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| author | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-15 04:36:03 -0700 |
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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/11122-0.txt b/11122-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..1cbcc0d --- /dev/null +++ b/11122-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,21101 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 11122 *** + +CHOICE SPECIMENS + +OF + +AMERICAN LITERATURE, + +AND + +LITERARY READER, + + + +BEING SELECTIONS FROM THE CHIEF AMERICAN WRITERS, + +BY + +PROF. BENJ. N. MARTIN, D.D., L.H.D., PROFESSOR OF THE UNIVERSITY OF THE +CITY OF NEW YORK. 1874 + + + +PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. + +The former edition of this work was prepared simply as a supplement to +Shaw's "Choice Specimens of English Literature." Though it extended to +a larger size than had been anticipated, and was therefore issued in a +separate volume, it still proved so straitened in point of space as to +be in some important respects defective and inadequate. The decision of +the publishers to reprint it in an enlarged form furnishes to the editor +a welcome opportunity to correct its deficiencies, and to make several +important emendations. + +When the work of collecting suitable extracts from the great body of our +literature was fairly entered upon, it soon became apparent that little +aid could be had from the earlier manuals. Besides being in great +measure obsolete, they were from the beginning disproportionate, and +geographically too local in subject and spirit; both of which may be +deemed grave defects. + +The last twenty years have made great changes in American authorship. +Many new names must now be added to the older lists, and many formerly +familiar ones must be dropped from them. Hence these extracts have for +the most part been derived, with assiduous care, directly from the +collected works of our standard authors. This part of my labor has been +greatly facilitated by the courtesy of the gentlemen connected with the +Society, the Mercantile, and the Astor, Library, whose constant kindness +I gratefully acknowledge. + +The principal alterations which will be found in this edition are the +following. + +1. The extracts, formerly, of necessity, brief and fragmentary, have +given place to more extended and coherent passages. + +2. A much larger space has been allotted to the more eminent authors. +Such writers as Franklin, Jefferson, Calhoun, Webster, Wirt, Irving, +Cooper, Hawthorne, Channing, Beecher, Prescott, Motley, Shea, Bryant, +Poe, Emerson, and Lowell, have been much more adequately exhibited. + +3. Many later writers have been added, so that the work more fully +represents the rapid development of literary effort among us. + +4. A few writers, formerly included, have been dropped from the list, +not always as less deserving a place, but sometimes as having less +adaptation to the purposes of the book. + +Much care has been bestowed upon the dates of the several authors, and +in bringing up details of information to the latest period. The same +pains have been taken to furnish a just representation of the writers, +too often overlooked in our manuals, of the Southern and Western +portions of our country. Though often wanting in mere grace of style, +they are apt to be original and vigorous; and often possessing valuable +material, they are well worthy of perusal. In all these respects this +collection has been carefully elaborated; and the editor hopes that it +will be found to give a somewhat proportionate and complete view for its +compass, of our best literature. + +In adapting the selections to Mr. Tuckerman's interesting "Sketch of +American Literature," specimens have generally been taken from several +authors in each of his groups. Some names not found in his "Sketch," +have been introduced, chiefly for the fuller illustration of the +literature of the south and west. In this particular, Coggeshall's +"Poets and Poetry of the West" has afforded great assistance. Among +the more recent aids of the same kind, I must also mention Davidson's +"Living Writers of the South," and Raymond's "Southland Writers." +Especial acknowledgment is due to the "Cyclopedia" of the Messrs. +Duyckinck; Appleton's "Annual Cyclopedia" has furnished many important +dates; and I have occasionally been indebted to the works of Allibone, +Cheever, Griswold, Cleveland, Hart, and Underwood. Not only the local +literature however, but the several professions, and the great religious +denominations, are also represented by prominent writers. + +It seemed unnecessary to treat the female writers as a distinct class; +they are, therefore, arranged under the departments to which they +respectively belong, as Essayists, Novelists, Poets, &c. + +I should be claiming a merit which does not belong to me, should I fail +to say, that, for much of the labor which this treatise has involved, I +am indebted to the co-operation of my brother, Mr. William T. Martin, +whose acquaintance with our literature has not often been surpassed, and +whose valuable aid and counsel have been freely afforded me. + +The hours which have been spent in culling extracts from so many able +and entertaining writers, though laborious, have been to the editor full +of interest, and often of delight. He trusts that these fruits of his +labor will be useful, in imparting, especially to his youthful readers, +not only an acquaintance with the best of our national authors, but a +taste for literature, and a good ideal of literary excellence, than +which few things in intellectual education are more to be esteemed. If +successful in these respects, he will be abundantly satisfied; and in +this hope, he submits his work to the judgment of the public. + + + + +CONTENTS + + + +CHAPTER I. + + +=_1._= RELIGIOUS WRITERS OF THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES. + + Roger Williams, 1598-1683 + 1. True Liberty defined. + + Cotton Mather, 1663-1728 + 2. Preservation of New England Principles. + + Jonathan Edwards, 1703-1758 + 3. Meaning of the Phrase Moral Inability. + + Samuel Davies, 1725-1761 + 4. Life and Immortality revealed through the Gospel. + + Nathaniel Emmons, 1745-1840 + 5. Rule of Private Judgment. + + + =_2._= HISTORICAL WRITERS OF THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH + CENTURIES. + + Cadwallader Colden, 1688-1776 + 6. The Five Nations assert their Superiority. + + William Stith, 1689-1755 + 7. The rule of Powhatan. + 8. Pocahontas in England. + + William Smith, 1728-1793 + 9. Manners of the People of New York. + + + =_3._= MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS OF THE SEVENTEENTH AND + EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES. + + John Winthrop, 1587-1649 + 10. True Liberty defined. + 11. Proposed Treatment of the Indians. + + William Byrd, 1674-1744 + 12. The Ginseng and Snakeroot Plants. + + Benjamin Franklin, 1706-1790 + 13. Good Resolutions.