burdens, and better-fed than the
+majority of their countrymen. The New Zealand race, as a whole, is
+certainly a very favorable type of barbarism, having but just emerged
+from an utterly savage condition, having been cannibals within one
+generation, and being the very identical people among whom were recorded
+those wonderful cures of flesh-wounds to which Emerson has referred.
+Cook and all other navigators have praised their robust physical aspect,
+and they undoubtedly, with the Fijians and the Tongans, stand at the
+head of all island races. They are admitted to surpass our American
+Indians, as well as the Kaffirs and the Joloffs, probably the finest
+African races; and a careful comparison between New-Zealanders and
+Anglo-Saxons will, therefore, approach as near to an _experimentum
+crucis_ as any single set of observations can. The following tables have
+been carefully prepared from those of Dr. Thomson, with the addition
+of some scanty facts from other sources,--scanty, because, as Quetelet
+indignantly observes, less pains have as yet been taken to measure
+accurately the physical powers of man than those of any machine he has
+constructed or any animal he has tamed.
+
+  TABLE.
+
+  HEIGHT.            _Number measured.  Average._
+  New-Zealanders...................  147  5 feet 6-3/4 inches.
+  Students at Edinburgh............  800  5 "    7-1/10 "
+  Class of 1860. Cambridge (Mass.).  106  5 "    7-3/5  "
+  Students at Cambridge (Eng.).....   80  5 "    8-3/5  "
+
+  WEIGHT.
+  New-Zealanders...................  146  140 pounds.
+  Soldiers 58th Regiment........... 1778  142     "
+  Class of 1860. Cambridge (Mass.).  106  142-1/2 "
+  Students at Cambridge (Eng.).....   80  143     "
+  Men weighed at Boston (U.S.)
+  Mechanics' Fair, 1860 .........   4369  146-3/4 "
+  Englishmen (Dr. Thomson)......... 2648  148     "
+  Cambridge, Eng. (a newspaper
+  statement) .................... ----    151     "
+  Revolutionary officers at West
+  Point, August 10th, 1778,
+  given in "Milledulcia," p. 273..   11    226   "
+
+  AREA OF CHEST.
+  New-Zealanders...................  151  35.36 inches.
+  Soldiers 58th Regiment...........  628  36.71  "
+
+  STRENGTH IN LIFTING.
+  New-Zealanders...................   31  367 pounds.
+  Students fit Edinburgh, aged 25.. ----  416  "
+  Soldiers 58th Regiment...........   33  422  "
+
+  NOTE. The range of strength among the New-Zealanders was from 250
+  pounds to 420 pounds; among the soldiers, from 350 pounds to 504 pounds.
+
+But it is the test of longevity which exhibits the greatest triumph for
+civilization, because here the life-insurance tables furnish ample,
+though comparatively recent statistics. Of course, in legendary ages all
+lives were of enormous length; and the Hindoos in their sacred books
+attribute to their progenitors a career of forty million years or
+thereabouts,--what may safely be termed a ripe old age; for if a man
+were still unripe after celebrating his forty-millionth birthday, he
+might as well give it up. But from the beginning of accurate statistics
+we know that the duration of life in any nation is a fair index of
+its progress in civilization, Quetelet gives statistics, more or less
+reliable, from every nation of Northern Europe, showing a gain of ten to
+twenty-five per cent, during the last century. Where the tables are most
+carefully prepared, the result is least equivocal. Thus, in Geneva,
+where accurate registers have been kept for three hundred years, it
+seems that from 1560 to 1600 the average lifetime of the citizens was
+twenty-one years and two months; in the next century, twenty-five years
+and nine months; in the century following, thirty-two years and nine
+months; and in the year 1833, forty years and five months: thus nearly
+doubling the average age of man in Geneva, within those three centuries
+of social progress. In France, it is estimated, that, in spite of
+revolutions and Napoleons, human life has been gaining at the rate
+of two months a year for nearly a century. By a manuscript of the
+fourteenth century, moreover, it is shown that the rate of mortality
+in Paris was then one in sixteen,--one person dying annually to every
+sixteen of the inhabitants. It is now one in thirty-two,--a gain of a
+hundred per cent, in five hundred years. In England the progress
+has been far more rapid. The rate of mortality in 1690 was one in
+thirty-three; in 1780 it was one in forty; and it stands now at one in
+sixty,--the healthiest condition in Europe,--while in half-barbarous
+Russia the rate of mortality is one in twenty-seven. It would be easy to
+multiply these statistics to any extent; but they all point one way, and
+no medical statistician now pretends to oppose the dictum of Hufeland,
+that "a certain degree of culture is physically necessary for man, and
+promotes duration of life."
+
+The simple result is, that the civilized man is physically superior to
+the barbarian. There is now no evidence that there exists in any part of
+the world a savage race who, taken as a whole, surpass or even equal the
+Anglo-Saxon type in average physical condition; as there is also
+none among whom the President elect of the United States and the
+Commander-in-chief of his armies would not be regarded as remarkably
+tall men, and Dr. Windship a remarkably strong one. "It is now well
+known," says Prichard, "that all savage races have less muscular power
+than civilized men." Johnstone in Northern Africa, and Cumming in
+Southern Africa, could find no one to equal them in strength of arm.
+At the Sandwich Islands, Ellis records, that, "when a boat manned by
+English seamen and a canoe with natives left the shore together, the
+canoe would uniformly leave the boat behind, but they would soon relax,
+while the seamen, pulling steadily on, would pass them, but, if the
+voyage took three hours, would invariably reach the destination first."
+Certain races may have been regularly trained by position and necessity
+in certain particular arts,--as Sandwich-Islanders in swimming, and our
+Indians in running,--and may naturally surpass the average skill of
+those who are comparatively out of practice in that speciality; yet it
+is remarkable that their greatest feats even in these ways never seem
+to surpass those achieved by picked specimens of civilization. The best
+Indian runners could only equal Lewis and Clarke's men, and they have
+been repeatedly beaten in prize-races within the last few years; while
+the most remarkable aquatic feat on record is probably that of Mr.
+Atkins of Liverpool, who recently dived to a depth of two hundred and
+thirty feet, reappearing above water in one minute and eleven seconds.
+
+In the wilderness and on the prairies, we find a general impression that
+cultivation and refinement must weaken the race. Not at all; they simply
+domesticate it. Domestication is not weakness. A strong hand does not
+become less muscular under a kid glove; and a man who is a hero in a red
+shirt will also be a hero in a white one. Civilization, imperfect as
+it is, has already procured for us better food, better air, and better
+behavior; it gives us physical training on system; and its mental
+training, by refining the nervous organization, makes the same quantity
+of muscular power go much farther. The young English ensigns and
+lieutenants who at Waterloo (in the words of Wellington) "rushed to meet
+death, as if it were a game of cricket," were the fruit of civilization.
+They were representatives, indeed, of the aristocracy of their nation;
+and here, where the aim of all institutions is to make the whole nation
+an aristocracy, we must plan to secure the same splendid physical
+superiority on a grander scale. It is in our power, by using even very
+moderately for this purpose our magnificent machinery of common schools,
+to give to the physical side of civilization an advantage which it has
+possessed nowhere else, not even in England or Germany. It is not yet
+time to suggest detailed plans on this subject, since the public mind
+is not yet fully awake even to the demand. When the time comes, the
+necessary provisions can be made easily,--at least, as regards boys;
+for the physical training of girls is a far more difficult problem
+The organization is more delicate and complicated, the embarrassments
+greater, the observations less carefully made, the successes fewer,
+the failures far more disastrous. Any intelligent and robust man may
+undertake the physical training of fifty boys, however delicate their
+organization, with a reasonable hope of rearing nearly all of them, by
+easy and obvious methods, into a vigorous maturity; but what wise man
+or woman can expect anything like the same proportion of success, at
+present, with fifty American girls?
+
+This is the most momentous health-problem with which we have to deal,--
+to secure the proper physical advantages of civilization for American
+women. Without this there can be no lasting progress. The Sandwich
+Island proverb says,--
+
+  "If strong be the frame of the mother,
+  Her son shall make laws for the people."
+
+But in this country, it is scarcely an exaggeration to say that
+every man grows to maturity surrounded by a circle of invalid female
+relatives, that he later finds himself the husband of an invalid wife
+and the parent of invalid daughters, and that he comes at last to regard
+invalidism, as Michelet coolly declares, the normal condition of that
+sex,--as if the Almighty did not know how to create a woman. This, of
+course, spreads a gloom over life. When I look at the morning throng of
+schoolgirls in summer, hurrying through every street, with fresh, young
+faces, and vesture of lilies, duly curled and straw-hatted and booted,
+and turned off as patterns of perfection by proud mammas,--it is not sad
+to me to think that all this young beauty must one day fade and die, for
+there are spheres of life beyond this earth, I know, and the soul is
+good to endure through more than one;--the sadness is in the unnatural
+nearness of the decay, to foresee the living death of disease that is
+waiting close at hand for so many, to know how terrible a proportion of
+those fair children are walking unconsciously into a weary, wretched,
+powerless, joyless, useless maturity. Among the myriad triumphs of
+advancing civilization, there seems but one formidable danger, and that
+is here.
+
+It cannot be doubted, however, that the peril will pass by, with
+advancing knowledge. In proportion to our national recklessness of
+danger is the promptness with which remedial measures are adopted, when
+they at last become indispensable. In the mean time, we must look for
+proofs of the physical resources of woman into foreign and even
+into savage lands. When an American mother tells me with pride, as
+occasionally happens, that her daughter can walk two miles and back
+without great fatigue, the very boast seems a tragedy; but when one
+reads that Oberea, queen of the Sandwich Islands, lifted Captain Wallis
+over a marsh as easily as if he had been a little child, there is a
+slight sense of consolation. Brunhilde, in the "Nibelungen," binds her
+offending lover with her girdle and slings him up to the wall. Cymburga,
+wife of Duke Ernest of Lithuania, could crack nuts between her fingers,
+and drive nails into a wall with her thumb;--whether she ever got her
+husband under it is not recorded. Let me preserve from oblivion the
+renown of my Lady Butterfield, who, about the year 1700, at Wanstead,
+in Essex, (England,) thus advertised:--"This is to give notice to my
+honored masters and ladies and loving friends, that my Lady Butterfield
+gives a challenge to ride a horse, or leap a horse, or run afoot, or
+_hollo_, with any woman in England seven years younger, but not a day
+older, because I won't undervalue myself, being now 74 years of age."
+Nor should be left unrecorded the high-born Scottish damsel whose
+tradition still remains at the Castle of Huntingtower, in Scotland,
+where two adjacent pinnacles still mark the Maiden's Leap. She sprang
+from battlement to battlement, a distance of nine feet and four inches,
+and eloped with her lover. Were a young lady to go through one of our
+villages in a series of leaps like that, and were she to require her
+lovers to follow in her footsteps, it is to be feared that she would die
+single.
+
+Yet the transplanted race which has in two centuries stepped from Delft
+Haven to San Francisco has no reason to be ashamed of its physical
+achievements, the more especially as it has found time on the way for
+one feat of labor and endurance which may be matched without fear
+against any historic deed. When civilization took possession of
+this continent, it found one vast coating of almost unbroken forest
+overspreading it from shore to prairie. To make room for civilization,
+that forest must go. What were Indians, however deadly,--what
+starvation, however imminent,--what pestilence, however lurking,--to a
+solid obstacle like this? No mere courage could cope with it, no mere
+subtlety, no mere skill, no Yankee ingenuity, no labor-saving machine
+with head for hands; but only firm, unwearying, bodily muscle to every
+stroke. Tree by tree, in two centuries, that forest has been felled.
+What were the Pyramids to that? There does not exist in history an
+athletic feat so astonishing.
+
+But there yet lingers upon this continent a forest of moral evil more
+formidable, a barrier denser and darker, a Dismal Swamp of inhumanity,
+a barbarism upon the soil, before which civilization has thus far been
+compelled to pause,--happy, if it could even check its spread. Checked
+at last, there comes from it a cry as if the light of day had turned to
+darkness,--when the truth simply is, that darkness is being mastered and
+surrounded by the light of day. Is it a good thing to "extend the area
+of freedom" by pillaging some feeble Mexico? and does the phrase become
+a bad one only when it means the peaceful progress of constitutional
+liberty within our own borders? The phrases which oppression teaches
+become the watchwords of freedom at last, and the triumph of
+Civilization over Barbarism is the only Manifest Destiny of America.
+
+
+
+
+WHO WAS CASPAR HAUSER?
+
+
+Recent publications have again attracted our attention to a subject
+which about thirty years ago was the cause of great excitement and
+innumerable speculations. The very extraordinary advent, life, and death
+of Caspar Hauser, the novelty and singularity of all his thoughts and
+actions, and his charming innocence and amiability, interested at the
+time all Europe in his behalf. Thrown upon the world in a state of utter
+helplessness, he was adopted by one of the cities of Germany, and became
+not only a universal pet, but a sight which people flocked from all
+parts to see. It became a perfect fever, raging throughout Germany, and
+extending also to other countries. The papers teemed with accounts and
+conjectures. Innumerable essays and even books were written, almost
+every one advancing a different theory for the solution of the mystery.
+But his death was still more the occasion for their appearance, and for
+some time thereafter they literally swarmed from the press. Every one
+who had in any way come in contact with him, and a great many who knew
+him by reputation only, thought themselves called upon to give their
+views, so that in a little while the subject acquired almost a
+literature of its own.
+
+But this excitement gradually disappeared, and with it most of the
+literature which it had called forth. There are a few names, however,
+which occur frequently in connection with that of Caspar Hauser, to
+whose opinions we shall subsequently call attention. They are Feuerbach,
+Daumer, Merker, Stanhope, Binder, Meier, and Fuhrmann.[A] Of these,
+Binder was his earliest protector; Feuerbach conducted the legal
+investigations to which Caspar's mysterious appearance gave rise; Daumer
+was for a long time his teacher and host; Stanhope adopted him; Meier
+afterwards filled Daumer's place; and Fuhrmann was the clergyman who
+attended his death-bed. Merker, though never thrown very closely in
+contact with Caspar, was a Prussian Counsellor of Police, and as such
+his opinion may perhaps have more than ordinary weight with some. Most
+of them published their various opinions during Caspar's life or soon
+after his death, and the subject was then allowed to sink to its proper
+level and attract no further attention. Within a few years, however, it
+has again been brought into prominent light by some new publications.
+One of these is an essay written by Feuerbach and published in his works
+edited by his son, in which he endeavors to prove that Caspar Hauser was
+the son of the Grand Duchess Stephanie of Baden; another is a book by
+Daumer, which he devotes entirely to the explosion of all theories that
+have ever been advanced; and a third, by Dr. Eschricht, contends
+that Caspar was at first an idiot and afterwards an impostor. Before
+considering these different theories, let us recall the principal
+incidents of his life. These have, indeed, been placed within the
+reach of the English reader by the Earl of Stanhope's book and by a
+translation of Feuerbach's "Kaspar Hauser. Beispiel eines Verbrechens am
+Seelenleben des Menschen,"[B] published in Boston in 1832; but, as the
+former has, we believe, obtained little circulation in this country, and
+the latter is now probably out of print, a short account of the life of
+this singular being may not be deemed amiss.
+
+[Footnote A: Daumer, in his _Disclosures concerning Caspar Hauser_,
+refers to a great many more than these; but it is impossible to follow
+his example in so limited a space.]
+
+[Footnote B: _Caspar Hauser. An Example of a Crime against the Life, of
+Man's Soul_.]
+
+On the 26th of May, 1828, a citizen of Nuremberg, while loitering in
+front of his house in the outskirts of the town, saw, tottering towards
+him, a lad of sixteen or seventeen years, coarsely and poorly clad. He
+held in his hand a letter, which he presented to the citizen; but to
+all questions as to who he was, whence he came, and what he wanted, he
+replied only in an unintelligible jargon. The letter was addressed to
+the captain of a cavalry company then stationed at Nuremberg, to whom
+he was taken. It stated substantially, that a boy had been left at the
+writer's door on the 7th of October, 1812, that the writer was a poor
+laborer with a large family, but that he had nevertheless adopted the
+boy, and had reared him in such strict seclusion from the world that not
+even his existence was known. The letter said further, that, so far from
+being able to answer, the lad could not even comprehend any questions
+put to him. It therefore discouraged all attempts to obtain any
+information in that way, and ended with the advice, that, according to
+his desire, he should be made a dragoon, as his father had been before
+him. Inclosed in this letter was a note, professedly by the mother, and
+pretending to have been left with him, when, as an infant, Caspar Hauser
+was first cast upon the world, but, in reality, as it was afterwards
+proved, written by the same person. This note gave the date of his
+birth, pleaded the poverty of the mother as an excuse for thus
+abandoning her child, and contained the same request as to his joining a
+cavalry regiment when he should arrive at the age of seventeen.
+
+The first impression produced by Caspar's appearance and behavior was,
+that he was some idiot or lunatic escaped from confinement; it remained
+only to be shown whence he had escaped. In the mean time he was placed
+under the protection of the police, who removed him to their guard-room.
+There he showed no consciousness of what was going on around him; his
+look was a dull, brutish stare; nor did he give any indication of
+intelligence, until pen and paper were placed in his hand, when he wrote
+clearly and repeatedly, "Kaspar Hauser." Since then he has been known by
+that name.
+
+When it became evident that the first conjectures concerning him were
+wrong, strenuous efforts were made by the police to sound the mystery,
+but without the slightest success. He himself could give no clue; for he
+neither understood what others said nor could make himself understood.
+With the exception of some six words, the sounds Caspar uttered were
+entirely meaningless. He recognized none of the places where he had
+been, no trace could be obtained of him elsewhere, and the most vigilant
+search brought nothing to light. The surprise which his first appearance
+produced increased as he became better known. It then became more and
+more evident that he was neither an idiot nor a lunatic; at the same
+time his manners were so peculiar, and his ignorance of civilized life
+and his dislike for its customs so great, that all sorts of conjectures
+were resorted to in order to explain the mystery.
+
+It was ascertained that he must have been incarcerated in some dungeon,
+entirely shut out from the light of the sun, which gave him great pain.
+The structure of his body, the tenderness of his feet, and the great
+difficulty and suffering which he experienced in walking, indicated
+beyond a doubt that he had been kept in a sitting posture, with his legs
+stretched straight out before him. His sustenance had been bread and
+water; for he not only evinced great repugnance to any other food, but
+the smallest quantity affected his constitution in the most violent
+manner. It was also evident that he had never come in contact with human
+beings, beyond what was necessary for supplying his immediate wants,
+and, strange to say, teaching him to write.
+
+That these inferences were well-founded was proved by the subsequent
+disclosures of Caspar himself, after he had acquired a sufficient
+command of language. The account he then gave was as follows.
+
+"He neither knows who he is nor where his home is. It was only at
+Nuremberg that he came into the world. Here he first learned, that,
+besides himself and 'the man with whom he had always been,' there
+existed other men and other creatures. As long as he can recollect, he
+had always lived in a hole, (a small, low apartment, which he sometimes
+calls a cage,) where he had always sat upon the ground, with bare feet,
+and clothed only with a shirt and a pair of breeches. In his apartment,
+he never heard a sound, whether produced by a man, by an animal, or by
+anything else. He never saw the heavens, nor did there ever appear a
+brightening (daylight) such as at Nuremberg, he never perceived any
+difference between day and night, and much less did he ever get a sight
+of the beautiful lights in the heavens. Whenever he awoke from sleep, he
+found a loaf of bread and a pitcher of water by him. Sometimes his water
+had a bad taste; whenever this was the case, he could no longer keep
+his eyes open, but was compelled to fall asleep; and when he afterwards
+awoke, he found that he had a clean shirt on, and that his nails had
+been cut.[C]
+
+[Footnote C: When he resided with Professor Daumer, a drop of opium in a
+glass of water was administered to him. After swallowing a mouthful, he
+exclaimed, "That water is nasty; it tastes exactly like the water I was
+sometimes obliged to drink in my cage."]
+
+"He never saw the face of the man who brought him his meat and drink. In
+his hole he had two wooden horses and several ribbons. With these horses
+he had always amused himself as long as he was awake; and his only
+occupation was, to make them run by his side, and to arrange the ribbons
+about them in different positions. Thus one day had passed the same as
+another; but he had never felt the want of anything, had never been
+sick, and--once only excepted--had never felt the sensation of pain.
+Upon the whole, he had been much happier there than in the world, where
+he was obliged to suffer so much. How long he had continued to live in
+this situation he knew not; for he had had no knowledge of time. He
+knew not when or how he came there. Nor had he any recollection of ever
+having been in a different situation, or in any other than in that
+place. The man with whom he had always been never did him any harm. Yet
+one day, shortly before he was taken away, when he had been running his
+horse too hard, and had made too much noise, the man came and struck
+him upon his arm with a stick, or with a piece of wood; this caused the
+wound which he brought with him to Nuremberg.
+
+"Pretty nearly about the same time, the man once came into his prison,
+placed a small table over his feet, and spread something white upon it,
+which he now knows to have been paper; he then came behind him, so as
+not to be seen by him, took hold of his hand, and moved it backwards and
+forwards on the paper, with a thing (a lead pencil) which he had stuck
+between his fingers. He (Hauser) was then ignorant of what it was; but
+he was mightily pleased, when he saw the black figures which began to
+appear upon the white paper. When he felt that his hand was free,
+and the man was gone from him, he was so much pleased with this new
+discovery, that he could never grow tired of drawing these figures
+repeatedly upon the paper. This occupation almost made him neglect his
+horses, although he did not know what those characters signified. The
+man repeated his visits in the same manner several times.
+
+"Another time the man came, lifted him from the place where he lay,
+placed him on his feet, and endeavored to teach him to stand. This he
+repeated at several different times. The manner in which he effected
+this was the following: he seized him firmly around the breast, from
+behind, placed his feet behind Caspar's feet, and lifted these, as in
+stepping forward.
+
+"Finally, the man appeared once again, placed Caspar's hands over his
+shoulders, tied them fast, and thus carried him on his back out of the
+prison. He was carried up (or down) a hill. He knows not how he felt;
+all became night, and he was laid upon his back."--By the expression,
+"all became night," he meant that he fainted away. The little which
+Caspar was able to relate in regard to his journey is not of any
+particular interest, and we omit it here.
+
+This is all that is known with any certainty of the early life of this
+unfortunate being. The conjectures to which it has given rise will be
+considered later. Let us first finish his history.
+
+As was to be expected, Caspar Hauser's faculties developed very
+gradually. His mind was in a torpor, and, placed suddenly amid, to
+him, most exciting scenes, it was long before he could understand the
+simplest phenomena of Nature. The unfolding of his mind was exactly like
+that of a child. Feuerbach, in his book on Caspar Hauser, gives the main
+features of this gradual development. We can only pick out a few.
+
+It is remarkable that in the same proportion as he advanced in knowledge
+and acquaintance with civilized life, the intensity of all his faculties
+diminished. It was so with his memory. He was at first able to exhibit
+most surprising feats. As an experiment, thirty, forty, and, on one
+occasion, forty-five names of persons were mentioned to him, which he
+afterwards repeated with all their titles,--to him, of course, entirely
+meaningless. So, too, with his power of sight. At first, he was able to
+see in the dark perfectly well, and much better than in the light of the
+sun, which was very painful to him. He very frequently amused himself
+at others groping in the dark, when he experienced not the slightest
+difficulty. On one occasion, in the evening, he read the name on a
+door-plate at the distance of one hundred and eighty paces. This
+keenness of vision did not, however, retain its entire vigor, but
+decreased as he became more accustomed to the sun. For some time after
+he made his appearance he had no idea of perspective, but would clutch
+like a child at objects far off. Nor had he any conception of the
+beauties of Nature, which he afterwards explained by saying that it then
+appeared to him like a mass of colors jumbled together. Nothing was
+beautiful, unless it was red, except a starry heaven,--and the emotion
+which he felt, on first beholding this, was truly touching. Until then,
+he had invariably spoken of "the man with whom he had always been" with
+feelings of affection; he longed to return to him, and looked upon all
+his studies as merely a temporary thing; some day he would go back and
+show the man how much he had learned. But when he first looked upon the
+heavens, his tone became entirely changed, and he denounced the man
+severely for never having shown him such beautiful things.
+
+All his senses were thus at first wonderfully keen. It was so with his
+hearing and smell. The latter was the source of most of his sufferings;
+for, being so exceedingly sensitive, even the most scentless things made
+him sick. He liked but one smell, that of bread, which had been his only
+food for seventeen years. It was a long time, indeed, before he could
+take any other food at all, and he only became accustomed to it very
+gradually.
+
+The effect produced upon Caspar Hauser by contact with or proximity to
+animals was also very curious. He was able to detect their presence
+under singularly unfavorable circumstances. Metals, too, had a very
+powerful effect upon him, and possessed for him a strong magnetic power.
+But it is impossible to give all the details, however interesting; for
+them we must refer to Feuerbach.
+
+His mind, as has been already said, was at first sunk in almost
+impenetrable darkness. He knew of but two divisions of earthly
+things,--man and beast, "_bua_" and "_ross_." The former was a word
+of his own. The latter, which is the German for _horse_, included
+everything not human, whether animate or inanimate. Between these he for
+a long time saw no difference. He could not understand why pictures and
+statues did not move, and he regarded his toy-horses as living things.
+To inanimate things impelled by foreign forces he ascribed volition.
+
+Religion he, of course, had none. He possessed naturally a very amiable
+character, and his thoughts and conduct were as pure as though guided by
+the soundest system of morality. But he knew nothing of a God, and one
+of the greatest difficulties Daumer had to encounter was instructing
+him on this point. His untutored mind could not master the doctrines of
+theology, and he was constantly puzzled by questions which he himself
+suggested, and which his instructor often found it impossible to answer
+satisfactorily.
+
+Physically he was very weak. The shortest walk would fatigue him.
+At first he could scarcely shuffle along at all, on account of the
+tenderness of his feet, and because his body had always been kept in
+one position. He so far overcame this, however, as to be able to walk a
+little, though always with an effort. But on horseback he never became
+tired. From the first time that he mounted a horse, he showed a love
+for the exercise, and a power of endurance utterly at variance with all
+other exhibitions of his strength; and he very soon acquired a degree
+of skill which made him an object of envy to all the cavalry-officers
+stationed in the neighborhood. So inconsistent and incomprehensible was
+everything about Caspar Hauser!
+
+In October, 1829, while residing in the family of Professor Daumer, an
+attempt was made upon his life, which was only so far successful as to
+give a very violent shock to his delicate constitution. The perpetrator
+of the crime was never discovered. Caspar was afterwards adopted by the
+Earl of Stanhope, and by him removed to Anspach. Feuerbach gives a very
+interesting description of him, as he appeared at this time.
+
+"In understanding a man, in knowledge a little child, and in many things
+more ignorant than a child, the whole of his language and demeanor shows
+often a strangely contrasted mingling of manly and childish behavior.
+With a serious countenance and in a tone of great importance, he often
+utters things which, coming from any other person of the same age, would
+be called stupid or silly, but which, coming from him, always force upon
+us a sad, compassionate smile. It is particularly farcical to hear him
+speak of the future plans of his life,--of the manner in which, after
+having learned a great deal and earned money, he intends to settle
+himself with his wife, whom he considers as an indispensable part of
+domestic furniture."
+
+"Mild and gentle, without vicious inclinations, and without passions and
+strong emotions, his quiet mind resembles the smooth mirror of a lake
+in the stillness of a moonlight night. Incapable of hurting an animal,
+compassionate even to the worm, which he is afraid to tread upon, timid
+even to cowardice, he will nevertheless act regardless of consequences,
+and even without forbearance, according to his own convictions, whenever
+it becomes necessary to defend or to execute purposes which he has once
+perceived and acknowledged to be right. If he feels himself annoyed in
+any manner, he will long bear it patiently, and will try to get out of
+the way of the person who is thus troublesome to him, or will endeavor
+to effect a change in his conduct by mild expostulations; but, finally,
+if he cannot help himself in any other manner, as soon as an opportunity
+of doing so offers, he will very quietly slip off the bonds that confine
+him,--yet without bearing the least malice against him who may have
+injured him. He is obedient, obliging, and yielding; but the man who
+accuses him wrongfully, or asserts to be true what he believes to be
+untrue, need not expect, that, from mere complaisance, or from other
+considerations, he will submit to injustice or to falsehood; he will
+always modestly, but firmly, insist upon his right; or perhaps, if the
+other seems inclined obstinately to maintain his ground against him, he
+will silently leave him."
+
+But the fate which had been pursuing this unfortunate being, and without
+which the tragedy of his life would have been incomplete, overtook him
+at last. On the 15th of December, 1833, he was induced by some unknown
+person to meet him in a retired spot in the city of Anspach, under the
+pretence that he should then have the secret of his parentage revealed
+to him. The real object was his murder, and this time it was successful.
+Caspar was stabbed to the heart. He still had sufficient strength left
+to walk about a thousand paces; and, indeed, the wound was outwardly so
+insignificant, that it was at first believed to be a mere scratch. This
+strengthened an opinion which was then gradually gaining ground, that
+Caspar was an impostor; for it was firmly believed by some that he had
+inflicted this wound upon himself, as well as the one received in 1829,
+in order to quicken the somewhat languishing interest taken in him. Nor
+did they give up this opinion when the wound was found to be fatal. They
+then boldly asserted that he had wounded himself more severely than
+he had intended. And not content with simply maintaining this absurd
+opinion, they taunted him with it on his death-bed, so that he was not
+even allowed to die in peace. Nothing was wanting to fill his bitter
+cup. How terrible must have been the mental torture to wring from
+so resigned a soul the exclamation, "O God! O God! to die thus with
+contumely and disgrace!" The German is still more expressive,--_"Ach,
+Gott! ach, Gott! so abkratzen müssen mit Schimpf und Schande!"_
+
+Such was the life of Caspar Hauser. For nearly seventeen years the
+inmate of a dreary prison, shut out from the light, without a single
+companion in his misery, drugged when it was necessary to change his
+linen, with no food but bread,--for seventeen years did he thus exist,
+--his mind a perfect blank. Suddenly cast upon the world, amid strange
+beings whom he could not understand and by whom he was not understood,
+he long knew scarcely a sensation save that of pain. And when at last
+he did become accustomed to civilized life, and the darkness which
+enshrouded him disappeared before the rays of light that found entrance
+into his intellect, it was only to awake to a knowledge of the utter
+misery of his position. He then saw himself a helpless orphan, the
+inferior of all with whom he came in contact, and a dependant upon the
+charity of others for his support. He awoke to find that he had lost
+seventeen years of this beautiful life, seventeen years which he never
+could recall,--that he never could take his stand amongst men as their
+equal, but would always be regarded as an unhappy being meriting their
+pity,--much like that felt for the pains of some suffering brute. Nor
+was this all. During the few years that were granted him in our
+world, persecuted by some unknown person, against whom he was
+helpless,--knowing that his life was aimed at by some one, but unable
+to protect himself, and at last falling a victim to the threatened
+blow,--and, worst of all, charged on his death-bed with being an
+impostor,--such was the life of Caspar Hauser!
+
+Among the different opinions which have existed in regard to his origin,
+the most noticeable are those advanced by Stanhope and Merker, and by
+Daumer, Eschricht, and Feuerbach. The Earl of Stanhope's connection
+with Caspar Hauser was a rather peculiar one. He made his appearance in
+Nuremberg at the time the first attempt was made upon Caspar's life,
+but took no particular notice of him, and left without having shown
+any interest in him. On a second visit, about seven months later, he
+suddenly became passionately attached to Caspar, showed most unusual
+marks of fondness for him, and finally adopted him. He then removed him
+to Anspach, and remained his protector until his death in December,
+1833. The day after his burial, Stanhope appeared in Anspach, and took
+particular pains to proclaim then, and subsequently at a judicial
+investigation in Munich, and in several tracts, his belief that Caspar
+was an impostor. This had already been maintained by Merker, the
+Prussian Counsellor of Police. The theory which Stanhope now advanced
+was, that Caspar was a journeyman tailor or glover, from some small
+village on the Austrian side of the river Salzach. The reasons which he
+assigns for his belief in the imposture are all derived from Caspar's
+supposed want of integrity and veracity. They impeach the character of
+Caspar living, and not of Caspar dead. Why, then, did Stanhope wait for
+his death before he proclaimed the imposture? Why did he remain his
+protector, and thus make himself a party to the fraud? His conduct is
+not easily explained. On the other hand, there is little ground for
+Daumer's conclusions. These are given at length in his "Disclosures
+concerning Caspar Hauser," published in 1859, a book called forth by
+attacks made upon him by Eschricht. Considering Stanhope's conduct, and
+his endeavor after Caspar's death to induce Daumer to support his views
+as to the imposture, and, upon his indignant refusal, making him twice
+the object of a personal attack, Daumer thinks that there is reason to
+believe Stanhope personally interested. He thinks that Caspar was the
+legitimate heir to some great English estate and title, that he was
+removed in order to make way for some one else, and that his murder was
+intrusted to some person who had not the courage or the wickedness
+to perpetrate it, but removed him first to Hungary and afterwards to
+Germany, and supported him in the manner indicated, hoping that he would
+not long survive. When, however, he grew up, his support became irksome
+and he was cast upon the world. There he attracted so much attention,
+that the instigator of the crime, dreading a disclosure, sought his
+life again. When this proved unsuccessful, he was removed to Anspach;
+Feuerbach, who had shown the greatest determination to sound the
+mystery, was removed from the world, and at last the tragedy was made
+complete in Caspar's own death. All this points to Stanhope. And yet
+Daumer has not taken the trouble to inquire whether it agrees with the
+family history. It is possible that he may be right; but his story
+carries with it so much the air of improbability, that we cannot give it
+credit without further proof.
+
+In the seventh volume of Hitzig's "Annals of Criminal Jurisprudence,"
+there is a communication from Lieutenant von Pirch, disclosing Caspar's
+acquaintance with certain Hungarian words. A little while before this
+announcement was made, a story had gone the rounds of the papers of
+Germany, that a governess residing in Pesth had fainted away, when the
+account of Caspar Hauser's appearance was related to her. All this
+naturally attracted attention to Hungary as the probable place of his
+birth; and it is for these reasons, that Feuerbach, Daumer, and others,
+suppose that he spent some part of his childhood in that country. After
+his death, Stanhope sent Lieutenant Hickel to Hungary to investigate the
+matter, but no traces were discovered,--a proof, as Stanhope has it,
+that these conclusions were groundless, and, according to Daumer,
+another proof of Stanhope's complicity. He believes that the very
+superficial search made by the order of Stanhope was intended to lull
+suspicion and prevent a more strict search being made.
+
+To return to the opinion advanced by Merker, and subsequently adopted by
+Stanhope,--the thing is simply impossible. In the first place, it would
+have been impossible for an impostor to elude discovery. To trace him
+would have been the easiest thing in the world. With a vigilant police,
+in a thickly settled country, how could a man leave his place of abode,
+and travel, were it for ever so short a distance, without being known?
+But this is the least consideration. Caspar's whole life, his intellect,
+his body, the feats which he accomplished, when submitted to the most
+searching tests, were a refutation of the charge. But when it is
+added that he wounded himself in order to do away with suspicion, the
+accusation becomes so absurd as scarcely to merit refutation. It is
+answered by the fact, that it was proved, from the nature of the
+wounds, in both cases, that self-infliction was impossible. Nor is it
+conceivable that any one should have been able so long to deceive
+people who were constantly with him and always on the alert. And it is
+remarkable that they who saw most of Caspar, and knew him best, were
+most firmly convinced of his integrity,--whilst his traducers were,
+almost without an exception, men who had never known him intimately.
+Feuerbach, Daumer, Binder, Meier, Fuhrmann, and many others, maintain
+his honesty in the strongest terms.
+
+On the other hand, it is said, that it is equally impossible for a
+person to have been kept in any community in the manner in which it is
+asserted that he was kept; discovery was inevitable. But it must be
+remembered that this instance does not stand alone. If search were made,
+many cases of the same kind might be collected. It is by no means so
+rare an occurrence for persons to be kept secluded in such a manner as
+to conceal their existence from the world. Daumer mentions two similar
+cases which happened about the same time. The very year that Caspar
+Hauser appeared, the son of a lawyer, named Fleischmann, just deceased,
+was discovered in a retired chamber of the house. He was thirty-eight
+years old, and had been confined there since his twelfth year. The other
+case, also mentioned by Feuerbach, was still more distressing. Dr. Horn
+saw, in the infirmary at Salzburg, a girl, twenty-two years of age, who
+had been brought up in a pig-sty. One of her legs was quite crooked,
+from her having sat with them crossed; she grunted like a hog; and her
+actions were "brutishly unseemly in human dress." Daumer also relates a
+third case, which was made the subject of a romantic story published in
+a Nuremberg paper, but which, he says, lacks confirmation. It was the
+discovery, in a secret place, of the grown-up son of a clergyman by his
+housekeeper. Whether this be true or not, both Feuerbach and Daumer
+believe that many similar instances do exist, which never come to light.
+It is not impossible, therefore, that Caspar Hauser was confined in a
+cellar to which none but his keeper sought entrance. Who would suspect
+the existence of a human being, taught to be perfectly submissive and
+quiet and to have no wants, in such a place, when even the existence
+of the subterranean, prison itself was probably unknown? The cases
+mentioned above were certainly more singular in this respect.
+
+But Eschricht's opinion is the most peculiar of all. In his "Unverstand
+mid schlechte Erziehung," he maintains that Caspar was an idiot until
+he was brought to Nuremberg, that his mind was then strengthened and
+developed, and that he was then transformed from an idiot into an
+impostor. This is still more impossible than Stanhope's theory; for in
+this case Daumer, Feuerbach, Hiltel the jailer, Binder the mayor, and
+indeed all Caspar's earliest friends, instead of being victims of an
+imposture, are made partakers in the fraud. No one acquainted with the
+irreproachable character of these men could entertain the idea for a
+minute; and when we remember that it was not one, but many, who must
+have been parties to it, it becomes doubly impossible.
+
+We come now to consider the opinion of Feuerbach; and we shall do it the
+more carefully, because in it, we feel confident, lies the true solution
+of the question. He was at the time President of the Court of Appeal of
+the Circle of Rezat. He had risen to this honorable position gradually,
+and it was the reward of his distinguished merit alone. His works on
+criminal jurisprudence, and the penal code which he drew up for the
+kingdom of Bavaria, and which was adopted by other states, had placed
+him in the first rank of criminal lawyers. It was he who conducted
+the first judicial investigations concerning Caspar Hauser. He was,
+therefore, intimately acquainted with all the circumstances of the case,
+and had ample opportunity to form a deliberate opinion. How the idea
+originated, that Caspar Hauser belonged to the House of Baden, it is
+difficult to say. Feuerbach never published it to the world. In his book
+on Caspar Hauser he makes no mention of it; but in 1832 he addressed a
+paper to Queen Caroline of Bavaria, headed, "Who might Caspar Hauser
+be?" in which he endeavors to show that he was the son of the
+Grand-Duchess Stephanie. This paper was, we believe, first published
+in 1852, in his "Life and Works," by his son.[D] The first part of it
+treats of Caspar's rank and position in general, and he comes to the
+following conclusions. Caspar was a legitimate child. Had he been
+illegitimate, less dangerous and far easier means would have been
+resorted to for concealing his existence and suppressing a knowledge
+of his parentage. And here we may add, that the supposition has never
+prevailed that he was the offspring of a criminal connection, and that
+these means were taken for suppressing the mother's disgrace. A note
+which Caspar brought with him, when he appeared at Nuremberg, indicated
+that such was the case, but it was so evidently a piece of deception
+that it never obtained much credit. The second conclusion at which
+Feuerbach arrives is, that people were implicated who had command of
+great and unusual means,--means which could prompt an attempt at murder
+in a crowded city and in the open day, and which could over-bribe all
+rewards offered for a disclosure. Third, Caspar was a person on whose
+life or death great interests depended, else there would not have been
+such care to conceal his existence. Interest, and not revenge or hate,
+was the motive. He must have been a person of high rank. To prove this,
+Feuerbach refers to dreams of Caspar's. On one occasion, particularly,
+he dreamt that he was conducted through a large castle, the appearance
+of which he imagined that he recognized, and afterwards minutely
+described. This Feuerbach thinks was only the awakening of past
+recollections. It would be interesting to know whether any palace
+corresponding to the description given exists. In the absence of such
+knowledge, this point of Feuerbach's argument appears a rather weak one.
+From the above propositions he concludes that Caspar was the legitimate
+child of princely parents, who was removed in order to open the
+succession to others, in whose way he stood.
+
+[Footnote D: ANSELM RITTER VON FEUERBACH'S _Leben und Wirken, aus
+seinen ausgedruckten Briefen, Tagebüchern, Vorträgen und Denkschriften,
+veröffentlicht von seinem Sohne_, LUDWIG FEUERBACH. Leipzig, 1852.]
+
+The second division of the paper relates to the imprisonment, and
+here he takes a ground entirely opposed to the opinions of others. He
+believes that he was thus kept as a protection against some greater
+evil. His wants were supplied, he was well taken care of, and his keeper
+is therefore to be looked upon as his protector. Daumer sees in the
+keeper nothing but a hired murderer, whose courage or whose wickedness
+failed him. It is certainly difficult to imagine a kind friend immuring
+one in a dark subterranean vault, feeding one on bread, excluding light,
+fellowship, amusement, thoughts,--never saying a word, but studiously
+allowing one's mind to become a dreary waste. It is a friendship to
+which most of us would prefer death. We are therefore inclined to
+think that Daumer is here in the right. But whatever the nature of his
+imprisonment, the principal argument does not lose its force.
+
+In the third place, Feuerbach speaks of the family to which Caspar must
+have belonged. Just about the time of Caspar's birth, the eldest son of
+the Grand-Duchess of Baden died an infant. His death was followed in
+a few years by that of his only brother, leaving several sisters, who
+could not inherit the duchy. By these deaths the old House of the
+Zähringer became extinct, and the offspring of a morganatic marriage
+became the heirs to the throne. It was, therefore, for their interest
+that the other branch should die out. In addition to this, the mother
+of the new house was a woman of unbounded ambition and determined
+character, and had a bitter hatred for the Grand-Duchess. Without laying
+too much stress, then, upon the nearness in date of the elder child's
+death and Caspar's birth, as given in the letter, there is reason to
+suppose that they were the same person. There was every feeling of
+interest to prompt the deed, there was the opportunity of sickness to
+accomplish it in, and there was an unscrupulous woman to take advantage
+of it. Is it, then, impossible that she, having command of the
+house-hold, should have been able to substitute a dead for the living
+child? Accept the proposition, and the mystery is solved; reject it, and
+we are still groping in the dark. Nevertheless, there are circumstances
+which, even then, are incapable of explanation; but it is the most
+satisfactory theory, and certainly has less objections than the others.
+Feuerbach came to this conclusion early; for his paper addressed to
+Queen Caroline of Bavaria was written in 1832, the year before Caspar's
+death. Delicacy forbade the open discussion of the question; but, even
+at the time, this theory found many supporters. Some even went so far
+as to say that Feuerbach's sudden death the same year was owing to the
+indefatigable zeal with which he was ferreting out the mystery.
+
+Of all the different explanations, then, which have been given, that of
+Feuerbach seems to be the most satisfactory. At the same time, like the
+rest, it is founded on conjecture. Its truth may never be proved. They
+whose interest it was to suppress the matter thirty years ago, and who
+resorted to such extreme measures in doing so, no doubt took ample
+precaution that every trace should be erased. It is barely possible that
+some confession or the discovery of some paper may cast light upon the
+subject; but the length of time which has elapsed renders it exceedingly
+improbable, and the mystery of Caspar Hauser, like the mysteries of the
+Iron Mask and Junius, will always remain a fruitful source of conjecture
+only.
+
+It may not be uninteresting to close this sketch with the consideration
+of a point of law raised by Feuerbach in connection with the subject. It
+will be recollected that he calls his book "Caspar Hauser. An Example
+of a Crime against the Life of Man's Soul." The crime committed against
+Caspar Hauser was, according to the Bavarian code, twofold. There was
+the crime of _illegal imprisonment_, and the crime of _exposure_. And
+here Feuerbach advances the doctrine, that it was not only the actual
+confinement which amounted to illegal imprisonment, but that "we must
+incontestably, and, indeed, principally, regard as such the cruel
+withholding from him of the most ordinary gifts which Nature with a
+liberal hand extends even to the most indigent,--the depriving him
+of all the means of mental development and culture,--the unnatural
+detention of a human soul in a state of irrational animality." "An
+attempt," he says, "by artificial contrivances, to seclude a man from
+Nature and from all intercourse with rational beings, to change
+the course of his human destiny, and to withdraw from him all the
+nourishment afforded by those spiritual substances which Nature has
+appointed for food to the human mind, that it may grow and flourish,
+and be instructed and developed and formed,--such an attempt must, even
+quite independently of its actual consequences, be considered as,
+in itself, a highly criminal invasion of man's most sacred and most
+peculiar property,--of the freedom and the destiny of his soul.
+...Inasmuch as the whole earlier part of his life was thus taken from
+him, he may be said to have been the subject of a partial soul-murder."
+This crime, if recognized, would, according to Feuerbach, far outweigh
+the mere crime of illegal imprisonment, and the latter would be merged
+in it.
+
+Tittmann, in his "Hand-Book of Penal Law," also speaks of crimes against
+the intellect, and particularly mentions the separation of a person from
+all human society, if practised upon a child before it has learned to
+speak and until the intellect Las become sealed up, as well as the
+intentional rearing of a person to ignorance, as reducible to this head.
+This was written before Caspar's case had occurred. He says, also, that
+they are similar to cases of homicide; because the latter are punished
+for destroying the rational being, and not the physical man. Murder and
+the destruction of the intellect are, therefore, equally punishable. The
+one merits the punishment of death as well as the other. Nor are we to
+take the possibility of a cure into consideration, any more than we do
+the possibility of extinguishing a fire. But where the law does not
+prescribe the punishment of death irrespectively of the possibility of
+recovery, the punishment would rarely exceed ten years in the House of
+Correction. We must understand Tittmann's remarks, however, to refer
+entirely to the law of Saxony,--that being the government under which he
+lived, and the only one in whose criminal code this crime is recognized.
+
+Feuerbach wished to have this murder of the soul inserted in the
+criminal code of Bavaria as a punishable crime; but he was unsuccessful,
+and the whole doctrine has subsequently been condemned. Mittermaier, in
+a note to his edition of Feuerbach's "Text-Book of German Criminal Law,"
+denies that there is any foundation for the distinction taken by him and
+Tittmann. He says, that, in the first place, it has not such an actual
+existence as is capable of proof; and, secondly, all crimes under it
+can easily be reached by some other law. The last objection does not,
+however, seem to be a very serious one. If, as Feuerbach says, the
+crime against the soul is more heinous than that against the body, it
+certainly deserves the first attention, even if the one is not merged in
+the other. The crime being greater, the punishment would be greater;
+and the demands of justice would no more be satisfied by the milder
+punishment than if a murderer were prosecuted as a nuisance. The fact,
+therefore, that the crime is reducible to some different head, is not an
+objection. We meet with the most serious difficulty when we consider the
+possibility of proof. Taking it for granted that the crime does exist in
+the abstract, the only question is, whether it is of such a nature that
+it would be expedient for government to take cognizance of it. The soul
+being in its nature so far beyond the reach of man, and the difficulty
+of ever proving the effect of human actions upon it, would seem to
+indicate that it were better to allow a few exceptional cases to pass
+unnoticed than to involve the criminal courts in endless and fruitless
+inquiry. Upon the ground of expediency only should the crime go
+unnoticed, and not because it can be reached in some other way. For
+proof that it does exist, we can point to nothing more convincing than
+the life of Caspar Hauser itself. No one can doubt that his soul was the
+victim of a crime, for which the perpetrator, untouched by human laws,
+stands accused before the throne of God.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+PAMPENEA.
+
+AN IDYL.
+
+
+  Lying by the summer sea,
+  I had a dream of Italy.
+
+  Chalky cliffs and miles of sand,
+  Ragged reefs and salty caves,
+  And the sparkling emerald waves
+  Faded; and I seemed to stand,
+  Myself a languid Florentine,
+  In the heart of that fair land.
+  And in a garden cool and green,
+  Boccaccio's own enchanted place,
+  I met Pampenea face to face,--
+  A maid so lovely that to see
+  Her smile is to know Italy.
+
+  Her hair was like a coronet
+  Upon her Grecian forehead set,
+  Where one gem glistened sunnily,
+  Like Venice, when first seen at sea.
+  I saw within her violet eyes
+  The starlight of Italian skies,
+  And on her brow and breast and hand
+  The olive of her native land.
+
+  And knowing how, in other times,
+  Her lips were ripe with Tuscan rhymes
+  Of love and wine and dance, I spread
+  My mantle by an almond-tree:
+  "And here, beneath the rose," I said,
+  "I'll hear thy Tuscan melody!"
+
+  I heard a tale that was not told
+  In those ten dreamy days of old,
+  When Heaven, for some divine offence,
+  Smote Florence with the pestilence,
+  And in that garden's odorous shade
+  The dames of the Decameron,
+  With each a happy lover, strayed,
+  To laugh and sing, at sorest need,
+  To lie in the lilies, in the sun,
+  With glint of plume and golden brede.
+
+  And while she whispered in my ear,
+  The pleasant Arno murmured near,
+  The dewy, slim chameleons run
+  Through twenty colors in the sun,
+  The breezes broke the fountain's glass,
+  And woke Aeolian melodies,
+  And shook from out the scented trees
+  The bleachèd lemon-blossoms on the grass.
+
+  The tale? I have forgot the tale!--
+  A Lady all for love forlorn;
+  A Rosebud, and a Nightingale
+  That bruised his bosom on a thorn;
+  A pot of rubies buried deep;
+  A glen, a corpse, a child asleep;
+  A Monk, that was no monk at all,
+  I' the moonlight by a castle-wall;--
+  Kaleidoscopic hints, to be
+  Worked up in farce or tragedy.
+
+  Now while the sweet-eyed Tuscan wove
+  The gilded thread of her romance,
+  (Which I have lost by grievous chance,)
+  The one dear woman that I love,
+  Beside me in our seaside nook,
+  Closed a white finger in her book,
+  Half-vexed that she should read, and weep
+  For Petrarch, to a man asleep.
+  And scorning me, so tame and cold,
+  She rose, and wandered down the shore,
+  Her wine-dark drapery, fold in fold,
+  Imprisoned by an ivory hand;
+  And on a ridge of granite, half in sand,
+  She stood, and looked at Appledore.
+
+  And waking, I beheld her there
+  Sea-dreaming in the moted air,
+  A Siren sweet and debonair,
+  With wristlets woven of colored weeds,
+  And oblong lucent amber beads
+  Of sea-kelp shining in her hair.
+  And as I mused on dreams, and how
+  The something in us never sleeps,
+  But laughs or sings or moans or weeps,
+  She turned,--and on her breast and brow
+  I saw the tint that seemed not won
+  From kisses of New England sun;
+  I saw on brow and breast and hand
+  The olive of a sunnier land!
+  She turned,--and lo! within her eyes
+  The starlight of Italian skies!
+
+  Most dreams are dark, beyond the range
+  Of reason; oft we cannot tell
+  If they be born of heaven or hell;
+  But to my soul it seems not strange,
+  That, lying by the summer sea,
+  With that dark woman watching me,
+  I slept, and dreamed of Italy!
+
+
+
+
+THE PROFESSOR'S STORY.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+THE PERILOUS HOUR.
+
+
+Up to this time Dick Venner had not decided on the particular mode
+and the precise period of relieving himself from the unwarrantable
+interference which threatened to defeat his plans. The luxury of feeling
+that he had his man in his power was its own reward. One who watches
+in the dark, outside, while his enemy, in utter unconsciousness, is
+illuminating his apartment and himself so that every movement of his
+head and every button on his coat can be seen and counted, especially
+if he holds a loaded rifle in his hand, experiences a peculiar kind of
+pleasure, which he naturally hates to bring to its climax by testing his
+skill as a marksman upon the object of his attention.
+
+Besides, Dick had two sides in his nature, almost as distinct as we
+sometimes observe in those persons who are the subjects of the condition
+known as _double consciousness_. On his New England side he was cunning
+and calculating, always cautious, measuring his distance before he
+risked his stroke, as nicely as if he were throwing his lasso. But
+he was liable to intercurrent fits of jealousy and rage, such as the
+light-hued races are hardly capable of conceiving,--blinding paroxysms
+of passion, which for the time overmastered him, and which, if they
+found no ready outlet, transformed themselves into the more dangerous
+forces that worked through the instrumentality of his cool craftiness.
+
+He had failed as yet in getting any positive evidence that there was any
+relation between Elsie and the schoolmaster other than such as might
+exist unsuspected and unblamed between a teacher and his pupil. A book,
+or a note, even, did not prove the existence of any sentiment. At one
+time he would be devoured by suspicions, at another he would try to
+laugh himself out of them. And in the mean while he followed Elsie's
+tastes as closely as he could, determined to make some impression upon
+her,--to become a habit, a convenience, a necessity,--whatever might aid
+him in the attainment of the one end which was now the aim of his life.
+
+It was to humor one of her tastes already known to the reader, that he
+said to her one morning,--"Come, Elsie, take your castanets, and let us
+have a dance."
+
+He had struck the right vein in the girl's fancy, for she was in the
+mood for this exercise, and very willingly led the way into one of the
+more empty apartments. What there was in this particular kind of dance
+which excited her it might not be easy to guess; but those who looked in
+with the old Doctor, on a former occasion, and saw her, will remember
+that she was strangely carried away by it, and became almost fearful in
+the vehemence of her passion. The sound of the castanets seemed to make
+her alive all over. Dick knew well enough what the exhibition would
+be, and was almost afraid of her at these moments; for it was like
+the dancing mania of Eastern devotees, more than the ordinary light
+amusement of joyous youth,--a convulsion of the body and the mind,
+rather than a series of voluntary modulated motions.
+
+Elsie rattled out the triple measure of a saraband. Her eyes began to
+glitter more brilliantly, and her shape to undulate in freer curves.
+Presently she noticed that Dick's look was fixed upon her necklace. His
+face betrayed his curiosity; he was intent on solving the question, why
+she always wore something about her neck. The chain of mosaics she had
+on at that moment displaced itself at every step, and he was peering
+with malignant, searching eagerness to see if an unsunned ring of
+fairer hue than the rest of the surface, or any less easily explained
+peculiarity, were hidden by her ornaments.
+
+She stopped suddenly, caught the chain of mosaics and settled it hastily
+in its place, flung down her castanets, drew herself back, and stood
+looking at him, with her head a little on one side, and her eyes
+narrowing in the way he had known so long and well.
+
+"What is the matter, Cousin Elsie? What do you stop for?" he said.
+
+Elsie did not answer, but kept her eyes on him, full of malicious light.
+The jealousy which lay covered up under his surface--thoughts took this
+opportunity to break out.
+
+"You wouldn't act so, if you were dancing with Mr. Langdon,--would you,
+Elsie?" he asked.
+
+It was with some effort that he looked steadily at her to see the effect
+of his question.
+
+Elsie _colored_,--not much, but still perceptibly. Dick could not
+remember that he had ever seen her show this mark of emotion before,
+in all his experience of her fitful changes of mood. It had a singular
+depth of significance, therefore, for him; he knew how hardly her color
+came. Blushing means nothing, in some persons; in others, it betrays
+a profound inward agitation,--a perturbation of the feelings far more
+trying than the passions which with many easily moved persons break
+forth in tears. All who have observed much are aware that some men, who
+have seen a good deal of life in its less chastened aspects and are
+anything but modest, will blush often and easily, while there are
+delicate and sensitive women who can turn pale, or go into fits, if
+necessary, but are very rarely seen to betray their feelings in their
+cheeks, even when their expression shows that their inmost soul is
+blushing scarlet.
+
+Presently she answered, abruptly and scornfully,--
+
+"Mr. Langdon is a gentleman, and would not vex me as you do."
+
+"A gentleman!" Dick answered, with the most insulting accent,--"a
+gentleman! Come, Elsie, you've got the Dudley blood in your veins,
+and it doesn't do for you to call this poor, sneaking schoolmaster a
+gentleman!"
+
+He stopped short. Elsie's bosom was heaving, the faint flush on her
+cheek was becoming a vivid glow. Whether it were shame or wrath, he saw
+that he had reached some deep-lying centre of emotion. There was no
+longer any doubt in his mind. With another girl these signs of confusion
+might mean little or nothing; with her they were decisive and final.
+Elsie Venner loved Bernard Langdon.
+
+The sudden conviction, absolute, overwhelming, which rushed upon him,
+had wellnigh led to an explosion of wrath, and perhaps some terrible
+scene which might have fulfilled some of Old Sophy's predictions. This,
+however, would never do. Dick's face whitened with his thoughts, but he
+kept still until he could speak calmly.
+
+"I've nothing against the young fellow," he said; "only I don't think
+there's anything quite good enough to keep the company of people that
+have the Dudley blood in them. You a'n't as proud as I am. I can't quite
+make up my mind to call a schoolmaster a gentleman, though this one may
+be well enough. I've nothing against him, at any rate."
+
+Elsie made no answer, but glided out of the room and slid away to her
+own apartment. She bolted the door and drew her curtains close. Then she
+threw herself on the floor, and fell into a dull, slow ache of passion,
+without tears, without words, almost without thoughts. So she remained,
+perhaps, for a half-hour, at the end of which time it seemed that her
+passion had become a sullen purpose. She arose, and, looking cautiously
+round, went to the hearth, which was ornamented with curious old Dutch
+tiles, with pictures of Scripture subjects. One of these represented
+the lifting of the brazen serpent. She took a hair-pin from one of her
+braids, and, insinuating its points under the edge of the tile, raised
+it from its place. A small leaden box lay under the tile, which she
+opened, and, taking from it a little white powder, which she folded in a
+scrap of paper, replaced the box and the tile over it.
+
+Whether Dick had by any means got a knowledge of this proceeding, or
+whether he only suspected some unmentionable design on her part, there
+is no sufficient means of determining. At any rate, when they met, an
+hour or two after these occurrences, he could not help noticing how
+easily she seemed to have got over her excitement. She was very pleasant
+with him,--too pleasant, Dick thought. It was not Elsie's way to come
+out of a fit of anger so easily as that. She had contrived some way of
+letting off her spite; that was certain. Dick was pretty cunning, as Old
+Sophy had said, and, whether or not he had any means of knowing Elsie's
+private intentions, watched her closely, and was on his guard against
+accidents.
+
+For the first time, he took certain precautions with reference to his
+diet, such as were quite alien to his common habits. On coming to the
+dinner-table, that day, he complained of headache, took but little food,
+and refused the cup of coffee which Elsie offered him, saying that it
+did not agree with him when he had these attacks.
+
+Here was a new complication. Obviously enough, he could not live in this
+way, suspecting everything but plain bread and water, and hardly feeling
+safe in meddling with them. Not only had this school-keeping wretch come
+between him and the scheme by which he was to secure his future fortune,
+but his image had so infected his cousin's mind that she was ready to
+try on him some of those tricks which, as he had heard hinted in the
+village, she had once before put in practice upon a person who had
+become odious to her.
+
+Something must be done, and at once, to meet the double necessities of
+this case. Every day, while the young girl was in these relations with
+the young man, was only making matters worse. They could exchange words
+and looks, they could arrange private interviews, they would be stooping
+together over the same book, her hair touching his cheek, her breath
+mingling with his, all the magnetic attractions drawing them together
+with strange, invisible effluences. As her passion for the schoolmaster
+increased, her dislike to him, her cousin, would grow with it, and all
+his dangers would be multiplied. It was a fearful point he had reached.
+He was tempted at one moment to give up all his plans and to disappear
+suddenly from the place, leaving with the schoolmaster, who had
+come between him and his object, an anonymous token of his personal
+sentiments which would be remembered a good while in the history of the
+town of Rockland. This was but a momentary thought; the great Dudley
+property could not be given up in that way.
+
+Something must happen at once to break up all this order of things. He
+could think of but one Providential event adequate to the emergency,--an
+event foreshadowed by various recent circumstances, but hitherto
+floating in his mind only as a possibility. Its occurrence would at once
+change the course of Elsie's feelings, providing her with something to
+think of besides mischief, and remove the accursed obstacle which was
+thwarting all his own projects. Every possible motive, then,--his
+interest, his jealousy, his longing for revenge, and now his fears for
+his own safety,--urged him to regard the happening of a certain casualty
+as a matter of simple necessity. This was the self-destruction of Mr.
+Bernard Langdon.
+
+Such an event, though it might be surprising to many people, would not
+be incredible, nor without many parallel cases. He was poor, a miserable
+fag, under the control of that mean wretch up there at the school, who
+looked as if he had sour buttermilk in his veins instead of blood. He
+was in love with a girl above his station, rich, and of old family, but
+strange in all her ways, and it was conceivable that he should become
+suddenly jealous of her. Or she might have frightened him with some
+display of her peculiarities which had filled him with a sudden
+repugnance in the place of love. Any of these things were credible, and
+would make a probable story enough,--so thought Dick over to himself
+with the New-England half of his mind.
+
+Unfortunately, men will not always take themselves out of the way when,
+so far as their neighbors are concerned, it would be altogether the most
+appropriate and graceful and acceptable service they could render. There
+was at this particular moment no special reason for believing that the
+schoolmaster meditated any violence to his own person. On the contrary,
+there was good evidence that he was taking some care of himself. He was
+looking well and in good spirits, and in the habit of amusing himself
+and exercising, as if to keep up his standard of health, especially of
+taking certain evening-walks, before referred to, at an hour when most
+of the Rockland people had "retired," or, in vulgar language, "gone to
+bed."
+
+Dick Venner settled it, however, in his own mind, that Mr. Bernard
+Langdon must lay violent hands upon himself. He even went so far as to
+determine the precise hour, and the method in which the "rash act," as
+it would undoubtedly be called in the next issue of "The Rockland
+Weekly Universe," should be committed. Time,--_this evening._
+Method,--asphyxia, by suspension. It was, unquestionably, taking a great
+liberty with a man to decide that he should become _felo de se_ without
+his own consent. Such, however, was the decision of Mr. Richard Venner
+with regard to Mr. Bernard Langdon.
+
+If everything went right, then, there would be a coroner's inquest
+to-morrow upon what remained of that gentleman, found suspended to the
+branch of a tree somewhere within a mile of the Apollinean Institute.
+The "Weekly Universe" would have a startling paragraph announcing a
+"SAD EVENT!!!" which had "thrown the town into an intense state of
+excitement. Mr. Barnard Langden, a well known teacher at the Apollinean
+Institute, was found, etc., etc. The vital spark was extinct. The
+motive to the rash act can only be conjectured, but is supposed to be
+disappointed affection. The name of an accomplished young lady of _the
+highest respectability_ and great beauty is mentioned in connection with
+this melancholy occurrence."
+
+Dick Venner was at the tea-table that evening, as usual.--No, he would
+take green tea, if she pleased,--the same as her father drank. It would
+suit his headache better.--Nothing,--he was much obliged to her. He
+would help himself,--which he did in a little different way from common,
+naturally enough, on account of his headache. He noticed that Elsie
+seemed a little nervous while she was rinsing some of the teacups before
+their removal.
+
+"There's something going on in that witch's head;" he said to himself.
+"I know her,--she'd be savage now, if she hadn't got some trick in hand.
+Let's see how she looks to-morrow!"
+
+Dick announced that he should go to bed early that evening, on account
+of this confounded headache which had been troubling him so much. In
+fact, he went up early, and locked his door after him, with as much
+noise as he could make. He then changed some part of his dress, so that
+it should be dark throughout, slipped off his boots, drew the lasso out
+from the bottom of the contents of his trunk, and, carrying that and
+his boots in his hand, opened his door softly, locked it after him, and
+stole down the back-stairs, so as to get out of the house unnoticed. He
+went straight to the stable and saddled the mustang. He took a rope from
+the stable with him, mounted his horse, and set forth in the direction
+of the Institute.
+
+Mr. Bernard, as we have seen, had not been very profoundly impressed by
+the old Doctor's cautions,--enough, however, to follow out some of his
+hints which were not troublesome to attend to. He laughed at the idea of
+carrying a loaded pistol about with him; but still it seemed only fair,
+as the old Doctor thought so much of the matter, to humor him about it.
+As for not going about when and where he liked, for fear he might have
+some lurking enemy, that was a thing not to be listened to nor thought
+of. There was nothing to be ashamed of or troubled about in any of his
+relations with the school-girls. Elsie, no doubt, showed a kind of
+attraction towards him, as did perhaps some others; but he had been
+perfectly discreet, and no father or brother or lover had any just cause
+of quarrel with him. To be sure, that dark young man at the Dudley
+mansion-house looked as if he were his enemy, when he had met him; but
+certainly there was nothing in their relations to each other, or in his
+own to Elsie, that would be like to stir such malice in his mind as
+would lead him to play any of his wild Southern tricks at his, Mr.
+Bernard's, expense. Yet he had a vague feeling that this young man was
+dangerous, and he had been given to understand that one of the risks he
+ran was from that quarter.
+
+On this particular evening, he had a strange, unusual sense of some
+impending peril. His recent interview with the Doctor, certain remarks
+that had been dropped in his hearing, but above all an unaccountable
+impression upon his spirits, all combined to fill his mind with a
+foreboding conviction that he was very near some overshadowing danger.
+It was as the chill of the ice-mountain towards which the ship is
+steering under full sail. He felt a strong impulse to see Helen Darley
+and talk with her. She was in the common parlour, and, fortunately,
+alone.
+
+"Helen," he said,--for they were almost like brother and sister now,--"I
+have been thinking what you would do, if I should have to leave the
+school at short notice, or be taken away suddenly by any accident."
+
+"Do?" she said, her cheek growing paler than its natural delicate
+hue,--"why, I do not know how I could possibly consent to live here, if
+you left us. Since you came, my life has been almost easy; before, it
+was getting intolerable. You must not talk about going, my dear friend;
+you have spoiled me for my place. Who is there here that I can have any
+true society with, but you? You would not leave us for another school,
+would you?"
+
+"No, no, my dear Helen," Mr. Bernard said; "if it depends on myself, I
+shall stay out my full time, and enjoy your company and friendship. But
+everything is uncertain in this world; I have been thinking that I might
+be wanted elsewhere, and called when I did not think of it;--it was a
+fancy, perhaps,--but I can't keep it out of my mind this evening. If any
+of my fancies should come true, Helen, there are two or three messages
+I want to leave with you. I have marked a book or two with a cross in
+pencil on the fly-leaf;--these are for you. There is a little hymn-book
+I should like to have you give to Elsie from me;--it may be a kind of
+comfort to the poor girl."
+
+Helen's eyes glistened as she interrupted him,--
+
+"What do you mean? You must not talk so, Mr. Langdon. Why, you never
+looked better in your life. Tell me now, you are not in earnest, are
+you, but only trying a little sentiment on me?"
+
+Mr. Bernard smiled, but rather sadly.
+
+"About half in earnest," he said. "I have had some fancies in my
+head,--superstitions, I suppose,--at any rate, it does no harm to tell
+you what I should like to have done, if anything should happen,--very
+likely nothing ever will. Send the rest of the books home, if you
+please, and write a letter to my mother. And, Helen, you will find
+one small volume in my desk enveloped and directed, you will see to
+whom;--give this with your own hands; it is a keepsake."
+
+The tears gathered in her eyes; she could not speak at first.
+Presently,--
+
+"Why, Bernard, my dear friend, my brother, it cannot be that you are in
+danger? Tell me what it is, and, if I can share it with you, or counsel
+you in any way, it will only be paying back the great debt I owe you.
+No, no,--it can't be true,--you are tired and worried, and your spirits
+have got depressed. I know what that is;--I was sure, one winter, that
+I should die before spring; but I lived to see the dandelions
+and buttercups go to seed. Come, tell me it was nothing but your
+imagination."
+
+She felt a tear upon her cheek, but would not turn her face away from
+him; it was the tear of a sister.
+
+"I am really in earnest, Helen," he said. "I don't know that there is
+the least reason in the world for these fancies. If they all go off and
+nothing comes of them, you may laugh at me, if you like. But if there
+should be any occasion, remember my requests. You don't believe in
+presentiments, do you?"
+
+"Oh, don't ask me, I beg you," Helen answered. "I have had a good many
+frights for every one real misfortune I have suffered. Sometimes I have
+thought I was warned beforehand of coming trouble, just as many people
+are of changes in the weather, by some unaccountable feeling,--but not
+often, and I don't like to talk about such things. I wouldn't think
+about these fancies of yours. I don't believe you have exercised
+enough;--don't you think it's confinement in the school has made you
+nervous?"
+
+"Perhaps it has; but it happens that I have thought more of exercise
+lately, and have taken walks late in the evening, besides playing my old
+gymnastic tricks every day."
+
+They talked on many subjects, but through all he said Helen perceived a
+pervading tone of sadness, and an expression as of a dreamy foreboding
+of unknown evil. They parted at the usual hour, and went to their
+several rooms. The sadness of Mr. Bernard had sunk into the heart
+of Helen, and she mingled many tears with her prayers that evening,
+earnestly entreating that he might be comforted in his days of trial and
+protected in his hour of danger.
+
+Mr. Bernard stayed in his room a short time before setting out for his
+evening walk. His eye fell upon the Bible his mother had given him when
+he left home, and he opened it in the New Testament at a venture. It
+happened that the first words he read were these,--"_Lest, coming
+suddenly, he find you sleeping_." In the state of mind in which he
+was at the moment, the text startled him. It was like a supernatural
+warning. He was not going to expose himself to any particular danger
+this evening; a walk in a quiet village was as free from risk as Helen
+Darley or his own mother could ask; yet he had an unaccountable feeling
+of apprehension, without any definite object. At this moment he
+remembered the old Doctor's counsel, which he had sometimes neglected,
+and, blushing at the feeling which led him to do it, he took the pistol
+his suspicious old friend had forced upon him, which he had put away
+loaded, and, thrusting it into his pocket, set out upon his walk.
+
+The moon was shining at intervals, for the night was partially clouded.
+There seemed to be nobody stirring, though his attention was unusually
+awake, and he could hear the whirr of the bats overhead, and the
+pulsating croak of the frogs in the distant pools and marshes. Presently
+he detected the sound of hoofs at some distance, and, looking forward,
+saw a horseman coming in his direction. The moon was under a cloud at
+the moment, and he could only observe that the horse and his rider
+looked like a single dark object, and that they were moving along at an
+easy pace. Mr. Bernard was really ashamed of himself, when he found his
+hand on the butt of his pistol. When the horseman was within a hundred
+and fifty yards of him, the moon shone out suddenly and revealed each
+of them to the other. The rider paused for a moment, as if carefully
+surveying the pedestrian, then suddenly put his horse to the full
+gallop, and dashed towards him, rising at the same instant in his
+stirrups and swinging something round his head,--what, Mr. Bernard could
+not make out. It was a strange manoeuvre,--so strange and threatening in
+aspect that the young man forgot his nervousness in an instant, cocked
+his pistol, and waited to see what mischief all this meant. He did not
+wait long. As the rider came rushing towards him, he made a rapid motion
+and something leaped five-and-twenty feet through the air, in Mr.
+Bernard's direction. In an instant he felt a ring, as of a rope or
+thong, settle upon his shoulders. There was no time to think,--he would
+be lost in another second. He raised his pistol and fired,--not at the
+rider, but at the horse. His aim was true; the mustang gave one bound
+and fell lifeless, shot through the head. The lasso was fastened to his
+saddle, and his last bound threw Mr. Bernard violently to the earth,
+where he lay motionless, as if stunned.
+
+In the mean time, Dick Venner, who had been dashed down with his horse,
+was trying to extricate himself,--one of his legs being held fast under
+the animal, the long spur on his boot having caught in the saddle-cloth.
+He found, however, that he could do nothing with his right arm, his
+shoulder having been in some way injured in his fall. But his Southern
+blood was up, and, as he saw Mr. Bernard move as if he were coming to
+his senses, he struggled violently to free himself.
+
+"I'll have the dog, yet," he said,--"only let me get at him with the
+knife!"
+
+He had just succeeded in extricating his imprisoned leg, and was ready
+to spring to his feet, when he was caught firmly by the throat, and,
+looking up, saw a clumsy barbed weapon, commonly known as a hay-fork,
+within an inch of his breast.
+
+"Hold on there! What 'n thunder 'r' y' abaout, y' darned Portagee?" said
+a voice, with a decided nasal tone in it, but sharp and resolute.
+
+Dick looked from the weapon to the person who held it, and saw a sturdy,
+plain man standing over him, with his teeth clinched, and his aspect
+that of one all ready for mischief.
+
+"Lay still, naow!" said Abel Stebbins, the Doctor's man; "'f y' don't,
+I'll stick ye, 'z sure 'z y' 'r' alive! I been aäfter ye f'r a week, 'n'
+I got y' naow! I knowed I'd ketch ye at some darned trick or 'nother
+'fore I'd done 'ith ye!"
+
+Dick lay perfectly still, feeling that he was crippled and helpless,
+thinking all the time with the Yankee half of his mind what to do about
+it. He saw Mr. Bernard lift his head and look around him. He would get
+his senses again in a few minutes, very probably, and then he, Mr.
+Richard Venner, would be done for.
+
+"Let me up! let me up!" he cried, in a low, hurried voice,--"I'll give
+you a hundred dollars in gold to let me go. The man a'n't hurt,--don't
+you see him stirring? He'll come to himself in two minutes. Let me up!
+I'll give you a hundred and fifty dollars in gold, now, here on the
+spot,--and the watch out of my pocket; take it yourself, with your own
+hands!"
+
+"I'll see y' darned fust! Ketch me lett'n' go!" was Abel's emphatic
+answer. "Yeou lay still, 'n' wait t'll that man comes tew."
+
+He kept the hay-fork ready for action at the slightest sign of
+resistance.
+
+Mr. Bernard, in the mean time, had been getting, first his senses, and
+then some Jew of his scattered wits, a little together.
+
+"What is it?"--he said. "Who 'a hurt? What's happened?"
+
+"Come along here 'z quick 'z y' ken," Abel answered, "'n' haälp me fix
+this fellah. Y' been hurt, y'rself, 'n' the' 's murder come pooty nigh
+happenin'."
+
+Mr. Bernard heard the answer, but presently stared about and asked
+again, _"Who's hurt? What's happened?"_
+
+"Y' 'r' hurt, y'rself, I tell ye," said Abel; "'n' the''s been a murder,
+pooty nigh."
+
+Mr. Bernard felt something about his neck, and, putting his hands up,
+found the loop of the lasso, which he loosened, but did not think to
+slip over his head, in the confusion of his perceptions and thoughts. It
+was a wonder that it had not choked him, but he had fallen forward so as
+to slacken it.
+
+By this time he was getting some notion of what he was about, and
+presently began looking round for his pistol, which had fallen. He
+found it lying near him, cocked it mechanically, and walked, somewhat
+unsteadily, towards the two men, who were keeping their position as
+still as if they were performing in a _tableau._
+
+"Quick, naow!" said Abel, who had heard the click of cocking the pistol,
+and saw that he held it in his hand, as he came towards him. "Gi' me
+that pistil, and yeon fetch that 'ere rope layin' there. I'll have this
+here fellah fixed 'n less 'n two minutes."
+
+Mr. Bernard did as Abel said,--stupidly and mechanically, for he was but
+half right as yet. Abel pointed the pistol at Dick's head.
+
+"Naow hold up y'r hands, yeou fellah," he said, "'n' keep 'em up, while
+this man puts the rope raound y'r wrists."
+
+Dick felt himself helpless, and, rather than have his disabled arm
+roughly dealt with, held up his hands. Mr. Bernard did as Abel said; he
+was in a purely passive state, and obeyed orders like a child. Abel then
+secured the rope in a most thorough and satisfactory complication of
+twists and knots.
+
+"Naow get up, will ye?" he said; and the unfortunate Dick rose to his
+feet.
+
+_"Who's hurt? What's happened?"_ asked poor Mr. Bernard again, his
+memory having been completely jarred out of him for the time.
+
+"Come, look here naow, yeou, don' stan' aäskin' questions over 'n'
+over;--'t beats all I ha'n't I tol' y' a dozen times?"
+
+As Abel spoke, he turned and looked at Mr. Bernard.
+
+"Hullo! What 'n thunder's that'ere raoun' y'r neck? Ketched ye 'ith a
+slippernoose, hey? Wal, if that a'n't the craowner! Hol' on a minute,
+Cap'n, 'n' I'll show ye what that 'ere halter's good for."
+
+Abel slipped the noose over Mr. Bernard's head, and put it round
+the neck of the miserable Dick Venner, who made no sign of
+resistance,--whether on account of the pain he was in, or from mere
+helplessness, or because he was waiting for some unguarded moment to
+escape,--since resistance seemed of no use.
+
+"I'm go'n' to kerry y' home," said Abel; "th' ol' Doctor, he's got a
+gre't cur'osity t' see ye. Jes' step along naow,--off that way, will
+ye?--'n I'll hol' on t' th' bridle, f' fear y' sh'd run away."
+
+He took hold of the leather thong, but found that it was fastened at the
+other end to the saddle. This was too much for Abel.
+
+"Wal, naow, yeou _be_ a pooty chap to hev raound! A fellah's neck in a
+slippernoose at one eend of a halter, 'n' a boss on th' full spring at
+t'other eend!"
+
+He looked at him from head to foot as a naturalist inspects a new
+specimen. His clothes had suffered in his fall, especially on the leg
+which had been caught under the horse.
+
+"Hullo! look o' there, naow! What's that 'ere stickin' aout o' y'r
+boot?"
+
+It was nothing but the handle of an ugly knife, which Abel instantly
+relieved him of.
+
+The party now took up the line of march for old Doctor Kittredge's
+house, Abel carrying the pistol and knife, and Mr. Bernard walking in
+silence, still half-stunned, holding the hay-fork, which Abel had thrust
+into his hand. It was all a dream to him as yet. He remembered the
+horseman riding at him, and his firing the pistol; but whether he was
+alive, and these walls around him belonged to the village of Rockland,
+or whether he had passed the dark river, and was in a suburb of the New
+Jerusalem, he could not as yet have told.
+
+They were in the street where the Doctor's house was situated.
+
+"I guess I'll fire off one o' these here berrils," said Abel.
+
+He fired.
+
+Presently there was a noise of opening windows, and the nocturnal
+headdresses of Rockland flowered out of them like so many developments
+of the Night-blooming Cereus. White cotton caps and red bandanna
+handkerchiefs were the prevailing forms of efflorescence. The main point
+was that the village was waked up. The old Doctor always waked easily,
+from long habit, and was the first among those who looked out to see
+what had happened.
+
+"Why, Abel!" he called out, "what have you got there? and what's all
+this noise about?"
+
+"We've ketched the Portagee!" Abel answered, as laconically as the hero
+of Lake Erie in his famous dispatch. "Go in there, you fellah!"
+
+The prisoner was marched into the house, and the Doctor, who had
+bewitched his clothes upon him in a way that would have been miraculous
+in anybody but a physician, was down in presentable form as soon as if
+it had been a child in a fit that he was sent for.
+
+"Richard Venner!" the Doctor exclaimed. "What is the meaning of all
+this? Mr. Langdon, has anything happened to you?"
+
+Mr. Bernard put his hand to his head.
+
+"My mind is confused," he said. "I've had a fall.--Oh, yes!--wait a
+minute and it will all come back to me."
+
+"Sit down, sit down," the Doctor said. "Abel will tell me about it.
+Slight concussion of the brain. Can't remember very well for an hour or
+two,--will come right by to-morrow."
+
+"Been stunded," Abel said. "He can't tell nothin'."
+
+Abel then proceeded to give a Napoleonic bulletin of the recent combat
+of cavalry and infantry and its results,--none slain, one captured.
+
+The Doctor looked at the prisoner through his spectacles.
+
+"What's the matter with your shoulder, Venner?"
+
+Dick answered sullenly, that he didn't know,--fell on it when his horse
+came down. The Doctor examined it as carefully as he could through his
+clothes.
+
+"Out of joint. Untie his hands, Abel."
+
+By this time a small alarm had spread among the neighbors, and there was
+a circle around Dick, who glared about on the assembled honest people
+like a hawk with a broken wing.
+
+When the Doctor said, "Untie his hands," the circle widened perceptibly.
+
+"Isn't it a leetle rash to give him the use of his hands? I see there's
+females and children standin' near."
+
+This was the remark of our old friend, Deacon Soper, who retired from
+the front row, as he spoke, behind a respectable-looking, but somewhat
+hastily dressed person of the defenceless sex, the female help of a
+neighboring household, accompanied by a boy, whose unsmoothed shock of
+hair looked like a last-year's crow's-nest.
+
+But Abel untied his hands, in spite of the Deacon's considerate
+remonstrance.
+
+"Now," said the Doctor, "the first thing is to put the joint back."
+
+"Stop," said Deacon Soper,--"stop a minute. Don't you think it will be
+safer--for the women-folks--jest to wait till mornin', afore you put
+that j'int into the socket?"
+
+Colonel Sprowle, who had been called by a special messenger, spoke up at
+this moment.
+
+"Let the women-folks and the deacons go home, if they're scared, and put
+the fellah's j'int in as quick as you like. I'll resk him, j'int in or
+out."
+
+"I want one of you to go straight down to Dudley Venner's with a
+message," the Doctor said. "I will have the young man's shoulder in
+quick enough."
+
+"Don't send that message!" said Dick, in a hoarse voice;--"do what you
+like with my arm, but don't send that message! Let me go,--I can walk,
+and I'll be off from this place. There's nobody hurt but I. Damn the
+shoulder!--let me go! You shall never hear of me again!"
+
+Mr. Bernard came forward.
+
+"My friends," he said, "_I_ am not injured,--seriously, at least. Nobody
+need complain against this man, if I don't. The Doctor will treat him
+like a human being, at any rate; and then, if he will go, let him. There
+are too many witnesses against him here for him to want to stay."
+
+The Doctor, in the mean time, without saying a word to all this, had got
+a towel round the shoulder and chest and another round the arm, and had
+the bone replaced in a very few moments.
+
+"Abel, put Cassia into the new chaise," he said, quietly. "My friends
+and neighbors, leave this young man to me."
+
+"Colonel Sprowle, you're a justice of the peace," said Deacon Soper,
+"and you know what the law says in cases like this. I a'n't so clear
+that it won't have to come afore the Grand Jury, whether we will or no."
+
+"I guess we'll set that j'int to-morrow mornin'," said Colonel
+Sprowle,--which made a laugh at the Deacon's expense, and virtually
+settled the question.
+
+"Now trust this young man in my care," said the old Doctor, "and go home
+and finish your naps. I knew him when he was a boy, and, I'll answer for
+it, he won't trouble you any more. The Dudley blood makes folks proud, I
+can tell you, whatever else they are."
+
+The good people so respected and believed in the Doctor that they left
+the prisoner with him.
+
+Presently, Cassia, the fast Morgan mare, came up to the front-door,
+with the wheels of the new, light chaise flashing behind her in the
+moonlight. The Doctor drove Dick forty miles at a stretch that night,
+out of the limits of the State.
+
+"Do you want money?" he said, before he left him.
+
+Dick told him the secret of his golden belt.
+
+"Where shall I send your trunk after you from your uncle's?"
+
+Dick gave him a direction to a seaport town to which he himself was
+going, to take passage for a port in South America.
+
+"Good-bye, Richard," said the Doctor. "Try to learn something from
+to-night's lesson."
+
+The Southern impulses in Dick's wild blood overcame him, and he kissed
+the old Doctor on both cheeks, crying as only the children of the sun
+can cry, after the first hours in the dewy morning of life. So Dick
+Venner disappears from this story. An hour after dawn, Cassia pointed
+her fine ears homeward, and struck into her square, honest trot, as
+if she had not been doing anything more than her duty during her four
+hours' stretch of the last night.
+
+Abel was not in the habit of questioning the Doctor's decisions.
+
+"It's all right," he said to Mr. Bernard. "The fellah's Squire Venner's
+relation, anyhaow. Don't you want to wait here, jest a little while,
+till I come back? The' 's a consid'able nice saddle 'n' bridle on a dead
+hoss that's layin' daown there in the road, 'n' I guess the' a'n't no
+use in lettin' on 'em spile,--so I'll jest step aout 'n' fetch 'em
+along. I kind o' calc'late 't won't pay to take the cretur's shoes 'n'
+hide off to-night,--'n' the' won't be much iron on that hoss's huffs an
+haour after daylight, I'll bate ye a quarter."
+
+"I'll walk along with you," said Mr. Bernard;--"I feel as if I could get
+along well enough now."
+
+So they set off together. There was a little crowd round the dead
+mustang already, principally consisting of neighbors who had adjourned
+from the Doctor's house to see the scene of the late adventure. In
+addition to these, however, the assembly was honored by the presence of
+Mr. Principal Silas Peckham, who had been called from his slumbers by
+a message that Master Langdon was shot through the head by a
+highway-robber, but had learned a true version of the story by this
+time. His voice was at that moment heard above the rest,--sharp, but
+thin, like bad cider-vinegar.
+
+"I take charge of that property, I say. Master Langdon 's actin' under
+my orders, and I claim that hoss and all that's on him. Hiram! jest slip
+off that saddle and bridle, and carry 'em up to the Institoot, and bring
+down a pair of pinchers and a file,--and--stop--fetch a pair of shears,
+too; there's hoss-hair enough in that mane and tail to stuff a bolster
+with."
+
+"You let that hoss alone!" spoke up Colonel Sprowle. "When a fellah
+goes out huntin' and shoots a squirrel, do you think he's go'n' to
+let another fellah pick him up and kerry him off? Not if he's got a
+double-berril gun, and t'other berril ha'n't been fired off yet! I
+should like to see the mahn that'll take off that seddle 'n' bridle,
+excep' the one th't hez a fair right to the whole concern!"
+
+Hiram was from one of the lean streaks in New Hampshire, and, not being
+overfed in Mr. Silas Peckham's kitchen, was somewhat wanting in stamina,
+as well as in stomach, for so doubtful an enterprise as undertaking to
+carry out his employer's orders in the face of the Colonel's defiance.
+
+Just then Mr. Bernard and Abel came up together.
+
+"Here they be," said the Colonel. "Stan' beck, gentlemen!"
+
+Mr. Bernard, who was pale and still a little confused, but gradually
+becoming more like himself, stood and looked in silence for a moment.
+
+All his thoughts seemed to be clearing themselves in this interval.
+He took in the whole series of incidents: his own frightful risk; the
+strange, instinctive, nay, Providential impulse which had led him so
+suddenly to do the one only thing which could possibly have saved him;
+the sudden appearance of the Doctor's man, but for which he might yet
+have been lost; and the discomfiture and capture of his dangerous enemy.
+
+It was all past now, and a feeling of pity rose in Mr. Bernard's heart.
+
+"He loved that horse, no doubt," he said,--"and no wonder. A beautiful,
+wild-looking creature! Take off those things that are on him, Abel, and
+have them carried to Mr. Dudley Venner's. If he does not want them, you
+may keep them yourself, for all that I have to say. One thing more. I
+hope nobody will lift his hand against this noble creature to mutilate
+him in any way. After you have taken off the saddle and bridle, Abel,
+bury him just as he is. Under that old beech-tree will be a good place.
+You'll see to it,--won't you, Abel?"
+
+Abel nodded assent, and Mr. Bernard returned to the Institute, threw
+himself in his clothes on the bed, and slept like one who is heavy with
+wine.
+
+Following Mr. Bernard's wishes, Abel at once took off the high-peaked
+saddle and the richly ornamented bridle from the mustang. Then, with
+the aid of two of three others, he removed him to the place indicated.
+Spades and shovels were soon procured, and before the moon had set, the
+wild horse of the Pampas was at rest under the turf at the wayside, in
+the far village among the hills of New England.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+THE TEST.
+
+
+_Musa loquitur._
+
+  I hung my verses in the wind;
+  Time and tide their faults may find.
+  All were winnowed through and through;
+  Five lines lasted sound and true;
+  Five were smelted in a pot
+  Than the South more fierce and hot.
+  These the Siroc could not melt,
+  Fire their fiercer flaming felt,
+  And their meaning was more white
+  Than July's meridian light.
+  Sunshine cannot bleach the snow,
+  Nor Time unmake what poets know.
+  Have you eyes to find the five
+  Which five thousand could survive?
+
+
+
+
+RECOLLECTIONS OF KEATS.
+
+_BY AN OLD SCHOOL-FELLOW._
+
+
+In the village of Enfield, in Middlesex, ten miles on the north road
+from London, was my father, John Clarke's school. The house had been
+built by a West India merchant, in the latter end of the seventeenth or
+beginning of the eighteenth century. It was of the better character of
+the domestic architecture of that period,--the whole front being of the
+purest red brick, wrought, by means of moulds, into rich designs of
+flowers and pomegranates, with heads of cherubim over two niches in
+the centre of the building. The elegance of the design and the perfect
+finish of the structure were such as to secure its protection, when a
+branch railway was brought from the Ware and Cambridge line to Enfield.
+The old school-house was converted into the station-house, and the
+railway company had the good taste to leave intact one of the few
+remaining specimens of the graceful English domestic architecture of
+long-gone days. Any of my readers who may happen to have a file of the
+London "Illustrated News," may find in No. 360, March 3, 1849, a not
+prodigiously enchanting wood-cut of the edifice.
+
+Here it was that John Keats all but commenced and did complete his
+school-education. He was born on the 29th of October, 1795; and I think
+he was one of the little fellows who had not wholly emerged from the
+child's costume upon being placed under my father's care. It will be
+readily conceived difficult to recall from the "dark backward and
+abysm" of nearly sixty years the general acts of perhaps the youngest
+individual in a corporation of between seventy and eighty youngsters;
+and very little more of Keats's child-life can I remember than that he
+had a brisk, winning face, and was a favorite with all, particularly
+with my mother.
+
+His maternal grandfather, Jennings, was proprietor of a large
+livery-stable, called "The Swan and Hoop," on the pavement in
+Moorfields, opposite the entrance into Finsbury Circus. He had two sons
+at my father's school. The elder was an officer in Duncan's ship in the
+fight off Camperdown. After the battle, the Dutch Admiral, De Winter,
+pointing to young Jennings, told Duncan that he had fired several
+shots at that young man, and always missed his mark;--no credit to his
+steadiness of aim; for Jennings, like his own admiral, was considerably
+above the ordinary dimensions of stature.
+
+Keats's father was the principal servant at the Swan and Hoop
+Stables,--a man of so remarkably fine a common-sense and native
+respectability, that I perfectly remember the warm terms in which his
+demeanor used to be canvassed by my parents after he had been to visit
+his boys. He was short of stature and well-knit in person, (John
+resembling him both in make and feature,) with brown hair and dark hazel
+eyes. He was killed by a fall from his horse, in returning from a visit
+to the school. John's two brothers, George, older, and Thomas, younger
+than himself, were like the mother,--who was tall, of good figure, with
+large, oval face, sombre features, and grave in behavior. The last of
+the family was a sister,--Fanny, I think, much younger than all,--of
+whom I remember my mother once speaking with much fondness, for her
+pretty, simple manners, while she was walking in the garden with her
+brothers. She married Mr. Llanos, a Spanish refugee, the author of
+"Don Estéban," and "Sandoval, the Free-Mason." He was a man of
+liberal principles, attractive manners, and more than ordinary
+accomplishments.--This is the amount of my knowledge and recollection of
+the family.
+
+In the early part of his school-life, John gave no extraordinary
+indications of intellectual character; but it was remembered of him
+afterwards, that there was ever present a determined and steady spirit
+in all his undertakings; and, although of a strong and impulsive will,
+I never knew it misdirected in his required pursuit of study. He was a
+most orderly scholar. The future ramifications of that noble genius were
+then closely shut in the seed, and greedily drinking in the moisture
+which made it afterwards burst forth so kindly into luxuriance and
+beauty.
+
+My father was in the habit, at each half-year's vacation, of bestowing
+prizes upon those pupils who had performed the greatest quantity of
+voluntary extra work; and such was Keats's indefatigable energy for the
+last two or three successive half-years of his remaining at school,
+that, upon each occasion, he took the first prize by a considerable
+distance. He was at work before the first school-hour began, and that
+was at seven o'clock; almost all the intervening times of recreation
+were so devoted; and during the afternoon-holidays, when all were at
+play, I have seen him in the school,--almost the only one,--at his Latin
+or French translation; and so unconscious and regardless was he of the
+consequences of this close and persevering application, that he never
+would have taken the necessary exercise, had he not been sometimes
+driven out by one of us for the purpose.
+
+I have said that he was a favorite with all. Not the less beloved was he
+for having a highly pugnacious spirit, which, when roused, was one of
+the most picturesque exhibitions--off the stage--I ever saw. One of the
+transports of that marvellous actor, Edmund Kean--whom, by the way,
+he idolized--was its nearest resemblance; and the two were not very
+dissimilar in face and figure. I remember, upon one occasion, when an
+usher, on account of some impertinent behavior, had boxed his brother
+Tom's ears, John rushed up, put himself in the received posture of
+offence, and, I believe, struck the usher,--who could have put him into
+his pocket. His passions at times were almost ungovernable; his brother
+George, being considerably the taller and stronger, used frequently to
+hold him down by main force, when he was in "one of his moods" and
+was endeavoring to beat him. It was all, however, a wisp-of-straw
+conflagration; for he had an intensely tender affection for his
+brothers, and proved it upon the most trying occasions. He was not
+merely the "favorite of all," like a pet prize-fighter, for his terrier
+courage; but his high-mindedness, his utter unconsciousness of a mean
+motive, his placability, his generosity, wrought so general a feeling in
+his behalf, that I never heard a word of disapproval from any one who
+had known him, superior or equal.
+
+The latter part of the time--perhaps eighteen months--that he remained
+at school, he occupied the hours during meals in reading. Thus his
+_whole_ time was engrossed. He had a tolerably retentive memory, and the
+quantity that he read was surprising. He must in those last months
+have exhausted the school--library, which consisted principally of
+abridgments of all the voyages and travels of any note; Mayor's
+Collection; also his Universal History; Robertson's Histories of
+Scotland, America, and Charles the Fifth; all Miss Edgeworth's
+productions; together with many other works, equally well calculated for
+youth, not necessary to be enumerated. The books, however, that were
+his constantly recurrent sources of attraction were Tooke's "Pantheon,"
+Lemprière's "Classical Dictionary," which he appeared to _learn_, and
+Spence's "Polymetis." This was the store whence he acquired his perfect
+intimacy with the Greek mythology; here was he "suckled In that creed
+outworn"; for his amount of classical attainment extended no farther
+than the "Aeneid"; with which epic, indeed, he was so fascinated, that
+before leaving school he had _voluntarily_ translated in writing a
+considerable portion. And yet I remember that at that early age,--mayhap
+under fourteen,--notwithstanding and through all its incidental
+attractiveness, he hazarded the opinion to me that there was feebleness
+in the structure of the work. He must have gone through all the better
+publications in the school-library, for he asked me to lend him some of
+my own books; and I think I now see him at supper, (we had all our meals
+in the school-room,) sitting back on the form, and holding the folio
+volume of Burnet's "History of his own Time" between himself and the
+table, eating his meal from beyond it. This work, and Leigh Hunt's
+"Examiner" newspaper,--which my father took in, and I used to lend to
+Keats,--I make no doubt laid the foundation of his love of civil and
+religious liberty. He once told me, smiling, that one of his guardians,
+being informed what books I had lent him to read, declared, that, if he
+had fifty children, he would not send one of them to my father's school.
+
+When he left us,--I think at fourteen years of age,--he was apprenticed
+to Mr. Thomas Hammond, a medical man, residing in Church Street,
+Edmonton, and exactly two miles from Enfield. This arrangement appeared
+to give him satisfaction; and I fear that it was the most placid period
+of his painful life; for now, with the exception of the duty he had to
+perform in the surgery, and which was by no means an onerous one, his
+whole leisure hours were employed in indulging his passion for reading
+and translating. It was during his apprenticeship that he finished the
+latter portion of the "Aeneid."
+
+The distance between our residences being so short, I encouraged his
+inclination to come over, when he could be spared; and in consequence,
+I saw him about five or six times a month, commonly on Wednesdays and
+Saturdays, those afternoons being my own most leisure times. He rarely
+came empty-handed; either he had a book to read, or brought one with him
+to be exchanged. When the weather permitted, we always sat in an arbor
+at the end of a spacious garden, and, in Boswellian phrase, "we had good
+talk."
+
+I cannot at this time remember what was the spark that fired the train
+of his poetical tendencies,--I do not remember what was the first
+signalized poetry he read; but he must have given me unmistakable tokens
+of his bent of taste; otherwise, at that early stage of his career, I
+never could have read to him the "Epithalamion" of Spenser; and this I
+perfectly remember having done, and in that (to me) hallowed old arbor,
+the scene of many bland and graceful associations,--all the substances
+having passed away. He was at that time, I should suppose, fifteen or
+sixteen years old; and at that period of life he certainly appreciated
+the general beauty of the composition, and felt the more passionate
+passages; for his features and exclamations were ecstatic. How often
+have I in after-times heard him quote these lines:--
+
+  "Behold, whiles she before the altar stands,
+  Hearing the holy priest that to her speaks,
+  And blesses her with his two happy hands,
+  How the red roses flush up in her cheeks!
+  And the pure snow, with goodly vermil stain,
+  Like crimson dyed in grain,
+  That even the angels, which continually
+  About the sacred altar do remain,
+  Forget their service, and about her fly,
+  _Oft peeping in her face, that seems more fair,
+  The more they on it stare;_
+  But her sad eyes, still fastened on the ground,
+  Are governèd with goodly modesty,
+  That suffers not one look to glance awry,
+  Which may let in a little thought unsound."
+
+That night he took away with him the first volume of the "Faery Queen,"
+and went through it, as I told his biographer, Mr. Monckton Milnes, "as
+a young horse would through a spring meadow,--ramping!" Like a true
+poet, too,--a poet "born, not manufactured,"--a poet in grain,--he
+especially singled out the epithets, for that felicity and power in
+which Spenser is so eminent. He hoisted himself up, and looked burly
+and dominant, as he said,--"What an image that is,--_'Sea-shouldering
+whales'!_"
+
+It was a treat to see as well as hear him read a pathetic passage. Once,
+when reading the "Cymbeline" aloud', I saw his eyes fill with tears, and
+for some moments he was unable to proceed, when he came to the departure
+of Posthumus, and Imogen's saying she would have watched him
+
+  "till the diminution
+  Of space had pointed him sharp as my needle;
+  Nay, followed him till he had _melted from
+  The smallness of a gnat to air_; and then
+  Have _turned mine eye and wept_."
+
+I cannot quite reconcile the time of our separating at this stage of his
+career,--which of us first went to London; but it was upon an occasion
+when I was walking thither, and, I think, to see Leigh Hunt, who had
+just fulfilled his penalty of confinement in Horsemonger-Lane Prison for
+the trivial libel upon the Prince Regent, that Keats, who was coming
+over to Enfield, met me, and, turning, accompanied me back part of the
+way to Edmonton. At the last field-gate, when taking leave, he gave
+me the sonnet entitled, "Written on the Day that Mr. Leigh Hunt left
+Prison." Unless I am utterly mistaken, this was the first proof I had
+received of his having committed himself in verse; and how clearly can I
+recall the conscious look with which he hesitatingly offered it! There
+are some momentary glances of beloved friends that fade only with life.
+I am not in a position to contradict the statement of his biographer,
+that "the lines in imitation of Spenser,
+
+  "'Now Morning from her orient charger came,
+  And her first footsteps touched a verdant hill,' etc.,
+
+"are the earliest known verses of his composition"; from the subject
+being the inspiration of his first love--and such a love!--in poetry, it
+is most probable; but certainly his first published poem was the sonnet
+commencing,
+
+  'O Solitude! if I must with thee dwell';
+
+and that will be found in the "Examiner," some time, as I conjecture,
+in 1816,--for I have not the paper to refer to, and, indeed, at this
+distance, both of time and removal from the means of verification, I
+would not be dogmatical.
+
+When we both had come to London,--he to enter as a student of St.
+Thomas's Hospital,--he was not long in discovering that my abode was
+with my brother-in-law, in Little Warner Street, Clerkenwell; and
+just at that time I was installed housekeeper, and was solitary. He,
+therefore, would come and revive his loved gossip, till, as the author
+of the "Urn Burial" says, "we were acting our antipodes,--the huntsmen
+were up in America, and they already were past their first sleep in
+Persia." At this time he lived in his first lodging upon coming to
+London, near to St. Thomas's Hospital. I find his address in a letter
+which must have preceded my appointing him to come and lighten my
+darkness in Clerkenwell. At the close of the letter, he says,--"Although
+the Borough is a beastly place in dirt, turnings, and windings, yet
+No. 8, Dean Street, is not difficult to find; and if you would run the
+gauntlet over London Bridge, take the first turning to the left, and
+then the first to the right, and, moreover, knock at my door, which is
+nearly opposite a meeting, you would do me a charity, which, as St. Paul
+saith, is the father of all the virtues. At all events, let me hear from
+you soon: I say, at all events, not excepting the gout in your fingers."
+I have little doubt that this letter (which has no other date than the
+day of the week, and no post-mark) preceded our first symposium; and a
+memorable night it was in my life's career.
+
+A copy, and a beautiful one, of the folio edition of Chapman's Homer had
+been lent me. It was the property of Mr. Alsager, the gentleman who
+for years had contributed no small share of celebrity to the great
+reputation of the "Times" newspaper, by the masterly manner in which he
+conducted the money-market department of that journal. At the time
+when I was first introduced to Mr. Alsager, he was living opposite
+Horsemonger-Lane Prison; and upon Mr. Leigh Hunt's being sentenced for
+the libel, his first day's dinner was sent over by Mr. Alsager. He was
+a man of the most studiously correct demeanor, with a highly cultivated
+taste and judgment in the fine arts and music. He succeeded Hazlitt,
+(which was no insignificant honor,) and for some time contributed the
+critiques upon the theatres, but ended by being the reporter of the
+state of the money-market. He had long been accustomed to have the first
+trial at his own house of the best-reputed new foreign instrumental
+music, which he used to import from Germany.
+
+Well, then, we were put in possession of the Homer of Chapman, and to
+work we went, turning to some of the "famousest" passages, as we had
+scrappily known them in Pope's version. There was, for instance, that
+perfect scene of the conversation on Troy wall of the old Senators with
+Helen, who is pointing out to them the several Greek captains, with that
+wonderfully vivid portrait of an orator, in Ulysses, in the Third Book,
+beginning at the 237th line,--
+
+  "But when the prudent Ithacus did to his counsels rise";
+
+the helmet and shield of Diomed, in the opening of the Fifth Book; the
+prodigious description of Neptune's passage in his chariot to the Achive
+ships, in the opening of the Thirteenth Book,--
+
+  "The woods, and all the great hills near,
+  trembled beneath the weight
+  Of his immortal moving feet."
+
+The last was the whole of the shipwreck of Ulysses in the Fifth Book of
+the "Odyssey." I think his expression of delight, during the reading of
+those dozen lines, was never surpassed:--
+
+  "Then forth he came, his both knees faltering, both
+  His strong hands hanging down, and all with froth
+  His cheeks and nostrils flowing, voice and breath
+  Spent to all use, and down he sunk to death.
+  _The sea had soaked his heart through_; all his veins
+  His toils had racked t' a laboring woman's pains.
+  Dead weary was he."
+
+On an after-occasion I showed him the couplet of Pope's upon the same
+passage:--
+
+  "From mouth and nose the briny torrent ran,
+  _And lost in lassitude, lay all the man._"
+
+Chapman supplied us with many an after-feast; but it was in the teeming
+wonderment of this, his first introduction, that, when I came down to
+breakfast the next morning, I found upon my table a letter with no other
+inclosure than his famous sonnet, "On first looking into Chapman's
+Homer." We had parted, as I have already said, at day-spring; yet he
+contrived that I should receive the poem, from a distance of nearly two
+miles, before 10, A.M. In the published copy of this sonnet he made an
+alteration in the seventh line:--
+
+  "Yet did I never breathe its pure serene."
+
+The original, which he sent me, had the phrase,
+
+  "Yet could I never tell what men could mean";
+
+which he said was bald, and too simply wondering. No one could more
+earnestly chastise his thoughts than Keats. His favorite among Chapman's
+Hymns of Homer was the one to Pan, and which he himself rivalled in the
+"Endymion."
+
+In one of our conversations about this period, I alluded to his position
+at St. Thomas's Hospital,--coasting and reconnoitring, as it were, that
+I might discover how he got on, and, with the total absorption that
+had evidently taken place of every other mood of his mind than that of
+imaginative composition, what was his bias for the future, and what his
+feeling with regard to the profession that had been _chosen for him_,--a
+circumstance I did not know at that time. He made no secret, however,
+that he could not sympathize with the science of anatomy, as a main
+pursuit in life; for one of the expressions that he used, in describing
+his unfitness for its mastery, was perfectly characteristic. He said, in
+illustration of his argument,--"The other day, for instance, during the
+lecture, there came a sunbeam into the room, and with it a whole troop
+of creatures floating in the ray; and I was off with them to Oberon
+and Fairy-land." And yet, with all this self-styled unfitness for the
+pursuit, I was afterwards informed, that at his subsequent
+examination he displayed an amount of acquirement which surprised his
+fellow-students, who had scarcely any other association with him than
+that of a cheerful, crochety rhymester.
+
+It was about this period, that, going to call upon Mr. Leigh Hunt,
+who then occupied a pretty little cottage in the "Vale of Health," on
+Hampstead Heath, I took with me two or three of the poems I had received
+from Keats. I did expect that Hunt would speak encouragingly, and indeed
+approvingly, of the compositions,--written, too, by a youth under age;
+but my partial spirit was not prepared for the unhesitating and prompt
+admiration which broke forth before he had read twenty lines of the
+first poem. Mr. Horace Smith happened to be there, on the occasion, and
+was not less demonstrative in his praise of their merits. The piece
+which he read out, I remember, was the sonnet,--
+
+  "How many bards gild the lapses of time!"
+
+marking with particular emphasis and approbation the last six lines:--
+
+  "So the unnumbered sounds that evening store,--
+  The songs of birds, the whispering of the leaves,
+  The voice of waters, the great bell that heaves
+  With solemn sound, and thousand others more,
+  _That distance of recognizance bereaves_,--
+  Make pleasing music, and not wild uproar."
+
+Smith repeated, with applause, the line in Italics, saying, "What a
+well-condensed expression!" After making numerous and eager inquiries
+about him, personally, and with reference to any peculiarities of mind
+and manner, the visit ended in my being requested to bring him over
+to the Vale of Health. That was a red-letter day in the young poet's
+life,--and one which will never fade with me, as long as memory lasts.
+The character and expression of Keats's features would unfailingly
+arrest even the casual passenger in the street; and now they were
+wrought to a tone of animation that I could not but watch with
+intense interest, knowing what was in store for him from the bland
+encouragement, and Spartan deference in attention, with fascinating
+conversational eloquence, that he was to receive and encounter. When we
+reached the Heath, I have present the rising and accelerated step, with
+the gradual subsidence of all talk, as we drew towards the cottage. The
+interview, which stretched into three "morning calls," was the
+prelude to many after-scenes and saunterings about Caen Wood and its
+neighborhood; for Keats was suddenly made a familiar of the household,
+and was always welcomed.
+
+It was in the library at Hunt's cottage, where an extemporary bed had
+been made up for him on the sofa, that he composed the framework and
+many lines of the poem on "Sleep and Poetry,"--the last sixty or seventy
+being an inventory of the art-garniture of the room. The sonnet,
+
+  "Keen, fitful gusts are whispering here and there,"
+
+he gave me the day after one of our visits, and very shortly after his
+installation at the cottage.
+
+  "Give me a golden pen, and let me lean,"
+
+was another, upon being compelled to leave "at an early hour." But the
+occasion that recurs to me with the liveliest interest was the evening
+when, some observations having been made upon the character, habits,
+and pleasant associations of that reverenced denizen of the hearth,
+the cheerful little fireside grasshopper, Hunt proposed to Keats the
+challenge of writing, then, there, and to time, a sonnet "On the
+Grasshopper and the Cricket." No one was present but myself, and they
+accordingly set to. I, absent with a book at the end of the sofa, could
+not avoid furtive glances, every now and then, at the emulants. I cannot
+say how long the trial lasted; I was not proposed umpire, and had no
+stop-watch for the occasion: the time, however, was short, for such
+a performance; and Keats won, as to time. But the event of the
+after-scrutiny was one of many such occurrences which have riveted the
+memory of Leigh Hunt in my affectionate regard and admiration, for
+unaffected generosity and perfectly unpretentious encouragement: his
+sincere look of pleasure at the first line,--
+
+  "The poetry of earth is never dead";
+
+"Such a prosperous opening!" he said; and when he came to the tenth and
+eleventh lines,--
+
+  "On a lone winter evening, _when the frost
+  Has wrought a silence_";
+
+"Ah! that's perfect! bravo, Keats!"--and then he went on in a dilation
+upon, the dumbness of all Nature during the season's suspension and
+torpidity. With all the kind and gratifying things that were said to
+him, Keats protested to me, as we were afterwards walking home, that he
+preferred Hunt's treatment of the subject to his own.
+
+He had left the neighborhood of the Borough, and was now living with his
+brothers in apartments on the second floor of a house in the Poultry,
+over the passage leading to the Queen's Head Tavern, and opposite one of
+the City Companies' Halls,--the Ironmongers', if I mistake not. I have
+the associating reminiscence of many happy hours spent in this lodging.
+Here was determined upon, in great part written, and sent forth to the
+world, the first little, but vigorous, offspring of his brain:--
+
+  POEMS
+  BY
+  JOHN KEATS.
+
+  "What more felicity can fell to creature
+  Than to enjoy delight with liberty?"
+
+  Fate of the Butterfly,--SPENSER
+
+  LONDON:
+  PRINTED FOR
+  C. AND J. OLLIER, 3, WELBECK STREET,
+  CAVENDISH SQUARE.
+  1817.
+
+Here, on the evening that the last proof-sheet was brought from the
+printer, and, as his biographer has recorded, upon being informed, if
+he purposed having a Dedication to the book, that it must be sent
+forthwith, he went to a side-table, and, in the midst of mixed
+conversation (for there were several friends in the room,) he brought to
+Charles Ollier, the publisher, the Dedication-Sonnet to Leigh Hunt. If
+the original manuscript of that poem--a legitimate sonnet, with
+every restriction of rhyme and metre--could now be produced, and the
+time--recorded in which it was written, it would be pronounced an
+extraordinary performance; added to which, the non-alteration of a
+single word in the poem (a circumstance noted at the time) claims for
+it, I should suppose, a merit without a parallel.
+
+"The poem which commences the volume," says Mr. Monckton Milnes, "was
+suggested to Keats by a delightful summer's day, as he stood beside the
+gate that loads from the battery on Hampstead Heath into a field by Caen
+Wood"; and the lovely passage beginning,
+
+  "Linger awhile upon some bending planks,"
+
+and which contains the description of the "swarms of minnows that show
+their little heads," Keats told me was the recollection of our having
+frequently loitered over the rail of a foot-bridge that spanned a little
+brook in the last field upon entering Edmonton. He himself thought the
+picture was correct, and liked it; and I do not know who could improve
+it.
+
+Another example of his promptly suggestive imagination, and uncommon
+facility in giving it utterance, occurred one day upon his returning
+home and finding me asleep upon the sofa, with my volume of Chaucer open
+at the "Flower and the Leaf." After expressing his admiration of the
+poem, which he had been reading, he gave me the fine testimony of that
+opinion, in pointing to the sonnet he had written at the close of it,
+which was an extempore effusion, and it has not the alteration of a
+single word. It lies before me now, signed, "J.K., Feb., 1817."
+
+If my memory does not betray me, this charming out-door fancy-scene was
+Keats's first introduction to Chaucer. Certain I am that the "Troilus
+and Cresseide" was an after-acquaintance; and clearly do I remember his
+approbation of the favorite passages that I had marked. I desired him to
+retrace the poem, and with his pen confirm and denote those which were
+congenial with his own feeling and judgment. These two circumstances,
+connected with the literary career of this cherished object of his
+friend's esteem and love, have stamped a priceless value upon that
+friend's miniature 18mo copy of Chaucer.
+
+The little first volume of Keats's Muse was launched amid the cheers and
+fond anticipations of all his circle. Every one of us expected that it
+would create a sensation in the literary world; and we calculated upon,
+at least, a succession of reprints. Alas! it might have emerged in
+Timbuctoo with stronger chance of fame and favor. It never passed to a
+second edition; the first was but a small one, and that was never sold
+off. The whole community, as if by compact, determined to know nothing
+about it. The word had been passed that its author was a Radical; and in
+those blessed days of "Bible-Crown-and-Constitution" supremacy, he might
+with better chance of success have been a robber,--there were many
+prosperous public ones,--if he had also been an Anti-Jacobin. Keats had
+made no demonstration of political opinion; but he had dedicated his
+book to Leigh Hunt, a Radical news-writer, and a dubbed partisan of the
+French ruler, because he did not call him the "Corsican monster," and
+other disgusting names. Verily, "the former times were _not_ better than
+these." Men can now write the word "Liberty" without being chalked on
+the back and hounded out.
+
+Poor Keats! he little anticipated, and as little deserved, the cowardly
+and scoundrel treatment that was in store for him upon the publication
+of his second composition, the "Endymion." It was in the interval of
+the two productions that he had moved from the Poultry, and had taken a
+lodging in Well Walk, Hampstead,--in the first or second house, on the
+right hand, going up to the Heath. I have an impression that he had been
+some weeks absent at the sea-side before settling in this domicile; for
+the "Endymion" had been begun, and he had made considerable advances in
+his plan. He came to me one Sunday, and I walked with him, spending
+the whole day in Well Walk. His constant and enviable friend Severn,
+I remember, was present on the occasion, by the circumstance of our
+exchanging looks upon Keats's reading to us portions of his new work
+that had pleased himself. One of these, I think, was the "Hymn to Pan";
+and another, I am sure, was the "Bower of Adonis," because his own
+expression of face will never pass from me (if I were a Reynolds or a
+Gainsborough, I could now stamp it forever) as he read the description
+of the latter, with the descent and ascent of the ear of Venus. The
+"Hymn to Pan" occurs early in the First Book:--
+
+  "O thou, whose mighty palace-roof doth hang
+  From jagged trunks," etc.
+
+And the "Bower of Adonis," in the Second Book, commences,--
+
+  "After a thousand mazes overgone."
+
+Keats was indebted for his introduction to Mr. Severn to his
+school-fellow Edward Holmes, who also had been one of the child-scholars
+at Enfield; for he came to us in the frock-dress. They were sworn
+companions at school, and remained friends through life. Mr. Holmes
+ought to have been an educated musician from his first childhood; for
+the passion was in him. I used to amuse myself with the piano-forte
+after supper, when all had gone to bed. Upon some sudden occasion,
+leaving the parlor, I heard a scuffle on the stairs, and discovered that
+my young gentleman had left his bed to hear the music. At other times,
+during the day, and in the intervals of school-hours, he would stand
+under the window, listening. He at length intrusted to me his heart's
+secret, that he should like to learn music. So I taught him his notes;
+and he soon knew and could do as much as his tutor. Upon leaving
+Enfield, he was apprenticed to the elder Seeley, a bookseller in Fleet
+Street; but, hating his occupation, left it, I believe, before he was of
+age. He had not lost sight of me; and I introduced him to Mr. Vincent
+Novello, who had made himself a friend to me, and who not merely, with
+rare profusion of bounty, gave Holmes instruction, but received him into
+his house, and made him one of his family. With them he resided some
+years. I was also the fortunate means of recommending him to the chief
+proprietor of the "Atlas" newspaper; and to that journal, during a long
+period, he contributed a series of essays and critiques upon the science
+and practice of music, which raised the journal into a reference and an
+authority in the art. He wrote for the proprietors of the "Atlas"
+that elegant little book of dilettante criticism, "A Ramble among the
+Musicians in Germany." He latterly contributed to the "Musical Times" a
+whole series of masterly essays and analyses upon the Masses of Haydn,
+Mozart, and Beethoven. But the work upon which his reputation will rest
+was a "Life of Mozart," which was purchased by Chapman and Hall.
+
+I have said that Holmes used to listen on the stairs. In after-years,
+when Keats was reading to me his "Eve of St. Agnes," (and what a happy
+day was that! I had come up to see him from Ramsgate, where I then
+lived,) at the passage where Porphyro in Madeleine's chamber is
+fearfully listening to the hubbub of the icing and the music in the hall
+below, and the verse says,--
+
+  "The boisterous midnight festive clarion,
+  The kettle-drum and far-heard clarionet,
+  Affray his ears, though but in dying tone:
+  _The hall-door shuts again, and all the noise is gone_,"--
+
+"That line," said he, "came into my head when I remembered how I used to
+listen, in bed, to your music at school." Interesting would be a record
+of the germs and first causes of all the greatest poets' conceptions!
+The elder Brunei's first hint for his "shield," in constructing the
+tunnel under the Thames, was taken from watching the labor of a
+sea-insect, which, having a projecting hood, could bore into the ship's
+timber, unmolested by the waves.
+
+I fancy it was about this time that Keats gave that signal example of
+his courage and stamina, in the recorded instance of his pugilistic
+contest with a butcher-boy. He told me--and in his characteristic
+manner--of their "passage of _arms_." The brute, he said, was tormenting
+a kitten, and he interfered, when a threat offered was enough for his
+mettle, and they set to. He thought he, should be beaten; for the fellow
+was the taller and stronger; but, like an authentic pugilist, my young
+poet found that he had planted a blow which "told" upon his antagonist.
+In every succeeding round, therefore, (for they fought nearly an hour,)
+he never failed of returning to the weak point; and the contest ended
+in the hulk being led or carried home. In all my knowledge of my
+fellow-beings, I never knew one who so thoroughly combined the sweetness
+with the power of gentleness and the irresistible sway of anger as
+Keats. His indignation would have made the boldest grave; and those who
+have seen him under the influence of tyranny, injustice, and meanness of
+soul will never forget the expression of his features,--"the form of his
+visage was changed."
+
+He had a strong sense of humor; yet, so to speak, he was not, in the
+strict sense of the term, a humorist. His comic fancy lurked in the
+outermost and most unlooked-for images of association,--which, indeed,
+maybe said to be the components of humor; nevertheless, I think they
+did not extend beyond the _quaint_, in fulfilment and success. But his
+perception of humor, with the power of transmitting it by imitation, was
+both vivid and irresistibly amusing. He once described to me his having
+gone to see a bear-baiting,--the animal, the property of a Mr. Tom
+Oliver. The performance not having began, Keats was near to and watched
+a young aspirant, who had brought a younger under his wing to witness
+the solemnity, and whom he oppressively patronized, instructing him in
+the names and qualities of all the magnates present. Now and then, in
+his zeal to manifest and impart his knowledge, he would forget himself,
+and stray beyond the prescribed bounds, into the ring,--to the lashing
+resentment of its comptroller, Mr. William Soames; who, after some hints
+of a practical nature, to "keep back," began laying about him with
+indiscriminate and unmitigable vivacity,--the Peripatetic signifying to
+his pupil,--"My eyes! Bill Soames giv' me sich a licker!"--evidently
+grateful, and considering himself complimented, upon being included in
+the general dispensation. Keats's entertainment with this minor scene of
+low life has often recurred to me. But his subsequent description of the
+baiting, with his position, of his legs and arms bent and shortened,
+till he looked like Bruin on his hind-legs, dabbing his fore-paws hither
+and thither, as the dogs snapped at him, and now and then acting the
+gasp of one that had been suddenly caught and hugged, his own capacious
+mouth adding force to the personation, was a memorable display. I am
+never reminded of this amusing relation, but it is associated with that
+forcible picture in Shakspeare, (and what subject can we not associate
+with him?) in the "Henry VI":--
+
+  "as a bear encompassed round with dogs,
+  Who having _pinched_ a few and _made them cry_,
+  The rest stand all aloof and bark at him."
+
+Keats also attended a prize-fight between two of the most skilful and
+enduring "light-weights,"--Randal and Turner. It was, I believe, at
+that remarkable wager, when, the men being so equally matched and
+accomplished, they had been sparring for three-quarters of an hour
+before a blow had been struck. In describing the rapidity of Randal's
+blows while the other was falling, Keats tapped his fingers on the
+window-pane.
+
+I make no apology for recording these events in his life; they are
+characteristics of the natural man,--and prove, moreover, that the
+indulgence in such exhibitions did not for one moment blunt the gentler
+emotions of his heart, or vulgarize his inborn love of all that was
+beautiful and true. His own line was the axiom of his moral existence,
+his political creed:--"A thing of beauty is a joy forever"; and I can
+fancy no coarser consociation able to win him from this faith. Had he
+been born in squalor, he would have emerged a gentleman. Keats was not
+an easily swayable man; in differing with those he loved, his firmness
+kept equal pace with the sweetness of his persuasion; but with the rough
+and the unlovable he kept no terms,--within the conventional precincts,
+I mean, of social order.
+
+From Well Walk he moved to another quarter of the Heath,--Wentworth
+Place the name, if I recollect. Here he became a sharing inmate with Mr.
+Charles Armitage Brown, a gentleman who had been a Russia merchant, and
+had retired to a literary leisure upon an independence. I do not know
+how they became acquainted; but Keats never had a more zealous, a
+firmer, or more practical friend and adviser than Brown. His robust
+eagerness and zeal, with a headstrong determination of will, led him
+into an undue prejudice against the brother, George, respecting some
+money-transactions with John, which, however, the former redeemed to the
+perfect satisfaction of all the friends of the family. After the death
+of Keats, Armitage Brown went to reside in Florence, where he remained
+some few years; then he settled at Plymouth, and there brought out a
+work entitled, "Shakespeare's Autobiographical Poems. Being his Sonnets
+clearly developed; with his Character, drawn chiefly from his Works."
+It cannot be said that in this work the author has clearly educed his
+theory; but, in the face of his failure upon that main point, the book
+is interesting, for the heart-whole zeal and homage with which he has
+gone into his subject. Brown was no half-measure man; "whatsoever his
+hand found to do, he did it with his might." His last stage-scene in
+life was passed in New Zealand, whither he emigrated with his son,
+having purchased some land,--or, as his own letter stated, having been
+thoroughly defrauded in the transaction. Brown accompanied Keats in his
+tour in the Hebrides, a worthy event in the poet's career, seeing that
+it led to the production of that magnificent sonnet to "Ailsa Rock." As
+a passing observation, and to show how the minutest circumstance did not
+escape him, he told me, that, when he first came upon the view of Loch
+Lomond, the sun was setting; the lake was in shade, and of a deep blue;
+and at the farther end was "_a slash across it_, of deep orange." The
+description of the traceried window in the "Eve of St. Agnes" gives
+proof of the intensity of his feeling for color.
+
+It was during his abode in Wentworth Place that the savage and vulgar
+attacks upon the "Endymion" appeared in the "Quarterly Review," and
+in "Blackwood's Magazine." There was, indeed, ruffian, low-lived
+work,--especially in the latter publication, which had reached a pitch
+of blackguardism, (it used to be called "Blackguard's Magazine,") with
+_personal abuse_,--ABUSE,--the only word,--that would damage the sale
+of any review at this day. The very reverse of its present management.
+There would not now be the _inclination_ for such rascal bush-fighting;
+and even then, or indeed at any period of the Magazine's career, the
+stalwart and noble mind of John Wilson would never have made itself
+editorially responsible for such trash. As to him of the "Quarterly," a
+thimble would have been "a mansion, a court," for his whole soul. The
+style of the articles directed against the Radical writers, and those
+especially whom the party had nicknamed the "Cockney school" of poetry,
+may be conceived by its provoking the following observation from Hazlitt
+to me:--"To pay those fellows, Sir, _in their own coin_, the way would
+be, to begin with Walter Scott, and _have at his clump-foot_." "Verily,
+the former times were not better than these."
+
+To say that these disgusting misrepresentations did not affect the
+consciousness and self-respect of Keats would be to underrate the
+sensitiveness of his nature. He felt the insult, but more the injustice
+of the treatment he had received; he told me so, as we lay awake one
+night, when I slept in his brother's bed. They had injured him in the
+most wanton manner; but if they, or my Lord Byron, ever for one moment
+supposed that he was crushed or even cowed in spirit by the treatment he
+had received, never were they more deluded. "Snuffed out by an article,"
+indeed! He had infinitely more magnanimity, in its fullest sense,
+than that very spoiled, self-willed, and mean-souled man,--and I have
+authority for the last term. To say nothing of personal and private
+transactions, pages 204-207 in the first volume of Mr. Monckton Milnes's
+life of our poet will be full authority for my estimate of his Lordship.
+"Johnny Keats" had, indeed, "a little body with a mighty heart," and
+he showed it in the best way: not by fighting the ruffians,--though
+he could have done that,--but by the resolve that he would produce
+brain-work which not one of their party could approach; and he did.
+
+In the year 1820 appeared the "Lamia," "Isabella," "Eve of St. Agnes,"
+and "Hyperion," etc. But, alas! the insidious disease which carried him
+off had made its approach, and he was going to, or had already departed
+for, Italy, attended by his constant and self-sacrificing friend,
+Severn. Keats's mother died of consumption; and he nursed his younger
+brother in the same disease, to the last,--and, by so doing, in all
+probability, hastened his own summons. Upon the publication of the last
+volume of poems, Charles Lamb wrote one of his own finely appreciative
+and cordial critiques in the "Morning Chronicle." This was sent to me in
+the country, where I had for some time resided. I had not heard of the
+dangerous state of Keats's health,--only that he and Severn were going
+to Italy; it was, therefore, an unprepared shock which brought me the
+news that he had died in Rome.
+
+Mr. Monckton Milnes has related the anecdote of Keats's introduction to
+Wordsworth, with the latter's appreciation of the "Hymn to Pan," which
+its author had been desired to repeat, and the Rydal Mount poet's
+snow-capped comment upon it,--"Uhm! a pretty piece of Paganism!" Mr.
+Milnes, with his genial and placable nature, has made an amiable defence
+for the apparent coldness of Wordsworth's appreciation,--"That it was
+probably intended for some slight rebuke to his youthful compeer,
+whom he saw absorbed in an order of ideas that to him appeared merely
+sensuous, and would have desired that the bright traits of Greek
+mythology should be sobered down by a graver faith." Keats, like
+Shakspeare, and every other true poet, put his whole soul into what he
+imagined, portrayed, or embodied; and hence he appeared the young Greek,
+"suckled in that creed outworn." The wonder is, that Mr. Wordsworth
+forgot to quote himself. From Keats's description of his Mentor's
+manner, as well as behavior, that evening, I cannot but believe it to
+have been one of the usual ebullitions of the egoism, not to say of the
+uneasiness, known to those who were accustomed to hear the great moral
+philosopher discourse upon his own productions and descant upon those
+of a contemporary. During this same visit, he was dilating upon some
+question in poetry, when, upon Keats's insinuating a confirmatory
+suggestion to his argument, Mrs. Wordsworth put her hand upon his arm,
+saying,--"Mr. Wordsworth is never interrupted." Again, during the same
+interview, some one had said that the next Waverley novel was to be "Rob
+Roy"; when Mr. Wordsworth took down his volume of Ballads, and read
+to the company "Rob Roy's Grave,"--then, returning it to the shelf,
+observed, "I do not know what more Mr. Scott can have to say upon the
+subject." When Leigh Hunt had his first interview with Wordsworth, the
+latter lectured to him--finely, indeed--upon his own writings; and
+repeated the entire sonnet,
+
+  "Great men have been among us,"--
+
+which Hunt said he did "in a grand and earnest tone." Some one in a
+company quoting the passage from "Henry V.,"--
+
+  "So work the honey-bees,"
+
+and each "picking out his pet plum" from that perfect piece of natural
+history, Wordsworth objected to the line,
+
+  "The singing masons building roofs of gold,"
+
+because, he said, of the unpleasant repetition of the "_ing_" in it!
+Where were his ears and judgment on that occasion? But I have more
+than once heard it said that Wordsworth had not a genuine love of
+Shakspeare,--that, when he could, he always accompanied a "_pro_" with
+his "_con_," and, Atticus-like, would "just hint a fault and hesitate
+dislike." Truly, indeed, we are all of "a mingled yarn, good and ill
+together."
+
+I can scarcely conceive of anything more unjust than the account
+which that ill-ordered being, Haydon, left behind him in his "Diary,"
+respecting the idolized object of his former intimacy, John Keats. At
+his own eager request, after reading the manuscript specimens I had left
+with Leigh Hunt, I had introduced their author to him; and for some time
+subsequently I had frequent opportunities of seeing them together, and
+can testify to the laudations that Haydon trowelled on to the young
+poet. Before I left London, however, it had been said that things and
+opinions had changed,--and, in short, that Haydon had abjured all
+acquaintance with, and had even ignored, such a person as the author of
+the sonnet to him, and those "On the Elgin Marbles." I say nothing of
+the grounds of their separation; but, knowing the two men, and knowing,
+I believe, to the core, the humane principle of the poet, I have such
+faith in his steadfastness of friendship, that I am sure he would never
+have left behind him an unfavorable _truth_, while nothing could have
+induced him to utter a _calumny_ of one who had received pledges of
+his former regard and esteem. Haydon's detraction was the more odious
+because its object could not contradict the charge, and because it
+supplied his old critical antagonists (if any remained) with an
+authority for their charge against him of Cockney ostentation and
+display. The most mean-spirited and trumpery twaddle in the paragraph
+was, that Keats was so far gone in sensual excitement as to put Cayenne
+pepper upon his tongue, when taking his claret! Poor fellow! he never
+purchased a bottle of claret, within my knowledge of him; and, from
+such observation as could not escape me, I am bound to assert that
+his domestic expenses never could have occasioned him a regret or a
+self-reproof.
+
+When Shelley left England for Italy, Keats told me that he had received
+from him an invitation to become his guest,--and, in short, to make one
+of his household. It was upon the purest principle that Keats declined
+the noble proffer; for he entertained an exalted opinion of Shelley's
+genius, in itself an inducement; he also knew of his deeds of bounty;
+and lastly, from their frequent intercourse, he had full faith in the
+sincerity of his proposal; for a more crystalline heart than Shelley's
+never beat in human bosom. He was incapable of an untruth or of a deceit
+in any ill form. Keats told me, that, in declining the invitation, his
+sole motive was the consciousness, which would be ever prevalent with
+him, of his not being, in its utter extent, a free agent,--even
+within such a circle as Shelley's,--himself, nevertheless, the most
+unrestricted of beings. Mr. Trelawney, a familiar of the family, has
+confirmed the unwavering testimony to Shelley's bounty of nature, where
+he says, "Shelley was a being absolutely without selfishness." The
+poorest cottagers knew and benefited by the thoroughly _practical_ and
+unselfish character of his Christianity, during his residence at Marlow,
+when he would visit them, and, having gone through a course of study
+in medicine, in order that he might assist them with his advice, would
+commonly administer the tonic which such systems usually require,--a
+good basin of broth, or pea-soup. And I believe I am infringing on no
+private domestic delicacy, when I repeat, that he has been known, upon a
+sudden and immediate emergency, to purloin ("_convey_ the wise it call")
+a portion of the warmest of Mrs. Shelley's wardrobe, to protect some
+poor starving sister. One of the richer residents of Marlow told me that
+"_they all_ considered him a madman." I wish he had bitten the whole
+squad.
+
+  "No settled senses of the world can match
+  The 'wisdom' of that madness."
+
+Shelley's figure was a little above the middle height, slender, and of
+delicate construction, which appeared the rather from a lounging or
+waving manner in his gait, as though his frame was compounded merely of
+muscle and tendon, and that the power of walking was an achievement with
+him, and not a natural habit. Yet I should suppose that he was not a
+valetudinarian, although that has been said of him, on account of his
+spare and vegetable diet: for I have the remembrance of his scampering
+and bounding over the gorse-bushes on Hampstead Heath, late one
+night,--now close upon us, and now shouting from the height, like a wild
+school-boy. He was both an active and an enduring walker,--feats which
+do not accompany an ailing and feeble constitution. His face was round,
+flat, pale, with small features; mouth beautifully shaped; hair,
+bright-brown and wavy; and such a pair of eyes as are rarely seen in
+the human or any other head,--intensely blue, with a gentle and lambent
+expression, yet wonderfully alert and engrossing: nothing appeared to
+escape his knowledge.
+
+Whatever peculiarity there might have been in Shelley's religious faith,
+I have the best authority for believing that it was confined to the
+early period of his life. The _practical_ result of its course of
+_action_, I am sure, had its source from the "Sermon on the Mount."
+There is not one clause in that divine code which his conduct towards
+his fellow-mortals did not confirm, and substantiate him to be a
+follower of Christ. Yet, when the news arrived in London of the death of
+Shelley and Captain Williams by drowning, the "Courier" newspaper--an
+evening journal of that day--capped the intelligence with the following
+remark:--"He will now know whether there is a hell or not!"--I believe
+that there are still one or two public fanatics who would _think_ that
+surmise, but not one would dare to utter it in his journal. So much for
+the progress of liberality, and the power of opinion.
+
+At page 100 of the "Life of Keats," Vol. I., Mr. Monckton Milnes has
+quoted a literary portrait of him, which he received from a lady who
+used to see him at Hazlitt's lectures at the Surrey Institution. The
+building was on the south or right-hand side, and close to Blackfriars'
+Bridge. I believe that the whole of Hazlitt's lectures, on the British
+Poets, the Writers of the Time of Elizabeth, and the Comic Writers, were
+delivered in that Institution, during the years 1817 and 1818; shortly
+after which time the establishment appears to have been broken up. The
+lady's remark upon the character and expression of Keats's features is
+both happy and true. She says,--"His countenance lives in my mind as one
+of singular beauty and brightness; it had an expression _as if he had
+been looking on some glorious sight_." That's excellent.--"His mouth was
+full, and less intellectual than his other features." True again. But
+when our artist pronounces that "his eyes were large and _blue_" and
+that "his hair was _auburn_," I am naturally reminded of the fable of
+the "Chameleon":--"They're _brown_, Ma'am,--_brown_, I assure you!" The
+fact is, the lady was enchanted--and I cannot wonder at it--with the
+whole character of that beaming face; and "blue" and "auburn" being the
+favorite tints of the human front divine, in the lords of the creation,
+the poet's eyes consequently became "blue," and his hair "auburn."
+Colors, however, vary with the prejudice or partiality of the spectator;
+and, moreover, people do not agree even upon the most palpable prismatic
+tint. A writing-master whom we had at Enfield was an artist of more than
+ordinary merit; but he had one dominant defect: he could not distinguish
+between true blue and true green. So that, upon one occasion, when he
+was exhibiting to us a landscape he had just completed, I hazarded
+the critical question, why he painted his trees so _blue_? "Blue!" he
+replied,--"what do you call green?"--Reader, alter in your copy of
+Monckton Milnes's "Life of Keats," Vol. I., page 103, "eyes" _light
+hazel_, "hair" _lightish-brown and wavy_.
+
+The most perfect, and withal the favorite portrait of him, was the
+one by Severn, published in Leigh Hunt's "Lord Byron and his
+Contemporaries," and which I remember the artist's sketching in a few
+minutes, one evening, when several of Keats's friends were at his
+apartments in the Poultry. The portrait prefixed to the "Life," also
+by Severn, is a most excellent one-look-and-expression likeness,--an
+every-day, and of "the earth, earthy" one;--and the last, which the same
+artist painted, and which is now in the possession of Mr. John Hunter,
+of Craig Crook, Edinburgh, may be an equally felicitous rendering of one
+look and manner; but I do not intimately recognize it. There is another,
+and a _curiously unconscious_ likeness of him, in the charming Dulwich
+Gallery of Pictures. It is in the portrait of Wouvermans, by Rembrandt.
+It is just so much of a resemblance as to remind the friends of the
+poet,--though not such a one as the immortal Dutchman would have
+made, had the poet been his sitter. It has a plaintive and melancholy
+expression, which, I rejoice to say, I do not associate with him.
+
+There is one of his attitudes, during familiar conversation, which, at
+times, (with the whole earnest manner and sweet expression of the man)
+presents itself to me, as though I had seen him only last week. The
+attitude I speak of was that of cherishing one leg over the knee of the
+other, smoothing the instep with the palm of his hand. In this action I
+mostly associate him in an eager parley with Leigh Hunt, in his little
+cottage in the "Vale of Health." This position, if I mistake not, is in
+the last portrait of him at Craig Crook; if not, it is in a reminiscent
+one, painted after his death.
+
+His stature could have been very little more than five feet; but he was,
+withal, compactly made and--well-proportioned; and before the hereditary
+disorder which carried him off began to show itself, he was active,
+athletic, and enduringly strong,--as the fight with the butcher gave
+full attestation.
+
+The critical world,--by which term I mean the censorious portion of
+it; for many have no other idea of criticism than, that of censure and
+objection,--the critical world have so gloated over the feebler, or, if
+they will, the defective side of Keats's genius, and his friends, his
+gloryingly partial friends, have so amply justified him, that I feel
+inclined to add no more to the category of opinions than to say, that
+the only fault in his poetry I could discover was a redundancy of
+imagery,--that exuberance, by-the-by, being a quality of the greatest
+promise, seeing that it is the constant accompaniment of a young and
+teeming genius. But his steady friend, Leigh Hunt, has rendered the
+amplest and truest record of his mental accomplishment in the Preface to
+the "Foliage," quoted at page 150 of the first volume of the "Life
+of Keats"; and his biographer has so zealously, and, I would say, so
+amiably, summed up his character and intellectual qualities, that I can
+add no more than my assent.
+
+Keats's whole course of life, to the very last act of it, was one
+routine of unselfishness and of consideration for others' feelings.
+The approaches of death having come on, he said to his untiring
+nurse--friend,--"Severn,--I,--lift me up,--I am dying:--_I shall die
+easy; don't be frightened;_--be firm, and thank God it has come."
+
+There are constant indications through the memoirs, and in the letters
+of Keats, of his profound reverence for Shakspeare. His own intensity of
+thought and expression visibly strengthened with the study of his idol;
+and he knew but little of him till he himself had become an author. A
+marginal note by him in a folio copy of the Plays is an example of the
+complete absorption his mind had undergone during the process of his
+matriculation;--and, through life, however long with any of us, we are
+all in progress of matriculation, as we study the "myriad-minded's"
+system of philosophy. The note that Keats made was this;--"The genius
+of Shakspeare was an _innate universality;_ wherefore he laid the
+achievements of human intellect prostrate beneath his indolent and
+kingly gaze: _he could do easily men's utmost;_ his plan of tasks to
+come was not of this world. If what he proposed to do hereafter would
+not in the idea answer the aim, how tremendous must have been his
+conception of ultimates!"
+
+
+
+
+THE EUROPEAN CRISIS.
+
+
+It is not long since we listened to an interesting discussion of this
+question:--Which was the more important year to Europe,--1859 or 1860?
+The question is one that may be commended to the attention of those
+ingenuous young gentlemen, in debating-societies assembled, who have not
+yet settled whether Brutus, Cassius, & Co. were right in assassinating
+"the mighty Julius," or whether Mary Stuart was a martyred saint or a
+martyred sinner, or whether the cold chop to which Cromwell treated
+Charles I. on a memorable winter-day was either a just or a politic
+mode of touching for the king's evil. It would have the merit of
+novelty,--and Americans are as fond of new things in their day of power
+as ever were the Athenians in the day of their decline. A yet rarer
+merit it would have, in the fact that a great deal could justly be said
+on both sides of the question. An umpire would probably decide in favor
+of 1859,--because, he might say, had the events of that year been
+different, those of 1860 must have undergone a complete change.
+
+The romantic conquest of Sicily by Garibaldi, and his successes in
+Naples, whereby a junior branch of the Bourbon family has been sent
+to "enjoy" that exile which has so long been the lot of the senior
+branch,--and the destruction of the _Papalini_ by the Italian army of
+Victor Emanuel II., which asserted the superiority of the children of
+the soil over the bands of foreign ruffians assembled by De Merode and
+Lamoricière for the oppression of the Peninsula in the name of the
+venerable head of the Church of Rome,--these are events even more
+striking than those by which the iron sceptre of Austria was cut through
+in the earlier year, because they have been accomplished by Italian
+genius and courage, the few foreigners in the army of Garibaldi not
+counting for much in the contest. They prove the regeneration of Italy.
+But it is evident that nothing of the kind could have been done in 1860,
+if 1859 had been as quiet a year for Italy as its immediate predecessor.
+Before the leaders and the soldiers of Italy could obtain the
+indispensable place whereon to stand, it was imperatively necessary
+that the power of Austria should be broken down, through the defeat and
+consequent demoralization of her army. For a period of forty-four
+years, Austria had had her own way in the Peninsula. From the fall
+of Napoleon's Italian dominion, in 1814, to the day when the third
+Napoleon's army entered Sardinia, there was, virtually, no other rule in
+Italy but that which Austria approved. The events of 1848, which at one
+time promised to remove "the barbarians," had for their conclusion the
+re-establishment of her ascendency in greater force than ever; and the
+last ten years of that ascendency will always be remembered as the
+period when its tyrannical character was most fully developed. The hoary
+proconsul of the Lorraines, Radetzky, if not personally cruel, was
+determined to do for his masters what Castilian lieutenants had done
+for the Austro-Burgundian monarchs of Spain and her dependencies,
+the fairest portions of Italy being among those dependencies, in the
+sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,--to destroy the public spirit of
+Italy. Could he have completed a century of life, or had there been no
+European nation ready to prevent the success of the Germanic policy
+under which Italy was to wither to provincial worthlessness, he might
+have been successful. But Austria lost her best man, the only one of
+her soldiers who had shown himself capable of upholding her Italian
+position, when he had reached to more than ninety years; and it pleased
+Providence to raise up a friend to Italy in a quarter to which most men
+had ceased to look for anything good.
+
+Well has it been said, that "it is not the best tools that shape out
+the best ends; if so, Martin Luther would not have been selected as the
+master-spirit of the Reformation." Napoleon III. may deserve all that is
+said against him by men of the extreme right and by men of the extreme
+left,--by Catholics and infidels,--by _Whites_, and _Reds_, and
+_Blues_,--but it cannot be denied that he gave to the Italians that
+assistance without which they never could have obtained even partial
+deliverance from the Austrian yoke, and which they could have procured
+from no other potentate or power. Bankrupt though she was, Austria's
+force was so superior to anything that Italy could present in the shape
+of an army, that Sardinia must have been conquered, if she had contended
+alone with her enemy; and a war between Austria and Sardinia was
+inevitable, and would probably have broken out long before 1859, had the
+former country been assured of the neutrality of France.
+
+There has been a great inkshed, and a large expenditure of oratory, on
+the question of the origin of the Italian war of 1859; and, as usual,
+much nonsense has been written and said of and concerning the ambition
+of France and the encroachments of Sardinia. But that war was brought
+about neither by French ambition nor by Sardinian desire for territorial
+aggrandizement. That it occurred in 1859 was undoubtedly owing to the
+action of France, which country merely chose its own time to drub its
+old foe; but the point at issue was, whether Austrian or Sardinian ideas
+should predominate in the government of Italy. Austria's purpose never
+could be accomplished so long as a constitutional polity existed in
+the best, because the best governed and the best organized, of all the
+Italian States; and Sardinia's purpose never could be accomplished so
+long as Austria was in a condition to dictate to the Italians the manner
+in which they should be ruled. A war between the two nations was, as we
+have said, inevitable. The only point about which there could be any
+dispute was, whether Sardinia would have to fight the battle of Italy
+unaided, or be backed by some power beyond the mountains.
+
+It shows how much men respect a military monarchy, how deferential they
+are to the sword, that even those persons who assumed that France must
+espouse the Sardinian cause were far from feeling confident that Austria
+would be overmatched by an alliance of the two most liberal of the
+Catholic nations of Europe. That monarchy is the type of force to all
+minds; and though she has seldom won any splendid successes in the field
+over the armies of enlightened nations, and has been repeatedly beaten
+by Prussia and France, men cling to old ideas, and give her great
+advantages at the beginning of every war in which she engages. The
+common opinion, in the spring of 1859, was, that Austria would crush
+Sardinia before the French could reach the field in force, and that her
+soldiers, flushed by successes over the Italians, would hurl their new
+foes out of the country, or leave them in its soil. As before, Italy was
+to be the grave of the French,--only that their grave was to be dug at
+the very beginning of the war, instead of being made, as in other days,
+at its close. But it was otherwise ordered. The Austrians lost the
+advantage which certainly was theirs at the opening of the contest,
+and, that lost, disaster after disaster befell their arms, until the
+"crowning mercy" of Solferino freed Italy from their rule, if it did not
+entirely banish them from her land. That Solferino was not so great
+a victory to the Allies as it was claimed to be at the time, that it
+resembled less Austerlitz than Wagram, may be admitted, and yet its
+importance remain unquestioned; for its decision gained for Italy the
+only thing that it was necessary she should have in order to work out
+her own salvation. Henceforth, she was not to tremble at the mere touch
+of the hilt of the sword worn by the Viceroy at Milan, but was to have
+the chance, at least, of ordering her own destinies. If not thoroughly
+free, she was no longer utterly enslaved.
+
+The peace of Villafranca surprised every one, from the Czar on the
+Neva to the gold-gatherers on the Sacramento. Strange as had been the
+doings--the world called them tricks--of Napoleon III., no man was
+prepared for that; and even now, though seventeen eventful months have
+rolled away since the first shock of it was experienced, the summer-day
+it was received seems more like one of those days we see in dreams than
+like a day of real life. Doubt, laughter, astonishment, and disgust
+followed each other through the minds of millions of men. If curses
+could kill, the man who had escaped the bombs of Orsini and the bullets
+of the Austrians would certainly have died in the month that followed
+the interview he had flogged his imperial brother into granting him. In
+America,--where we are always doing so much (on paper) for the cause of
+freedom, and for the deliverance of "oppressed nationalities" of the
+proper degrees and shades of whiteness, in the firm conviction that the
+free man is the better customer,--in America the reaction of opinion was
+overwhelming; and there were but few persons in the United States who
+would not have shouted over news that Henri Cinq was in Paris, and that
+the French Empire had a third time made way for the Kingdom of France.
+Time has not altogether removed the impression then created; for, if it
+has not justified the belief that the French Emperor had abandoned
+the Italian cause, it has convinced the world that he lost a noble
+opportunity to effect the destruction of Austria. There may be--most
+probably there are--facts yet unknown to the public, knowledge of which
+would partially justify the conduct of the victor toward the vanquished,
+in 1859; but, if we judge from what we know, which is all that any
+monarch can demand of the formers of opinion, Napoleon III. was guilty
+of a monstrous political and military blunder when he forced a truce
+upon Francis Joseph.
+
+There is no evidence that any European power was about to interfere in
+behalf of Austria. Prussia, it is true, had taken a stern attitude, and
+showed a disposition to place herself at the head of those German States
+which were for beginning a march upon Paris at once, though M. le
+Maréchal Duc de Malakoff was ready with two hundred thousand men to
+receive them, and Paris itself was not the feeble place it had been in
+1814 and 1815. It is altogether likely that Prussia was, as is usual
+with her at every European crisis, shamming. She had no interest in the
+maintenance of Austria's territorial integrity, and it was rather late
+in the day to assume that Berlin was affected by the mortifications of
+Vienna. Could the hearts of kings and the counsels of cabinets be known
+with that literal exactness which is so desirable in politics, and
+yet so unattainable, we should probably find that Prussia's apparent
+readiness to lead Germany was owing to her determination that German
+armies should be led nowhere to the assistance of Austria. England
+had just changed her Ministry, the Derby Cabinet giving way to Lord
+Palmerston's, which was recognized on all sides as a great gain to the
+cause of Italian independence; and Lord John Russell had written one of
+those crusty notes to the Prussian government for which he is so famous,
+and which was hardly less Italian in its sentiments than that in which,
+written in October last, he upheld the course of Garibaldi and Victor
+Emanuel. Russia had evinced no disposition to interfere in behalf of
+Austria, and perhaps the news of Magenta and Solferino was as agreeable
+to the dwellers in St. Petersburg and Moscow as it was to the citizens
+of New York and Boston. She was, indeed, believed to be backing France.
+Politically, so far as we can judge, there was no cause or occasion for
+the throwing up of the cards by the French, after Solferino.
+
+Nor were the military reasons for the cessation of warlike operations of
+a nature to convince men of their irresistible weightiness. A great
+deal was said about the strength of "the Quadrilateral," and of the
+impregnability of the position which it formed,--as if there ever had
+existed a military position which could not be carried or turned, or out
+of which its defenders could not be bought, or forced, or starved!
+The strength of the Quadrilateral was as well known to the Emperor
+in January as it was in July, and he must have counted its powers of
+resistance before he resolved upon war. Victory he had organized, like
+Carnot; and victory in Lombardy was sure to take his army to the Mincio.
+Verona and Venetia were to be the complement of Milan. Then there was
+the story that he frightened the Kaiser into giving his consent to the
+truce by proving to him that the fortresses upon which he relied were
+not in good defensible condition, his commissaries having placed the
+funds in their pockets that should have been devoted to the purchase
+of stores,--a story that wears a very probable air, in view of the
+discovery subsequently made of the malversations of some of the highest
+persons at Vienna, and which had much to do with the suicide of the
+Minister of Finance. It is known, too, that the force which Napoleon
+III. had assembled in the Adriatic was very strong, and could have been
+so used as to have promoted an Hungarian insurrection in a sense not at
+all pleasant to the Austrians, to have attacked Dalmatia and Istria, and
+to have aided in the deliverance of Venice. That force was largely naval
+in its character, and the French navy was burning to distinguish itself
+in a war that had been so productive of glory to the sister-service: it
+would have had a Magenta and a Palestro of its own, won where the Dorias
+and the Pisani had struggled for fame and their countries' ascendency.
+Instead of the Quadrilateral being a bar to the French, it would have
+been a trap to the Austrians, who would have been taken there after the
+manner in which Napoleon I. took their predecessors at Ulm. After the
+war was over, it came out that Verona was not even half armed.
+
+If Napoleon III. was bent upon carrying that imitation of his uncle, of
+which he is so fond, to the extent of granting a magnanimous peace to a
+crushed foe, he may be said to have caricatured that which he sought
+to imitate. The first Napoleon's magnanimity after Austerlitz has been
+attributed to the craft of the beaten party,--he allowing the Russians
+to escape when they had extricated themselves from the false position in
+which their master's folly had caused them to be placed. But the third
+Napoleon did allow the Austrians to avoid the consequences of their
+defeat, and so disappointed Italy and the world. He _was_ magnanimous,
+and most astonishing to the minds of men was his magnanimity. Most
+people called it stupidity, and strange stories were told of his
+nervous system having been shattered by the sights and sounds of those
+slaughter-fields which he had planned and fought and won!
+
+We live rapidly in this age, when nations are breaking up all around us,
+when unions are dissolving, when dynasties disappear before the light
+like ghosts at cock-crowing, and when emperors and kings rely upon
+universal suffrage, once so terrible a bugbear in their eyes, for the
+titles to their crowns. Opinion is rapidly formed, and is as rapidly
+dismissed. We may be as much astonished now at the peace of Villafranca
+as we were on the day when first it was announced, and while looking
+upon it only as a piece of diplomacy intended to put an end to a contest
+costly in blood and gold; but we cannot say, as it was common then
+to say, that the war which it closed has decided nothing. That war
+established the freedom and nationality of Italy, and the peace so much
+condemned was the means of demonstrating to the world the existence of
+an _Italian People_. How far the French Emperor was self-deceived, and
+to what extent he believed in the practicability of the arrangements
+made at Villafranca and Zurich, are inscrutable mysteries. _Que
+sais-je_? might be the form of his own answer, were any one entitled to
+question him concerning his own opinion on his own acts of 1859. But
+of the effects of his attack on Austria there can be no doubt. That
+Lorraines and Bourbons have ceased to reign in Italy,--that the
+Kingdom of Victor Emanuel has increased from six millions of people to
+twenty-four millions,--that the same constitutional monarch who ruled at
+Turin is now acknowledged in Milan, in Ancona, in Florence, in Naples,
+and in Palermo, being King of Lombards, and Tuscans, and Romans, and
+Neapolitans, and Sicilians,--and that the Austrians are no longer the
+rulers of the Peninsula,--these things are all due to the conduct of the
+French Emperor. Had the peace of Europe not been broken by France, the
+Austrian power in Italy would have been unbroken at this moment, and
+Naples have been still under the dominion of that mad tyrant whose
+supreme delight it was to offend the moral sense of the world, and who
+found even in the remonstrances of his brother-despots occasion for
+increasing the weight of the chains of his victims, and of adding to the
+intensity and the exquisiteness of their tortures.
+
+These solid advantages to Italy, this freedom of hers from domestic
+despotism and foreign control, are the fruits of French intervention;
+and they could have been obtained in no other way. There was no nation
+but France to which Italy could look for aid, and to France she did not
+look in vain. Of the motives of her ally it would be idle to speak, as
+there is no occasion to go beyond consequences; and those consequences
+are just as good as if the French Emperor were as pure-minded and
+unselfish as the most perfect of those paladins of romance who went
+about redressing one class of wrongs by the creation of another.
+What Italy desired, what alone she needed, was freedom from foreign
+intervention; and that she got through the interposition of French
+armies, and that she could have got from no other human source. This
+single fact is an all-sufficient answer to the myriads of sneers that
+were called forth by the failure of Napoleon III. to redeem his pledge
+to make Italy free from the Alps to the Adriatic. What other potentate
+did anything for that country in 1859, or has done anything for it since
+that memorable year? Neither prince nor people, leaving Napoleon III.
+and the French aside, has so much as lifted a hand to promote the
+regeneration of Italy. America has enough to do in the way of attending
+to domestic slavery, without concerning herself about the freedom of
+foreigners; and she has given the Italians her--sympathies, which are of
+as much real worth to her as would be a treatise on the Resolutions of
+'98 to a man who should happen to tumble into the Niagara, with the
+Falls close upon him. England would have had Italy submit to that
+Austrian rule which had been established over her by English influence
+in 1814, when even the perverse, pig-headed Francis II. could see sound
+objections to it; and all because want of submission on her part would
+disturb the equilibrium of Europe, and might tend to the aggrandizement
+of France,--two things which she by no means desired to see happen.
+Russia, like America, gave Italy her sympathies; but she had a better
+excuse than we had for being prudent, as her monarch was engaged in
+planning at least the freedom of the serfs. If the Russians desired the
+overthrow of the Austrians, it was not because they loved the Italians,
+but from hatred of their oppressors; and that hatred had its origin in
+the refusal of Austria to join Russia when she was so hard pressed by
+France and England, Turkey and Piedmont. Prussia, us we have seen, sided
+with Austria; and though it is impossible to believe in her sincerity,
+her moral power, so far as it went, was adverse to the Italian cause.
+The other European nations were of no account, having no will of their
+own, and being influenced only by the action of the members of the
+Pentarchy. Save France, Italy had no friend possessed of the disposition
+and the ability to afford her that assistance without which she must
+soon have become in name, as she was fast becoming in fact, a mere
+collection of Austrian provinces.
+
+We dwell upon those well-known facts because an opinion seems to prevail
+that no nation or government shall interfere for the protection of the
+weak against the strong, unless it shall be able to show that it is
+perfect itself, and that its intentions are of the most unselfish
+nature. Peoples are to be delivered from oppression only as the
+Israelites were delivered, by the direct and immediate interposition of
+Heaven in human affairs; and the delivering agent must be as high-minded
+and generous as Moses, who was allowed merely to gaze upon the Promised
+Land. Men who thus reason about human action, and the motives of actors
+on the great stage of life, must have read history to very little
+purpose, and have observed the making of history round about them to no
+purpose at all. The instruments of Providence are seldom perfect men,
+and the broad light in which they live brings out their faults in full
+force. Napoleon III. is not above the average morality of his time; and
+if he had been so, probably he never would have become Emperor of the
+French. But in this respect differs he much from those men who have
+wrought great things for the world, and whom the world is content to
+reverence? Robert Bruce, who saved Scotland from the misery that befell
+Ireland; Henry IV., who renewed the life of France; Maurice of Saxony,
+who prevented the Reformation from proving a stupendous failure; and
+William III., without whose aid the Constitutionalists of England must
+have gone down before the Stuarts: not one of these men was perfect;
+and yet what losses the world would have experienced, if they had never
+lived, or had failed in their great labors! It has been claimed for
+Gustavus Adolphus that he was the only pure conqueror that ever lived;
+but his purity may safely be placed to the account of the balls of
+Lützen: he was not left unto temptation. We should extend to Napoleon
+III. the same charity that we extend to men who have long been
+historical characters, and judge him by his actions and their results,
+and not criticise him by the canons of faction.
+
+Italy was delivered by the war of 1859, and that war was terminated by
+the peace of Villafranca. For the moment, it seemed as if there were
+to be a restoration of the petty princes who had fled from Tuscany and
+Parma and Modena, and that an Italian Confederation had been resolved
+upon, in which the noxious influences of Austria and Naples and Papal
+Rome should stifle the pure principles upheld by Sardinia. A few months
+sufficed to show that these evils existed in apprehension only. The
+Italians, by the withdrawal of the French, were thrown upon their own
+resources, and by their conduct they dissipated the belief that they
+were unequal to the emergency. Had the war been continued, had Venetia
+been conquered, and had the last of the Austrians been driven beyond the
+Isonzo, Italy would have been the prize of French valor and genius; for
+all this must have been done on the instant, and before the Italians,
+less the Sardinians, could have taken an effective part in the war. The
+most devoted believer in the patriotism and bravery of the Italians must
+perforce admit that they had little to do with the war of 1859. Leaving
+the Sardinians aside, the Italian element in that contest was scarcely
+appreciable. This we say without meaning any reflection on the Italians.
+There were many good reasons why they should remain quiet. In common
+with the rest of the world, even France herself, the war took them by
+surprise, Austria bringing it on weeks, if not months, before Napoleon
+III. had meant it to begin. They, too, had seen their country so often
+abused by those who had conquered there, that they had some excuse for
+waiting the progress of events. The most industrious and studied efforts
+had been made to convince them that the object of the ruler of France
+was the realization of another Napoleonic idea, namely, the restoration
+of that Kingdom of Italy which perished in 1814; and though the rule of
+Napoleon I. was the best that Italy had known for three hundred years,
+it was hardly worth while to enter upon a doubtful fight for its
+restoration. Hence the majority of the people of Italy were not so
+active as they might have been; and their coolness is said to have had
+much effect on the mind of the victor, who must have thought that the
+people he had come to deliver were taking things very easily, and who
+could not have felt much flattered, when assured, in the politest
+terms, that those people believed him to be a selfish liar. His work,
+therefore, was but partially performed. Instead of halting on the shores
+of the historical Adriatic, his armies drew up on the banks of the
+classic Mincius. Trance had done her part; let Italy do the rest, if
+it were to be done. Thus abdicating his original purpose, and probably
+feeling much as William III. felt when the English were so slow in
+joining him that he talked of returning to his ships, Napoleon III.
+gave up his power to dictate the future of Italy. He had no right,
+thereafter, to say that the Bourbons should continue to govern in the
+Two Sicilies, that the Dukes should be restored to their Duchies, and
+that Venetia should be guarantied to Austria. He felt this, as the terms
+of the treaties that were made very clearly show; for he was careful to
+abstain from pledging himself to anything of a definite character. If
+he had perfected his original work, and been possessed of the power to
+effect a new settlement of Italy, he would, we presume, have stipulated
+for the continuance of the Bourbon power in the southern portion of the
+Peninsula and in Sicily; while the much talked-of purpose of creating an
+Italian Kingdom or Duchy for Prince Napoleon would probably have been
+carried out, and that gentleman have been established on the Arno. To
+the Sardinian monarchy would have been assigned the spoils taken from
+Austria,--Venice and Lombardy. The change in his political plans was the
+consequence of the change in his military plan,--though either change
+may be pronounced the cause or the effect, according to the point from
+which the observer views the entire series of transactions. Thus the
+peace of 1859 may be considered to have been a benefit to Italy, just
+as the war it terminated had been. The war freed her from Austrian
+dominion; the peace, from its character, and from the circumstances
+under which it was made, left her people at liberty to act as they
+pleased in the fair field that had been won for their exertions by the
+skill and courage of the French and Sardinian armies.