--The Croaker. + 14. Franklin's Electrical Kite. + 15. Motion for Prayers in the Convention. + 16. The Ephemeron. An Emblem. + + + =_4._= LATER RELIGIOUS WRITERS AND DIVINES. + + John Woolman, 1730-1772 + 17. Remarks on Slavery and Labor. + + John M. Mason, 1770-1829 + 18. Grandeur of the Bible Society. + 19. The Right of the State to Educate. + + Timothy Dwight, 1752-1817 + 20. The Wilderness reclaimed. + 21. The Glory of Nature, from God. + + John Henry Hobart, 1775-1830 + 22. The Divine Glory in Redemption. + + Lyman Beecher, 1775-1863 + 23. The Being of a God. + + William Ellery Channing, 1780-1842 + 24. Character of Napoleon. + 25. Grandeur of the prospect of Immortality. + 26. The Duty of the Free States. + + Edward Payson, 1783-1827 + 27. Natural Religion. + + Joseph S. Buckminster, 1784-1812 + 28. Necessity of Regeneration. + + Nathaniel W. Taylor, 1786-1858 + 29. Proof of Immortality from the Moral Nature of Man. + + Edward Hitchcock, 1793-1864 + 30. Geological Proof of Divine Benevolence. + + John P. Durbin, 1800- + 31. First Sight of Mount Sinai. + + Leonard Bacon, 1802- + 32. The Day approaching. + 33. The Benefits of Capital. + + James W. Alexander, 1804-1859 + 34. The Church a Temple. + + Martin J. Spaulding, 1810-1872 + 35. Trials of the Pioneer Catholic Clergy in the West. + + James H. Thornwell, 1811-1862 + 36. Evil tendencies of an act of Sin. + + Charles P. McIlvaine, 1799-1873 + 37. Attestations of the Resurrection. + + George W. Bethune, 1805-1862 + 38. Aspirations towards Heaven. + 39. The Prospects of Art in the United States. + + William R. Williams, 1804- + 40. Lead us not into Temptation. + + George B. Cheever, 1807- + 41. Sin distorts the judgment. + 42. Mont Blanc. + + Horace Bushnell, 1804- + 43. Unconscious Influence. + 44. The True Rest of the Christian. + + Alfred T. Bledsoe, about 1809- + 45. Moral Evil consistent with the Holiness of God. + + Richard Fuller, 1808- + 46. The Desire of all Nations shall come. _Haggai_ ii. 7. + + Henry Ward Beecher, 1813- + 47. A Picture in a College at Oxford. + 48. Frost on the Window. + 49. Nature designed for our enjoyment. + 50. Life in the Country. + 51. The Conception of Angels, Superhuman. + + John McClintock, 1814-1870 + 52. The Christian the only true Lover of Nature. + + Noah Porter, 1811- + 53. Science magnifies God. + + William H. Milburn, 1823- + 54. The Pioneer Preachers of the Mississippi Valley. + + + =_5._= ORATORS, AND LEGAL AND POLITICAL WRITERS, OF THE ERA + OF THE REVOLUTION. + + John Dickinson, 1732-1808 + 55. Aspect of the War in May, 1779. + + John Adams, 1735-1826 + 56. Character of James Otis. + 57. The Requisites of a Good Government. + + Patrick Henry, 1736-1799 + 58. The Necessity of the War. + 59. The Constitution should be amended before Adoption. + + John Rutledge, 1735-1826 + 60. An Independent Judiciary the Safeguard of Liberty. + + Thomas Jefferson, 1743-1826 + 61. Essential Principles of American Government. + 62. Character of Washington. + 63. Geographical Limits of the Elephant and the Mammoth. + 64. The Unhappy Effects of Slavery. + + John Jay, 1745-1829 + 65. An Appeal to Arms. + + + =_6._= ORATORS, AND LEGAL AND POLITICAL WRITERS, OF THE ERA + SUBSEQUENT TO THE REVOLUTION. + + Alexander Hamilton, 1757-1804 + 66. Nature of the Federal Debt. + 67. The French Revolution. + + Fisher Ames, 1758-1808 + 68. Obligation of National Good Faith. + + Gouverneur Morris, 1752-1816 + 69. Qualifications of a Minister of Foreign Affairs. + + William Pinkney, 1764-1820 + 70. Responsibility for Slavery. + 71. American Belligerent Rights. + + James Madison, 1751-1836 + 72. Value of a Record of the Debates on the Federal Constitution. + 73. Inscription for a Statue of Washington. + + John Randolph, 1773-1832 + 74. Change is not Reform. + 75. The Error of Decayed Families. + + James Kent, 1763-1847 + 76. Law of the States. + + Edward Livingston, 1764-1836 + 77. The Proper Office of the Judge. + + John Quincy Adams, 1767-1848 + 78. The Right of Petition Universal. + 79. The Administration of Washington. + + Henry Clay, 1777-1852 + 80. Emancipation of the South American States. + 81. Dangers of Disunion. + + John C. Calhoun, 1782-1850 + 82. Dangers of an Unlimited Power of Removal from Office. + 83. Peculiar merit of our Political System. + 84. Concurrent Majorities supersede Force. + + Daniel Webster, 1782-1852 + 85. Inestimable Value of the Federal Union;--Extract from the Reply + to Hayne. + 86. Object of the Bunker Hill Monument. + 87. Benefits of the U.S. Constitution. + 88. Right of changing Allegiance. + + Joseph Story, 1779-1845 + 89. Chief Justice Marshall. + 90. Progress of Jurisprudence. + + Lewis Cass, 1782-1866 + 91. Policy of Removing the Indians. + + Rufus Choate, 1799-1859 + 92. Conservative Force of the American Bar. + 93. The Age of the Pilgrims the Heroic Period of our History. + + William H. Seward, 1801-1872 + 94. Military Services of Lafayette in America. + + Abraham Lincoln, 1809-1865 + 95. Obligation to the Patriot Dead. + + Charles Sumner, 1811-1873 + 96. Prospective Results of the Kansas and Nebraska Bill. + 97. Heroic Effort cannot Fail. + 98. Our Foreign Relations. + 99. Prophetic Voices about America. + + Alexander H. Stephens, 1812- + 100. Origin of the American Flag. + + + =_7._= BIOGRAPHICAL WRITERS. + + Benjamin Rush, 1745-1813 + 101. Life of Edward Drinker, a Centenarian. + + John Marshall, 1755-1835 + 102. The Conquest of Canada. + + John Armstrong, 1759-1843 + 103. Capture of Stoney Point. + + Charles Caldwell, 1772-1853 + 104. A Lecture of Dr. Rush. + + Thomas H. Benton, 1783-1858 + 105. The Character of Macon. + + Alexander Slidell Mackenzie, 1803-1848 + 106. Recapture of the Frigate Philadelphia, at Tripoli. + + I.F.H. Claiborne. About 1804- + 107. Tecumseh's Speech to the Creek Indians. + + George W. Greene, 1811- + 108. Foreign Officers in the Revolutionary Army. + + James Parton, 1822- + 109. Career and Character of Aaron Burr. + 110. Henry Clay and the Western Bar. + 111. Western Theatres. + + + =_8._= HISTORY, GENERAL AND SPECIAL. + + John Heckewelder, 1743-1823 + 112. Settlements of the Christian Indians. + + Jeremy Belknap, 1744-1798 + 113. The Mast Pine. + + David Ramsay, 1749-1815 + 114. Feeling of South Carolina towards the Mother Country. + + Henry Lee, 1756-1818 + 115. Indian Services of General Rodgers Clarke. + 116. The career of Captain Kirkwood. + + Peter S. Duponceau. 1760-1844 + 117. Character of William Penn. + + Charles J. Ingersoll, 1782-1862 + 118. Calhoun Characterized. + 119. Battle of Chippewa. + + Henry M. Brackenridge, 1786-1871 + 120. Old St. Genevieve, in Missouri. + + Gulian C. Verplanck, 1786-1870 + 121. The Profession of the Schoolmaster. + + John W. Francis, 1789-1861 + 122. Public Changes during a Single Lifetime. + + William Meade, 1789-1862 + 123. Character of the Early Virginia Clergy. + + Jared Sparks, 1794-1866 + 124. The Battle of Bennington. + 125. Services, Death, and Character of Pulaski. + + William H. Prescott, 1796-1859 + 126. Moral Consequences of the Discovery of America. + 127. Picture-writing of the Mexicans. + 128. Ransom and Doom of the Inca. + + George Bancroft, 1800- + 129. Virginia and its Inhabitants, in early times. + 130. Contrast of English and French Colonization in America. + 131. Death of Montcalm. + 132. Character of the Declaration of Independence. + 133. The First Policy of Spain in the American Revolution. + + J.G.M. Ramsey. About 1800- + 134. The Military Services of General Sevier. + + Charles Gayarré, 1805- + 135. General Jackson at New Orleans. + + Brantz Mayer, 1809- + 136. Rekindling the Sacred Fire in Mexico. + + Albert J. Pickett, 1810-1858 + 137. The Indians and the First Settlers in Alabama. + + Charles W. Upham, 1803- + 138. Defeat of the Indian King Philip. + + John L. Motley, 1814- + 139. Character of Alva. + 140. Siege and Abandonment of Ostend. + 141. The Rise of the Dutch Republic. + + Alex'r B. Meek, 1814-1865 + 142. Exiled French Officers in Alabama. + 143. The Youth of the Indian Chief, Weatherford. + + Abel