+
+The destinies of Italy being placed in her own hands, the Italians were
+as prompt as politic considerations would allow them to be in promoting
+the unification of their country. Central Italy soon became a part of
+the constitutional monarchy which had grown up under the shadow of the
+Alps. This could not have happened, if Napoleon III. had chosen to veto
+the proceedings of the Italians, which had virtually nullified one of
+his purposes. That he consented to this large addition to the power of
+Sardinia on the condition of receiving Savoy and Nice is by no means
+unlikely; and we do not think that Victor Emanuel was either unwise or
+wanting in patriotism in parting with those countries for the benefit of
+Italy. Taking advantage of the troubles in Sicily, Garibaldi led a
+small expedition to that island, which there landed, and began those
+operations which had their appropriate termination, in five months, in
+the addition of all the territories of the wretched Francis II., except
+Gaëta, to the dominions of the Sardinian King. The importance of
+Garibaldi's undertaking it is quite impossible to overrate; but of what
+account could it have been, if the Austrians had stood to Italy in the
+same position that they held at the opening of 1859? Of none at all.
+Garibaldi is preeminently a man of sense, and he would never have
+thought of moving against Francis II., if Francis Joseph had been at
+liberty to assist that scandalous caricature of kings. Or, if he had
+been tempted to enter upon the project, he would have been "snuffed
+out" as easily as was Murat, when, in 1815, he sought to recover the
+Neapolitan throne. If Austrian ships had not prevented him from landing
+in Sicily, Austrian troops would have destroyed him in that island. Nay,
+it is but reasonable to believe that Bomba's navy and army would have
+been amply sufficient to do their master's work. That his men were not
+wanting in courage and conduct has been proved by their deeds since the
+tyrant left his capital, on the Volturno and around Capua and at Gaëta.
+It was not want of bravery that led to their failure in Sicily, but the
+belief that their employer's system had failed, and that he and they
+were given up to the vengeance of Italy, supposing the Italians to be
+strong enough to do justice on them. They took courage when European
+circumstances led them to conclude that Austria would be advised, at
+the Warsaw Conference, to use her forces for the restoration of the old
+order of things in Italy, and receive the support of Russia and Prussia.
+To deserve such aid from the North, the Neapolitan army struggled hard,
+but in vain. The Absolutist cause was lost in Naples when the sovereigns
+met in the Polish capital; and though, forty years earlier, this would
+have been held an additional reason for the entrance of the barbarians
+into Italy, the successes of the patriots must have had their proper
+weight with the Prince Regent of Prussia and the Czar, who are
+understood to have been as deaf as adders to the charming of their young
+brother from Vienna. What was resolved upon at Warsaw the world has no
+positive means of knowing, and but little reliance is to be placed upon
+the rumors that have been so abundant; but, as Austria has not
+moved against the Italians, and as the instructions to her new
+commander-in-chief in Venetia (Von Benedek) are reported to be strong
+on the point of non-intervention, we are at liberty to infer that she
+accepts all that has been done as accomplished facts, and means to
+stand upon the defensive, in the hope of gaining moral support by her
+moderation in being outwardly content with less than half the spoil
+which was given to her at the expense of Italy, when Europe was
+"settled," for the time, four-and-forty years ago.
+
+The action of the Sardinian government, in sending its soldiers against
+the legal banditti whom Lamoricière had sought to drill into the
+semblance of an army, which was a direct attack on the Pope, and the
+subsequent employment of those soldiers, and of the Sardinian fleet,
+against the forces of Francis II., were model pieces of statesmanship,
+and worthy of the great man whose name and fame have become indissolubly
+associated with the redemption of Italy. The decision thus to act could
+not have been taken without the consent of Napoleon III. having first
+been had and obtained; and there is probably much truth in the story,
+that, when Lamoricière had the coolness to threaten his conquerors with
+the vengeance of the Emperor, they told him, half-laughingly, that, they
+had planned the campaign with that illustrious personage at Chambéry,
+which must have convinced him that the cause of the Keys had nothing to
+expect from France beyond the sort of police aid which General Goyon was
+affording to it in the name of his master. Lamoricière also expected
+help from Austria, and professed to be able to number the few days at
+the expiration of which the white-coats would be at Alessandria, which
+would have been a diversion in his favor, that, had it been made, must
+have saved him from the mortification of surrendering to men whom he
+affected to despise, but who brought him and his army under the yoke.
+The faith of the commander of the rabble of the Faith in Austrian
+assistance was a Viennese inspiration, and was meant to induce him to
+resist to the last. Nor was it altogether false; for the Kaiser and
+Count Rechberg appear to have believed that they could induce the
+governments of Russia and Prussia to support them in a crusade in behalf
+of Rome and Naples, which was to rely upon Lutherans and supporters of
+the Eastern Church for the salvation of the Western Church and its worst
+members. The first interview between Rechberg and Gortschakoff, if we
+can believe a despatch from Warsaw, led quickly to a quarrel, which must
+have taken place not long after their chiefs, the Kaiser and the Czar,
+had been locked in each other's arms at the railway-station. It is but
+just to the Austrians to state, that they probably had received from St.
+Petersburg some promises of assistance, which Alexander found himself
+unable to redeem, so determined was Russian opinion in its expression of
+aversion to Austria when its organs began to suspect that the old game
+was to be renewed, and that Alexander contemplated doing in 1861
+what Nicholas had done in 1849,--to step between Francis Joseph and
+humiliation, perhaps destruction. If it be true that the Czar has
+ordered all Russians to leave Italy, that piece of pitiful spite would
+show how he hates the Italian cause, and also that it is not in his
+power seriously to retard its progress at present. Instead of ordering
+Russians from Italy, he would send them to that country in great masses,
+could he have his way in directing the foreign policy of his empire.
+
+The entire success of Victor Emanuel and Garibaldi has brought Italian
+matters to a crisis. Carrying out the policy of Cavour, the King and the
+Soldier have all but completed the unification of their country, at
+the very time when the United States are threatened with disunion. The
+Kingdom of Italy exists at this time, virtually, if not in terms, and
+contains about twenty-four million people. It comprises the original
+territories of Victor Emanuel, _minus_ Savoy and Nice, the Two Sicilies,
+Lombardy, almost the whole of the Papal States, and Tuscany, Parma, and
+Modena. If we except the fragment of his old possessions yet held by the
+Pope, and the Austrian hold on Venetia, all Italy now acknowledges
+the rule of Victor Emanuel, who is to meet an _Italian_ Parliament
+in January, 1861. No political change of our century has been more
+remarkable than this, whether we look to its extent, or have regard to
+the agencies by which it has been brought about. Two years ago, there
+was more reason to believe that the King of Sardinia would be an exile
+than that the Bourbon King of Naples would be on his travels. No man
+would have dared to prophesy that the former would be reigning over
+seven-eighths of the Italians, while the latter should be reduced to one
+town, garrisoned by foreign mercenaries. That these changes should be
+wrought by universal suffrage, had it been predicted, would have been
+thought too much to be related as a dream. Yet it is the voice of the
+Italian People, speaking under a suffrage-system apparently more liberal
+than ever has been known in America, which has accomplished all that has
+been done since the summer of 1859 in the Peninsula and in Sicily. It
+was because Napoleon III. would not place himself in opposition to the
+opinion of the people of Central Italy, that the petty monarchs of
+that country were not restored to their thrones, and that they became
+subjects of Victor Emanuel; and the voting in Sicily and Naples
+has confirmed the decision of arms, and made it imperative on the
+reactionists to attack the people, should their policy lead them to
+seek a reversal of the decrees of 1860. The new monarch of the Italians
+expressly bases his title to reign on the will of the people, expressed
+through the exercise of the least restricted mode of voting that ever
+has been known among men; and the people of Southern Italy never could
+have had the opportunity to vote their crown to him, if Garibaldi
+had not first freed them from the savage tyranny of Francis II.; and
+Garibaldi himself could not have acted for their deliverance, if Italy
+had not previously been delivered from the Austrians by France. Thus we
+have the French Emperor, designated as a _parvenu_ both in England and
+America, and owing his power to his name,--the democrat Garibaldi, whose
+power is from his deeds, and whose income is not equal to that of an
+Irish laborer in the United States,--the rich and noble Cavour, whose
+weekly revenues would suffice to purchase the fee-simple of Garibaldi's
+island-farm,--the King of Sardinia, representing a race that was
+renowned before the Normans reigned in England,--and the masses of the
+Italian people,--all acting together for the redemption of a country
+which needs only justice to enable it to assume, as near as modern
+circumstances will permit, its old importance in the world's scale.
+That there should have been such a concurrence of foreign friendship,
+democratic patriotism, royal sagacity, aristocratic talent, and popular
+good sense, for Italy's benefit, must help to strengthen the belief that
+the Italians are indeed about to become a new _Power_ in Europe, and
+in the world, and that their country is no more to be rated as a mere
+"geographical expression."
+
+The Italian crisis is a European crisis; for matters have now reached
+a pass in which the foreigner must have something to say of Italy's
+future: and it will be well for the general peace, if he shall use only
+the words of justice, in giving his decision; for his right to speak
+at all in the premises is derived only from an act of usurpation, long
+acquiescence in which has clothed it with a certain show of legality. In
+all that the Italians have thus far done, since the conclusion of the
+with Austria, they have not necessarily been brought into conflict
+with any foreign nation, though they may have terribly offended those
+legitimate sovereigns who have been accustomed either to give law to
+Europe or to see public opinion defer considerably to their will. Not a
+single acquisition thus far made by Victor Emmanuel can be said to have
+proceeded from any act at which Europe could complain with justice.
+Lombardy was given to him by his ally of France, whose prize it was, and
+who had an undid dispose of it in a most righteous manner. That Central
+Italy was acquired by him was due partly to the cowardice of the old
+rulers thereof, and partly to intelligence, activity, and patriotism of
+its people. No foreign rights, conventional or otherwise, were assailed
+or disregarded, when it passed under the Sardinian sceptre. When go much
+of the Pope's temporal possessions were taken from him by the people
+themselves, who had become weary of the worst system of misgovernment
+known to the west of Bokhara, no doubt many pious Catholics were
+shocked; but, if they knew anything of the history of the Papal temporal
+rule and power, they could not complain at what was done, on the score
+of illegality; and the deeds of Cialdini and Fanti and Persano were
+performed against foreigners who had intruded themselves into Italy, and
+who were employed to uphold the political supremacy of a few persons at
+Rome, while they had no more connection with the religion of the ancient
+Church than they had with that of Thibet. The King of the Two Sicilies,
+by his tyranny, and by his persistence in the offensive course of his
+house, had become an outlaw, as it were, and every _Italian_ at least
+was fairly authorized to attack him; and in doing so he could not
+be said to assail European order, nor could any European power
+send assistance to a monarch who had refused to listen even to the
+remonstrances of Austria against his cruelties. The stanchest of
+English conservatives, while they said they must regard Garibaldi as
+a freebooter, did not hesitate to express the warmest wishes for the
+freebooter's success. When the Sardinians marched to Garibaldi's aid,
+they did so in the interest of order, which has been promptly restored
+to Southern Italy through their energetic course.
+
+Thus far, that which has been done in Italy has been of a local
+character; but nothing more can be done, in the way of completing the
+independence and unity of Italy, without bringing the patriots into
+conflict with Austria. That power still is supreme in Venetia, which is
+one of the best portions of Italy, and which can be held by no foreign
+sovereign without endangering the whole Peninsula. Were there no other
+reason for seeking to redeem Venetia from Austrian oppression, the
+safety of the rest of Italy would demand that that redemption should be
+accomplished. Venetia, as she now is, is a place of arms for the chief,
+we may say the only, foreign enemy that the Italian Kingdom has or can
+have; and that enemy has a deep and a peculiar interest in seeking
+occasion to bring about the new kingdom's destruction. If Austria should
+succeed in conciliating the Hungarians,--which she might do, if she
+were to act justly toward them,--and a change of government were to take
+place in France,--and changes in the French government have occurred
+so often since 1789 as not to be improbable now,--she would, through
+possession of Venetia, be enabled to commence a new Italian war with the
+chances of success greatly in her favor. The Italians, therefore, are
+compelled to round and complete their work, in getting possession of
+Venetia, by that desire for safety and for self-preservation which
+actuates all men and all communities. A nobler feeling, too, moves them.
+They feel the obligation that exists to extend to the Venetians that
+freedom which is now enjoyed by all Italians except the Venetians and
+a small portion of the Pope's subjects. They would be recreant to the
+dictates of duty, and disregardful of those of honor, were they to leave
+Venetia in the hands of Austria. What their feelings on this
+momentous subject are may be gathered from Garibaldi's address to his
+companions-in-arms, when, having completed his immediate work, he
+withdrew from active service for the time, in November last. His words
+point as directly to an attack on Venetia as his landing in Sicily
+indicated his intention to overthrow Francis II.; and that attack,
+according to the Patriot Soldier, is to be made under the lead of the
+Patriot King, Victor Emanuel. A million of Italians are called for, that
+it may be successfully made; and that number ought to be raised, if so
+vast a host shall be found necessary to perfect the independence of
+Italy. After what we have seen done by the Italians, we should not
+distrust their power to do even more, if no delay should be permitted,
+and full advantage be taken of the spirit of enthusiastic patriotism
+which now animates them. That Garibaldi means no delay is proved by his
+naming next March as the date for the renewal of the mighty crusade in
+the course of which already such miracles have been wrought.
+
+That Italy, as she stands to-day, would be found more than the equal
+of Austria, no doubt can be felt by any one who is acquainted with the
+condition of the two powers. Italy would enter upon a contest with
+Austria under circumstances of peculiar advantage. She would have so
+decided a naval superiority, that the Austrian flag would disappear from
+the Mediterranean and the Adriatic, and she would be able to operate
+powerfully from the sea against Venice. It is a military axiom, that,
+wherever there is a sea-side, there is a weak side; and Venetia presents
+this to an assailing force in quite a striking manner. Command of
+the Adriatic and the neighboring waters would enable the Italians to
+threaten many points of the Austrian territory, which would require to
+be watched by large collections of soldiers; and aid could be sent to
+the Hungarians, should they rise, by the way of Fiume. Italy could
+raise a larger army to attack Venetia than Austria could employ for its
+defence, with Hungary on the eve of revolution, Bohemia discontented,
+Croatia not the loyal land it was in '48, and even the Tyrol no longer
+a model of subserviency to the Imperial House. The Italians are at any
+time the equals of the Austrians as soldiers, and at this time their
+minds are in an exalted state, under the dominion of which they would
+be found superior to any men who could be brought against them, if well
+led; and among the Imperial commanders there is no man, unless Von
+Benedek be an exception, who is to be named with the generals who have
+led the way in the work we have seen done since last spring. In a
+military sense, and in a moral sense, Italy is the superior of the
+beaten, bankrupt monarchy of Austria, and capable of wresting Venetia
+from the intrusive race, which holds it as much in defiance of common
+sense as of common right.
+
+But would Italy be permitted to settle her quarrel with her old
+oppressor without foreign intervention? We fear that she would not.
+Venetia is held by Austria in virtue of the Vienna settlement of Europe,
+in the first place, and then under the treaty that followed the war of
+1859. Some English statesmen would appear to be of opinion that Venetia
+must remain among the possessions of Austria, without reference to the
+interests of Italy, the party most concerned in the business. In his
+first note to Sir James Hudson, British Minister at Turin, which note
+was to be read to Count Cavour, Lord John Russell, Foreign Secretary,
+writes more like an Austrian than an Englishman, going even to the
+astounding length of declaring that a war to defend her right to Venetia
+would be on Austria's part a patriotic war,--such a war, we presume the
+Honorable Secretary of State must have meant, as Wallace waged against
+Edward I., or that which the first William of Orange carried on against
+Philip II.! Lord Palmerston seems inclined to indorse his colleague's
+views: for he referred directly to this very note in terms of
+approbation, in the speech which he made at the dinner of the
+"Worshipful Company of Salters," on the 14th of November. It is true,
+that, in a later note from Lord John Russell to Sir James Hudson,
+extreme ground in favor of what had been done in Naples by the
+Sardinians is taken, and sustained with eminent ability; and in the
+speech of Lord Palmerston referred to, the object of the first note was
+said to be the prevention of a rash course that "might have blighted all
+the best hopes of Italian freedom." We do not for a moment suppose that
+the English people would ever allow their government to do anything
+to help Austria to maintain possession of Venetia; but the relations
+between Austria and England are of old date, and an opinion prevails in
+the latter country that the former should be kept strong, in order that
+she may be preserved as a counterpoise, on the one side to Russia, and
+on the other to France. England has a difficult part to play, and her
+course, or rather that of her government, sometimes makes considerable
+demand on the charitable construction of the world; but her people are
+sound, and for a long series of years their weight has been felt on the
+right side of European contests. The Italian cause is popular with all
+classes of Englishmen, and their country will never do anything to the
+prejudice of that cause. But it may refuse aid at a time when such aid
+shall be much needed, and when even France may stand aloof, and refrain
+from finishing the business which she commenced.
+
+There is said to be an opinion growing up in France that Italy may be
+made too strong for the good of her friend and ally. A new nation of
+twenty-seven million souls--which would be Italy's strength, should Rome
+and Venetia be gained for her--might become a potent enemy even to one
+of its chief creators; and the taking of Savoy and Nice has caused
+ill-feeling between the two countries, in which Garibaldi heartily
+shares. Napoleon III. might be depended upon, himself, to support Italy
+hereafter against any foreign enemy, but it is by no means clear that
+France would support him in such a course; and he must defer to the
+opinion of his subjects to a considerable extent, despotic though his
+power is supposed to be. It is opinion, in the last resort, that governs
+every where,--under an absolute monarchy quite as determinedly as under
+a liberal polity like ours or England's. There is a large party in
+France, composed of the most incongruous materials, which has the
+profoundest interest in misrepresenting the policy of the Imperial
+government, and which is full of men of culture and intellect,--men
+whose labors, half-performed though they are, must have considerable
+effect on the French mind. The first Napoleon had the ground honeycombed
+under him by his enemies, who could not be suppressed, nor their labors
+be made to cease, even by his stern system of repression. It may be so
+with the present Emperor, who knows that one false step might upset his
+dynasty as utterly as it was twice over-thrown by the armies of combined
+Europe. What was then done by the lions and the eagles might now be done
+by the moles. The worms that gnawed through the Dutch dykes did Holland
+more damage than she experienced from the armies of Louis XIV. Let the
+French mind become possessed with the idea that the Emperor is helping
+Italy at the expense of France, and we may see a third Restoration in
+that country, or even a third Republic. The elder Bourbons were driven
+out because they were as a monument in Paris to Leipzig and Vittoria
+and Waterloo, erected by the victors on those fatal fields. The Orléans
+dynasty broke down because it had become an article in the belief of
+most Frenchmen that it was disgracing France by the corruption of its
+domestic policy and the subserviency of its foreign policy. Napoleon
+III. could no more sustain himself against the belief that he was using
+France for the benefit of Italy than the King of the French could
+sustain himself against the conviction that he was abusing the country
+he ruled over for the advancement of his family. He has already offended
+the Catholic clergy by what he has done for Italy, which they regard as
+having been done against their Church; and as they helped to make him,
+so they may be able to unmake him. To satisfy grumblers, he took Savoy
+and Nice. For some time past, rumor has been busy in attributing to him
+the design of demanding the island of Sardinia. If he should ask for
+Sardinia, and receive it, might he not ask also for Sicily, the country
+of which he offered to become King in 1848, and did not receive one
+vote, an incident that may still weigh upon the imperial heart, no man
+ever forgetting a contemptuous slight? If he should make these demands,
+or either of them, would the other European Powers permit the Italians
+to comply with them? These are questions not to be answered hurriedly,
+but they closely concern the Italian question, a solution of which must
+soon be had, for the world's peace.
+
+The third act of the drama approaches, and 1861 may be a more important
+year to Italy than was either 1859 or 1860. The successful antagonist
+of Austria she can be; but could she, without foreign aid, withstand an
+alliance that should be formed against her in the name of order, while
+her former ally should remain quiet and refuse to take any part in the
+war? Austria, it has been intimated, might be induced to sell Venetia to
+Italy, and this is possible, though such a settlement of the question in
+dispute would be an extraordinary confession of weakness on the part of
+the aristocratical military monarchy of the Lorraines, and a proceeding
+of which it would be more ashamed than it would be even of a generous
+action.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+A VISIT TO THE ASYLUM FOR AGED AND DECAYED PUNSTERS.
+
+
+Having just returned from a visit to this admirable Institution in
+company with a friend who is one of the Directors, we propose giving a
+short account of what we saw and heard. The great success of the Asylum
+for Idiots and Feeble-minded Youth, several of the scholars from which
+have reached considerable distinction, one of them being connected with
+a leading Daily Paper in this city, and others having served in the
+State and National Legislatures, was the motive which led to the
+foundation of this excellent Charity. Our late distinguished townsman,
+Noah Dow, Esquire, as is welt known, bequeathed a large portion of his
+fortune to this establishment,--"being thereto moved," as his will
+expressed it, "by the desire of _N. Dowing_ some publick Institution
+for the benefit of Mankind." Being consulted as to the Rules of the
+Institution and the selection of a Superintendent, he replied, that "all
+Boards must construct their own Platforms of operation. Let them select
+_anyhow_ and he should be pleased." N.E. Howe, Esq., was chosen in
+compliance with this delicate suggestion.
+
+The Charter provides for the support of "One hundred aged and decayed
+Gentlemen-Punsters." On inquiry if there was no provision for _females_,
+my friend called my attention to this remarkable psychological fact,
+namely:--
+
+THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A FEMALE PUNSTER.
+
+This remark struck me forcibly, and on reflection I found that _I never
+knew nor heard of one_, though I have once or twice heard a woman make
+_a single detached_ pun, as I have known a hen to crow.
+
+On arriving at the south gate of the Asylum grounds, I was about to
+ring, but my friend held my arm and begged me to rap with my stick,
+which I did. An old man with a very comical face presently opened the
+gate and put out his head.
+
+"So you prefer _Cane_ to _A bell_, do you?" he said,--and began
+chuckling and coughing at a great rate.
+
+My friend winked at me.
+
+"You're here still, Old Joe, I see," he said to the old man.
+
+"Yes, yes,--and it's very odd, considering how often I've _bolted_,
+nights."
+
+He then threw open the double gates for us to ride through.
+
+"Now," said the old man, as he pulled the gates after us, "you've had a
+long journey."
+
+"Why, how is that, Old Joe?" said my friend.
+
+"Don't you see?" he answered; "there's the _East hinges_ on one side of
+the gate, and there's the West hinges_ on t'other side,--haw! haw! haw!"
+
+We had no sooner got into the yard than a feeble little gentleman, with
+a remarkably bright eye, came up to us, looking very seriously, as if
+something had happened.
+
+"The town has entered a complaint against the Asylum as a gambling
+establishment," he said to my friend, the Director.
+
+"What do you mean?" said my friend.
+
+"Why, they complain that there's a _lot o' rye_ on the premises," he
+answered, pointing to a field of that grain,--and hobbled away, his
+shoulders shaking with laughter, as he went.
+
+On entering the main building, we saw the Rules and Regulations for
+the Asylum conspicuously posted up. I made a few extracts which may be
+interesting.
+
+
+Sect. I. OF VERBAL EXERCISES.
+
+5. Each Inmate shall be permitted to make Puns freely from eight in the
+morning until ten at night, except during Service in the Chapel and
+Grace before Meals.
+
+6. At ten o'clock the gas will be turned off, and no further Puns,
+Conundrums, or other play on words, will be allowed to be uttered, or to
+be uttered aloud.
+
+9. Inmates who have lost their faculties and cannot any longer make Puns
+shall be permitted to repeat such as may be selected for them by the
+Chaplain out of the work of Mr. _Joseph Miller_.
+
+10. Violent and unmanageable Punsters, who interrupt others when engaged
+in conversation, with Puns or attempts at the same, shall be deprived
+of their _Joseph Millers_, and, if necessary, placed in solitary
+confinement.
+
+
+Sect. III. OF DEPORTMENT AT MEALS.
+
+4. No Inmate shall make any Pun, or attempt at the same, until the
+Blessing has been asked and the company are decently seated.
+
+7. Certain Puns having been placed on the _Index Expurgatorius_ of the
+Institution, no Inmate shall be allowed to utter them, on pain of being
+debarred the perusal of _Punch_ and _Vanity Fair_, and, if repeated,
+deprived of his _Joseph Miller_.
+
+Among these are the following:--
+
+Allusions to _Attic salt_, when asked to pass the salt-cellar.
+
+Remarks on the Inmates being _mustered_, etc., etc.
+
+Associating baked beans with the _bene_factors of the Institution.
+
+Saying that beef-eating is _befitting_, etc., etc.
+
+The following are also prohibited, excepting to such Inmates as may have
+lost their faculties and cannot any longer make Puns of their own:--
+
+"----your own _hair_ or a wig"; "it will be _long enough_, "etc., etc.;
+"little of its age," etc., etc.;--also, playing upon the following
+words: _hos_pital; _mayor_; _pun_; _pitied_; _bread_; _sauce_, etc.,
+etc., etc. See INDEX EXPURGATORIUS, _printed for use of Inmates_.
+
+The subjoined Conundrum is not allowed:--Why is Hasty Pudding like the
+Prince? Because it comes attended by its _sweet_;--nor this variation to
+it, _to wit_: Because the _'lasses runs after it_.
+
+The Superintendent, who went round with us, had been a noted punster in
+his time, and well known in the business-world, but lost his customers
+by making too free with their names,--as in the famous story he set
+afloat in '29 of _four Jerries_ attaching to the names of a noted Judge,
+an eminent Lawyer, the Secretary of the Board of Foreign Missions, and
+the well-known Landlord at Springfield. One of the _four Jerries_, he
+added, was of gigantic magnitude. The play on words was brought out
+by an accidental remark of Solomons, the well-known Banker. "_Capital
+punishment!_" the Jew was overheard saying, with reference to the guilty
+parties. He was understood as saying, _A capital pun is meant_, which
+led to an investigation and the relief of the greatly excited public
+mind.
+
+The Superintendent showed some of his old tendencies, as he went round
+with us.
+
+"Do you know"--he broke out all at once--"why they don't take steppes in
+Tartary for establishing Insane Hospitals?"
+
+We both confessed ignorance.
+
+"Because there are _nomad_ people to be found there," he said, with a
+dignified smile.
+
+He proceeded to introduce us to different Inmates. The first was a
+middle-aged, scholarly man, who was seated at a table with a Webster's
+Dictionary and a sheet of paper before him.
+
+"Well, what luck to-day, Mr. Mowzer?" said the Superintendent.
+
+"Three or four only," said Mr. Mowzer. "Will you hear 'em now,--now I'm
+here?"
+
+We all nodded.
+
+"Don't you see Webster _ers_ in the words cent_er_ and theat_er_?
+
+"If he spells leather _lether_, and feather _fether_, isn't there danger
+that he'll give us a _bad spell of weather_?
+
+"Besides, Webster is a resurrectionist; he does not allow _u_ to rest
+quietly in the _mould_.
+
+"And again, because Mr. Worcester inserts an illustration in his text,
+is that any reason why Mr. Webster's publishers should hitch one on in
+their appendix? It's what I call a _Conntect-a-cut_ trick.
+
+"Why is his way of spelling like the floor of an oven? Because it is
+_under bread_.
+
+"Mowzer!" said the Superintendent,--"that word is on the Index!"
+
+"I forgot," said Mr. Mowzer;--"please don't deprive me of _Vanity Fair_,
+this one time, Sir.
+
+"These are all, this morning. Good day, Gentlemen. Then to the
+Superintendent,--Add you, Sir!"
+
+The next Inmate was a semi-idiotic-looking old man. He had a heap of
+block-letters before him, and, as we came up, he pointed, without saying
+a word, to the arrangements he had made with them on the table. They
+were evidently anagrams, and had the merit of transposing the letters of
+the words employed without addition or subtraction. Here are a few of
+them:--
+
+  TIMES.  SMITE!
+  POST.  STOP!
+
+  TRIBUNE.  TRUE NIB.
+  WORLD.  DR. OWL.
+
+  ADVERTISER.  (RES VERI DAT.
+               (IS TRUE. READ!
+
+  ALLOPATHY.  ALL O' TH' PAY.
+  HOMEOPATHY.  O, THE--! O! O, MY! PAH!
+
+The mention of several new York papers led to two or three questions.
+Thus: Whether the Editor of the Tribune was _H.G. really?_ If the
+complexion of his politics were not accounted for by his being an
+_eager_ person himself? Whether Wendell _Fillips_ were not a reduced
+copy of John _Knocks?_ Whether a New York _Feuilletoniste_ is not the
+same thing as a _Fellow down East?_
+
+At this time a plausible-looking, bald-headed man joined us, evidently
+waiting to take a part in the conversation.
+
+"Good morning, Mr. Riggles," said the Superintendent. "Anything fresh
+this morning? Any Conundrum?"
+
+"I haven't looked at the cattle," he answered, dryly.
+
+"Cattle? Why cattle?"
+
+"Why, to see if there's any _corn under 'em!_" he said; and immediately
+asked, "Why is Douglas like the earth?"
+
+We tried, but couldn't guess.
+
+"Because he was _flattened out at the polls!_" said Mr. Riggles.
+
+"A famous politician, formerly," said the Superintendent. "His
+grandfather was a _seize-Hessian-ist_ in the Revolutionary War. By the
+way, I hear the _freeze-oil_ doctrines don't go down at New Bedford."
+
+The next Inmate looked as if be might have been a sailor formerly.
+
+"Ask him what his calling was," said the Superintendent.
+
+"Followed the sea," he replied to the question put by one of us. "Went
+as mate in a fishing-schooner."
+
+"Why did you give it up?"
+
+"Because I didn't like working for _two mast-ers_," he replied.
+
+Presently we came upon a group of elderly persons, gathered about a
+venerable gentleman with flowing locks, who was propounding questions to
+a row of Inmates.
+
+"Can any Inmate give me a motto for M. Berger?" he said.
+
+Nobody responded for two or three minutes. At last one old man, whom I
+at once recognized as a Graduate of our University, (Anno 1800,) held up
+his hand.
+
+"Rem a _cue_ tetigit."
+
+"Go to the head of the Class, Josselyn," said the venerable Patriarch.
+
+The successful Inmate did as he was told, but in a very rough way,
+pushing against two or three of the Class.
+
+"How is this?" said the Patriarch.
+
+"You told me to go up _jostlin',_" he replied.
+
+The old gentlemen who had been shoved about enjoyed the Pun too much to
+be angry.
+
+Presently the Patriarch asked again,--
+
+"Why was M. Berger authorized to go to the dances given to the Prince?"
+
+The Class had to give up this, and he answered it himself:--
+
+"Because every one of his carroms was a _tick-it_ to the _ball_."
+
+"Who collects the money to defray the expenses of the last campaign in
+Italy?" asked the Patriarch.
+
+Here again the Class failed.
+
+"The war-cloud's rolling _Dun_," he answered.
+
+"And what is mulled wine made with?"
+
+Three or four voices exclaimed at once,----
+
+"_Sizzle-y_ Madeira!"
+
+Here a servant entered, and said, "Luncheon-time." The old gentlemen,
+who have excellent appetites, dispersed at once, one of them politely
+asking us if we would not stop and have a bit of bread and a little mite
+of cheese.
+
+"There is one thing I have forgotten to show you," said the
+Superintendent,--"the cell for the confinement of violent and
+unmanageable Punsters."
+
+We were very curious to see it, particularly with reference to the
+alleged absence of every object upon which a play of words could
+possibly be made.
+
+The Superintendent led us up some dark stairs to a corridor, then
+along a narrow passage, then down a broad flight of steps into another
+passage-way, and opened a large door which looked out on the main
+entrance.
+
+"We have not seen the cell for the confinement of 'violent and
+unmanageable' Punsters," we both exclaimed.
+
+"This is the _sell!_" he exclaimed, pointing to the outside prospect.
+
+My friend, the Director, looked me in the face so good-naturedly that I
+had to laugh.
+
+"We like to humor the Inmates," he said. "It has a bad effect, we
+find, on their health and spirits to disappoint them of their little
+pleasantries. Some of the jests to which we have listened are not new to
+me, though I dare say you may not have heard them often before. The same
+thing happens in general society,--with this additional disadvantage,
+that there is no punishment provided for 'violent and unmanageable'
+Punsters, as in our Institution."
+
+We made our bow to the Superintendent and walked to the place where our
+carriage was waiting for us. On our way, an exceedingly decrepit old man
+moved slowly towards us, with a perfectly blank look on his face, but
+still appearing as if he wished to speak.
+
+"Look!" said the Director,--"that is our Centenarian."
+
+The ancient man crawled towards us, cocked one eye, with which he seemed
+to sec a little, up at us, and said,--
+
+"Sarvant, young Gentlemen. Why is a--a--a--like a--a--a--? Give it up?
+Because it's a--a--a--a--."
+
+He smiled a pleasant smile, as if it were all plain enough.
+
+"One hundred and seven last Christmas," said the Director. "He lost his
+answers about the age of ninety-eight. Of late years he puts his whole
+Conundrums in blank,--but they please him just as well."
+
+We took our departure, much gratified and instructed by our visit,
+hoping to have some future opportunity of inspecting the Records of this
+excellent Charity and making extracts for the benefit of our Readers.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+THE QUESTION OF THE HOUR.
+
+
+Dean Swift, in a letter to Lord Bolingbroke, says that he does not
+"remember to have ever heard or seen one great genius who had long
+success in the ministry; and recollecting a great many in my memory and
+acquaintance, those who had the smoothest time were, at best, men of
+middling degree in understanding." However true this may be in the
+main,--and it undoubtedly is true that in ordinary times the speculative
+and innovating temper of an original mind is less safe than the patience
+of routine and persistence in precedent of a common-place one,--there
+are critical occasions to which intellect of the highest quality,
+character of the finest fibre, and a judgment that is inspired rather
+than confused by new and dangerous combinations of circumstances, are
+alone equal. Tactics and an acquaintance with the highest military
+authorities were adequate enough till they were confronted with General
+Bonaparte and the new order of things. If a great man struggling with
+the storms of fate be the sublimest spectacle, a mediocre man in the
+same position is surely the most pitiful. Deserted by his presence
+of mind, which, indeed, had never been anything but an absence of
+danger,--baffled by the inapplicability of his habitual principles of
+conduct, (if that may be called a principle, which, like the act of
+walking, is merely an unconscious application of the laws of gravity,)
+--helpless, irresolute, incapable of conceiving the flower Safety in
+the nettle Danger, much more of plucking it thence,--surely here, if
+anywhere, is an object of compassion. When such a one is a despot who
+has wrought his own destruction by obstinacy in a traditional evil
+policy, like Francis II. of Naples, our commiseration is outweighed by
+satisfaction that the ruin of the man is the safety of the state. But
+when the victim is a so-called statesman, who has malversated the
+highest trusts for selfish ends, who has abused constitutional forms
+to the destruction of the spirit that gave them life and validity, who
+could see nothing nobler in the tenure of high office than the means it
+seemed to offer of prolonging it, who knows no art to conjure the spirit
+of anarchy he has evoked but the shifts and evasions of a second-rate
+attorney, and who has contrived to involve his country in the confusion
+of principle and vacillation of judgment which have left him without
+a party and without a friend,--for such a man we have no feeling but
+contemptuous reprobation. Pan-urge in danger of shipwreck is but a
+faint type of Mr. Buchanan in face of the present crisis; and that poor
+fellow's craven abjuration of his "_former_ friend," Friar John, is
+magnanimity itself, compared with his almost-ex-Excellency's treatment
+of the Free States in his last Message to Congress. There are times
+when mediocrity is a dangerous quality, and a man may drown himself as
+effectually in milk-and-water as in Malmsey.
+
+The question, whether we are a Government or an Indian Council, we do
+not propose to discuss here; whether there be a right of secession
+tempered by a right of coercion, like a despotism by assassination, and
+whether it be expedient to put the latter in practice, we shall
+not consider: for it is not always the part of wisdom to attempt a
+settlement of what the progress of events will soon settle for us. Mr.
+Buchanan seems to have no opinion, or, if he has one, it is a halting
+between two, a bat-like cross of sparrow and mouse that gives timidity
+its choice between flight and skulking. Nothing shocks our sense of the
+fitness of things more than a fine occasion to which the man is wanting.
+Fate gets her hook ready, but the eye is not there to clinch with it,
+and so all goes at loose ends. Mr. Buchanan had one more chance offered
+him of showing himself a common-place man, and he has done it full
+justice. Even if they could have done nothing for the country, a few
+manly sentences might have made a pleasing exception in his political
+history, and rescued for him the fag-end of a reputation.
+
+Mr. Buchanan, by his training in a system of politics without a parallel
+for intrigue, personality, and partisanship, would have unfitted himself
+for taking a statesmanlike view of anything, even if he had ever been
+capable of it. His nature has been subdued to what it worked in. We
+could not have expected from him a Message around which the spirit, the
+intelligence, and the character of the country would have rallied. But
+he might have saved himself from the evil fame of being the first of our
+Presidents who could never forget himself into a feeling of the
+dignity of the place he occupied. He has always seemed to consider the
+Presidency as a retaining-fee paid him by the slavery-propagandists,
+and his Message to the present Congress looks like the last juiceless
+squeeze of the orange which the South is tossing contemptuously away.
+
+Mr. Buchanan admits as real the assumed wrongs of the South Carolina
+revolutionists, and even, if we understand him, allows that they are
+great enough to justify revolution. But he advises the secessionists to
+pause and try what can be done by negotiation. He sees in the internal
+history of the country only a series of injuries inflicted by the
+Free upon the Slave States; yet he affirms, that, so far as Federal
+legislation is concerned, the rights of the South have never been
+assailed, except in the single instance of the Missouri Compromise,
+which gave to Slavery the unqualified possession of territory which the
+Free States might till then have disputed. Yet that bargain, a losing
+one as it was on the part of the Free States, having been annulled, can
+hardly be reckoned a present grievance. South Carolina had quite as long
+a list of intolerable oppressions to resent in 1832 as now, and not one
+of them, as a ground of complaint, could be compared with the refusal
+to pay the French-Spoliation claims of Massachusetts. The secession
+movement then, as now, had its origin in the ambition of disappointed
+politicians. If its present leaders are more numerous, none of them are
+so able as Mr. Calhoun; and if it has now any other object than it had
+then, it is to win by intimidation advantages that shall more than
+compensate for its loss in the elections.
+
+In 1832, General Jackson bluntly called the South Carolina doctrines
+treason, and the country sustained him. That they are not characterized
+in the same way now does not prove any difference in the thing, but only
+in the times and the men. They are none the less treason because
+James Buchanan is less than Andrew Jackson, but they are all the more
+dangerous.
+
+It has been the misfortune of the United States that the conduct of
+their public affairs has passed more and more exclusively into the hands
+of men who have looked on politics as a game to be played rather than
+as a trust to be administered, and whose capital, whether of personal
+consideration or of livelihood, has been staked on a turn of the cards.
+A general skepticism has thus been induced, exceedingly dangerous
+in times like these. The fatal doctrine of rotation in office has
+transferred the loyalty of the numberless servants of the Government,
+and of those dependent on or influenced by them, from the nation to
+a party. For thousands of families every change in the National
+Administration is as disastrous as revolution, and the Government has
+thus lost that influence which the idea of permanence and stability
+would exercise in a crisis like the present. At the present moment, the
+whole body of office-holders at the South is changed from a conservative
+to a disturbing element by a sense of the insecurity of their tenure.
+Their allegiance having always been to the party in power at Washington,
+and not to the Government of the Nation, they find it easy to transfer
+it to the dominant faction at home.
+
+The subservience on the question of Slavery, which has hitherto
+characterized both the great parties of the country, has strengthened
+the hands of the extremists at the South, and has enabled them to get
+the control of public opinion there by fostering false notions of
+Southern superiority and Northern want of principle. We have done so
+much to make them believe in their importance to us, and given them so
+little occasion even to suspect our importance to them, that we have
+taught them to regard themselves as the natural rulers of the country,
+and to look upon the Union as a favor granted to our weakness, whose
+withdrawal would be our ruin. Accordingly, they have grown more and more
+exacting, till at length the hack politicians of the Free States have
+become so imbued with the notion of yielding, and so incapable of
+believing in any principle of action higher than temporary expedients
+to carry an election, or any object nobler than the mere possession of
+office for its own sake, that Mr. Buchanan gravely proposes that the
+Republican party should pacify South Carolina by surrendering the very
+creed that called it into existence and holds it together, the only
+fruit of its victory that made victory worth having. Worse than this,
+when the Free States by overwhelming majorities have just expressed
+their conviction, that slavery, as he creature of local law, can claim
+no legitimate extension beyond the limits of that law, he asks their
+consent to denationalize freedom and to nationalize slavery by an
+amendment of the Federal Constitution, that shall make the local law of
+the Slave States paramount throughout the Union. Mr. Buchanan would stay
+the yellow fever by abolishing the quarantine hospital and planting a
+good virulent case or two in every village in the land.
+
+We do not underestimate the gravity of the present crisis, and we agree
+that nothing should be done to exasperate it; but if the people of the
+Free States have been taught anything by the repeated lessons of bitter
+experience, it has been that submission is not the seed of conciliation,
+but of contempt and encroachment. The wolf never goes for mutton to the
+mastiff. It is quite time that it should be understood that freedom is
+also an institution deserving some attention in a Model Republic, that
+a decline in stocks is more tolerable and more transient than one in
+public spirit, and that material prosperity was never known to abide
+long in a country that had lost its political morality. The fault of the
+Free States in the eyes of the South is not one that can be atoned for
+by any yielding of special points here and there. Their offence is that
+they are free, and that their habits and prepossessions are those of
+Freedom. Their crime is the census of 1860. Their increase in numbers,
+wealth, and power is a standing aggression. It would not be enough to
+please the Southern States that we should stop asking them to abolish
+slavery,--what they demand of us is nothing less than that we should
+abolish the spirit of the age. Our very thoughts are a menace. It is not
+the North, but the South, that forever agitates the question of Slavery.
+The seeming prosperity of the cotton-growing States is based on a great
+mistake and a great wrong; and it is no wonder that they are irritable
+and scent accusation in the very air. It is the stars in their courses
+that fight against their system, and there are those who propose to make
+everything comfortable by Act of Congress.
+
+It is almost incredible to what a pitch of absurdity the Slave-holding
+party have been brought by the weak habit of concession which has been
+the vice of the Free States. Senator Green of Missouri, whose own State
+is rapidly gravitating toward free institutions, gravely proposes an
+armed police along the whole Slave frontier for the arrest of fugitives.
+Already the main employment of our navy is in striving to keep Africans
+out, and now the whole army is to mount guard to keep them in. This is
+but a trifle to the demands that will be made upon us, if we yield now
+under the threats of a mob,--for men acting under passion or terror, or
+both, are a mob, no matter what their numbers and intelligence.
+
+A dissolution of the Union would be a terrible thing, but not so
+terrible as an acquiescence in the theory that Property is the only
+interest that binds men together in society, and that its protection
+is the highest object of human government. Nothing could well be more
+solemn than the thought of a disruption of our great and prosperous
+Republic. Even if peaceful, the derangement consequent upon it would
+cause incalculable suffering and disaster. Already the mere threat
+of it, assisted by the efforts of interested persons, has caused a
+commercial panic. But would it be wisdom in the Free States to put
+themselves at the mercy of such a panic whenever the whim took South
+Carolina to be discontented? That would be the inevitable result of a
+craven spirit now. Let the Republican party be mild and forbearing,--for
+the opportunity to be so is the best reward of victory, and taunts and
+recriminations belong to boys; but, above all, let them be manly. The
+moral taint of once submitting to be bullied is a scrofula that will
+never out of the character.
+
+We do not believe that the danger is so great as it appears. Rumor is
+like one of those multiplying-mirrors that make a mob of shadows out
+of one real object. The interests of three-fifths of the Slave-holding
+States are diametrically opposed to secession; so are those of
+five-sixths of the people of the seceding States, if they did but know
+it. The difficulties in the way of organizing a new form of government
+are great, almost insuperable; the expenses enormous. As the public
+burdens grow heavier, the lesson of resistance and rebellion will find
+its aptest scholars in the non-slave-owning majority who will be paying
+taxes for the support of the very institution that has made and keeps
+them poor. Men are not long in arriving at just notions of the value of
+what they pay for, especially when it is for other people. Taxes are a
+price that people are slowest to pay for a cat in a bag. If matters are
+allowed to take their own course for a little longer, the inevitable
+reaction is sure to set in. The Hartford Convention gave more uneasiness
+to the Government and the country than the present movement in the
+South, but the result of it was the ruin of the Federal Party, and not
+of the Federal Union.
+
+Even if the secessionists could accomplish their schemes, who would
+be the losers? Not the Free States, certainly, with their variety of
+resources and industry. The laws of trade cannot be changed, and the
+same causes which have built up their agriculture, commerce, and
+manufactures will not cease to be operative. The real wealth
+and strength of states, other things being equal, depends upon
+homogeneousness of population and variety of occupation, with a common
+interest and common habits of thought. The cotton-growing States, with
+their single staple, are at the mercy of chance. India, Australia, nay,
+Africa herself, may cut the thread of their prosperity. Their population
+consists of two hostile races, and their bone and muscle, instead
+of being the partners, are the unwilling tools of their capital
+and intellect. The logical consequence of this political theory is
+despotism, which the necessity of coercing the subject race will make a
+military one. Already South Carolina is discussing a standing army. If
+history is not a lying gossip, the result of the system of labor will be
+Jamaica, and that of the system of polity, Mexico. Instead of a stable
+government, they will have a whirligig of _pronunciamientos_, or
+stability will be purchased at a cost that will make it intolerable.
+They have succeeded in establishing among themselves a fatal unanimity
+on the question of Slavery,--fatal because it makes the office of spy
+and informer honorable, makes the caprice of a mob the arbiter of
+thought, speech, and action, and debases public opinion to a muddy
+mixture of fear and prejudice. In peace, the majority of their
+population will be always looked on as conspirators; in war, they would
+become rebels.
+
+It is time that the South should learn, if they do not begin to suspect
+it already, that the difficulty of the Slavery question is slavery
+itself,--nothing more, nothing less. It is time that the North should
+learn that it has nothing left to compromise but the rest of its
+self-respect. Nothing will satisfy the extremists at the South short of
+a reduction of the Free States to a mere police for the protection of an
+institution whose danger increases at an equal pace with its wealth.
+
+It was the deliberate intention of Mr. Calhoun that the compact should
+be broken the moment the absolute control of Government passed out of
+the hands of the slaveholding clique. He was willing to wait till we
+had stolen Texas and paid a hundred millions for Cuba; but if the game
+seemed to be up, then secede at once. In a hasty moment, he started his
+revolution, when there was a stronger man than he to confront him. South
+Carolina was to all appearance as united then as now. But a few months
+brought a reaction, and no one was more relieved than Mr. Calhoun that
+matters stopped where they did. Whether the stirrers of the present
+excitement, which finds vacillation in the Executive and connivance
+In the Cabinet, will be wise enough to let it go out in the same way,
+remains to be seen; but the greatest danger of disunion, would spring
+from a want of self-possession and spirit in the Free States.
+
+
+
+
+REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.
+
+
+_Collection of Rare and Original Documents and Relations concerning the
+Discovery and Conquest of America, chiefly from the Spanish Archives_.
+Published in the Original, with Translations, Illustrative Notos, Maps,
+and Biographical Sketches. By K.G. SQUIER, M.A., F.S.A., etc., etc. New
+York: Charles B. Norton. 1860.
+
+No. I. Carta dirigida al Key de Espana, por el Licenciado Dr. Don DIEGO
+GARCIA DE PALACIO, Oydor de la Real Audiencia de Guatemala, Ano 1576.
+Being a Description of the Ancient Provinces of Guazacapan, Izalco,
+Cuscatlan, and Chiquimula, in the Audiencia of Guatemala: with an
+Account of the Languages, Customs, and Religion of their Aboriginal
+Inhabitants, and a Description of the Ruins of Copan. Square 8vo. pp.
+132.
+
+This tract is the first number of a series of Rare and Original
+Documents, relating to the first settlement of America by the Spaniards,
+which Mr. Squier proposes to edit and publish. The undertaking is one of
+interest to all students of American history, and deserves a generous
+encouragement from them. Its success must depend not on the usual
+machinery of bookselling so much as on the ready support of individuals.
+
+Mr. Squier's proposed collection resembles in its scope the well-known
+"Recueil des Documents et Memoires Originaux" of M. Ternaux-Compans.
+Familiar, by long residence and longer study, as few men are or ever
+have been, with those portions of our continent of which the Spaniards
+first took possession, acquainted with their antiquities and former
+condition, and a curious investigator of their present state and
+prospects, Mr. Squier is peculiarly fitted to select and edit--with
+judgment such documents of historical interest as his unrivalled
+opportunities have enabled him to collect.
+
+The Letter of Palacio is now for the first time published in the
+original, although it was largely used by Herrera in his "Historia
+General." "To me," says Mr. Squier, "the relation has a special
+interest. I have been over a great part of the ground that was traversed
+by its author, and I am deeply impressed with the accuracy of his
+descriptions.... His memoir will always stand as one of the best
+illustrations of an interesting country, as it was at the period
+immediately succeeding the Conquest." It appears, that, under an order
+from the Crown, Palacio was deputed to visit a number of the Provinces
+of Guatemala, and to report upon them, especially in respect to the
+condition of their native inhabitants. The memoir now published relates
+chiefly to the territory comprised in the present Republic of San
+Salvador. It shows Palacio to have been an intelligent observer, and a
+kindly, well-disposed man,--not free from the superstitions of his time
+and race, but less credulous than many of his contemporaries. His
+report is full of matter of value to the historical inquirer, and of
+entertainment for the general reader. His stories of the manners of the
+people, and his accounts of the animals of the district are brief, but
+characteristic. But the most interesting part of his narrative is that
+which relates to the wonderful ruins of Copan. It is a remarkable fact,
+stated by Mr. Squier in his Prefatory Note, that these ruins do not
+appear to have been noticed by any of the chroniclers of the country
+down to the time of Fuentes, who wrote in 1689, more than one hundred
+years after Palacio. It was not, indeed, until 1841, when Stephens
+published his account of them, that an accurate description was given
+to the world of these most interesting and most puzzling remains of a
+forgotten people and an unknown antiquity. Even in Palacio's time, only
+vague traditions existed regarding them. His account has a permanent
+value from being the earliest known, and as proving that within fifty
+years after the Spanish Conquest they presented very nearly the same
+appearance as at present.
+
+Mr. Squier has enriched Talacio's Letter with numerous and important
+notes. He claims a lenient judgment of his translation, which is printed
+side by side with the original, on account of the obscurities of the
+manuscript, and the uncertainty as to the meaning of some of the
+writer's expressions. But, allowing for these difficulties, we regret
+that Mr. Squier did not bestow a little more pains on this part of his
+work. He has fallen into some slight errors, which might easily have
+been corrected, and he has, as we think, lost something of the spirit of
+the original by too free a version. The book is one which in typographic
+beauty would meet the demands of the most exacting bibliographer. We
+regret the more that the pages are disfigured with misprints, many of
+which are left uncorrected in the long list of _Errata_, while others
+occur in the very list itself.
+
+
+1. _Le Panlatinisme, Confédération Gallo-Latine et Celto-Gauloise,
+Contre-Testament de Pierre le Grand et Contre-Panslavisme_. Paris:
+Passard, Libraire-Éditeur. 1860. 8vo. pp. 260.
+
+2. _Testament de Pierre le Grand, ou Plan de Domination Européenne
+laissé par lui à ses Descendants et Successeurs au Trône de la Russie_.
+Édition suivie de Notes et de Pièces Justificatives. Paris: Passard.
+1860. 8vo.
+
+We seem to be living in an age of pamphleteers. More than ever, both in
+France and Germany, are pamphlets the order of the day. In Paris
+alone, the year 1860 has given birth to hundreds of these writings of
+circumstance,--political squibs, visionary remodellings of European
+states,--vying with each other for ephemeral celebrity. They fill the
+windows of the book-shops, and are spread by scores along the stands
+in the numerous galleries which the Parisian population throngs of
+evenings. Those issued in the early part of the year have gradually
+descended from the rank of new publications, and may be found on
+every quay, spread out, for a few _centimes_, side by side with
+old weather-beaten books, odd volumes, refuse of libraries, which
+book-lovers daily finger through in the hope of finding some pearl, some
+rarity, in the worthless mass.
+
+Thus we have seen the interminable Rhine question discussed in its every
+possible phase,--still more that of Italy. Between come the Druses, the
+Orient, the Turks. Then Italy again, Garibaldi, Naples, the Pope.
+
+To state in general terms the tendency of these rockets of literature,
+or to arrive at the spirit which seems to pervade them, is not quite so
+easy as it would seem. They are written by authors of all party-colors,
+within certain impassable limits prescribed by the parental restrictions
+of Government. Still it seems to be the old story of soothing; and many
+a conclusion--as where England is smoothed down by a few flatteries and
+told that her most natural ally is France, or where Germany is heartily
+assured that she has nothing to fear, that all the changes proposed are
+for the good of the Teutonic race--reminds us very strongly of that
+widely known verse in child-literature,--
+
+  "Will you walk into my parlor," etc.
+
+We have before us, however, a work which, from its size and from
+the labor bestowed upon it, deserves to be ranked above the various
+productions that have scarcely called forth more than a passing notice
+in the daily press.
+
+The pamphlet named at the head of this article, and which is but a
+complement to the volume, is one of the numerous reconstructions and
+rearrangements of European limits made in the quiet of the study. Were
+it this alone, it would deserve but little attention. It is more. The
+author bases his theories upon other than political reasons, having
+labored hard to establish many debatable points of Ethnography in the
+interesting notes appended to the work, and which form by far the most
+remarkable part of it. So we have the question of Races discussed at
+full length. There is certainly some philological legerdemain, as may be
+seen from some of the convenient conclusions of the author concerning
+the Celts and the Gauls. He is full of such paragraphs as this in his
+argumentation:--
+
+  "It has seemed to us proved, that the names,
+  Volces, Volsks, Bolgs, Belgs, Belgians, Welsh,
+  Welchs, Waels, Wuelchs or Walchs, Walls,
+  Walloons, Valais, Valois, Vlaks, Wallachians,
+  Galatians, Galtachs, Galls, Gaels or Caels,
+  Gaelic, Galot, Gallegos, Gaul, and even Ola,
+  Olatz, and Vallus, were but one and the same
+  word under different forms."
+
+The point to be established at all hazards is, that the French,
+Spaniards, Portuguese, Italians, Belgians, and even the English and
+Greeks, form but one great family, of one hundred and fifteen million
+individuals,--the Gallo-Roman. This Neo-Latin world the author would
+wish combined in one grand confederation, like the States of America.
+Hence his use of the term _Panlatinism_, in opposition to the so much
+debated one of _Panslavism_. The merit of the work under consideration
+is, that, though decidedly French in all its views, it condenses in
+a few paragraphs the present mooted question of race. The idea of
+Panslavism, or the uniting of eighty millions of Sclavonians under one
+banner, was, in its origin, republican and federal, whatever it may
+have become since. Few words have acquired more diametrically opposite
+meanings, according as they were uttered by radical or conservative.
+Hence the confusion, hence the many strange phrases to be met with in
+the periodical press. The author of the present work has sought to throw
+some light on this important point. Leaving aside his prophetic fears of
+future shocks with American or Asiatic powers as visionary, we can say
+for the work that it presents in a clear light the question of races
+as referring to European politics. The notes are good, and no research
+seems to have been spared by the writer to establish the position he
+maintains.
+
+
+1. _Ancient Danish Ballads._ Translated from the Originals, by R.C.
+ALEXANDER PRIOR, M.D. London: Williams & Norgate. Leipzig: R. Hartmann.
+1860, 3 vols. pp. lx., 400, 468, 500.
+
+2. _Edinburgh Papers._ By ROBERT CHAMBERS, F.R.S.E., etc., etc. _The
+Romantic Scottish Ballads, their Epoch and Authorship._ W. & R.
+Chambers: London and Edinburgh. 1859. pp. 40.
+
+3. _The Romantic Scottish Ballads, and the Lady Wardlaw Heresy._ By
+NORVAL CLYNE. Aberdeen: A. Brown & Co. 1859. pp. 49.
+
+The expectations raised by the title of Dr. Prior's volumes are in a
+great measure disappointed by their contents. The book is of value only
+because it gives for the first time, in English, the substance of a
+large number of Danish ballads, and points out the relations between
+them and similar productions in other languages. Of the spirit and life
+of these remarkable poems a person hitherto unfamiliar with them would
+find but scanty indication in Dr. Prior's versions. He has merely done
+them into English in a somewhat mechanical way, and one scarcely gets
+a better notion of the more imaginative ones in his bald reproductions
+than of the "Iliad" from the analysis of that poem in the "Epistolae
+Obscurorum Virorum." It seems to require almost as peculiar powers to
+translate an old ballad as to write a new one.
+
+Dr. Prior complains of Jamieson, that his versions from the Danish are
+done in a broad Scotch dialect, almost as unintelligible to ordinary
+readers as the language of which they profess to give the meaning. But
+if any one compare Jamieson's rendering of "The Buried Mother" with Dr.
+Prior's, (Prior, vol. i. p. 368,) he will, we think, see cause to regret
+that Jamieson did not do what Dr. Prior has attempted, and that he has
+not left us a greater number of translations equally good. Jamieson's
+fault was not so much his broad Scotch as his over-fondness for
+archaisms, sometimes of mere spelling, which give rise to a needless
+obscurity. We think that he was theoretically right; but he should not
+have pushed his theory to the extent of puzzling the reader, where his
+aim was to give only that air of strangeness which allures the fancy. As
+respects ballads dealing with the supernatural, Jamieson's notion of
+the duty of a translator was certainly the true one. There is something
+almost ludicrous in a ghost talking the ordinary conversational language
+of every-day life, which might, to be sure, serve very well for some
+of Jung Stilling's spirits in bottle-green hunting-coats with brass
+buttons, but hardly for the majesty of buried Denmark. Dr. Prior may
+claim that his renderings are more literal; but it is the vice of
+literal translation, that the phrases of one language, if exactly
+reproduced in another, while they may have the same sense, convey a
+wholly different impression to the imagination. It is to such cases that
+the Italian proverb, _Tradutiore traditore_, applies. Dryden, citing
+approvingly Denham's verses to Fanshawe,
+
+  "They but preserve his ashes, thou his flame,
+  True to his sense, but truer to his fame,"
+
+says, with his usual pithiness, "Too faithfully is indeed pedantically."
+
+In Dr. Prior's version of the "The Buried Mother" we find a case
+precisely in point. The Stepmother says to the poor Orphans,--
+
+  "In blind-house shall ye lie all night."
+
+Jamieson gives it,--
+
+  "Says, 'Ye sall ligg i' the mirk all night.'"
+
+Now, the object in all translations of ballad-poetry being to reproduce
+simple and downright phrases with equal simplicity and force, to give
+us the same effects and not the same words, we vastly prefer Jamieson's
+verse to Dr. Prior's, in spite of the affectation of _ligg_ for _lie_.
+If _blind-house_ be the equivalent for _dark_ in the original, Dr.
+Prior should have told us so in a note, giving us the stronger (because
+simpler) English word in the text. He might as well write _hand-shoe_
+for _glove_, in a translation from the German. Elsewhere Jamieson errs
+in preferring _groff_ to _great_, and the more that _groff_ means more
+properly _coarse_ than _large_.
+
+The following couplet is also from Dr. Prior's translation of this
+ballad:--
+
+  "They cried one evening till the sound
+  Their mother heard beneath the ground."
+
+Jamieson has it,--
+
+  "'Twas lang i' the night, and the bairnies
+  grat [cried],
+  Their mither she under the mools [mould]
+  heard that."
+
+Again, Dr. Prior gives us,--
+
+  "Her eldest daughter then she sped
+  To fetch Child Dyring out of bed";
+
+instead of Jamieson's--
+
+  "Till her eldest dochter syne [then] said she,
+  'Ye bid Child Dyring come here to me.'"
+
+And, still worse,--
+
+  "Out from their chest she stretch'd her bones
+  And rent her way through earth and stones";
+
+where Jamieson is not only more literal, but more forcible,--
+
+  "Wi' her banes sae stark a bowt she gae
+  Hath riven both wall and marble gray."
+
+The original is better than either,--
+
+  "She upward heaved her mighty bones
+  And rived both wall and gray marble-stones."
+
+Jamieson had the true instinct of a translator, though his own verses
+defy the stanchest reader; and, reasoning by analogy, Dr. Prior's
+translations are so bad that he ought to be capable of very good
+original poetry.
+
+However, with all its defects, Dr. Prior's book is of value for the
+information it gives. Under the dead ribs of his translations the reader
+familiar with old ballads can create a life for himself, and can form
+some conception of the spirit and strength of the originals.
+
+Mr. Chambers's pamphlet is one that we should hardly have expected from
+the editor of the best collection of ballads in the language before
+that of Professor Child. Directly in the teeth of all probability, he
+attributes the bulk of the _romantic_ Scottish ballads to Lady Wardlaw,
+who wrote "Hardyknute." This is one of those theories (like that of Lord
+Bacon being the author of Shakspeare's plays) which cannot be argued,
+but which every one familiar with the subject challenges peremptorily.
+Without going very deeply into the matter, Mr. Norval Clyne has put in
+a clever plea in arrest of judgment. The truth is, that, in the present
+state of our knowledge, "Hardyknute" could not pass muster as an antique
+better than "Vortigern," or the poems of "Master Rowley"; and the notion
+that Lady Wardlaw could have written "Sir Patrick Spens" will not hold
+water better than a sieve, when we consider how hopelessly inferior are
+the imitations of old ballads written by Scott, with fifty times her
+familiarity with the originals, and a man of genius besides.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Miss Gilbert's Career_. An American Story. By J.G. HOLLAND. New York:
+Charles Scribner.
+
+There is scarcely a more hazardous experiment for any novelist than "a
+novel with a purpose." If the moral does not run away with the story, it
+is in most cases only because the author's lucky star has made the moral
+too feeble, in spite of his efforts, to do that or anything else,--in
+other words, because his book has fortunately defeated its own object.
+That any clever girl will be kept from the perilous paths of authorship
+by the warnings, however strongly inculcated, of any novel whatever, we
+are not prepared to assert: we venture to say no one will be deterred by
+the history of Miss Fanny Gilbert. If a woman's happiness is to be found
+in love, and not in fame, the question nevertheless recurs,--What is she
+to do before the love comes? Our author only shows that his heroine's
+restless unhappiness was owing to her having to wait for her heart to be
+awakened: to prove what he desires to prove, he should demonstrate that
+it was owing to her having adopted authorship during the time of her
+waiting. During that time, Miss Fanny Gilbert wrote novels, and was
+unhappy: would she have been happy, if, in the interval, she had
+chronicled small beer? And even admitting that her authorship caused her
+unhappiness, we can scarcely believe Dr. Holland prepared to say, after
+having allowed his heroine a real talent, as one condition of the
+problem, that she ought to have concealed that talent in the decorous
+napkin of silence.
+
+What the moral loses the story gains. Our author has lost nothing of
+that genuine love of Nature, of that quick perception of the comic
+element in men and things, of that delightful freshness and liveliness,
+which threw such a charm about the former writings of Timothy Titcomb.
+No story can be pronounced a failure which has vivacity and interest;
+and the volume before us adds to vivacity and interest vigorous sketches
+of character and scenery, droll conversation and incidents, a frequent
+and kindly humor, and, underlying all, a true, earnest purpose, which
+claims not only approval for the author, but respect for the man.
+
+Dr. Holland describes admirably whatever he has himself seen.
+Unfortunately, he has not seen his hero or his heroine. About Arthur
+Blague there is nothing real or distinctive. There is a life and reality
+in many scenes of his experience; but the central figure of the group
+stands conventional and inanimate,--the ordinary walking gentleman of
+the stage,--the stereo-typed hero of the novel,--hero only by virtue of
+his finally marrying the heroine. The one merit of the delineation--that
+it is a portrait of a delicate Christian gentleman--is sadly marred by
+the vulgar smartness of Arthur's repartees with the scampish New-Yorker.
+A victory in such a contest was by no means necessary to vindicate the
+hero's superiority; and if he so far forgot himself as to engage at all
+in the degrading warfare, a defeat would have been more creditable. His
+retorts are undeniably smart; but "smartness" is the attribute of a
+"fellow," not of a "gentleman."
+
+Miss Fanny Gilbert is a warm-hearted, high-spirited girl, clever and
+ambitious, and disposed at first to look contemptuously on poor Arthur,
+whose humble labors appear in most dingy and sordid colors, when
+contrasted with the fair Fanny's gorgeous dreams. She is not a very
+fascinating nor a very real heroine; but she is better than most of our
+heroines, and some of her experiences are very pleasantly told.
+
+Arthur's miserly employer is very good, and his shrewd friend Cheek is
+capitally drawn. It was a peculiarly happy thought to make Cheek into
+a railroad-conductor, and finally into a "gentlemanly and efficient"
+superintendent. Nothing else would have suited his character half so
+well. The business-like religionists, Moustache and Breastpin, are not
+so good as the author meant to have them. The young bookseller is very
+well done, and Dr. Gilbert very natural and lifelike. The story of the
+Doctor's awakened interest in his daughter's success, and of his journey
+to New York, is very well told. We like especially the lesson which
+the triumphant authoress, in the full glory of her fame, receives,
+on finding that her father sets a higher value on his son's least
+achievement than on his daughter's highest success,--that, however a
+woman may deserve a man's place, the world will never award it to her.
+It would have been more effective, however, if Dr. Holland had not been
+quite so anxious that no one should fail to perceive the moral,--if
+he had had a little more confidence in his readers. But we can give
+unqualified praise to the scene between Miss Gilbert and the little
+crippled boy, which is one of the most beautiful and touching pictures
+ever yet presented.
+
+It is a real satisfaction to find a book which one may venture to
+criticize fearlessly, knowing that it will bear the test,--especially
+at present, when one needs be as chary of trying any book fairly as
+Don Quixote was of proving his unlucky helmet. And an additional
+satisfaction is caused by the fact, that the book, not only in origin,
+but in essence, is American from cover to cover.
+
+
+
+
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+RECEIVED BY THE EDITORS OF THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY.
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+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ATLANTIC MONTHLY VOLUME 7, NO. 39,
+JANUARY, 1861***
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January,
+1861, by Various
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: February 16, 2004  [eBook #11118]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: US-ASCII
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ATLANTIC MONTHLY VOLUME 7, NO. 39,
+JANUARY, 1861***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Joshua Hutchinson, Tonya Allen, and Project Gutenberg
+Distributed Proofreaders
+
+
+
+THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY.
+
+A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS.
+
+VOL. VII.--JANUARY, 1861.--NO. XXXIX.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+WASHINGTON CITY.
+
+
+Washington is the paradise of paradoxes,--a city of magnificent
+distances, but of still more magnificent discrepancies. Anything may be
+affirmed of it, everything denied. What it seems to be it is not; and
+although it is getting to be what it never was, it must always remain
+what it now is. It might be called a city, if it were not alternately
+populous and uninhabited; and it would be a wide-spread village, if it
+were not a collection of hospitals for decayed or callow politicians. It
+is the hybernating-place of fashion, of intelligence, of vice,--a resort
+without the attractions of waters either mineral or salt, where there is
+no bathing and no springs, but drinking in abundance and gambling in
+any quantity. Defenceless, as regards walls, redoubts, moats, or other
+fortifications, it is nevertheless the Sevastopol of the Republic,
+against which the allied army of Contractors and Claim-Agents
+incessantly lay siege. It is a great, little, splendid, mean,
+extravagant, poverty-stricken barrack for soldiers of fortune and
+votaries of folly.
+
+Scattered helter-skelter over an immense surface, cut up into scalene
+triangles, the oddity of its plan makes Washington a succession of
+surprises which never fail to vex and astonish the stranger, be he ever
+so highly endowed as to the phrenological bump of locality. Depending
+upon the hap-hazard start the ignoramus may chance to make, any
+particular house or street is either nearer at hand or farther off than
+the ordinary human mind finds it agreeable to believe. The first duty of
+the new-comer is to teach his nether extremities to avoid instinctively
+the hypothenuse of the street-triangulation, and the last lesson the
+resident fails to learn is which of the shortcuts from point to point
+is the least lengthy. Beyond a doubt, the corners of the streets were
+constructed upon a cold and brutal calculation of the greatest possible
+amount of oral sin which disappointed haste and irritated anxiety are
+capable of committing; nor is any relief to the tendency to profanity
+thus engendered afforded by the inexcusable nomenclature of the streets
+and avenues,--a nomenclature in which the resources of the alphabet, the
+arithmetic, the names of all the States of the Union, and the Presidents
+as well, are exhausted with the most unsystematic profligacy. A man not
+gifted with supernatural acuteness, in striving to get from Brown's
+Hotel to the General Post-Office, turns a corner and suddenly finds
+himself nowhere, simply because he is everywhere,--being at the instant
+upon three separate streets and two distinct avenues. And, as a further
+consequence of the scalene arrangement of things, it happens that the
+stranger in Washington, however civic his birth and education may have
+been, is always unconsciously performing those military evolutions
+styled marching to the right or left oblique,--acquiring thereby, it is
+said, that obliquity of the moral vision--which sooner or later afflicts
+every human being who inhabits this strange, lop-sided city-village.
+
+So queer, indeed, is Washington City in every aspect, that one
+newly impressed by its incongruities is compelled to regard Swift's
+description of Lilliputia and Sydney Smith's account of Australia as
+poor attempts at fun. For, leaving out of view the pigmies of the former
+place, whose like we know is never found in Congress, what is there in
+that Australian bird with the voice of a jackass to excite the feeblest
+interest in the mind of a man who has listened to the debates on Kansas?
+or what marvel is an amphibian with the bill of a duck to him who has
+gazed aghast at the intricate anatomy of the bill of English? It is true
+that the ignorant Antipodes, with a total disregard of all theories of
+projectiles, throw their boomerangs behind their backs in order to kill
+an animal that stands or runs before their faces, or skim them along
+the ground when they would destroy an object flying overhead. And these
+feats seem curious. But an accomplished "Constitutional Adviser" can
+perform feats far more surprising with a few lumps of coal or a number
+of ships-knees, which are but boomerangs of a larger growth. Another has
+invented the deadliest of political missiles, (in their recoil,) shaped
+like mules and dismantled forts, while a third has demolished the
+Treasury with a simple miscalculation. Still more astonishing are the
+performances of an eminent functionary who encourages polygamy by
+intimidation, purchases redress for national insult by intercepting his
+armies and fleets with an apology in the mouth of a Commissioner, and
+elevates the Republic in the eyes of mankind by conquering at Ostend
+even less than he has lost at the Executive Mansion.
+
+In truth, the list of Washington anomalies is so extensive and so
+various, that no writer with a proper regard for his own reputation or
+his readers' credulity would dare enumerate them one by one. Without
+material injury to the common understanding, a few may be mentioned; but
+respect for public opinion would urge that the enormous whole be summed
+up in the comparatively safe and respectful assertion, that the one only
+absolutely certain thing in Washington is the absence of everything
+that is at all permanent. The following are some of the more obnoxious
+astonishments of the place.
+
+Traversing a rocky prairie inflated with hacks, you arrive late in the
+afternoon at a curbed boundary, too fatigued in body and too suffocated
+with dust to resent the insult to your common-sense implied in the
+announcement that you have merely crossed what is called an Avenue.
+Recovered from your fatigue, you ascend the steps of a marble palace,
+and enter but to find it garrisoned by shabby regiments armed with
+quills and steel pens. The cells they inhabit are gloomy as dungeons,
+but furnished like parlors. Their business is to keep everybody's
+accounts but their own. They are of all ages, but of a uniformly
+dejected aspect. Do not underrate their value. Mr. Bulwer has said,
+that, in the hands of men entirely great, the pen is mightier than the
+sword. Suffer yourself to be astonished at their numbers, but permit
+yourself to withdraw from their vicinity without questioning too closely
+their present utility or future destination. No personal affront to the
+public or the nineteenth century is intended by the superfluity of their
+numbers or the inadequacy of their capacities. Their rapid increase is
+attributable not to any incestuous breeding in-and-in among themselves,
+but to a violent seduction of the President and the Heads of Department
+by importunate Congressmen; and you may rest assured that this criminal
+multiplication fills nobody with half so much righteous indignation and
+virtuous sorrow as the clerks themselves. Emerging from the palace of
+quill-drivers, a new surprise awaits you. The palace is surmounted by
+what appear to be gigantic masts and booms, economically, but strongly
+rigged, and without any sails. In the distance, you see other palaces
+rigged in the same manner. The effect of this spectacle is painful in
+the extreme. Standing dry-shod as the Israelites were while crossing the
+Red Sea, you nevertheless seem to be in the midst of a small fleet of
+unaccountable sloops of the Saurian period. You question whether these
+are not the fabulous "Ships of State" so often mentioned in the elegant
+oratory of your country. You observe that these ships are anchored in an
+ocean of pavement, and your no longer trustworthy eyes search vainly
+for their helms. The nearest approach to a rudder is a chimney or an
+unfinished pillar; the closest resemblance to a pilot is a hod-carrying
+workman clambering up a gangway. Dismissing the nautical hypothesis,
+your next effort to relieve your perplexity results in the conjecture
+that the prodigious masts and booms may be nothing more than curious
+gibbets, the cross-pieces to which, conforming rigidly to the Washington
+rule of contrariety, are fastened to the bottom instead of the top of
+the upright. Your theory is, that the destinies of the nation are to be
+hanged on these monstrous gibbets, and you wonder whether the laws of
+gravitation will be complaisant enough to turn upside down for the
+accommodation of the hangman, whoever he may be. It is not without
+pain that you are forced at last to the commonplace belief that these
+remarkable mountings of the Public Buildings are neither masts nor
+booms, but simply derricks,--mechanical contrivances for the lifting of
+very heavy weights. It is some consolation, however, to be told that
+the weakness of these derricks has never been proved by the endeavor
+to elevate by means of them the moral character of the inhabitants of
+Washington. Content yourself, after a reasonable delay for natural
+wonderment, to leave the strange scene. This shipping-like aspect of the
+incomplete Departments is only a nice architectural tribute to the fact
+that the population of Washington is a floating population. This you
+will not be long in finding out. The oldest inhabitants are here to-day
+and gone tomorrow, as punctually, if not as poetically, as the Arabs of
+Mr. Longfellow. A few remain,--parasitic growths, clinging tenaciously
+to the old haunts. Like tartar on the teeth, they are proof against the
+hardest rubs of the tooth-brush of Fortune.
+
+As with the people, so with the houses. Though they retain their
+positions, seldom abandoning the ground on which they were originally
+built, they change almost hourly their appearance and their
+uses,--insomuch that the very solids of the city seem fluid, and even
+the stables are mutable,--the horse-house of last week being an office
+for the sale of patents, or periodicals, or lottery-tickets, this week,
+with every probability of becoming an oyster-cellar, a billiard-saloon,
+a cigar-store, a barber's shop, a bar-room, or a faro-bank, next week.
+And here is another astonishment. You will observe that the palatial
+museums for the temporary preservation of fossil or fungous penmen join
+walls, virtually, with habitations whose architecture would reflect
+no credit on the most curious hamlet in tide-water Virginia. To your
+amazement, you learn that all these houses, thousands in number, are
+boarding-houses. Of course, where everybody is a stranger, nobody
+keeps house. It would be pardonable to suppose, that, out of so many
+boarding-houses, some would be in reality what they are in name. Nothing
+can be farther from the fact. These houses contain apartments more or
+less cheerless and badly furnished, according to the price (always
+exorbitant, however small it may be) demanded for them, and are devoted
+exclusively to the storage of empty bottles and demijohns, to large
+boxes of vegetable- and flower-seeds, to great piles of books, speeches,
+and documents not yet directed to people who will never read them, and
+to an abominable odor of boiling cabbages. This odor steals in from
+a number of pitch-dark tunnels and shafts, misnamed passages and
+staircases, in which there are more books, documents, and speeches,
+other boxes of seeds, and a still stronger odor of cabbages. The piles
+of books are traps set here for the benefit of the setters of broken
+legs and the patchers of skinless shins, and the noisome odors are
+propagated for the advantage of gentlemen who treat diseases of the
+larynx and lungs.
+
+It would appear, then, that the so-called boarding-houses are, in point
+of fact, private gift-book stores, or rather, commission-houses for the
+receiving and forwarding of a profusion of undesirable documents and
+vegetations. You may view them also in the light of establishments for
+the manufacture and distribution of domestic perfumery, payment for
+which is never exacted at the moment of its involuntary purchase, but is
+left to be collected by a doctor,--who calls upon you during the winter,
+levies on you with a lancet, and distrains upon your viscera with a
+compound cathartic pill.
+
+It is claimed, that, in addition to the victims who pay egregious rents
+for boarding-house beds in order that they may have a place to store
+their documents and demi-johns, there are other permanent occupants of
+these houses. As, for example, Irish chambermaids, who subtract a few
+moments from the morning half-hour given to drinking the remnants of
+your whiskey, and devote them to cleaning up your room. Also a very
+strange being, peculiar to Washington boarding-houses, who is never
+visible at any time, and is only heard stumbling up-stairs about four
+o'clock in the morning. Also beldames of incalculable antiquity,--a
+regular allowance of one to each boarding-house,--who flit noiselessly
+and unceasingly about the passages and up and down the stairways,
+admonishing you of their presence by a ghostly sniffle, which always
+frightens you, and prevents you from running into them and knocking them
+down. For these people, it is believed, a table is set in the houses
+where the boarders proper flatter their acquaintances that they sleep.
+It must be so, for the entire male population is constantly eating in
+the oyster-cellars. Indeed, if ocular evidence may be relied on, the
+best energies of the metropolis are given to the incessant consumption
+of "half a dozen raw," or "four fried and a glass of ale." The bar-rooms
+and eating-houses are always full or in the act of becoming full. By a
+fatality so unerring that it has ceased to be wonderful, it happens that
+you can never enter a Washington restaurant and find it partially empty,
+without being instantly followed by a dozen or two of bipeds as hungry
+and thirsty as yourself, who crowd up to the bar and destroy half the
+comfort you derive from your lunch or your toddy.
+
+But, although, everybody is forever eating oysters and drinking ale in
+myriads of subterranean holes and corners, nobody fails to eat at other
+places more surprising and original than any you have yet seen. In all
+other cities, people eat at home or at a hotel or an eating-house; in
+Washington they eat at bank. But they do not eat money,--at least, not
+in the form of bullion, or specie, or notes. These Washington banks,
+unlike those of London, Paris, and New York, are open mainly at night
+and all night long, are situated invariably in the second story, guarded
+as jealously as any seraglio, and admit nobody but strangers,--that is
+to say, everybody in Washington. This is singular. Still more singular
+is the fact, that the best food, served in the most exquisite manner,
+and (with sometimes a slight variation) the choicest wines and cigars,
+may be had at these banks free of cost, except to those who choose
+voluntarily to remunerate the banker by purchasing a commodity as costly
+and almost as worthless as the articles sold at ladies' fairs,--upon
+which principle, indeed, the Washington banks are conducted. The
+commodity alluded to is in the form of small discs of ivory, called
+"chips" or "cheeks" or "shad" or "skad," and the price varies from
+twenty-five cents to a hundred dollars per "skad."
+
+It is expected that every person who opens an account at bank by eating
+a supper there shall buy a number of "shad," but not with the view of
+taking them home to show to his wife and children. Yet it is not an
+uncommon thing for persons of a stingy and ungrateful disposition to
+spend most of their time in these benevolent institutions without ever
+spending so much as a dollar for "shad," but eating, drinking, and
+smoking, and particularly drinking, to the best of their ability. This
+reprehensible practice is known familiarly in Washington as "bucking
+ag'inst the sideboard," and is thought by some to be the safest mode of
+doing business at bank.
+
+The presiding officer is never called President. He is called
+"Dealer,"--perhaps from the circumstance of his dealing in ivory,--and
+is not looked up to and worshipped as the influential man of
+banking-houses is generally. On. the contrary, he is for the most part
+condemned by his best customers, whose heart's desire and prayer are to
+break his bank and ruin him utterly.
+
+Seeing the multitude of boarding-houses, oyster-cellars, and
+ivory-banks, you may suppose there are no hotels in Washington. You are
+mistaken. There are plenty of hotels, many of them got up on the scale
+of magnificent distances that prevails everywhere, and somewhat on the
+maritime plan of the Departments. Outwardly, they look like colossal
+docks, erected for the benefit of hacks, large fleets of which you will
+always find moored under their lee, safe from the monsoon that prevails
+on the open sea of the Avenue. Inwardly, they are labyrinths, through
+whose gloomy mazes it is impossible to thread your way without the
+assistance of an Ariadne's clue in the shape of an Irishman panting
+under a trunk. So obscure and involved are the hotel-interiors, that it
+would be madness for a stranger to venture in search of his room without
+the guidance of some one far more familiar with the devious course of
+the narrow clearings through the forest of apartments than the landlord
+himself. Now and then a reckless and adventurous proprietor undertakes
+to make a day's journey alone through his establishment. He is never
+heard of afterwards,--or, if found, is discovered in a remote angle or
+loft, in a state of insensibility from bewilderment and starvation.