Stevens, 1815- + 144. The Early Methodist Clergy in America. + + Francis Parkman, 1823- + 145. The Old Western Hunters and Trappers. + 146. Marquette Exploring the Upper Mississippi. + + John G. Shea, 1824- + 147. Difficulties of the Catholic Indian Missionaries. + 148. Exploration of the Mississippi. + + John G. Palfrey, 1796- + 149. Happiness of Winthrop's Closing Years. + + + + CHAPTER II. + + + =_1._= ESSAYISTS, MORALISTS, AND REFORMERS. + + Joseph Dennie, 1768-1813 + 150. Reflections on the Seasons. + + William Gaston, 1778-1844 + 151. The Importance of Integrity. + + Jesse Buel, 1778-1839 + 152. Extent and Defects of American Agriculture. + + Robert Walsh, 1784-1859 + 153. False Sympathy with Criminals. + + Thomas S. Grimke, 1786-1834 + 154. Literary Excellence of the English Bible. + + Henry C. Carey, 1793- + 155. Agriculture as a Science. + + Edmund Ruffin, 1793-1863 + 156. Improvement of Acid Soils. + + Francis Wayland, 1796-1865 + 157. Superiority of the Moral Sentiments. + + Horace Mann, 1796-1857 + 158. Thoughts for a Young Man. + + Orestes A. Brownson, 1800- + 159. The Duty of Progress. + 160. Catholic Europe in the Seventeenth Century, despotic. + + Theodore D. Woolsey, 1801- + 161. Importance of the Study of International Law. + + Taylor Lewis, 1802- + 162. Unity of the Mosaic Account of the Creation. + 163. Cruel Intestine Wars caused by National Division. + + Horace Greeley, 1811-1872 + 164. The Problem of Labor. + 165. The Beneficence of Labor-saving Inventions. + 166. Literature as a Vocation;--the Editor. + 167. Tranquility of Rural Life. + + Theodore Parker, 1810-1860 + 168. Winter and Spring. + 169. The true idea of a Christian Church. + 170. Character of Franklin. + 171. Character of Jefferson. + + Wendell Phillips, 1811- + 172. The War for the Union. + 173. Character of Toussaint L'Ouverture. + + Thomas Starr King, 1824-1864 + 174. Great Principles and Small Duties. + + + =_2._= GENERAL AND POLITE LITERATURE. + + William Wirt, 1772-1834 + 175. The Example of Patrick Henry no argument for Indolence. + 176. Jefferson's Seat at Monticello. + + Timothy Flint, 1780-1840 + 177. The Western Boatman. + + Washington Irving, 1783-1859 + 178. Title and Table of Contents of Knickerbocker's History of New + York. + 179. The Army at New Amsterdam. + 180. A Mother's Memory. + 181. Columbus a Prisoner. + 182. Arrival of Columbus at Court. + 183. A Time of Unexampled Prosperity. + 184. Death and Burial of General Braddock. + 185. Baron Steuben in the Revolutionary Army. + + Richard H. Wilde, 1780-1847 + 186. Interest of Tasso's Life. + + George Ticknor, 1791-1871 + 187. The Design of Cervantes in writing Don Quixote. + + James Hall, 1793-1868 + 188. Description of a Prairie. + + H.R. Schoolcraft, 1793-1864 + 189. The Chippewa Indian. + + Edward Everett, 1794-1865 + 190. Astronomy for all Time. + 191. Description of a Sunrise. + 192. The Celtic Immigration. + + Hugh S. Legaré. 1797-1843 + 193. The Study of the Ancient Classics. + 194. Disadvantages of Colonial Life. + + Francis L. Hawks, 1798-1866 + 195. Japan interesting in many Aspects. + + George P. Marsh, 1801- + 196. Method of learning English. + 197. The Evergreens of Southern Europe. + + George H. Calvert, 1803- + 198. Estimate of Coleridge. + + Ralph W. Emerson, 1803- + 199. Influence of Nature. + 200. The power of Childhood. + 201. Advantage of working in harmony with Nature. + 202. Rules for Reading. + + John R. Bartlett, 1805- + 203. Lynch Law at El Paso. + + Nat'l P. Willis, 1807-1867 + 204. The American Abroad. + 205. Character and Writings of James Hillhouse. + + H.W. Longfellow, 1807- + 206. The interrupted Legend. + + Henry Reed, 1808-1854 + 207. Legendary Period of Britain. + + C.M. Kirkland, 1808-1864 + 208. The Felling of a Great Tree. + 209. The Bee Tree. + + Margaret Fuller Ossoli 1810-1850 + 210. Carlyle characterized. + + Oliver W. Holmes, 1809- + 211. Consequences of exposing an old error. + 212. Pleasures of Boating. + 213. The unspoken Declaration. + 214. Mechanics of Vital Action. + + John Wm. Draper, 1810- + 215. Truths in the ancient Philosophies. + 216. Future Influence of America. + + James R. Lowell, 1810- + 217. New England two Centuries ago. + 218. From an Essay on Dryden. + 219. Love of Birds and Squirrels. + 220. Chaucer's love of Nature. + + Edgar A. Poe, 1811-1849 + 221. The Chiming of the Clock. + 222. The Philosophy of Composition. + + H.T. Tuckerman, 1813-1871 + 223. The Heart superior to the Intellect. + + H.N. Hudson, 1814- + 224. Instructive Character of Shakespeare's Works. + + Mary H. Eastman. About 1817- + 225. Lake Itasca, the Source of the Mississippi. + 226. A Plea for the Indians. + + Mary E. Moragne, 1815- + 227. The Huguenot Town. + + Richard H. Dana, Jr., 1815- + 228. A Death at Sea. + + Evert A. Duyckinck, 1816- + 229. Newspapers. + + Horace B. Wallace, 1817-1852 + 230. Art an Emanation of Religious Affection. + + H.D. Thoreau, 1817-1862 + 231. Description of "Poke" or Garget, (Phytolacca Decandra). + 232. Walden Pond. + 233. Wants of the Age. + + Elizabeth F. Ellett, 1818- + 234. Escape of Mary Bledsoe from the Indians. + + James J. Jarves, 1818- + 235. The Art Idea. + + Edwin P. Whipple, 1819- + 236. Poets and Poetry of America. + + J.T.L. Worthington, 1847- + 237. The Sisters. + + Alice Cary, 1820-1871 + 238. Clovernook, the End of the History. + + Donald G. Mitchell, 1822- + 239. A Talk about Porches. + + Richard Grant White, 1822- + 240. The Character of Shakespeare's Style. + + Thos. W. Higginson, 1823- + 241. Elegance of French Style. + + Charles G. Leland, 1824- + 242. Aspect of Nuremberg. + + Geo. Wm. Curtis, 1824- + 243. Under the Palms. + + John L. McConnell, 1826- + 244. The Early Western Politician. + + Sarah J. Lippincott. About 1833 + 245. Death in Town, and in Country. + + Francis Bret Harte, 1837- + 246. Birth of a Child in a Miner's Camp. + + Wm. D. Howells, 1837- + 247. Snow in Venice. + + Mary A. Dodge, 1838- + 248. Scenery of the Upper Mississippi. + + + =_3._= LATER MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS. + + George Washington, 1732-1799 + 249. Natural advantages of Virginia. + + Matthew F. Maury, 1806-1873 + 250. The Mariner's Guide across the Deep. + 251. The Gulf Stream. + + O.M. Mitchell, 1810-1862 + 252. The Great Unfinished Problems of the Universe. + + + =_4._= NATURAL HISTORY, SCENERY, ETC. + + William Bartram, 1739-1813 + 253. Scenes on the Upper Oconee, Georgia. + 254. The Wood Pelican of Florida. + + + Alex'r Wilson, 1766-1813 + 255. Nest of the Red-headed Woodpecker. + 256. The White-headed, or Bald Eagle. + + Stephen Elliott, 1771-1830 + 257. Completeness and variety of Nature. + + John J. Audubon, 1776-1851 + 258. The Passenger Pigeon. + 259. Emigrants Removing Westward. + 260. Interest of Exploration in the Remote West. + + Daniel Drake, 1785-1852 + 261. Objects of the Western Mound Builders. + + John Bachman, 1790-1874 + 262. The Opossum. + + J.A. Lapham, 1811- + 263. The Smaller Lakes of Wisconsin. + 264. Ancient Earthworks. + + Chas. W. Webber, 1819-1856 + 265. The Mocking Bird. + + Chas. Lanman, 1819- + 266. Maple Sugar-Making among the Indians. + + Ephraim G. Squier, 1821- + 267. Indian Pottery. + + + =_5._= WRITERS OF TRAVEL AND ADVENTURE. + + Benj'n Silliman, 1779-1864 + 268. The Falls of Montmorenci. + + John L. Stephens, 1805-1852 + 269. Discovery of a Ruined City in the Woods. + + John C. Fremont, 1813- + 270. Ascent of a Peak of the Rocky Mountains. + 271. The Columbia River, Oregon. + + Elisha K. Kane, 1822-1857 + 272. Discovery of an Open Arctic