+If it were not for an occasional negro, who, instigated by charitable
+motives or love of money, slouches about from room to room with an empty
+coal-scuttle as an excuse for his intrusions, a gentleman stopping at a
+Washington hotel would be doomed to certain death. In fact, the lives of
+all the guests hang upon a thread, or rather, a wire; for, if the bell
+should fail to answer, there would be no earthly chance of getting into
+daylight again. It is but reasonable to suppose that the wires to many
+rooms have been broken in times past, and it is well known in Washington
+that these rooms are now tenanted by skeletons of hapless travellers
+whose relatives and friends never doubted that they had been kidnapped
+or had gone down in the Arctic.
+
+The differential calculus by which all Washington is computed obtains at
+the hotels as elsewhere, with this peculiarity,--that the differences
+are infinitely great, instead of infinitely small. While the fronts are
+very fine, showy, and youthful as the Lecompton Constitution, the rears
+are coarse, common, and old as the Missouri Compromise. The furniture in
+the rooms that look upon Pennsylvania Avenue is as fresh as the dogma
+of Squatter Sovereignty; that in all other rooms dates back to the
+Ordinance of '87. Some of the apartments exhibit a glaring splendor; the
+rest show beds, bureaus, and washstands which hard and long usage has
+polished to a sort of newness. Specimens of ancient pottery found on
+these washstands are now in the British Museum, and are reckoned among
+the finest of Layard's collections at Nineveh.
+
+The dining rooms are admirable examples of magnificent distance. The
+room is long, the tables are long, the kitchen is a long way off, and
+the waiters a long time going and coming. The meals are long,--so
+long that there is literally no end to them; they are eternal. It is
+customary to mark certain points in the endless route of appetite with
+mile-stones named breakfast, dinner, and supper; but these points have
+no more positive existence than the imaginary lines and angles of the
+geometrician. Breakfast runs entirely through dinner into supper, and
+dinner ends with coffee, the beginning of breakfast. Estimating the
+duration of dinner by the speed of an ordinary railroad-train, it is
+twenty miles from soup to fish, and fifty from turkey to nuts. But
+distance, however magnificent, does not lend enchantment to a meal. The
+wonder is that the knives and forks are not made to correspond in length
+with the repasts,--in which case the latter would be pitchforks, and the
+former John-Brown pikes.
+
+The people of Washington are as various, mixed, dissimilar, and
+contrasted as the edifices they inhabit. Within the like area, which is
+by no means a small one, the same number of dignitaries can be found
+nowhere else on the face of the globe,--nor so many characters of
+doubtful reputation. If the beggars of Dublin, the cripples of
+Constantinople, and the lepers of Damascus should assemble in
+Baden-Baden during a Congress of Kings, then Baden-Baden would resemble
+Washington. Presidents, Senators, Honorables, Judges, Generals,
+Commodores, Governors, and the Ex's of all these, congregate here as
+thick as pick-pockets at a horse-race or women at a wedding in church.
+Add Ambassadors, Plenipotentiaries, Lords, Counts, Barons, Chevaliers,
+the great and small fry of the Legations, Captains, Lieutenants,
+Claim-Agents, Negroes, Perpetual-Motion-Men, Fire-Eaters, Irishmen,
+Plug-Uglies, Hoosiers, Gamblers, Californians, Mexicans, Japanese,
+Indians, and Organ-Grinders, together with females to match all
+varieties of males, and you have vague notion of the people of
+Washington.
+
+It is an axiom in physics, that a part cannot be greater than the whole;
+and it will be recollected, that, after Epistemon had his head sewed on,
+he related a tough story about the occupations of the mighty dead, and
+swore, that, in the course of his wanderings among the damned, he found
+Cicero kindling fires, Hannibal selling egg-shells, and Julius Caesar
+cleaning stoves. The story holds good in regard to the mighty personages
+in Washington, but the axiom does not. Men whose fame fills the
+land, when they are at home or spouting about the country, sink into
+insignificance when they get to Washington. The sun is but a small
+potato in the midst of the countless systems of the sidereal heavens.
+In like manner, the majestic orbs of the political firmament undergo
+a cruel lessening of diameter as they approach the Federal City. The
+greatest of men ceases to be great in the presence of hundreds of his
+peers, and the multitude of the illustrious dwindle into individual
+littleness by reason of their superabundance. And when it comes to
+occupations, it will hardly be denied that the stranger who beholds a
+Senator "coppering on the ace," or a Congressman standing in a bar-room
+with a lump of mouldy cheese in one hand and a glass of "pony whiskey"
+in the other, or a Judge of the Supreme Court wriggling an ugly woman
+through the ridiculous movements of the polka in a hotel-parlor, must
+experience sensations quite as confounding as any Epistemon felt in
+Kingdom Come.
+
+In spite of numberless receptions, levees, balls, hops, parties,
+dinners, and other reunions, there is, properly speaking, no society in
+Washington. Circles are said to exist, but, like that in the vortex of
+the whirlpool, they are incessantly changing. Divisions purely arbitrary
+may be made in any community. Hence the circles of Washington society
+may be represented sciagraphically in the following diagram.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+The Circle of the Mudsill includes Negroes, Clerks, Irish Laborers,
+Patent and other Agents, Hackmen, Faro-Dealers, Washerwomen, and
+Newspaper-Correspondents. In the Hotel Circle, the Newest Strangers,
+Harpists, Members of Congress, Concertina-Men, Provincial Judges,
+Card-Writers, College-Students, Unprotected Females, "Star" and "States"
+Boys, Stool-Pigeons, Contractors, Sellers of Toothpicks, and Beau
+Hickman, are found. The Circle of the White House embraces the
+President, the Cabinet, the Chiefs of Bureaus, the Embassies, Corcoran
+and Riggs, formerly Mr. Forney, and until recently George Sanders and
+Isaiah Rynders. The little innermost circle is intended to represent a
+select body of residents, intense exclusives, who keep aloof from the
+other circles and hold them all in equal contempt. This circle is known
+only by report; in all probability it is a myth. It is worthy of remark
+that the circles of the White House and the Hotels rise higher and sink
+lower than that of the Mudsill, but whether this is a fact or a mere
+necessity of the diagram is not known.
+
+Society, such as it is, in the metropolis, is indulgent to itself. It
+intermeddles not, asks no impertinent questions, and transacts
+its little affairs in perfect peace and quietude. Vigilant as the
+Inquisition in matters political, it is deaf and blind, but not dumb, as
+to all others. It dresses as it pleases, drinks as much as it chooses,
+eats indiscriminately, sleeps promiscuously, gets up at all hours of
+the day, and does as little work as possible. Its only trouble is that
+"incomparable grief" to which Panurge was subject, and "which at that
+time they called lack of money." In truth, the normal condition of
+Washington society is, to use a vernacular term, "busted." It is not an
+isolated complaint. Everybody is "busted." No matter what may be the
+state of a man's funds when he gets to Washington, no matter how long he
+stays or how soon he leaves, to this "busted" complexion must he come at
+last. He is in Rome; he must take the consequences. Shall he insult the
+whole city with his solvency? Certainly not. He abandons his purse and
+his conscience to the madness of the hour, and, in generous emulation of
+the prevailing recklessness and immorality, dismisses every scruple and
+squanders his last cent. Then, and not till then, does he feel himself
+truly a Washington-man, able to look anybody in the face with the serene
+pride of an equal, and without the mortification of being accused or
+even suspected of having in all the earth a dollar that he can call his
+own.
+
+Where morals are loose, piety is seldom in excess. But there are a
+half-dozen of churches in Washington, besides preaching every Sunday
+in the House of Representatives. The relative size and cost of the
+churches, as compared with the Public Buildings, indicates the true
+object of worship in Washington. Strange to say, the theatre is smaller
+than the churches. Clerical and dramatic entertainments cannot compete
+with the superior attractions of the daily rows in Congress and the
+nightly orgies at the faro-banks. Heaven is regarded as another
+Chihuahua or Sonora, occupied at present by unfriendly Camanches, but
+destined to be annexed some day. In the mean time, a very important
+election is to come off in Connecticut or Pennsylvania. That must be
+attended to immediately. Such is piety in Washington.
+
+The list of the unique prodigies of Washington is without limit. But
+marvels heaped together cease to be marvellous, and of all places in
+the world a museum is the most tiresome. So, amid the whirl and roar
+of winter-life in Washington, when one has no time to read, write, or
+think, and scarcely time to eat, drink, and sleep, when the days fly by
+like hours, and the brain reels under the excitement of the protracted
+debauch, life becomes an intolerable bore. Yet the place has an intense
+fascination for those who suffer most acutely from the _tedium vitae_ to
+which every one is more or less a prey; and men and women who have lived
+in Washington are seldom contented elsewhere. The moths return to the
+flaming candle until they are consumed.
+
+In conclusion, it must be admitted that Washington is the Elysium of
+oddities, the Limbo of absurdities, an imbroglio of ludicrous anomalies.
+Planned on a scale of surpassing grandeur, its architectural execution
+is almost contemptible. Blessed with the name of the purest of men, it
+has the reputation of Sodom. The seat of the law-making power, it is the
+centre of violence and disorder which disturb the peace and harmony
+of the whole Republic,--the chosen resort for duelling, clandestine
+marriages, and the most stupendous thefts. It is a city without commerce
+and without manufactures; or rather, its commerce is illicit, and its
+manufacturers are newspaper-correspondents, who weave tissues of fiction
+out of the warp of rumor and the web of prevarication. The site of the
+United States Treasury, it is the home of everything but affluence. Its
+public buildings are splendid, its private dwellings generally squalid.
+The houses are low, the rents high; the streets are broad, the crossings
+narrow; the hacks are black, the horses white; the squares are
+triangles, except that of the Capitol, which is oval; and the water is
+so soft that it is hard to drink it, even with the admixture of alcohol.
+It has a Monument that will never be finished, a Capitol that is to have
+a dome, a Scientific Institute which does nothing but report the rise
+and fall of the thermometer, and two pieces of Equestrian Statuary
+which it would be a waste of time to criticize. It boasts a streamlet
+dignified with the name of the river Tiber, and this streamlet is of the
+size and much the appearance of a vein in a dirty man's arm. It has a
+canal, but the canal is a mud-puddle during one half the day and an
+empty ditch during the other. In spite of the labors of the Smithsonian
+Institute, it has no particular weather. It has the climates of all
+parts of the habitable globe. It rains, hails, snows, blows, freezes,
+and melts in Washington, all in the space of twenty-four hours. After a
+fortnight of steady rain, the sun shines out, and in half an hour the
+streets are filled with clouds of dust. Property in Washington is
+exceedingly sensitive, the people alarmingly callous. The men are
+fine-looking, the women homely. The latter have plain faces, but
+magnificent busts and graceful figures. The former have an imposing
+presence and an empty pocket, a great name and a small conscience.
+Notwithstanding all these impediments and disadvantages, Washington
+is progressing rapidly. It is fast becoming a large city, but it must
+always remain a deserted village in the summer. Its destiny is that of
+the Union. It will be the greatest capital the world ever saw, or
+it will be "a parched place in the wilderness, a salt land and not
+inhabited," and "every one that passeth thereby shall be astonished and
+wag his head."
+
+
+
+
+MIDSUMMER AND MAY.
+
+
+[Concluded.]
+
+Spring at last stole placidly into summer, and Marguerite, who was
+always shivering in the house, kept the company in a whirl of out-door
+festivals.
+
+"We have not lived so, Roger," said Mrs. McLean, "since the summer when
+you went away. We all follow the caprice of this child as a ship follows
+the little compass-needle."
+
+And she made room for the child beside her in the carriage; for Mr.
+Raleigh was about driving them into town,--an exercise which had its
+particular charm for Marguerite, not only for the glimpse it afforded of
+the gay, bustling inland-city-life, but for opportunities of securing
+the reins and of occasioning panics. Lately, however, she had resigned
+the latter pleasure, and sat with quiet propriety by Mrs. McLean.
+Frequently, also, she took long drives alone or with one of the
+children, holding the reins listlessly, and ranging the highway
+unobservantly for miles around.
+
+Mrs. Purcell declared the girl was homesick; Mrs. Heath doubted if
+the climate agreed with her: she neither denied nor affirmed their
+propositions.
+
+Mr. Heath came and went from the city where her father was, without
+receiving any other notice than she would have bestowed on a peaceful
+walking-stick; his attentions to her during his visits were unequivocal;
+she accepted them as nonchalantly as from a waiter at table. On the
+occasion of his last stay, there had been a somewhat noticeable change
+in his demeanor: he wore a trifle of quite novel assurance; his supreme
+bearing was not mitigated by the restless sparkle of his eye; and in
+addressing her his compliments, he spoke as one having authority.
+
+Mrs. Laudersdale, so long and so entirely accustomed to the reception
+of homage that it cost her no more reflection than an imperial princess
+bestows on the taxes that produce her tiara, turned slowly from the
+apparent apathy thus induced on her modes of thought, passivity lost in
+a gulf of anxious speculation, while she watched the theatre of events
+with a glow, like wine in lamplight, that burned behind her dusky eyes
+till they had the steady penetration of some wild creature's. She may
+have wondered if Mr. Raleigh's former feeling were yet alive; she may
+have wondered if Marguerite had found the spell that once she found,
+herself; she may have been kept in thrall by ignorance if he had ever
+read that old confessing note of hers: whatever she thought or hoped or
+dreaded, she said nothing, and did nothing.
+
+Of all those who concerned themselves in the affair of Marguerite's
+health and spirits, Mr. Raleigh was the only one who might have solved
+their mystery. Perhaps the thought of wooing the child whose mother
+he had once loved was sufficiently repugnant to him to overcome the
+tenderness which every one was forced to feel for so beautiful a
+creation. I have not said that Marguerite was this, before, because,
+until brought into contrast with her mother, her extreme loveliness was
+too little positive to be felt; now it was the evanescent shimmer of
+pearl to the deep perpetual fire of the carbuncle. Softened, as she
+became, from her versatile cheeriness, she moved round like a moonbeam,
+and frequently had a bewildered grace, as if she knew not what to make
+of herself. Mr. Raleigh, from the moment in which he perceived that she
+no longer sought his company, retreated into his own apartments, and was
+less seen by the others than ever.
+
+Returning from the drive on the morning of Mrs. McLean's last recorded
+remark, Mr. Raleigh, who had remained to give the horses in charge to a
+servant, was about to pass, when the _tableau_ within the drawing-room
+caught his attention and altered his course. He entered, and flung his
+gloves down on a table, and threw himself on the floor beside Marguerite
+and the children. She appeared to be revisited by a ray of her old
+sunshine, and had unrolled a giant parcel of candied sweets, which their
+mother would have sacrificed on the shrine of jalap and senna, the
+purchase of a surreptitious moment, and was now dispensing the brilliant
+comestibles with much ill-subdued glee. One mouth, that had bitten off
+the head of a checkerberry chanticleer, was convulsed with the
+acidulous tickling of sweetened laughter, till the biter was bit and a
+metamorphosis into the animal of attack seemed imminent; at the hands of
+another a warrior in barley-sugar was experiencing the vernacular for
+defeat with reproving haste and gravity; and there was yet another
+little omnivorous creature that put out both hands for indiscriminate
+snatching, and made a spectacle of himself in a general plaster of
+gum-arabic-drop and brandy-smash.
+
+"Contraband?" said Mr. Raleigh.
+
+"And sweet as stolen fruit," said Marguerite. "Ursule makes the
+richest comfits, but not so innumerable as these. Mamma and I owe our
+sweet-tooth and honey-lip to bits of her concoction."
+
+"Mrs. Purcell," asked Mr. Raleigh, as that lady entered, "is this little
+banquet no seduction to you?"
+
+"What are you doing?" she replied.
+
+"Drinking honey-dew from acorns."
+
+"Laudersdale as ever!" ejaculated she, looking over his shoulder. "I
+thought you had 'no sympathy with'"----
+
+"But I 'like to see other folks take'"----
+
+"Their sweets, in this case. No, thank you," she continued, after this
+little rehearsal of the past. "What are you poisoning all this brood
+for?"
+
+"Mrs. Laudersdale eats sweetmeats; they don't poison her," remonstrated
+Katy.
+
+"Mrs. Laudersdale, my dear, is exceptional."
+
+Katy opened her eyes, as if she had been told that the object of her
+adoration was Japanese.
+
+"It is the last grain that completes the transformation, as your
+story-books have told; and one day you will see her stand, a statue
+of sugar, and melt away in the sun. To be sure, the whole air will be
+sweetened, but there will be no Mrs. Laudersdale."
+
+"For shame, Mrs. Purcell!" cried Marguerite. "You're not sweet-tempered,
+or you'd like sweet dainties yourself. Here are nuts swathed in syrup;
+you'll have none of them? Here are health and slumber and idle dreams
+in a chocolate-drop. Not a chocolate? Here are dates; if you wouldn't
+choose the things in themselves, truly you would for their associations?
+See, when you take up one, what a picture follows it: the plum that has
+swung at the top of a palm and crowded into itself the glow of those
+fierce noon-suns; it has been tossed by the sirocco, it has been steeped
+in reeking dew; there was always stretched above it the blue intense
+tent of a heaven full of light,--always below and around, long level
+reaches of hot shining sand; the phantoms of waning desert moons have
+hovered over it, swarthy Arab chiefs have encamped under it; it
+has threaded the narrow streets of Damascus--that city the most
+beautiful--on the backs of gaunt gray dromedaries; it has crossed the
+seas,--and all for you, if you take it, this product of desert freedom,
+torrid winds, and fervid suns!"
+
+"I might swallow the date," said Mrs. Purcell, "but Africa would choke
+me."
+
+Mr. Raleigh had remained silent for some time, watching Marguerite as
+she talked. It seemed to him that his youth was returning; he forgot his
+resolves, his desires, and became aware of nothing in the world but her
+voice. Just before she concluded, she grew conscious of his gaze, and
+almost at once ceased speaking; her eyes fell a moment to meet it, and
+then she would have flashed them aside, but that it was impossible;
+lucid lakes of light, they met his own; she was forced to continue it,
+to return it, to forget all, as he was forgetting, in that long look.
+
+"What is this?" said Mrs. Purcell, stooping to pick up a trifle on the
+matting.
+
+"_C'est a moi!_" cried Marguerite, springing up suddenly, and spilling
+all the fragments of the feast, to the evident satisfaction of the
+lately neglected guests.
+
+"Yours?" said Mrs. Purcell with coolness, still retaining it. "Why do
+you think in French?"
+
+"Because I choose!" said Marguerite, angrily. "I mean--How do you know
+that I do?"
+
+"Your exclamation, when highly excited or contemptuously indifferent, is
+always in that tongue."
+
+"Which am I now?"
+
+"Really, you should know best. Here is your bawble"; and Mrs. Purcell
+tossed it lightly into her hands, and went out.
+
+It was a sheath of old morocco. The motion loosened the clasp, and the
+contents, an ivory oval and a cushion of faded silk, fell to the floor.
+Mr. Raleigh bent and regathered them; there was nothing for Marguerite
+but to allow that he should do so. The oval had reversed in falling, so
+that he did not see it; but, glancing at her before returning it, he
+found her face and neck dyed deeper than the rose. Still reversed, he
+was about to relinquish it, when Mrs. McLean passed, and, hearing the
+scampering of little feet as they fled with booty, she also entered.
+
+"Seeing you reminds me, Roger," said she. "What do you suppose has
+become of that little miniature I told you of? I was showing it to
+Marguerite the other night, and have not seen it since. I must have
+mislaid it, and it was particularly valuable, for it was some nameless
+thing that Mrs. Heath found among her mother's trinkets, and I begged it
+of her, it was such a perfect likeness of you. Can you have seen it?"
+
+"Yes, I have it," he replied. "And haven't I as good a right to it as
+any?"
+
+He extended his arm for the case which Marguerite held, and so touching
+her hand, the touch was more lingering than it needed to be; but he
+avoided looking at her, or he would have seen that the late color had
+fled till the face was whiter than marble.
+
+"Your old propensities," said Mrs. McLean. "You always will be a boy. By
+the way, what do you think of Mary Purcell's engagement? I thought she
+would always be a girl."
+
+"Ah! McLean was speaking of it to me. Why were they not engaged before?"
+
+"Because she was not an heiress."
+
+Mr. Raleigh raised his eyebrows significantly.
+
+"He could not afford to marry any but an heiress," explained Mrs.
+McLean.
+
+Mr. Raleigh fastened the case and restored it silently.
+
+"You think that absurd? You would not marry an heiress?"
+
+Mr. Raleigh did not at once reply.
+
+"You would not, then, propose to an heiress?"
+
+"No."
+
+As this monosyllable fell from his lips, Marguerite's motion placed
+her beyond hearing. She took a few swift steps, but paused and leaned
+against the wall of the gable for support, and, placing her hand upon
+the sun-beat bricks, she felt a warmth in them which there seemed to be
+neither in herself nor in the wide summer-air.
+
+Mrs. Purcell came along, opening her parasol.
+
+"I am going to the orchard," said she; "cherries are ripe. Hear the
+robins and the bells! Do you want to come?"
+
+"No," said Marguerite.
+
+"There are bees in the orchard, too,--the very bees, for aught I
+know, that Mr. Raleigh used to watch thirteen years ago, or their
+great-grand-bees,--they stand in the same place."
+
+"You knew Mr. Raleigh thirteen years ago?" she asked, glancing up
+curiously.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Very well."
+
+"How much is very well?"
+
+"He proposed to me. Smother your anger; he didn't care for me; some one
+told him that I cared for him."
+
+"Did you?"
+
+"This is what the Inquisition calls applying the question?" asked Mrs.
+Purcell. "Nonsense, dear child! he was quite in love with somebody
+else."
+
+"And that was----?"
+
+"He supposed your mother to be a widow. Well, if you won't come, I shall
+go alone and read my 'L'Allegro' under the boughs, with breezes blowing
+between the lines. I can show you some little field-mice like unfledged
+birds, and a nest that protrudes now and then glittering eyes and cleft
+fangs."
+
+Marguerite was silent; the latter commodity was _de trop_. Mrs. Purcell
+adjusted her parasol and passed on.
+
+Here, then, was the whole affair. Marguerite pressed her hands to her
+forehead, as if fearful some of the swarming thoughts should escape;
+then she hastened up the slope behind the house, and entered and hid
+herself in the woods. Mr. Raleigh had loved her mother. Of course, then,
+there was not a shadow of doubt that her mother had loved him. Horrible
+thought! and she shook like an aspen, beneath it. For a time it seemed
+that she loathed him,--that she despised the woman who had given him
+regard. The present moment was a point of dreadful isolation; there was
+no past to remember, no future to expect; she herself was alone and
+forsaken, the whole world dark, and heaven blank. But that could not be
+forever. As she sat with her face buried in her hands, old words, old
+looks, flashed on her recollection; she comprehended what long years of
+silent suffering the one might have endured, what barren yearning the
+other; she saw how her mother's haughty calm might be the crust on a
+lava-sea; she felt what desolation must have filled Roger Raleigh's
+heart, when he found that she whom he had loved no longer lived, that he
+had cherished a lifeless ideal,--for Marguerite knew from his own lips
+that he had not met the same woman whom he had left.
+
+She started up, wondering what had led her upon this train of thought,
+why she had pursued it, and what reason she had for the pain it gave
+her. A step rustled among the distant last-year's leaves; there in the
+shadowy wood, where she did not dream of concealing her thoughts, where
+it seemed that all Nature shared her confidence, this step was like
+a finger laid on the hidden sore. She paused, a glow rushed over her
+frame, and her face grew hot with the convicting flush. Consternation,
+bitter condemnation, shame, impetuous resolve, swept over her in one
+torrent, and she saw that she had a secret which every one might touch,
+and, touching, cause to sting. She hurried onward through the wood,
+unconscious how rapidly or how far her heedless course extended. She
+sprang across gaps at which she would another time have shuddered; she
+clambered over fallen trees, penetrated thickets of tangled brier, and
+followed up the shrunken beds of streams, till suddenly the wood grew
+thin again, and she emerged upon an open space,--a long lawn, where the
+grass grew rank and tall as in deserted graveyards, and on which the
+afternoon sunshine lay with most dreary, desolate emphasis. Marguerite
+had scarcely comprehended herself before; now, as she looked out on the
+utter loneliness of the place, all joyousness, all content, seemed wiped
+from the world. She leaned against a tree where the building rose before
+her, old and forsaken, washed by rains, beaten by winds. A blind slung
+open, loose on a broken hinge; the emptiness of the house looked through
+it like a spirit. The woodbine seemed the only living thing about
+it,--the woodbine that had swung its clusters, heavy as grapes of
+Eshcol, along one wall, and, falling from support, had rioted upon the
+ground in masses of close-netted luxuriance.
+
+Standing and surveying the silent scene of former gayety, a figure
+came down the slope, crushing the grass with lingering tread, checked
+himself, and, half-reversed, surveyed it with her. Her first impulse was
+to approach, her next to retreat; by a resolution of forces she remained
+where she was. Mr. Raleigh's position prevented her from seeing the
+expression of his face; from his attitude seldom was anything to be
+divined. He turned with a motion of the arm, as if he swung off a
+burden, and met her eye. He laughed, and drew near.
+
+"I am tempted to return to that suspicion of mine when I first met you,
+Miss Marguerite," said he. "You take shape from solitude and empty air
+as easily as a Dryad steps from her tree."
+
+"There are no Dryads now," said Marguerite, sententiously.
+
+"Then you confess to being a myth?"
+
+"I confess to being tired, Mr. Raleigh."
+
+Mr. Raleigh's manner changed, at her petulance and fatigue, to the old
+air of protection, and he gave her his hand. It was pleasant to be the
+object of his care, to be with him as at first, to renew their former
+relation. She acquiesced, and walked beside him.
+
+"You have had some weary travel," he said, "and probably not more than
+half of it in the path."
+
+And she feared he would glance at the rents in her frock, forgetting
+that they were not sufficiently infrequent facts to be noticeable.
+
+"He treats me like a child," she thought. "He expects me to tear my
+dress! He forgets, that, while thirteen years were making a statue of
+her, they were making a woman of me!" And she snatched away her hand.
+
+"I have the boat below," he said, without paying attention to the
+movement. "You took the longest way round, which, you have heard, is the
+shortest way home. You have never been on the lake with me." And he was
+about to assist her in.
+
+She stepped back, hesitating.
+
+"No, no," he said. "It is very well to think of walking back, but it
+must end in thinking. You have no impetus now to send you over another
+half-dozen miles of wood-faring, no pique to sting, Io."
+
+And before she could remonstrate, she was lifted in, the oars had
+flashed twice, and there was deep water between herself and shore. She
+was in reality too much fatigued to be vexed, and she sat silently
+watching the spaces through which they glanced, and listening to the
+rhythmic dip of the oars. The soft afternoon air, with its melancholy
+sweetness and tinge of softer hue, hung round them; the water, brown and
+warm, was dimpled with the flight of myriad insects; they wound among
+the islands, a path one of them knew of old. From the shelving rocks a
+wild convolvulus drooped its twisted bells across them, a sweet-brier
+snatched at her hair in passing, a sudden elder-tree shot out its creamy
+panicles above, they ripped up drowsy beds of folded lily-blooms.
+
+Mr. Raleigh, suddenly lifting one oar, gave the boat a sharp curve and
+sent it out on the open expanse; it seemed to him that he had no right
+thus to live two lives in one. Still he wished to linger, and with now
+and then a lazy movement they slipped along. He leaned one arm on the
+upright oar, like a river-god, and from the store of boat-songs in his
+remembrance sang now and then a strain. Marguerite sat opposite and
+rested along the side, content for the moment to glide on as they were,
+without a reference to the past in her thought, without a dream of the
+future. Peach-bloom fell on the air, warmed all objects into mellow
+tint, and reddened deep into sunset. Tinkling cow-bells, where the kine
+wound out from pasture, stole faintly over the lake, reflected dyes
+suffused it and spread around them sheets of splendid color, outlines
+grew ever dimmer on the distant shores, a purple tone absorbed all
+brilliance, the shadows fell, and, bright with angry lustre, the planet
+Mars hung in the south and struck a spear, redder than rubies, down the
+placid mirror. The dew gathered and lay sparkling on the thwarts as they
+touched the garden-steps, and they mounted and traversed together the
+alleys of odorous dark. They entered at Mr. Raleigh's door and stepped
+thence into the main hall, where they could see the broad light from the
+drawing-room windows streaming over the lawn beyond. Mrs. Laudersdale
+came down the hall to meet them.
+
+"My dear Rite," she said, "I have been alarmed, and have sent the
+servants out for you. You left home in the morning, and you have not
+dined. Your father and Mr. Heath have arrived. Tea is just over, and
+we are waiting for you to dress and go into town; it is Mrs. Manton's
+evening, you recollect."
+
+"Must I go, mamma?" asked Marguerite, after this statement of facts.
+"Then I must have tea first. Mr. Raleigh, I remember my wasted
+sweetmeats of the morning with a pang. How long ago that seems!"
+
+In a moment her face told her regret for the allusion, and she hastened
+into the dining-room.
+
+Mr. Raleigh and Marguerite had a merry tea, and Mrs. Purcell came and
+poured it out for them.
+
+"Quite like the days when we went gypsying," said she, when near its
+conclusion.
+
+"We have just come from the Bawn, Miss Marguerite and I," he replied.
+
+"You have? I never go near it. Did it break your heart?"
+
+Mr. Raleigh laughed.
+
+"Is Mr. Raleigh's heart such a delicate organ?" asked Marguerite.
+
+"Once, you might have been answered negatively; now, it must be like the
+French banner, _perce, troue, crible,"--
+
+"Pray, add the remainder of your quotation," said he,--"_sans peur et
+sans reproche_."
+
+"So that a trifle would reduce it to flinders," said Mrs. Purcell,
+without minding his interruption.
+
+"Would you give it such a character, Miss Rite?" questioned Mr. Raleigh
+lightly.
+
+"I? I don't see that you have any heart at all, Sir."
+
+"I swallow my tea and my mortification."
+
+"Do you remember your first repast at the Bawn?" asked Mrs. Purcell.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"And the jelly like molten rubies that I made? It keeps well." And she
+moved a glittering dish toward him.
+
+"All things of that summer keep well," he replied.
+
+"Except yourself, Mr. Raleigh. The Indian jugglers are practising upon
+us, I suspect. You are no more like the same person who played sparkling
+comedy and sang passionate tragedy than this bamboo stick is like that
+willow wand."
+
+"I wish I could retort, Miss Helen," he replied. "I beg your pardon!"
+
+She was silent, and her eye fell and rested on the sheeny damask
+beneath. He glanced at her keenly an instant, then handed her his cup,
+saying,--
+
+"May I trouble you?"
+
+She looked up again, a smile breaking over the face wanner than
+youth, but which the hour's gayety had flushed to a forgetfulness of
+intervening years, extended her left hand for the cup, still gazing and
+smiling.
+
+Various resolves had flitted through Marguerite's mind since her
+entrance. One, that she would yet make Mr. Raleigh feel her power,
+yielded to shame and self-contempt, and she despised herself for a woman
+won unwooed. But she was not sure that she was won. Perhaps, after all,
+she did not care particularly for Mr. Raleigh. He was much older than
+she; he was quite grave, sometimes satirical; she knew nothing about
+him; she was slightly afraid of him. On the whole, if she consulted her
+taste, she would have preferred a younger hero; she would rather be the
+Fornarina for a Raffaello; she had fancied her name sweetening the songs
+of Giraud Riquier, the last of the Troubadours; and she did not believe
+Beatrice Portinari to be so excellent among women, so different from
+other girls, that her name should have soared so far aloft with that
+escutcheon of the golden wing on a field azure. "But they say that there
+cannot be two epic periods in a nation's literature," thought Marguerite
+hurriedly; "so that a man who might have been Homer once will be nothing
+but a gentleman now." And at this point, having decided that Mr. Raleigh
+was fully worth unlimited love, she added to her resolves a desire for
+content with whatever amount of friendly affection he chose to bestow
+upon her. And all this, while sifting the sugar over her raspberries.
+Nevertheless, she felt, in the midst of her heroic content, a strange
+jealousy at hearing the two thus discuss days in which she had no share,
+and she watched them furtively, with a sharp, hateful suspicion dawning
+in her mind. Now, as Mrs. Purcell's eyes met Mr. Raleigh's, and her hand
+was still extended for the cup, Marguerite fastened her glance on its
+glittering ring, and said abruptly,--
+
+"Mrs. Purcell, have you a husband?"
+
+Mrs. Purcell started and withdrew her hand, as if it had received a
+blow, just as Mr. Raleigh relinquished the cup, so that between them the
+bits of pictured porcelain fell and splintered over the equipage.
+
+"Naughty child!" said Mrs. Purcell. "See now what you've done!"
+
+"What have I to do with it?"
+
+"Then you haven't any bad news for me? Has any one heard from the
+Colonel? Is he ill?"
+
+"Pshaw!" said Marguerite, rising and throwing down her napkin.
+
+She went to the window and looked out.
+
+"It is time you were gone, little lady," said Mr. Raleigh.
+
+She approached Mrs. Purcell and passed her hand down her hair.
+
+"What pretty soft hair you have!" said she. "These braids are like
+carved gold-stone. May I dress it with sweet-brier to-night? I brought
+home a spray."
+
+"Rite!" said Mrs. Laudersdale sweetly, at the door; and Rite obeyed the
+summons.
+
+In a half-hour she came slowly down the stairs, untwisting a long string
+of her mother's abandoned pearls, great pear-shaped things full of the
+pale lustre of gibbous moons. She wore a dress of white samarcand, with
+a lavish ornament like threads and purfiles of gold upon the bodice, and
+Ursule followed with a cloak. As she entered the drawing-room, the great
+bunches of white azalea, which her mother had brought from the swamps,
+caught her eye; she threw down the pearls, and broke off rapid dusters
+of the queenly flowers, touching the backward-curling hyacinthine
+petals, and caressingly passing her finger down the pale purple shadow
+of the snowy folds. Directly afterward she hung them in her breezy hair,
+from which, by natural tenure, they were not likely to fall, bound them
+over her shoulders and in her waist.
+
+"See! I stand like Summer," she said, "wrapped in perfume; it is
+intoxicating."
+
+Just then two hands touched her, and her father bent his face over her.
+She flung her arms round him, careless of their fragile array, kissed
+him on both cheeks, laughed, and kissed him again. She did not speak,
+for he disliked French, and English sometimes failed her.
+
+"Here is Mr. Heath," her father said.
+
+She partly turned, touched that gentleman's hand with the ends of her
+fingers, and nodded. Her father whispered a brief sentence in her ear.
+
+"_Jamais, Monsieur, jamais!_" she exclaimed; then, with a quick gesture
+of deprecation, moved again toward him; but Mr. Laudersdale had coldly
+passed to make his compliments to Mrs. Heath.
+
+"You are not in toilet?" said Marguerite, following him, but speaking
+with Mr. Raleigh.
+
+"No,--Mrs. Purcell has been playing for me a little thing I always
+liked,--that sweet, tuneful afternoon chiding of the Miller and the
+Torrent."
+
+She glanced at Mrs. Purcell, saw that her dress remained unaltered, and
+commenced pulling out the azaleas from her own.
+
+"I do not want to go," she murmured. "I need not! Mamma and Mrs. McLean
+have already gone in the other carriage."
+
+"Come, Marguerite," said Mr. Laudersdale, approaching her, as Mr. Heath
+and his mother disappeared.
+
+"I am not going," she replied, quickly.
+
+"Not going? I beg your pardon, my dear, but you are!" and he took her
+hand.
+
+She half endeavored to withdraw it, threw a backward glance over her
+shoulder at the remaining pair, and, led by her father, went out.
+
+Marguerite did her best to forget the vexation, was very affable with
+her father, and took no notice of any of Mr. Heath's prolonged remarks.
+The drive was at best a tiresome one, and she was already half-asleep
+when the carriage stopped. The noise and light, and the little vanities
+of the dressing-room, awakened her, and she descended prepared for
+conquest. But, after a few moments, it all became weariness, the air
+was close, the flowers faded, the music piercing. The toilets did
+not attract nor the faces interest her. She danced along absent and
+spiritless, when her eye, raised dreamily, fell on an object among the
+curtains and lay fascinated there. It was certainly Mr. Raleigh: but so
+little likely did that seem, that she again circled the room, with her
+eyes bent upon that point, expecting it to vanish. He must have come in
+the saddle, unless a coach had returned for him and Mrs. Purcell,--yes,
+there was Mrs. Purcell,--and she wore that sweet-brier fresh-blossoming
+in the light. With what ease she moved!--it must always have been the
+same grace;--how brilliant she was! There,--she was going to dance with
+Mr. Raleigh. No? Where, then? Into the music-room!
+
+The music-room lay beyond an anteroom of flowers and prints, and
+was closed against the murmur of the parlors by great glass doors.
+Marguerite, from her position, could see Mr. Raleigh seated at the
+piano, and Mrs. Purcell standing by his side; now she turned a leaf, now
+she stooped, and their hands touched upon the keys. Marguerite slipped
+alone through the dancers, and drew nearer. There were others in the
+music-room, but they were at a distance from the piano. She entered
+the anteroom and sat shadowed among the great fragrant shrubs. A group
+already stood there, eating ices and gayly gossiping. Mr. Laudersdale
+and Mr. Manton sauntered in, their heads together, and muttering occult
+matters of business, whose tally was kept with forefinger on palm.
+
+"Where is Raleigh?" asked Mr. Manton, looking up. "He can tell us."
+
+"At his old occupation," answered a gentleman from beside Mrs.
+Laudersdale, "flirting with forbidden fruit."
+
+"An alliterative amusement," said Mrs. Laudersdale.
+
+"You did not know the original Raleigh?" continued the gentleman. "But
+he always took pleasure in female society; yet, singularly enough,
+though fastidious in choice, it was only upon the married ladies that he
+bestowed his platonisms. I observe the old Adam still clings to him."
+
+"He probably found more liberty with them," remarked Mrs. Laudersdale,
+when no one else replied.
+
+"Without doubt he took it."
+
+"I mean, that, where attentions are known to intend nothing, one is not
+obliged to measure them, or to calculate upon effects."
+
+"Of the latter no one can accuse Mr. Raleigh!" said Mr. Laudersdale,
+hotly, forgetting himself for once.
+
+Mrs. Laudersdale lifted her large eyes and laid them on her husband's
+face.
+
+"Excuse me! excuse me!" said the gentleman, with natural misconception.
+"I was not aware that he was a friend of yours." And taking a lady on
+his arm, he withdrew.
+
+"Nor is he!" said Mr. Laudersdale, in lowest tones, replying to his
+wife's gaze, and for the first time intimating his feeling. "Never,
+never, can I repair the ruin he has made me!"
+
+Mrs. Laudersdale rose and stretched out her arm, blindly.
+
+"The room is quite dark," she murmured; "the flowers must soil the air.
+Will you take me up-stairs?"
+
+Meanwhile, the unconscious object of their remark was turning over a
+pile of pages with one hand, while the other trifled along the gleaming
+keys.
+
+"Here it is," said he, drawing one from the others, and arranging it
+before him,--a _gondel-lied_.
+
+There stole from his fingers the soft, slow sound of lapsing waters, the
+rocking on the tide, the long sway of some idle weed. Here a jet of tune
+was flung out from a distant bark, here a high octave flashed like a
+passing torch through night-shadows, and lofty arching darkness told in
+clustering chords. Now the boat fled through melancholy narrow ways of
+pillared pomp and stately beauty, now floated off on the wide lagoons
+alone with the stars and sea. Into this broke the passion of the gliding
+lovers, deep and strong, giving a soul to the whole, and fading away
+again, behind its wild beating,--with the silence of lapping ripple and
+dipping oar.
+
+Mrs. Purcell, standing beside the player, laid a careless arm across the
+instrument, and bent her face above him like a flower languid with
+the sun's rays. Suddenly the former smile suffused it, and, as the
+gondel-lied fell into a slow floating accompaniment, she sang with a
+swift, impetuous grace, and in a sweet, yet thrilling voice, the Moth
+Song. The shrill music and murmur from the parlors burst all at once in
+muffled volume upon the melody, and, turning, they both saw Marguerite
+standing in the doorway, like an angry wraith, and flitting back again.
+Mrs. Purcell laughed, but took up the thread of her song again where it
+was broken, and carried it through to the end. Then Mr. Raleigh tossed
+the gondel-lied aside, and rising, they continued their stroll.
+
+"You have more than your share of the good things of life, Raleigh,"
+said Mr. McLean, as the person addressed poured out wine for Mrs.
+Purcell. "Two affairs on hand at once? You drink deep. Light and
+sparkling,--thin and tart,--isn't it Solomon who forbids mixed drink?"
+
+"I was never the worse for claret," replied Mr. Raleigh, bearing away
+the glittering glass.
+
+The party from the Lake had not arrived at an early hour, and it was
+quite late when Mr. Raleigh made his way through ranks of tireless
+dancers, toward Marguerite. She had been dancing with a spirit that
+would have resembled joyousness but for its reckless _abandon_. She
+seemed to him then like a flame, as full of wilful sinuous caprice. At
+the first he scarcely liked it, but directly the artistic side of his
+nature recognized the extreme grace and beauty that flowed through every
+curve of movement. Standing now, the corn-silk hair slightly disordered
+and still blown about by the fan of some one near her, her eyes
+sparkling like stars in the dewdrops of wild wood-violets, warm, yet
+weary, and a flush deepening her cheek with color, while the flowers
+hung dead around her, she held a glass of wine and watched the bead swim
+to the brim. Mr. Raleigh approached unaware, and startled her as he
+spoke.
+
+"It is _au gre du vent_, indeed," he said,--"just the white fluttering
+butterfly,--and now that the wings are clasped above this crimson
+blossom, I have a chance of capture." And smiling, he gently withdrew
+the splendid draught.
+
+"_Buvez, Monsieur_," she said; "_c'est le vin de la vie!_"
+
+"Do you know how near daylight it is?" he replied. "Mrs. Laudersdale
+fainted in the heat, and your father took her home long ago. The Heaths
+went also; and the carriage has just returned for the only ones of us
+that are left, you and me."
+
+"Is it ready now?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"So am I."
+
+And in a few moments she sat opposite him in the coach, on their way
+home.
+
+"It wouldn't be possible for me to sit on the box and drive?" she asked.
+
+"I should like it, in this wild starlight, these flying clouds, this
+breath of dawn."
+
+Meeting no response, she sank into silence. No emotion can keep one
+awake forever, and, after all her late fatigue, the roll of the easy
+vehicle upon the springs soon soothed her into a dreamy state. Through
+the efforts at wakefulness, she watched the gleams that fell within from
+the carriage-lamps, the strange shadows on the roadside, the boughs
+tossing to the wind and flickering all their leaves in the speeding
+light; she watched, also, Mr. Raleigh's face, on which, in the fitful
+flashes, she detected a look of utter weariness.
+
+"_Monsieur_," she exclaimed, "_il faut que je vous gene!_"
+
+"Immensely," said Mr. Raleigh with a smile; "but, fortunately, for no
+great time."
+
+"We shall be soon at home? Then I must have slept."
+
+"Very like. What did you dream?"
+
+"Oh, one must not tell dreams before breakfast, or they come to pass,
+you know."
+
+"No,--I am uninitiated in dream-craft. Mr. Heath"----
+
+"_Monsieur_," she cried, with sudden heat, "_il me semble que je
+comprends les Laocoons! J'en suis de meme!_"
+
+As she spoke, she fell, struck forward by a sudden shock, the coach was
+rocking like a boat, and plunging down unknown gulfs. Mr. Raleigh seized
+her, broke through the door, and sprang out.
+
+"_Qu'avez vous?_" she exclaimed.
+
+"The old willow is fallen in the wind," he replied.
+
+"_Quel dommage_ that we did not see it fall!"
+
+"It has killed one of the horses, I fear," he continued, measuring, as
+formerly, her terror by her levity. "Capua! is all right? Are you safe?"
+
+"Yah, massa!" responded a voice from the depths, as Capua floundered
+with the remaining horse in the thicket at the lake-edge below. "Yah,
+massa,--nuffin harm Ol' Cap in water; spec he born to die in galluses;
+had nuff chance to be in glory, ef 'twasn't. I's done beat wid dis yer
+pony, anyhow, Mass'r Raleigh. Seems, ef he was a 'sect to fly in de face
+of all creation an' pay no 'tention to his centre o' gravity, he might
+walk up dis yer hill!"
+
+Mr. Raleigh left Marguerite a moment, to relieve Capua's perplexity.
+Through the remaining darkness, the sparkle of stars, and wild fling of
+shadows in the wind, she could but dimly discern the struggling figures,
+and the great creature trampling and snorting below. She remembered
+strange tales out of the "Arabian Nights," "Bellerophon and the
+Chimaera," "St. George and the Dragon"; she waited, half-expectant, to
+see the great talon-stretched wings flap up against the slow edge of
+dawn, where Orion lay, a pallid monster, watching the planet that
+flashed like some great gem low in a crystalline west, and she stepped
+nearer, with a kind of eager and martial spirit, to do battle in turn.
+
+"Stand aside, Una!" cried Mr. Raleigh, who had worked in a determined
+characteristic silence, and the horse's head, sharp ear, and starting
+eye were brought to sight, and then his heaving bulk.
+
+"All right, massa!" cried Capua, after a moment's survey, as he patted
+the trembling flanks. "Pretty tough ex'cise dat! Spect Massam Clean be
+mighty high,--his best cretur done about killed wid dat tree;--feared he
+show dis nigger a stick worf two o' dat!"
+
+"We had like to have finished our dance on nothing," said Mr. Raleigh
+now, looking back on the splintered wheels and panels. "Will you mount?
+I can secure you from falling."
+
+"Oh, no,--I can walk; it is only a little way."
+
+"Reach home like Cinderella? If you had but one glass slipper, that
+might be; but in satin ones it is impossible." And she found herself
+seated aloft before quite aware what had happened.
+
+Pacing along, they talked lightly, with the gayety natural upon
+excitement,--Capua once in a while adding a cogent word. As they opened
+the door, Mr. Raleigh paused a moment.
+
+"I am glad," he said, "that my last day with you has been crowned by
+such adventures. I leave the Lake at noon."
+
+She hung, listening, with a backward swerve of figure, and regarding
+him in the dim light of the swinging hall-lamp, for the moment
+half-petrified. Suddenly she turned and seized his hand in hers,--then
+threw it off.
+
+"_Cher ami_," she murmured hastily, in a piercing whisper, like some
+articulate sigh, "_si tu m'aimes, dis moi!_"
+
+The door closed in the draught, the drawing-room door opened, and Mr.
+Laudersdale stepped out, having been awaiting their return. Mr. Raleigh
+caught the flash of Marguerite's eye and the crimson of her cheek, as
+she sprang forward up the stairs and out of sight.
+
+The family did not breakfast together the next day, as politeness
+chooses to call the first hour after a ball, and Mr. Raleigh was making
+some arrangements preliminary to his departure, in his own apartments,
+at about the hour of noon. The rooms which he had formerly occupied Mrs.
+McLean had always kept closed, in a possibility of his return, and he
+had found himself installed in them upon his arrival. The library was
+today rather a melancholy room: the great book-cases did not enliven it;
+the grand-piano, with its old dark polish, seemed like a coffin, the
+sarcophagus of unrisen music; the oak panelling had absorbed a richer
+hue with the years than once it wore; the portrait of his mother seemed
+farther withdrawn from sight and air; Antinoues took a tawnier tint in
+his long reverie. The Summer, past her height, sent a sad beam, the
+signal of decay, through the half-open shutters, and it lay wearily on
+the man who sat by the long table, and made more sombre yet the faded
+carpet and cumbrous chair.
+
+There was a tap on the door. Mr. Raleigh rose and opened it, and invited
+Mr. Laudersdale in. The latter gentleman complied, took the chair
+resigned by the other, but after a few words became quiet. Mr. Raleigh
+made one or two attempts at conversation, then, seeing silence to be his
+visitor's whim, suffered him to indulge it, and himself continued his
+writing. Indeed, the peculiar relations existing between these men made
+much conversation difficult. Mr. Laudersdale sat with his eyes upon
+the floor for several minutes, and his countenance wrapped in thought.
+Rising, with his hands behind him, he walked up and down the long room,
+still without speaking.
+
+"Can I be of service to you, Sir?" asked the other, after observing him.
+
+"Yes, Mr. Raleigh, I am led to think you can,"--still pacing up and
+down, and vouchsafing no further information.
+
+At last, the monotonous movement ended, Mr. Laudersdale stood at the
+window, intercepting the sunshine, and examined some memoranda.
+
+"Yes, Mr. Raleigh," he resumed, with all his courtly manner, upon close
+of the examination, "I am in hopes that you may assist me in a singular
+dilemma."
+
+"I shall be very glad to do so."
+
+"Thank you. This is the affair. About a year ago, being unable to make
+my usual visit to my daughter and her grandmother, I sent there in my
+place our head clerk, young Heath, to effect the few transactions, and
+also to take a month's recreation,--for we were all overworked and
+exhausted by the crisis. The first thing he proceeded to do was to fall
+in love with my daughter. Of course he did not mention this occurrence
+to me, on his return. When my daughter arrived at New York, I was again
+detained, myself, and sent her to this place under his care. He lingered
+rather longer than he should have done, knowing the state of things; but
+I suspected nothing, for the idea of a clerk's marriage with the heiress
+of the great Martinique estate never entered my mind; moreover, I have
+regarded her as a child; and I sent him back with various commissions at
+several times,--once on business with McLean, once to obtain my wife's
+signature to some sacrifice of property, and so on. I really beg your
+pardon, Mr. Raleigh; it is painful to another, I am aware, to be thrust
+upon family confidences"----
+
+"Pray, Sir, proceed," said Mr. Raleigh, wheeling his chair about.
+
+"But since you are in a manner connected with the affair, yourself"----
+
+"You must be aware, Mr. Laudersdale, that my chief desire is the
+opportunity you afford me."
+
+"I believe so. I am happy to afford it. On the occasion of Mr. Heath's
+last visit to this place, Marguerite drew attention to a coin whose
+history you heard, and the other half of which Mrs. Purcell wore. Mr.
+Heath obtained the fragment he possessed through my wife's aunt, Susanne
+Le Blanc; Mrs. Purcell obtained hers through her grandmother, Susan
+White. Of course, these good people were not slow to put the coin and
+the names together; Mr. Heath, moreover, had heard portions of the
+history of Susanne Le Blanc, when in Martinique.
+
+"On resuming his duties in the counting-house, after this little
+incident, one day, at the close of business-hours, he demanded from me
+the remnants of this history with which he might be unacquainted. When
+I paused, he took up the story and finished it with ease, and--and
+poetical justice, I may say, Mr. Raleigh. Susanne was the sister of
+Mrs. Laudersdale's father, though far younger than he. She met a young
+American gentleman, and they became interested in each other. Her
+brother designed her for a different fate,--the governor of the island,
+indeed, was her suitor,--and forbade their intercourse. There were
+rumors of a private marriage; her apartments were searched for any
+record, note, or proof, unsuccessfully. If there were such, they had
+been left in the gentleman's hands for better concealment. It being
+supposed that they continued to meet, M. Le Blanc prevailed upon the
+governor to arrest the lover on some trifling pretence and send him out
+of the island. Shortly afterward, as he once confessed to his wife, he
+caused a circumstantial account of the death and funeral obsequies of
+each to reach the other. Immediately he urged the governor's suit again,
+and when she continued to resist, he fixed the wedding-day, himself, and
+ordered the _trousseau_. Upon this, one evening, she buried the box of
+trinkets at the foot of the oleanders, and disappeared the next, and no
+trace of her was found.
+
+"When I reached this point, young Heath turned to me with that
+impudently nonchalant drawl of his, saying,--
+
+"'And her property, Sir?'
+
+"'That,' I replied innocently, 'which comprised half the estate, and
+which she would have received, on attaining the requisite age, was
+inherited by her brother, upon her suicide.'
+
+"'Apparent suicide, you mean,' said he; and thereupon took up the story,
+as I have said, matched date to date and person to person, and informed
+me that exactly a fortnight from the day of Mademoiselle Susanne Le
+Blanc's disappearance, a young lady took rooms at a hotel in a Southern
+city, and advertised for a situation as governess, under the name of
+Susan White. She gave no references, spoke English imperfectly, and had
+difficulty in obtaining one; finally, however, she was successful, and
+after a few years married into the family of her employer, and became
+the mother of Mrs. Heath. The likeness of Mrs. Purcell, the grandchild
+of Susan White, to Susanne Le Blanc, was so extraordinary, a number of
+years ago, that, when Ursule, my daughter's nurse, first saw her, she
+fainted with terror. My wife, you are aware, was born long after these
+events. This governess never communicated to her husband any more
+specific circumstance of her youth than that she had lived in the West
+Indies, and had left her family because they had resolved to marry
+her,--as she might have done, had she not died shortly after her
+daughter's birth. Among her few valuables were found this half-coin of
+Heath's, and a miniature, which his mother recently gave your cousin,
+but which, on account of its new interest, she has demanded again; for
+it is probably that of the ancient lover, and bearing, as it does, a
+very striking resemblance to yourself, you have pronounced it to be
+undoubtedly that of your uncle, Reuben Raleigh, and wondered how it came
+into the possession of Mrs. Heath's mother. Now, as you may be aware,
+Reuben Raleigh was the name of Susanne Le Blanc's lover."
+
+"No,--I was not aware."
+
+Mr. Laudersdale's countenance, which had been animated in narration,
+suddenly fell.
+
+"I was in hopes," he resumed,--"I thought,--my relation of these
+occurrences may have been very confused; but it is as plain as daylight
+to me, that Susanne Le Blanc and Susan White are one, and that the
+property of the first is due to the heirs of the last."
+
+"Without doubt, Sir."
+
+"The same is plain, to the Heaths. I am sure that Marguerite will accept
+our decision in the matter,--sure that no daughter of mine would
+retain a fraudulent penny; for retain it she could, since there is not
+sufficient proof in any court, if we chose to contest; but it will
+beggar her."
+
+"How, Sir? Beggar her to divide her property?"
+
+"It is a singular division. The interest due on Susanne's moiety swells
+it enormously. Add to this, that, after M. Le Blanc's death, Madame Le
+Blanc, a much younger person, did not so well understand the management
+of affairs, the property depreciated, and many losses were encountered,
+and it happens that the sum due Mrs. Heath covers the whole amount that
+Marguerite possesses."
+
+"Now, then, Sir?" exclaimed Mr. Raleigh, interrogatively.
+
+"Now, then, Mrs. Heath requests my daughter's hand for her son, and
+offers to set off to him, at once, such sum as would constitute his half
+of her new property upon her decease, and allow him to enter our house
+as special partner."
+
+"Ah!"
+
+"This does not look so unreasonable. Last night he proposed formally to
+Marguerite, who is still ignorant of these affairs, and she refused him.
+I have urged her differently,--I can do no more than urge,--and she
+remains obdurate. To accumulate misfortunes, we escaped 1857 by a
+miracle. We have barely recovered; and now various disasters striking
+us,--the loss of the Osprey the first and chief of them,--we are to-day
+on the verge of bankruptcy. Nothing but the entrance of this fortune can
+save us from ruin."
+
+"Unfortunate!" said Mr. Raleigh,--"most unfortunate! And can I serve you
+at this point?"
+
+"Not at all, Sir," said Mr. Laudersdale, with sudden erectness. "No,--I
+have but one hope. It has seemed to me barely possible that your uncle
+may have communicated to you events of his early life,--that you may
+have heard, that there may have been papers telling of the real fate of
+Susanne Le Blanc."
+
+"None that I know of," said Mr. Raleigh, after a pause. "My uncle was
+a very reserved person. I often imagined that his youth had not been
+without its passages, something to account for his unvarying depression.
+In one letter, indeed, I asked him for such a narration. He promised to
+give it to me shortly,--the next mail, perhaps. The next mail I received
+nothing; and after that he made no allusion to the request."
+
+"Indeed? Indeed? I should say,--pardon me, Mr. Raleigh,--that your
+portion of the next mail met with some accident. Your servants could not
+explain it?"
+
+"There is Capua, who was major-domo. We can inquire," said Mr. Raleigh,
+with a smile, rising and ringing for that functionary.
+
+On Capua's appearance, the question was asked, if he had ever secretly
+detained letter or paper of any kind.
+
+"Lors, massa! I alwes knew 'twould come to dis!" he replied. "No, massa,
+neber!" shaking his head with repeated emphasis.
+
+"I thought you might have met with some accident, Capua," said his
+master.
+
+"Axerden be ----, beg massa's parden; but such s'picions poison any
+family's peace, and make a feller done forgit hisself."
+
+"Very well," said Mr. Raleigh, who was made to believe by this vehemence
+in what at first had seemed a mere fantasy. "Only remember, that, if you
+could assure me that any papers had been destroyed, the assurance would
+be of value."
+
+"'Deed, Mass Roger? Dat alters de case," said Capua, grinning. "Dere's
+been a good many papers 'stroyed in dis yer house firs' an' last."
+
+"Which in particular?"
+
+"Don' rekerlek, massa, it's so long ago."
+
+"But make an effort."
+
+"Well, Massa Raleigh,--'pears to me I _do_ remember suthin',--I do
+b'lieve--yes, dis's jist how 'twas. Spect I might as well make a crean
+breast ob it. I's alwes had it hangin' roun' my conscious; do'no' but
+I's done grad to git rid ob it. Alwes spected massa 'd be 'xcusin' Cap
+o' turnin' tief."
+
+"That is the last accusation I should make against you, Capua."
+
+"But dar I stan's convicted."
+
+"Out with it, Capua!" said Mr. Laudersdale, laughing.
+
+"Lord! Massa Lausdel! how you do scare a chile! Didn' know mass'r was
+dar. See, Mass Roger, dis's jist how 'twas. Spec you mind dat time
+when all dese yer folks lib'd acrost de lake dat summer, an' massa was
+possessed to 'most lib dar too? Well, one day, massa mind Ol' Cap's
+runnin' acrost in de rain an' in great state ob excitement to tell him
+his house done burnt up?"
+
+"Yes. What then?"
+
+"Dat day, massa, de letters had come from Massa Reuben out in Indy, an'
+massa's pipe kinder 'tracted Cap's 'tention, an' so he jist set down in
+massa's chair an' took a smoke. Bimeby Cap thought,--'Ef massa come an'
+ketch him!'--an' put down de pipe an' went to work, and bimeby I smelt
+mighty queer smell, massa, 'bout de house, made him tink Ol' Nick was
+come hissef for Ol' Cap, an' I come back into dis yer room an' Massa
+Reuben's letters from Indy was jist most done burnt up, he cotched 'em
+in dese yer ol' brack han's, Mass Roger, an' jist whipt 'em up in dat
+high croset."
+
+And having arrived at this confusion in his personal pronouns, Capua
+mounted nimbly on pieces of furniture, thrust his pocket-knife through
+a crack of the wainscot, opened the door of a small unseen closet, and,
+after groping about and inserting his head as Van Amburgh did in the
+lion's mouth, scrambled down again with his hand full of charred and
+blackened papers, talking glibly all the while.
+
+"Ef massa'd jist listen to reason," he said, "'stead o' flyin' into one
+ob his tantrums, I might sprain de matter. You see, I knew Mass Roger'd
+feel so oncomforble and remorseful to find his ol' uncle's letters done
+'stroyed, an 'twas all by axerden, an' couldn' help it noways, massa,
+an' been done sorry eber since, an' wished dar warn't no letters dis
+side de Atlantic nor torrer, ebery day I woke."
+
+After which plea, Capua awaited his sentence.
+
+"That will do,--it's over now, old boy," said Mr. Raleigh, with his
+usual smile.
+
+"Now, massa, you a'n't gwine"----
+
+"No, Capua, I'm going to do nothing but look at the papers."
+
+"But massa's"----
+
+"You need not be troubled,--I said, I was not."
+
+"But, massa,--s'pose I deserve a thrashing?"
+
+"There's no danger of your getting it, you blameless Ethiop!"
+
+Upon which pacific assurance, Capua departed.
+
+The two gentlemen now proceeded to the examination of these fragments.
+Of the letters nothing whatever was to be made. From one of them dropped
+a little yellow folded paper that fell apart in its creases. Put
+together, it formed a sufficiently legible document, and they read the
+undoubted marriage-certificate of Susanne Le Blanc and Reuben Raleigh.
+
+"I am sorry," said Mr. Laudersdale, after a moment. "I am sorry, instead
+of a fortune, to give them a bar-sinister."
+
+"Your daughter is ignorant?--your wife?"
+
+"Entirely. Will you allow me to invite them in here? They should see
+this paper."
+
+"You do not anticipate any unpleasant effect?"
+
+"Not the slightest Marguerite has no notion of want or of pride.
+Her first and only thought will be--_sa cousine Helene_." And Mr.
+Laudersdale went out.
+
+Some light feet were to be heard pattering down the stairs, a mingling
+of voices, then Mr. Laudersdale passed on, and Marguerite tapped,
+entered, and closed the door.
+
+"My father has told me something I but half understand," said she, with
+her hand on the door. "Unless I marry Mr. Heath, I lose my wealth? What
+does that signify? Would all the mines of Peru tempt me?"
+
+Mr. Raleigh remained leaning against the corner of the bookcase. She
+advanced and stood at the foot of the table, nearly opposite him. Her
+lips were glowing as if the fire of her excitement were fanned by every
+breath; her eyes, half hidden by the veiling lids, seemed to throw a
+light out beneath them and down her cheek. She wore a mantle of swan's
+down closely wrapped round her, for she had complained ceaselessly of
+the chilly summer.
+
+"Mr. Raleigh," she said, "I am poorer than you are, now. I am no longer
+an heiress."
+
+At this moment, the door opened again and Mrs. Laudersdale entered. At
+a step she stood in the one sunbeam; at another, the shutters blew
+together, and the room was left in semi-darkness, with her figure
+gleaming through it, outlined and starred in tremulous evanescent
+light. For an instant both Marguerite and Mr. Raleigh seemed to be
+half awe-struck by the radiant creature shining out of the dark;
+but directly, Marguerite sprang back and stripped away the torrid
+nasturtium-vine which her mother had perhaps been winding in her hair
+when her husband spoke with her, and whose other end, long and laden
+with fragrant flame, still hung in her hand and along her dress.
+Laughing, Marguerite in turn wound it about herself, and the flowers, so
+lately plucked from the bath of hot air, where they had lain steeping in
+sun, flashed through the air a second, and then played all their faint
+spirit-like luminosity about their new wearer. She seemed sphered in
+beauty, like the Soul of Morning in some painter's fantasy, with all
+great stars blossoming out in floral life about her, colorless, yet
+brilliant in shape and light. It was too much; Mr. Raleigh opened the
+window and let in the daylight again, and a fresh air that lent the
+place a gayer life. As he did so, Mr. Laudersdale entered, and with him
+Mr. Heath and his mother. Mr. Laudersdale briefly recapitulated the
+facts, and added,--
+
+"Communicating my doubts to Mr. Raleigh, he has kindly furnished me with
+the marriage-certificate of his uncle and Mademoiselle Le Blanc. And as
+Mr. Reuben Raleigh was living within thirteen years, you perceive that
+your claims are invalidated."
+
+There was a brief silence while the paper was inspected.
+
+"I am still of opinion that my grandmother's second marriage was legal,"
+replied Mr. Heath; "yet I should be loath to drag up her name and
+subject ourselves to a possibility of disgrace. So, though the estate is
+ours, we can do without it!"
+
+Meanwhile, Marguerite had approached her father, and was patching
+together the important scraps.
+
+"What has this to do with it?" said she. "You admitted before this
+discovery--did you not?--that the property was no longer mine. These
+people are Aunt Susanne's heirs still, if not legally, yet justly. I
+will not retain a _sous_ of it! My father shall instruct my lawyer, Mrs.
+Heath, to make all necessary transfers to yourself. Let us wish you
+good-morning!" And she opened the door for them to pass.
+
+"Marguerite! are you mad?" asked her father, as the door closed.
+
+"No, father,--but honest,--which is the same thing," she responded,
+still standing near it.
+
+"True," he said, in a low tone like a groan. "But we are ruined."
+
+"Ruined? Oh, no! You are well and strong. So am I. I can work. I shall
+get much embroidery to do, for I can do it perfectly; the nuns taught
+me. I have a thousand resources. And there is something my mother can
+do; it is her great secret; she has played at it summer after summer.
+She has moulded leaves and flowers and twined them round beautiful faces
+in clay, long enough; now she shall carve them in stone, and you will be
+rich again!"
+
+Mrs. Laudersdale sat in a low chair while Marguerite spoke, the
+nasturtium-vine dinging round her feet like a gorgeous snake, her hands
+lying listlessly in her lap, and her attitude that of some queen who has
+lost her crown, and is totally bewildered by this strange conduct on the
+part of circumstances. All the strength and energy that had been the
+deceits of manner were utterly fallen away, and it was plain, that,
+whatever the endowment was which Marguerite had mentioned, she could
+only play at it. She was but a woman, sheer woman, with the woman's one
+capability, and the exercise of that denied her.
+
+Mr. Laudersdale remained with his eyes fixed on her, and lost, it
+seemed, to the presence of others.
+
+"The disgrace is bitter," he murmured. "I have kept my name so proudly
+and so long! But that is little. It is for you I fear. I have stood in
+your sunshine and shadowed your life, dear!--At least," he continued,
+after a pause, "I can place you beyond the reach of suffering. I must
+finish my lonely way."
+
+Mrs. Laudersdale looked up slowly and met his earnest glance.
+
+"Must I leave you?" she exclaimed, with a wild terror in her tone. "Do
+you mean that I shall go away? Oh, you need not care for me,--you need
+never love me,--you may always be cold,--but I must serve you, live with
+you, die with you!" And she sprang forward with outstretched arms.
+
+He caught her before her foot became entangled in the long folds of her
+skirt, drew her to himself, and held her. What he murmured was inaudible
+to the others; but a tint redder than roses are swam to her cheek, and a
+smile broke over her face like a reflection in rippling water. She held
+his arm tightly in her hand, and erect and proud, as it were with a new
+life, bent toward Roger Raleigh.
+
+"You see!" said she. "My husband loves me. And I,--it seems at this
+moment that I have never loved any other than him!"
+
+There came a quick step along the matting, the handle of the door turned
+in Marguerite's resisting grasp, and Mrs. Purcell's light muslins swept
+through. Mr. Raleigh advanced to meet her,--a singular light upon his
+face, a strange accent of happiness in his voice.
+
+"Since you seem to be a part of the affair," she said in a low tone,
+while her lip quivered with anger and scorn, "concerning which I have
+this moment been informed, pray, take to Mr. Lauderdale my brother's
+request to enter the house of Day, Knight, and Company, from this day."
+
+"Has he made such a request?" asked Mr. Raleigh.
+
+"He shall make it!" she murmured swiftly, and was gone.
+
+That night a telegram flashed over the wires, and thenceforth, on the
+great financial tide, the ship Day, Knight, and Company lowered its peak
+to none.
+
+The day crept through until evening, deepening into genuine heat, and
+Marguerite sat waiting for Mr. Raleigh to come and bid her farewell.
+It seemed that his plans were altered, or possibly he was gone, and at
+sunset she went out alone. The cardinals that here and there showed
+their red caps above the bank, the wild roses that still lined the way,
+the grapes that blossomed and reddened and ripened year after year
+ungathered, did not once lift her eyes. She sat down, at last, on an old
+fallen trunk cushioned with moss, half of it forever wet in the brook
+that babbled to the lake, and waited for the day to quench itself in
+coolness and darkness.
+
+"Ah!" said Mr. Raleigh, leaping from the other side of the brook to the
+mossy trunk, "is it you? I have been seeking you, and what sprite sends
+you to me?"
+
+"I thought you were going away," she said, abruptly.
+
+"That is a broken paving-stone," he answered, seating himself beside
+her, and throwing his hat on the grass.
+
+"You asked me, yesterday, if I confessed to being a myth," she said,
+after a time. "If I should go back to Martinique, I should become one in
+your remembrance,--should I not? You would think of me just as you would
+have thought of the Dryad yesterday, if she had stepped from the tree
+and stepped back again?"
+
+"Are you going to Martinique?" he asked, with a total change of face and
+manner.
+
+"I don't know. I am tired of this; and I cannot live on an ice-field. I
+had such life at the South! It is 'as if a rose should shut and be a bud
+again.' I need my native weather, heat and sea."
+
+"How can you go to Martinique?"
+
+"Oh, I forgot!"
+
+Mr. Raleigh did not reply, and they both sat listening to the faint
+night-side noises of the world.
+
+"You are very quiet," he said at last, ceasing to fling waifs upon the
+stream.
+
+"And you could be very gay, I believe."
+
+"Yes. I am full of exuberant spirits. Do you know what day it is?"
+
+"It is my birthday."
+
+"It is _my_ birthday!"
+
+"How strange! The Jews would tell you that this sweet first of August
+was the birthday of the world.
+
+  "''Tis like the birthday of the world,
+  When earth was born in bloom,'"--
+
+she sang, but paused before her voice should become hoarse in tears.
+
+"Do you know what you promised me on my birthday? I am going to claim
+it."
+
+"The present. You shall have a cast which I had made from one of
+my mother's fancies or bas-reliefs,--she only does the front of
+anything,--a group of fleurs-de-lis whose outlines make a child's face,
+my face."
+
+"It is more than any likeness in stone or pencil that I shall ask of
+you."
+
+"What then?"
+
+"You cannot imagine?"
+
+"_Monsieur_" she whispered, turning toward him, and blushing in the
+twilight, "_est ce que c'est moi?_"
+
+There came out the low west-wind singing to itself through the leaves,
+the drone of a late-carousing honey-bee, the lapping of the water on the
+shore, the song of the wood-thrush replete with the sweetness of its
+half-melody; and ever and anon the pensive cry of the whippoorwill
+fluted across the deepening silence that summoned all these murmurs
+into hearing. A rustle like the breeze in the birches passed, and Mrs.
+Purcell retarded her rapid step to survey the woods-people who rose out
+of the shade and now went on together with her. It seemed as if the
+loons and whippoorwills grew wild with sorrow that night, and after a
+while Mrs. Purcell ceased her lively soliloquy, and as they walked they
+listened. Suddenly Mr. Raleigh turned. Mrs. Purcell was not beside him.
+They had been walking on the brook-edge; the path was full of gaps and
+cuts. With a fierce shudder and misgiving, he hurriedly retraced his
+steps, and searched and called; then, with the same haste, rejoining
+Marguerite, gained the house, for lanterns and assistance. Mrs. Purcell
+sat at the drawing-room window.
+
+"_Comment?_" cried Marguerite, breathlessly.
+
+"Oh, I had no idea of walking in fog up to my chin," said Mrs. Purcell;
+"so I took the short cut."
+
+"You give me credit for the tragic element," she continued, under her
+breath, as Mr. Raleigh quietly passed her. "That is old style. To be
+sure, I might as well die there as in the swamps of Florida. Purcell is
+ordered to Florida. Of course, I am ordered too!" And she whirled him
+the letter which she held.
+
+Other letters had been received with the evening-mail, and one that made
+Mr. Raleigh's return in September imperative occasioned some discussion
+in the House of Laudersdale. The result that that gentleman secured
+one more than he had intended in the spring; and if you ever watch the
+shipping-list, the arrival of the Spray-Plough at Calcutta, with Mr. and
+Mrs. Raleigh among the passengers, will be seen by you as soon as me.
+
+Later in the evening of this same eventful day, as Mr. Raleigh and
+Marguerite sat together in the moonlight that flooded the great window,
+Mrs. Laudersdale passed them and went down the garden to the lake.
+She wore some white garment, as in her youth, and there was a dreamy
+sweetness in her eye and an unspoken joy about her lips. Mr. Raleigh
+could not help thinking it was a singular happiness, this that opened
+before her; it seemed to be like a fruit plucked from the stem and left
+to mature in the sunshine by itself, late and lingering, never sound at
+heart. She floated on, with the light in her dusky eyes and the seldom
+rose on her cheek,--floated on from moonbeam to moonbeam,--and the
+lovers brought back their glances and gave them to each other. For one,
+life opened a labyrinth of warmth and light and joy; for the other,
+youth was passed, destiny not to be appeased: if his affection enriched
+her, the best he could do was to bestow it; in his love there would yet
+be silent reservations.
+
+"Mr. Raleigh," said Marguerite, "did you ever love my mother?"
+
+"Once I thought I did."
+
+"And now?"
+
+"Whereas I was blind, now I see."
+
+"Listen! Mrs. Purcell is singing in the drawing-room."
+
+  "Through lonely summers, where the roses blow
+  Unsought, and shed their tangled sweets,
+  I sit and hark, or in the starry dark,
+  Or when the night-rain on the hill-side beats.
+
+  "Alone! But when the eternal summers flow
+  And refluent drown in song all moan,
+  Thy soul shall waste for its delight, and haste
+  Through heaven. And I shall be no more alone!"
+
+"What a voice she sings with to-night!" said Marguerite. "It is stripped
+of all its ornamental disguises,--so slender, yet piercing!"
+
+"A needle can pain like a sword-blade. There goes the moon in clouds.
+Hark! What was that? A cry?" And he started to his feet.
+
+"No," she said,--"it is only the wild music of the lake, the voices of
+shadows calling to shadows."
+
+"There it is again, but fainter; the wind carries it the other way."
+
+"It is a desolating wind."
+
+"And the light on the land is like that of eclipse!"
+
+He stooped and raised her and folded her in his arms.
+
+"I have a strange, terrible sense of calamity, _Mignonne!_" he said.
+"Let it strike, so it spare you!"
+
+"Nothing can harm us," she replied, clinging to him. "Even death cannot
+come between us!"
+
+"Marguerite!" said Mr. Laudersdale, entering, "where is your mother?"
+
+"She went down to the lake, Sir."
+
+"She cannot possibly have gone out upon it!"
+
+"Oh, she frequently does; and so do we all."
+
+"But this high wind has risen since. The flaws"----And he went out
+hastily.
+
+There flashed on Mr. Raleigh's mental sight a vision of the moonlit
+lake, one instant. A boat, upon its side, bending its white sail down
+the depths; a lifted arm wound in the fatal rope; a woman's form,
+hanging by that arm, sustained in the dark transparent tide of death;
+the wild wind blowing over, the moonlight glazing all. For that instant
+he remained still as stone; the next, he strode away, and dashed down
+to the lake-shore. It seemed as if his vision yet continued. They had
+already put out in boats; he was too late. He waited in ghastly suspense
+till they rowed home with their slow freight. And then his arm supported
+the head with its long, uncoiling, heavy hair, and lifted the limbs,
+round which the drapery flowed like a pall on sculpture, till another
+man took the burden from him and went up to the house with his dead.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When Mr. Raleigh entered the house again, it was at break of dawn. Some
+one opened the library-door and beckoned him in. Marguerite sprang into
+his arms.
+
+"What if she had died?" said Mrs. Purcell, with her swift satiric
+breath, and folding a web of muslin over her arm. "See! I had got out
+the shroud. As it is, we drink _skal_ and say grace at breakfast. The
+funeral baked-meats shall coldly furnish forth the marriage-feast. You
+men are all alike. _Le Roi est mort? Vive la Reine!_"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+PAUL REVERE'S RIDE.
+
+
+  Listen, my children, and you shall hear
+  Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
+  On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-Five:
+  Hardly a man is now alive
+  Who remembers that famous day and year.
+
+  He said to his friend,--"If the British march
+  By land or sea from the town to-night,
+  Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry-arch
+  Of the North-Church-tower, as a signal-light,--
+  One if by land, and two if by sea;
+  And I on the opposite shore will be,
+  Ready to ride and spread the alarm
+  Through every Middlesex village and farm,
+  For the country-folk to be up and to arm."
+
+  Then he said good-night, and with muffled oar
+  Silently rowed to the Charlestown shore,
+  Just as the moon rose over the bay,
+  Where swinging wide at her moorings lay
+  The Somersett, British man-of-war:
+  A phantom ship, with each mast and spar
+  Across the moon, like a prison-bar,
+  And a huge, black hulk, that was magnified
+  By its own reflection in the tide.
+
+  Meanwhile, his friend, through alley and street
+  Wanders and watches with eager ears,
+  Till in the silence around him he hears
+  The muster of men at the barrack-door,
+  The sound of arms, and the tramp of feet,
+  And the measured tread of the grenadiers
+  Marching down to their boats on the shore.
+
+  Then he climbed to the tower of the church,
+  Up the wooden stairs, with stealthy tread,
+  To the belfry-chamber overhead,
+  And startled the pigeons from their perch
+  On the sombre rafters, that round him made
+  Masses and moving shapes of shade,--
+  Up the light ladder, slender and tall,
+  To the highest window in the wall,
+  Where he paused to listen and look down
+  A moment on the roofs of the town,
+  And the moonlight flowing over all.
+
+  Beneath, in the churchyard, lay the dead
+  In their night-encampment on the hill,
+  Wrapped in silence so deep and still,
+  That he could hear, like a sentinel's tread,
+  The watchful night-wind, as it went
+  Creeping along from tent to tent,
+  And seeming to whisper, "All is well!"
+  A moment only he feels the spell
+  Of the place and the hour, the secret dread
+  Of the lonely belfry and the dead;
+  For suddenly all his thoughts are bent
+  On a shadowy something far away,
+  Where the river widens to meet the bay,--
+  A line of black, that bends and floats
+  On the rising tide, like a bridge of boats.
+
+  Meanwhile, impatient to mount and ride,
+  Booted and spurred, with a heavy stride,
+  On the opposite shore walked Paul Revere
+  Now he patted his horse's side,
+  Now gazed on the landscape far and near,
+  Then impetuous stamped the earth,
+  And turned and tightened his saddle-girth;
+  But mostly he watched with eager search
+  The belfry-tower of the old North Church,
+  As it rose above the graves on the hill,
+  Lonely, and spectral, and sombre, and still.
+
+  And lo! as he looks, on the belfry's height,
+  A glimmer, and then a gleam of light!
+  He springs to the saddle, the bridle he turns,
+  But lingers and gazes, till full on his sight
+  A second lamp in the belfry burns!
+
+  A hurry of hoofs in a village-street,
+  A shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark,
+  And beneath from the pebbles, in passing, a spark
+  Struck out by a steed that flies fearless and fleet:
+  That was all! And yet, through the gloom and the light,
+  The fate of a nation was riding that night;
+  And the spark struck out by that steed, in his flight,
+  Kindled the land into flame with its heat.
+
+  It was twelve by the village-clock,
+  When he crossed the bridge into Medford town.
+  He heard the crowing of the cock,
+  And the barking of the farmer's dog,
+  And felt the damp of the river-fog,
+  That rises when the sun goes down.
+
+  It was one by the village-clock,
+  When he rode into Lexington.
+  He saw the gilded weathercock
+  Swim in the moonlight as he passed,
+  And the meeting-house windows, blank and bare,
+  Gaze at him with a spectral glare,
+  As if they already stood aghast
+  At the bloody work they would look upon.
+
+  It was two by the village-clock,
+  When he came to the bridge in Concord town.
+  He heard the bleating of the flock,
+  And the twitter of birds among the trees,
+  And felt the breath of the morning-breeze
+  Blowing over the meadows brown.
+  And one was safe and asleep in his bed
+  Who at the bridge would be first to fall,
+  Who that day would be lying dead,
+  Pierced by a British musket-ball.
+
+  You know the rest. In the books you have read
+  How the British regulars fired and fled,--
+  How the farmers gave them ball for ball,
+  From behind each fence and farmyard-wall,
+  Chasing the red-coats down the lane,
+  Then crossing the fields to emerge again
+  Under the trees at the turn of the road,
+  And only pausing to fire and load.
+
+  So through the night rode Paul Revere;
+  And so through the night went his cry of alarm
+  To every Middlesex village and farm,--
+  A cry of defiance, and not of fear,--
+  A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,
+  And a word that shall echo forevermore!
+  For, borne on the night-wind of the Past,
+  Through all our history, to the last,
+  In the hour of darkness and peril and need,
+  The people will waken and listen to hear
+  The hurrying hoof-beat of that steed,
+  And the midnight-message of Paul Revere.
+
+
+
+
+A NIGHT UNDER GROUND.
+
+
+My dear Laura Matilda, have you ever worked your way under ground, like
+the ghost Hamlet, Senior? On the contrary, you confess, but a dim idea
+of that peculiar mode of progression abides in the well-ordered mansion
+of your mind?
+
+Well, I do not wonder at it; you are civilized beyond the common herd;
+your mamma, careful of her own comfort and the beauty of her child,
+guards both. Your sunny summer-times go by in the shade of sylvan
+groves, or amid the whirl of Saratoga or Newport ball-rooms. I accept
+your ignorance; it is a pretty blossom in your maiden chaplet. For
+myself, I blush for my own familiarity with rough scenes chanced upon in
+wayward wanderings.
+
+Let me tell you of a path among the "untrodden ways." Transport yourself
+with me.
+
+Fancy a low, level, drowsy point of land, stretching out into the
+unbroken emerald green of Lake Superior, at the point where a narrow,
+yellowish river offers its tribute. The King of Lakes is exclusive; he
+disdains to blend his brilliant waters with those of the muddy river; a
+wavy line, distinctly and clearly defined, but seeming as if drawn by
+a trembling hand, undulates at their junction,--no democratic,
+union-seeking boundary, but the arbitrary line of division that
+separates the Sultan from the slave, the peer from the peasant.
+
+Along this shore are scattered various buildings that seem to nod in the
+indolent sunshine of the bright, clear, quiet air of midsummer. One of
+these, differing from the rest in its more modern construction, is a
+spacious hotel that holds itself proudly erect, and from its summit the
+gay flag of my country floats flauntingly.
+
+We must pass this by, and go down a plank-covered walk to reach the
+sandy-golden beach where the green waves dash with silent dignity,
+in these long calms of July. Before the hotel the river flows also
+sleepily; but both shores are vocal with ladies' laughter and
+the singing of young girls, the lively chatter of a party of
+pleasure-tourists.
+
+The fine steamer that brought us to this point has gone,
+
+  "Sailing out into the west,
+  Out into the west, as the sun went down";
+
+but no "weeping and wringing of hands" was there; we knew it must "come
+back to the town,"--that we are merely transient waifs cast upon this
+quiet beach, flitting birds of passage who have alighted in the porticos
+of the "Bigelow House," Ontonagon, Michigan.
+
+A long, low flat-boat, without visible sails, steam-pipes, or oars,--a
+narrow river-craft, with a box-like cabin at one end, the whole rude
+in its _ensemble_, and uncivilized in its details,--is the object that
+meets the gaze of those who would curiously inspect the means by which
+the adventurous novelty-seeking portion of our party are to be conveyed
+up this Ontonagon river to the great copper-mines that form the
+inestimable wealth of that region. For the metallic attraction has
+proved magnetic to the fancies of a few. A mine is a mystery; and
+mysteries, to the female mind, are delights.
+
+What is the boat to us but a means? If it seem prosaic, what care we?
+Have we escaped the French fashions of _a-la-mode_ watering-places, to
+be fastidious amid wigwams and unpeopled shores?
+
+We all know what it is to embark for a day's travel, but we do not all
+understand the charm of being stowed away like freight in a boat such as
+the one here faintly sketched; how seats are improvised; how umbrellas
+are converted into stationary screens, and awnings grow out of
+inspiration; how baskets are hidden carefully among carpet-bags, and
+camp-stools, and water-jugs, and stowed-in-shavings ice; how the
+long-suffering, patient ladies shelter themselves in the tiny, stifling
+cabin, while those of the merry, complexion-careless sort lounge in
+the daylight's glare, and one couple, fond of seclusion and sentiment,
+discover a good place for both, at the rudder-end.
+
+There is an oar or two on board, it appears, as we push off in the early
+dawn; and these are employed for a mile or so at the mouth of the river;
+then the current begins to quicken in a narrower bed, and a group of
+sinewy men betake themselves to their poles, lazily at first, until----
+
+But you do not know exactly what these implements are?
+
+They are heavy, wooden, sharp-pointed poles, ten or twelve feet long. On
+either side of the boat runs a "walk," arranged as if a ladder were laid
+horizontally; but in reality the bars or rungs are firmly fastened to
+the walk, to be used as rests for the feet. Here the men, five on a
+side, march like a chain-gang, backward and forward; placing one end of
+the pole in the bed of the stream, resting the other in the hollow of
+the shoulder near the arm-pit, and bracing themselves by their feet
+against these bars, they pry the boat along.
+
+Progression by such means is unavoidably slow; but no steamboat-race
+on our Western rivers, blind and reckless, boiler-defying and
+life-despising, ever produced more excitement than this same poling.
+
+Wait till the current runs rapidly, fretting and seething in its angry
+haste, when for a moment's delay the boat must lose ground; when the
+poles are plunged into the rocky bed like harpoons into the back of an
+escaping whale; when the athletic forms of the men are bent forward
+until each prostrates himself in the exertion of his full powers; when
+not a false step--each step a run--can be hazarded; when that monotonous
+unanimity of labor is at its height, in which each boatman becomes
+possessed as if by a devil of strife; when their faces lose every gentle
+semblance of humanity, and become distorted to a simple expression
+of stubborn brute force; when the muscles of their arms are knitted,
+rope-like, and every nerve stretched to its utmost;--wait till you have
+seen all this, and you will confess that a woman's lazy life can know no
+harder toil than that of the mind's sympathetic coexertion,--that is, if
+she be excitable or impressible.
+
+The stream is tortuous, erratic, shallow, and narrow. Sometimes, as we
+glide, always noiselessly, beneath the overhanging foliage and tangled
+vines along shore, what myriads of gayly winged insects--brilliant
+dragon-flies, mammoth gnats, preposterous mosquitoes--swarm about our
+heads, disturbed from their gambols by the laughter and songs aboard our
+moving craft!
+
+Only one halt in our journey, and that to dine. Just above this point we
+pass the swiftest rapids on the route, where the river widens, and each
+side of the bank is beautiful in its wooded picturesqueness, while the
+waters rush, in foaming, surging, tumbling confusion, over the rugged
+rocks, or dart between them like a merry band of water-sprites chasing
+each other in gleesome frolic.
+
+It seems a desecration of these rapids thus to subdue and triumph over
+them. They are as if placed there by Nature as a sportive check to man's
+further intrusion; and as the waters come hurrying down, led, as it
+were, by some Undine jealous for her realm, their murmurings seem to
+say, in playful, yet earnest remonstrance,--"Let our gambols divert
+you; we will hasten to you; but approach no nearer! Permit us to guard
+the sanctuary of our hidden sources, our beloved and holy solitudes!"
+
+But vain appeal! Our men pole frantically onward, and so the day passes.
+By mid-afternoon their labors cease, and we come to anchor at the bank,
+having achieved seventeen miles in nine hours! Let those of us to whom
+lightning-express-trains have been slow grumble hereafter at their fifty
+miles an hour!
+
+A country-wagon receives most of the ladies; the majority of their
+attendant cavaliers walk; of two horses, the side-saddled one has about
+one hundred pounds avoirdupois for his share, and, in spite of the lack
+of habit and equestrian "pomp and circumstance" generally, I cannot term
+it the most unpleasant three miles I ever travelled. The road is a wild,
+rugged ascent up a well-wooded hill-side. There is a tonic vigor in
+the atmosphere, which communicates itself irresistibly to one's mental
+state; the gladdened lungs inhale it eagerly, as a luxury. When one
+walks in this air, one seems to gain wings; to ride is to float at will.
+
+Presently, at the top, a low village comes in sight; yelping curs start
+from wayside cabins; coarse, dull-featured women gape at half-opened
+doors or sit idly on rude steps; and the men we chance to meet wear that
+cadaverous pallor inseparable from the mere idea of a miner. We do not
+regret that the pert dogs have imparted speed to our horses' heels;--a
+swift, exhilarating gallop brings us in sight of a large, comfortable
+house, perched like a bird-box in the hills; then others are discerned;
+and in a few more bounds, we are at the gate. Here, where all visitors
+to the Minnesota Mines are received and entertained, we prove
+_avant-couriers_ of the slowly advancing wagon-load,--"the largest party
+of ladies ever met there," they tell us, as we forewarn our hosts of the
+band so boldly invading their copper-bound country.
+
+Very soon we are rambling over the hills,--those of Nature's rearing,
+and others formed by the accumulation of refuse brought up from the
+mine. We discover and secure some fine specimens of the metal; sundry
+of the knowing ones, after mysterious interviews with rascally-looking
+miners, appear with curious bits of pure silver ore mingled with
+crystals of quartz and tinted with tiny specks of copper. These, being
+the most valuable curiosities of the region, are usually secreted by the
+miners for the purpose of private speculation.
+
+We feel a reverence for this ground, so teeming with metallic
+wealth,--and yet a certain timorousness, as we remember that we walk on
+a crust, that beneath us are great caves and subterranean galleries.
+
+This outer shell, this surface-knowledge of what lies below, does not
+content me. I have also a brave friend who shares my feeling. We agree,
+that, despite the interest of this crust, to know of the fruit beneath
+and not taste it is worse than aggravating; we grow reckless in our
+thirst for the forbidden knowledge.
+
+We have entertained a little plot in our headstrong minds all the way,
+which we have hardly dared to name before. It is surely not feminine to
+look longingly on those ladders made for the descent of hardy miners
+only; visitors beneath the surface are rare; only gentlemen interested
+in seeing for themselves the richness of these vaunted mines have
+essayed the tour; even many of these failing to penetrate farther than
+the first level, and bravely owning their faint-heartedness. In spite of
+this, we feel our way cautiously. A descent is to be made this night,
+when the Captain of the Mine goes his nightly round of inspection; a
+gentleman, the head and front of our expedition, whom we shall call the
+"Colonel," proposes to accompany him.
+
+Why may we not form an harmonious quartette? We have nerve; has it not
+been tested throughout the somewhat arduous journey of the preceding
+weeks? We have presence of mind; we are passable _gymnastes_.
+
+In fact, viewing _Mon Amie_ and me from our own point of view, than
+ourselves never did there exist two mortals more manifestly fashioned
+straight from the hand of Nature, and educated by previous physical
+culture and mental discipline for the performance of a feat at once
+perilous and daring, one unknown to the members of "our set," and which
+might have been thought impracticable by all who had known us only in
+the gas-light glare of Society, and the circumspection of crinoline's
+confining circle.
+
+Does it matter by what cunning wiles of pretty pleading and downright
+demonstrations of the project's reasonableness we succeeded (for we did
+succeed) in being allowed to take our fates in our own hands or trust
+them to our own sure-footedness? I think not.
+
+  "For when a woman will, she will, you may
+  depend on't."
+
+But you should have seen the robing! We are to start at ten, P.M.
+Previously we betake ourselves to our chambers, and, entertaining a
+vague notion that Fashion's expanse may prove inconvenient, we are
+looping up our trailing robes in fantastic folds, when a tap at the
+door.
+
+_Voila!_ a servant with two full suits of new, but coarse, miners'
+clothes,--with a modest intimation from our companions of their
+advisability,--in fact, their absolute necessity. We pause aghast! Ah!
+the renewed shouts of laughter from those merry, but more timorous
+damsels, who, from their secure surroundings,--those becoming barriers
+adopted at the dictate of Parisian caprice and retained with feminine
+pertinacity,--had poked fun at our forlorn limpness!
+
+This climax of costume is startling, but the laughter rouses our
+courage. We stand on the brink of our Rubicon. Shall trousers deter us
+from the passage? Shall a coat be synonymous with cowardice? No,--we
+rise superior to the occasion; we pant to be free; we in-breathe the
+spirit of liberty, as we don our blouses. We loop our long tresses under
+such head-coverings as would drive any artist hatter to despair; to us
+they prove a weighty argument against hats in general, as we feel their
+heavy rims press on our tender brain-roofs. However, when the saucy eyes
+of _Mon Amie_ look out sparkling from under her begrimed helmet, the
+effect is not bad; on the contrary, the masquerade is piquant. No need
+to mention the ribbons that we knot under our wide, square collars for
+becomingness, our coquetry "under difficulties," nor the gauntleted
+gloves wherewith we protect our hands, nor the daintiness of the little
+boots that peep from the loose trousers, which have something Turkish
+in their cut. _Mon Amie_, with her rosy blushes, reminds me of a jocund
+miller's boy;--as for myself, well, I do not think the Bloomer dress so
+very bad, after all!
+
+A torch-bearing band have stationed themselves at the doors to bid us
+god-speed,--to make merry at our droll masquerade,--to quiz our odd
+head-gear,--to criticize us from head to foot, in short,--but between
+all, to offer words of caution. Then we go out into the starlit, but not
+over-bright night,--such a one as is friendly to lovers and to thieves,
+friendly to religion and to thought, the beloved of sentimentalists, and
+the adored of this particular group of adventurous miners. In Indian
+file, lantern-led, we traverse the narrow, beaten path that leads to
+one of the openings of the mine. These are covered by a rough-plank
+house,--too much like a shed to merit that pretentious term, which
+implies something fit to live in; in the centre of this shelter is
+an open space, perhaps a yard square, and similar in appearance to a
+trap-door in a roof. Here we wait a few moments, while the Captain of
+the Mine and the Agent of the Mining Company,--who has joined our party
+at the last moment, to afford us the undivided services of the Captain
+as guide,--are engaged in some mysterious process of moulding; an odor,
+not attar of rose, nor yet Frangipanni, salutes our nostrils; then our
+companions approach. Both the Colonel and the Agent are "lit up,"--in
+fact, all-luminous with the radiance of tallow "dips"; one of these,
+stuck in a lump of soft clay, adheres to the front of each hat, and in
+their hands they have others.
+
+We also are to wear a starry flame on our brows; and, not content with
+this, are invested with several short unlighted candles, which are to
+dangle gracefully by their wicks from a buttonhole of our becoming
+blouses. Thus our costume is complete; and I doubt if Buckingham sported
+the diamond tags of Anne of Austria with more satisfaction than do we
+our novel and odorous decoration: we dub ourselves the Light Guard on
+the instant.
+
+In the delay before starting, we observe several miners descend through
+the black and most suggestive trap-door, each bearing a tin can in his
+mouth, as a good dog carries a basket at the bidding of his master.
+
+The flame of the candle, bright in the density of the pit's darkness, as
+its bearer descends step by step with the rapidity which custom has
+made easy, becomes in a few seconds like the tiniest glow-worm: one can
+follow the spark only; the man disappears within the moment.
+
+I cannot describe, nor, indeed, convey the least idea of this peculiar
+effect. We feel our hearts tremble at the thought that whither that
+light has gone we must follow. For the first time I realize that we
+are about to go _into_ the earth,--that we shall presently crawl like
+insects, burrow like underground vermin, beneath the surface, man's
+proper place. But such thoughts are not for long indulgence.
+
+"Now let us descend!" says the Colonel.
+
+Grasping the round of the ladder where it rose slightly above the floor,
+the Captain, our guide, with that air of assurance which practice
+bestows, swings himself from sight. To him succeeds the Colonel. Next
+comes my own turn. This is not the first time my feet have tried
+ladder-bars; in the country-spent vacations of my school-days, how
+many times have I alertly scaled the highest leading to granaries, to
+barn-lofts, to bird-houses, to all quasi-inaccessible places, whither my
+daring ignorance--reckless, because unconscious of danger--had tempted
+me! But mounting a clean, strong, wide ladder, in the full flood of day,
+light below, above, around, promising you security by its very fulness
+of effulgence, is a far different thing from groping your way, step by
+step, down a slimy, muddy frame which hangs in a straight line from the
+very start. I shake off a first tremor, draw a full breath, and with
+fortitude follow my leader carefully. As I look above, after fairly
+getting committed, I can behold _Mon Amie's_ feet, whose arched in-steps
+cling round each bar with a pretty dependence that is in the highest
+degree appealing. Above her I hear the deep voice of the Agent.
+
+And so the quintette, in grim harmony of enterprise, go down, down,
+down, like so many human buckets, into a bottomless well.
+
+Alas, and alas! our own arms, with their as yet untried muscles, must be
+our only windlass to bring us to the surface again! Down, down, down,
+deeper, deeper, deeper! Will this first ladder never end?
+
+Ah, at last! At the foot, on either side, stand the Captain and the
+Colonel, like sentries. We have reached a shelf of rock, and we may
+rest. Here we perch ourselves, like sea-birds on a precipice that
+overlooks the sea.
+
+By the light of our flickering candles we behold each other's faces,
+and we can talk together. We are but two hundred feet under ground. A
+desolate stillness reigns here; no sound reaches us, either of labor or
+the steps of passing workmen. A cold stream of water trickles from a
+cleft rock behind us; we bathe our foreheads in it, and betake ourselves
+to the ladder again.
+
+From our next resting-place we proceed through a gallery, an exhausted
+vein, kept open as a passage from one shaft to another. As we turn a
+corner, we seem to plunge into a rocky cavern; our feet tread on
+roughly imbedded rocks; the sides of the cave jut out in refuse
+boulders,--harsh, dark-colored, ashen; overhead are beams of hard wood,
+bracing and strengthening the excavation. We traverse this gallery
+hastily.
+
+Now that we are here, we are conscious of excitement. _Mon Amie_
+manifests hers by her steady, deliberate tones, a sort of exaltation
+foreign to her usually vibrating voice, her tremulous cadences; she
+seems borne along, despite and above herself. For my own part, as my
+lungs inflate themselves with this pure, dry, bracing air, exquisitely
+redolent of health, and testifying at once to a total exemption
+from noxious exhalations or mephitic vapors, I grow _tete-montee_,
+rattle-brained; my laugh echoes through these stony chambers, wild
+snatches of song hover on my lips, odd conceits flit through my brain,
+I joke, I dash forward with haste; my excitement endows me with a
+superfeminine self-possession.
+
+But now we hear an ominous rattle, a clanking of chains, a rumbling as
+of distant thunder; we are approaching a shaft. The shafts in this
+mine are not sunk perpendicularly, but are slightly inclined: the huge
+buckets, lowered and raised by means of powerful machinery, are but
+ancient caldrons, counterparts of those in which the weird witches in
+"Macbeth" might have brewed their unholy decoctions, or such as the
+dreadful giants that formed the nightmare of my childhood might have
+used in preparing those Brobdignagian repasts among the ingredients of
+which a plump child held the same rank as a crab in ours.
+
+The sounds grow nearer; presently our guide disappears; then I behold
+the Colonel, in whose steps I follow, faithful as his shadow, crouch
+sidewise: we must pass behind this inclined plane, which rests on
+roughly hewn rocks, that protrude till it appears impossible that any
+living thing, except a lizard, can find a passage. I am sure we must
+shrink from the original rotundity with which Nature blessed us. I
+feel as the frog in the fable might have felt, if, after successfully
+inflating himself to the much-envied dimensions of the ox, he had
+suddenly found himself reduced to his proper proportions. Edging
+sidewise, accommodating the inequalities of the damp surfaces to the
+undulations of our forms, deafened, crazed by the roar of the caldrons
+that dash madly from side to side, we fairly _ooze_ through.
+
+More ladders! This time they are not hung quite perpendicularly, are
+shorter, and some lean, a little, which affords rest; others have one
+side higher than the other: to these my already aching palms cling with
+desperation. So have I seen insects adhere, through sheer force of fear,
+to a shaken stem, or a perilous branch beaten by a storm-wind.
+
+The voices of my companions come to me from above, though I cannot see
+the soles of _Mon Amie's_ friendly feet, which at first preserved an
+amiable companionship with my own hands; but, looking far upward, I
+behold a tiny, star-like spark. When I was a child, I used to think that
+fire-flies were the crowns of the fairies, which shone despite their
+wearers' invisibility: this idea was recalled to me.
+
+Hark! booming from unthought-of depths, a roar rolls up in majestic
+waves of echoing thunder. At this resonant burst, I tremble,--I think a
+prayer.
+
+"They are blasting below us," cries the Colonel, _de profundis_.
+
+Then up rushes a volume of thick, white smoke, and we are enveloped as
+in shrouds. I have no more fear,--but the odor, ah! that sulphureous,
+sickening, deathly odor! Faintness seizes me,--the ladder swims before
+my eyes,--I am paralyzed,--Death has me, I think!
+
+But the very excess of the danger has in it something of reviving power.
+I remember, that, just as I left my room,--whose quiet safety never
+before appeared so heavenly,--prompted by some instinctive impulse, I
+had placed a small vial of ammonia in the breast-pocket of my coat.
+
+I have wellnigh swooned with ecstasy, as I have inhaled the overcoming
+odors of some rare bouquet, love-bestowed and prized beyond gems; my
+senses have reeled in the intoxication of those wondrous extracts whose
+Oriental, tangible richness of fragrance holds me in a spell almost
+mystical in its enthralment; but I dare aver that no blossom's breath,
+no pungent perfume distilled by the erudite inspiration of Science, ever
+possessed a tithe of the delicious agony of that whiff of unromantic
+ammonia, which, powerful as the touch of magic, and thrilling as the
+kiss of love, snatched me back to life, arrested my tottering senses, as
+they blindly staggered on the very brink of certain death.
+
+When we reach the next level, and our faces are revealed to each other,
+with one voice they exclaim, "How frightfully pale you are!" But I say
+nothing. In fact, their familiar features, wearing no longer their
+daylight semblance, present an aspect at once grim and grotesque, and
+more like the spirits of my friends than their incorporated substances.
+
+Traversing the wild, rude corridors, we find that the path grows more
+perilous, the way more intricate; we have words of warning from our
+protectors, who often look back anxiously. They have begun to realize
+what they have done in yielding to a woman's odd caprice.
+
+In this level we are shown the spots from which famous masses of copper
+have been removed, and are granted useful, but fleeting statistics
+of weight; we are also so fortunate as to discover some chips of the
+wonderful block, raised in '54, I think, which weighed five hundred
+tons. Then we chance upon chasms, which, seen so dimly, though dreadful
+enough in reality, are made a thousand times more so by the terrors of
+imagination; we creep along the brinks of these, scarcely daring to look
+down; above, the heavy boulders lie heaped in frightful confusion. When
+we have crawled past these death-traps and stand in safety once more,
+we throw down bits of stone, and seconds elapse before we hear the dull
+_thump_ with which each signals its arrival in the depths. Along the
+edges of some of these gloomy pits we cannot pick our way; therefore a
+plank is thrown across, and, trusting to so slender a bridge, we pass,
+one by one. A single false step were enough to dash one to atoms,--so
+to be transformed to a bruised and mangled mass, to perform one's own
+sepulture, and lie in a grander grave than will ever be hollowed by
+mortal hands to hide our useless bodies.
+
+The deeper one penetrates into these mines, the wilder, more dangerous
+the paths. It is as though the upper regions were kept in "company"
+order, but lower down we meet with the every-day roughnesses of
+veritable miners'-life; we follow their hazardous, but familiar steps;
+we behold all the hardships these toiling, burrowing workers undergo,
+that the hidden coffers of Earth may yield their tribute of treasure to
+Man, its self-appointed, arrogant master.
+
+Occasionally we meet a passing miner. Grasping his ponderous tools, he
+flits by like a phantom; even in the momentary glance, we can perceive
+how livid his sunless labor has left him; he is blanched as a ghoul,
+and moves as noiselessly, with feather-light step. Each with a motion
+salutes the Captain; but they do not heed the little group of strangers
+who have braved so many dangers to behold the wonders which to them
+are as commonplace as the forge to a blacksmith, or to a carpenter his
+work-bench.
+
+Still farther below us we hear the clink and clatter of real work. Down
+we plunge,--another ladder, "long drawn out." Some of its rounds are
+wanting; others are loose and worn to a mere splinter. Warned by the
+voice below me, I proceed with a trembling caution, tenfold more
+exciting to the strained nerves than the wildest bound on a mettled
+racer, the fiercest rush that ever tingled through every fibre of the
+rider's frame.
+
+The water has saturated the banks by which our crazy ladder hangs, and
+every round is damp and slimy with clayey mud. Alas, for my poor pretty
+gantlets! _Mon Amie_ has thrown away hers, as useless.
+
+Finally the ladder ceases abruptly. My feet in vain seek a
+resting-place. There is none.
+
+A voice says,--that kindly, earnest voice, the symbol of protective
+care, and our smoother of all difficulties,--"We have swung ourselves
+down by a chain that hangs from the side of the last round. We are too
+far below to reach or assist you. Take the chain firmly; it is the only
+route, and we cannot return!"
+
+_Que faire?_ Behold a pleasant predicament for two city-bred ladies, not
+"to the manner born," of swinging themselves from the end of a ladder
+by means of a rusty iron chain, from which they would alight--where?
+Surely, we know not.
+
+I am very sure I could not reproduce in description, and probably not
+by practice, the inevitable monkey-contortions, the unimaginable animal
+agility, by which I transfer my weight to the clumsy links of this
+almost invisible chain. The size of the staple from which it hangs
+dissipates all fears in respect to its strength. Hand over hand, my feet
+sliding on the slippery bank, remembering sailors in the shrouds, and
+taking time to pity them, at last I reach friendly hands, and stand
+breathless on another level.
+
+How the soft, white, dimpled palms of _Mon Amie_ testify to the hardship
+of this episode, as she bathes them in the cooling water! But, because
+one's hands are tender, cannot one's nerves be strong, one's will
+indomitable?
+
+Again on the tramp. The cavernous passages are sublime in height, the
+chasms fearful in their yawning gulfs. We pick our way daintily, at
+intervals pausing to listen to the distant reverberations of exploding
+blasts. The atmosphere here, as above, is fairly heavenly in its purity
+and invigorating freshness; it girds us with singular strength,
+and clothes us as in a garment of enchanted armor that defies all
+soul-sinking.
+
+Creeping behind another shaft, we reach still another chasm, above which
+piles of dark rocks lie heaped in such confusion as might result from a
+great convulsion. There is a narrow path along its edge, and here the
+stones are small; but, as we look up, the mighty masses frown down upon
+us with threatening grandeur. Along this path, treading lightly, as
+if gifted with wings, the Captain passes; then the Agent (for we had
+slightly altered our order of march); _Mon Amie_ follows. She is
+half-way past the danger, when an ominous pause,--we are ordered to
+stop.
+
+Down into the chasm rolls a stone, displaced by an unlucky step of our
+pioneer. One stone is nothing,--but more follow that had been supported
+by this: small ones at first,--but the larger rocks threaten a slide. If
+they are not arrested in their course, she is lost!
+
+What a moment that is! I dare not breathe. _Mon Amie_ stands
+statue-like, awaiting the death which she believes is upon her. Not many
+words are spoken. I think I feel all that her one glance conveys.
+But the brave men beyond her, with instant unanimous action bracing
+themselves against the sliding rocks, oppose their feeble force to the
+down-sweeping agents of destruction; a moment more, and they would
+have been too late. With the step of a frightened antelope _Mon Amie_
+trembles past them. I see her safe, and hasten on. "Step lightly!" says
+a voice full of suspense and fear, despite its calmness.
+
+Step, indeed! As if I rest on those treacherous stones! My feet brush
+them no more than the wing of a butterfly grazes the roses among which
+it flutters. Step, forsooth! If ever the angels concerned themselves for
+this atom in Creation's myriads, they hover round me now, they bear me
+up, they teach me how to fly! Deprived now of their human props, how
+the angry fragments leap and tumble and chase one another through the
+echoing abyss below! These reverberations seem freighted with elfin
+voices that jeer the insensate rocks for their baffled scheme of
+mischief.
+
+But they chanted a far different chorus, and the darkness saw another
+sight, when, a few moons later, they dashed themselves down in
+irresistible array, and bore with them in their desperate plunge the
+lifeless bodies of two passing miners, in whose hearts, it may be, dwelt
+at the moment only happy thoughts of the homes 'neath the blue skies to
+which they were hurrying, the dear familiar sunlit Paradise that would
+succeed the endless night of their _Inferno_ of toil.
+
+  "But men must work, and women must weep;
+  And the sooner 'tis over, the sooner to sleep!"
+
+Well, we take up our march again presently, and, led by a monotonous
+hammering, proceed toward the sound. Some of the miners are at work
+here, clearing a mass of ore from the stubborn rock. Their strokes fall
+as regularly as those of machinery, and the grim men who wield the
+ponderous hammers accompany each blow with a peculiar loud indrawing of
+the breath, like the pant of a blacksmith at his anvil. So strong is
+this resemblance, that we burst forth all together in the strains of
+the "Anvil Chorus"; and the accompaniment is beaten with tenfold more
+regularity and effect than on the stage, in the glare of the footlights,
+by "Il Trovatore's" gypsy-comrades. I doubt if Verdi's music was ever
+so rendered before, amid such surroundings. The compliment may be the
+higher, coming from so low a region.
+
+Beyond this group are a few miners resting from toil. One of these, as
+he stands leaning his folded arms on a jutting rock, upon which he has
+placed his candle, elicits our spontaneous admiration. His beauty is
+Apollo-like,--every chiselled feature perfect in its classic regularity;
+his eyes sad, slumberous, and yet deep and glowing, are quite enough
+for any susceptible maiden's heart; about a broad expanse of forehead
+cluster thick masses of dark brown hair; his shirt, open at the throat,
+reveals glimpses of ivory; altogether he is statuesque and beautiful.
+Even his hands, strongly knit as they are, have not been rendered coarse
+by labor; they bear the same pallid hue as his face, and he looks like
+some nobly-born prisoner. "What untoward fate cast him there?" I often
+ask myself. He exists in my memory as a veritable Prince Charming, held
+captive in those gloomy caves of enchantment that yielded up to me their
+unreal realities in that nightmarish experience. I never fancy him on
+upper earth living coarsely, even, it may be, talking ungrammatically,
+defying Horne Tooke and outraging Murray, among beings of a lower order
+of humanity; but he rises like a statue, standing silent and apart.
+
+Some one throws away a nearly burnt-out candle at this spot. It falls
+but a few inches from a can of gunpowder, which is not too securely
+closed. As I utter a quick word of warning to the careless one, a miner
+starts. "Good Heaven!" I hear him exclaim, as we disappear,--"that was a
+woman!"
+
+When we reach the next shaft, the Captain deposits himself in the
+descending bucket, and, irregularly tossing from side to side, goes down
+to overlook some work, and leave fresh orders with the miners. We await
+his return before again betaking ourselves to the ladders.
+
+On the next level, we behold scores of men in busy action. I can think
+only of ants in an ant-hill: some are laden with ore; others bearing the
+refuse rocks and earth, the _debris_ of the mine, to the shafts; others,
+again, are preparing blasts,--we do not tarry long with these; others
+with picks work steadily at the tough ore. In some places, the copper
+freshly broken glitters like gold, and the specks on the rocks, or in
+the earth-covered mass, as our candle-light awakens their sparkles,
+gleam like the spangles on a dancer's robe or stars in a midnight sky.
+All the while we hear the dreadful rattle of the down-sinking caldrons,
+or the heavy labor of the freighted ones, as they ascend from level to
+level.
+
+Suddenly our path conducts us past a seated bevy of miners taking their
+"crib," as it is termed, from the food-can, which stands at hand,--a
+small fire blazing in the midst of them. Weary and sore, we seat
+ourselves near them, while our hardier companions talk with the
+respectful group.
+
+They work eight hours at a time, they tell us,--ascending at the
+expiration of that period to betake themselves to their homes, which are
+mostly in the little village where the yelping curs also reside. They
+enjoy unusual health, and pity the upper-world of surface-laborers,
+whom they regard with a kind of contempt. Accidents are not frequent,
+considering the perils of their occupation. The miners here are
+generally Cornish-men, with some Germans.
+
+I sit silent, thinking of my Prince Charming, with many vague
+conjectures.
+
+At first, these men have paused in their repast in presence of the
+strangers; but now, with rude courtesy, noticing our weariness, they
+offer a portion to us. Faint and famishing, we by no means disdain it. I
+wonder what Mrs. Grundy would say, could her Argus-eyes penetrate to
+the spot, where we,--bound to "die of roses in aromatic pain,"--in
+miners'-garb, masculine and muddy, sit on stones with earthy delvers,
+more than six hundred feet under ground,--where the foot of woman has
+never trod before, nor the voice of woman echoed,--and sip, with the
+relish of intense thirst, steaming black tea from an old tin cup!
+
+_Eh, bien!_ for all that, let me do it justice. Never was black tea
+less herb-like; never draught of sillery, quaffed from goblet of rare
+Bohemian glass, more delicious! And so, with thank-yous that were not
+only from the lip, we toil on some distance yet, to the shaft by which
+we are to ascend,--one quite remote from that by which we began our
+trip.
+
+Halting at the foot of the ladder, we pour forth the "Star-spangled
+Banner" with the full strength of lungs inflated by patriotism, until
+the stirring staves ring and resound through those dim caves. The
+miners, who hold the superstition, that to whisper bodes ill-luck, must
+have imagined we were exorcising evil spirits with an incantation.
+
+Then begins our weary way upward. We sing "Excelsior" in our hearts, and
+forget our aching limbs, for the most laborious portion of the night's
+toil is before us. The almost perpendicular ladder is just beside the
+powerful pump, which, worked by a steam-engine, exhausts the water from
+the mine, and its busy piston, in monotonous measure, keeps time to our
+climbing.
+
+Two rests during the entire distance, which we travel in brave silence.
+Indeed, we cannot speak,--the oppressive strain upon the chest is so
+great. Step after step, hand over hand, up we go. At last, warmer air
+greets us, lights flicker from above; the trap-door is reached; we are
+on the surface again; we are out of the depths,--and our hearts whisper
+a _Te Deum_ of thanksgiving.
+
+I think well of the establishment of a chapel, such as exists at the
+entrance to the Valenciana mine in Mexico, where each miner spends half
+an hour, going to or returning from his labors. Such a union of work and
+worship seems a proper adjunct to the profit and the peril.
+
+There is a faint glimmer of coming dawn far away in the east, as we
+go forth into the midsummer-night, and we catch the distant notes of
+chanticleer, as he sounds his shrill _reveille_ to the day.
+
+As my confused brain seeks repose, and my weary limbs sink into the
+softness of the never-so-welcome bed, my thoughts fly to distant ones,
+to whom I would whisper,--as I do to you who have so patiently burrowed
+with me,--"Only love me for the dangers I have passed!"
+
+But it is in vain that you long for a similar experience, my dear Laura
+Matilda. Being the first, we are also the last women to whom these
+subterranean passages will yield their mysteries, their windings, and
+their wonders. Against all of my own sex the Pandemonian depths of the
+Minnesota Mines are henceforth as obstinately barred as ever were the
+golden gates of the Mohammedan Paradise.
+
+
+
+
+A LONELY HOUSE.
+
+
+  "Some weighty crime that Heaven could not pardon,
+  A secret curse, on that old building hung,
+  And its deserted garden."
+
+HOOD'S _Haunted House_.
+
+One autumn evening, not very long ago, I was driving out with my uncle.
+I had been spending several weeks at his house, and in that time had
+driven with him very often, so that I supposed myself familiar with
+nearly all the roads that stretched away from the pleasant village where
+he resided; but on this occasion he proposed taking me in an entirely
+new direction, over a tract of country I had never before seen.
+
+For a mile or two after we left home, we bowled rapidly along on a
+well-travelled turnpike; then a sudden turn to the right brought us,
+with slackened speed, into a quiet country-road. Passing through the
+fields that bordered the highway, we came into a wild, romantic region
+of hill and dale that fully deserved all that my uncle had said in its
+praise.
+
+Giving ourselves up to the sweet influences of the scene, we trotted our
+horses slowly, past dusky bits of forest that made the air fragrant with
+the damp smell of the woods, and by occasional shining pools adorned
+with floating pond-lilies, and shaded with thick, low bushes of
+witch-hazel. The sunlight had that orange glow that comes only on autumn
+evenings, the long, slant rays striking across the yellow fields and
+lighting up the dark evergreens which dotted the landscape with a tawny
+illumination, like dull flames. The locusts hummed drowsily, as if they
+were almost asleep, and the frogs in the ponds sent out an occasional
+muffled croak. Altogether, it was deliciously calm and deserted; we did
+not meet a human being or a habitation for miles, as we wound along
+the secluded path, now up and now down, but on the whole gradually
+ascending, till we reached the summit of a hill larger and steeper than
+the rest.
+
+Here there stood a lonely house.
+
+Pausing to allow our horses a moment's rest, my eye was caught by its
+deserted and dilapidated appearance. It had evidently been uninhabited
+for years. The fence had gone to decay, the gate lay rotting on the
+ground, and a forlorn sleigh, looking strangely out of place in contrast
+with the summer-flowers that had over-grown it, was drawn up before the
+entrance. The grass had obliterated every trace of the path that once
+led to the decayed steps, bushes had grown up thickly around the lower
+story of the house, and tangled vines, creeping in through the broken
+panes of the windows, hung in festoons from the moss-covered sills.
+The door had dropped from its hinges, and on one side of the front the
+boards had fallen off, so that I could see quite into the interior,
+where I noticed, with surprise, some furniture yet remained, though in
+great confusion, a broken chair and an overturned table being the most
+prominent objects. Outside, the same disorder was manifest in the great
+farm-wagon, left standing where it had last been used, and the neglected
+out-buildings fast going to decay. About the whole place there was an
+aspect of peculiar gloom, and the house itself stood on this bleak hill
+looking out over the lonesome landscape with a sort of tragic melancholy
+in its black and weather-beaten front.
+
+Now such a sight as this is very rare in our busy New England, where
+everything is turned to advantage, and where the thrifty owner of a
+tenement too old for habitation is sure to tear it down and convert the
+materials of which it is built to some other use. My curiosity was,
+therefore, at once excited regarding this place, and I turned to my
+uncle with an inquiry as to its history.
+
+"It is a very sad one," he answered,--"so sad that it gives a terrible
+dreariness to this solitary spot."
+
+"Then I am sure you will tell me the causes which led to its desertion.
+You know how much I like a story."
+
+My uncle complied with the request, and, as we wended our way home
+through the deepening twilight, related a series of strange facts,
+which, at the time, took a powerful hold on my imagination, and which I
+have since endeavored to group into a continuous narrative.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+This house, now so forlorn, was once a neat and happy home. It was built
+by a young farmer named James Blount, who went into it with his young
+wife when he brought her home from the distant State where he had
+married her. For several years they seemed very prosperous and happy;
+then a heavy affliction came. The healthy young farmer was thrown from
+his horse, and carried to his home only to linger a few terrible hours
+and expire in great agony. Thus early in its history was the doomed
+house overshadowed with the gloom of sudden and violent death.
+
+Every one was heartily sorry for the widow with her two little boys,
+and the people of the country-side did all that they could to cheer
+her loneliness and lighten her grief. But, as I have said, she was a
+stranger among them, and she seems to have been naturally of a reserved
+disposition, preferring solitude in her affliction; for she so repelled
+their attentions, that, one by one, even her husband's friends deserted
+her. Then, too, her house was three miles from the nearest neighbor, and
+this was necessarily a barrier to frequent social intercourse. She very
+rarely went into the village, even to church, and thus people came to
+know very little of her manner of life; it was only guessed at by those
+few acquaintance who, at rare intervals, made their way to the Blount
+farm-house.
+
+Among them it was remarked, that the widow, still quite young, was
+unnaturally stern and cold, and that her two sons, who were growing up
+in this sad isolation, were strangely like their mother, not only in
+appearance, but in manners. Their names were James and John. There was
+but little over a year between them, and they were so much alike that
+most persons found a difficulty in distinguishing one from the other.
+Both had fierce, black eyes, short, crisp, black hair, and swarthy
+skins,--quite unlike our freckled-face Yankee boys,--so that the older
+villagers declared, with a sigh, that there was not a trace of the
+good-hearted father about them; they wholly resembled their strange
+mother. The boys themselves did nothing to lessen this disagreeable
+impression; they were unusually grave and reserved for their years,
+taking no interest in the sports of other children; and after a time,
+it became painfully evident to those who watched them that they had no
+fondness for each other; on the contrary, that affection which would
+naturally have sprung from their nearness in age and their constant
+companionship seemed to be entirely wanting, and its place usurped by an
+absolute dislike.
+
+When this was first discovered, it was supposed to account for the
+widow's aversion to society. This idea, being once started, made those
+idle busybodies there are in every village eager to discover if the
+suspicion were correct. Through the men hired to work on the farm, it
+was ascertained that the poor mother, with all her sternness and her
+iron law, had difficulty in keeping peace between the boys. Twenty times
+a day they would fall into angry dispute about some trifle; and so
+violent were these altercations, that it was said that she durst not for
+a moment have them both out of her sight, lest one should inflict some
+deadly injury upon the other. That this was no ill-founded fear was
+evinced by a quarrel that took place between them, when John was perhaps
+eleven, and James twelve years old.
+
+It was witnessed by a village lad named Isaac Welles. He was an alert,
+active person, who liked to earn a penny or two on his own account, out
+of work-hours. With this notable intention, he arose soon after dawn of
+a pleasant summer-morning, for the purpose of picking blackberries.
+Now he knew that they were very plentiful in a field near the Blount
+farmhouse, and, thinking such small theft no robbery, he made his
+way thither with all speed, and was soon filling his basket with the
+dew-sprinkled fruit. Early as it was, however, he soon discovered that
+there was some one up before him. He heard a sound of talking in low,
+caressing tones, and, glancing in the direction whence it came, he saw
+John Blount sitting under a tree near by, and playing with a little
+black squirrel, which appeared to be quite tame. Not caring to be
+discovered and warned off, Isaac went on with his work quietly, taking
+care to keep where he could see without being seen.
+
+John was not long left alone in his innocent amusement, for in a few
+moments James Blount came running down from the house towards him. As he
+approached, John's face darkened; he caught up the squirrel, and made an
+endeavor to hide it under his jacket.
+
+"No, you don't!" said James, as he came up, breathless. "I see you have
+got him, plain enough; he sha'n't get away this time,--so you might as
+well give him to me."
+
+"No, I won't!" replied John, sullenly.
+
+"You won't?"
+
+"No!" said John, more fiercely, and then burst out, passionately,--"I
+don't see why you want to tease me about it; he a'n't your pet; I have
+found him and tamed him; he knows me and loves me, and he don't care for
+you; besides, you only want him to torment him. No! you sha'n't have
+him!"
+
+"Sha'n't I? we'll see!" And James made a step forward.
+
+John drew back several paces, at the same time trying to soothe the
+squirrel, which was becoming impatient of its confinement. His face
+quivered with excitement, as he went on, passionately,--
+
+"I know what you want him for: you want him to hurt some way. You wrung
+my black kitten's neck, and now you want to kill my squirrel. You are a
+bad, wicked boy, and I hate you!"
+
+With the last words he started to run; but he had not gone far when his
+foot struck a stone, and he fell. At this, the squirrel, terrified,
+jumped from his arms; but James was close by, and before it could
+escape, he had caught it. John was up in an instant, and James, seeing
+that he could not avoid him, gave the poor little creature's neck a
+sudden twist and flung it gasping at his brother's feet, exclaiming,--
+
+"There, now, you may have it!"
+
+For one moment John stood still, white with rage and grief; then he
+uttered a sort of choking howl, and sprang at James,--
+
+"You cruel coward!"
+
+The words were accompanied with a half-articulate curse, as he struck
+at him, blindly, fiercely, and they closed in what seemed a deadly
+struggle. John, being the younger, had a slight disadvantage in size and
+weight, but wrath gave him more than his usual strength; while James
+fought desperately, as if for life. After a few moments they rolled on
+the ground together.
+
+It was a fearful sight, those two brothers, boys though they were,
+fighting in that mad way. Their faces, so much alike that they seemed
+almost reflections of each other, were crimson with anger; their eyes
+shot fire; their breath came in sobbing pants; and very soon blood was
+drawn on both. After a brief contest, John, with a tremendous effort,
+threw James under him. With one hand he pinioned his arms, while the
+other was at his throat, where it closed with a deadly gripe. James made
+one last effort to save himself; with a violent wrench he succeeded in
+fixing his teeth in his brother's arm, but he failed in making him relax
+his hold, though they met in the firm flesh. John's brow grew darker,
+but he only tightened his clasp closer and closer, muttering,--
+
+"So help me, God! I will kill you!"
+
+His words were near being verified; already the fallen boy's mouth had
+unclosed, the red of his face turned to livid purple, and his eyes
+stared wildly, when Mrs. Blount, pale, with disordered attire, as if she
+had but just risen and dressed hastily, ran, screaming, down the hill.
+Seizing John around the waist, she dragged him back, and flung him to
+the ground, exclaiming,--
+
+"Oh, my sons! my sons! are you not brothers? Will you never be at
+peace?"
+
+At this moment, Isaac arrived, breathless with running, at the spot.
+When she saw him, the widow ceased speaking, and made no further
+allusion to the quarrel while he remained. However, she gladly accepted
+his offered assistance in lifting James, who lay gasping, and wellnigh
+dead. As they turned towards the house, John rose, sullenly, and
+wrapping a handkerchief round his wounded arm, which was bleeding
+profusely, he glanced scowlingly at his brother.
+
+"He will get over this," he muttered, with an oath; "but, sooner or
+later, I swear I will kill him!"
+
+Without noticing his mother's appealing look, he walked back to the tree
+where the dead pet lay.
+
+The half-strangled boy was carried to his bed, and a few simple remedies
+restored him to consciousness. As soon as possible, Mrs. Blount
+dismissed Isaac, declining his offers of going for a doctor, with cold
+thanks. As he went back to resume his interrupted blackberrying, he saw
+John sitting at the foot of the tree. He had dug a hole in which to bury
+the poor squirrel; it lay on his knee, a stream of dark gore oozing
+through its tiny white teeth. John was vainly endeavoring to wipe this
+with the handkerchief already stained with his own blood, while his hot
+tears fell fast and heavy.
+
+As John had said, James recovered from the choking, and the only
+apparent results of the fight were that both boys were scarred for life.
+John bore on his right wrist the impression of his brother's teeth; and
+James's throat was disfigured by two deep, black marks, on each side,
+which were quite visible till his beard concealed them. Yet, I doubt
+not, that desperate struggle, in that dawning summer-day, laid the
+foundation of the inextinguishable hatred that blasted those men's lives
+and was to be quenched only in death.
+
+Several years passed after this, in which very little was known of what
+passed at the lonely house. The boys were old enough to perform most of
+the work of the farm, so that they no longer hired laborers except at
+harvest. Mrs. Blount had herself given her sons all the instruction they
+had ever received, and, being a woman of attainments beyond those usual
+in her station, she seemed quite competent to the task. Nothing more was
+heard of their quarrels; they were always coldly civil to each other,
+when in the presence of others, and were regarded by their companions
+with respect, though, I imagine, never with any cordial liking. So they
+grew up to be grave, taciturn men, still retaining the same strong
+resemblance of face and figure, though time had somewhat altered the
+features, by fixing a different expression on each, giving to John a
+fierce resolution, and to James a lurking distrustfulness of look. These
+years made less change in Mrs. Blount than in her sons; she was the same
+active, black-eyed woman, only that her sternness and reserve seemed to
+increase with her age, and a few silver threads appeared in her raven
+hair.
+
+I have said that it was three miles from the Blount place to the nearest
+house. This was at the toll-gate, which was kept by a man named Curtis.
+He was a person of progressive tastes, supposed to have aristocratic
+inclinations. As he was a well-to-do man, these were evinced in a
+Brussels carpet and a piano-forte which figured in his small parlor, and
+by his sending his only child, a daughter, to a city boarding-school.
+She returned, as might have been expected, with ideas and desires far
+beyond the hill-side cottage where she was condemned to vegetate. Now
+she was very pretty, with dancing blue eyes and a profusion of golden
+curls; she had, too, a most winning manner, hard for any one to resist;
+and these personal attractions, added to style of dress that had never
+been seen or imagined among the simple country-folk, rendered her a
+most important person, so that no "tea-fight" or merry-making was
+complete without Nelly Curtis.
+
+However, it might have been long enough before the recluse young Blounts
+would have encountered the gay little belle, had it not been that they
+were of necessity obliged to pass through the toll-gate, and sometimes
+forced to stop there. From some of her friends Nelly heard what a
+secluded life the two brothers led, and how especially averse they
+seemed to female society, and, with the appetite for conquest of a true
+flirt, she at once determined on adding them to the list of her victims.
+It was not long before she had an opportunity for beginning her wiles.
+
+One fine spring morning, John Blount started on horseback to go to the
+village. The sun shone very brightly, the hedge-rows blushed with early
+blossoms, and the birds sang a song of rejoicing. It was one of those
+clear, soft days when one feels new life and vigor at the thought of the
+coming summer. Arrived at the toll-gate, John was surprised at seeing no
+one there to open it; he waited a moment, somewhat impatiently, and then
+called out,--
+
+"Holloa!"
+
+At this, as if startled at his voice, there appeared in the cottage
+door-way a slender, rosy-cheeked maiden, who looked blooming and
+graceful enough to be the incarnation of the fresh and beautiful May.
+
+"Excuse me," she said, with a little curtsy; "I did not see you come
+up."
+
+This, as Nelly informed the friend to whom she related the adventure,
+was a fib,--for Mr. Curtis was away, and she had been watching all the
+morning, in hopes one of the Blounts would pass; but she considered it a
+justifiable stratagem, as likely to secure his attention.
+
+Meantime John was gazing spellbound at this apparition, which appeared
+to him charming beyond anything he had ever imagined. He was so far
+carried away, that he was quite speechless and wholly oblivious of the
+toll, until she came up to the side of the horse and held out her hand.
+Then he colored, and, with awkward apology, gave her the change.
+
+"Thank you, Sir."
+
+Nelly smiled sweetly, and was just about to undo the latch of the gate,
+when John anticipated her by springing from his horse, and laying his
+powerful brown hand over her small white one, saying,--
+
+"You can't do anything with this great, heavy gate. Stand aside, and let
+me open it."
+
+Of course the offer was kindly accepted, and Nelly fairly overwhelmed
+him with her thanks, being herself somewhat touched by the unusual
+civility. John appeared quite overcome with confusion, and, remounting
+his horse, he rode off with a gruff "Good day." However, I fancy, that
+pleasant voice, and the accidental touch of that little hand, made an
+impression that never was effaced.
+
+Having thus enslaved John, it was not long before a similar opportunity
+occurred for captivating James; though it would seem from Nelly's
+confessions to her confidante that this was not so easily accomplished
+with him as with his brother. The first time she opened the gate for
+him, he paid but little more heed to her than he would have to her
+father, and she never considered her conquest complete until one day
+when Mr. Curtis availed himself of a vacant seat in James's wagon to
+get Nelly taken into the village: that ride, she fancied, insured the
+wished-for result. Whether this was a correct supposition or not,
+certain it is that not many weeks elapsed before both the Blounts were
+completely fascinated by the gay coquette.
+
+For some time the passion of each brother remained a secret to the
+other. Accident revealed it.
+
+One soft summer-evening, John rode down to the village for letters. As
+he passed through the toll-gate, he succeeded in making an appointment
+with Nelly for a walk on his return. He came back an hour later, and
+soon after sunset the two strolled down a shady path into the woods. It
+was moonlight, and Nelly was doubtless very charming in the mysterious
+radiance,--certainly her companion thought so,--for, when their walk
+was over, he induced her to sit with him on a fallen log that lay just
+within the shade of the trees, instead of returning to the house. They
+had been chatting there perhaps half an hour, when they were interrupted
+by the girl the Curtises kept to do "chores."
+
+"Please, Miss Nelly, there's a gentleman wants to see you."
+
+"Very well, tell him I will be there in a moment."
+
+When the girl was gone, Nelly suddenly exclaimed, rather regretfully,--
+
+"How stupid of me, not to ask who it was!"
+
+John's answer is not reported, only that he succeeded in lengthening the
+"moment" into a quarter of an hour, and then half an hour; and it might,
+perhaps, have lasted the whole evening, had they not, in the midst of a
+most interesting conversation, been startled by a rustling in the bushes
+behind them.
+
+"There is some one watching us!" cried John, excitedly, and half rising.
+
+"Nonsense!" said Nelly; "it is only a cat. Sit down again."
+
+This invitation was not to be declined. John sat down again, though
+still a little restless and uneasy. For some moments all was still. John
+had concluded that Nelly's suggestion was a correct one, and they had
+begun to chat quite unconcernedly, when they were again interrupted.
+This time the sound was that of an approaching footstep, and for an
+instant a dark shadow fell across the moonlit path in front of them.
+Nelly was now fairly frightened, she uttered a faint shriek, and clung
+to John for protection. Doubtless this was a very pleasant appeal to the
+young farmer, but just now wrath mastered every other feeling. He was
+ever easily angered, and, to be sure, the thought that they were watched
+was by no means agreeable. So, with a quick caress, he loosened her
+clasp and started to his feet, exclaiming,--
+
+"Don't be frightened, dear! I'll punish the rascal!"
+
+He made a dash in the direction whence the sound had come. In the shade
+of the trees stood the intruder quite still, making no attempt to avoid
+the furious onset. Mad with rage, John seized him by the collar, and,
+striking him repeatedly, and muttering curses, dragged him towards the
+bench where Nelly sat trembling. A few staggering steps, and they were
+on the path, with the pure, peaceful light of the moon falling full on
+the stranger's face.
+
+"Good God!" cried John, loosening his hold,--"it is my brother!"
+
+James drew himself up, tossing back his disordered hair, and for a
+moment the two men regarded each other with stern, fixed looks, as if
+they were preparing for another encounter. By this time, Nelly, who was
+completely terrified, had begun to weep convulsively, and her sobs broke
+the ominous silence, as she gasped,--
+
+"Oh, John, please don't strike him again!"
+
+At these words, John started, as if stung, and, looking at her with
+indignant sadness, said,--
+
+"There, you needn't cry, Nelly! I won't hurt him; I will leave him to
+you safely."
+
+Then, overcome by the rush of recollection, he burst out,
+passionately,--
+
+"Oh, James! James! you have rendered my life miserable by your
+treacheries, and now you have robbed me of her! This is no place to
+settle our quarrels; but I have sworn it once, and I swear it again now,
+some day I will be revenged!"
+
+He would not stop to hear Nelly's entreating voice; but, full of the one
+dreadful thought, that all her anxieties had been for another, while he
+was indifferent to her, he mounted his horse, without one backward look,
+and galloped fast away. I can fancy there was a wild whirl of emotion
+in his passionate heart: deadly hatred, jealousy, and crossed love are
+enough to drive any man mad.
+
+Meantime, James apologized to Nelly for his intrusion, on the ground,
+that, becoming tired of waiting, and hearing she had gone out for a
+wait, he had started to meet them, but was about to turn back, fearing
+to interrupt them, when John's rudeness compelled him to appear. The
+excuse was accepted; and James soon occupied the seat recently vacated
+by poor John. So well did he avail himself of the circumstances, that he
+succeeded in convincing Nelly that his brother was a very ill-tempered
+person, whom it would be well for her to avoid. On this, with the true
+instinct of a flirt, she endeavored to persuade him that she had never
+really cared for John's attentions. James was but too willing to be
+convinced of this; and he parted from her, feeling satisfied that his
+suit would be successful.
+
+Knowing well that his life was scarcely safe, if he were for a moment
+alone with John, after that night, James constantly exercised such
+caution as prevented the possibility of an encounter. He was determined
+as soon as possible to leave that neighborhood, always provided that
+Nelly would go with him. For some time he considered this as certain.
+John carefully avoided her, and no new suitor appeared.
+
+I fear that pretty Nelly was a thorough coquette; for, having nearly
+broken one brother's heart, she very soon tired of the other, for whom
+she had never really cared a straw. These two men being the last to fall
+into her toils, she began to sigh wearily over her too easily captured
+victims, when her fickle fancy was caught by game more worthy so expert
+a sportsman.
+
+It happened that at this time there came to the village a gentleman from
+New York, named Brooke, a bachelor of known wealth. He was perhaps forty
+years old, and had run through a course of reckless dissipation which
+had rendered him thoroughly tired of city ways and city women. On the
+very first Sunday after his arrival, as he stood idly lounging at the
+church-door, his eye was caught by Nelly's fresh, rosy face. He followed
+her into church, and spent the time of service in staring her out of
+countenance. It will be readily imagined that she was not slow to
+follow up this first impression; and but few days elapsed before their
+acquaintance had ripened into intimacy.
+
+Of course, his unceasing attentions could not fail of attracting notice
+and exciting remark; and it was not long before they came to the ears
+of the Blounts. John received the news with sullen indifference. It
+mattered little to him whom she liked now. James, however, refused to
+believe that there could be anything in it, regarding it as a mere
+passing caprice. In this view most of the village-people coincided; they
+considered it absurd to suppose that there could be anything serious in
+Mr. Brooke's devotion. Time would probably have proved the correctness
+of this supposition, had it not been, fortunately for Nelly, that she
+had a father with more steadiness of mind than her giddy brain was
+capable of. Mr. Curtis succeeded in turning the rapid attachment to such
+advantage, that in three weeks from the time of their first meeting they
+were not only engaged, but actually married.
+
+It had been Nelly's intention, with the vanity of a true woman, to
+postpone the wedding a month longer, and then to have it on such a scale
+as would excite the admiration and envy of all her companions; but Mr.
+Curtis was too shrewd for this. He durst not put this rapid love to the
+test of waiting; and he so worked upon his daughter's fears, that she
+consented to a more hasty union. Mr. Brooke, too, showed some aversion
+to any public demonstration. Perhaps he was conscious that his friends
+would think he was doing a foolish thing, and he was therefore desirous
+of having it over before they had time to remonstrate. So, on a fine
+bright Sunday, early in September, the drowsy congregation, who were
+dozing away the afternoon-service, were aroused by the publication
+of the banns of marriage between Henry Brooke and Nelly Curtis. It
+occasioned great whispering and tittering. But no one suspected that the
+wedding was near at hand; and there were very few lingerers after the
+service was over, when Kelly came in at the side-door with her father,
+was joined by Mr. Brooke, and actually married then and there.
+
+The Blount brothers never went to church, but they almost always came
+into the village of a Sunday afternoon, and on this memorable day they
+were there as usual, but not together. John was earnestly discussing a
+new breed of cattle with a neighboring farmer, wholly oblivious of
+the false Nelly. James was standing with a group of young men on the
+village-green, when Isaac Welles, the whilom blackberry-boy, rushed
+up, breathless, to say that he had been detained in the church and had
+actually seen Nelly and Mr. Brooke married.
+
+In the first eager questions that followed this announcement, no one
+noticed James, until they were astonished to see him fall heavily to the
+ground. He had fainted. They had not mentioned the publication of the
+banns to him, and he was wholly unprepared for this utter annihilation
+of all his hopes. Welles sprang to his side, and they raised him
+quickly. He was a strong man, and before they could bring any
+restoratives he had recovered.
+
+"It is nothing," he said, with a sickly smile. "I think it must have
+been a sunstroke. It is confoundedly hot."
+
+This lame explanation was accepted, and James refused to go into any of
+the neighbors' houses, though he consented to seat himself, for a few
+moments, on a rustic bench in the shade of the trees.
+
+Half an hour later, John, having finished his chat, strolled to the
+green and approached the group. He looked surprised when he caught
+sight of his brother, who of late had so carefully avoided him. His
+astonishment increased when James rose, and, advancing a step, said,--
+
+"John, Nelly Curtis is married to that Brooke!"
+
+An angry flush rose to John's brow, and his black eyes flashed
+ominously, as he answered, in a hoarse, low voice,--
+
+"So much the better, for now she will never be your wife."
+
+"Neither mine nor yours," said James, maliciously;--then, after a
+moment, he added, "She was a worthless thing, and we are well rid of
+her."
+
+At this, a tornado of passion seemed to seize John. He sprang forward,
+crying,--
+
+"She was not worthless, and I will kill the first man who dares to say
+so."
+
+There was an interval of dead silence; the brothers regarded each other
+for a moment, then James shrugged his shoulders contemptuously, and
+turned away. John glanced around him defiantly on the astonished crowd,
+and, seeing no one there likely to dispute with him, he seemed to have
+formed a sudden resolution, for he walked off rapidly after his brother.
+
+Isaac Welles had stood by, no unobservant witness of this scene. He
+noted something in those two men's eyes that recalled the fierce quarrel
+of the two boys; and as soon as it was possible for him to get away,
+he went off after the Blounts, determined, if possible, to prevent
+mischief.
+
+Meantime John had not met his brother; but, seeing James's horse was
+gone, he mounted his own and rode away towards home, determining to
+catch James before he could reach there. However, he did not overtake
+him. James was too cunning to ride directly to the farm-house, and
+John's headlong speed availed only to bring him there in time to find
+his mother alone and dangerously ill.
+
+In a moment all other thoughts were laid aside. The pent-up affection of
+John's heart had centred itself on his only parent. She had always been
+cold and stern with her sons, yet they loved her with a tender devotion
+which reclaimed natures that might otherwise have been wholly bad.
+
+With all the tenderness of a woman, John assisted his mother to her bed,
+and, not daring to leave her, awaited eagerly the coming of the only
+other person who could summon aid,--his brother James.
+
+At last he came,--riding slowly, with bowed head, up the lonely road.
+John went out to meet him. James looked up angry and astonished, and
+immediately threw himself into a position of defence. John shook his
+head.
+
+"James," he said, "I cannot settle our quarrel now. Mother is very
+ill,--perhaps dying."
+
+James started forward.
+
+"Where is she? What is the matter?" he cried, eagerly.
+
+"I do not know," answered John. "I will go for the doctor, now that you
+are come. I durst not leave her before. But, James, stop one moment. As
+long as she lives, you are safe,--I will not hurt you by word or act;
+but when she is gone,--beware!"
+
+James did not answer, except by a nod, and John, turning, saw Isaac
+Welles standing at the gate. He had overheard the conversation and felt
+that there was no danger of a quarrel, and he now came eagerly forward
+with offers of assistance. They were gratefully accepted; for even the
+taciturnity of the brothers seemed to give way before the pressing fear
+that beset them.
+
+There is ever great good-will and kindness in the scattered community of
+a village, and, despite the unpopularity of the Blounts, neighbors and
+friends soon came to them, ready and willing to aid them by every means
+in their power.
+
+Mrs. Blount's illness proved to be quite as alarming as John had
+feared. The physician, from the first, held out very little hope of her
+recovery. The strong, healthy woman was stricken, as if in a moment;
+it was the first real illness she had ever had, and it made fearful
+progress. Yet her naturally iron constitution resisted desperately, so
+that, to the astonishment of all who saw her sufferings, she lingered
+on, week after week, with wonderful tenacity of life. The summer faded
+into autumn, and autumn died into winter, and still she lived, failing
+slowly, each day losing strength, growing weaker and weaker, until it
+seemed as if she existed only by the force of will.
+
+Of course it had long ago been found necessary to have some other
+dependence than the kindness of neighbors, and a stout Irish girl had
+been hired for the kitchen, while Mrs. Clark, a good, responsible woman,
+occupied the post of nurse. From these persons, and from Isaac Welles,
+the rest of the story is collected.
+
+During all these months of her illness, the two brothers had been
+unfailing in their devotion to their poor suffering mother. Night and
+day they never tired, watching by her bedside for hours, and seeming
+scarcely to sleep. Of course they were much together, but no words of
+harshness ever passed their lips. When out of Mrs. Blount's presence,
+they spoke to each other as little as possible; in her presence, there
+was a studied civility that might have deceived any one but a mother.
+Even she was puzzled. She would lie and watch them with burning, eager
+eyes, striving to discover if it was a heartfelt reconciliation or only
+a hollow truce. It was the strong feeling she had that only her life
+kept them apart, which gave her power to defy death. Perhaps on this
+very account his stroke was all the more sudden at last.
+
+It was a dark, lowering afternoon in December when the summons came.
+Mrs. Blount had been lying in a half-doze for more than an hour. Her
+sons had taken advantage of this sleep to attend to some necessary
+duties. The nurse sat beside the fire, watching the flames flicker on
+the dark walls, and idly wondering if the leaden-hued sky portended a
+snow-storm. Her musings were broken by the voice of the invalid, very
+faint, but quite distinct,--
+
+"Nurse! nurse! Call my sons. I am dying!"
+
+Mrs. Clark ran to the bed.
+
+"Quick! quick!" cried Mrs. Blount. "Do not stop for me. You cannot help
+me now. Call my sons before it is too late!"
+
+Her tone and action were so imperative that they enforced obedience, and
+the nurse ran down-stairs with all speed. She found no one but the hired
+girl in the kitchen, who said, in answer to her hurried inquiries, that
+both brothers were out, gone to bring in the cattle before the storm.
+Mrs. Clark sent her in all haste to recall them, and then returned to
+the sick-room. As she entered, the dying woman looked up quickly, her
+face clouded with disappointment when she saw that she was alone. The
+nurse said all in her power to assure her that her sons would soon be
+there, but she could not allay the strange excitement into which their
+absence seemed to have thrown her.
+
+"My strength is failing," she said, sadly; "every moment is precious;
+if I die without that promise which they could not refuse to a dying
+mother's prayer, God knows what will become of them!"
+
+Mrs. Clark urged the necessity of quiet, but the sufferer paid no heed
+to the caution. She talked on, wildly, and sometimes incoherently,
+about the hopes she built upon the reconciliation her death-bed would
+effect,--showing, in these few moments of unnatural loquacity, how
+deeply she had felt the animosity between her sons, and how great had
+been the effort to conquer it. This excitement could not continue long;
+her voice soon grew weaker, and at last she ceased speaking, appearing
+to sink into a stupor of exhaustion.
+
+An instant after, the door opened and John ran eagerly to the couch,
+closely followed by James. Already the poor widow's eyes were closed;
+the livid hue that is so fatally significant overspread her face; her
+breath came in quick gasps.
+
+"Mother! mother!" cried John, flinging himself on his knees beside her,
+and seizing the thin, hard hand.
+
+At that sound, she opened her eyes, but it was too late; she no longer
+had the power of utterance. She glanced from one brother to the other
+with a piteous, entreating look; her mouth moved convulsively; in the
+effort to speak, she sat upright for an instant, ghastly and rigid, and
+then fell heavily back.
+
+All was over; her life of labor was changed for eternal rest; and the
+two men, whom only her power had restrained, stood with the last barrier
+between them removed, avowed and deadly enemies.
+
+Yet, for all that, they were sincere mourners for the sole parent they
+had ever known, though it seemed, that, jealous even in their grief,
+neither cared to have the other see how much he suffered; for, after
+the first few moments, when the heart refuses to be satisfied of the
+certainty which it knows only too well, they turned away, and each
+sought his own room. Afterwards, when all was prepared and the room
+decently arranged, they returned, and alternately through the long night
+kept their vigil beside the corpse. It is strange, that, in those quiet
+hours of communion with the loved dead, no thought of relenting towards
+each other ever suggested itself.
+
+The snow that had been hanging all day in the dark clouds above them
+towards evening began to fall. Stilly and continually the tiny flakes
+came down, hiding all the ruggedness of earth under a spotless mantle,
+even as the white shroud covered the toil-worn frame of the released
+sufferer.
+
+In the morning the news spread rapidly, and neighbors came to the
+afflicted house. But the brothers seemed to resent their offers of
+assistance as an intrusion, refusing to allow any other watchers,
+themselves continuing night and day to watch beside the corpse; and that
+awful vigil, instead of softening their hearts, seemed to harden them
+into a more deadly hatred.
+
+The third afternoon, when all the country-side was ghastly in its
+winding-sheet of snow, and the clouds hung heavy as a pall over the
+stricken earth, the little funeral held its way from the lonely
+farm-house to the village-churchyard. As a last tribute of respect to
+their mother, the two brothers drove side by side in the same sleigh.
+Those who saw them said that it was a sight not to be forgotten,--those
+two black figures, with their stern, pale faces, so much alike, yet so
+unsympathizing, sitting motionless, not even leaning on each other in
+that moment of grief. So they were together, yet apart, during the
+ceremony that consigned the wife to the grave where five-and-twenty
+years before they had laid the husband. So they were together, yet
+apart, when they turned their horse's head towards their home and rode
+away silently into the sombre twilight.
+
+The last person who saw them that night was Mrs. Clark. The brothers
+had insisted that both she and the Irish girl should leave early in the
+day,--replying to all offers of putting the house in order, that they
+preferred to be alone. But on her way home after the funeral, Mrs. Clark
+passed the house in a friend's sleigh and stopped a moment for her
+bundle, which in the hurry of the morning had been forgotten. To her
+surprise, as she approached the door, she saw that there were no lights
+visible in any of the windows, although it was already very dark.
+Thinking the brothers were in the back part of the house, she pushed
+open the door, which yielded to her touch, and was just about to make
+her way towards the kitchen, when she heard a sound in the parlor, and
+then these words, quite distinctly:--
+
+"Are you ready, James?"
+
+"Yes,--only one word. It is a long account we have to settle, and it
+must be final."
+
+"It shall be. Mine is a heavy score. Years ago I swore to wipe it out,
+and now the time has come."
+
+Mrs. Clark's knock interrupted them. There was an angry exclamation, and
+the door was opened. To her intense surprise, no light came from within.
+She could not understand how they could settle their accounts in the
+darkness; but they gave her no time for reflection; an angry voice, in
+answer to her inquiries, bade her go on to the kitchen, and she hastened
+off. There she found a single candle burning dimly; by its light she
+picked up her bundle, and, leaving the door open to see her way,
+returned to the front of the house. Though not a nervous woman, she felt
+an undefined fear at the mysterious darkness and silence; and as she
+passed the brothers standing in the doorway, she was struck with fresh
+terror at the livid pallor of those two stern faces that looked out from
+the black shadow. When she was going out, she heard the door of the
+parlor bolted within, and she rejoined her friends, right glad to be
+away from the sad house.
+
+So those two men were left alone, locked into the dark room together, in
+the horrible companionship of their inextinguishable hatred and their
+own bad hearts. It will forever remain unknown what passed between them
+through the long hours of that awful night, when the wind howled madly
+around the lightless house, and the clouds gathered blacker and thicker,
+shrouding it in impenetrable gloom.
+
+Three days passed before any living creature approached the spot,--three
+days of cold unparalleled in the annals of that country,--cold so severe
+that it compelled even the hardy farmers to keep as much as possible by
+the fireside. On the fourth day, Isaac Welles began to think they had
+been quite long enough alone, and he started with a friend to visit the
+Blount brothers. Arrived at the farm-house, they saw the sleigh standing
+before the door, but no sign of any one stirring. The shutters of the
+windows were closed, and no smoke came out of the chimney. They knocked
+at the door. No answer. Surprised at the silence, they at length tried
+to open it. It was not locked, but some heavy substance barred the way.
+With difficulty they forced it open wide enough to go in.
+
+To this day those men shudder and turn pale, as they recall the awful
+scene that awaited them within that house, which was, in fact, a tomb.
+
+The obstacle which opposed their entrance was the dead body of John
+Blount. He lay stretched on the floor,--his face mutilated by cuts and
+disfigured with gore, his clothes disordered and bloody, and one hand
+nearly severed from the arm by a deep gash at the wrist; yet it was
+evident that none of these wounds were mortal. After that terrible
+conflict, he had probably crawled to the door and fallen there, faint
+with loss of blood; the silent, cruel cold had completed the work of
+death.
+
+Following the blood-track, the two men entered the parlor, with
+suspended breath and hearts that almost ceased to beat. There they
+found the dead body of James Blount,--his clothes half torn off, in the
+violence of the strife that could end only in murder. A long, deep cut
+on the throat had terminated that awful struggle, though many other less
+dangerous wounds showed how desperate it had been. He lay just as he
+fell,--his features still contracted with a look of defiance and
+hatred, and in his right hand still clasped a long, sharp knife. He had
+succumbed in that mortal conflict, which quenched a lifelong quarrel,
+and was to prove fatal alike to victor and vanquished. Thus the vow of
+John Blount was fulfilled,--the pent-up hatred of years satisfied in his
+brother's murder.
+
+The room was in the wildest disorder,--chairs thrown down and broken,
+tables overturned, and the carpet torn. In one corner they found a
+second long, sharp knife. It had been at least a fair fight.
+
+They laid the two ghastly corpses side by side: they had been chained
+together all their lives; they were chained together in death. The two
+fratricides are buried in one grave.
+
+This terrible tragedy blighted the spot where it took place. No one
+would ever inhabit that house again. The furniture was removed, except
+from the one room which to this day remains unchanged, and the building
+left to fall to decay. The superstitious affirm, that, in the long
+winter nights, oaths and groans steal out, muffled, on the rising wind,
+from the dark shadows of the Lonely House.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+BARBARISM AND CIVILIZATION.
+
+
+In the interior of the island of Borneo there has been found a certain
+race of wild creatures, of which kindred varieties have been discovered
+in the Philippine Islands, in Terra del Fuego, and in Southern Africa.
+They walk usually almost erect upon two legs, and in that attitude
+measure about four feet in height; they are dark, wrinkled, and hairy;
+they construct no habitations, form no families, scarcely associate
+together, sleep in trees or in caves, feed on snakes and vermin, on ants
+and ants' eggs, on mice, and on each other; they cannot be tamed, nor
+forced to any labor; and they are hunted and shot among the trees, like
+the great gorillas, of which they are a stunted copy. When they are
+captured alive, one finds, with surprise, that their uncouth jabbering
+sounds like articulate language; they turn up a human face to gaze upon
+their captor; the females show instincts of modesty; and, in fine, these
+wretched beings are Men.
+
+Men, "created in God's image," born immortal and capable of progress,
+and so differing from Socrates and Shakspeare only in degree. It is but
+a sliding scale from this melancholy debasement up to the most regal
+condition of humanity. A traceable line of affinity unites these outcast
+children with the renowned historic races of the world: the Assyrian,
+the Egyptian, the Ethiopian, the Jew,--the beautiful Greek, the strong
+Roman, the keen Arab, the passionate Italian, the stately Spaniard, the
+sad Portuguese, the brilliant Frenchman, the frank Northman, the wise
+German, the firm Englishman, and that last-born heir of Time, the
+American, inventor of many new things, but himself, by his temperament,
+the greatest novelty of all,--the American, with his cold, clear eye,
+his skin made of ice, and his veins filled with lava.
+
+Who shall define what makes the essential difference between those
+lowest and these loftiest types? Not color; for the most degraded races
+seem never to be the blackest, and the builders of the Pyramids were far
+darker than the dwellers in the Aleutian Islands. Not unmixed purity of
+blood; since the Circassians, the purest type of the supreme Caucasian
+race, have given nothing to history but the courage of their men and the
+degradation of their women. Not religion; for enlightened nations have
+arisen under each great historic faith, while even Christianity has its
+Abyssinia and Arkansas. Not climate; for each quarter of the globe has
+witnessed both extremes. We can only say that there is an inexplicable
+step in progress, which we call civilization; it is the development of
+mankind into a sufficient maturity of strength to keep the peace and
+organize institutions; it is the arrival of literature and art; it is
+the lion and the lamb beginning to lie down together, without having, as
+some one has said, the lamb inside of the lion.
+
+There are innumerable aspects of this great transformation; but there is
+one, in special, which has been continually ignored or evaded. In the
+midst of our civilization, there is a latent distrust of civilization.
+We are never weary of proclaiming the enormous gain it has brought
+to manners, to morals, and to intellect; but there is a wide-spread
+impression that the benefit is purchased by a corresponding physical
+decay. This alarm has had its best statement from Emerson. "Society
+never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the
+other.... What a contrast between the well-clad, reading, writing,
+thinking American, with a watch, a pencil, and a bill of exchange in his
+pocket, and the naked New-Zealander, whose property is a club, a spear,
+a mat, and the undivided twentieth part of a shed to sleep under! But
+compare the health of the two men, and you shall see that his aboriginal
+strength the white man has lost. If the traveller tell us truly, strike
+the savage with a broad-axe, and in a day or two the flesh shall unite
+and heal as if you struck the blow into soft pitch; and the same blow
+shall send the white man to his grave."
+
+Were this true, the fact would be fatal. Man is a progressive being,
+only on condition that he begin at the beginning. He can afford to wait
+centuries for a brain, but he cannot subsist a second without a body. If
+civilization sacrifice the physical thus hopelessly to the mental, and
+barbarism merely sacrifice the mental to the physical, then barbarism is
+unquestionably the better thing, so far as it goes, because it provides
+the essential preliminary conditions, and so can afford to wait.
+Barbarism is a one-story log-hut, a poor thing, but better than nothing;
+while such a civilization would be simply a second story, with a first
+story too weak to sustain it, a magnificent sky-parlor, with all heaven
+in view from the upper windows, but with the whole family coming down in
+a crash presently, through a fatal neglect of the basement. In such a
+view, an American Indian or a Kaffir warrior may be a wholesome object,
+good for something already, and for much more when he gets a brain
+built on. But when one sees a bookworm in his library, an anxious
+merchant-prince in his counting-room, tottering feebly about, his thin
+underpinning scarcely able to support what he has already crammed
+into that heavy brain of his, and he still piling in more,--one feels
+disposed to cry out, "Unsafe passing here! Stand from under!"
+
+Sydney Smith, in his "Moral Philosophy," has also put strongly this case
+of physiological despair. "Nothing can be plainer than that a life of
+society is unfavorable to all the animal powers of men.... A Choctaw
+could run from here to Oxford without stopping. I go in the mail-coach;
+and the time the savage has employed in learning to run so fast I have
+employed in learning something useful. It would not only be useless in
+me to run like a Choctaw, but foolish and disgraceful." But one may well
+suppose, that, if the jovial divine had kept himself in training for
+this disgraceful lost art of running, his diary might not have recorded
+the habit of lying two hours in bed in the morning, "dawdling and
+doubting," as he says, or the fact of his having "passed the whole day
+in an unpleasant state of body, produced by laziness"; and he might
+not have been compelled to invent for himself that amazing rheumatic
+armor,--a pair of tin boots, a tin collar, a tin helmet, and a tin
+shoulder-of-mutton over each of his natural shoulders, all duly filled
+with boiling water, and worn in patience by the sedentary Sydney.
+
+It is also to be remembered that this statement was made in 1805,
+when England and Germany were both waking up to a revival of physical
+training,--if we may trust Sir John Sinclair in the one case, and
+Salzmann in the other,--such as America is experiencing now. Many years
+afterwards, Sydney Smith wrote to his brother, that "a working senator
+should lead the life of an athlete." But supposing the fact still true,
+that an average red man can run, and an average white man cannot,--who
+does not see that it is the debility, not the feat, which is
+discreditable? Setting aside the substantial advantages of strength
+and activity, there is a melancholy loss of self-respect in buying
+cultivation for the brain by resigning the proper vigor of the body. Let
+men say what they please, they all demand a life which shall be whole
+and sound throughout, and there is a drawback upon all gifts that are
+paid for in infirmities. There is no thorough satisfaction in art or
+intellect, if we yet feel ashamed before the Indian because we cannot
+run, and before the South-Sea Islander because we cannot swim. Give us a
+total culture, and a success without any discount of shame. After all,
+one feels a certain justice in Warburton's story of the Guinea trader,
+in Spence's Anecdotes. Mr. Pope was with Sir Godfrey Kneller one day,
+when his nephew, a Guinea trader, came in. "Nephew," said Sir Godfrey,
+"you have the honor of seeing the two greatest men in the world." "I
+don't know how great you may be," said the Guinea-man, "but I don't like
+your looks; I have often bought a man, much better than both of you
+together, all muscles and bones, for ten guineas."
+
+Fortunately for the hopes of man, the alarm is unfounded. The advance
+of accurate knowledge dispels it. Civilization is cultivation, whole
+cultivation; and even in its present imperfect state, it not only
+permits physical training, but promotes it. The traditional glory of
+the savage body is yielding before medical statistics: it is becoming
+evident that the average barbarian, observed from the cradle to the
+grave, does not know enough and is not rich enough to keep his body in
+its highest condition, but, on the contrary, is small and sickly and
+short-lived and weak, compared with the man of civilization. The great
+athletes of the world have been civilized; the long-lived men have been
+civilized; the powerful armies have been civilized; and the average of
+life, health, size, and strength is highest to-day among those races
+where knowledge and wealth and comfort are most widely spread. And yet,
+by the common lamentation, one would suppose that all civilization is a
+slow suicide of the race, and that refinement and culture are to leave
+man at last in a condition like that of the little cherubs on old
+tomb-stones, all head and wings.