Sea. + + Bayard Taylor, 1825- + 273. Monterey, California. + 274. Approach to San Francisco. + 275. Swiss Scenery;--a Battlefield;--Picturesque Dwellings. + + + =_6._= NOVELISTS AND WRITERS OF FICTION. + + Chas. Brockden Brown, 1771-1810 + 276. The Yellow Fever in Philadelphia. + + Washington Allston, 1779-1843 + 277. Impersonation of the Power of Evil. + 278. On a Picture by Caracci. + 279. Originality of Mind. + + James K. Paulding, 1779-1860 + 280. Characteristics of the Dutch and German Settlers. + 281. Abortive Towns. + + Jas. Fenimore Cooper, 1789-1851 + 282. The Shooting Match. + 283. Long Tom Coffin. + 284. Death of the Old Trapper in the Pawnee Village. + 285. Escape from the Wreck. + 286. Naval Results of the War of 1812. + + Catharine M. Sedgwick, 1789-1867 + 287. The Minister Condemning Vain Apparel. + 288. Kosciusko's Garden at West Point. + + John Neal, 1793- + 289. The Nature of True Poetry. + + John P. Kennedy, 1795-1870 + 290. The Mansion at Swallow Barn. + 291. A Disappointed Politician. + 292. Wirt's Style of Oratory. + + William Ware, 1797-1852 + 293. The Christian Martyr. + + Lydia M. Child, 1802- + 294. Ill temper contagious. + + Robert M. Bird, 1803-1854 + 295. The Quaker Huntsman. + + Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1805-1864 + 296. Portrait of Edward Randolph. + 297. Description of an Old Sailor. + 298. A Picture of Girlhood. + 299. Sculpture: Art and Artists. + 300. Ruins of Furness Abbey. + 301. Scenery of the Merrimac. + 302. A Dungeon of Ancient Rome. + + Wm. Gilmore Simms, 1806-1870 + 303. The Battle of Eutaw. + 304. Character and Services of Gen. Marion. + + Harriet B. Stowe, 1812- + 305. Memorials of a Dead Child. + 306. The Old Meeting House. + + Maria J. McIntosh, 1815- + 307. Debate between Webster and Hayne. + + Catharine A. Warfield, 1817- + 308. View of the Sky by Night. + + Herman Melville, 1819- + 309. Sperm-Whale Fishing. + + Josiah G. Holland, 1819- + 310. The Wedding-Present. + + John Esten Cooke, 1830- + 311. The Portrait. + 312. Aspects of Summer. + + Sarah A. Dorsey. About 1835- + 313. Scenery at Natchez, Mississippi. + + Anne M. Crane, + 314. Impression of a Sea-Scene. + + Mary C. Ames. About 1837- + 315. A Railway Station in the Country. + + + + CHAPTER III. + + + POETS. + + Francis Hopkinson, 1737-1791 + 316. From "The Battle of the Kegs." + + John Trumbull, 1750-1831 + 317. From "McFingall." + + Philip Freneau, 1752-1832 + 318. From "An Indian Burying-ground." + + David Humphreys, 1753-1818 + 319. From "The Happiness of America." + + Sam'l J. Smith, 1771-1835 + 320. "Peace, Be Still." + + William Clifton, 1772-1799 + 321. From "Lines to Fancy." + + Robert Treat Paine, 1773-1811 + 322. The Miser. + + John Blair Linn, 1777-1804 + 323. From "The Powers of Genius." + + Francis S. Key, 1779-1843 + 324. "The Star-Spangled Banner." + + Washington Allston, 1779-1843 + 325. From "The Sylphs of the Seasons." + + John Pierpont, 1785-1866 + 326. A Temperance Song. + 327. The. Pilgrim Fathers. + + Jas. G. Percival, 1786-1856 + 328. The Coral Grove. + + Richard H. Dana, 1787- + 329. From "The Buccaneer." + + Richard H. Wilde, 1789-1847 + 330. My Life is like the Summer Rose. + + Jas. A. Hillhouse, 1789-1841 + 331. From "Hadad." + 332. From "The Judgment." + + John M. Harney, 1789-1825 + 333. From "Cristalina; a fairy tale." + + Charles Sprague, 1791- + 334. From "Curiosity." + + L.H. Sigourney, 1791-1865 + 335. The Widow at her Daughter's Bridal. + + Wm. O. Butler, 1793- + 336. From "The Boatman's Horn." + 337. The Battle-field of Raisin. + + Wm. C. Bryant, 1794- + 338. Lines to a Water Fowl. + 339. Freedom Irrepressible. + 340. Communion with Nature, Soothing. + 341. The Living Lost. + 342. The Song of the Sower. + 343. The Planting of the Apple-Tree. + + Maria Brooks, 1795-1845 + 344. "Marriage." + + Joseph R. Drake, 1705-1820 + 345. The Fay's Departure. + + Fitz-Greene Halleck, 1795-1869 + 346. Marco Bozzaris. + 347. The Broken Merchant. + + J.G.C. Brainard, 1796-1828 + 348. From "Lines to the Connecticut River." + + Robert C. Sands, 1799-1832 + 349. From "Weehawken." + + George W. Doane, 1799-1859 + 350. From "Evening." + + Geo. P. Morris, 1801-1864 + 351. Highlands of the Hudson. + + Geo. D. Prentice, 1802-1869 + 352. From "The Mammoth Cave." + + Chas. C. Pise, 1802-1866 + 353. The Rainbow. + 354. View at Gibraltar. + + E.P. Lovejoy, 1802-1836 + 355. From "Lines to my Mother." + + Edward C. Pinkney, 1802-1828 + 356. A Health. + + R.W. Emerson, 1803- + 357. Hymn sung at the Completion of the Concord Monument. + 358. Disappearance of Winter. + 359. Inspiration of Duty. + + Thos. C. Upham, 1799-1873 + 360. On a Son Lost at Sea. + + Jacob L. Martin, 1805-1848 + 361. The Church of Santa Croce, Florence. + + Geo. W. Bethune, 1805-1862 + 362. Mythology gives place to Christianity. + + Chas. F. Hoffman, 1806- + 363. The Red Man's Heaven. + + Wm. Gilmore Simms, 1806-1870 + 364. Nature inspires sentiment. + + Nath'l P. Willis, 1807-1867 + 365. From "Hagar in the Wilderness." + 366. Unseen Spirits. + + H.W. Longfellow, 1807- + 367. Lines to Resignation. + 368. From The Wedding; The Launch: The Ship. + 369. Song of the Mocking-bird, at Sunset. + 370. Hiawatha's Departure. + + Wm. D. Gallagher, 1808- + 371. The Laborer. + + John G. Whittier, 1808- + 372. What the Voice said. + 373. The Atlantic Telegraph. + 374. Description of a Snow Storm. + 375. The Quaker's Creed. + + Albert Pike, 1809- + 376. The Everlasting Hills. + + Anne C. Lynch Botta. About 1809 + 377. The Dumb Creation. + + Oliver W. Holmes, 1809- + 378. From "The Last Leaf." + 379. A Mother's Secret. + + Willis G. Clark, 1810-1841 + 380. "An Invitation to Early Piety." + + James R. Lowell, 1810- + 381 A Song, "The Violet." + 382. Importance of a Noble Deed. + 383. The Spaniards' Graves at the Isles of Shoals. + + Edgar A. Poe, 1811-1849 + 384. The Raven. + + Alfred B. Street, 1811- + 385. An Autumn Landscape. + 386. The Falls of the Mongaup. + + Laura M. H. Thurston, 1812-1842 + 387. Lines on Crossing the Alleghanies. + + Frances S. Osgood, 1812-1850 + 388. From "The Parting." + + Harriet B. Stowe, 1812- + 389. The Peace of Faith. + 390. Only a Year. + + H.T. Tuckerman, 1813-1871 + 391. The Statue of Washington. + + John G. Saxe, 1816- + 392. The Blessings of Sleep. + 393. "Ye Tailyor man; a contemplative ballad." + 394. Ancient and Modern Ghosts contrasted. + 395. Boys. + 396. Sonnet to a Clam. + + Lucy Hooper, 1816-1841 + 397. The "Death-Summons." + + Catharine A. Warfield, 1817- + 398. From "The Return to Ashland." + + Arthur C. Coxe, 1818- + 399. The Heart's Song. + + Wm. Ross Wallace, 1819- + 400. The North Edda. + + Walter Whitman, 1819- + 401. The Brooklyn Ferry at Twilight. + + Amelia B. Welby, 1819-1852 + 402. The Bereaved. + + R.S. Nichols. About 1820- + 403. From "Musings." + + Alice Cary, 1820-1871 + 404. Attractions of our early Home. + + Sidney Dyer. About 1820- + 405. The Power of Song. + + Austin T. Earle, 1822- + 406. From "Warm Hearts had We." + + Thos. Buchanan Read, 1822- + 407. The Mournful Mowers. + 408. From "The Closing Scene." + + Margaret M. Davidson, 1823-1837 + 409. From Lines in Memory of her Sister Lucretia. + + John R. Thompson, 1823-1873 + 410. Music in Camp. + + Geo. H. Boker, 1824- + 411. From the "Ode to a Mountain Oak" + 412. Dirge for a Sailor. + + Wm. Allen Butler, 1825- + 413. From "Nothing to Wear." + + Bayard Taylor, 1825- + 414. "The Burden of the Day." + + John T. Trowbridge, 1827- + 415. "Dorothy in the Garret." + + Henry Timrod, 1829-1867 + 416. The Unknown Dead. + + Susan