+
+It must be owned that the delusion has all the superstitions of history
+in its favor, and only the facts against it. If we may trust tradition,
+the race has undoubtedly been tapering down from century to century
+since the Creation, so that the original Adam must have been more than
+twice the size of the Webster statue. However far back we go, admiring
+memory looks farther. Homer and Virgil never let their hero throw a
+stone without reminding us that modern heroes only live in glass houses,
+to have stones thrown at them. Lucretius and Juvenal chant the same
+lament. Xenophon, mourning the march of luxury among the Persians, says
+that modern effeminacy has reached such a pitch, that men have even
+devised coverings for their fingers, called gloves. Herodotus narrates,
+that, when Cambyses sent ambassadors to the Macrobians, they asked what
+the Persians had to eat and how long they commonly lived. He was told
+that they sometimes attained the age of eighty, and that they ate a mass
+of crushed grain, which they termed bread. On this, they said that it
+was no wonder, if the Persians died young, when they partook of such
+rubbish, and that probably they would not survive even so long, but for
+the wine they drank; while the Macrobians lived on flesh and milk, and
+survived one hundred and twenty years.
+
+But, unfortunately, there were no Life Insurance Companies among the
+Macrobians, and therefore nothing to bring down this formidable average
+to a reliable schedule,--such as accurately informs every modern man how
+long he may live honestly, without defrauding either his relict or his
+insurers. We know, moreover, precisely what Dr. Windship can lift, at
+any given date, and what the rest of us cannot; but Homer and Virgil
+never weighed the stones which their heroes threw, nor even the words in
+which they described the process. It is a matter of certainty that
+all great exploits are severely tested by Fairbanks's scales and
+stop-watches. It is wonderful how many persons, in the remoter
+districts, assure the newspaper-editors of their ability to lift twelve
+hundred pounds; and many a young oarsman can prove to you that he has
+pulled his mile faster than Ward or Clark, if you will only let him give
+his own guess at time and distance.
+
+It is easy, therefore, to trace the origin of these exaggerations. Those
+old navigators, for instance, who saw so many fine things which were
+not to be seen, how should they help peopling the barbarous realms with
+races of giants? Job Hartop, who three times observed a merman rise
+above water to his waist, near the Bermudas,--Harris, who endured such
+terrific cold in the Antarctics, that once, perilously blowing his nose
+with his fingers, it flew into the fire and was seen no more,--Knyvett,
+who, in the same regions, pulled off his frozen stockings, and his toes
+with them, but had them replaced by the ship's surgeon,--of course
+these men saw giants, and it is only a matter for gratitude that they
+vouchsafed us dwarfs also, to keep up some remains of self-respect in
+us. In Magellan's Straits, for instance, they saw, on one side, from
+three to four thousand pigmies with mouths from ear to ear; while on the
+other shore they saw giants whose footsteps were four times as large as
+an Englishman's,--which was a strong expression, considering that the
+Englishman's footstep had already reached round the globe.
+
+The only way to test these earlier observations is by later ones. For
+instance, in the year 1772, a Dutchman named Roggewein discovered Easter
+Island. His expedition had cost the government a good deal, and he
+had to bring home his money's worth of discoveries. Accordingly, his
+islanders were all giants,--twice as tall, he said, as the tallest of
+the Europeans; "they measured, one with another, the height of twelve
+feet; so that we could easily,--who will not wonder at it?--without
+stooping, have passed between the legs of these sons of Goliath.
+According to their height, so is their thickness." Moreover, he "puts
+down nothing but the real truth, and upon the nicest inspection," and,
+to exhibit this caution, warns us that it would be wrong to rate the
+women of those regions as high as the men, they being, as he pityingly
+owns, "commonly not above ten or eleven feet." Sweet young creatures
+they must have appeared, belle and steeple in one. And it was certainly
+a great disappointment to Captain Cook, when, on visiting the same
+Island, fifty years later, he could not find man or woman more than six
+feet tall. Thus ended the tale of this Flying Dutchman.
+
+Thus lamentably have the inhabitants of Patagonia been also dwindling,
+though, there, if anywhere, still lies the Cape of Bad Hope for the
+apostles of human degeneracy. Pigafetta originally estimated them at
+twelve feet. In the time of Commodore Byron, they had already grown
+downward; yet he said of them that they were "enormous goblins," seven
+feet high, every one of them. One of his officers, however, writing an
+independent narrative, seemed to think this a needless concession; he
+admits, indeed, that the women were not, perhaps, more than seven feet,
+or seven and a half, or, it might be, eight, "but the men were, for
+the most part, about nine feet high, and very often more." Lieutenant
+Cumming, he said, being but six feet two, appeared a mere pigmy among
+them. But it seems, that, in after-times, on some one's questioning this
+diminutive lieutenant as to the actual size of these enormous goblins,
+the veteran frankly confessed, that, "had it been anywhere else but in
+Patagonia, he should have called them good sturdy savages and thought no
+more on't."
+
+But, these facts apart, there are certain general truths which look
+ominous for the reputation of the _physique_ of savage tribes.
+
+First, they cannot keep the race alive, they are always tending to
+decay. When first encountered by civilization, they usually tell stories
+of their own decline in numbers, and after that the downward movement is
+accelerated. They are poor, ignorant, improvident, oppressed by others'
+violence, or exhausted by their own; war kills them, infanticide and
+abortion cut them off before they reach the age of war, pestilences
+sweep them away, whole tribes perish by famine and smallpox. Under the
+stern climate of the Esquimaux and the soft skies of Tahiti, the same
+decline is seen. Parkman estimates that in 1763 the whole number of
+Indians east of the Mississippi was but ten thousand, and they were
+already mourning their own decay. Travellers seldom visit a savage
+country without remarking on the scarcity of aged people and of young
+children. Lewis and Clarke, Mackenzie, Alexander Henry, observed this
+among Indian tribes never before visited by white men; Dr. Kane remarked
+it among the Esquimaux, D'Azara among the Indians of South America, and
+many travellers in the South-Sea Islands and even in Africa, though the
+black man apparently takes more readily to civilization than any other
+race, and then develops a terrible vitality, as American politicians
+find to their cost.
+
+Meanwhile, the hardships which thus decimate the tribe toughen the
+survivors, and sometimes give them an apparent advantage over civilized
+men. The savages whom one encounters are necessarily the picked men of
+the race, and the observer takes no census of the multitudes who have
+perished in the process. Civilization keeps alive, in every generation,
+multitudes who would otherwise die prematurely. These millions of
+invalids do not owe to civilization their diseases, but their lives. It
+is painful that your sick friend should live on Cherry Pectoral; but if
+he had been born in barbarism, he would neither have had it to drink nor
+survived to drink it.
+
+And again, it is now satisfactorily demonstrated that these picked
+survivors of savage life are commonly suffering under the same diseases
+with their civilized compeers, and show less vital power to resist them.
+In barbarous nations every foreigner is taken for a physician, and the
+first demand is for medicines; if not the right medicines, then the
+wrong ones; if no medicines are at hand, the written prescription,
+administered internally, is sometimes found a desirable restorative. The
+earliest missionaries to the South-Sea Islands found ulcers and dropsy
+and hump-backs there before them. The English Bishop of New Zealand,
+landing on a lone islet where no ship had ever touched, found the
+whole population prostrate with influenza. Lewis and Clarke, the first
+explorers of the Rocky Mountains, found Indian warriors ill with fever
+and dysentery, rheumatism and paralysis, and Indian women in hysterics.
+"The tooth-ache," said Roger Williams of the New England tribes, "is the
+only paine which will force their stoute hearts to cry"; even the Indian
+women, he says, never cry as he has heard "some of their men in this
+paine"; but Lewis and Clarke found whole tribes who had abolished this
+source of tears in the civilized manner, by having no teeth left. We
+complain of our weak eyes as a result of civilized habits, and Tennyson,
+in "Locksley Hall," wishes his children bred in some savage land, "not
+with blinded eyesight poring over miserable books." But savage life
+seems more injurious to the organs of vision than even the type of a
+cheap edition; for the most vigorous barbarians--on the prairies, in
+Southern archipelagos, on African deserts--suffer more from different
+forms of ophthalmia than from any other disease; without knowing the
+alphabet, they have worse eyes than if they were professors, and have
+not even the melancholy consolation of spectacles.
+
+Again, the savage cannot, as a general rule, endure transplantation,--he
+cannot thrive in the country of the civilized man; whereas the latter,
+with time for training, can equal or excel him in strength and endurance
+on his own ground. As it is known that the human race generally can
+endure a greater variety of climate than the hardiest of the lower
+animals, so it is with the man of civilization, when compared with the
+barbarian. Kane, when he had once learned how to live in the Esquimaux
+country, lived better than the Esquimaux themselves; and he says
+expressly, that "their powers of resistance are no greater than those of
+well-trained voyagers from other lands." Richardson, Parkyns, Johnstone,
+give it as their opinion, that the European, once acclimated, bears
+the heat of the African deserts better than the native negro. "These
+Christians are devils," say the Arabs; "they can endure both cold and
+heat." What are the Bedouins to the Zouaves, who unquestionably would be
+as formidable in Lapland as in Algiers? Nay, in the very climates where
+the natives are fading away, the civilized foreigner multiplies: thus,
+the strong New-Zealanders do not average two children to a family, while
+the households of the English colonists are larger than at home,--which
+is saying a good deal.
+
+Most formidable of all is the absence of all recuperative power in
+the savage who rejects civilization. No effort of will improves his
+condition; he sees his race dying out, and he can only drink and forget
+it. But the civilized man has an immense capacity for self-restoration;
+he can make mistakes and correct them again, sin and repent, sink and
+rise. Instinct can only prevent; science can cure in one generation, and
+prevent in the next. It is known that some twenty years ago a thrill
+of horror shot through all Anglo-Saxondom at the reported physical
+condition of the operatives in English mines and factories. It is not so
+generally known, that, by a recent statement of the medical inspector of
+factories, there is declared to have been a most astounding renovation
+of female health in such establishments throughout all England since
+that time,--the simple result of sanitary laws. What science has done
+science can do. Everybody knows which symptom of American physical decay
+is habitually quoted, as most alarming; one seldom sees a dentist who
+does not despair of the republic. Yet this calamity is nothing new; the
+elder branch of our race has been through that epidemic, and outlived
+it. In the robust days of Queen Bess, the teeth of the court ladies were
+habitually so black and decayed, that foreigners used constantly to ask
+if Englishwomen ate nothing but sugar. Hentzner, who visited the country
+in 1697, speaks of the same calamity as common among the English of all
+classes. Two centuries and a half have removed the stigma,--improved
+physical habits have put fresh pearls between the lips of all England
+now; and there seems no reason why we Americans may not yet be healthy,
+in spite of our teeth.
+
+Thus much for general considerations; let us come now to more specific
+tests, beginning with the comparison of size. The armor of the knights
+of the Middle Ages is too small for their modern descendants: Hamilton
+Smith records that two Englishmen of average dimensions found no suit
+large enough to fit them in the great collection of Sir Samuel Meyrick.
+The Oriental sabre will not admit the English hand, nor the bracelet of
+the Kaffir warrior the English arm. The swords found in Roman tumuli
+have handles inconveniently small; and the great mediaeval two-handed
+sword is now supposed to have been used only for one or two blows at the
+first onset, and then exchanged for a smaller one. The statements given
+by Homer, Aristotle, and Vitruvius represent six feet as a high standard
+for full-grown men; and the irrefutable evidence of the ancient
+doorways, bedsteads, and tombs proves the average size of the race to
+have certainly not diminished in modern days. The gigantic bones have
+all turned out to be animal remains; even the skeleton twenty-five
+feet high and ten feet broad, which one _savant_ wrote a book called
+"Gigantosteologia" to prove human, and another, a counter-argument,
+called "Gigantomachia," to prove animal,--neither of the philosophers
+taking the trouble to draw a single fragment of the fossil. The enormous
+savage races have turned out, as has been shown, to be travellers'
+tales,--even the Patagonians being brought down to an average of five
+feet ten inches, and being, moreover, only a part of a race, the
+Abipones, of which the other families are smaller. Indeed, we can all
+learn by our own experience how irresistible is the tendency of the
+imagination to attribute vast proportions to all hardy and warlike
+tribes. Most persons fancy the Scottish Highlanders, for instance, to
+have been a race of giants; yet Charles Edward was said to be taller
+than any man in his Highland army, and his height was but five feet
+nine. We have the same impression in regard to our own Aborigines. Yet,
+when first, upon the prairies of Nebraska, I came in sight of a tribe of
+genuine, unadulterated Indians, with no possession on earth but a
+bow and arrow and a bear-skin,--bare-skin in a double sense, I might
+add,--my instinctive exclamation was, "What race of dwarfs is this?"
+They were the descendants of the glorious Pawnees of Cooper, the heroes
+of every boy's imagination; yet, excepting the three chiefs, who were
+noble-looking men of six feet in height, the tallest of the tribe could
+not have measured five feet six inches.
+
+The most careful investigations give the same results in respect to
+physical strength. Early travellers among our Indians, as Hearne and
+Mackenzie, and early missionaries to the South-Sea Islands, as Ellis,
+report athletic contests in which the natives could not equal the
+better-fed, better-clothed, better-trained Europeans. When the French
+_savans_, Peron, Regnier, Ransonnet, carried their dynamometers to the
+islands of the Indian Ocean, they found with surprise that an average
+English sailor was forty-two per cent, stronger, and an average
+Frenchman thirty per cent, stronger, than the strongest island tribe
+they visited. Even in comparing different European races, it is
+undeniable that bodily strength goes with the highest civilization.
+It is recorded in Robert Stephenson's Life, that, when the English
+"navvies" were employed upon the Paris and Boulogne Railway, they used
+spades and barrows just twice the size of those employed by their
+Continental rivals, and were regularly paid double. Quetelet's
+experiments with the dynamometer on university students showed the same
+results: first ranked the Englishman, then the Frenchman, then the
+Belgian, then the Russian, then the Southern European: for those races
+of Southern Europe which once ruled the Eastern and the Western worlds
+by physical and mental power have lost in strength as they have paused
+in civilization, and the easy victories of our armies in Mexico show us
+the result.
+
+It is impossible to deny that the observations on this subject are yet
+very imperfect; and the only thing to be claimed is, that they all point
+one way. So far as absolute statistical tables go, the above-named
+French observations have till recently stood almost alone, and have been
+the main reliance. The just criticism has, however, been made, that the
+subjects of these experiments were the inhabitants of New Holland and
+Van Diemen's Land, by no means the strongest instances on the side of
+barbarism. It is, therefore, fortunate that the French tables have now
+been superseded by some more important comparisons, accurately made by
+A.S. Thomson, M.D., Surgeon of the Fifty-Eighth Regiment of the British
+Army, and printed in the seventeenth volume of the Journal of the London
+Statistical Society.
+
+The observations were made in New Zealand,--Dr. Thomson being stationed
+there with his regiment, and being charged with the duty of vaccinating
+all natives employed by the government. The islanders thus used for
+experiment were to some extent picked men, as none but able-bodied
+persons would have been selected for employ, and as they were, moreover,
+(he states,) accustomed to lifting burdens, and better-fed than the
+majority of their countrymen. The New Zealand race, as a whole, is
+certainly a very favorable type of barbarism, having but just emerged
+from an utterly savage condition, having been cannibals within one
+generation, and being the very identical people among whom were recorded
+those wonderful cures of flesh-wounds to which Emerson has referred.
+Cook and all other navigators have praised their robust physical aspect,
+and they undoubtedly, with the Fijians and the Tongans, stand at the
+head of all island races. They are admitted to surpass our American
+Indians, as well as the Kaffirs and the Joloffs, probably the finest
+African races; and a careful comparison between New-Zealanders and
+Anglo-Saxons will, therefore, approach as near to an _experimentum
+crucis_ as any single set of observations can. The following tables have
+been carefully prepared from those of Dr. Thomson, with the addition
+of some scanty facts from other sources,--scanty, because, as Quetelet
+indignantly observes, less pains have as yet been taken to measure
+accurately the physical powers of man than those of any machine he has
+constructed or any animal he has tamed.
+
+  TABLE.
+
+  HEIGHT.            _Number measured.  Average._
+  New-Zealanders...................  147  5 feet 6-3/4 inches.
+  Students at Edinburgh............  800  5 "    7-1/10 "
+  Class of 1860. Cambridge (Mass.).  106  5 "    7-3/5  "
+  Students at Cambridge (Eng.).....   80  5 "    8-3/5  "
+
+  WEIGHT.
+  New-Zealanders...................  146  140 pounds.
+  Soldiers 58th Regiment........... 1778  142     "
+  Class of 1860. Cambridge (Mass.).  106  142-1/2 "
+  Students at Cambridge (Eng.).....   80  143     "
+  Men weighed at Boston (U.S.)
+  Mechanics' Fair, 1860 .........   4369  146-3/4 "
+  Englishmen (Dr. Thomson)......... 2648  148     "
+  Cambridge, Eng. (a newspaper
+  statement) .................... ----    151     "
+  Revolutionary officers at West
+  Point, August 10th, 1778,
+  given in "Milledulcia," p. 273..   11    226   "
+
+  AREA OF CHEST.
+  New-Zealanders...................  151  35.36 inches.
+  Soldiers 58th Regiment...........  628  36.71  "
+
+  STRENGTH IN LIFTING.
+  New-Zealanders...................   31  367 pounds.
+  Students fit Edinburgh, aged 25.. ----  416  "
+  Soldiers 58th Regiment...........   33  422  "
+
+  NOTE. The range of strength among the New-Zealanders was from 250
+  pounds to 420 pounds; among the soldiers, from 350 pounds to 504 pounds.
+
+But it is the test of longevity which exhibits the greatest triumph for
+civilization, because here the life-insurance tables furnish ample,
+though comparatively recent statistics. Of course, in legendary ages all
+lives were of enormous length; and the Hindoos in their sacred books
+attribute to their progenitors a career of forty million years or
+thereabouts,--what may safely be termed a ripe old age; for if a man
+were still unripe after celebrating his forty-millionth birthday, he
+might as well give it up. But from the beginning of accurate statistics
+we know that the duration of life in any nation is a fair index of
+its progress in civilization, Quetelet gives statistics, more or less
+reliable, from every nation of Northern Europe, showing a gain of ten to
+twenty-five per cent, during the last century. Where the tables are most
+carefully prepared, the result is least equivocal. Thus, in Geneva,
+where accurate registers have been kept for three hundred years, it
+seems that from 1560 to 1600 the average lifetime of the citizens was
+twenty-one years and two months; in the next century, twenty-five years
+and nine months; in the century following, thirty-two years and nine
+months; and in the year 1833, forty years and five months: thus nearly
+doubling the average age of man in Geneva, within those three centuries
+of social progress. In France, it is estimated, that, in spite of
+revolutions and Napoleons, human life has been gaining at the rate
+of two months a year for nearly a century. By a manuscript of the
+fourteenth century, moreover, it is shown that the rate of mortality
+in Paris was then one in sixteen,--one person dying annually to every
+sixteen of the inhabitants. It is now one in thirty-two,--a gain of a
+hundred per cent, in five hundred years. In England the progress
+has been far more rapid. The rate of mortality in 1690 was one in
+thirty-three; in 1780 it was one in forty; and it stands now at one in
+sixty,--the healthiest condition in Europe,--while in half-barbarous
+Russia the rate of mortality is one in twenty-seven. It would be easy to
+multiply these statistics to any extent; but they all point one way, and
+no medical statistician now pretends to oppose the dictum of Hufeland,
+that "a certain degree of culture is physically necessary for man, and
+promotes duration of life."
+
+The simple result is, that the civilized man is physically superior to
+the barbarian. There is now no evidence that there exists in any part of
+the world a savage race who, taken as a whole, surpass or even equal the
+Anglo-Saxon type in average physical condition; as there is also
+none among whom the President elect of the United States and the
+Commander-in-chief of his armies would not be regarded as remarkably
+tall men, and Dr. Windship a remarkably strong one. "It is now well
+known," says Prichard, "that all savage races have less muscular power
+than civilized men." Johnstone in Northern Africa, and Cumming in
+Southern Africa, could find no one to equal them in strength of arm.
+At the Sandwich Islands, Ellis records, that, "when a boat manned by
+English seamen and a canoe with natives left the shore together, the
+canoe would uniformly leave the boat behind, but they would soon relax,
+while the seamen, pulling steadily on, would pass them, but, if the
+voyage took three hours, would invariably reach the destination first."
+Certain races may have been regularly trained by position and necessity
+in certain particular arts,--as Sandwich-Islanders in swimming, and our
+Indians in running,--and may naturally surpass the average skill of
+those who are comparatively out of practice in that speciality; yet it
+is remarkable that their greatest feats even in these ways never seem
+to surpass those achieved by picked specimens of civilization. The best
+Indian runners could only equal Lewis and Clarke's men, and they have
+been repeatedly beaten in prize-races within the last few years; while
+the most remarkable aquatic feat on record is probably that of Mr.
+Atkins of Liverpool, who recently dived to a depth of two hundred and
+thirty feet, reappearing above water in one minute and eleven seconds.
+
+In the wilderness and on the prairies, we find a general impression that
+cultivation and refinement must weaken the race. Not at all; they simply
+domesticate it. Domestication is not weakness. A strong hand does not
+become less muscular under a kid glove; and a man who is a hero in a red
+shirt will also be a hero in a white one. Civilization, imperfect as
+it is, has already procured for us better food, better air, and better
+behavior; it gives us physical training on system; and its mental
+training, by refining the nervous organization, makes the same quantity
+of muscular power go much farther. The young English ensigns and
+lieutenants who at Waterloo (in the words of Wellington) "rushed to meet
+death, as if it were a game of cricket," were the fruit of civilization.
+They were representatives, indeed, of the aristocracy of their nation;
+and here, where the aim of all institutions is to make the whole nation
+an aristocracy, we must plan to secure the same splendid physical
+superiority on a grander scale. It is in our power, by using even very
+moderately for this purpose our magnificent machinery of common schools,
+to give to the physical side of civilization an advantage which it has
+possessed nowhere else, not even in England or Germany. It is not yet
+time to suggest detailed plans on this subject, since the public mind
+is not yet fully awake even to the demand. When the time comes, the
+necessary provisions can be made easily,--at least, as regards boys;
+for the physical training of girls is a far more difficult problem
+The organization is more delicate and complicated, the embarrassments
+greater, the observations less carefully made, the successes fewer,
+the failures far more disastrous. Any intelligent and robust man may
+undertake the physical training of fifty boys, however delicate their
+organization, with a reasonable hope of rearing nearly all of them, by
+easy and obvious methods, into a vigorous maturity; but what wise man
+or woman can expect anything like the same proportion of success, at
+present, with fifty American girls?
+
+This is the most momentous health-problem with which we have to deal,--
+to secure the proper physical advantages of civilization for American
+women. Without this there can be no lasting progress. The Sandwich
+Island proverb says,--
+
+  "If strong be the frame of the mother,
+  Her son shall make laws for the people."
+
+But in this country, it is scarcely an exaggeration to say that
+every man grows to maturity surrounded by a circle of invalid female
+relatives, that he later finds himself the husband of an invalid wife
+and the parent of invalid daughters, and that he comes at last to regard
+invalidism, as Michelet coolly declares, the normal condition of that
+sex,--as if the Almighty did not know how to create a woman. This, of
+course, spreads a gloom over life. When I look at the morning throng of
+schoolgirls in summer, hurrying through every street, with fresh, young
+faces, and vesture of lilies, duly curled and straw-hatted and booted,
+and turned off as patterns of perfection by proud mammas,--it is not sad
+to me to think that all this young beauty must one day fade and die, for
+there are spheres of life beyond this earth, I know, and the soul is
+good to endure through more than one;--the sadness is in the unnatural
+nearness of the decay, to foresee the living death of disease that is
+waiting close at hand for so many, to know how terrible a proportion of
+those fair children are walking unconsciously into a weary, wretched,
+powerless, joyless, useless maturity. Among the myriad triumphs of
+advancing civilization, there seems but one formidable danger, and that
+is here.
+
+It cannot be doubted, however, that the peril will pass by, with
+advancing knowledge. In proportion to our national recklessness of
+danger is the promptness with which remedial measures are adopted, when
+they at last become indispensable. In the mean time, we must look for
+proofs of the physical resources of woman into foreign and even
+into savage lands. When an American mother tells me with pride, as
+occasionally happens, that her daughter can walk two miles and back
+without great fatigue, the very boast seems a tragedy; but when one
+reads that Oberea, queen of the Sandwich Islands, lifted Captain Wallis
+over a marsh as easily as if he had been a little child, there is a
+slight sense of consolation. Brunhilde, in the "Nibelungen," binds her
+offending lover with her girdle and slings him up to the wall. Cymburga,
+wife of Duke Ernest of Lithuania, could crack nuts between her fingers,
+and drive nails into a wall with her thumb;--whether she ever got her
+husband under it is not recorded. Let me preserve from oblivion the
+renown of my Lady Butterfield, who, about the year 1700, at Wanstead,
+in Essex, (England,) thus advertised:--"This is to give notice to my
+honored masters and ladies and loving friends, that my Lady Butterfield
+gives a challenge to ride a horse, or leap a horse, or run afoot, or
+_hollo_, with any woman in England seven years younger, but not a day
+older, because I won't undervalue myself, being now 74 years of age."
+Nor should be left unrecorded the high-born Scottish damsel whose
+tradition still remains at the Castle of Huntingtower, in Scotland,
+where two adjacent pinnacles still mark the Maiden's Leap. She sprang
+from battlement to battlement, a distance of nine feet and four inches,
+and eloped with her lover. Were a young lady to go through one of our
+villages in a series of leaps like that, and were she to require her
+lovers to follow in her footsteps, it is to be feared that she would die
+single.
+
+Yet the transplanted race which has in two centuries stepped from Delft
+Haven to San Francisco has no reason to be ashamed of its physical
+achievements, the more especially as it has found time on the way for
+one feat of labor and endurance which may be matched without fear
+against any historic deed. When civilization took possession of
+this continent, it found one vast coating of almost unbroken forest
+overspreading it from shore to prairie. To make room for civilization,
+that forest must go. What were Indians, however deadly,--what
+starvation, however imminent,--what pestilence, however lurking,--to a
+solid obstacle like this? No mere courage could cope with it, no mere
+subtlety, no mere skill, no Yankee ingenuity, no labor-saving machine
+with head for hands; but only firm, unwearying, bodily muscle to every
+stroke. Tree by tree, in two centuries, that forest has been felled.
+What were the Pyramids to that? There does not exist in history an
+athletic feat so astonishing.
+
+But there yet lingers upon this continent a forest of moral evil more
+formidable, a barrier denser and darker, a Dismal Swamp of inhumanity,
+a barbarism upon the soil, before which civilization has thus far been
+compelled to pause,--happy, if it could even check its spread. Checked
+at last, there comes from it a cry as if the light of day had turned to
+darkness,--when the truth simply is, that darkness is being mastered and
+surrounded by the light of day. Is it a good thing to "extend the area
+of freedom" by pillaging some feeble Mexico? and does the phrase become
+a bad one only when it means the peaceful progress of constitutional
+liberty within our own borders? The phrases which oppression teaches
+become the watchwords of freedom at last, and the triumph of
+Civilization over Barbarism is the only Manifest Destiny of America.
+
+
+
+
+WHO WAS CASPAR HAUSER?
+
+
+Recent publications have again attracted our attention to a subject
+which about thirty years ago was the cause of great excitement and
+innumerable speculations. The very extraordinary advent, life, and death
+of Caspar Hauser, the novelty and singularity of all his thoughts and
+actions, and his charming innocence and amiability, interested at the
+time all Europe in his behalf. Thrown upon the world in a state of utter
+helplessness, he was adopted by one of the cities of Germany, and became
+not only a universal pet, but a sight which people flocked from all
+parts to see. It became a perfect fever, raging throughout Germany, and
+extending also to other countries. The papers teemed with accounts and
+conjectures. Innumerable essays and even books were written, almost
+every one advancing a different theory for the solution of the mystery.
+But his death was still more the occasion for their appearance, and for
+some time thereafter they literally swarmed from the press. Every one
+who had in any way come in contact with him, and a great many who knew
+him by reputation only, thought themselves called upon to give their
+views, so that in a little while the subject acquired almost a
+literature of its own.
+
+But this excitement gradually disappeared, and with it most of the
+literature which it had called forth. There are a few names, however,
+which occur frequently in connection with that of Caspar Hauser, to
+whose opinions we shall subsequently call attention. They are Feuerbach,
+Daumer, Merker, Stanhope, Binder, Meier, and Fuhrmann.[A] Of these,
+Binder was his earliest protector; Feuerbach conducted the legal
+investigations to which Caspar's mysterious appearance gave rise; Daumer
+was for a long time his teacher and host; Stanhope adopted him; Meier
+afterwards filled Daumer's place; and Fuhrmann was the clergyman who
+attended his death-bed. Merker, though never thrown very closely in
+contact with Caspar, was a Prussian Counsellor of Police, and as such
+his opinion may perhaps have more than ordinary weight with some. Most
+of them published their various opinions during Caspar's life or soon
+after his death, and the subject was then allowed to sink to its proper
+level and attract no further attention. Within a few years, however, it
+has again been brought into prominent light by some new publications.
+One of these is an essay written by Feuerbach and published in his works
+edited by his son, in which he endeavors to prove that Caspar Hauser was
+the son of the Grand Duchess Stephanie of Baden; another is a book by
+Daumer, which he devotes entirely to the explosion of all theories that
+have ever been advanced; and a third, by Dr. Eschricht, contends
+that Caspar was at first an idiot and afterwards an impostor. Before
+considering these different theories, let us recall the principal
+incidents of his life. These have, indeed, been placed within the
+reach of the English reader by the Earl of Stanhope's book and by a
+translation of Feuerbach's "Kaspar Hauser. Beispiel eines Verbrechens am
+Seelenleben des Menschen,"[B] published in Boston in 1832; but, as the
+former has, we believe, obtained little circulation in this country, and
+the latter is now probably out of print, a short account of the life of
+this singular being may not be deemed amiss.
+
+[Footnote A: Daumer, in his _Disclosures concerning Caspar Hauser_,
+refers to a great many more than these; but it is impossible to follow
+his example in so limited a space.]
+
+[Footnote B: _Caspar Hauser. An Example of a Crime against the Life, of
+Man's Soul_.]
+
+On the 26th of May, 1828, a citizen of Nuremberg, while loitering in
+front of his house in the outskirts of the town, saw, tottering towards
+him, a lad of sixteen or seventeen years, coarsely and poorly clad. He
+held in his hand a letter, which he presented to the citizen; but to
+all questions as to who he was, whence he came, and what he wanted, he
+replied only in an unintelligible jargon. The letter was addressed to
+the captain of a cavalry company then stationed at Nuremberg, to whom
+he was taken. It stated substantially, that a boy had been left at the
+writer's door on the 7th of October, 1812, that the writer was a poor
+laborer with a large family, but that he had nevertheless adopted the
+boy, and had reared him in such strict seclusion from the world that not
+even his existence was known. The letter said further, that, so far from
+being able to answer, the lad could not even comprehend any questions
+put to him. It therefore discouraged all attempts to obtain any
+information in that way, and ended with the advice, that, according to
+his desire, he should be made a dragoon, as his father had been before
+him. Inclosed in this letter was a note, professedly by the mother, and
+pretending to have been left with him, when, as an infant, Caspar Hauser
+was first cast upon the world, but, in reality, as it was afterwards
+proved, written by the same person. This note gave the date of his
+birth, pleaded the poverty of the mother as an excuse for thus
+abandoning her child, and contained the same request as to his joining a
+cavalry regiment when he should arrive at the age of seventeen.
+
+The first impression produced by Caspar's appearance and behavior was,
+that he was some idiot or lunatic escaped from confinement; it remained
+only to be shown whence he had escaped. In the mean time he was placed
+under the protection of the police, who removed him to their guard-room.
+There he showed no consciousness of what was going on around him; his
+look was a dull, brutish stare; nor did he give any indication of
+intelligence, until pen and paper were placed in his hand, when he wrote
+clearly and repeatedly, "Kaspar Hauser." Since then he has been known by
+that name.
+
+When it became evident that the first conjectures concerning him were
+wrong, strenuous efforts were made by the police to sound the mystery,
+but without the slightest success. He himself could give no clue; for he
+neither understood what others said nor could make himself understood.
+With the exception of some six words, the sounds Caspar uttered were
+entirely meaningless. He recognized none of the places where he had
+been, no trace could be obtained of him elsewhere, and the most vigilant
+search brought nothing to light. The surprise which his first appearance
+produced increased as he became better known. It then became more and
+more evident that he was neither an idiot nor a lunatic; at the same
+time his manners were so peculiar, and his ignorance of civilized life
+and his dislike for its customs so great, that all sorts of conjectures
+were resorted to in order to explain the mystery.
+
+It was ascertained that he must have been incarcerated in some dungeon,
+entirely shut out from the light of the sun, which gave him great pain.
+The structure of his body, the tenderness of his feet, and the great
+difficulty and suffering which he experienced in walking, indicated
+beyond a doubt that he had been kept in a sitting posture, with his legs
+stretched straight out before him. His sustenance had been bread and
+water; for he not only evinced great repugnance to any other food, but
+the smallest quantity affected his constitution in the most violent
+manner. It was also evident that he had never come in contact with human
+beings, beyond what was necessary for supplying his immediate wants,
+and, strange to say, teaching him to write.
+
+That these inferences were well-founded was proved by the subsequent
+disclosures of Caspar himself, after he had acquired a sufficient
+command of language. The account he then gave was as follows.
+
+"He neither knows who he is nor where his home is. It was only at
+Nuremberg that he came into the world. Here he first learned, that,
+besides himself and 'the man with whom he had always been,' there
+existed other men and other creatures. As long as he can recollect, he
+had always lived in a hole, (a small, low apartment, which he sometimes
+calls a cage,) where he had always sat upon the ground, with bare feet,
+and clothed only with a shirt and a pair of breeches. In his apartment,
+he never heard a sound, whether produced by a man, by an animal, or by
+anything else. He never saw the heavens, nor did there ever appear a
+brightening (daylight) such as at Nuremberg, he never perceived any
+difference between day and night, and much less did he ever get a sight
+of the beautiful lights in the heavens. Whenever he awoke from sleep, he
+found a loaf of bread and a pitcher of water by him. Sometimes his water
+had a bad taste; whenever this was the case, he could no longer keep
+his eyes open, but was compelled to fall asleep; and when he afterwards
+awoke, he found that he had a clean shirt on, and that his nails had
+been cut.[C]
+
+[Footnote C: When he resided with Professor Daumer, a drop of opium in a
+glass of water was administered to him. After swallowing a mouthful, he
+exclaimed, "That water is nasty; it tastes exactly like the water I was
+sometimes obliged to drink in my cage."]
+
+"He never saw the face of the man who brought him his meat and drink. In
+his hole he had two wooden horses and several ribbons. With these horses
+he had always amused himself as long as he was awake; and his only
+occupation was, to make them run by his side, and to arrange the ribbons
+about them in different positions. Thus one day had passed the same as
+another; but he had never felt the want of anything, had never been
+sick, and--once only excepted--had never felt the sensation of pain.
+Upon the whole, he had been much happier there than in the world, where
+he was obliged to suffer so much. How long he had continued to live in
+this situation he knew not; for he had had no knowledge of time. He
+knew not when or how he came there. Nor had he any recollection of ever
+having been in a different situation, or in any other than in that
+place. The man with whom he had always been never did him any harm. Yet
+one day, shortly before he was taken away, when he had been running his
+horse too hard, and had made too much noise, the man came and struck
+him upon his arm with a stick, or with a piece of wood; this caused the
+wound which he brought with him to Nuremberg.
+
+"Pretty nearly about the same time, the man once came into his prison,
+placed a small table over his feet, and spread something white upon it,
+which he now knows to have been paper; he then came behind him, so as
+not to be seen by him, took hold of his hand, and moved it backwards and
+forwards on the paper, with a thing (a lead pencil) which he had stuck
+between his fingers. He (Hauser) was then ignorant of what it was; but
+he was mightily pleased, when he saw the black figures which began to
+appear upon the white paper. When he felt that his hand was free,
+and the man was gone from him, he was so much pleased with this new
+discovery, that he could never grow tired of drawing these figures
+repeatedly upon the paper. This occupation almost made him neglect his
+horses, although he did not know what those characters signified. The
+man repeated his visits in the same manner several times.
+
+"Another time the man came, lifted him from the place where he lay,
+placed him on his feet, and endeavored to teach him to stand. This he
+repeated at several different times. The manner in which he effected
+this was the following: he seized him firmly around the breast, from
+behind, placed his feet behind Caspar's feet, and lifted these, as in
+stepping forward.
+
+"Finally, the man appeared once again, placed Caspar's hands over his
+shoulders, tied them fast, and thus carried him on his back out of the
+prison. He was carried up (or down) a hill. He knows not how he felt;
+all became night, and he was laid upon his back."--By the expression,
+"all became night," he meant that he fainted away. The little which
+Caspar was able to relate in regard to his journey is not of any
+particular interest, and we omit it here.
+
+This is all that is known with any certainty of the early life of this
+unfortunate being. The conjectures to which it has given rise will be
+considered later. Let us first finish his history.
+
+As was to be expected, Caspar Hauser's faculties developed very
+gradually. His mind was in a torpor, and, placed suddenly amid, to
+him, most exciting scenes, it was long before he could understand the
+simplest phenomena of Nature. The unfolding of his mind was exactly like
+that of a child. Feuerbach, in his book on Caspar Hauser, gives the main
+features of this gradual development. We can only pick out a few.
+
+It is remarkable that in the same proportion as he advanced in knowledge
+and acquaintance with civilized life, the intensity of all his faculties
+diminished. It was so with his memory. He was at first able to exhibit
+most surprising feats. As an experiment, thirty, forty, and, on one
+occasion, forty-five names of persons were mentioned to him, which he
+afterwards repeated with all their titles,--to him, of course, entirely
+meaningless. So, too, with his power of sight. At first, he was able to
+see in the dark perfectly well, and much better than in the light of the
+sun, which was very painful to him. He very frequently amused himself
+at others groping in the dark, when he experienced not the slightest
+difficulty. On one occasion, in the evening, he read the name on a
+door-plate at the distance of one hundred and eighty paces. This
+keenness of vision did not, however, retain its entire vigor, but
+decreased as he became more accustomed to the sun. For some time after
+he made his appearance he had no idea of perspective, but would clutch
+like a child at objects far off. Nor had he any conception of the
+beauties of Nature, which he afterwards explained by saying that it then
+appeared to him like a mass of colors jumbled together. Nothing was
+beautiful, unless it was red, except a starry heaven,--and the emotion
+which he felt, on first beholding this, was truly touching. Until then,
+he had invariably spoken of "the man with whom he had always been" with
+feelings of affection; he longed to return to him, and looked upon all
+his studies as merely a temporary thing; some day he would go back and
+show the man how much he had learned. But when he first looked upon the
+heavens, his tone became entirely changed, and he denounced the man
+severely for never having shown him such beautiful things.
+
+All his senses were thus at first wonderfully keen. It was so with his
+hearing and smell. The latter was the source of most of his sufferings;
+for, being so exceedingly sensitive, even the most scentless things made
+him sick. He liked but one smell, that of bread, which had been his only
+food for seventeen years. It was a long time, indeed, before he could
+take any other food at all, and he only became accustomed to it very
+gradually.
+
+The effect produced upon Caspar Hauser by contact with or proximity to
+animals was also very curious. He was able to detect their presence
+under singularly unfavorable circumstances. Metals, too, had a very
+powerful effect upon him, and possessed for him a strong magnetic power.
+But it is impossible to give all the details, however interesting; for
+them we must refer to Feuerbach.
+
+His mind, as has been already said, was at first sunk in almost
+impenetrable darkness. He knew of but two divisions of earthly
+things,--man and beast, "_bua_" and "_ross_." The former was a word
+of his own. The latter, which is the German for _horse_, included
+everything not human, whether animate or inanimate. Between these he for
+a long time saw no difference. He could not understand why pictures and
+statues did not move, and he regarded his toy-horses as living things.
+To inanimate things impelled by foreign forces he ascribed volition.
+
+Religion he, of course, had none. He possessed naturally a very amiable
+character, and his thoughts and conduct were as pure as though guided by
+the soundest system of morality. But he knew nothing of a God, and one
+of the greatest difficulties Daumer had to encounter was instructing
+him on this point. His untutored mind could not master the doctrines of
+theology, and he was constantly puzzled by questions which he himself
+suggested, and which his instructor often found it impossible to answer
+satisfactorily.
+
+Physically he was very weak. The shortest walk would fatigue him.
+At first he could scarcely shuffle along at all, on account of the
+tenderness of his feet, and because his body had always been kept in
+one position. He so far overcame this, however, as to be able to walk a
+little, though always with an effort. But on horseback he never became
+tired. From the first time that he mounted a horse, he showed a love
+for the exercise, and a power of endurance utterly at variance with all
+other exhibitions of his strength; and he very soon acquired a degree
+of skill which made him an object of envy to all the cavalry-officers
+stationed in the neighborhood. So inconsistent and incomprehensible was
+everything about Caspar Hauser!
+
+In October, 1829, while residing in the family of Professor Daumer, an
+attempt was made upon his life, which was only so far successful as to
+give a very violent shock to his delicate constitution. The perpetrator
+of the crime was never discovered. Caspar was afterwards adopted by the
+Earl of Stanhope, and by him removed to Anspach. Feuerbach gives a very
+interesting description of him, as he appeared at this time.
+
+"In understanding a man, in knowledge a little child, and in many things
+more ignorant than a child, the whole of his language and demeanor shows
+often a strangely contrasted mingling of manly and childish behavior.
+With a serious countenance and in a tone of great importance, he often
+utters things which, coming from any other person of the same age, would
+be called stupid or silly, but which, coming from him, always force upon
+us a sad, compassionate smile. It is particularly farcical to hear him
+speak of the future plans of his life,--of the manner in which, after
+having learned a great deal and earned money, he intends to settle
+himself with his wife, whom he considers as an indispensable part of
+domestic furniture."
+
+"Mild and gentle, without vicious inclinations, and without passions and
+strong emotions, his quiet mind resembles the smooth mirror of a lake
+in the stillness of a moonlight night. Incapable of hurting an animal,
+compassionate even to the worm, which he is afraid to tread upon, timid
+even to cowardice, he will nevertheless act regardless of consequences,
+and even without forbearance, according to his own convictions, whenever
+it becomes necessary to defend or to execute purposes which he has once
+perceived and acknowledged to be right. If he feels himself annoyed in
+any manner, he will long bear it patiently, and will try to get out of
+the way of the person who is thus troublesome to him, or will endeavor
+to effect a change in his conduct by mild expostulations; but, finally,
+if he cannot help himself in any other manner, as soon as an opportunity
+of doing so offers, he will very quietly slip off the bonds that confine
+him,--yet without bearing the least malice against him who may have
+injured him. He is obedient, obliging, and yielding; but the man who
+accuses him wrongfully, or asserts to be true what he believes to be
+untrue, need not expect, that, from mere complaisance, or from other
+considerations, he will submit to injustice or to falsehood; he will
+always modestly, but firmly, insist upon his right; or perhaps, if the
+other seems inclined obstinately to maintain his ground against him, he
+will silently leave him."
+
+But the fate which had been pursuing this unfortunate being, and without
+which the tragedy of his life would have been incomplete, overtook him
+at last. On the 15th of December, 1833, he was induced by some unknown
+person to meet him in a retired spot in the city of Anspach, under the
+pretence that he should then have the secret of his parentage revealed
+to him. The real object was his murder, and this time it was successful.
+Caspar was stabbed to the heart. He still had sufficient strength left
+to walk about a thousand paces; and, indeed, the wound was outwardly so
+insignificant, that it was at first believed to be a mere scratch. This
+strengthened an opinion which was then gradually gaining ground, that
+Caspar was an impostor; for it was firmly believed by some that he had
+inflicted this wound upon himself, as well as the one received in 1829,
+in order to quicken the somewhat languishing interest taken in him. Nor
+did they give up this opinion when the wound was found to be fatal. They
+then boldly asserted that he had wounded himself more severely than
+he had intended. And not content with simply maintaining this absurd
+opinion, they taunted him with it on his death-bed, so that he was not
+even allowed to die in peace. Nothing was wanting to fill his bitter
+cup. How terrible must have been the mental torture to wring from
+so resigned a soul the exclamation, "O God! O God! to die thus with
+contumely and disgrace!" The German is still more expressive,--_"Ach,
+Gott! ach, Gott! so abkratzen muessen mit Schimpf und Schande!"_
+
+Such was the life of Caspar Hauser. For nearly seventeen years the
+inmate of a dreary prison, shut out from the light, without a single
+companion in his misery, drugged when it was necessary to change his
+linen, with no food but bread,--for seventeen years did he thus exist,
+--his mind a perfect blank. Suddenly cast upon the world, amid strange
+beings whom he could not understand and by whom he was not understood,
+he long knew scarcely a sensation save that of pain. And when at last
+he did become accustomed to civilized life, and the darkness which
+enshrouded him disappeared before the rays of light that found entrance
+into his intellect, it was only to awake to a knowledge of the utter
+misery of his position. He then saw himself a helpless orphan, the
+inferior of all with whom he came in contact, and a dependant upon the
+charity of others for his support. He awoke to find that he had lost
+seventeen years of this beautiful life, seventeen years which he never
+could recall,--that he never could take his stand amongst men as their
+equal, but would always be regarded as an unhappy being meriting their
+pity,--much like that felt for the pains of some suffering brute. Nor
+was this all. During the few years that were granted him in our
+world, persecuted by some unknown person, against whom he was
+helpless,--knowing that his life was aimed at by some one, but unable
+to protect himself, and at last falling a victim to the threatened
+blow,--and, worst of all, charged on his death-bed with being an
+impostor,--such was the life of Caspar Hauser!
+
+Among the different opinions which have existed in regard to his origin,
+the most noticeable are those advanced by Stanhope and Merker, and by
+Daumer, Eschricht, and Feuerbach. The Earl of Stanhope's connection
+with Caspar Hauser was a rather peculiar one. He made his appearance in
+Nuremberg at the time the first attempt was made upon Caspar's life,
+but took no particular notice of him, and left without having shown
+any interest in him. On a second visit, about seven months later, he
+suddenly became passionately attached to Caspar, showed most unusual
+marks of fondness for him, and finally adopted him. He then removed him
+to Anspach, and remained his protector until his death in December,
+1833. The day after his burial, Stanhope appeared in Anspach, and took
+particular pains to proclaim then, and subsequently at a judicial
+investigation in Munich, and in several tracts, his belief that Caspar
+was an impostor. This had already been maintained by Merker, the
+Prussian Counsellor of Police. The theory which Stanhope now advanced
+was, that Caspar was a journeyman tailor or glover, from some small
+village on the Austrian side of the river Salzach. The reasons which he
+assigns for his belief in the imposture are all derived from Caspar's
+supposed want of integrity and veracity. They impeach the character of
+Caspar living, and not of Caspar dead. Why, then, did Stanhope wait for
+his death before he proclaimed the imposture? Why did he remain his
+protector, and thus make himself a party to the fraud? His conduct is
+not easily explained. On the other hand, there is little ground for
+Daumer's conclusions. These are given at length in his "Disclosures
+concerning Caspar Hauser," published in 1859, a book called forth by
+attacks made upon him by Eschricht. Considering Stanhope's conduct, and
+his endeavor after Caspar's death to induce Daumer to support his views
+as to the imposture, and, upon his indignant refusal, making him twice
+the object of a personal attack, Daumer thinks that there is reason to
+believe Stanhope personally interested. He thinks that Caspar was the
+legitimate heir to some great English estate and title, that he was
+removed in order to make way for some one else, and that his murder was
+intrusted to some person who had not the courage or the wickedness
+to perpetrate it, but removed him first to Hungary and afterwards to
+Germany, and supported him in the manner indicated, hoping that he would
+not long survive. When, however, he grew up, his support became irksome
+and he was cast upon the world. There he attracted so much attention,
+that the instigator of the crime, dreading a disclosure, sought his
+life again. When this proved unsuccessful, he was removed to Anspach;
+Feuerbach, who had shown the greatest determination to sound the
+mystery, was removed from the world, and at last the tragedy was made
+complete in Caspar's own death. All this points to Stanhope. And yet
+Daumer has not taken the trouble to inquire whether it agrees with the
+family history. It is possible that he may be right; but his story
+carries with it so much the air of improbability, that we cannot give it
+credit without further proof.
+
+In the seventh volume of Hitzig's "Annals of Criminal Jurisprudence,"
+there is a communication from Lieutenant von Pirch, disclosing Caspar's
+acquaintance with certain Hungarian words. A little while before this
+announcement was made, a story had gone the rounds of the papers of
+Germany, that a governess residing in Pesth had fainted away, when the
+account of Caspar Hauser's appearance was related to her. All this
+naturally attracted attention to Hungary as the probable place of his
+birth; and it is for these reasons, that Feuerbach, Daumer, and others,
+suppose that he spent some part of his childhood in that country. After
+his death, Stanhope sent Lieutenant Hickel to Hungary to investigate the
+matter, but no traces were discovered,--a proof, as Stanhope has it,
+that these conclusions were groundless, and, according to Daumer,
+another proof of Stanhope's complicity. He believes that the very
+superficial search made by the order of Stanhope was intended to lull
+suspicion and prevent a more strict search being made.
+
+To return to the opinion advanced by Merker, and subsequently adopted by
+Stanhope,--the thing is simply impossible. In the first place, it would
+have been impossible for an impostor to elude discovery. To trace him
+would have been the easiest thing in the world. With a vigilant police,
+in a thickly settled country, how could a man leave his place of abode,
+and travel, were it for ever so short a distance, without being known?
+But this is the least consideration. Caspar's whole life, his intellect,
+his body, the feats which he accomplished, when submitted to the most
+searching tests, were a refutation of the charge. But when it is
+added that he wounded himself in order to do away with suspicion, the
+accusation becomes so absurd as scarcely to merit refutation. It is
+answered by the fact, that it was proved, from the nature of the
+wounds, in both cases, that self-infliction was impossible. Nor is it
+conceivable that any one should have been able so long to deceive
+people who were constantly with him and always on the alert. And it is
+remarkable that they who saw most of Caspar, and knew him best, were
+most firmly convinced of his integrity,--whilst his traducers were,
+almost without an exception, men who had never known him intimately.
+Feuerbach, Daumer, Binder, Meier, Fuhrmann, and many others, maintain
+his honesty in the strongest terms.
+
+On the other hand, it is said, that it is equally impossible for a
+person to have been kept in any community in the manner in which it is
+asserted that he was kept; discovery was inevitable. But it must be
+remembered that this instance does not stand alone. If search were made,
+many cases of the same kind might be collected. It is by no means so
+rare an occurrence for persons to be kept secluded in such a manner as
+to conceal their existence from the world. Daumer mentions two similar
+cases which happened about the same time. The very year that Caspar
+Hauser appeared, the son of a lawyer, named Fleischmann, just deceased,
+was discovered in a retired chamber of the house. He was thirty-eight
+years old, and had been confined there since his twelfth year. The other
+case, also mentioned by Feuerbach, was still more distressing. Dr. Horn
+saw, in the infirmary at Salzburg, a girl, twenty-two years of age, who
+had been brought up in a pig-sty. One of her legs was quite crooked,
+from her having sat with them crossed; she grunted like a hog; and her
+actions were "brutishly unseemly in human dress." Daumer also relates a
+third case, which was made the subject of a romantic story published in
+a Nuremberg paper, but which, he says, lacks confirmation. It was the
+discovery, in a secret place, of the grown-up son of a clergyman by his
+housekeeper. Whether this be true or not, both Feuerbach and Daumer
+believe that many similar instances do exist, which never come to light.
+It is not impossible, therefore, that Caspar Hauser was confined in a
+cellar to which none but his keeper sought entrance. Who would suspect
+the existence of a human being, taught to be perfectly submissive and
+quiet and to have no wants, in such a place, when even the existence
+of the subterranean, prison itself was probably unknown? The cases
+mentioned above were certainly more singular in this respect.
+
+But Eschricht's opinion is the most peculiar of all. In his "Unverstand
+mid schlechte Erziehung," he maintains that Caspar was an idiot until
+he was brought to Nuremberg, that his mind was then strengthened and
+developed, and that he was then transformed from an idiot into an
+impostor. This is still more impossible than Stanhope's theory; for in
+this case Daumer, Feuerbach, Hiltel the jailer, Binder the mayor, and
+indeed all Caspar's earliest friends, instead of being victims of an
+imposture, are made partakers in the fraud. No one acquainted with the
+irreproachable character of these men could entertain the idea for a
+minute; and when we remember that it was not one, but many, who must
+have been parties to it, it becomes doubly impossible.
+
+We come now to consider the opinion of Feuerbach; and we shall do it the
+more carefully, because in it, we feel confident, lies the true solution
+of the question. He was at the time President of the Court of Appeal of
+the Circle of Rezat. He had risen to this honorable position gradually,
+and it was the reward of his distinguished merit alone. His works on
+criminal jurisprudence, and the penal code which he drew up for the
+kingdom of Bavaria, and which was adopted by other states, had placed
+him in the first rank of criminal lawyers. It was he who conducted
+the first judicial investigations concerning Caspar Hauser. He was,
+therefore, intimately acquainted with all the circumstances of the case,
+and had ample opportunity to form a deliberate opinion. How the idea
+originated, that Caspar Hauser belonged to the House of Baden, it is
+difficult to say. Feuerbach never published it to the world. In his book
+on Caspar Hauser he makes no mention of it; but in 1832 he addressed a
+paper to Queen Caroline of Bavaria, headed, "Who might Caspar Hauser
+be?" in which he endeavors to show that he was the son of the
+Grand-Duchess Stephanie. This paper was, we believe, first published
+in 1852, in his "Life and Works," by his son.[D] The first part of it
+treats of Caspar's rank and position in general, and he comes to the
+following conclusions. Caspar was a legitimate child. Had he been
+illegitimate, less dangerous and far easier means would have been
+resorted to for concealing his existence and suppressing a knowledge
+of his parentage. And here we may add, that the supposition has never
+prevailed that he was the offspring of a criminal connection, and that
+these means were taken for suppressing the mother's disgrace. A note
+which Caspar brought with him, when he appeared at Nuremberg, indicated
+that such was the case, but it was so evidently a piece of deception
+that it never obtained much credit. The second conclusion at which
+Feuerbach arrives is, that people were implicated who had command of
+great and unusual means,--means which could prompt an attempt at murder
+in a crowded city and in the open day, and which could over-bribe all
+rewards offered for a disclosure. Third, Caspar was a person on whose
+life or death great interests depended, else there would not have been
+such care to conceal his existence. Interest, and not revenge or hate,
+was the motive. He must have been a person of high rank. To prove this,
+Feuerbach refers to dreams of Caspar's. On one occasion, particularly,
+he dreamt that he was conducted through a large castle, the appearance
+of which he imagined that he recognized, and afterwards minutely
+described. This Feuerbach thinks was only the awakening of past
+recollections. It would be interesting to know whether any palace
+corresponding to the description given exists. In the absence of such
+knowledge, this point of Feuerbach's argument appears a rather weak one.
+From the above propositions he concludes that Caspar was the legitimate
+child of princely parents, who was removed in order to open the
+succession to others, in whose way he stood.
+
+[Footnote D: ANSELM RITTER VON FEUERBACH'S _Leben und Wirken, aus
+seinen ausgedruckten Briefen, Tagebuechern, Vortraegen und Denkschriften,
+veroeffentlicht von seinem Sohne_, LUDWIG FEUERBACH. Leipzig, 1852.]
+
+The second division of the paper relates to the imprisonment, and
+here he takes a ground entirely opposed to the opinions of others. He
+believes that he was thus kept as a protection against some greater
+evil. His wants were supplied, he was well taken care of, and his keeper
+is therefore to be looked upon as his protector. Daumer sees in the
+keeper nothing but a hired murderer, whose courage or whose wickedness
+failed him. It is certainly difficult to imagine a kind friend immuring
+one in a dark subterranean vault, feeding one on bread, excluding light,
+fellowship, amusement, thoughts,--never saying a word, but studiously
+allowing one's mind to become a dreary waste. It is a friendship to
+which most of us would prefer death. We are therefore inclined to
+think that Daumer is here in the right. But whatever the nature of his
+imprisonment, the principal argument does not lose its force.
+
+In the third place, Feuerbach speaks of the family to which Caspar must
+have belonged. Just about the time of Caspar's birth, the eldest son of
+the Grand-Duchess of Baden died an infant. His death was followed in
+a few years by that of his only brother, leaving several sisters, who
+could not inherit the duchy. By these deaths the old House of the
+Zaehringer became extinct, and the offspring of a morganatic marriage
+became the heirs to the throne. It was, therefore, for their interest
+that the other branch should die out. In addition to this, the mother
+of the new house was a woman of unbounded ambition and determined
+character, and had a bitter hatred for the Grand-Duchess. Without laying
+too much stress, then, upon the nearness in date of the elder child's
+death and Caspar's birth, as given in the letter, there is reason to
+suppose that they were the same person. There was every feeling of
+interest to prompt the deed, there was the opportunity of sickness to
+accomplish it in, and there was an unscrupulous woman to take advantage
+of it. Is it, then, impossible that she, having command of the
+house-hold, should have been able to substitute a dead for the living
+child? Accept the proposition, and the mystery is solved; reject it, and
+we are still groping in the dark. Nevertheless, there are circumstances
+which, even then, are incapable of explanation; but it is the most
+satisfactory theory, and certainly has less objections than the others.
+Feuerbach came to this conclusion early; for his paper addressed to
+Queen Caroline of Bavaria was written in 1832, the year before Caspar's
+death. Delicacy forbade the open discussion of the question; but, even
+at the time, this theory found many supporters. Some even went so far
+as to say that Feuerbach's sudden death the same year was owing to the
+indefatigable zeal with which he was ferreting out the mystery.
+
+Of all the different explanations, then, which have been given, that of
+Feuerbach seems to be the most satisfactory. At the same time, like the
+rest, it is founded on conjecture. Its truth may never be proved. They
+whose interest it was to suppress the matter thirty years ago, and who
+resorted to such extreme measures in doing so, no doubt took ample
+precaution that every trace should be erased. It is barely possible that
+some confession or the discovery of some paper may cast light upon the
+subject; but the length of time which has elapsed renders it exceedingly
+improbable, and the mystery of Caspar Hauser, like the mysteries of the
+Iron Mask and Junius, will always remain a fruitful source of conjecture
+only.
+
+It may not be uninteresting to close this sketch with the consideration
+of a point of law raised by Feuerbach in connection with the subject. It
+will be recollected that he calls his book "Caspar Hauser. An Example
+of a Crime against the Life of Man's Soul." The crime committed against
+Caspar Hauser was, according to the Bavarian code, twofold. There was
+the crime of _illegal imprisonment_, and the crime of _exposure_. And
+here Feuerbach advances the doctrine, that it was not only the actual
+confinement which amounted to illegal imprisonment, but that "we must
+incontestably, and, indeed, principally, regard as such the cruel
+withholding from him of the most ordinary gifts which Nature with a
+liberal hand extends even to the most indigent,--the depriving him
+of all the means of mental development and culture,--the unnatural
+detention of a human soul in a state of irrational animality." "An
+attempt," he says, "by artificial contrivances, to seclude a man from
+Nature and from all intercourse with rational beings, to change
+the course of his human destiny, and to withdraw from him all the
+nourishment afforded by those spiritual substances which Nature has
+appointed for food to the human mind, that it may grow and flourish,
+and be instructed and developed and formed,--such an attempt must, even
+quite independently of its actual consequences, be considered as,
+in itself, a highly criminal invasion of man's most sacred and most
+peculiar property,--of the freedom and the destiny of his soul.
+...Inasmuch as the whole earlier part of his life was thus taken from
+him, he may be said to have been the subject of a partial soul-murder."
+This crime, if recognized, would, according to Feuerbach, far outweigh
+the mere crime of illegal imprisonment, and the latter would be merged
+in it.
+
+Tittmann, in his "Hand-Book of Penal Law," also speaks of crimes against
+the intellect, and particularly mentions the separation of a person from
+all human society, if practised upon a child before it has learned to
+speak and until the intellect Las become sealed up, as well as the
+intentional rearing of a person to ignorance, as reducible to this head.
+This was written before Caspar's case had occurred. He says, also, that
+they are similar to cases of homicide; because the latter are punished
+for destroying the rational being, and not the physical man. Murder and
+the destruction of the intellect are, therefore, equally punishable. The
+one merits the punishment of death as well as the other. Nor are we to
+take the possibility of a cure into consideration, any more than we do
+the possibility of extinguishing a fire. But where the law does not
+prescribe the punishment of death irrespectively of the possibility of
+recovery, the punishment would rarely exceed ten years in the House of
+Correction. We must understand Tittmann's remarks, however, to refer
+entirely to the law of Saxony,--that being the government under which he
+lived, and the only one in whose criminal code this crime is recognized.
+
+Feuerbach wished to have this murder of the soul inserted in the
+criminal code of Bavaria as a punishable crime; but he was unsuccessful,
+and the whole doctrine has subsequently been condemned. Mittermaier, in
+a note to his edition of Feuerbach's "Text-Book of German Criminal Law,"
+denies that there is any foundation for the distinction taken by him and
+Tittmann. He says, that, in the first place, it has not such an actual
+existence as is capable of proof; and, secondly, all crimes under it
+can easily be reached by some other law. The last objection does not,
+however, seem to be a very serious one. If, as Feuerbach says, the
+crime against the soul is more heinous than that against the body, it
+certainly deserves the first attention, even if the one is not merged in
+the other. The crime being greater, the punishment would be greater;
+and the demands of justice would no more be satisfied by the milder
+punishment than if a murderer were prosecuted as a nuisance. The fact,
+therefore, that the crime is reducible to some different head, is not an
+objection. We meet with the most serious difficulty when we consider the
+possibility of proof. Taking it for granted that the crime does exist in
+the abstract, the only question is, whether it is of such a nature that
+it would be expedient for government to take cognizance of it. The soul
+being in its nature so far beyond the reach of man, and the difficulty
+of ever proving the effect of human actions upon it, would seem to
+indicate that it were better to allow a few exceptional cases to pass
+unnoticed than to involve the criminal courts in endless and fruitless
+inquiry. Upon the ground of expediency only should the crime go
+unnoticed, and not because it can be reached in some other way. For
+proof that it does exist, we can point to nothing more convincing than
+the life of Caspar Hauser itself. No one can doubt that his soul was the
+victim of a crime, for which the perpetrator, untouched by human laws,
+stands accused before the throne of God.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+PAMPENEA.
+
+AN IDYL.
+
+
+  Lying by the summer sea,
+  I had a dream of Italy.
+
+  Chalky cliffs and miles of sand,
+  Ragged reefs and salty caves,
+  And the sparkling emerald waves
+  Faded; and I seemed to stand,
+  Myself a languid Florentine,
+  In the heart of that fair land.
+  And in a garden cool and green,
+  Boccaccio's own enchanted place,
+  I met Pampenea face to face,--
+  A maid so lovely that to see
+  Her smile is to know Italy.
+
+  Her hair was like a coronet
+  Upon her Grecian forehead set,
+  Where one gem glistened sunnily,
+  Like Venice, when first seen at sea.
+  I saw within her violet eyes
+  The starlight of Italian skies,
+  And on her brow and breast and hand
+  The olive of her native land.
+
+  And knowing how, in other times,
+  Her lips were ripe with Tuscan rhymes
+  Of love and wine and dance, I spread
+  My mantle by an almond-tree:
+  "And here, beneath the rose," I said,
+  "I'll hear thy Tuscan melody!"
+
+  I heard a tale that was not told
+  In those ten dreamy days of old,
+  When Heaven, for some divine offence,
+  Smote Florence with the pestilence,
+  And in that garden's odorous shade
+  The dames of the Decameron,
+  With each a happy lover, strayed,
+  To laugh and sing, at sorest need,
+  To lie in the lilies, in the sun,
+  With glint of plume and golden brede.
+
+  And while she whispered in my ear,
+  The pleasant Arno murmured near,
+  The dewy, slim chameleons run
+  Through twenty colors in the sun,
+  The breezes broke the fountain's glass,
+  And woke Aeolian melodies,
+  And shook from out the scented trees
+  The bleached lemon-blossoms on the grass.
+
+  The tale? I have forgot the tale!--
+  A Lady all for love forlorn;
+  A Rosebud, and a Nightingale
+  That bruised his bosom on a thorn;
+  A pot of rubies buried deep;
+  A glen, a corpse, a child asleep;
+  A Monk, that was no monk at all,
+  I' the moonlight by a castle-wall;--
+  Kaleidoscopic hints, to be
+  Worked up in farce or tragedy.
+
+  Now while the sweet-eyed Tuscan wove
+  The gilded thread of her romance,
+  (Which I have lost by grievous chance,)
+  The one dear woman that I love,
+  Beside me in our seaside nook,
+  Closed a white finger in her book,
+  Half-vexed that she should read, and weep
+  For Petrarch, to a man asleep.
+  And scorning me, so tame and cold,
+  She rose, and wandered down the shore,
+  Her wine-dark drapery, fold in fold,
+  Imprisoned by an ivory hand;
+  And on a ridge of granite, half in sand,
+  She stood, and looked at Appledore.
+
+  And waking, I beheld her there
+  Sea-dreaming in the moted air,
+  A Siren sweet and debonair,
+  With wristlets woven of colored weeds,
+  And oblong lucent amber beads
+  Of sea-kelp shining in her hair.
+  And as I mused on dreams, and how
+  The something in us never sleeps,
+  But laughs or sings or moans or weeps,
+  She turned,--and on her breast and brow
+  I saw the tint that seemed not won
+  From kisses of New England sun;
+  I saw on brow and breast and hand
+  The olive of a sunnier land!
+  She turned,--and lo! within her eyes
+  The starlight of Italian skies!
+
+  Most dreams are dark, beyond the range
+  Of reason; oft we cannot tell
+  If they be born of heaven or hell;
+  But to my soul it seems not strange,
+  That, lying by the summer sea,
+  With that dark woman watching me,
+  I slept, and dreamed of Italy!
+
+
+
+
+THE PROFESSOR'S STORY.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+THE PERILOUS HOUR.
+
+
+Up to this time Dick Venner had not decided on the particular mode
+and the precise period of relieving himself from the unwarrantable
+interference which threatened to defeat his plans. The luxury of feeling
+that he had his man in his power was its own reward. One who watches
+in the dark, outside, while his enemy, in utter unconsciousness, is
+illuminating his apartment and himself so that every movement of his
+head and every button on his coat can be seen and counted, especially
+if he holds a loaded rifle in his hand, experiences a peculiar kind of
+pleasure, which he naturally hates to bring to its climax by testing his
+skill as a marksman upon the object of his attention.
+
+Besides, Dick had two sides in his nature, almost as distinct as we
+sometimes observe in those persons who are the subjects of the condition
+known as _double consciousness_. On his New England side he was cunning
+and calculating, always cautious, measuring his distance before he
+risked his stroke, as nicely as if he were throwing his lasso. But
+he was liable to intercurrent fits of jealousy and rage, such as the
+light-hued races are hardly capable of conceiving,--blinding paroxysms
+of passion, which for the time overmastered him, and which, if they
+found no ready outlet, transformed themselves into the more dangerous
+forces that worked through the instrumentality of his cool craftiness.
+
+He had failed as yet in getting any positive evidence that there was any
+relation between Elsie and the schoolmaster other than such as might
+exist unsuspected and unblamed between a teacher and his pupil. A book,
+or a note, even, did not prove the existence of any sentiment. At one
+time he would be devoured by suspicions, at another he would try to
+laugh himself out of them. And in the mean while he followed Elsie's
+tastes as closely as he could, determined to make some impression upon
+her,--to become a habit, a convenience, a necessity,--whatever might aid
+him in the attainment of the one end which was now the aim of his life.
+
+It was to humor one of her tastes already known to the reader, that he
+said to her one morning,--"Come, Elsie, take your castanets, and let us
+have a dance."
+
+He had struck the right vein in the girl's fancy, for she was in the
+mood for this exercise, and very willingly led the way into one of the
+more empty apartments. What there was in this particular kind of dance
+which excited her it might not be easy to guess; but those who looked in
+with the old Doctor, on a former occasion, and saw her, will remember
+that she was strangely carried away by it, and became almost fearful in
+the vehemence of her passion. The sound of the castanets seemed to make
+her alive all over. Dick knew well enough what the exhibition would
+be, and was almost afraid of her at these moments; for it was like
+the dancing mania of Eastern devotees, more than the ordinary light
+amusement of joyous youth,--a convulsion of the body and the mind,
+rather than a series of voluntary modulated motions.
+
+Elsie rattled out the triple measure of a saraband. Her eyes began to
+glitter more brilliantly, and her shape to undulate in freer curves.
+Presently she noticed that Dick's look was fixed upon her necklace. His
+face betrayed his curiosity; he was intent on solving the question, why
+she always wore something about her neck. The chain of mosaics she had
+on at that moment displaced itself at every step, and he was peering
+with malignant, searching eagerness to see if an unsunned ring of
+fairer hue than the rest of the surface, or any less easily explained
+peculiarity, were hidden by her ornaments.
+
+She stopped suddenly, caught the chain of mosaics and settled it hastily
+in its place, flung down her castanets, drew herself back, and stood
+looking at him, with her head a little on one side, and her eyes
+narrowing in the way he had known so long and well.
+
+"What is the matter, Cousin Elsie? What do you stop for?" he said.
+
+Elsie did not answer, but kept her eyes on him, full of malicious light.
+The jealousy which lay covered up under his surface--thoughts took this
+opportunity to break out.
+
+"You wouldn't act so, if you were dancing with Mr. Langdon,--would you,
+Elsie?" he asked.
+
+It was with some effort that he looked steadily at her to see the effect
+of his question.
+
+Elsie _colored_,--not much, but still perceptibly. Dick could not
+remember that he had ever seen her show this mark of emotion before,
+in all his experience of her fitful changes of mood. It had a singular
+depth of significance, therefore, for him; he knew how hardly her color
+came. Blushing means nothing, in some persons; in others, it betrays
+a profound inward agitation,--a perturbation of the feelings far more
+trying than the passions which with many easily moved persons break
+forth in tears. All who have observed much are aware that some men, who
+have seen a good deal of life in its less chastened aspects and are
+anything but modest, will blush often and easily, while there are
+delicate and sensitive women who can turn pale, or go into fits, if
+necessary, but are very rarely seen to betray their feelings in their
+cheeks, even when their expression shows that their inmost soul is
+blushing scarlet.
+
+Presently she answered, abruptly and scornfully,--
+
+"Mr. Langdon is a gentleman, and would not vex me as you do."
+
+"A gentleman!" Dick answered, with the most insulting accent,--"a
+gentleman! Come, Elsie, you've got the Dudley blood in your veins,
+and it doesn't do for you to call this poor, sneaking schoolmaster a
+gentleman!"
+
+He stopped short. Elsie's bosom was heaving, the faint flush on her
+cheek was becoming a vivid glow. Whether it were shame or wrath, he saw
+that he had reached some deep-lying centre of emotion. There was no
+longer any doubt in his mind. With another girl these signs of confusion
+might mean little or nothing; with her they were decisive and final.
+Elsie Venner loved Bernard Langdon.
+
+The sudden conviction, absolute, overwhelming, which rushed upon him,
+had wellnigh led to an explosion of wrath, and perhaps some terrible
+scene which might have fulfilled some of Old Sophy's predictions. This,
+however, would never do. Dick's face whitened with his thoughts, but he
+kept still until he could speak calmly.
+
+"I've nothing against the young fellow," he said; "only I don't think
+there's anything quite good enough to keep the company of people that
+have the Dudley blood in them. You a'n't as proud as I am. I can't quite
+make up my mind to call a schoolmaster a gentleman, though this one may
+be well enough. I've nothing against him, at any rate."
+
+Elsie made no answer, but glided out of the room and slid away to her
+own apartment. She bolted the door and drew her curtains close. Then she
+threw herself on the floor, and fell into a dull, slow ache of passion,
+without tears, without words, almost without thoughts. So she remained,
+perhaps, for a half-hour, at the end of which time it seemed that her
+passion had become a sullen purpose. She arose, and, looking cautiously
+round, went to the hearth, which was ornamented with curious old Dutch
+tiles, with pictures of Scripture subjects. One of these represented
+the lifting of the brazen serpent. She took a hair-pin from one of her
+braids, and, insinuating its points under the edge of the tile, raised
+it from its place. A small leaden box lay under the tile, which she
+opened, and, taking from it a little white powder, which she folded in a
+scrap of paper, replaced the box and the tile over it.
+
+Whether Dick had by any means got a knowledge of this proceeding, or
+whether he only suspected some unmentionable design on her part, there
+is no sufficient means of determining. At any rate, when they met, an
+hour or two after these occurrences, he could not help noticing how
+easily she seemed to have got over her excitement. She was very pleasant
+with him,--too pleasant, Dick thought. It was not Elsie's way to come
+out of a fit of anger so easily as that. She had contrived some way of
+letting off her spite; that was certain. Dick was pretty cunning, as Old
+Sophy had said, and, whether or not he had any means of knowing Elsie's
+private intentions, watched her closely, and was on his guard against
+accidents.
+
+For the first time, he took certain precautions with reference to his
+diet, such as were quite alien to his common habits. On coming to the
+dinner-table, that day, he complained of headache, took but little food,
+and refused the cup of coffee which Elsie offered him, saying that it
+did not agree with him when he had these attacks.
+
+Here was a new complication. Obviously enough, he could not live in this
+way, suspecting everything but plain bread and water, and hardly feeling
+safe in meddling with them. Not only had this school-keeping wretch come
+between him and the scheme by which he was to secure his future fortune,
+but his image had so infected his cousin's mind that she was ready to
+try on him some of those tricks which, as he had heard hinted in the
+village, she had once before put in practice upon a person who had
+become odious to her.
+
+Something must be done, and at once, to meet the double necessities of
+this case. Every day, while the young girl was in these relations with
+the young man, was only making matters worse. They could exchange words
+and looks, they could arrange private interviews, they would be stooping
+together over the same book, her hair touching his cheek, her breath
+mingling with his, all the magnetic attractions drawing them together
+with strange, invisible effluences. As her passion for the schoolmaster
+increased, her dislike to him, her cousin, would grow with it, and all
+his dangers would be multiplied. It was a fearful point he had reached.
+He was tempted at one moment to give up all his plans and to disappear
+suddenly from the place, leaving with the schoolmaster, who had
+come between him and his object, an anonymous token of his personal
+sentiments which would be remembered a good while in the history of the
+town of Rockland. This was but a momentary thought; the great Dudley
+property could not be given up in that way.
+
+Something must happen at once to break up all this order of things. He
+could think of but one Providential event adequate to the emergency,--an
+event foreshadowed by various recent circumstances, but hitherto
+floating in his mind only as a possibility. Its occurrence would at once
+change the course of Elsie's feelings, providing her with something to
+think of besides mischief, and remove the accursed obstacle which was
+thwarting all his own projects. Every possible motive, then,--his
+interest, his jealousy, his longing for revenge, and now his fears for
+his own safety,--urged him to regard the happening of a certain casualty
+as a matter of simple necessity. This was the self-destruction of Mr.
+Bernard Langdon.
+
+Such an event, though it might be surprising to many people, would not
+be incredible, nor without many parallel cases. He was poor, a miserable
+fag, under the control of that mean wretch up there at the school, who
+looked as if he had sour buttermilk in his veins instead of blood. He
+was in love with a girl above his station, rich, and of old family, but
+strange in all her ways, and it was conceivable that he should become
+suddenly jealous of her. Or she might have frightened him with some
+display of her peculiarities which had filled him with a sudden
+repugnance in the place of love. Any of these things were credible, and
+would make a probable story enough,--so thought Dick over to himself
+with the New-England half of his mind.
+
+Unfortunately, men will not always take themselves out of the way when,
+so far as their neighbors are concerned, it would be altogether the most
+appropriate and graceful and acceptable service they could render. There
+was at this particular moment no special reason for believing that the
+schoolmaster meditated any violence to his own person. On the contrary,
+there was good evidence that he was taking some care of himself. He was
+looking well and in good spirits, and in the habit of amusing himself
+and exercising, as if to keep up his standard of health, especially of
+taking certain evening-walks, before referred to, at an hour when most
+of the Rockland people had "retired," or, in vulgar language, "gone to
+bed."
+
+Dick Venner settled it, however, in his own mind, that Mr. Bernard
+Langdon must lay violent hands upon himself. He even went so far as to
+determine the precise hour, and the method in which the "rash act," as
+it would undoubtedly be called in the next issue of "The Rockland
+Weekly Universe," should be committed. Time,--_this evening._
+Method,--asphyxia, by suspension. It was, unquestionably, taking a great
+liberty with a man to decide that he should become _felo de se_ without
+his own consent. Such, however, was the decision of Mr. Richard Venner
+with regard to Mr. Bernard Langdon.
+
+If everything went right, then, there would be a coroner's inquest
+to-morrow upon what remained of that gentleman, found suspended to the
+branch of a tree somewhere within a mile of the Apollinean Institute.
+The "Weekly Universe" would have a startling paragraph announcing a
+"SAD EVENT!!!" which had "thrown the town into an intense state of
+excitement. Mr. Barnard Langden, a well known teacher at the Apollinean
+Institute, was found, etc., etc. The vital spark was extinct. The
+motive to the rash act can only be conjectured, but is supposed to be
+disappointed affection. The name of an accomplished young lady of _the
+highest respectability_ and great beauty is mentioned in connection with
+this melancholy occurrence."
+
+Dick Venner was at the tea-table that evening, as usual.--No, he would
+take green tea, if she pleased,--the same as her father drank. It would
+suit his headache better.--Nothing,--he was much obliged to her. He
+would help himself,--which he did in a little different way from common,
+naturally enough, on account of his headache. He noticed that Elsie
+seemed a little nervous while she was rinsing some of the teacups before
+their removal.
+
+"There's something going on in that witch's head;" he said to himself.
+"I know her,--she'd be savage now, if she hadn't got some trick in hand.
+Let's see how she looks to-morrow!"
+
+Dick announced that he should go to bed early that evening, on account
+of this confounded headache which had been troubling him so much. In
+fact, he went up early, and locked his door after him, with as much
+noise as he could make. He then changed some part of his dress, so that
+it should be dark throughout, slipped off his boots, drew the lasso out
+from the bottom of the contents of his trunk, and, carrying that and
+his boots in his hand, opened his door softly, locked it after him, and
+stole down the back-stairs, so as to get out of the house unnoticed. He
+went straight to the stable and saddled the mustang. He took a rope from
+the stable with him, mounted his horse, and set forth in the direction
+of the Institute.
+
+Mr. Bernard, as we have seen, had not been very profoundly impressed by
+the old Doctor's cautions,--enough, however, to follow out some of his
+hints which were not troublesome to attend to. He laughed at the idea of
+carrying a loaded pistol about with him; but still it seemed only fair,
+as the old Doctor thought so much of the matter, to humor him about it.
+As for not going about when and where he liked, for fear he might have
+some lurking enemy, that was a thing not to be listened to nor thought
+of. There was nothing to be ashamed of or troubled about in any of his
+relations with the school-girls. Elsie, no doubt, showed a kind of
+attraction towards him, as did perhaps some others; but he had been
+perfectly discreet, and no father or brother or lover had any just cause
+of quarrel with him. To be sure, that dark young man at the Dudley
+mansion-house looked as if he were his enemy, when he had met him; but
+certainly there was nothing in their relations to each other, or in his
+own to Elsie, that would be like to stir such malice in his mind as
+would lead him to play any of his wild Southern tricks at his, Mr.
+Bernard's, expense. Yet he had a vague feeling that this young man was
+dangerous, and he had been given to understand that one of the risks he
+ran was from that quarter.
+
+On this particular evening, he had a strange, unusual sense of some
+impending peril. His recent interview with the Doctor, certain remarks
+that had been dropped in his hearing, but above all an unaccountable
+impression upon his spirits, all combined to fill his mind with a
+foreboding conviction that he was very near some overshadowing danger.
+It was as the chill of the ice-mountain towards which the ship is
+steering under full sail. He felt a strong impulse to see Helen Darley
+and talk with her. She was in the common parlour, and, fortunately,
+alone.
+
+"Helen," he said,--for they were almost like brother and sister now,--"I
+have been thinking what you would do, if I should have to leave the
+school at short notice, or be taken away suddenly by any accident."
+
+"Do?" she said, her cheek growing paler than its natural delicate
+hue,--"why, I do not know how I could possibly consent to live here, if
+you left us. Since you came, my life has been almost easy; before, it
+was getting intolerable. You must not talk about going, my dear friend;
+you have spoiled me for my place. Who is there here that I can have any
+true society with, but you? You would not leave us for another school,
+would you?"