A. Talley Von Weiss. About 1830- + 417. The Sea-Shell. + + Albert Sutliffe, 1830- + 418. "May Noon." + + Elijah E. Edwards, 1831- + 419. "Let me Rest." + + Paul H. Hayne, 1831- + 420. October. + + Rosa V. Johnson Jeffrey. About 1832- + 421. From "Angel Watchers." + + Sarah J. Lippincott, 1833- + 422. "Absolution." + + E.C. Stedman, 1833- + 423. The Mountain. + + John J. Piatt, 1835- + 424. Long Ago. + + Celia Thaxter, 1835- + 425. "Regret." + + Theophilus H. Hill, 1836- + 426. From "The Song of the Butterfly." + + Thos. B. Aldrich, 1836- + 427. The Crescent and the Cross. + + Francis Bret Harte, 1837- + 428. Dickens in Camp. + 429. The Two Ships. + + Charles Dimitry, 1838- + 430. From "The Sergeant's Story." + + John Hay, 1841- + 431. The Prairie. + + Joaquin Miller, + 432. The Future of California. + + Joel C. Harris, 1846- + 433. Agnes. + + +ALPHABETICAL INDEX OF AUTHORS. + + * * * * * + +(The Figures refer to the Number of the Selection.) + + * * * * * + + ADAMS, JOHN 56, 57 + ADAMS, JOHN QUINCY 78, 79 + ALEXANDER, JAMES W. 34 + ALDRICH, THOMAS B. 427 + ALLSTON, WASHINGTON 277, 278, 279, 325 + AMES, FISHER 68 + AMES, MARY C. 315 + ARMSTRONG, JOHN 103 + AUDUBON, JOHN J. 258, 259, 260 + + BACHMAN, JOHN 262 + BACON, LEONARD 32, 33 + BANCROFT, GEORGE 129, 130, 131, 132, 133 + BARTLETT, JOHN R. 203 + BARTRAM, WILLIAM 253, 254 + BEECHER, HENRY WARD 47, 48, 49, 50, 51 + BEECHER, LYMAN 23 + BELKNAP, JEREMY 113 + BENTON, THOMAS H. 105 + BETHUNE, GEORGE W. 38, 39, 362 + BIRD, ROBERT M. 295 + BLEDSOE, ALBERT T. 45 + BOKER, GEORGE HENRY 411, 412 + BOTTA, ANNE C. LYNCH 377 + BRACKENRIDGE, HENRY M. 120 + BRAINARD, JOHN G.C. 348 + BROOKS, MARIA 344 + BROWN, C. BROCKDEN 276 + BROWNSON, ORESTES A. 159, 160 + BRYANT, WILLIAM C. 338, 339, 340, 341, 342, 343 + BUCKMINSTER, JOSEPH S. 28 + BUEL, JESSE 152 + BUSHNELL, HORACE 43, 44 + BUTLER, WILLIAM ALLEN 413 + BUTLER, WILLIAM O. 336, 337 + BYRD, WILLIAM 12 + + CALDWELL, CHARLES 104 + CALHOUN, JOHN C. 82, 83, 84 + CALVERT, GEORGE H. 198 + CAREY, HENRY C. 155 + CARY, ALICE 238, 404 + CASS, LEWIS 91 + CHANNING, WM. ELLERY 24, 25, 26 + CHEEVER, GEORGE B. 41, 42 + CHILD, LYDIA MARIA 294 + CHOATE, RUFUS 92, 93 + CLAIBORNE, I.F.H. 107 + CLARK, WILLIS G. 380 + CLAY, HENRY 80, 81 + CLIFTON, WILLIAM 321 + COLDEN, CADWALLADER 6 + COOKE, JOHN ESTEN 311, 312 + COOPER, J. FENIMORE 282, 283, 284, 285, 286 + COXE, ARTHUR C. 399 + CRANE, ANNE M. 314 + CURTIS, GEORGE WM. 243 + + DANA, RICHARD H. 329 + DANA, RICHARD H., JR. 228 + DAVIDSON, MARGARET M. 409 + DAVIES, SAMUEL 4 + DENNIE, JOSEPH 150 + DICKINSON, JOHN 55 + DIMITRY, CHARLES 430 + DOANE, GEORGE W. 350 + DODGE, MARY A. 248 + DORSEY, SARAH A. 313 + DRAKE, DANIEL 261 + DRAKE, JOSEPH R. 345 + DRAPER, JOHN WM. 215, 216 + DUPONCEAU, PETER S. 117 + DWIGHT, TIMOTHY 20, 21 + DURBIN, JOHN P. 31 + DUYCKINCK, EVERT A. 229 + DYER, SIDNEY 405 + + EARLE, AUSTIN T. 406 + EASTMAN, MARY H. 225, 226 + EDWARDS, ELIJAH E. 419 + EDWARDS, JONATHAN 3 + ELLETT, ELIZABETH F. 234 + ELLIOTT, STEPHEN 257 + EMERSON, RALPH WALDO 199, 200, 201, 202, 357, 358, 359 + EMMONS, NATHANIEL 5 + EVERETT, EDWARD 190, 191, 192 + + FLINT, TIMOTHY 177 + FRANCIS, JOHN W. 122 + FRANKLIN, BENJAMIN 13, 14, 15, 16 + FREMONT, JOHN C. 270, 271 + FRENEAU, PHILIP 318 + FULLER, RICHARD 46 + + GALLAGHER, WILLIAM D. 371 + GASTON, WILLIAM 151 + GAYARRÉ, CHARLES 135 + GREELEY, HORACE 164, 165, 166, 167 + GREENE, GEORGE W. 108 + GRIMKE, THOMAS S. 154 + + HALL, JAMES 188 + HALLECK, FITZ-GREENE 346, 347 + HAMILTON, ALEXANDER 66, 67 + HARNEY, JOHN M. 333 + HARRIS, JOEL C. 433 + HARTE, FRANCIS BRET 246, 428, 429 + HAWKS, FRANCIS L. 195 + HAWTHORNE, NATHANIEL 296, 297, 298, 299, 300, 301, 302 + HAY, JOHN 431 + HAYNE, PAUL H. 420 + HECKEWELDER, JOHN 112 + HENRY, PATRICK 58, 59 + HIGGINSON, THOMAS 241 + HILL, THEOPHILUS H. 426 + HILLHOUSE, JAMES A. 331, 332 + HITCHCOCK, EDWARD 30 + HOBART, JOHN H. 22 + HOFFMAN, CHARLES F. 363 + HOLLAND, JOSIAH G. 310 + HOLMES, OLIVER W. 211, 212, 213, 214, 378, 379 + HOOPER, LUCY 397 + HOPKINSON, FRANCIS 316 + HUDSON, HENRY N. 224 + HOWELLS, WILLIAM D. 247 + HUMPHREYS, DAVID 319 + + INGERSOLL, CHARLES J. 118, 119 + IRVING, WASHINGTON 178, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183, 184, 185 + + JARVES, JAMES J. 235 + JAY, JOHN 65 + JEFFERSON, THOMAS 61, 62, 63, 64 + JEFFREY, ROSA V. JOHNSON 421 + + KANE, ELISHA K. 272 + KENNEDY, JOHN P. 290, 291, 292 + KENT, JAMES 76 + KEY, FRANCIS S. 324 + KING, THOS. STARR 174 + KIRKLAND, CAROLINE M. 208, 209 + + LANMAN, CHARLES 266 + LAPHAM, J.A. 263, 264 + LEE, HENRY 115, 116 + LEGARÉ, HUGH S. 193, 194 + LELAND, CHARLES G. 242 + LEWIS, TAYLOR 162, 163 + LINCOLN, ABRAHAM 95 + LINN, JOHN B. 323 + LIPPINCOTT, SARAH J. 245, 422 + LIVINGSTON, EDWARD 77 + LONGFELLOW, HENRY W. 206, 367, 368, 369, 370 + LOVEJOY, ELIJAH P. 355 + LOWELL, JAS. RUSSELL 217, 218, 219, 220, 381, 382, 383 + + MACKENZIE, A. SLIDELL 106 + McCLINTOCK, JOHN 52 + McCONNELL, JOHN L. 244 + McILVAINE, CHARLES P. 37 + McINTOSH, MARIA J. 307 + MADISON, JAMES 73, 73 + MANN, HORACE 158 + MARSH, GEORGE P. 196, 197 + MARSHALL, JOHN 102 + MARTIN, JACOB L. 361 + MASON, JOHN M. 18, 19 + MATHER, COTTON 2 + MAURY, MATTHEW F. 250, 251 + MAYER, BRANTZ 136 + MEADE, WILLIAM 123 + MEEK, ALEXANDER B. 142, 143 + MELVILLE, HERMAN 309 + MILBURN, WILLIAM H. 54 + MILLER, JOAQUIN 432 + MITCHELL, DONALD G. 239 + MITCHELL, ORMSBY M. 252 + MORAGNE, MARY E. 227 + MORRIS, GEORGE P. 351 + MORRIS, GOUVERNEUR 69 + MOTLEY, JOHN L. 139, 140, 141 + + NEAL, JOHN 289 + NICHOLS, REBECCA S. 403 + + OSGOOD, FRANCIS S. 388 + OSSOLI, MARGARET FULLER 210 + + PAINE, ROBERT T. 322 + PALFREY, JOHN G. 149 + PARKER, THEODORE 168, 169, 170, 171 + PARKMAN, FRANCIS 145, 146 + PARTON, JAMES 109, 110, 111 + PAULDING, JAMES K. 280, 281 + PAYSON, EDWARD 27 + PERCIVAL, JAMES G. 328 + PHILLIPS, WENDELL 172, 173 + PIATT, JOHN J. 424 + PICKETT, ALBERT J. 137 + PIERPONT, JOHN 326, 327 + PIKE, ALBERT 376 + PINKNEY, EDWARD C. 356 + PINKNEY, WILLIAM 70, 71 + PISE, CHARLES C. 353, 354 + POE, EDGAR A. 221, 222, 384 + PORTER, NOAH 53 + PRENTICE, GEORGE 352 + PRESCOTT, WILLIAM H. 126, 127, 128 + + RAMSAY, DAVID 114 + RAMSEY, J.G.M. 134 + RANDOLPH, JOHN 74, 75 + READ, THOS. BUCHANAN 407, 408 + REED, HENRY 207 + RUFFIN, EDMUND 156 + RUSH, BENJAMIN 101 + RUTLEDGE, JOHN 60 + + SANDS, ROBERT C. 349 + SAXE, JOHN G. 392, 393, 394, 395, 396 + SCHOOLCRAFT, HENRY R. 189 + SEDGWICK, CATHARINE M. 287, 288 + SEWARD, WILLIAM 94 + SHEA, JOHN G. 147, 148 + SIGOURNEY, LYDIA H. 335 + SILLIMAN, BENJAMIN 268 + SIMMS, WM. GILMORE 303, 304, 364 + SMITH, SAMUEL J. 320 + SMITH, WILLIAM 9 + SPARKS, JARED 124, 125 + SPAULDING, MARTIN J. 35 + SPRAGUE, CHARLES 334 + SQUIER, EPHRAIM G. 267 + STEDMAN, E.C. 423 + STEPHENS, ALEXANDER H. 100 + STEPHENS, JOHN L. 269 + STEVENS, ABEL 144 + STITH, WILLIAM 7, 8 + STORY, JOSEPH 89, 90 + STOWE, HARRIET BEECHER 305, 306, 389, 390 + STREET, ALFRED B. 385, 386 + SUMNER, CHARLES 96, 87, 98, 99 + SUTLIFFE, ALBERT 418 + + TAYLOR, BAYARD 273, 274, 275, 414 + TAYLOR, NATHANIEL W. 29 + THAXTER, CELIA 425 + THOMPSON, JOHN R. 410 + THORNWELL, JAMES H. 36 + THOREAU, HENRY D. 231, 232, 233 + THURSTON, LAURA M.H. 387 + TICKNOR, GEORGE 187 + TIMROD, HENRY 416 + TROWBRIDGE, JOHN T. 415 + TRUMBULL, JOHN 317 + TUCKERMAN, HENRY T. 223, 391 + + UPHAM, CHARLES W. 138 + UPHAM, THOMAS C. 360 + + VERPLANCK, GULIAN C. 121 + VON WEISS, SUSAN A. TALLEY 417 + + WALLACE, HORACE B. 230 + WALLACE, WILLIAM R. 400 + WALSH, ROBERT 153 + WARE, WILLIAM 293 + WARFIELD, CATHERINE A. 308, 398 + WASHINGTON, GEORGE 249 + WAYLAND, FRANCIS 157 + WEBBER, CHARLES W. 265 + WEBSTER, DANIEL 85, 86, 87, 88 + WELBY, AMELIA B. 402 + WHIPPLE, EDWIN P. 236 + WHITE, RICHARD GRANT 240 + WHITMAN, WALTER 401 + WHITTIER, JOHN G. 372, 373, 374, 375 + WILDE, RICHARD H. 186, 330 + WILLIAMS, ROGER 1 + WILLIAMS, WILLIAM R. 40 + WILLIS, NATHANIEL P. 204, 205, 365, 366 + WILSON, ALEXANDER 255, 256 + WINTHROP, JOHN 10, 11 + WIRT, WILLIAM 176 + WOOLMAN, JOHN 17 + WOOLSEY, THEODORE D. 161 + WORTHINGTON, JANE T.L. 237 + + + +CHOICE SPECIMENS + +OF + +AMERICAN LITERATURE. + + * * * * * + + + +CHAPTER I. + + +RELIGIOUS WRITERS OF THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES. + + +=_Roger Williams, 1598-1683._= (Manual, pp. 480, 512.) + +From his "Memoirs." + +=_1.=_ EXTENT OF RELIGIOUS FREEDOM. + +There goes many a ship to sea, with many hundred souls in one ship, +whose weal and woe is common, and is a true picture of a commonwealth, +or a human combination or society. It hath fallen out, sometimes, that +both Papists and Protestants, Jews and Turks, may be embarked into one +ship. Upon which supposal, I affirm that all the liberty of conscience, +that ever I pleaded for, turns upon these two hinges; that none of the +Papists, Protestants, Jews, or Turks, be forced to come to the ship's +prayers, nor compelled from their own particular prayers or worship, +if they practice any.... If any of the seamen refuse to perform their +service, or passengers to pay their freight; if any refuse to help, in +person or purse, towards the common charges or defence; if any refuse to +obey the common laws or orders of the ship concerning their common +peace or preservation; if any shall mutiny and rise up against their +commanders and officers; if any should preach or write, that there ought +to be no commanders nor officers, because all are equal in Christ, +therefore no masters nor officers, no laws, nor orders, no corrections +nor punishments,--I say I never denied but in such cases, whatever is +pretended, the commander or commanders may judge, resist, compel, and +punish such transgressors, according to their deserts and merits. + + * * * * * + + +=_Cotton Mather, 1663-1728._= (Manual pp. 479, 512.) + +From the "Antiquities," or Book I, of the "Magnalia." + +=2.= PRESERVATION OF NEW ENGLAND PRINCIPLES. + +'Tis now time for me to tell my reader, that in _our age_, there has +been another essay made, not by French, but by English PROTESTANTS, to +fill a certain country in America with _Reformed Churches_; nothing +in _doctrine_, little in _discipline_, different from that of Geneva. +Mankind will pardon _me_, a native of that country, if smitten with a +just fear of encroaching and ill-bodied _degeneracies_, I shall use my +modest endeavors to prevent the _loss_ of a country so signalized for +the _profession_ of the purest _Religion_, and for the _protection_ of +God upon it in that holy profession. I shall count my country _lost_, in +the loss of the primitive _principles_, and the primitive _practices_, +upon which it was at first established: but certainly one good way to +save that _loss_, would be to do something, that the memory of _the +great things done for us by our God_, may not be _lost_, and that the +story of the circumstances attending the _foundation_ and _formation_ +of this country, and of its _preservation_ hitherto, may be impartially +handed unto posterity. THIS is the undertaking whereto I now address +myself; and now, _Grant me thy gracious assistances, O my God! that in +this my undertaking I may be kept from every false way._ + + * * * * * + + +=_Jonathan Edwards, 1703-1758_=. (Manual, p. 479.) + +From the "Inquiry, &c., into the Freedom of the Will." + +=_3._= MEANING OF THE PHRASE "MORAL INABILITY." + +It must be observed concerning Moral Inability, in each kind of it, that +the word _Inability_ is used in a sense very diverse from its original +import.... In the strictest propriety of speech, a man has a thing in +his power, if he has it in his choice, or at his election; and a man +cannot be truly said to be unable to do a thing, when he can do it if he +will. It is improperly said, that a person cannot perform those external +actions which are dependent on the act of the will, and which would be +easily performed, if the act of the will were present. And if it be +improperly said, that he cannot perform those external voluntary actions +which depend on the will, it is in some respect more improperly said, +that he is unable to exert the acts of the will themselves; because it +is more evidently false, with respect to these, that he cannot if he +will; for to say so is a downright contradiction: it is to say he cannot +will if he does will. And in this case, not only is it true, that it is +easy for a man to do the thing if he will, but the very willing is the +doing; when once he has willed, the thing is performed; and nothing +else remains to be done. Therefore, in these things to ascribe a +non-performance to the want of power or ability, is not just; because +the thing wanting is not a being able, but a being willing. There +are faculties of mind, and capacity of nature, and everything else +sufficient, but a disposition; nothing is wanting but a will. + + * * * * * + + +=_Samuel Davies, 1725-1761._= (Manual, p. 480.) + +From his "Sermons." + +=_4._= LIFE AND IMMORTALITY REVEALED THROUGH THE GOSPEL. + +So extensive have been the havoc and devastation which death has made +in the world for near six thousand years, ever since it was first +introduced by the sin of man, that this earth is now become one vast +grave-yard or burying-place for her sons. The many generations that have +followed upon each other, in so quick a succession, from Adam to this +day, are now in the mansions under ground.... Some make a short journey +from the womb to the grave; they rise from nothing at the creative +fiat of the Almighty, and take an immediate flight into the world of +spirits.... Like a bird on the wing, they perch on our globe, rest a +day, a month, or a year, and then fly off for some other regions. It is +evident these were not formed for the purposes of the present state, +where they make so short a stay; and yet we are sure they are not made +in vain by an all-wise Creator; and therefore we conclude they are young +immortals, that immediately ripen in the world of spirits, and there +enter upon scenes for which it was worth their while coming into +existence.... A few creep into their beds of dust under the burden of +old age and the gradual decays of nature. In short, the grave is _the +place appointed for all living_; the general rendezvous of all the sons +of Adam. There the prince and the beggar, the conqueror and the slave, +the giant and the infant, the scheming politician and the simple +peasant, the wise and the fool, Heathens, Jews, Mahometans, and +Christians, all lie equally low, and mingle their dust without +distinction.... There lie our ancestors, our neighbors, our friends, +our relatives, with whom we once conversed, and who were united to our +hearts by strong and endearing ties; and there lies our friend, the +sprightly, vigorous youth, whose death is the occasion of this funeral +solemnity. This earth is overspread with the ruins of the human frame: +it is a huge carnage, a vast charnel-house, undermined and hollowed with +the graves, the last mansions of mortals. + + * * * * * + + +=_Nathaniel Emmons,[1] 1745-1840._= + +From his "Sermons." + +=_5._= THE RIGHT OF PRIVATE JUDGMENT. + +The right of private judgment involves the right of forming our opinions +according to the best light we can obtain. After a man knows what +others have said or written, and after he has thought and searched the +Scriptures, upon any religious subject, he has a right to form his own +judgment exactly according to evidence. He has no right to exercise +prejudice or partiality; but he has a right to exercise impartiality, in +spite of all the world. After all the evidence is collected from every +quarter, then it is the proper business of the understanding or judgment +to compare and balance evidence, and to form a decisive opinion or +belief, according to apparent truth. We have no more right to judge +without evidence than we have to judge contrary to evidence; and we have +no more right to doubt without, or contrary to, evidence, than we have +to believe without, or contrary to, evidence. We have no right to keep +ourselves in a state of doubt or uncertainty, when we have sufficient +evidence to come to a decision. The command is, "Prove all things; hold +fast that which is good." The meaning is, Examine all things; and after +examination, decide what is right. + +[Footnote 1: A Congregational clergyman of Massachusetts, original in +theology, and eminently lucid in style.] + + + * * * * * + + + +HISTORICAL WRITERS OF THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES. + + +=_Cadwallader Colden,[2] 1688-1776._= + +From "The History of the Five Nations." + +=_6._= CONVICTION OF THEIR SUPERIORITY + +The _Five Nations_ think themselves by nature superior to the rest of +mankind.... All the nations round them have, for many years, entirely +submitted to them, and pay a yearly tribute to them in _wampum_; they +dare neither make war nor peace without the consent of the _Mohawks_. +Two old men commonly go, about every year or two, to receive this +tribute; and I have often had opportunity to observe what anxiety the +poor Indians were under while these two old men remained in that part of +the country where I was. An old Mohawk Sachem, in a poor blanket and +a dirty shirt, may be seen issuing his orders with as arbitrary an +authority as a Roman dictator. It is not for the sake of tribute, +however, that they make war, but from the notions of glory which they +have ever most strongly imprinted on their minds; and the farther they +go to seek an enemy, the greater glory they think they gain; there +cannot, I think, be a greater or stronger instance than this, how +much the sentiments impressed on a people's mind conduce to their +grandeur.... The Five Nations, in their love of liberty and of their +country, in their bravery in battle, and their constancy in enduring +torments, equal the fortitude of the most renowned Romans. + +[Footnote 2: A native of Scotland, but for many years a resident of New +York, where he was eminent in politics and science.] + + * * * * * + + +=_William Stith, 1755._= (Manual, p. 490.) + +From "The History of Virginia." + +=_7._= THE RULE OF POWHATAN. + +Although both himself and people were very barbarous, and void of all +letters and civility, yet was there such a government among them, that +the magistrates for good command, and the people for due subjection, +excelled many places that would be counted very civil. He had under him +above thirty inferior Kings or Werowances, who had power of life and +death, but were bound to govern according to the customs of their +country. However, his will was in all cases, their supreme law, and must +be obeyed. They all knew their several lands, habitations, and limits, +to fish, fowl, or hunt in. But they held all of their great Werowance, +_Powhatan_; to whom they paid tribute of skins, beads, copper, pearl, +deer, turkies, wild beasts, and corn. All his subjects reverenced him, +not only as a King, but as half a God; and it was curious to behold, +with what fear and adoration they obeyed him. For at his feet they +presented whatever he commanded; and a frown of his brow would make +their greatest Spirits tremble. And indeed it was no wonder; for he was +very terrible and tyrannous in punishing such as offended him, with +variety of cruelty, and the most exquisite torture. + + * * * * * + +=_8._= POCAHONTAS IN ENGLAND. + +However, Pocahontas was eagerly sought and kindly entertained +everywhere. Many courtiers, and others of his acquaintance, daily +flocked to Captain Smith to be introduced to her. They generally +confessed that the hand of God did visibly appear in her conversion, +and that they had seen many English ladies worse favored, of less exact +proportion, and genteel carriage than she was.... The whole court were +charmed and surprised at the decency and grace of her deportment; and +the king himself, and queen, were pleased honorably to receive and +esteem her. The Lady Delawarr, and those other persons of quality, +also waited on her to the masks, balls, plays, and other public +entertainments, with which she was wonderfully pleased and delighted. +And she would, doubtless, have well deserved, and fully returned, all +this respect and kindness, had she lived to arrive in Virginia. + + * * * * * + + +=_William Smith, 1793._= (Manual, p. 490.) + +From "The History of the Province of New York." + +=_9._=. MANNERS OF THE INHABITANTS. + +New York is one of the most social places on the continent. The men +collect themselves into weekly evening clubs. The ladies, in winter, are +frequently entertained either at concerts of music or assemblies, and +make a very good appearance. They are comely, and dress well, and scarce +any of them have distorted shapes. Tinctured with a Dutch education, +they manage their families with becoming parsimony, good providence, and +singular neatness. The practice of extravagant gaming, common to the +fashionable part of the fair sex in some places, is a vice with which +my countrywomen cannot justly be charged. There is nothing they +so generally neglect as reading, and indeed all the arts for the +improvement of the mind; in which, I confess, we have set them the +example. They are modest, temperate, and charitable; naturally +sprightly, sensible, and good-humored; and, by the helps of a more +elevated education, would possess all the accomplishments desirable +in the sex. Our schools are in the lowest order: the instructors want +instruction; and, through a long, shameful neglect of all the arts and +sciences, our common speech is extremely corrupt, and the evidences of +a bad taste, both as to thought and language, are visible in all our +proceedings, public and private. + +The history of our diseases belongs to a profession with which I am +very little acquainted. Few physicians amongst us are eminent for +their skill. Quacks abound like locusts in Egypt, and too many have +recommended themselves to a full practice and profitable subsistence. +Loud as the call is, to our shame be it remembered, we have no law +to protect the lives of the king's subjects from the malpractice of +pretenders. Any man, at his pleasure, sets up for physician, apothecary, +and chirurgeon. The natural history of this province would of itself +furnish a small volume; and, therefore, I leave this also to such as +have capacity and leisure to make useful observations in that curious +and entertaining branch of natural philosophy. + +The clergy of this province are, in general, but indifferently +supported, it is true they live easily, but few of them leave any thing +to their children.... As to the number of our clergymen, it is large +enough at present, there being but few settlements unsupplied with a +ministry