+
+"No, no, my dear Helen," Mr. Bernard said; "if it depends on myself, I
+shall stay out my full time, and enjoy your company and friendship. But
+everything is uncertain in this world; I have been thinking that I might
+be wanted elsewhere, and called when I did not think of it;--it was a
+fancy, perhaps,--but I can't keep it out of my mind this evening. If any
+of my fancies should come true, Helen, there are two or three messages
+I want to leave with you. I have marked a book or two with a cross in
+pencil on the fly-leaf;--these are for you. There is a little hymn-book
+I should like to have you give to Elsie from me;--it may be a kind of
+comfort to the poor girl."
+
+Helen's eyes glistened as she interrupted him,--
+
+"What do you mean? You must not talk so, Mr. Langdon. Why, you never
+looked better in your life. Tell me now, you are not in earnest, are
+you, but only trying a little sentiment on me?"
+
+Mr. Bernard smiled, but rather sadly.
+
+"About half in earnest," he said. "I have had some fancies in my
+head,--superstitions, I suppose,--at any rate, it does no harm to tell
+you what I should like to have done, if anything should happen,--very
+likely nothing ever will. Send the rest of the books home, if you
+please, and write a letter to my mother. And, Helen, you will find
+one small volume in my desk enveloped and directed, you will see to
+whom;--give this with your own hands; it is a keepsake."
+
+The tears gathered in her eyes; she could not speak at first.
+Presently,--
+
+"Why, Bernard, my dear friend, my brother, it cannot be that you are in
+danger? Tell me what it is, and, if I can share it with you, or counsel
+you in any way, it will only be paying back the great debt I owe you.
+No, no,--it can't be true,--you are tired and worried, and your spirits
+have got depressed. I know what that is;--I was sure, one winter, that
+I should die before spring; but I lived to see the dandelions
+and buttercups go to seed. Come, tell me it was nothing but your
+imagination."
+
+She felt a tear upon her cheek, but would not turn her face away from
+him; it was the tear of a sister.
+
+"I am really in earnest, Helen," he said. "I don't know that there is
+the least reason in the world for these fancies. If they all go off and
+nothing comes of them, you may laugh at me, if you like. But if there
+should be any occasion, remember my requests. You don't believe in
+presentiments, do you?"
+
+"Oh, don't ask me, I beg you," Helen answered. "I have had a good many
+frights for every one real misfortune I have suffered. Sometimes I have
+thought I was warned beforehand of coming trouble, just as many people
+are of changes in the weather, by some unaccountable feeling,--but not
+often, and I don't like to talk about such things. I wouldn't think
+about these fancies of yours. I don't believe you have exercised
+enough;--don't you think it's confinement in the school has made you
+nervous?"
+
+"Perhaps it has; but it happens that I have thought more of exercise
+lately, and have taken walks late in the evening, besides playing my old
+gymnastic tricks every day."
+
+They talked on many subjects, but through all he said Helen perceived a
+pervading tone of sadness, and an expression as of a dreamy foreboding
+of unknown evil. They parted at the usual hour, and went to their
+several rooms. The sadness of Mr. Bernard had sunk into the heart
+of Helen, and she mingled many tears with her prayers that evening,
+earnestly entreating that he might be comforted in his days of trial and
+protected in his hour of danger.
+
+Mr. Bernard stayed in his room a short time before setting out for his
+evening walk. His eye fell upon the Bible his mother had given him when
+he left home, and he opened it in the New Testament at a venture. It
+happened that the first words he read were these,--"_Lest, coming
+suddenly, he find you sleeping_." In the state of mind in which he
+was at the moment, the text startled him. It was like a supernatural
+warning. He was not going to expose himself to any particular danger
+this evening; a walk in a quiet village was as free from risk as Helen
+Darley or his own mother could ask; yet he had an unaccountable feeling
+of apprehension, without any definite object. At this moment he
+remembered the old Doctor's counsel, which he had sometimes neglected,
+and, blushing at the feeling which led him to do it, he took the pistol
+his suspicious old friend had forced upon him, which he had put away
+loaded, and, thrusting it into his pocket, set out upon his walk.
+
+The moon was shining at intervals, for the night was partially clouded.
+There seemed to be nobody stirring, though his attention was unusually
+awake, and he could hear the whirr of the bats overhead, and the
+pulsating croak of the frogs in the distant pools and marshes. Presently
+he detected the sound of hoofs at some distance, and, looking forward,
+saw a horseman coming in his direction. The moon was under a cloud at
+the moment, and he could only observe that the horse and his rider
+looked like a single dark object, and that they were moving along at an
+easy pace. Mr. Bernard was really ashamed of himself, when he found his
+hand on the butt of his pistol. When the horseman was within a hundred
+and fifty yards of him, the moon shone out suddenly and revealed each
+of them to the other. The rider paused for a moment, as if carefully
+surveying the pedestrian, then suddenly put his horse to the full
+gallop, and dashed towards him, rising at the same instant in his
+stirrups and swinging something round his head,--what, Mr. Bernard could
+not make out. It was a strange manoeuvre,--so strange and threatening in
+aspect that the young man forgot his nervousness in an instant, cocked
+his pistol, and waited to see what mischief all this meant. He did not
+wait long. As the rider came rushing towards him, he made a rapid motion
+and something leaped five-and-twenty feet through the air, in Mr.
+Bernard's direction. In an instant he felt a ring, as of a rope or
+thong, settle upon his shoulders. There was no time to think,--he would
+be lost in another second. He raised his pistol and fired,--not at the
+rider, but at the horse. His aim was true; the mustang gave one bound
+and fell lifeless, shot through the head. The lasso was fastened to his
+saddle, and his last bound threw Mr. Bernard violently to the earth,
+where he lay motionless, as if stunned.
+
+In the mean time, Dick Venner, who had been dashed down with his horse,
+was trying to extricate himself,--one of his legs being held fast under
+the animal, the long spur on his boot having caught in the saddle-cloth.
+He found, however, that he could do nothing with his right arm, his
+shoulder having been in some way injured in his fall. But his Southern
+blood was up, and, as he saw Mr. Bernard move as if he were coming to
+his senses, he struggled violently to free himself.
+
+"I'll have the dog, yet," he said,--"only let me get at him with the
+knife!"
+
+He had just succeeded in extricating his imprisoned leg, and was ready
+to spring to his feet, when he was caught firmly by the throat, and,
+looking up, saw a clumsy barbed weapon, commonly known as a hay-fork,
+within an inch of his breast.
+
+"Hold on there! What 'n thunder 'r' y' abaout, y' darned Portagee?" said
+a voice, with a decided nasal tone in it, but sharp and resolute.
+
+Dick looked from the weapon to the person who held it, and saw a sturdy,
+plain man standing over him, with his teeth clinched, and his aspect
+that of one all ready for mischief.
+
+"Lay still, naow!" said Abel Stebbins, the Doctor's man; "'f y' don't,
+I'll stick ye, 'z sure 'z y' 'r' alive! I been aaefter ye f'r a week, 'n'
+I got y' naow! I knowed I'd ketch ye at some darned trick or 'nother
+'fore I'd done 'ith ye!"
+
+Dick lay perfectly still, feeling that he was crippled and helpless,
+thinking all the time with the Yankee half of his mind what to do about
+it. He saw Mr. Bernard lift his head and look around him. He would get
+his senses again in a few minutes, very probably, and then he, Mr.
+Richard Venner, would be done for.
+
+"Let me up! let me up!" he cried, in a low, hurried voice,--"I'll give
+you a hundred dollars in gold to let me go. The man a'n't hurt,--don't
+you see him stirring? He'll come to himself in two minutes. Let me up!
+I'll give you a hundred and fifty dollars in gold, now, here on the
+spot,--and the watch out of my pocket; take it yourself, with your own
+hands!"
+
+"I'll see y' darned fust! Ketch me lett'n' go!" was Abel's emphatic
+answer. "Yeou lay still, 'n' wait t'll that man comes tew."
+
+He kept the hay-fork ready for action at the slightest sign of
+resistance.
+
+Mr. Bernard, in the mean time, had been getting, first his senses, and
+then some Jew of his scattered wits, a little together.
+
+"What is it?"--he said. "Who 'a hurt? What's happened?"
+
+"Come along here 'z quick 'z y' ken," Abel answered, "'n' haaelp me fix
+this fellah. Y' been hurt, y'rself, 'n' the' 's murder come pooty nigh
+happenin'."
+
+Mr. Bernard heard the answer, but presently stared about and asked
+again, _"Who's hurt? What's happened?"_
+
+"Y' 'r' hurt, y'rself, I tell ye," said Abel; "'n' the''s been a murder,
+pooty nigh."
+
+Mr. Bernard felt something about his neck, and, putting his hands up,
+found the loop of the lasso, which he loosened, but did not think to
+slip over his head, in the confusion of his perceptions and thoughts. It
+was a wonder that it had not choked him, but he had fallen forward so as
+to slacken it.
+
+By this time he was getting some notion of what he was about, and
+presently began looking round for his pistol, which had fallen. He
+found it lying near him, cocked it mechanically, and walked, somewhat
+unsteadily, towards the two men, who were keeping their position as
+still as if they were performing in a _tableau._
+
+"Quick, naow!" said Abel, who had heard the click of cocking the pistol,
+and saw that he held it in his hand, as he came towards him. "Gi' me
+that pistil, and yeon fetch that 'ere rope layin' there. I'll have this
+here fellah fixed 'n less 'n two minutes."
+
+Mr. Bernard did as Abel said,--stupidly and mechanically, for he was but
+half right as yet. Abel pointed the pistol at Dick's head.
+
+"Naow hold up y'r hands, yeou fellah," he said, "'n' keep 'em up, while
+this man puts the rope raound y'r wrists."
+
+Dick felt himself helpless, and, rather than have his disabled arm
+roughly dealt with, held up his hands. Mr. Bernard did as Abel said; he
+was in a purely passive state, and obeyed orders like a child. Abel then
+secured the rope in a most thorough and satisfactory complication of
+twists and knots.
+
+"Naow get up, will ye?" he said; and the unfortunate Dick rose to his
+feet.
+
+_"Who's hurt? What's happened?"_ asked poor Mr. Bernard again, his
+memory having been completely jarred out of him for the time.
+
+"Come, look here naow, yeou, don' stan' aaeskin' questions over 'n'
+over;--'t beats all I ha'n't I tol' y' a dozen times?"
+
+As Abel spoke, he turned and looked at Mr. Bernard.
+
+"Hullo! What 'n thunder's that'ere raoun' y'r neck? Ketched ye 'ith a
+slippernoose, hey? Wal, if that a'n't the craowner! Hol' on a minute,
+Cap'n, 'n' I'll show ye what that 'ere halter's good for."
+
+Abel slipped the noose over Mr. Bernard's head, and put it round
+the neck of the miserable Dick Venner, who made no sign of
+resistance,--whether on account of the pain he was in, or from mere
+helplessness, or because he was waiting for some unguarded moment to
+escape,--since resistance seemed of no use.
+
+"I'm go'n' to kerry y' home," said Abel; "th' ol' Doctor, he's got a
+gre't cur'osity t' see ye. Jes' step along naow,--off that way, will
+ye?--'n I'll hol' on t' th' bridle, f' fear y' sh'd run away."
+
+He took hold of the leather thong, but found that it was fastened at the
+other end to the saddle. This was too much for Abel.
+
+"Wal, naow, yeou _be_ a pooty chap to hev raound! A fellah's neck in a
+slippernoose at one eend of a halter, 'n' a boss on th' full spring at
+t'other eend!"
+
+He looked at him from head to foot as a naturalist inspects a new
+specimen. His clothes had suffered in his fall, especially on the leg
+which had been caught under the horse.
+
+"Hullo! look o' there, naow! What's that 'ere stickin' aout o' y'r
+boot?"
+
+It was nothing but the handle of an ugly knife, which Abel instantly
+relieved him of.
+
+The party now took up the line of march for old Doctor Kittredge's
+house, Abel carrying the pistol and knife, and Mr. Bernard walking in
+silence, still half-stunned, holding the hay-fork, which Abel had thrust
+into his hand. It was all a dream to him as yet. He remembered the
+horseman riding at him, and his firing the pistol; but whether he was
+alive, and these walls around him belonged to the village of Rockland,
+or whether he had passed the dark river, and was in a suburb of the New
+Jerusalem, he could not as yet have told.
+
+They were in the street where the Doctor's house was situated.
+
+"I guess I'll fire off one o' these here berrils," said Abel.
+
+He fired.
+
+Presently there was a noise of opening windows, and the nocturnal
+headdresses of Rockland flowered out of them like so many developments
+of the Night-blooming Cereus. White cotton caps and red bandanna
+handkerchiefs were the prevailing forms of efflorescence. The main point
+was that the village was waked up. The old Doctor always waked easily,
+from long habit, and was the first among those who looked out to see
+what had happened.
+
+"Why, Abel!" he called out, "what have you got there? and what's all
+this noise about?"
+
+"We've ketched the Portagee!" Abel answered, as laconically as the hero
+of Lake Erie in his famous dispatch. "Go in there, you fellah!"
+
+The prisoner was marched into the house, and the Doctor, who had
+bewitched his clothes upon him in a way that would have been miraculous
+in anybody but a physician, was down in presentable form as soon as if
+it had been a child in a fit that he was sent for.
+
+"Richard Venner!" the Doctor exclaimed. "What is the meaning of all
+this? Mr. Langdon, has anything happened to you?"
+
+Mr. Bernard put his hand to his head.
+
+"My mind is confused," he said. "I've had a fall.--Oh, yes!--wait a
+minute and it will all come back to me."
+
+"Sit down, sit down," the Doctor said. "Abel will tell me about it.
+Slight concussion of the brain. Can't remember very well for an hour or
+two,--will come right by to-morrow."
+
+"Been stunded," Abel said. "He can't tell nothin'."
+
+Abel then proceeded to give a Napoleonic bulletin of the recent combat
+of cavalry and infantry and its results,--none slain, one captured.
+
+The Doctor looked at the prisoner through his spectacles.
+
+"What's the matter with your shoulder, Venner?"
+
+Dick answered sullenly, that he didn't know,--fell on it when his horse
+came down. The Doctor examined it as carefully as he could through his
+clothes.
+
+"Out of joint. Untie his hands, Abel."
+
+By this time a small alarm had spread among the neighbors, and there was
+a circle around Dick, who glared about on the assembled honest people
+like a hawk with a broken wing.
+
+When the Doctor said, "Untie his hands," the circle widened perceptibly.
+
+"Isn't it a leetle rash to give him the use of his hands? I see there's
+females and children standin' near."
+
+This was the remark of our old friend, Deacon Soper, who retired from
+the front row, as he spoke, behind a respectable-looking, but somewhat
+hastily dressed person of the defenceless sex, the female help of a
+neighboring household, accompanied by a boy, whose unsmoothed shock of
+hair looked like a last-year's crow's-nest.
+
+But Abel untied his hands, in spite of the Deacon's considerate
+remonstrance.
+
+"Now," said the Doctor, "the first thing is to put the joint back."
+
+"Stop," said Deacon Soper,--"stop a minute. Don't you think it will be
+safer--for the women-folks--jest to wait till mornin', afore you put
+that j'int into the socket?"
+
+Colonel Sprowle, who had been called by a special messenger, spoke up at
+this moment.
+
+"Let the women-folks and the deacons go home, if they're scared, and put
+the fellah's j'int in as quick as you like. I'll resk him, j'int in or
+out."
+
+"I want one of you to go straight down to Dudley Venner's with a
+message," the Doctor said. "I will have the young man's shoulder in
+quick enough."
+
+"Don't send that message!" said Dick, in a hoarse voice;--"do what you
+like with my arm, but don't send that message! Let me go,--I can walk,
+and I'll be off from this place. There's nobody hurt but I. Damn the
+shoulder!--let me go! You shall never hear of me again!"
+
+Mr. Bernard came forward.
+
+"My friends," he said, "_I_ am not injured,--seriously, at least. Nobody
+need complain against this man, if I don't. The Doctor will treat him
+like a human being, at any rate; and then, if he will go, let him. There
+are too many witnesses against him here for him to want to stay."
+
+The Doctor, in the mean time, without saying a word to all this, had got
+a towel round the shoulder and chest and another round the arm, and had
+the bone replaced in a very few moments.
+
+"Abel, put Cassia into the new chaise," he said, quietly. "My friends
+and neighbors, leave this young man to me."
+
+"Colonel Sprowle, you're a justice of the peace," said Deacon Soper,
+"and you know what the law says in cases like this. I a'n't so clear
+that it won't have to come afore the Grand Jury, whether we will or no."
+
+"I guess we'll set that j'int to-morrow mornin'," said Colonel
+Sprowle,--which made a laugh at the Deacon's expense, and virtually
+settled the question.
+
+"Now trust this young man in my care," said the old Doctor, "and go home
+and finish your naps. I knew him when he was a boy, and, I'll answer for
+it, he won't trouble you any more. The Dudley blood makes folks proud, I
+can tell you, whatever else they are."
+
+The good people so respected and believed in the Doctor that they left
+the prisoner with him.
+
+Presently, Cassia, the fast Morgan mare, came up to the front-door,
+with the wheels of the new, light chaise flashing behind her in the
+moonlight. The Doctor drove Dick forty miles at a stretch that night,
+out of the limits of the State.
+
+"Do you want money?" he said, before he left him.
+
+Dick told him the secret of his golden belt.
+
+"Where shall I send your trunk after you from your uncle's?"
+
+Dick gave him a direction to a seaport town to which he himself was
+going, to take passage for a port in South America.
+
+"Good-bye, Richard," said the Doctor. "Try to learn something from
+to-night's lesson."
+
+The Southern impulses in Dick's wild blood overcame him, and he kissed
+the old Doctor on both cheeks, crying as only the children of the sun
+can cry, after the first hours in the dewy morning of life. So Dick
+Venner disappears from this story. An hour after dawn, Cassia pointed
+her fine ears homeward, and struck into her square, honest trot, as
+if she had not been doing anything more than her duty during her four
+hours' stretch of the last night.
+
+Abel was not in the habit of questioning the Doctor's decisions.
+
+"It's all right," he said to Mr. Bernard. "The fellah's Squire Venner's
+relation, anyhaow. Don't you want to wait here, jest a little while,
+till I come back? The' 's a consid'able nice saddle 'n' bridle on a dead
+hoss that's layin' daown there in the road, 'n' I guess the' a'n't no
+use in lettin' on 'em spile,--so I'll jest step aout 'n' fetch 'em
+along. I kind o' calc'late 't won't pay to take the cretur's shoes 'n'
+hide off to-night,--'n' the' won't be much iron on that hoss's huffs an
+haour after daylight, I'll bate ye a quarter."
+
+"I'll walk along with you," said Mr. Bernard;--"I feel as if I could get
+along well enough now."
+
+So they set off together. There was a little crowd round the dead
+mustang already, principally consisting of neighbors who had adjourned
+from the Doctor's house to see the scene of the late adventure. In
+addition to these, however, the assembly was honored by the presence of
+Mr. Principal Silas Peckham, who had been called from his slumbers by
+a message that Master Langdon was shot through the head by a
+highway-robber, but had learned a true version of the story by this
+time. His voice was at that moment heard above the rest,--sharp, but
+thin, like bad cider-vinegar.
+
+"I take charge of that property, I say. Master Langdon 's actin' under
+my orders, and I claim that hoss and all that's on him. Hiram! jest slip
+off that saddle and bridle, and carry 'em up to the Institoot, and bring
+down a pair of pinchers and a file,--and--stop--fetch a pair of shears,
+too; there's hoss-hair enough in that mane and tail to stuff a bolster
+with."
+
+"You let that hoss alone!" spoke up Colonel Sprowle. "When a fellah
+goes out huntin' and shoots a squirrel, do you think he's go'n' to
+let another fellah pick him up and kerry him off? Not if he's got a
+double-berril gun, and t'other berril ha'n't been fired off yet! I
+should like to see the mahn that'll take off that seddle 'n' bridle,
+excep' the one th't hez a fair right to the whole concern!"
+
+Hiram was from one of the lean streaks in New Hampshire, and, not being
+overfed in Mr. Silas Peckham's kitchen, was somewhat wanting in stamina,
+as well as in stomach, for so doubtful an enterprise as undertaking to
+carry out his employer's orders in the face of the Colonel's defiance.
+
+Just then Mr. Bernard and Abel came up together.
+
+"Here they be," said the Colonel. "Stan' beck, gentlemen!"
+
+Mr. Bernard, who was pale and still a little confused, but gradually
+becoming more like himself, stood and looked in silence for a moment.
+
+All his thoughts seemed to be clearing themselves in this interval.
+He took in the whole series of incidents: his own frightful risk; the
+strange, instinctive, nay, Providential impulse which had led him so
+suddenly to do the one only thing which could possibly have saved him;
+the sudden appearance of the Doctor's man, but for which he might yet
+have been lost; and the discomfiture and capture of his dangerous enemy.
+
+It was all past now, and a feeling of pity rose in Mr. Bernard's heart.
+
+"He loved that horse, no doubt," he said,--"and no wonder. A beautiful,
+wild-looking creature! Take off those things that are on him, Abel, and
+have them carried to Mr. Dudley Venner's. If he does not want them, you
+may keep them yourself, for all that I have to say. One thing more. I
+hope nobody will lift his hand against this noble creature to mutilate
+him in any way. After you have taken off the saddle and bridle, Abel,
+bury him just as he is. Under that old beech-tree will be a good place.
+You'll see to it,--won't you, Abel?"
+
+Abel nodded assent, and Mr. Bernard returned to the Institute, threw
+himself in his clothes on the bed, and slept like one who is heavy with
+wine.
+
+Following Mr. Bernard's wishes, Abel at once took off the high-peaked
+saddle and the richly ornamented bridle from the mustang. Then, with
+the aid of two of three others, he removed him to the place indicated.
+Spades and shovels were soon procured, and before the moon had set, the
+wild horse of the Pampas was at rest under the turf at the wayside, in
+the far village among the hills of New England.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+THE TEST.
+
+
+_Musa loquitur._
+
+  I hung my verses in the wind;
+  Time and tide their faults may find.
+  All were winnowed through and through;
+  Five lines lasted sound and true;
+  Five were smelted in a pot
+  Than the South more fierce and hot.
+  These the Siroc could not melt,
+  Fire their fiercer flaming felt,
+  And their meaning was more white
+  Than July's meridian light.
+  Sunshine cannot bleach the snow,
+  Nor Time unmake what poets know.
+  Have you eyes to find the five
+  Which five thousand could survive?
+
+
+
+
+RECOLLECTIONS OF KEATS.
+
+_BY AN OLD SCHOOL-FELLOW._
+
+
+In the village of Enfield, in Middlesex, ten miles on the north road
+from London, was my father, John Clarke's school. The house had been
+built by a West India merchant, in the latter end of the seventeenth or
+beginning of the eighteenth century. It was of the better character of
+the domestic architecture of that period,--the whole front being of the
+purest red brick, wrought, by means of moulds, into rich designs of
+flowers and pomegranates, with heads of cherubim over two niches in
+the centre of the building. The elegance of the design and the perfect
+finish of the structure were such as to secure its protection, when a
+branch railway was brought from the Ware and Cambridge line to Enfield.
+The old school-house was converted into the station-house, and the
+railway company had the good taste to leave intact one of the few
+remaining specimens of the graceful English domestic architecture of
+long-gone days. Any of my readers who may happen to have a file of the
+London "Illustrated News," may find in No. 360, March 3, 1849, a not
+prodigiously enchanting wood-cut of the edifice.
+
+Here it was that John Keats all but commenced and did complete his
+school-education. He was born on the 29th of October, 1795; and I think
+he was one of the little fellows who had not wholly emerged from the
+child's costume upon being placed under my father's care. It will be
+readily conceived difficult to recall from the "dark backward and
+abysm" of nearly sixty years the general acts of perhaps the youngest
+individual in a corporation of between seventy and eighty youngsters;
+and very little more of Keats's child-life can I remember than that he
+had a brisk, winning face, and was a favorite with all, particularly
+with my mother.
+
+His maternal grandfather, Jennings, was proprietor of a large
+livery-stable, called "The Swan and Hoop," on the pavement in
+Moorfields, opposite the entrance into Finsbury Circus. He had two sons
+at my father's school. The elder was an officer in Duncan's ship in the
+fight off Camperdown. After the battle, the Dutch Admiral, De Winter,
+pointing to young Jennings, told Duncan that he had fired several
+shots at that young man, and always missed his mark;--no credit to his
+steadiness of aim; for Jennings, like his own admiral, was considerably
+above the ordinary dimensions of stature.
+
+Keats's father was the principal servant at the Swan and Hoop
+Stables,--a man of so remarkably fine a common-sense and native
+respectability, that I perfectly remember the warm terms in which his
+demeanor used to be canvassed by my parents after he had been to visit
+his boys. He was short of stature and well-knit in person, (John
+resembling him both in make and feature,) with brown hair and dark hazel
+eyes. He was killed by a fall from his horse, in returning from a visit
+to the school. John's two brothers, George, older, and Thomas, younger
+than himself, were like the mother,--who was tall, of good figure, with
+large, oval face, sombre features, and grave in behavior. The last of
+the family was a sister,--Fanny, I think, much younger than all,--of
+whom I remember my mother once speaking with much fondness, for her
+pretty, simple manners, while she was walking in the garden with her
+brothers. She married Mr. Llanos, a Spanish refugee, the author of
+"Don Esteban," and "Sandoval, the Free-Mason." He was a man of
+liberal principles, attractive manners, and more than ordinary
+accomplishments.--This is the amount of my knowledge and recollection of
+the family.
+
+In the early part of his school-life, John gave no extraordinary
+indications of intellectual character; but it was remembered of him
+afterwards, that there was ever present a determined and steady spirit
+in all his undertakings; and, although of a strong and impulsive will,
+I never knew it misdirected in his required pursuit of study. He was a
+most orderly scholar. The future ramifications of that noble genius were
+then closely shut in the seed, and greedily drinking in the moisture
+which made it afterwards burst forth so kindly into luxuriance and
+beauty.
+
+My father was in the habit, at each half-year's vacation, of bestowing
+prizes upon those pupils who had performed the greatest quantity of
+voluntary extra work; and such was Keats's indefatigable energy for the
+last two or three successive half-years of his remaining at school,
+that, upon each occasion, he took the first prize by a considerable
+distance. He was at work before the first school-hour began, and that
+was at seven o'clock; almost all the intervening times of recreation
+were so devoted; and during the afternoon-holidays, when all were at
+play, I have seen him in the school,--almost the only one,--at his Latin
+or French translation; and so unconscious and regardless was he of the
+consequences of this close and persevering application, that he never
+would have taken the necessary exercise, had he not been sometimes
+driven out by one of us for the purpose.
+
+I have said that he was a favorite with all. Not the less beloved was he
+for having a highly pugnacious spirit, which, when roused, was one of
+the most picturesque exhibitions--off the stage--I ever saw. One of the
+transports of that marvellous actor, Edmund Kean--whom, by the way,
+he idolized--was its nearest resemblance; and the two were not very
+dissimilar in face and figure. I remember, upon one occasion, when an
+usher, on account of some impertinent behavior, had boxed his brother
+Tom's ears, John rushed up, put himself in the received posture of
+offence, and, I believe, struck the usher,--who could have put him into
+his pocket. His passions at times were almost ungovernable; his brother
+George, being considerably the taller and stronger, used frequently to
+hold him down by main force, when he was in "one of his moods" and
+was endeavoring to beat him. It was all, however, a wisp-of-straw
+conflagration; for he had an intensely tender affection for his
+brothers, and proved it upon the most trying occasions. He was not
+merely the "favorite of all," like a pet prize-fighter, for his terrier
+courage; but his high-mindedness, his utter unconsciousness of a mean
+motive, his placability, his generosity, wrought so general a feeling in
+his behalf, that I never heard a word of disapproval from any one who
+had known him, superior or equal.
+
+The latter part of the time--perhaps eighteen months--that he remained
+at school, he occupied the hours during meals in reading. Thus his
+_whole_ time was engrossed. He had a tolerably retentive memory, and the
+quantity that he read was surprising. He must in those last months
+have exhausted the school--library, which consisted principally of
+abridgments of all the voyages and travels of any note; Mayor's
+Collection; also his Universal History; Robertson's Histories of
+Scotland, America, and Charles the Fifth; all Miss Edgeworth's
+productions; together with many other works, equally well calculated for
+youth, not necessary to be enumerated. The books, however, that were
+his constantly recurrent sources of attraction were Tooke's "Pantheon,"
+Lempriere's "Classical Dictionary," which he appeared to _learn_, and
+Spence's "Polymetis." This was the store whence he acquired his perfect
+intimacy with the Greek mythology; here was he "suckled In that creed
+outworn"; for his amount of classical attainment extended no farther
+than the "Aeneid"; with which epic, indeed, he was so fascinated, that
+before leaving school he had _voluntarily_ translated in writing a
+considerable portion. And yet I remember that at that early age,--mayhap
+under fourteen,--notwithstanding and through all its incidental
+attractiveness, he hazarded the opinion to me that there was feebleness
+in the structure of the work. He must have gone through all the better
+publications in the school-library, for he asked me to lend him some of
+my own books; and I think I now see him at supper, (we had all our meals
+in the school-room,) sitting back on the form, and holding the folio
+volume of Burnet's "History of his own Time" between himself and the
+table, eating his meal from beyond it. This work, and Leigh Hunt's
+"Examiner" newspaper,--which my father took in, and I used to lend to
+Keats,--I make no doubt laid the foundation of his love of civil and
+religious liberty. He once told me, smiling, that one of his guardians,
+being informed what books I had lent him to read, declared, that, if he
+had fifty children, he would not send one of them to my father's school.
+
+When he left us,--I think at fourteen years of age,--he was apprenticed
+to Mr. Thomas Hammond, a medical man, residing in Church Street,
+Edmonton, and exactly two miles from Enfield. This arrangement appeared
+to give him satisfaction; and I fear that it was the most placid period
+of his painful life; for now, with the exception of the duty he had to
+perform in the surgery, and which was by no means an onerous one, his
+whole leisure hours were employed in indulging his passion for reading
+and translating. It was during his apprenticeship that he finished the
+latter portion of the "Aeneid."
+
+The distance between our residences being so short, I encouraged his
+inclination to come over, when he could be spared; and in consequence,
+I saw him about five or six times a month, commonly on Wednesdays and
+Saturdays, those afternoons being my own most leisure times. He rarely
+came empty-handed; either he had a book to read, or brought one with him
+to be exchanged. When the weather permitted, we always sat in an arbor
+at the end of a spacious garden, and, in Boswellian phrase, "we had good
+talk."
+
+I cannot at this time remember what was the spark that fired the train
+of his poetical tendencies,--I do not remember what was the first
+signalized poetry he read; but he must have given me unmistakable tokens
+of his bent of taste; otherwise, at that early stage of his career, I
+never could have read to him the "Epithalamion" of Spenser; and this I
+perfectly remember having done, and in that (to me) hallowed old arbor,
+the scene of many bland and graceful associations,--all the substances
+having passed away. He was at that time, I should suppose, fifteen or
+sixteen years old; and at that period of life he certainly appreciated
+the general beauty of the composition, and felt the more passionate
+passages; for his features and exclamations were ecstatic. How often
+have I in after-times heard him quote these lines:--
+
+  "Behold, whiles she before the altar stands,
+  Hearing the holy priest that to her speaks,
+  And blesses her with his two happy hands,
+  How the red roses flush up in her cheeks!
+  And the pure snow, with goodly vermil stain,
+  Like crimson dyed in grain,
+  That even the angels, which continually
+  About the sacred altar do remain,
+  Forget their service, and about her fly,
+  _Oft peeping in her face, that seems more fair,
+  The more they on it stare;_
+  But her sad eyes, still fastened on the ground,
+  Are governed with goodly modesty,
+  That suffers not one look to glance awry,
+  Which may let in a little thought unsound."
+
+That night he took away with him the first volume of the "Faery Queen,"
+and went through it, as I told his biographer, Mr. Monckton Milnes, "as
+a young horse would through a spring meadow,--ramping!" Like a true
+poet, too,--a poet "born, not manufactured,"--a poet in grain,--he
+especially singled out the epithets, for that felicity and power in
+which Spenser is so eminent. He hoisted himself up, and looked burly
+and dominant, as he said,--"What an image that is,--_'Sea-shouldering
+whales'!_"
+
+It was a treat to see as well as hear him read a pathetic passage. Once,
+when reading the "Cymbeline" aloud', I saw his eyes fill with tears, and
+for some moments he was unable to proceed, when he came to the departure
+of Posthumus, and Imogen's saying she would have watched him
+
+  "till the diminution
+  Of space had pointed him sharp as my needle;
+  Nay, followed him till he had _melted from
+  The smallness of a gnat to air_; and then
+  Have _turned mine eye and wept_."
+
+I cannot quite reconcile the time of our separating at this stage of his
+career,--which of us first went to London; but it was upon an occasion
+when I was walking thither, and, I think, to see Leigh Hunt, who had
+just fulfilled his penalty of confinement in Horsemonger-Lane Prison for
+the trivial libel upon the Prince Regent, that Keats, who was coming
+over to Enfield, met me, and, turning, accompanied me back part of the
+way to Edmonton. At the last field-gate, when taking leave, he gave
+me the sonnet entitled, "Written on the Day that Mr. Leigh Hunt left
+Prison." Unless I am utterly mistaken, this was the first proof I had
+received of his having committed himself in verse; and how clearly can I
+recall the conscious look with which he hesitatingly offered it! There
+are some momentary glances of beloved friends that fade only with life.
+I am not in a position to contradict the statement of his biographer,
+that "the lines in imitation of Spenser,
+
+  "'Now Morning from her orient charger came,
+  And her first footsteps touched a verdant hill,' etc.,
+
+"are the earliest known verses of his composition"; from the subject
+being the inspiration of his first love--and such a love!--in poetry, it
+is most probable; but certainly his first published poem was the sonnet
+commencing,
+
+  'O Solitude! if I must with thee dwell';
+
+and that will be found in the "Examiner," some time, as I conjecture,
+in 1816,--for I have not the paper to refer to, and, indeed, at this
+distance, both of time and removal from the means of verification, I
+would not be dogmatical.
+
+When we both had come to London,--he to enter as a student of St.
+Thomas's Hospital,--he was not long in discovering that my abode was
+with my brother-in-law, in Little Warner Street, Clerkenwell; and
+just at that time I was installed housekeeper, and was solitary. He,
+therefore, would come and revive his loved gossip, till, as the author
+of the "Urn Burial" says, "we were acting our antipodes,--the huntsmen
+were up in America, and they already were past their first sleep in
+Persia." At this time he lived in his first lodging upon coming to
+London, near to St. Thomas's Hospital. I find his address in a letter
+which must have preceded my appointing him to come and lighten my
+darkness in Clerkenwell. At the close of the letter, he says,--"Although
+the Borough is a beastly place in dirt, turnings, and windings, yet
+No. 8, Dean Street, is not difficult to find; and if you would run the
+gauntlet over London Bridge, take the first turning to the left, and
+then the first to the right, and, moreover, knock at my door, which is
+nearly opposite a meeting, you would do me a charity, which, as St. Paul
+saith, is the father of all the virtues. At all events, let me hear from
+you soon: I say, at all events, not excepting the gout in your fingers."
+I have little doubt that this letter (which has no other date than the
+day of the week, and no post-mark) preceded our first symposium; and a
+memorable night it was in my life's career.
+
+A copy, and a beautiful one, of the folio edition of Chapman's Homer had
+been lent me. It was the property of Mr. Alsager, the gentleman who
+for years had contributed no small share of celebrity to the great
+reputation of the "Times" newspaper, by the masterly manner in which he
+conducted the money-market department of that journal. At the time
+when I was first introduced to Mr. Alsager, he was living opposite
+Horsemonger-Lane Prison; and upon Mr. Leigh Hunt's being sentenced for
+the libel, his first day's dinner was sent over by Mr. Alsager. He was
+a man of the most studiously correct demeanor, with a highly cultivated
+taste and judgment in the fine arts and music. He succeeded Hazlitt,
+(which was no insignificant honor,) and for some time contributed the
+critiques upon the theatres, but ended by being the reporter of the
+state of the money-market. He had long been accustomed to have the first
+trial at his own house of the best-reputed new foreign instrumental
+music, which he used to import from Germany.
+
+Well, then, we were put in possession of the Homer of Chapman, and to
+work we went, turning to some of the "famousest" passages, as we had
+scrappily known them in Pope's version. There was, for instance, that
+perfect scene of the conversation on Troy wall of the old Senators with
+Helen, who is pointing out to them the several Greek captains, with that
+wonderfully vivid portrait of an orator, in Ulysses, in the Third Book,
+beginning at the 237th line,--
+
+  "But when the prudent Ithacus did to his counsels rise";
+
+the helmet and shield of Diomed, in the opening of the Fifth Book; the
+prodigious description of Neptune's passage in his chariot to the Achive
+ships, in the opening of the Thirteenth Book,--
+
+  "The woods, and all the great hills near,
+  trembled beneath the weight
+  Of his immortal moving feet."
+
+The last was the whole of the shipwreck of Ulysses in the Fifth Book of
+the "Odyssey." I think his expression of delight, during the reading of
+those dozen lines, was never surpassed:--
+
+  "Then forth he came, his both knees faltering, both
+  His strong hands hanging down, and all with froth
+  His cheeks and nostrils flowing, voice and breath
+  Spent to all use, and down he sunk to death.
+  _The sea had soaked his heart through_; all his veins
+  His toils had racked t' a laboring woman's pains.
+  Dead weary was he."
+
+On an after-occasion I showed him the couplet of Pope's upon the same
+passage:--
+
+  "From mouth and nose the briny torrent ran,
+  _And lost in lassitude, lay all the man._"
+
+Chapman supplied us with many an after-feast; but it was in the teeming
+wonderment of this, his first introduction, that, when I came down to
+breakfast the next morning, I found upon my table a letter with no other
+inclosure than his famous sonnet, "On first looking into Chapman's
+Homer." We had parted, as I have already said, at day-spring; yet he
+contrived that I should receive the poem, from a distance of nearly two
+miles, before 10, A.M. In the published copy of this sonnet he made an
+alteration in the seventh line:--
+
+  "Yet did I never breathe its pure serene."
+
+The original, which he sent me, had the phrase,
+
+  "Yet could I never tell what men could mean";
+
+which he said was bald, and too simply wondering. No one could more
+earnestly chastise his thoughts than Keats. His favorite among Chapman's
+Hymns of Homer was the one to Pan, and which he himself rivalled in the
+"Endymion."
+
+In one of our conversations about this period, I alluded to his position
+at St. Thomas's Hospital,--coasting and reconnoitring, as it were, that
+I might discover how he got on, and, with the total absorption that
+had evidently taken place of every other mood of his mind than that of
+imaginative composition, what was his bias for the future, and what his
+feeling with regard to the profession that had been _chosen for him_,--a
+circumstance I did not know at that time. He made no secret, however,
+that he could not sympathize with the science of anatomy, as a main
+pursuit in life; for one of the expressions that he used, in describing
+his unfitness for its mastery, was perfectly characteristic. He said, in
+illustration of his argument,--"The other day, for instance, during the
+lecture, there came a sunbeam into the room, and with it a whole troop
+of creatures floating in the ray; and I was off with them to Oberon
+and Fairy-land." And yet, with all this self-styled unfitness for the
+pursuit, I was afterwards informed, that at his subsequent
+examination he displayed an amount of acquirement which surprised his
+fellow-students, who had scarcely any other association with him than
+that of a cheerful, crochety rhymester.
+
+It was about this period, that, going to call upon Mr. Leigh Hunt,
+who then occupied a pretty little cottage in the "Vale of Health," on
+Hampstead Heath, I took with me two or three of the poems I had received
+from Keats. I did expect that Hunt would speak encouragingly, and indeed
+approvingly, of the compositions,--written, too, by a youth under age;
+but my partial spirit was not prepared for the unhesitating and prompt
+admiration which broke forth before he had read twenty lines of the
+first poem. Mr. Horace Smith happened to be there, on the occasion, and
+was not less demonstrative in his praise of their merits. The piece
+which he read out, I remember, was the sonnet,--
+
+  "How many bards gild the lapses of time!"
+
+marking with particular emphasis and approbation the last six lines:--
+
+  "So the unnumbered sounds that evening store,--
+  The songs of birds, the whispering of the leaves,
+  The voice of waters, the great bell that heaves
+  With solemn sound, and thousand others more,
+  _That distance of recognizance bereaves_,--
+  Make pleasing music, and not wild uproar."
+
+Smith repeated, with applause, the line in Italics, saying, "What a
+well-condensed expression!" After making numerous and eager inquiries
+about him, personally, and with reference to any peculiarities of mind
+and manner, the visit ended in my being requested to bring him over
+to the Vale of Health. That was a red-letter day in the young poet's
+life,--and one which will never fade with me, as long as memory lasts.
+The character and expression of Keats's features would unfailingly
+arrest even the casual passenger in the street; and now they were
+wrought to a tone of animation that I could not but watch with
+intense interest, knowing what was in store for him from the bland
+encouragement, and Spartan deference in attention, with fascinating
+conversational eloquence, that he was to receive and encounter. When we
+reached the Heath, I have present the rising and accelerated step, with
+the gradual subsidence of all talk, as we drew towards the cottage. The
+interview, which stretched into three "morning calls," was the
+prelude to many after-scenes and saunterings about Caen Wood and its
+neighborhood; for Keats was suddenly made a familiar of the household,
+and was always welcomed.
+
+It was in the library at Hunt's cottage, where an extemporary bed had
+been made up for him on the sofa, that he composed the framework and
+many lines of the poem on "Sleep and Poetry,"--the last sixty or seventy
+being an inventory of the art-garniture of the room. The sonnet,
+
+  "Keen, fitful gusts are whispering here and there,"
+
+he gave me the day after one of our visits, and very shortly after his
+installation at the cottage.
+
+  "Give me a golden pen, and let me lean,"
+
+was another, upon being compelled to leave "at an early hour." But the
+occasion that recurs to me with the liveliest interest was the evening
+when, some observations having been made upon the character, habits,
+and pleasant associations of that reverenced denizen of the hearth,
+the cheerful little fireside grasshopper, Hunt proposed to Keats the
+challenge of writing, then, there, and to time, a sonnet "On the
+Grasshopper and the Cricket." No one was present but myself, and they
+accordingly set to. I, absent with a book at the end of the sofa, could
+not avoid furtive glances, every now and then, at the emulants. I cannot
+say how long the trial lasted; I was not proposed umpire, and had no
+stop-watch for the occasion: the time, however, was short, for such
+a performance; and Keats won, as to time. But the event of the
+after-scrutiny was one of many such occurrences which have riveted the
+memory of Leigh Hunt in my affectionate regard and admiration, for
+unaffected generosity and perfectly unpretentious encouragement: his
+sincere look of pleasure at the first line,--
+
+  "The poetry of earth is never dead";
+
+"Such a prosperous opening!" he said; and when he came to the tenth and
+eleventh lines,--
+
+  "On a lone winter evening, _when the frost
+  Has wrought a silence_";
+
+"Ah! that's perfect! bravo, Keats!"--and then he went on in a dilation
+upon, the dumbness of all Nature during the season's suspension and
+torpidity. With all the kind and gratifying things that were said to
+him, Keats protested to me, as we were afterwards walking home, that he
+preferred Hunt's treatment of the subject to his own.
+
+He had left the neighborhood of the Borough, and was now living with his
+brothers in apartments on the second floor of a house in the Poultry,
+over the passage leading to the Queen's Head Tavern, and opposite one of
+the City Companies' Halls,--the Ironmongers', if I mistake not. I have
+the associating reminiscence of many happy hours spent in this lodging.
+Here was determined upon, in great part written, and sent forth to the
+world, the first little, but vigorous, offspring of his brain:--
+
+  POEMS
+  BY
+  JOHN KEATS.
+
+  "What more felicity can fell to creature
+  Than to enjoy delight with liberty?"
+
+  Fate of the Butterfly,--SPENSER
+
+  LONDON:
+  PRINTED FOR
+  C. AND J. OLLIER, 3, WELBECK STREET,
+  CAVENDISH SQUARE.
+  1817.
+
+Here, on the evening that the last proof-sheet was brought from the
+printer, and, as his biographer has recorded, upon being informed, if
+he purposed having a Dedication to the book, that it must be sent
+forthwith, he went to a side-table, and, in the midst of mixed
+conversation (for there were several friends in the room,) he brought to
+Charles Ollier, the publisher, the Dedication-Sonnet to Leigh Hunt. If
+the original manuscript of that poem--a legitimate sonnet, with
+every restriction of rhyme and metre--could now be produced, and the
+time--recorded in which it was written, it would be pronounced an
+extraordinary performance; added to which, the non-alteration of a
+single word in the poem (a circumstance noted at the time) claims for
+it, I should suppose, a merit without a parallel.
+
+"The poem which commences the volume," says Mr. Monckton Milnes, "was
+suggested to Keats by a delightful summer's day, as he stood beside the
+gate that loads from the battery on Hampstead Heath into a field by Caen
+Wood"; and the lovely passage beginning,
+
+  "Linger awhile upon some bending planks,"
+
+and which contains the description of the "swarms of minnows that show
+their little heads," Keats told me was the recollection of our having
+frequently loitered over the rail of a foot-bridge that spanned a little
+brook in the last field upon entering Edmonton. He himself thought the
+picture was correct, and liked it; and I do not know who could improve
+it.
+
+Another example of his promptly suggestive imagination, and uncommon
+facility in giving it utterance, occurred one day upon his returning
+home and finding me asleep upon the sofa, with my volume of Chaucer open
+at the "Flower and the Leaf." After expressing his admiration of the
+poem, which he had been reading, he gave me the fine testimony of that
+opinion, in pointing to the sonnet he had written at the close of it,
+which was an extempore effusion, and it has not the alteration of a
+single word. It lies before me now, signed, "J.K., Feb., 1817."
+
+If my memory does not betray me, this charming out-door fancy-scene was
+Keats's first introduction to Chaucer. Certain I am that the "Troilus
+and Cresseide" was an after-acquaintance; and clearly do I remember his
+approbation of the favorite passages that I had marked. I desired him to
+retrace the poem, and with his pen confirm and denote those which were
+congenial with his own feeling and judgment. These two circumstances,
+connected with the literary career of this cherished object of his
+friend's esteem and love, have stamped a priceless value upon that
+friend's miniature 18mo copy of Chaucer.
+
+The little first volume of Keats's Muse was launched amid the cheers and
+fond anticipations of all his circle. Every one of us expected that it
+would create a sensation in the literary world; and we calculated upon,
+at least, a succession of reprints. Alas! it might have emerged in
+Timbuctoo with stronger chance of fame and favor. It never passed to a
+second edition; the first was but a small one, and that was never sold
+off. The whole community, as if by compact, determined to know nothing
+about it. The word had been passed that its author was a Radical; and in
+those blessed days of "Bible-Crown-and-Constitution" supremacy, he might
+with better chance of success have been a robber,--there were many
+prosperous public ones,--if he had also been an Anti-Jacobin. Keats had
+made no demonstration of political opinion; but he had dedicated his
+book to Leigh Hunt, a Radical news-writer, and a dubbed partisan of the
+French ruler, because he did not call him the "Corsican monster," and
+other disgusting names. Verily, "the former times were _not_ better than
+these." Men can now write the word "Liberty" without being chalked on
+the back and hounded out.
+
+Poor Keats! he little anticipated, and as little deserved, the cowardly
+and scoundrel treatment that was in store for him upon the publication
+of his second composition, the "Endymion." It was in the interval of
+the two productions that he had moved from the Poultry, and had taken a
+lodging in Well Walk, Hampstead,--in the first or second house, on the
+right hand, going up to the Heath. I have an impression that he had been
+some weeks absent at the sea-side before settling in this domicile; for
+the "Endymion" had been begun, and he had made considerable advances in
+his plan. He came to me one Sunday, and I walked with him, spending
+the whole day in Well Walk. His constant and enviable friend Severn,
+I remember, was present on the occasion, by the circumstance of our
+exchanging looks upon Keats's reading to us portions of his new work
+that had pleased himself. One of these, I think, was the "Hymn to Pan";
+and another, I am sure, was the "Bower of Adonis," because his own
+expression of face will never pass from me (if I were a Reynolds or a
+Gainsborough, I could now stamp it forever) as he read the description
+of the latter, with the descent and ascent of the ear of Venus. The
+"Hymn to Pan" occurs early in the First Book:--
+
+  "O thou, whose mighty palace-roof doth hang
+  From jagged trunks," etc.
+
+And the "Bower of Adonis," in the Second Book, commences,--
+
+  "After a thousand mazes overgone."
+
+Keats was indebted for his introduction to Mr. Severn to his
+school-fellow Edward Holmes, who also had been one of the child-scholars
+at Enfield; for he came to us in the frock-dress. They were sworn
+companions at school, and remained friends through life. Mr. Holmes
+ought to have been an educated musician from his first childhood; for
+the passion was in him. I used to amuse myself with the piano-forte
+after supper, when all had gone to bed. Upon some sudden occasion,
+leaving the parlor, I heard a scuffle on the stairs, and discovered that
+my young gentleman had left his bed to hear the music. At other times,
+during the day, and in the intervals of school-hours, he would stand
+under the window, listening. He at length intrusted to me his heart's
+secret, that he should like to learn music. So I taught him his notes;
+and he soon knew and could do as much as his tutor. Upon leaving
+Enfield, he was apprenticed to the elder Seeley, a bookseller in Fleet
+Street; but, hating his occupation, left it, I believe, before he was of
+age. He had not lost sight of me; and I introduced him to Mr. Vincent
+Novello, who had made himself a friend to me, and who not merely, with
+rare profusion of bounty, gave Holmes instruction, but received him into
+his house, and made him one of his family. With them he resided some
+years. I was also the fortunate means of recommending him to the chief
+proprietor of the "Atlas" newspaper; and to that journal, during a long
+period, he contributed a series of essays and critiques upon the science
+and practice of music, which raised the journal into a reference and an
+authority in the art. He wrote for the proprietors of the "Atlas"
+that elegant little book of dilettante criticism, "A Ramble among the
+Musicians in Germany." He latterly contributed to the "Musical Times" a
+whole series of masterly essays and analyses upon the Masses of Haydn,
+Mozart, and Beethoven. But the work upon which his reputation will rest
+was a "Life of Mozart," which was purchased by Chapman and Hall.
+
+I have said that Holmes used to listen on the stairs. In after-years,
+when Keats was reading to me his "Eve of St. Agnes," (and what a happy
+day was that! I had come up to see him from Ramsgate, where I then
+lived,) at the passage where Porphyro in Madeleine's chamber is
+fearfully listening to the hubbub of the icing and the music in the hall
+below, and the verse says,--
+
+  "The boisterous midnight festive clarion,
+  The kettle-drum and far-heard clarionet,
+  Affray his ears, though but in dying tone:
+  _The hall-door shuts again, and all the noise is gone_,"--
+
+"That line," said he, "came into my head when I remembered how I used to
+listen, in bed, to your music at school." Interesting would be a record
+of the germs and first causes of all the greatest poets' conceptions!
+The elder Brunei's first hint for his "shield," in constructing the
+tunnel under the Thames, was taken from watching the labor of a
+sea-insect, which, having a projecting hood, could bore into the ship's
+timber, unmolested by the waves.
+
+I fancy it was about this time that Keats gave that signal example of
+his courage and stamina, in the recorded instance of his pugilistic
+contest with a butcher-boy. He told me--and in his characteristic
+manner--of their "passage of _arms_." The brute, he said, was tormenting
+a kitten, and he interfered, when a threat offered was enough for his
+mettle, and they set to. He thought he, should be beaten; for the fellow
+was the taller and stronger; but, like an authentic pugilist, my young
+poet found that he had planted a blow which "told" upon his antagonist.
+In every succeeding round, therefore, (for they fought nearly an hour,)
+he never failed of returning to the weak point; and the contest ended
+in the hulk being led or carried home. In all my knowledge of my
+fellow-beings, I never knew one who so thoroughly combined the sweetness
+with the power of gentleness and the irresistible sway of anger as
+Keats. His indignation would have made the boldest grave; and those who
+have seen him under the influence of tyranny, injustice, and meanness of
+soul will never forget the expression of his features,--"the form of his
+visage was changed."
+
+He had a strong sense of humor; yet, so to speak, he was not, in the
+strict sense of the term, a humorist. His comic fancy lurked in the
+outermost and most unlooked-for images of association,--which, indeed,
+maybe said to be the components of humor; nevertheless, I think they
+did not extend beyond the _quaint_, in fulfilment and success. But his
+perception of humor, with the power of transmitting it by imitation, was
+both vivid and irresistibly amusing. He once described to me his having
+gone to see a bear-baiting,--the animal, the property of a Mr. Tom
+Oliver. The performance not having began, Keats was near to and watched
+a young aspirant, who had brought a younger under his wing to witness
+the solemnity, and whom he oppressively patronized, instructing him in
+the names and qualities of all the magnates present. Now and then, in
+his zeal to manifest and impart his knowledge, he would forget himself,
+and stray beyond the prescribed bounds, into the ring,--to the lashing
+resentment of its comptroller, Mr. William Soames; who, after some hints
+of a practical nature, to "keep back," began laying about him with
+indiscriminate and unmitigable vivacity,--the Peripatetic signifying to
+his pupil,--"My eyes! Bill Soames giv' me sich a licker!"--evidently
+grateful, and considering himself complimented, upon being included in
+the general dispensation. Keats's entertainment with this minor scene of
+low life has often recurred to me. But his subsequent description of the
+baiting, with his position, of his legs and arms bent and shortened,
+till he looked like Bruin on his hind-legs, dabbing his fore-paws hither
+and thither, as the dogs snapped at him, and now and then acting the
+gasp of one that had been suddenly caught and hugged, his own capacious
+mouth adding force to the personation, was a memorable display. I am
+never reminded of this amusing relation, but it is associated with that
+forcible picture in Shakspeare, (and what subject can we not associate
+with him?) in the "Henry VI":--
+
+  "as a bear encompassed round with dogs,
+  Who having _pinched_ a few and _made them cry_,
+  The rest stand all aloof and bark at him."
+
+Keats also attended a prize-fight between two of the most skilful and
+enduring "light-weights,"--Randal and Turner. It was, I believe, at
+that remarkable wager, when, the men being so equally matched and
+accomplished, they had been sparring for three-quarters of an hour
+before a blow had been struck. In describing the rapidity of Randal's
+blows while the other was falling, Keats tapped his fingers on the
+window-pane.
+
+I make no apology for recording these events in his life; they are
+characteristics of the natural man,--and prove, moreover, that the
+indulgence in such exhibitions did not for one moment blunt the gentler
+emotions of his heart, or vulgarize his inborn love of all that was
+beautiful and true. His own line was the axiom of his moral existence,
+his political creed:--"A thing of beauty is a joy forever"; and I can
+fancy no coarser consociation able to win him from this faith. Had he
+been born in squalor, he would have emerged a gentleman. Keats was not
+an easily swayable man; in differing with those he loved, his firmness
+kept equal pace with the sweetness of his persuasion; but with the rough
+and the unlovable he kept no terms,--within the conventional precincts,
+I mean, of social order.
+
+From Well Walk he moved to another quarter of the Heath,--Wentworth
+Place the name, if I recollect. Here he became a sharing inmate with Mr.
+Charles Armitage Brown, a gentleman who had been a Russia merchant, and
+had retired to a literary leisure upon an independence. I do not know
+how they became acquainted; but Keats never had a more zealous, a
+firmer, or more practical friend and adviser than Brown. His robust
+eagerness and zeal, with a headstrong determination of will, led him
+into an undue prejudice against the brother, George, respecting some
+money-transactions with John, which, however, the former redeemed to the
+perfect satisfaction of all the friends of the family. After the death
+of Keats, Armitage Brown went to reside in Florence, where he remained
+some few years; then he settled at Plymouth, and there brought out a
+work entitled, "Shakespeare's Autobiographical Poems. Being his Sonnets
+clearly developed; with his Character, drawn chiefly from his Works."
+It cannot be said that in this work the author has clearly educed his
+theory; but, in the face of his failure upon that main point, the book
+is interesting, for the heart-whole zeal and homage with which he has
+gone into his subject. Brown was no half-measure man; "whatsoever his
+hand found to do, he did it with his might." His last stage-scene in
+life was passed in New Zealand, whither he emigrated with his son,
+having purchased some land,--or, as his own letter stated, having been
+thoroughly defrauded in the transaction. Brown accompanied Keats in his
+tour in the Hebrides, a worthy event in the poet's career, seeing that
+it led to the production of that magnificent sonnet to "Ailsa Rock." As
+a passing observation, and to show how the minutest circumstance did not
+escape him, he told me, that, when he first came upon the view of Loch
+Lomond, the sun was setting; the lake was in shade, and of a deep blue;
+and at the farther end was "_a slash across it_, of deep orange." The
+description of the traceried window in the "Eve of St. Agnes" gives
+proof of the intensity of his feeling for color.
+
+It was during his abode in Wentworth Place that the savage and vulgar
+attacks upon the "Endymion" appeared in the "Quarterly Review," and
+in "Blackwood's Magazine." There was, indeed, ruffian, low-lived
+work,--especially in the latter publication, which had reached a pitch
+of blackguardism, (it used to be called "Blackguard's Magazine,") with
+_personal abuse_,--ABUSE,--the only word,--that would damage the sale
+of any review at this day. The very reverse of its present management.
+There would not now be the _inclination_ for such rascal bush-fighting;
+and even then, or indeed at any period of the Magazine's career, the
+stalwart and noble mind of John Wilson would never have made itself
+editorially responsible for such trash. As to him of the "Quarterly," a
+thimble would have been "a mansion, a court," for his whole soul. The
+style of the articles directed against the Radical writers, and those
+especially whom the party had nicknamed the "Cockney school" of poetry,
+may be conceived by its provoking the following observation from Hazlitt
+to me:--"To pay those fellows, Sir, _in their own coin_, the way would
+be, to begin with Walter Scott, and _have at his clump-foot_." "Verily,
+the former times were not better than these."
+
+To say that these disgusting misrepresentations did not affect the
+consciousness and self-respect of Keats would be to underrate the
+sensitiveness of his nature. He felt the insult, but more the injustice
+of the treatment he had received; he told me so, as we lay awake one
+night, when I slept in his brother's bed. They had injured him in the
+most wanton manner; but if they, or my Lord Byron, ever for one moment
+supposed that he was crushed or even cowed in spirit by the treatment he
+had received, never were they more deluded. "Snuffed out by an article,"
+indeed! He had infinitely more magnanimity, in its fullest sense,
+than that very spoiled, self-willed, and mean-souled man,--and I have
+authority for the last term. To say nothing of personal and private
+transactions, pages 204-207 in the first volume of Mr. Monckton Milnes's
+life of our poet will be full authority for my estimate of his Lordship.
+"Johnny Keats" had, indeed, "a little body with a mighty heart," and
+he showed it in the best way: not by fighting the ruffians,--though
+he could have done that,--but by the resolve that he would produce
+brain-work which not one of their party could approach; and he did.
+
+In the year 1820 appeared the "Lamia," "Isabella," "Eve of St. Agnes,"
+and "Hyperion," etc. But, alas! the insidious disease which carried him
+off had made its approach, and he was going to, or had already departed
+for, Italy, attended by his constant and self-sacrificing friend,
+Severn. Keats's mother died of consumption; and he nursed his younger
+brother in the same disease, to the last,--and, by so doing, in all
+probability, hastened his own summons. Upon the publication of the last
+volume of poems, Charles Lamb wrote one of his own finely appreciative
+and cordial critiques in the "Morning Chronicle." This was sent to me in
+the country, where I had for some time resided. I had not heard of the
+dangerous state of Keats's health,--only that he and Severn were going
+to Italy; it was, therefore, an unprepared shock which brought me the
+news that he had died in Rome.
+
+Mr. Monckton Milnes has related the anecdote of Keats's introduction to
+Wordsworth, with the latter's appreciation of the "Hymn to Pan," which
+its author had been desired to repeat, and the Rydal Mount poet's
+snow-capped comment upon it,--"Uhm! a pretty piece of Paganism!" Mr.
+Milnes, with his genial and placable nature, has made an amiable defence
+for the apparent coldness of Wordsworth's appreciation,--"That it was
+probably intended for some slight rebuke to his youthful compeer,
+whom he saw absorbed in an order of ideas that to him appeared merely
+sensuous, and would have desired that the bright traits of Greek
+mythology should be sobered down by a graver faith." Keats, like
+Shakspeare, and every other true poet, put his whole soul into what he
+imagined, portrayed, or embodied; and hence he appeared the young Greek,
+"suckled in that creed outworn." The wonder is, that Mr. Wordsworth
+forgot to quote himself. From Keats's description of his Mentor's
+manner, as well as behavior, that evening, I cannot but believe it to
+have been one of the usual ebullitions of the egoism, not to say of the
+uneasiness, known to those who were accustomed to hear the great moral
+philosopher discourse upon his own productions and descant upon those
+of a contemporary. During this same visit, he was dilating upon some
+question in poetry, when, upon Keats's insinuating a confirmatory
+suggestion to his argument, Mrs. Wordsworth put her hand upon his arm,
+saying,--"Mr. Wordsworth is never interrupted." Again, during the same
+interview, some one had said that the next Waverley novel was to be "Rob
+Roy"; when Mr. Wordsworth took down his volume of Ballads, and read
+to the company "Rob Roy's Grave,"--then, returning it to the shelf,
+observed, "I do not know what more Mr. Scott can have to say upon the
+subject." When Leigh Hunt had his first interview with Wordsworth, the
+latter lectured to him--finely, indeed--upon his own writings; and
+repeated the entire sonnet,
+
+  "Great men have been among us,"--
+
+which Hunt said he did "in a grand and earnest tone." Some one in a
+company quoting the passage from "Henry V.,"--
+
+  "So work the honey-bees,"
+
+and each "picking out his pet plum" from that perfect piece of natural
+history, Wordsworth objected to the line,
+
+  "The singing masons building roofs of gold,"
+
+because, he said, of the unpleasant repetition of the "_ing_" in it!
+Where were his ears and judgment on that occasion? But I have more
+than once heard it said that Wordsworth had not a genuine love of
+Shakspeare,--that, when he could, he always accompanied a "_pro_" with
+his "_con_," and, Atticus-like, would "just hint a fault and hesitate
+dislike." Truly, indeed, we are all of "a mingled yarn, good and ill
+together."
+
+I can scarcely conceive of anything more unjust than the account
+which that ill-ordered being, Haydon, left behind him in his "Diary,"
+respecting the idolized object of his former intimacy, John Keats. At
+his own eager request, after reading the manuscript specimens I had left
+with Leigh Hunt, I had introduced their author to him; and for some time
+subsequently I had frequent opportunities of seeing them together, and
+can testify to the laudations that Haydon trowelled on to the young
+poet. Before I left London, however, it had been said that things and
+opinions had changed,--and, in short, that Haydon had abjured all
+acquaintance with, and had even ignored, such a person as the author of
+the sonnet to him, and those "On the Elgin Marbles." I say nothing of
+the grounds of their separation; but, knowing the two men, and knowing,
+I believe, to the core, the humane principle of the poet, I have such
+faith in his steadfastness of friendship, that I am sure he would never
+have left behind him an unfavorable _truth_, while nothing could have
+induced him to utter a _calumny_ of one who had received pledges of
+his former regard and esteem. Haydon's detraction was the more odious
+because its object could not contradict the charge, and because it
+supplied his old critical antagonists (if any remained) with an
+authority for their charge against him of Cockney ostentation and
+display. The most mean-spirited and trumpery twaddle in the paragraph
+was, that Keats was so far gone in sensual excitement as to put Cayenne
+pepper upon his tongue, when taking his claret! Poor fellow! he never
+purchased a bottle of claret, within my knowledge of him; and, from
+such observation as could not escape me, I am bound to assert that
+his domestic expenses never could have occasioned him a regret or a
+self-reproof.
+
+When Shelley left England for Italy, Keats told me that he had received
+from him an invitation to become his guest,--and, in short, to make one
+of his household. It was upon the purest principle that Keats declined
+the noble proffer; for he entertained an exalted opinion of Shelley's
+genius, in itself an inducement; he also knew of his deeds of bounty;
+and lastly, from their frequent intercourse, he had full faith in the
+sincerity of his proposal; for a more crystalline heart than Shelley's
+never beat in human bosom. He was incapable of an untruth or of a deceit
+in any ill form. Keats told me, that, in declining the invitation, his
+sole motive was the consciousness, which would be ever prevalent with
+him, of his not being, in its utter extent, a free agent,--even
+within such a circle as Shelley's,--himself, nevertheless, the most
+unrestricted of beings. Mr. Trelawney, a familiar of the family, has
+confirmed the unwavering testimony to Shelley's bounty of nature, where
+he says, "Shelley was a being absolutely without selfishness." The
+poorest cottagers knew and benefited by the thoroughly _practical_ and
+unselfish character of his Christianity, during his residence at Marlow,
+when he would visit them, and, having gone through a course of study
+in medicine, in order that he might assist them with his advice, would
+commonly administer the tonic which such systems usually require,--a
+good basin of broth, or pea-soup. And I believe I am infringing on no
+private domestic delicacy, when I repeat, that he has been known, upon a
+sudden and immediate emergency, to purloin ("_convey_ the wise it call")
+a portion of the warmest of Mrs. Shelley's wardrobe, to protect some
+poor starving sister. One of the richer residents of Marlow told me that
+"_they all_ considered him a madman." I wish he had bitten the whole
+squad.
+
+  "No settled senses of the world can match
+  The 'wisdom' of that madness."
+
+Shelley's figure was a little above the middle height, slender, and of
+delicate construction, which appeared the rather from a lounging or
+waving manner in his gait, as though his frame was compounded merely of
+muscle and tendon, and that the power of walking was an achievement with
+him, and not a natural habit. Yet I should suppose that he was not a
+valetudinarian, although that has been said of him, on account of his
+spare and vegetable diet: for I have the remembrance of his scampering
+and bounding over the gorse-bushes on Hampstead Heath, late one
+night,--now close upon us, and now shouting from the height, like a wild
+school-boy. He was both an active and an enduring walker,--feats which
+do not accompany an ailing and feeble constitution. His face was round,
+flat, pale, with small features; mouth beautifully shaped; hair,
+bright-brown and wavy; and such a pair of eyes as are rarely seen in
+the human or any other head,--intensely blue, with a gentle and lambent
+expression, yet wonderfully alert and engrossing: nothing appeared to
+escape his knowledge.
+
+Whatever peculiarity there might have been in Shelley's religious faith,
+I have the best authority for believing that it was confined to the
+early period of his life. The _practical_ result of its course of
+_action_, I am sure, had its source from the "Sermon on the Mount."
+There is not one clause in that divine code which his conduct towards
+his fellow-mortals did not confirm, and substantiate him to be a
+follower of Christ. Yet, when the news arrived in London of the death of
+Shelley and Captain Williams by drowning, the "Courier" newspaper--an
+evening journal of that day--capped the intelligence with the following
+remark:--"He will now know whether there is a hell or not!"--I believe
+that there are still one or two public fanatics who would _think_ that
+surmise, but not one would dare to utter it in his journal. So much for
+the progress of liberality, and the power of opinion.
+
+At page 100 of the "Life of Keats," Vol. I., Mr. Monckton Milnes has
+quoted a literary portrait of him, which he received from a lady who
+used to see him at Hazlitt's lectures at the Surrey Institution. The
+building was on the south or right-hand side, and close to Blackfriars'
+Bridge. I believe that the whole of Hazlitt's lectures, on the British
+Poets, the Writers of the Time of Elizabeth, and the Comic Writers, were
+delivered in that Institution, during the years 1817 and 1818; shortly
+after which time the establishment appears to have been broken up. The
+lady's remark upon the character and expression of Keats's features is
+both happy and true. She says,--"His countenance lives in my mind as one
+of singular beauty and brightness; it had an expression _as if he had
+been looking on some glorious sight_." That's excellent.--"His mouth was
+full, and less intellectual than his other features." True again. But
+when our artist pronounces that "his eyes were large and _blue_" and
+that "his hair was _auburn_," I am naturally reminded of the fable of
+the "Chameleon":--"They're _brown_, Ma'am,--_brown_, I assure you!" The
+fact is, the lady was enchanted--and I cannot wonder at it--with the
+whole character of that beaming face; and "blue" and "auburn" being the
+favorite tints of the human front divine, in the lords of the creation,
+the poet's eyes consequently became "blue," and his hair "auburn."
+Colors, however, vary with the prejudice or partiality of the spectator;
+and, moreover, people do not agree even upon the most palpable prismatic
+tint. A writing-master whom we had at Enfield was an artist of more than
+ordinary merit; but he had one dominant defect: he could not distinguish
+between true blue and true green. So that, upon one occasion, when he
+was exhibiting to us a landscape he had just completed, I hazarded
+the critical question, why he painted his trees so _blue_? "Blue!" he
+replied,--"what do you call green?"--Reader, alter in your copy of
+Monckton Milnes's "Life of Keats," Vol. I., page 103, "eyes" _light
+hazel_, "hair" _lightish-brown and wavy_.
+
+The most perfect, and withal the favorite portrait of him, was the
+one by Severn, published in Leigh Hunt's "Lord Byron and his
+Contemporaries," and which I remember the artist's sketching in a few
+minutes, one evening, when several of Keats's friends were at his
+apartments in the Poultry. The portrait prefixed to the "Life," also
+by Severn, is a most excellent one-look-and-expression likeness,--an
+every-day, and of "the earth, earthy" one;--and the last, which the same
+artist painted, and which is now in the possession of Mr. John Hunter,
+of Craig Crook, Edinburgh, may be an equally felicitous rendering of one
+look and manner; but I do not intimately recognize it. There is another,
+and a _curiously unconscious_ likeness of him, in the charming Dulwich
+Gallery of Pictures. It is in the portrait of Wouvermans, by Rembrandt.
+It is just so much of a resemblance as to remind the friends of the
+poet,--though not such a one as the immortal Dutchman would have
+made, had the poet been his sitter. It has a plaintive and melancholy
+expression, which, I rejoice to say, I do not associate with him.
+
+There is one of his attitudes, during familiar conversation, which, at
+times, (with the whole earnest manner and sweet expression of the man)
+presents itself to me, as though I had seen him only last week. The
+attitude I speak of was that of cherishing one leg over the knee of the
+other, smoothing the instep with the palm of his hand. In this action I
+mostly associate him in an eager parley with Leigh Hunt, in his little
+cottage in the "Vale of Health." This position, if I mistake not, is in
+the last portrait of him at Craig Crook; if not, it is in a reminiscent
+one, painted after his death.
+
+His stature could have been very little more than five feet; but he was,
+withal, compactly made and--well-proportioned; and before the hereditary
+disorder which carried him off began to show itself, he was active,
+athletic, and enduringly strong,--as the fight with the butcher gave
+full attestation.
+
+The critical world,--by which term I mean the censorious portion of
+it; for many have no other idea of criticism than, that of censure and
+objection,--the critical world have so gloated over the feebler, or, if
+they will, the defective side of Keats's genius, and his friends, his
+gloryingly partial friends, have so amply justified him, that I feel
+inclined to add no more to the category of opinions than to say, that
+the only fault in his poetry I could discover was a redundancy of
+imagery,--that exuberance, by-the-by, being a quality of the greatest
+promise, seeing that it is the constant accompaniment of a young and
+teeming genius. But his steady friend, Leigh Hunt, has rendered the
+amplest and truest record of his mental accomplishment in the Preface to
+the "Foliage," quoted at page 150 of the first volume of the "Life
+of Keats"; and his biographer has so zealously, and, I would say, so
+amiably, summed up his character and intellectual qualities, that I can
+add no more than my assent.
+
+Keats's whole course of life, to the very last act of it, was one
+routine of unselfishness and of consideration for others' feelings.
+The approaches of death having come on, he said to his untiring
+nurse--friend,--"Severn,--I,--lift me up,--I am dying:--_I shall die
+easy; don't be frightened;_--be firm, and thank God it has come."
+
+There are constant indications through the memoirs, and in the letters
+of Keats, of his profound reverence for Shakspeare. His own intensity of
+thought and expression visibly strengthened with the study of his idol;
+and he knew but little of him till he himself had become an author. A
+marginal note by him in a folio copy of the Plays is an example of the
+complete absorption his mind had undergone during the process of his
+matriculation;--and, through life, however long with any of us, we are
+all in progress of matriculation, as we study the "myriad-minded's"
+system of philosophy. The note that Keats made was this;--"The genius
+of Shakspeare was an _innate universality;_ wherefore he laid the
+achievements of human intellect prostrate beneath his indolent and
+kingly gaze: _he could do easily men's utmost;_ his plan of tasks to
+come was not of this world. If what he proposed to do hereafter would
+not in the idea answer the aim, how tremendous must have been his
+conception of ultimates!"
+
+
+
+
+THE EUROPEAN CRISIS.
+
+
+It is not long since we listened to an interesting discussion of this
+question:--Which was the more important year to Europe,--1859 or 1860?
+The question is one that may be commended to the attention of those
+ingenuous young gentlemen, in debating-societies assembled, who have not
+yet settled whether Brutus, Cassius, & Co. were right in assassinating
+"the mighty Julius," or whether Mary Stuart was a martyred saint or a
+martyred sinner, or whether the cold chop to which Cromwell treated
+Charles I. on a memorable winter-day was either a just or a politic
+mode of touching for the king's evil. It would have the merit of
+novelty,--and Americans are as fond of new things in their day of power
+as ever were the Athenians in the day of their decline. A yet rarer
+merit it would have, in the fact that a great deal could justly be said
+on both sides of the question. An umpire would probably decide in favor
+of 1859,--because, he might say, had the events of that year been
+different, those of 1860 must have undergone a complete change.
+
+The romantic conquest of Sicily by Garibaldi, and his successes in
+Naples, whereby a junior branch of the Bourbon family has been sent
+to "enjoy" that exile which has so long been the lot of the senior
+branch,--and the destruction of the _Papalini_ by the Italian army of
+Victor Emanuel II., which asserted the superiority of the children of
+the soil over the bands of foreign ruffians assembled by De Merode and
+Lamoriciere for the oppression of the Peninsula in the name of the
+venerable head of the Church of Rome,--these are events even more
+striking than those by which the iron sceptre of Austria was cut through
+in the earlier year, because they have been accomplished by Italian
+genius and courage, the few foreigners in the army of Garibaldi not
+counting for much in the contest. They prove the regeneration of Italy.
+But it is evident that nothing of the kind could have been done in 1860,
+if 1859 had been as quiet a year for Italy as its immediate predecessor.
+Before the leaders and the soldiers of Italy could obtain the
+indispensable place whereon to stand, it was imperatively necessary
+that the power of Austria should be broken down, through the defeat and
+consequent demoralization of her army. For a period of forty-four
+years, Austria had had her own way in the Peninsula. From the fall
+of Napoleon's Italian dominion, in 1814, to the day when the third
+Napoleon's army entered Sardinia, there was, virtually, no other rule in
+Italy but that which Austria approved. The events of 1848, which at one
+time promised to remove "the barbarians," had for their conclusion the
+re-establishment of her ascendency in greater force than ever; and the
+last ten years of that ascendency will always be remembered as the
+period when its tyrannical character was most fully developed. The hoary
+proconsul of the Lorraines, Radetzky, if not personally cruel, was
+determined to do for his masters what Castilian lieutenants had done
+for the Austro-Burgundian monarchs of Spain and her dependencies,
+the fairest portions of Italy being among those dependencies, in the
+sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,--to destroy the public spirit of
+Italy. Could he have completed a century of life, or had there been no
+European nation ready to prevent the success of the Germanic policy
+under which Italy was to wither to provincial worthlessness, he might
+have been successful. But Austria lost her best man, the only one of
+her soldiers who had shown himself capable of upholding her Italian
+position, when he had reached to more than ninety years; and it pleased
+Providence to raise up a friend to Italy in a quarter to which most men
+had ceased to look for anything good.
+
+Well has it been said, that "it is not the best tools that shape out
+the best ends; if so, Martin Luther would not have been selected as the
+master-spirit of the Reformation." Napoleon III. may deserve all that is
+said against him by men of the extreme right and by men of the extreme
+left,--by Catholics and infidels,--by _Whites_, and _Reds_, and
+_Blues_,--but it cannot be denied that he gave to the Italians that
+assistance without which they never could have obtained even partial
+deliverance from the Austrian yoke, and which they could have procured
+from no other potentate or power. Bankrupt though she was, Austria's
+force was so superior to anything that Italy could present in the shape
+of an army, that Sardinia must have been conquered, if she had contended
+alone with her enemy; and a war between Austria and Sardinia was
+inevitable, and would probably have broken out long before 1859, had the
+former country been assured of the neutrality of France.
+
+There has been a great inkshed, and a large expenditure of oratory, on
+the question of the origin of the Italian war of 1859; and, as usual,
+much nonsense has been written and said of and concerning the ambition
+of France and the encroachments of Sardinia. But that war was brought
+about neither by French ambition nor by Sardinian desire for territorial
+aggrandizement. That it occurred in 1859 was undoubtedly owing to the
+action of France, which country merely chose its own time to drub its
+old foe; but the point at issue was, whether Austrian or Sardinian ideas
+should predominate in the government of Italy. Austria's purpose never
+could be accomplished so long as a constitutional polity existed in
+the best, because the best governed and the best organized, of all the
+Italian States; and Sardinia's purpose never could be accomplished so
+long as Austria was in a condition to dictate to the Italians the manner
+in which they should be ruled. A war between the two nations was, as we
+have said, inevitable. The only point about which there could be any
+dispute was, whether Sardinia would have to fight the battle of Italy
+unaided, or be backed by some power beyond the mountains.
+
+It shows how much men respect a military monarchy, how deferential they
+are to the sword, that even those persons who assumed that France must
+espouse the Sardinian cause were far from feeling confident that Austria
+would be overmatched by an alliance of the two most liberal of the
+Catholic nations of Europe. That monarchy is the type of force to all
+minds; and though she has seldom won any splendid successes in the field
+over the armies of enlightened nations, and has been repeatedly beaten
+by Prussia and France, men cling to old ideas, and give her great
+advantages at the beginning of every war in which she engages. The
+common opinion, in the spring of 1859, was, that Austria would crush
+Sardinia before the French could reach the field in force, and that her
+soldiers, flushed by successes over the Italians, would hurl their new
+foes out of the country, or leave them in its soil. As before, Italy was
+to be the grave of the French,--only that their grave was to be dug at
+the very beginning of the war, instead of being made, as in other days,
+at its close. But it was otherwise ordered. The Austrians lost the
+advantage which certainly was theirs at the opening of the contest,
+and, that lost, disaster after disaster befell their arms, until the
+"crowning mercy" of Solferino freed Italy from their rule, if it did not
+entirely banish them from her land. That Solferino was not so great
+a victory to the Allies as it was claimed to be at the time, that it
+resembled less Austerlitz than Wagram, may be admitted, and yet its
+importance remain unquestioned; for its decision gained for Italy the
+only thing that it was necessary she should have in order to work out
+her own salvation. Henceforth, she was not to tremble at the mere touch
+of the hilt of the sword worn by the Viceroy at Milan, but was to have
+the chance, at least, of ordering her own destinies. If not thoroughly
+free, she was no longer utterly enslaved.
+
+The peace of Villafranca surprised every one, from the Czar on the
+Neva to the gold-gatherers on the Sacramento. Strange as had been the
+doings--the world called them tricks--of Napoleon III., no man was
+prepared for that; and even now, though seventeen eventful months have
+rolled away since the first shock of it was experienced, the summer-day
+it was received seems more like one of those days we see in dreams than
+like a day of real life. Doubt, laughter, astonishment, and disgust
+followed each other through the minds of millions of men. If curses
+could kill, the man who had escaped the bombs of Orsini and the bullets
+of the Austrians would certainly have died in the month that followed
+the interview he had flogged his imperial brother into granting him. In
+America,--where we are always doing so much (on paper) for the cause of
+freedom, and for the deliverance of "oppressed nationalities" of the
+proper degrees and shades of whiteness, in the firm conviction that the
+free man is the better customer,--in America the reaction of opinion was
+overwhelming; and there were but few persons in the United States who
+would not have shouted over news that Henri Cinq was in Paris, and that
+the French Empire had a third time made way for the Kingdom of France.
+Time has not altogether removed the impression then created; for, if it
+has not justified the belief that the French Emperor had abandoned
+the Italian cause, it has convinced the world that he lost a noble
+opportunity to effect the destruction of Austria. There may be--most
+probably there are--facts yet unknown to the public, knowledge of which
+would partially justify the conduct of the victor toward the vanquished,
+in 1859; but, if we judge from what we know, which is all that any
+monarch can demand of the formers of opinion, Napoleon III. was guilty
+of a monstrous political and military blunder when he forced a truce
+upon Francis Joseph.
+
+There is no evidence that any European power was about to interfere in
+behalf of Austria. Prussia, it is true, had taken a stern attitude, and
+showed a disposition to place herself at the head of those German States
+which were for beginning a march upon Paris at once, though M. le
+Marechal Duc de Malakoff was ready with two hundred thousand men to
+receive them, and Paris itself was not the feeble place it had been in
+1814 and 1815. It is altogether likely that Prussia was, as is usual
+with her at every European crisis, shamming. She had no interest in the
+maintenance of Austria's territorial integrity, and it was rather late
+in the day to assume that Berlin was affected by the mortifications of
+Vienna. Could the hearts of kings and the counsels of cabinets be known
+with that literal exactness which is so desirable in politics, and
+yet so unattainable, we should probably find that Prussia's apparent
+readiness to lead Germany was owing to her determination that German
+armies should be led nowhere to the assistance of Austria. England
+had just changed her Ministry, the Derby Cabinet giving way to Lord
+Palmerston's, which was recognized on all sides as a great gain to the
+cause of Italian independence; and Lord John Russell had written one of
+those crusty notes to the Prussian government for which he is so famous,
+and which was hardly less Italian in its sentiments than that in which,
+written in October last, he upheld the course of Garibaldi and Victor
+Emanuel. Russia had evinced no disposition to interfere in behalf of
+Austria, and perhaps the news of Magenta and Solferino was as agreeable
+to the dwellers in St. Petersburg and Moscow as it was to the citizens
+of New York and Boston. She was, indeed, believed to be backing France.
+Politically, so far as we can judge, there was no cause or occasion for
+the throwing up of the cards by the French, after Solferino.
+
+Nor were the military reasons for the cessation of warlike operations of
+a nature to convince men of their irresistible weightiness. A great
+deal was said about the strength of "the Quadrilateral," and of the
+impregnability of the position which it formed,--as if there ever had
+existed a military position which could not be carried or turned, or out
+of which its defenders could not be bought, or forced, or starved!
+The strength of the Quadrilateral was as well known to the Emperor
+in January as it was in July, and he must have counted its powers of
+resistance before he resolved upon war. Victory he had organized, like
+Carnot; and victory in Lombardy was sure to take his army to the Mincio.
+Verona and Venetia were to be the complement of Milan. Then there was
+the story that he frightened the Kaiser into giving his consent to the
+truce by proving to him that the fortresses upon which he relied were
+not in good defensible condition, his commissaries having placed the
+funds in their pockets that should have been devoted to the purchase
+of stores,--a story that wears a very probable air, in view of the
+discovery subsequently made of the malversations of some of the highest
+persons at Vienna, and which had much to do with the suicide of the
+Minister of Finance. It is known, too, that the force which Napoleon
+III. had assembled in the Adriatic was very strong, and could have been
+so used as to have promoted an Hungarian insurrection in a sense not at
+all pleasant to the Austrians, to have attacked Dalmatia and Istria, and
+to have aided in the deliverance of Venice. That force was largely naval
+in its character, and the French navy was burning to distinguish itself
+in a war that had been so productive of glory to the sister-service: it
+would have had a Magenta and a Palestro of its own, won where the Dorias
+and the Pisani had struggled for fame and their countries' ascendency.
+Instead of the Quadrilateral being a bar to the French, it would have
+been a trap to the Austrians, who would have been taken there after the
+manner in which Napoleon I. took their predecessors at Ulm. After the
+war was over, it came out that Verona was not even half armed.
+
+If Napoleon III. was bent upon carrying that imitation of his uncle, of
+which he is so fond, to the extent of granting a magnanimous peace to a
+crushed foe, he may be said to have caricatured that which he sought
+to imitate. The first Napoleon's magnanimity after Austerlitz has been
+attributed to the craft of the beaten party,--he allowing the Russians
+to escape when they had extricated themselves from the false position in
+which their master's folly had caused them to be placed. But the third
+Napoleon did allow the Austrians to avoid the consequences of their
+defeat, and so disappointed Italy and the world. He _was_ magnanimous,
+and most astonishing to the minds of men was his magnanimity. Most
+people called it stupidity, and strange stories were told of his
+nervous system having been shattered by the sights and sounds of those
+slaughter-fields which he had planned and fought and won!
+
+We live rapidly in this age, when nations are breaking up all around us,
+when unions are dissolving, when dynasties disappear before the light
+like ghosts at cock-crowing, and when emperors and kings rely upon
+universal suffrage, once so terrible a bugbear in their eyes, for the
+titles to their crowns. Opinion is rapidly formed, and is as rapidly
+dismissed. We may be as much astonished now at the peace of Villafranca
+as we were on the day when first it was announced, and while looking
+upon it only as a piece of diplomacy intended to put an end to a contest
+costly in blood and gold; but we cannot say, as it was common then
+to say, that the war which it closed has decided nothing. That war
+established the freedom and nationality of Italy, and the peace so much
+condemned was the means of demonstrating to the world the existence of
+an _Italian People_. How far the French Emperor was self-deceived, and
+to what extent he believed in the practicability of the arrangements
+made at Villafranca and Zurich, are inscrutable mysteries. _Que
+sais-je_? might be the form of his own answer, were any one entitled to
+question him concerning his own opinion on his own acts of 1859. But
+of the effects of his attack on Austria there can be no doubt. That
+Lorraines and Bourbons have ceased to reign in Italy,--that the
+Kingdom of Victor Emanuel has increased from six millions of people to
+twenty-four millions,--that the same constitutional monarch who ruled at
+Turin is now acknowledged in Milan, in Ancona, in Florence, in Naples,
+and in Palermo, being King of Lombards, and Tuscans, and Romans, and
+Neapolitans, and Sicilians,--and that the Austrians are no longer the
+rulers of the Peninsula,--these things are all due to the conduct of the
+French Emperor. Had the peace of Europe not been broken by France, the
+Austrian power in Italy would have been unbroken at this moment, and
+Naples have been still under the dominion of that mad tyrant whose
+supreme delight it was to offend the moral sense of the world, and who
+found even in the remonstrances of his brother-despots occasion for
+increasing the weight of the chains of his victims, and of adding to the
+intensity and the exquisiteness of their tortures.
+
+These solid advantages to Italy, this freedom of hers from domestic
+despotism and foreign control, are the fruits of French intervention;
+and they could have been obtained in no other way. There was no nation
+but France to which Italy could look for aid, and to France she did not
+look in vain. Of the motives of her ally it would be idle to speak, as
+there is no occasion to go beyond consequences; and those consequences
+are just as good as if the French Emperor were as pure-minded and
+unselfish as the most perfect of those paladins of romance who went
+about redressing one class of wrongs by the creation of another.
+What Italy desired, what alone she needed, was freedom from foreign
+intervention; and that she got through the interposition of French
+armies, and that she could have got from no other human source. This
+single fact is an all-sufficient answer to the myriads of sneers that
+were called forth by the failure of Napoleon III. to redeem his pledge
+to make Italy free from the Alps to the Adriatic. What other potentate
+did anything for that country in 1859, or has done anything for it since
+that memorable year? Neither prince nor people, leaving Napoleon III.
+and the French aside, has so much as lifted a hand to promote the
+regeneration of Italy. America has enough to do in the way of attending
+to domestic slavery, without concerning herself about the freedom of
+foreigners; and she has given the Italians her--sympathies, which are of
+as much real worth to her as would be a treatise on the Resolutions of
+'98 to a man who should happen to tumble into the Niagara, with the
+Falls close upon him. England would have had Italy submit to that
+Austrian rule which had been established over her by English influence
+in 1814, when even the perverse, pig-headed Francis II. could see sound
+objections to it; and all because want of submission on her part would
+disturb the equilibrium of Europe, and might tend to the aggrandizement
+of France,--two things which she by no means desired to see happen.
+Russia, like America, gave Italy her sympathies; but she had a better
+excuse than we had for being prudent, as her monarch was engaged in
+planning at least the freedom of the serfs. If the Russians desired the
+overthrow of the Austrians, it was not because they loved the Italians,
+but from hatred of their oppressors; and that hatred had its origin in
+the refusal of Austria to join Russia when she was so hard pressed by
+France and England, Turkey and Piedmont. Prussia, us we have seen, sided
+with Austria; and though it is impossible to believe in her sincerity,
+her moral power, so far as it went, was adverse to the Italian cause.
+The other European nations were of no account, having no will of their
+own, and being influenced only by the action of the members of the
+Pentarchy. Save France, Italy had no friend possessed of the disposition
+and the ability to afford her that assistance without which she must
+soon have become in name, as she was fast becoming in fact, a mere
+collection of Austrian provinces.
+
+We dwell upon those well-known facts because an opinion seems to prevail
+that no nation or government shall interfere for the protection of the
+weak against the strong, unless it shall be able to show that it is
+perfect itself, and that its intentions are of the most unselfish
+nature. Peoples are to be delivered from oppression only as the
+Israelites were delivered, by the direct and immediate interposition of
+Heaven in human affairs; and the delivering agent must be as high-minded
+and generous as Moses, who was allowed merely to gaze upon the Promised
+Land. Men who thus reason about human action, and the motives of actors
+on the great stage of life, must have read history to very little
+purpose, and have observed the making of history round about them to no
+purpose at all. The instruments of Providence are seldom perfect men,
+and the broad light in which they live brings out their faults in full
+force. Napoleon III. is not above the average morality of his time; and
+if he had been so, probably he never would have become Emperor of the
+French. But in this respect differs he much from those men who have
+wrought great things for the world, and whom the world is content to
+reverence? Robert Bruce, who saved Scotland from the misery that befell
+Ireland; Henry IV., who renewed the life of France; Maurice of Saxony,
+who prevented the Reformation from proving a stupendous failure; and
+William III., without whose aid the Constitutionalists of England must
+have gone down before the Stuarts: not one of these men was perfect;
+and yet what losses the world would have experienced, if they had never
+lived, or had failed in their great labors! It has been claimed for
+Gustavus Adolphus that he was the only pure conqueror that ever lived;
+but his purity may safely be placed to the account of the balls of
+Luetzen: he was not left unto temptation. We should extend to Napoleon
+III. the same charity that we extend to men who have long been
+historical characters, and judge him by his actions and their results,
+and not criticise him by the canons of faction.
+
+Italy was delivered by the war of 1859, and that war was terminated by
+the peace of Villafranca. For the moment, it seemed as if there were
+to be a restoration of the petty princes who had fled from Tuscany and
+Parma and Modena, and that an Italian Confederation had been resolved
+upon, in which the noxious influences of Austria and Naples and Papal
+Rome should stifle the pure principles upheld by Sardinia. A few months
+sufficed to show that these evils existed in apprehension only. The
+Italians, by the withdrawal of the French, were thrown upon their own
+resources, and by their conduct they dissipated the belief that they
+were unequal to the emergency. Had the war been continued, had Venetia
+been conquered, and had the last of the Austrians been driven beyond the
+Isonzo, Italy would have been the prize of French valor and genius; for
+all this must have been done on the instant, and before the Italians,
+less the Sardinians, could have taken an effective part in the war. The
+most devoted believer in the patriotism and bravery of the Italians must
+perforce admit that they had little to do with the war of 1859. Leaving
+the Sardinians aside, the Italian element in that contest was scarcely
+appreciable. This we say without meaning any reflection on the Italians.
+There were many good reasons why they should remain quiet. In common
+with the rest of the world, even France herself, the war took them by
+surprise, Austria bringing it on weeks, if not months, before Napoleon
+III. had meant it to begin. They, too, had seen their country so often
+abused by those who had conquered there, that they had some excuse for
+waiting the progress of events. The most industrious and studied efforts
+had been made to convince them that the object of the ruler of France
+was the realization of another Napoleonic idea, namely, the restoration
+of that Kingdom of Italy which perished in 1814; and though the rule of
+Napoleon I. was the best that Italy had known for three hundred years,
+it was hardly worth while to enter upon a doubtful fight for its
+restoration. Hence the majority of the people of Italy were not so
+active as they might have been; and their coolness is said to have had
+much effect on the mind of the victor, who must have thought that the
+people he had come to deliver were taking things very easily, and who
+could not have felt much flattered, when assured, in the politest
+terms, that those people believed him to be a selfish liar. His work,
+therefore, was but partially performed. Instead of halting on the shores
+of the historical Adriatic, his armies drew up on the banks of the
+classic Mincius. Trance had done her part; let Italy do the rest, if
+it were to be done. Thus abdicating his original purpose, and probably
+feeling much as William III. felt when the English were so slow in
+joining him that he talked of returning to his ships, Napoleon III.
+gave up his power to dictate the future of Italy. He had no right,
+thereafter, to say that the Bourbons should continue to govern in the
+Two Sicilies, that the Dukes should be restored to their Duchies, and
+that Venetia should be guarantied to Austria. He felt this, as the terms
+of the treaties that were made very clearly show; for he was careful to
+abstain from pledging himself to anything of a definite character. If
+he had perfected his original work, and been possessed of the power to
+effect a new settlement of Italy, he would, we presume, have stipulated
+for the continuance of the Bourbon power in the southern portion of the
+Peninsula and in Sicily; while the much talked-of purpose of creating an
+Italian Kingdom or Duchy for Prince Napoleon would probably have been
+carried out, and that gentleman have been established on the Arno. To
+the Sardinian monarchy would have been assigned the spoils taken from
+Austria,--Venice and Lombardy. The change in his political plans was the
+consequence of the change in his military plan,--though either change
+may be pronounced the cause or the effect, according to the point from
+which the observer views the entire series of transactions. Thus the
+peace of 1859 may be considered to have been a benefit to Italy, just
+as the war it terminated had been. The war freed her from Austrian
+dominion; the peace, from its character, and from the circumstances
+under which it was made, left her people at liberty to act as they
+pleased in the fair field that had been won for their exertions by the
+skill and courage of the French and Sardinian armies.
+
+The destinies of Italy being placed in her own hands, the Italians were
+as prompt as politic considerations would allow them to be in promoting
+the unification of their country. Central Italy soon became a part of
+the constitutional monarchy which had grown up under the shadow of the
+Alps. This could not have happened, if Napoleon III. had chosen to veto
+the proceedings of the Italians, which had virtually nullified one of
+his purposes. That he consented to this large addition to the power of
+Sardinia on the condition of receiving Savoy and Nice is by no means
+unlikely; and we do not think that Victor Emanuel was either unwise or
+wanting in patriotism in parting with those countries for the benefit of
+Italy. Taking advantage of the troubles in Sicily, Garibaldi led a
+small expedition to that island, which there landed, and began those
+operations which had their appropriate termination, in five months, in
+the addition of all the territories of the wretched Francis II., except
+Gaeta, to the dominions of the Sardinian King. The importance of
+Garibaldi's undertaking it is quite impossible to overrate; but of what
+account could it have been, if the Austrians had stood to Italy in the
+same position that they held at the opening of 1859? Of none at all.
+Garibaldi is preeminently a man of sense, and he would never have
+thought of moving against Francis II., if Francis Joseph had been at
+liberty to assist that scandalous caricature of kings. Or, if he had
+been tempted to enter upon the project, he would have been "snuffed
+out" as easily as was Murat, when, in 1815, he sought to recover the
+Neapolitan throne. If Austrian ships had not prevented him from landing
+in Sicily, Austrian troops would have destroyed him in that island. Nay,
+it is but reasonable to believe that Bomba's navy and army would have
+been amply sufficient to do their master's work. That his men were not
+wanting in courage and conduct has been proved by their deeds since the
+tyrant left his capital, on the Volturno and around Capua and at Gaeta.
+It was not want of bravery that led to their failure in Sicily, but the
+belief that their employer's system had failed, and that he and they
+were given up to the vengeance of Italy, supposing the Italians to be
+strong enough to do justice on them. They took courage when European
+circumstances led them to conclude that Austria would be advised, at
+the Warsaw Conference, to use her forces for the restoration of the old
+order of things in Italy, and receive the support of Russia and Prussia.
+To deserve such aid from the North, the Neapolitan army struggled hard,
+but in vain. The Absolutist cause was lost in Naples when the sovereigns
+met in the Polish capital; and though, forty years earlier, this would
+have been held an additional reason for the entrance of the barbarians
+into Italy, the successes of the patriots must have had their proper
+weight with the Prince Regent of Prussia and the Czar, who are
+understood to have been as deaf as adders to the charming of their young
+brother from Vienna. What was resolved upon at Warsaw the world has no
+positive means of knowing, and but little reliance is to be placed upon
+the rumors that have been so abundant; but, as Austria has not
+moved against the Italians, and as the instructions to her new
+commander-in-chief in Venetia (Von Benedek) are reported to be strong
+on the point of non-intervention, we are at liberty to infer that she
+accepts all that has been done as accomplished facts, and means to
+stand upon the defensive, in the hope of gaining moral support by her
+moderation in being outwardly content with less than half the spoil
+which was given to her at the expense of Italy, when Europe was
+"settled," for the time, four-and-forty years ago.
+
+The action of the Sardinian government, in sending its soldiers against
+the legal banditti whom Lamoriciere had sought to drill into the
+semblance of an army, which was a direct attack on the Pope, and the
+subsequent employment of those soldiers, and of the Sardinian fleet,
+against the forces of Francis II., were model pieces of statesmanship,
+and worthy of the great man whose name and fame have become indissolubly
+associated with the redemption of Italy. The decision thus to act could
+not have been taken without the consent of Napoleon III. having first
+been had and obtained; and there is probably much truth in the story,
+that, when Lamoriciere had the coolness to threaten his conquerors with
+the vengeance of the Emperor, they told him, half-laughingly, that, they
+had planned the campaign with that illustrious personage at Chambery,
+which must have convinced him that the cause of the Keys had nothing to
+expect from France beyond the sort of police aid which General Goyon was
+affording to it in the name of his master. Lamoriciere also expected
+help from Austria, and professed to be able to number the few days at
+the expiration of which the white-coats would be at Alessandria, which
+would have been a diversion in his favor, that, had it been made, must
+have saved him from the mortification of surrendering to men whom he
+affected to despise, but who brought him and his army under the yoke.
+The faith of the commander of the rabble of the Faith in Austrian
+assistance was a Viennese inspiration, and was meant to induce him to
+resist to the last. Nor was it altogether false; for the Kaiser and
+Count Rechberg appear to have believed that they could induce the
+governments of Russia and Prussia to support them in a crusade in behalf
+of Rome and Naples, which was to rely upon Lutherans and supporters of
+the Eastern Church for the salvation of the Western Church and its worst
+members. The first interview between Rechberg and Gortschakoff, if we
+can believe a despatch from Warsaw, led quickly to a quarrel, which must
+have taken place not long after their chiefs, the Kaiser and the Czar,
+had been locked in each other's arms at the railway-station. It is but
+just to the Austrians to state, that they probably had received from St.
+Petersburg some promises of assistance, which Alexander found himself
+unable to redeem, so determined was Russian opinion in its expression of
+aversion to Austria when its organs began to suspect that the old game
+was to be renewed, and that Alexander contemplated doing in 1861
+what Nicholas had done in 1849,--to step between Francis Joseph and
+humiliation, perhaps destruction. If it be true that the Czar has
+ordered all Russians to leave Italy, that piece of pitiful spite would
+show how he hates the Italian cause, and also that it is not in his
+power seriously to retard its progress at present. Instead of ordering
+Russians from Italy, he would send them to that country in great masses,
+could he have his way in directing the foreign policy of his empire.
+
+The entire success of Victor Emanuel and Garibaldi has brought Italian
+matters to a crisis. Carrying out the policy of Cavour, the King and the
+Soldier have all but completed the unification of their country, at
+the very time when the United States are threatened with disunion. The
+Kingdom of Italy exists at this time, virtually, if not in terms, and
+contains about twenty-four million people. It comprises the original
+territories of Victor Emanuel, _minus_ Savoy and Nice, the Two Sicilies,
+Lombardy, almost the whole of the Papal States, and Tuscany, Parma, and
+Modena. If we except the fragment of his old possessions yet held by the
+Pope, and the Austrian hold on Venetia, all Italy now acknowledges
+the rule of Victor Emanuel, who is to meet an _Italian_ Parliament
+in January, 1861. No political change of our century has been more
+remarkable than this, whether we look to its extent, or have regard to
+the agencies by which it has been brought about. Two years ago, there
+was more reason to believe that the King of Sardinia would be an exile
+than that the Bourbon King of Naples would be on his travels. No man
+would have dared to prophesy that the former would be reigning over
+seven-eighths of the Italians, while the latter should be reduced to one
+town, garrisoned by foreign mercenaries. That these changes should be
+wrought by universal suffrage, had it been predicted, would have been
+thought too much to be related as a dream. Yet it is the voice of the
+Italian People, speaking under a suffrage-system apparently more liberal
+than ever has been known in America, which has accomplished all that has
+been done since the summer of 1859 in the Peninsula and in Sicily. It
+was because Napoleon III. would not place himself in opposition to the
+opinion of the people of Central Italy, that the petty monarchs of
+that country were not restored to their thrones, and that they became
+subjects of Victor Emanuel; and the voting in Sicily and Naples
+has confirmed the decision of arms, and made it imperative on the
+reactionists to attack the people, should their policy lead them to
+seek a reversal of the decrees of 1860. The new monarch of the Italians
+expressly bases his title to reign on the will of the people, expressed
+through the exercise of the least restricted mode of voting that ever
+has been known among men; and the people of Southern Italy never could
+have had the opportunity to vote their crown to him, if Garibaldi
+had not first freed them from the savage tyranny of Francis II.; and
+Garibaldi himself could not have acted for their deliverance, if Italy
+had not previously been delivered from the Austrians by France. Thus we
+have the French Emperor, designated as a _parvenu_ both in England and
+America, and owing his power to his name,--the democrat Garibaldi, whose
+power is from his deeds, and whose income is not equal to that of an
+Irish laborer in the United States,--the rich and noble Cavour, whose
+weekly revenues would suffice to purchase the fee-simple of Garibaldi's
+island-farm,--the King of Sardinia, representing a race that was
+renowned before the Normans reigned in England,--and the masses of the
+Italian people,--all acting together for the redemption of a country
+which needs only justice to enable it to assume, as near as modern
+circumstances will permit, its old importance in the world's scale.
+That there should have been such a concurrence of foreign friendship,
+democratic patriotism, royal sagacity, aristocratic talent, and popular
+good sense, for Italy's benefit, must help to strengthen the belief that
+the Italians are indeed about to become a new _Power_ in Europe, and
+in the world, and that their country is no more to be rated as a mere
+"geographical expression."
+
+The Italian crisis is a European crisis; for matters have now reached
+a pass in which the foreigner must have something to say of Italy's
+future: and it will be well for the general peace, if he shall use only
+the words of justice, in giving his decision; for his right to speak
+at all in the premises is derived only from an act of usurpation, long
+acquiescence in which has clothed it with a certain show of legality. In
+all that the Italians have thus far done, since the conclusion of the
+with Austria, they have not necessarily been brought into conflict
+with any foreign nation, though they may have terribly offended those
+legitimate sovereigns who have been accustomed either to give law to
+Europe or to see public opinion defer considerably to their will. Not a
+single acquisition thus far made by Victor Emmanuel can be said to have
+proceeded from any act at which Europe could complain with justice.
+Lombardy was given to him by his ally of France, whose prize it was, and
+who had an undid dispose of it in a most righteous manner. That Central
+Italy was acquired by him was due partly to the cowardice of the old
+rulers thereof, and partly to intelligence, activity, and patriotism of
+its people. No foreign rights, conventional or otherwise, were assailed
+or disregarded, when it passed under the Sardinian sceptre. When go much
+of the Pope's temporal possessions were taken from him by the people
+themselves, who had become weary of the worst system of misgovernment
+known to the west of Bokhara, no doubt many pious Catholics were
+shocked; but, if they knew anything of the history of the Papal temporal
+rule and power, they could not complain at what was done, on the score
+of illegality; and the deeds of Cialdini and Fanti and Persano were
+performed against foreigners who had intruded themselves into Italy, and
+who were employed to uphold the political supremacy of a few persons at
+Rome, while they had no more connection with the religion of the ancient
+Church than they had with that of Thibet. The King of the Two Sicilies,
+by his tyranny, and by his persistence in the offensive course of his
+house, had become an outlaw, as it were, and every _Italian_ at least
+was fairly authorized to attack him; and in doing so he could not
+be said to assail European order, nor could any European power
+send assistance to a monarch who had refused to listen even to the
+remonstrances of Austria against his cruelties. The stanchest of
+English conservatives, while they said they must regard Garibaldi as
+a freebooter, did not hesitate to express the warmest wishes for the
+freebooter's success. When the Sardinians marched to Garibaldi's aid,
+they did so in the interest of order, which has been promptly restored
+to Southern Italy through their energetic course.
+
+Thus far, that which has been done in Italy has been of a local
+character; but nothing more can be done, in the way of completing the
+independence and unity of Italy, without bringing the patriots into
+conflict with Austria. That power still is supreme in Venetia, which is
+one of the best portions of Italy, and which can be held by no foreign
+sovereign without endangering the whole Peninsula. Were there no other
+reason for seeking to redeem Venetia from Austrian oppression, the
+safety of the rest of Italy would demand that that redemption should be
+accomplished. Venetia, as she now is, is a place of arms for the chief,
+we may say the only, foreign enemy that the Italian Kingdom has or can
+have; and that enemy has a deep and a peculiar interest in seeking
+occasion to bring about the new kingdom's destruction. If Austria should
+succeed in conciliating the Hungarians,--which she might do, if she
+were to act justly toward them,--and a change of government were to take
+place in France,--and changes in the French government have occurred
+so often since 1789 as not to be improbable now,--she would, through
+possession of Venetia, be enabled to commence a new Italian war with the
+chances of success greatly in her favor. The Italians, therefore, are
+compelled to round and complete their work, in getting possession of
+Venetia, by that desire for safety and for self-preservation which
+actuates all men and all communities. A nobler feeling, too, moves them.
+They feel the obligation that exists to extend to the Venetians that
+freedom which is now enjoyed by all Italians except the Venetians and
+a small portion of the Pope's subjects. They would be recreant to the
+dictates of duty, and disregardful of those of honor, were they to leave
+Venetia in the hands of Austria. What their feelings on this
+momentous subject are may be gathered from Garibaldi's address to his
+companions-in-arms, when, having completed his immediate work, he
+withdrew from active service for the time, in November last. His words
+point as directly to an attack on Venetia as his landing in Sicily
+indicated his intention to overthrow Francis II.; and that attack,
+according to the Patriot Soldier, is to be made under the lead of the
+Patriot King, Victor Emanuel. A million of Italians are called for, that
+it may be successfully made; and that number ought to be raised, if so
+vast a host shall be found necessary to perfect the independence of
+Italy. After what we have seen done by the Italians, we should not
+distrust their power to do even more, if no delay should be permitted,
+and full advantage be taken of the spirit of enthusiastic patriotism
+which now animates them. That Garibaldi means no delay is proved by his
+naming next March as the date for the renewal of the mighty crusade in
+the course of which already such miracles have been wrought.
+
+That Italy, as she stands to-day, would be found more than the equal
+of Austria, no doubt can be felt by any one who is acquainted with the
+condition of the two powers. Italy would enter upon a contest with
+Austria under circumstances of peculiar advantage. She would have so
+decided a naval superiority, that the Austrian flag would disappear from
+the Mediterranean and the Adriatic, and she would be able to operate
+powerfully from the sea against Venice. It is a military axiom, that,
+wherever there is a sea-side, there is a weak side; and Venetia presents
+this to an assailing force in quite a striking manner. Command of
+the Adriatic and the neighboring waters would enable the Italians to
+threaten many points of the Austrian territory, which would require to
+be watched by large collections of soldiers; and aid could be sent to
+the Hungarians, should they rise, by the way of Fiume. Italy could
+raise a larger army to attack Venetia than Austria could employ for its
+defence, with Hungary on the eve of revolution, Bohemia discontented,
+Croatia not the loyal land it was in '48, and even the Tyrol no longer
+a model of subserviency to the Imperial House. The Italians are at any
+time the equals of the Austrians as soldiers, and at this time their
+minds are in an exalted state, under the dominion of which they would
+be found superior to any men who could be brought against them, if well
+led; and among the Imperial commanders there is no man, unless Von
+Benedek be an exception, who is to be named with the generals who have
+led the way in the work we have seen done since last spring. In a
+military sense, and in a moral sense, Italy is the superior of the
+beaten, bankrupt monarchy of Austria, and capable of wresting Venetia
+from the intrusive race, which holds it as much in defiance of common
+sense as of common right.
+
+But would Italy be permitted to settle her quarrel with her old
+oppressor without foreign intervention? We fear that she would not.
+Venetia is held by Austria in virtue of the Vienna settlement of Europe,
+in the first place, and then under the treaty that followed the war of
+1859. Some English statesmen would appear to be of opinion that Venetia
+must remain among the possessions of Austria, without reference to the
+interests of Italy, the party most concerned in the business. In his
+first note to Sir James Hudson, British Minister at Turin, which note
+was to be read to Count Cavour, Lord John Russell, Foreign Secretary,
+writes more like an Austrian than an Englishman, going even to the
+astounding length of declaring that a war to defend her right to Venetia
+would be on Austria's part a patriotic war,--such a war, we presume the
+Honorable Secretary of State must have meant, as Wallace waged against
+Edward I., or that which the first William of Orange carried on against
+Philip II.! Lord Palmerston seems inclined to indorse his colleague's
+views: for he referred directly to this very note in terms of
+approbation, in the speech which he made at the dinner of the
+"Worshipful Company of Salters," on the 14th of November. It is true,
+that, in a later note from Lord John Russell to Sir James Hudson,
+extreme ground in favor of what had been done in Naples by the
+Sardinians is taken, and sustained with eminent ability; and in the
+speech of Lord Palmerston referred to, the object of the first note was
+said to be the prevention of a rash course that "might have blighted all
+the best hopes of Italian freedom." We do not for a moment suppose that
+the English people would ever allow their government to do anything
+to help Austria to maintain possession of Venetia; but the relations
+between Austria and England are of old date, and an opinion prevails in
+the latter country that the former should be kept strong, in order that
+she may be preserved as a counterpoise, on the one side to Russia, and
+on the other to France. England has a difficult part to play, and her
+course, or rather that of her government, sometimes makes considerable
+demand on the charitable construction of the world; but her people are
+sound, and for a long series of years their weight has been felt on the
+right side of European contests. The Italian cause is popular with all
+classes of Englishmen, and their country will never do anything to the
+prejudice of that cause. But it may refuse aid at a time when such aid
+shall be much needed, and when even France may stand aloof, and refrain
+from finishing the business which she commenced.
+
+There is said to be an opinion growing up in France that Italy may be
+made too strong for the good of her friend and ally. A new nation of
+twenty-seven million souls--which would be Italy's strength, should Rome
+and Venetia be gained for her--might become a potent enemy even to one
+of its chief creators; and the taking of Savoy and Nice has caused
+ill-feeling between the two countries, in which Garibaldi heartily
+shares. Napoleon III. might be depended upon, himself, to support Italy
+hereafter against any foreign enemy, but it is by no means clear that
+France would support him in such a course; and he must defer to the
+opinion of his subjects to a considerable extent, despotic though his
+power is supposed to be. It is opinion, in the last resort, that governs
+every where,--under an absolute monarchy quite as determinedly as under
+a liberal polity like ours or England's. There is a large party in
+France, composed of the most incongruous materials, which has the
+profoundest interest in misrepresenting the policy of the Imperial
+government, and which is full of men of culture and intellect,--men
+whose labors, half-performed though they are, must have considerable
+effect on the French mind. The first Napoleon had the ground honeycombed
+under him by his enemies, who could not be suppressed, nor their labors
+be made to cease, even by his stern system of repression. It may be so
+with the present Emperor, who knows that one false step might upset his
+dynasty as utterly as it was twice over-thrown by the armies of combined
+Europe. What was then done by the lions and the eagles might now be done
+by the moles. The worms that gnawed through the Dutch dykes did Holland
+more damage than she experienced from the armies of Louis XIV. Let the
+French mind become possessed with the idea that the Emperor is helping
+Italy at the expense of France, and we may see a third Restoration in
+that country, or even a third Republic. The elder Bourbons were driven
+out because they were as a monument in Paris to Leipzig and Vittoria
+and Waterloo, erected by the victors on those fatal fields. The Orleans
+dynasty broke down because it had become an article in the belief of
+most Frenchmen that it was disgracing France by the corruption of its
+domestic policy and the subserviency of its foreign policy. Napoleon
+III. could no more sustain himself against the belief that he was using
+France for the benefit of Italy than the King of the French could
+sustain himself against the conviction that he was abusing the country
+he ruled over for the advancement of his family. He has already offended
+the Catholic clergy by what he has done for Italy, which they regard as
+having been done against their Church; and as they helped to make him,
+so they may be able to unmake him. To satisfy grumblers, he took Savoy
+and Nice. For some time past, rumor has been busy in attributing to him
+the design of demanding the island of Sardinia. If he should ask for
+Sardinia, and receive it, might he not ask also for Sicily, the country
+of which he offered to become King in 1848, and did not receive one
+vote, an incident that may still weigh upon the imperial heart, no man
+ever forgetting a contemptuous slight? If he should make these demands,
+or either of them, would the other European Powers permit the Italians
+to comply with them? These are questions not to be answered hurriedly,
+but they closely concern the Italian question, a solution of which must
+soon be had, for the world's peace.
+
+The third act of the drama approaches, and 1861 may be a more important
+year to Italy than was either 1859 or 1860. The successful antagonist
+of Austria she can be; but could she, without foreign aid, withstand an
+alliance that should be formed against her in the name of order, while
+her former ally should remain quiet and refuse to take any part in the
+war? Austria, it has been intimated, might be induced to sell Venetia to
+Italy, and this is possible, though such a settlement of the question in
+dispute would be an extraordinary confession of weakness on the part of
+the aristocratical military monarchy of the Lorraines, and a proceeding
+of which it would be more ashamed than it would be even of a generous
+action.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+A VISIT TO THE ASYLUM FOR AGED AND DECAYED PUNSTERS.
+
+
+Having just returned from a visit to this admirable Institution in
+company with a friend who is one of the Directors, we propose giving a
+short account of what we saw and heard. The great success of the Asylum
+for Idiots and Feeble-minded Youth, several of the scholars from which
+have reached considerable distinction, one of them being connected with
+a leading Daily Paper in this city, and others having served in the
+State and National Legislatures, was the motive which led to the
+foundation of this excellent Charity. Our late distinguished townsman,
+Noah Dow, Esquire, as is welt known, bequeathed a large portion of his
+fortune to this establishment,--"being thereto moved," as his will
+expressed it, "by the desire of _N. Dowing_ some publick Institution
+for the benefit of Mankind." Being consulted as to the Rules of the
+Institution and the selection of a Superintendent, he replied, that "all
+Boards must construct their own Platforms of operation. Let them select
+_anyhow_ and he should be pleased." N.E. Howe, Esq., was chosen in
+compliance with this delicate suggestion.
+
+The Charter provides for the support of "One hundred aged and decayed
+Gentlemen-Punsters." On inquiry if there was no provision for _females_,
+my friend called my attention to this remarkable psychological fact,
+namely:--
+
+THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A FEMALE PUNSTER.
+
+This remark struck me forcibly, and on reflection I found that _I never
+knew nor heard of one_, though I have once or twice heard a woman make
+_a single detached_ pun, as I have known a hen to crow.
+
+On arriving at the south gate of the Asylum grounds, I was about to
+ring, but my friend held my arm and begged me to rap with my stick,
+which I did. An old man with a very comical face presently opened the
+gate and put out his head.
+
+"So you prefer _Cane_ to _A bell_, do you?" he said,--and began
+chuckling and coughing at a great rate.
+
+My friend winked at me.
+
+"You're here still, Old Joe, I see," he said to the old man.
+
+"Yes, yes,--and it's very odd, considering how often I've _bolted_,
+nights."
+
+He then threw open the double gates for us to ride through.
+
+"Now," said the old man, as he pulled the gates after us, "you've had a
+long journey."
+
+"Why, how is that, Old Joe?" said my friend.
+
+"Don't you see?" he answered; "there's the _East hinges_ on one side of
+the gate, and there's the West hinges_ on t'other side,--haw! haw! haw!"
+
+We had no sooner got into the yard than a feeble little gentleman, with
+a remarkably bright eye, came up to us, looking very seriously, as if
+something had happened.
+
+"The town has entered a complaint against the Asylum as a gambling
+establishment," he said to my friend, the Director.
+
+"What do you mean?" said my friend.
+
+"Why, they complain that there's a _lot o' rye_ on the premises," he
+answered, pointing to a field of that grain,--and hobbled away, his
+shoulders shaking with laughter, as he went.
+
+On entering the main building, we saw the Rules and Regulations for
+the Asylum conspicuously posted up. I made a few extracts which may be
+interesting.
+
+
+Sect. I. OF VERBAL EXERCISES.
+
+5. Each Inmate shall be permitted to make Puns freely from eight in the
+morning until ten at night, except during Service in the Chapel and
+Grace before Meals.
+
+6. At ten o'clock the gas will be turned off, and no further Puns,
+Conundrums, or other play on words, will be allowed to be uttered, or to
+be uttered aloud.
+
+9. Inmates who have lost their faculties and cannot any longer make Puns
+shall be permitted to repeat such as may be selected for them by the
+Chaplain out of the work of Mr. _Joseph Miller_.
+
+10. Violent and unmanageable Punsters, who interrupt others when engaged
+in conversation, with Puns or attempts at the same, shall be deprived
+of their _Joseph Millers_, and, if necessary, placed in solitary
+confinement.
+
+
+Sect. III. OF DEPORTMENT AT MEALS.
+
+4. No Inmate shall make any Pun, or attempt at the same, until the
+Blessing has been asked and the company are decently seated.
+
+7. Certain Puns having been placed on the _Index Expurgatorius_ of the
+Institution, no Inmate shall be allowed to utter them, on pain of being
+debarred the perusal of _Punch_ and _Vanity Fair_, and, if repeated,
+deprived of his _Joseph Miller_.
+
+Among these are the following:--
+
+Allusions to _Attic salt_, when asked to pass the salt-cellar.
+
+Remarks on the Inmates being _mustered_, etc., etc.
+
+Associating baked beans with the _bene_factors of the Institution.
+
+Saying that beef-eating is _befitting_, etc., etc.
+
+The following are also prohibited, excepting to such Inmates as may have
+lost their faculties and cannot any longer make Puns of their own:--
+
+"----your own _hair_ or a wig"; "it will be _long enough_, "etc., etc.;
+"little of its age," etc., etc.;--also, playing upon the following
+words: _hos_pital; _mayor_; _pun_; _pitied_; _bread_; _sauce_, etc.,
+etc., etc. See INDEX EXPURGATORIUS, _printed for use of Inmates_.
+
+The subjoined Conundrum is not allowed:--Why is Hasty Pudding like the
+Prince? Because it comes attended by its _sweet_;--nor this variation to
+it, _to wit_: Because the _'lasses runs after it_.
+
+The Superintendent, who went round with us, had been a noted punster in
+his time, and well known in the business-world, but lost his customers
+by making too free with their names,--as in the famous story he set
+afloat in '29 of _four Jerries_ attaching to the names of a noted Judge,
+an eminent Lawyer, the Secretary of the Board of Foreign Missions, and
+the well-known Landlord at Springfield. One of the _four Jerries_, he
+added, was of gigantic magnitude. The play on words was brought out
+by an accidental remark of Solomons, the well-known Banker. "_Capital
+punishment!_" the Jew was overheard saying, with reference to the guilty
+parties. He was understood as saying, _A capital pun is meant_, which
+led to an investigation and the relief of the greatly excited public
+mind.
+
+The Superintendent showed some of his old tendencies, as he went round
+with us.
+
+"Do you know"--he broke out all at once--"why they don't take steppes in
+Tartary for establishing Insane Hospitals?"
+
+We both confessed ignorance.
+
+"Because there are _nomad_ people to be found there," he said, with a
+dignified smile.
+
+He proceeded to introduce us to different Inmates. The first was a
+middle-aged, scholarly man, who was seated at a table with a Webster's
+Dictionary and a sheet of paper before him.
+
+"Well, what luck to-day, Mr. Mowzer?" said the Superintendent.
+
+"Three or four only," said Mr. Mowzer. "Will you hear 'em now,--now I'm
+here?"
+
+We all nodded.
+
+"Don't you see Webster _ers_ in the words cent_er_ and theat_er_?
+
+"If he spells leather _lether_, and feather _fether_, isn't there danger
+that he'll give us a _bad spell of weather_?
+
+"Besides, Webster is a resurrectionist; he does not allow _u_ to rest
+quietly in the _mould_.
+
+"And again, because Mr. Worcester inserts an illustration in his text,
+is that any reason why Mr. Webster's publishers should hitch one on in
+their appendix? It's what I call a _Conntect-a-cut_ trick.
+
+"Why is his way of spelling like the floor of an oven? Because it is
+_under bread_.
+
+"Mowzer!" said the Superintendent,--"that word is on the Index!"
+
+"I forgot," said Mr. Mowzer;--"please don't deprive me of _Vanity Fair_,
+this one time, Sir.
+
+"These are all, this morning. Good day, Gentlemen. Then to the
+Superintendent,--Add you, Sir!"
+
+The next Inmate was a semi-idiotic-looking old man. He had a heap of
+block-letters before him, and, as we came up, he pointed, without saying
+a word, to the arrangements he had made with them on the table. They
+were evidently anagrams, and had the merit of transposing the letters of
+the words employed without addition or subtraction. Here are a few of
+them:--
+
+  TIMES.  SMITE!
+  POST.  STOP!
+
+  TRIBUNE.  TRUE NIB.
+  WORLD.  DR. OWL.
+
+  ADVERTISER.  (RES VERI DAT.
+               (IS TRUE. READ!
+
+  ALLOPATHY.  ALL O' TH' PAY.
+  HOMEOPATHY.  O, THE--! O! O, MY! PAH!
+
+The mention of several new York papers led to two or three questions.
+Thus: Whether the Editor of the Tribune was _H.G. really?_ If the
+complexion of his politics were not accounted for by his being an
+_eager_ person himself? Whether Wendell _Fillips_ were not a reduced
+copy of John _Knocks?_ Whether a New York _Feuilletoniste_ is not the
+same thing as a _Fellow down East?_
+
+At this time a plausible-looking, bald-headed man joined us, evidently
+waiting to take a part in the conversation.
+
+"Good morning, Mr. Riggles," said the Superintendent. "Anything fresh
+this morning? Any Conundrum?"
+
+"I haven't looked at the cattle," he answered, dryly.
+
+"Cattle? Why cattle?"
+
+"Why, to see if there's any _corn under 'em!_" he said; and immediately
+asked, "Why is Douglas like the earth?"
+
+We tried, but couldn't guess.
+
+"Because he was _flattened out at the polls!_" said Mr. Riggles.
+
+"A famous politician, formerly," said the Superintendent. "His
+grandfather was a _seize-Hessian-ist_ in the Revolutionary War. By the
+way, I hear the _freeze-oil_ doctrines don't go down at New Bedford."
+
+The next Inmate looked as if be might have been a sailor formerly.
+
+"Ask him what his calling was," said the Superintendent.
+
+"Followed the sea," he replied to the question put by one of us. "Went
+as mate in a fishing-schooner."
+
+"Why did you give it up?"
+
+"Because I didn't like working for _two mast-ers_," he replied.
+
+Presently we came upon a group of elderly persons, gathered about a
+venerable gentleman with flowing locks, who was propounding questions to
+a row of Inmates.
+
+"Can any Inmate give me a motto for M. Berger?" he said.
+
+Nobody responded for two or three minutes. At last one old man, whom I
+at once recognized as a Graduate of our University, (Anno 1800,) held up
+his hand.
+
+"Rem a _cue_ tetigit."
+
+"Go to the head of the Class, Josselyn," said the venerable Patriarch.
+
+The successful Inmate did as he was told, but in a very rough way,
+pushing against two or three of the Class.
+
+"How is this?" said the Patriarch.
+
+"You told me to go up _jostlin',_" he replied.
+
+The old gentlemen who had been shoved about enjoyed the Pun too much to
+be angry.
+
+Presently the Patriarch asked again,--
+
+"Why was M. Berger authorized to go to the dances given to the Prince?"
+
+The Class had to give up this, and he answered it himself:--
+
+"Because every one of his carroms was a _tick-it_ to the _ball_."
+
+"Who collects the money to defray the expenses of the last campaign in
+Italy?" asked the Patriarch.
+
+Here again the Class failed.
+
+"The war-cloud's rolling _Dun_," he answered.
+
+"And what is mulled wine made with?"
+
+Three or four voices exclaimed at once,----
+
+"_Sizzle-y_ Madeira!"
+
+Here a servant entered, and said, "Luncheon-time." The old gentlemen,
+who have excellent appetites, dispersed at once, one of them politely
+asking us if we would not stop and have a bit of bread and a little mite
+of cheese.
+
+"There is one thing I have forgotten to show you," said the
+Superintendent,--"the cell for the confinement of violent and
+unmanageable Punsters."
+
+We were very curious to see it, particularly with reference to the
+alleged absence of every object upon which a play of words could
+possibly be made.
+
+The Superintendent led us up some dark stairs to a corridor, then
+along a narrow passage, then down a broad flight of steps into another
+passage-way, and opened a large door which looked out on the main
+entrance.
+
+"We have not seen the cell for the confinement of 'violent and
+unmanageable' Punsters," we both exclaimed.
+
+"This is the _sell!_" he exclaimed, pointing to the outside prospect.
+
+My friend, the Director, looked me in the face so good-naturedly that I
+had to laugh.
+
+"We like to humor the Inmates," he said. "It has a bad effect, we
+find, on their health and spirits to disappoint them of their little
+pleasantries. Some of the jests to which we have listened are not new to
+me, though I dare say you may not have heard them often before. The same
+thing happens in general society,--with this additional disadvantage,
+that there is no punishment provided for 'violent and unmanageable'
+Punsters, as in our Institution."
+
+We made our bow to the Superintendent and walked to the place where our
+carriage was waiting for us. On our way, an exceedingly decrepit old man
+moved slowly towards us, with a perfectly blank look on his face, but
+still appearing as if he wished to speak.
+
+"Look!" said the Director,--"that is our Centenarian."
+
+The ancient man crawled towards us, cocked one eye, with which he seemed
+to sec a little, up at us, and said,--
+
+"Sarvant, young Gentlemen. Why is a--a--a--like a--a--a--? Give it up?
+Because it's a--a--a--a--."
+
+He smiled a pleasant smile, as if it were all plain enough.
+
+"One hundred and seven last Christmas," said the Director. "He lost his
+answers about the age of ninety-eight. Of late years he puts his whole
+Conundrums in blank,--but they please him just as well."
+
+We took our departure, much gratified and instructed by our visit,
+hoping to have some future opportunity of inspecting the Records of this
+excellent Charity and making extracts for the benefit of our Readers.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+THE QUESTION OF THE HOUR.
+
+
+Dean Swift, in a letter to Lord Bolingbroke, says that he does not
+"remember to have ever heard or seen one great genius who had long
+success in the ministry; and recollecting a great many in my memory and
+acquaintance, those who had the smoothest time were, at best, men of
+middling degree in understanding." However true this may be in the
+main,--and it undoubtedly is true that in ordinary times the speculative
+and innovating temper of an original mind is less safe than the patience
+of routine and persistence in precedent of a common-place one,--there
+are critical occasions to which intellect of the highest quality,
+character of the finest fibre, and a judgment that is inspired rather
+than confused by new and dangerous combinations of circumstances, are
+alone equal. Tactics and an acquaintance with the highest military
+authorities were adequate enough till they were confronted with General
+Bonaparte and the new order of things. If a great man struggling with
+the storms of fate be the sublimest spectacle, a mediocre man in the
+same position is surely the most pitiful. Deserted by his presence
+of mind, which, indeed, had never been anything but an absence of
+danger,--baffled by the inapplicability of his habitual principles of
+conduct, (if that may be called a principle, which, like the act of
+walking, is merely an unconscious application of the laws of gravity,)
+--helpless, irresolute, incapable of conceiving the flower Safety in
+the nettle Danger, much more of plucking it thence,--surely here, if
+anywhere, is an object of compassion. When such a one is a despot who
+has wrought his own destruction by obstinacy in a traditional evil
+policy, like Francis II. of Naples, our commiseration is outweighed by
+satisfaction that the ruin of the man is the safety of the state. But
+when the victim is a so-called statesman, who has malversated the
+highest trusts for selfish ends, who has abused constitutional forms
+to the destruction of the spirit that gave them life and validity, who
+could see nothing nobler in the tenure of high office than the means it
+seemed to offer of prolonging it, who knows no art to conjure the spirit
+of anarchy he has evoked but the shifts and evasions of a second-rate
+attorney, and who has contrived to involve his country in the confusion
+of principle and vacillation of judgment which have left him without
+a party and without a friend,--for such a man we have no feeling but
+contemptuous reprobation. Pan-urge in danger of shipwreck is but a
+faint type of Mr. Buchanan in face of the present crisis; and that poor
+fellow's craven abjuration of his "_former_ friend," Friar John, is
+magnanimity itself, compared with his almost-ex-Excellency's treatment
+of the Free States in his last Message to Congress. There are times
+when mediocrity is a dangerous quality, and a man may drown himself as
+effectually in milk-and-water as in Malmsey.
+
+The question, whether we are a Government or an Indian Council, we do
+not propose to discuss here; whether there be a right of secession
+tempered by a right of coercion, like a despotism by assassination, and
+whether it be expedient to put the latter in practice, we shall
+not consider: for it is not always the part of wisdom to attempt a
+settlement of what the progress of events will soon settle for us. Mr.
+Buchanan seems to have no opinion, or, if he has one, it is a halting
+between two, a bat-like cross of sparrow and mouse that gives timidity
+its choice between flight and skulking. Nothing shocks our sense of the
+fitness of things more than a fine occasion to which the man is wanting.
+Fate gets her hook ready, but the eye is not there to clinch with it,
+and so all goes at loose ends. Mr. Buchanan had one more chance offered
+him of showing himself a common-place man, and he has done it full
+justice. Even if they could have done nothing for the country, a few
+manly sentences might have made a pleasing exception in his political
+history, and rescued for him the fag-end of a reputation.
+
+Mr. Buchanan, by his training in a system of politics without a parallel
+for intrigue, personality, and partisanship, would have unfitted himself
+for taking a statesmanlike view of anything, even if he had ever been
+capable of it. His nature has been subdued to what it worked in. We
+could not have expected from him a Message around which the spirit, the
+intelligence, and the character of the country would have rallied. But
+he might have saved himself from the evil fame of being the first of our
+Presidents who could never forget himself into a feeling of the
+dignity of the place he occupied. He has always seemed to consider the
+Presidency as a retaining-fee paid him by the slavery-propagandists,
+and his Message to the present Congress looks like the last juiceless
+squeeze of the orange which the South is tossing contemptuously away.
+
+Mr. Buchanan admits as real the assumed wrongs of the South Carolina
+revolutionists, and even, if we understand him, allows that they are
+great enough to justify revolution. But he advises the secessionists to
+pause and try what can be done by negotiation. He sees in the internal
+history of the country only a series of injuries inflicted by the
+Free upon the Slave States; yet he affirms, that, so far as Federal
+legislation is concerned, the rights of the South have never been
+assailed, except in the single instance of the Missouri Compromise,
+which gave to Slavery the unqualified possession of territory which the
+Free States might till then have disputed. Yet that bargain, a losing
+one as it was on the part of the Free States, having been annulled, can
+hardly be reckoned a present grievance. South Carolina had quite as long
+a list of intolerable oppressions to resent in 1832 as now, and not one
+of them, as a ground of complaint, could be compared with the refusal
+to pay the French-Spoliation claims of Massachusetts. The secession
+movement then, as now, had its origin in the ambition of disappointed
+politicians. If its present leaders are more numerous, none of them are
+so able as Mr. Calhoun; and if it has now any other object than it had
+then, it is to win by intimidation advantages that shall more than
+compensate for its loss in the elections.
+
+In 1832, General Jackson bluntly called the South Carolina doctrines
+treason, and the country sustained him. That they are not characterized
+in the same way now does not prove any difference in the thing, but only
+in the times and the men. They are none the less treason because
+James Buchanan is less than Andrew Jackson, but they are all the more
+dangerous.
+
+It has been the misfortune of the United States that the conduct of
+their public affairs has passed more and more exclusively into the hands
+of men who have looked on politics as a game to be played rather than
+as a trust to be administered, and whose capital, whether of personal
+consideration or of livelihood, has been staked on a turn of the cards.
+A general skepticism has thus been induced, exceedingly dangerous
+in times like these. The fatal doctrine of rotation in office has
+transferred the loyalty of the numberless servants of the Government,
+and of those dependent on or influenced by them, from the nation to
+a party. For thousands of families every change in the National
+Administration is as disastrous as revolution, and the Government has
+thus lost that influence which the idea of permanence and stability
+would exercise in a crisis like the present. At the present moment, the
+whole body of office-holders at the South is changed from a conservative
+to a disturbing element by a sense of the insecurity of their tenure.
+Their allegiance having always been to the party in power at Washington,
+and not to the Government of the Nation, they find it easy to transfer
+it to the dominant faction at home.
+
+The subservience on the question of Slavery, which has hitherto
+characterized both the great parties of the country, has strengthened
+the hands of the extremists at the South, and has enabled them to get
+the control of public opinion there by fostering false notions of
+Southern superiority and Northern want of principle. We have done so
+much to make them believe in their importance to us, and given them so
+little occasion even to suspect our importance to them, that we have
+taught them to regard themselves as the natural rulers of the country,
+and to look upon the Union as a favor granted to our weakness, whose
+withdrawal would be our ruin. Accordingly, they have grown more and more
+exacting, till at length the hack politicians of the Free States have
+become so imbued with the notion of yielding, and so incapable of
+believing in any principle of action higher than temporary expedients
+to carry an election, or any object nobler than the mere possession of
+office for its own sake, that Mr. Buchanan gravely proposes that the
+Republican party should pacify South Carolina by surrendering the very
+creed that called it into existence and holds it together, the only
+fruit of its victory that made victory worth having. Worse than this,
+when the Free States by overwhelming majorities have just expressed
+their conviction, that slavery, as he creature of local law, can claim
+no legitimate extension beyond the limits of that law, he asks their
+consent to denationalize freedom and to nationalize slavery by an
+amendment of the Federal Constitution, that shall make the local law of
+the Slave States paramount throughout the Union. Mr. Buchanan would stay
+the yellow fever by abolishing the quarantine hospital and planting a
+good virulent case or two in every village in the land.
+
+We do not underestimate the gravity of the present crisis, and we agree
+that nothing should be done to exasperate it; but if the people of the
+Free States have been taught anything by the repeated lessons of bitter
+experience, it has been that submission is not the seed of conciliation,
+but of contempt and encroachment. The wolf never goes for mutton to the
+mastiff. It is quite time that it should be understood that freedom is
+also an institution deserving some attention in a Model Republic, that
+a decline in stocks is more tolerable and more transient than one in
+public spirit, and that material prosperity was never known to abide
+long in a country that had lost its political morality. The fault of the
+Free States in the eyes of the South is not one that can be atoned for
+by any yielding of special points here and there. Their offence is that
+they are free, and that their habits and prepossessions are those of
+Freedom. Their crime is the census of 1860. Their increase in numbers,
+wealth, and power is a standing aggression. It would not be enough to
+please the Southern States that we should stop asking them to abolish
+slavery,--what they demand of us is nothing less than that we should
+abolish the spirit of the age. Our very thoughts are a menace. It is not
+the North, but the South, that forever agitates the question of Slavery.
+The seeming prosperity of the cotton-growing States is based on a great
+mistake and a great wrong; and it is no wonder that they are irritable
+and scent accusation in the very air. It is the stars in their courses
+that fight against their system, and there are those who propose to make
+everything comfortable by Act of Congress.
+
+It is almost incredible to what a pitch of absurdity the Slave-holding
+party have been brought by the weak habit of concession which has been
+the vice of the Free States. Senator Green of Missouri, whose own State
+is rapidly gravitating toward free institutions, gravely proposes an
+armed police along the whole Slave frontier for the arrest of fugitives.
+Already the main employment of our navy is in striving to keep Africans
+out, and now the whole army is to mount guard to keep them in. This is
+but a trifle to the demands that will be made upon us, if we yield now
+under the threats of a mob,--for men acting under passion or terror, or
+both, are a mob, no matter what their numbers and intelligence.
+
+A dissolution of the Union would be a terrible thing, but not so
+terrible as an acquiescence in the theory that Property is the only
+interest that binds men together in society, and that its protection
+is the highest object of human government. Nothing could well be more
+solemn than the thought of a disruption of our great and prosperous
+Republic. Even if peaceful, the derangement consequent upon it would
+cause incalculable suffering and disaster. Already the mere threat
+of it, assisted by the efforts of interested persons, has caused a
+commercial panic. But would it be wisdom in the Free States to put
+themselves at the mercy of such a panic whenever the whim took South
+Carolina to be discontented? That would be the inevitable result of a
+craven spirit now. Let the Republican party be mild and forbearing,--for
+the opportunity to be so is the best reward of victory, and taunts and
+recriminations belong to boys; but, above all, let them be manly. The
+moral taint of once submitting to be bullied is a scrofula that will
+never out of the character.
+
+We do not believe that the danger is so great as it appears. Rumor is
+like one of those multiplying-mirrors that make a mob of shadows out
+of one real object. The interests of three-fifths of the Slave-holding
+States are diametrically opposed to secession; so are those of
+five-sixths of the people of the seceding States, if they did but know
+it. The difficulties in the way of organizing a new form of government
+are great, almost insuperable; the expenses enormous. As the public
+burdens grow heavier, the lesson of resistance and rebellion will find
+its aptest scholars in the non-slave-owning majority who will be paying
+taxes for the support of the very institution that has made and keeps
+them poor. Men are not long in arriving at just notions of the value of
+what they pay for, especially when it is for other people. Taxes are a
+price that people are slowest to pay for a cat in a bag. If matters are
+allowed to take their own course for a little longer, the inevitable
+reaction is sure to set in. The Hartford Convention gave more uneasiness
+to the Government and the country than the present movement in the
+South, but the result of it was the ruin of the Federal Party, and not
+of the Federal Union.
+
+Even if the secessionists could accomplish their schemes, who would
+be the losers? Not the Free States, certainly, with their variety of
+resources and industry. The laws of trade cannot be changed, and the
+same causes which have built up their agriculture, commerce, and
+manufactures will not cease to be operative. The real wealth
+and strength of states, other things being equal, depends upon
+homogeneousness of population and variety of occupation, with a common
+interest and common habits of thought. The cotton-growing States, with
+their single staple, are at the mercy of chance. India, Australia, nay,
+Africa herself, may cut the thread of their prosperity. Their population
+consists of two hostile races, and their bone and muscle, instead
+of being the partners, are the unwilling tools of their capital
+and intellect. The logical consequence of this political theory is
+despotism, which the necessity of coercing the subject race will make a
+military one. Already South Carolina is discussing a standing army. If
+history is not a lying gossip, the result of the system of labor will be
+Jamaica, and that of the system of polity, Mexico. Instead of a stable
+government, they will have a whirligig of _pronunciamientos_, or
+stability will be purchased at a cost that will make it intolerable.
+They have succeeded in establishing among themselves a fatal unanimity
+on the question of Slavery,--fatal because it makes the office of spy
+and informer honorable, makes the caprice of a mob the arbiter of
+thought, speech, and action, and debases public opinion to a muddy
+mixture of fear and prejudice. In peace, the majority of their
+population will be always looked on as conspirators; in war, they would
+become rebels.
+
+It is time that the South should learn, if they do not begin to suspect
+it already, that the difficulty of the Slavery question is slavery
+itself,--nothing more, nothing less. It is time that the North should
+learn that it has nothing left to compromise but the rest of its
+self-respect. Nothing will satisfy the extremists at the South short of
+a reduction of the Free States to a mere police for the protection of an
+institution whose danger increases at an equal pace with its wealth.
+
+It was the deliberate intention of Mr. Calhoun that the compact should
+be broken the moment the absolute control of Government passed out of
+the hands of the slaveholding clique. He was willing to wait till we
+had stolen Texas and paid a hundred millions for Cuba; but if the game
+seemed to be up, then secede at once. In a hasty moment, he started his
+revolution, when there was a stronger man than he to confront him. South
+Carolina was to all appearance as united then as now. But a few months
+brought a reaction, and no one was more relieved than Mr. Calhoun that
+matters stopped where they did. Whether the stirrers of the present
+excitement, which finds vacillation in the Executive and connivance
+In the Cabinet, will be wise enough to let it go out in the same way,
+remains to be seen; but the greatest danger of disunion, would spring
+from a want of self-possession and spirit in the Free States.
+
+
+
+
+REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.
+
+
+_Collection of Rare and Original Documents and Relations concerning the
+Discovery and Conquest of America, chiefly from the Spanish Archives_.
+Published in the Original, with Translations, Illustrative Notos, Maps,
+and Biographical Sketches. By K.G. SQUIER, M.A., F.S.A., etc., etc. New
+York: Charles B. Norton. 1860.
+
+No. I. Carta dirigida al Key de Espana, por el Licenciado Dr. Don DIEGO
+GARCIA DE PALACIO, Oydor de la Real Audiencia de Guatemala, Ano 1576.
+Being a Description of the Ancient Provinces of Guazacapan, Izalco,
+Cuscatlan, and Chiquimula, in the Audiencia of Guatemala: with an
+Account of the Languages, Customs, and Religion of their Aboriginal
+Inhabitants, and a Description of the Ruins of Copan. Square 8vo. pp.
+132.
+
+This tract is the first number of a series of Rare and Original
+Documents, relating to the first settlement of America by the Spaniards,
+which Mr. Squier proposes to edit and publish. The undertaking is one of
+interest to all students of American history, and deserves a generous
+encouragement from them. Its success must depend not on the usual
+machinery of bookselling so much as on the ready support of individuals.
+
+Mr. Squier's proposed collection resembles in its scope the well-known
+"Recueil des Documents et Memoires Originaux" of M. Ternaux-Compans.
+Familiar, by long residence and longer study, as few men are or ever
+have been, with those portions of our continent of which the Spaniards
+first took possession, acquainted with their antiquities and former
+condition, and a curious investigator of their present state and
+prospects, Mr. Squier is peculiarly fitted to select and edit--with
+judgment such documents of historical interest as his unrivalled
+opportunities have enabled him to collect.
+
+The Letter of Palacio is now for the first time published in the
+original, although it was largely used by Herrera in his "Historia
+General." "To me," says Mr. Squier, "the relation has a special
+interest. I have been over a great part of the ground that was traversed
+by its author, and I am deeply impressed with the accuracy of his
+descriptions.... His memoir will always stand as one of the best
+illustrations of an interesting country, as it was at the period
+immediately succeeding the Conquest." It appears, that, under an order
+from the Crown, Palacio was deputed to visit a number of the Provinces
+of Guatemala, and to report upon them, especially in respect to the
+condition of their native inhabitants. The memoir now published relates
+chiefly to the territory comprised in the present Republic of San
+Salvador. It shows Palacio to have been an intelligent observer, and a
+kindly, well-disposed man,--not free from the superstitions of his time
+and race, but less credulous than many of his contemporaries. His
+report is full of matter of value to the historical inquirer, and of
+entertainment for the general reader. His stories of the manners of the
+people, and his accounts of the animals of the district are brief, but
+characteristic. But the most interesting part of his narrative is that
+which relates to the wonderful ruins of Copan. It is a remarkable fact,
+stated by Mr. Squier in his Prefatory Note, that these ruins do not
+appear to have been noticed by any of the chroniclers of the country
+down to the time of Fuentes, who wrote in 1689, more than one hundred
+years after Palacio. It was not, indeed, until 1841, when Stephens
+published his account of them, that an accurate description was given
+to the world of these most interesting and most puzzling remains of a
+forgotten people and an unknown antiquity. Even in Palacio's time, only
+vague traditions existed regarding them. His account has a permanent
+value from being the earliest known, and as proving that within fifty
+years after the Spanish Conquest they presented very nearly the same
+appearance as at present.
+
+Mr. Squier has enriched Talacio's Letter with numerous and important
+notes. He claims a lenient judgment of his translation, which is printed
+side by side with the original, on account of the obscurities of the
+manuscript, and the uncertainty as to the meaning of some of the
+writer's expressions. But, allowing for these difficulties, we regret
+that Mr. Squier did not bestow a little more pains on this part of his
+work. He has fallen into some slight errors, which might easily have
+been corrected, and he has, as we think, lost something of the spirit of
+the original by too free a version. The book is one which in typographic
+beauty would meet the demands of the most exacting bibliographer. We
+regret the more that the pages are disfigured with misprints, many of
+which are left uncorrected in the long list of _Errata_, while others
+occur in the very list itself.
+
+
+1. _Le Panlatinisme, Confederation Gallo-Latine et Celto-Gauloise,
+Contre-Testament de Pierre le Grand et Contre-Panslavisme_. Paris:
+Passard, Libraire-Editeur. 1860. 8vo. pp. 260.
+
+2. _Testament de Pierre le Grand, ou Plan de Domination Europeenne
+laisse par lui a ses Descendants et Successeurs au Trone de la Russie_.
+Edition suivie de Notes et de Pieces Justificatives. Paris: Passard.
+1860. 8vo.
+
+We seem to be living in an age of pamphleteers. More than ever, both in
+France and Germany, are pamphlets the order of the day. In Paris
+alone, the year 1860 has given birth to hundreds of these writings of
+circumstance,--political squibs, visionary remodellings of European
+states,--vying with each other for ephemeral celebrity. They fill the
+windows of the book-shops, and are spread by scores along the stands
+in the numerous galleries which the Parisian population throngs of
+evenings. Those issued in the early part of the year have gradually
+descended from the rank of new publications, and may be found on
+every quay, spread out, for a few _centimes_, side by side with
+old weather-beaten books, odd volumes, refuse of libraries, which
+book-lovers daily finger through in the hope of finding some pearl, some
+rarity, in the worthless mass.
+
+Thus we have seen the interminable Rhine question discussed in its every
+possible phase,--still more that of Italy. Between come the Druses, the
+Orient, the Turks. Then Italy again, Garibaldi, Naples, the Pope.
+
+To state in general terms the tendency of these rockets of literature,
+or to arrive at the spirit which seems to pervade them, is not quite so
+easy as it would seem. They are written by authors of all party-colors,
+within certain impassable limits prescribed by the parental restrictions
+of Government. Still it seems to be the old story of soothing; and many
+a conclusion--as where England is smoothed down by a few flatteries and
+told that her most natural ally is France, or where Germany is heartily
+assured that she has nothing to fear, that all the changes proposed are
+for the good of the Teutonic race--reminds us very strongly of that
+widely known verse in child-literature,--
+
+  "Will you walk into my parlor," etc.
+
+We have before us, however, a work which, from its size and from
+the labor bestowed upon it, deserves to be ranked above the various
+productions that have scarcely called forth more than a passing notice
+in the daily press.
+
+The pamphlet named at the head of this article, and which is but a
+complement to the volume, is one of the numerous reconstructions and
+rearrangements of European limits made in the quiet of the study. Were
+it this alone, it would deserve but little attention. It is more. The
+author bases his theories upon other than political reasons, having
+labored hard to establish many debatable points of Ethnography in the
+interesting notes appended to the work, and which form by far the most
+remarkable part of it. So we have the question of Races discussed at
+full length. There is certainly some philological legerdemain, as may be
+seen from some of the convenient conclusions of the author concerning
+the Celts and the Gauls. He is full of such paragraphs as this in his
+argumentation:--
+
+  "It has seemed to us proved, that the names,
+  Volces, Volsks, Bolgs, Belgs, Belgians, Welsh,
+  Welchs, Waels, Wuelchs or Walchs, Walls,
+  Walloons, Valais, Valois, Vlaks, Wallachians,
+  Galatians, Galtachs, Galls, Gaels or Caels,
+  Gaelic, Galot, Gallegos, Gaul, and even Ola,
+  Olatz, and Vallus, were but one and the same
+  word under different forms."
+
+The point to be established at all hazards is, that the French,
+Spaniards, Portuguese, Italians, Belgians, and even the English and
+Greeks, form but one great family, of one hundred and fifteen million
+individuals,--the Gallo-Roman. This Neo-Latin world the author would
+wish combined in one grand confederation, like the States of America.
+Hence his use of the term _Panlatinism_, in opposition to the so much
+debated one of _Panslavism_. The merit of the work under consideration
+is, that, though decidedly French in all its views, it condenses in
+a few paragraphs the present mooted question of race. The idea of
+Panslavism, or the uniting of eighty millions of Sclavonians under one
+banner, was, in its origin, republican and federal, whatever it may
+have become since. Few words have acquired more diametrically opposite
+meanings, according as they were uttered by radical or conservative.
+Hence the confusion, hence the many strange phrases to be met with in
+the periodical press. The author of the present work has sought to throw
+some light on this important point. Leaving aside his prophetic fears of
+future shocks with American or Asiatic powers as visionary, we can say
+for the work that it presents in a clear light the question of races
+as referring to European politics. The notes are good, and no research
+seems to have been spared by the writer to establish the position he
+maintains.
+
+
+1. _Ancient Danish Ballads._ Translated from the Originals, by R.C.
+ALEXANDER PRIOR, M.D. London: Williams & Norgate. Leipzig: R. Hartmann.
+1860, 3 vols. pp. lx., 400, 468, 500.
+
+2. _Edinburgh Papers._ By ROBERT CHAMBERS, F.R.S.E., etc., etc. _The
+Romantic Scottish Ballads, their Epoch and Authorship._ W. & R.
+Chambers: London and Edinburgh. 1859. pp. 40.
+
+3. _The Romantic Scottish Ballads, and the Lady Wardlaw Heresy._ By
+NORVAL CLYNE. Aberdeen: A. Brown & Co. 1859. pp. 49.
+
+The expectations raised by the title of Dr. Prior's volumes are in a
+great measure disappointed by their contents. The book is of value only
+because it gives for the first time, in English, the substance of a
+large number of Danish ballads, and points out the relations between
+them and similar productions in other languages. Of the spirit and life
+of these remarkable poems a person hitherto unfamiliar with them would
+find but scanty indication in Dr. Prior's versions. He has merely done
+them into English in a somewhat mechanical way, and one scarcely gets
+a better notion of the more imaginative ones in his bald reproductions
+than of the "Iliad" from the analysis of that poem in the "Epistolae
+Obscurorum Virorum." It seems to require almost as peculiar powers to
+translate an old ballad as to write a new one.
+
+Dr. Prior complains of Jamieson, that his versions from the Danish are
+done in a broad Scotch dialect, almost as unintelligible to ordinary
+readers as the language of which they profess to give the meaning. But
+if any one compare Jamieson's rendering of "The Buried Mother" with Dr.
+Prior's, (Prior, vol. i. p. 368,) he will, we think, see cause to regret
+that Jamieson did not do what Dr. Prior has attempted, and that he has
+not left us a greater number of translations equally good. Jamieson's
+fault was not so much his broad Scotch as his over-fondness for
+archaisms, sometimes of mere spelling, which give rise to a needless
+obscurity. We think that he was theoretically right; but he should not
+have pushed his theory to the extent of puzzling the reader, where his
+aim was to give only that air of strangeness which allures the fancy. As
+respects ballads dealing with the supernatural, Jamieson's notion of
+the duty of a translator was certainly the true one. There is something
+almost ludicrous in a ghost talking the ordinary conversational language
+of every-day life, which might, to be sure, serve very well for some
+of Jung Stilling's spirits in bottle-green hunting-coats with brass
+buttons, but hardly for the majesty of buried Denmark. Dr. Prior may
+claim that his renderings are more literal; but it is the vice of
+literal translation, that the phrases of one language, if exactly
+reproduced in another, while they may have the same sense, convey a
+wholly different impression to the imagination. It is to such cases that
+the Italian proverb, _Tradutiore traditore_, applies. Dryden, citing
+approvingly Denham's verses to Fanshawe,
+
+  "They but preserve his ashes, thou his flame,
+  True to his sense, but truer to his fame,"
+
+says, with his usual pithiness, "Too faithfully is indeed pedantically."
+
+In Dr. Prior's version of the "The Buried Mother" we find a case
+precisely in point. The Stepmother says to the poor Orphans,--
+
+  "In blind-house shall ye lie all night."
+
+Jamieson gives it,--
+
+  "Says, 'Ye sall ligg i' the mirk all night.'"
+
+Now, the object in all translations of ballad-poetry being to reproduce
+simple and downright phrases with equal simplicity and force, to give
+us the same effects and not the same words, we vastly prefer Jamieson's
+verse to Dr. Prior's, in spite of the affectation of _ligg_ for _lie_.
+If _blind-house_ be the equivalent for _dark_ in the original, Dr.
+Prior should have told us so in a note, giving us the stronger (because
+simpler) English word in the text. He might as well write _hand-shoe_
+for _glove_, in a translation from the German. Elsewhere Jamieson errs
+in preferring _groff_ to _great_, and the more that _groff_ means more
+properly _coarse_ than _large_.
+
+The following couplet is also from Dr. Prior's translation of this
+ballad:--
+
+  "They cried one evening till the sound
+  Their mother heard beneath the ground."
+
+Jamieson has it,--
+
+  "'Twas lang i' the night, and the bairnies
+  grat [cried],
+  Their mither she under the mools [mould]
+  heard that."
+
+Again, Dr. Prior gives us,--
+
+  "Her eldest daughter then she sped
+  To fetch Child Dyring out of bed";
+
+instead of Jamieson's--
+
+  "Till her eldest dochter syne [then] said she,
+  'Ye bid Child Dyring come here to me.'"
+
+And, still worse,--
+
+  "Out from their chest she stretch'd her bones
+  And rent her way through earth and stones";
+
+where Jamieson is not only more literal, but more forcible,--
+
+  "Wi' her banes sae stark a bowt she gae
+  Hath riven both wall and marble gray."
+
+The original is better than either,--
+
+  "She upward heaved her mighty bones
+  And rived both wall and gray marble-stones."
+
+Jamieson had the true instinct of a translator, though his own verses
+defy the stanchest reader; and, reasoning by analogy, Dr. Prior's
+translations are so bad that he ought to be capable of very good
+original poetry.
+
+However, with all its defects, Dr. Prior's book is of value for the
+information it gives. Under the dead ribs of his translations the reader
+familiar with old ballads can create a life for himself, and can form
+some conception of the spirit and strength of the originals.
+
+Mr. Chambers's pamphlet is one that we should hardly have expected from
+the editor of the best collection of ballads in the language before
+that of Professor Child. Directly in the teeth of all probability, he
+attributes the bulk of the _romantic_ Scottish ballads to Lady Wardlaw,
+who wrote "Hardyknute." This is one of those theories (like that of Lord
+Bacon being the author of Shakspeare's plays) which cannot be argued,
+but which every one familiar with the subject challenges peremptorily.
+Without going very deeply into the matter, Mr. Norval Clyne has put in
+a clever plea in arrest of judgment. The truth is, that, in the present
+state of our knowledge, "Hardyknute" could not pass muster as an antique
+better than "Vortigern," or the poems of "Master Rowley"; and the notion
+that Lady Wardlaw could have written "Sir Patrick Spens" will not hold
+water better than a sieve, when we consider how hopelessly inferior are
+the imitations of old ballads written by Scott, with fifty times her
+familiarity with the originals, and a man of genius besides.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Miss Gilbert's Career_. An American Story. By J.G. HOLLAND. New York:
+Charles Scribner.
+
+There is scarcely a more hazardous experiment for any novelist than "a
+novel with a purpose." If the moral does not run away with the story, it
+is in most cases only because the author's lucky star has made the moral
+too feeble, in spite of his efforts, to do that or anything else,--in
+other words, because his book has fortunately defeated its own object.
+That any clever girl will be kept from the perilous paths of authorship
+by the warnings, however strongly inculcated, of any novel whatever, we
+are not prepared to assert: we venture to say no one will be deterred by
+the history of Miss Fanny Gilbert. If a woman's happiness is to be found
+in love, and not in fame, the question nevertheless recurs,--What is she
+to do before the love comes? Our author only shows that his heroine's
+restless unhappiness was owing to her having to wait for her heart to be
+awakened: to prove what he desires to prove, he should demonstrate that
+it was owing to her having adopted authorship during the time of her
+waiting. During that time, Miss Fanny Gilbert wrote novels, and was
+unhappy: would she have been happy, if, in the interval, she had
+chronicled small beer? And even admitting that her authorship caused her
+unhappiness, we can scarcely believe Dr. Holland prepared to say, after
+having allowed his heroine a real talent, as one condition of the
+problem, that she ought to have concealed that talent in the decorous
+napkin of silence.
+
+What the moral loses the story gains. Our author has lost nothing of
+that genuine love of Nature, of that quick perception of the comic
+element in men and things, of that delightful freshness and liveliness,
+which threw such a charm about the former writings of Timothy Titcomb.
+No story can be pronounced a failure which has vivacity and interest;
+and the volume before us adds to vivacity and interest vigorous sketches
+of character and scenery, droll conversation and incidents, a frequent
+and kindly humor, and, underlying all, a true, earnest purpose, which
+claims not only approval for the author, but respect for the man.
+
+Dr. Holland describes admirably whatever he has himself seen.
+Unfortunately, he has not seen his hero or his heroine. About Arthur
+Blague there is nothing real or distinctive. There is a life and reality
+in many scenes of his experience; but the central figure of the group
+stands conventional and inanimate,--the ordinary walking gentleman of
+the stage,--the stereo-typed hero of the novel,--hero only by virtue of
+his finally marrying the heroine. The one merit of the delineation--that
+it is a portrait of a delicate Christian gentleman--is sadly marred by
+the vulgar smartness of Arthur's repartees with the scampish New-Yorker.
+A victory in such a contest was by no means necessary to vindicate the
+hero's superiority; and if he so far forgot himself as to engage at all
+in the degrading warfare, a defeat would have been more creditable. His
+retorts are undeniably smart; but "smartness" is the attribute of a
+"fellow," not of a "gentleman."
+
+Miss Fanny Gilbert is a warm-hearted, high-spirited girl, clever and
+ambitious, and disposed at first to look contemptuously on poor Arthur,
+whose humble labors appear in most dingy and sordid colors, when
+contrasted with the fair Fanny's gorgeous dreams. She is not a very
+fascinating nor a very real heroine; but she is better than most of our
+heroines, and some of her experiences are very pleasantly told.
+
+Arthur's miserly employer is very good, and his shrewd friend Cheek is
+capitally drawn. It was a peculiarly happy thought to make Cheek into
+a railroad-conductor, and finally into a "gentlemanly and efficient"
+superintendent. Nothing else would have suited his character half so
+well. The business-like religionists, Moustache and Breastpin, are not
+so good as the author meant to have them. The young bookseller is very
+well done, and Dr. Gilbert very natural and lifelike. The story of the
+Doctor's awakened interest in his daughter's success, and of his journey
+to New York, is very well told. We like especially the lesson which
+the triumphant authoress, in the full glory of her fame, receives,
+on finding that her father sets a higher value on his son's least
+achievement than on his daughter's highest success,--that, however a
+woman may deserve a man's place, the world will never award it to her.
+It would have been more effective, however, if Dr. Holland had not been
+quite so anxious that no one should fail to perceive the moral,--if
+he had had a little more confidence in his readers. But we can give
+unqualified praise to the scene between Miss Gilbert and the little
+crippled boy, which is one of the most beautiful and touching pictures
+ever yet presented.
+
+It is a real satisfaction to find a book which one may venture to
+criticize fearlessly, knowing that it will bear the test,--especially
+at present, when one needs be as chary of trying any book fairly as
+Don Quixote was of proving his unlucky helmet. And an additional
+satisfaction is caused by the fact, that the book, not only in origin,
+but in essence, is American from cover to cover.
+
+
+
+
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