and some superabound. In matters of religion we are not so +intelligent in general as the inhabitants of the New England colonies, +but both in this respect and good morals we certainly have the advantage +of the Southern provinces. One of the king's instructions to our +governors recommends the investigation of means for the conversion of +negroes and Indians. An attention to both, especially the latter, has +been too little regarded. If the missionaries of the English Society for +propagating the Gospel instead of being seated in opulent christianized +towns had been sent out to preach among the savages, unspeakable +political advantages would have flowed from such a salutary measure. + + * * * * * + + + +MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS OF THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES. + + +=_John Winthrop, 1587-1649._= (Manual, p. 490.) + +From his "Life and Letters." + +=_10._= TRUE LIBERTY DEFINED. + +For the other point concerning liberty, I observe a great mistake in the +country about that. There is a twofold liberty,--natural (I mean as our +nature is now corrupt) and civil, or federal. The first is common to man +with beasts and other creatures. By this, man, as he stands in relation +to man simply, hath liberty to do what he lists: it is a liberty to evil +as well as to good. This liberty is incompatible and inconsistent with +authority, and cannot endure the least restraint of the most just +authority. The exercise and maintaining of this liberty makes men grow +more evil, and, in time, to be worse than brute beasts. This is +that great enemy of truth and peace, that wild beast, which all the +ordinances of God are bent against, to restrain and subdue it. The other +kind of liberty I call civil, or federal; it may also be termed moral, +in reference to the covenant between God and man in the moral law, and +the politic covenants and constitutions amongst men themselves. This +liberty is the proper end and object of authority, and cannot subsist +without it; and it is a liberty to that only which is good, just, and +honest. This liberty you are to stand for, with the hazard not only of +your goods, but of your lives, if need be. + + * * * * * + +From "The History of New England." + +=_11._= PROPOSED TREATMENT OF THE INDIANS. + +We received a letter at the General Court from the magistrates of +Connecticut, and New Haven, and of Aquiday,[3] wherein they declared +their dislike of such as would have the Indians rooted out, as being of +the cursed race of Ham, and their desire of our mutual accord in seeking +to gain them by justice and kindness, and withal to watch over them to +prevent any danger by them, &c. We returned answer of our consent with +them in all things propounded, only we refused to include those of +Aquiday in our answer, or to have any treaty with them. + +[Footnote 3: The original name of Rhode Island.] + + * * * * * + + +=_William Byrd,[4] 1674-1744._= + +From "History of the Dividing Line between Virginia and North Carolina." + +=_12._= THE GINSENG AND SNAKEROOT PLANTS. + +Though practice will soon make a man of tolerable vigor an able footman, +yet, as a help to bear fatigue, I used to chew a root of ginseng as I +walked along. This kept up my spirits, and made me trip away as nimbly +in my half jack-boots as younger men could in their shoes.... The +Emperor of China sends ten thousand men every year on purpose to gather +it.... Providence has planted it very thin in every country. Nor, +indeed, is mankind worthy of so great a blessing, since health and +long life are commonly abused to ill purposes. This noble plant grows +likewise at the Cape of Good Hope. It grows also on the northern +continent of America, near the mountains, but as sparingly as truth and +public spirit. + +Its virtues are, that it gives an uncommon warmth and vigor to the +blood, and frisks the spirits beyond any other cordial. It cheers the +heart even of a man that has a bad wife, and makes him look down with +great composure on the crosses of the world. It promotes insensible +perspiration, dissolves all phlegmatic and viscous humors that are apt +to obstruct the narrow channels of the nerves. It helps the memory, and +would quicken even Helvetian dullness. 'Tis friendly to the lungs, much +more than scolding itself. It comforts the stomach and strengthens the +bowels, preventing all colics and fluxes. In one word, it will make a +man live a great while, and very well while he does live; and, what +is more, it will even make old age amiable, by rendering it lively, +cheerful, and good-humored.... + +I found near our camp some plants of that kind of Rattlesnake +root, called star-grass. The leaves shoot out circularly, and grow +horizontally and near the ground. The root is in shape not unlike the +rattle of that serpent, and is a strong antidote against the bite of it. +It is very bitter, and where it meets with any poison, works by violent +sweats, but where it meets with none, has no sensible operation but +that of putting the spirits into a great hurry, and so of promoting +perspiration. + +The rattlesnake has an utter antipathy to this plant, insomuch that if +you smear your hands with the juice of it, you may handle the viper +safely. Thus much I can say on my own experience, that once in July, +when these snakes are in their greatest vigor, I besmeared a dog's nose +with the powder of this root, and made him trample on a large snake +several times, which, however, was so far from biting him, that it +perfectly sickened at the dog's approach, and turned his head from him +with the utmost aversion. + +In our march one of the men killed a small rattlesnake, which had no +more than two rattles. Those vipers remain in vigor generally till +towards the end of September, or sometimes later, if the weather +continues a little warm. On this consideration we had provided three +several sorts of rattlesnake root, made up into proper doses, and ready +for immediate use, in case any one of the men or their horses had been +bitten.... + +In the low grounds the Carolina gentlemen shewed us another plant, which +they said was used in their country to cure the bite of the rattlesnake. +It put forth several leaves, in figure like a heart, and was clouded so +like the common Assarabacca, that I conceived it to be of that family. +[Footnote 4: A native of Virginia:--was sent to England for his +education, where he became intimate with the wits of Queen Anne's time. +On his return to Virginia, he became a prominent official. He has left +very pleasing accounts of his explorations.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Benjamin Franklin, 1706-1790._= (Manual, pp. 478, 486.) + +Extract from his Autobiography. + +=_13._= GOOD RESOLUTIONS.--THE CROAKER. + +I grew convinced, that _truth, sincerity_, and _integrity_, in dealings +between man and man, were of the utmost importance to the felicity of +life, and I formed written resolutions, which still remain in my journal +book, to practice them ever while I lived. Revelation had indeed no +weight with me, as such; but I entertained an opinion, that, though +certain actions might not be bad, _because_ they were forbidden by it, +or good _because_ it commended them; yet probably those actions might be +forbidden _because_ they were bad for us, or commanded because they were +beneficial to us, in their own natures, all the circumstances of things +considered. And this persuasion, with the kind hand of Providence, +or some guardian angel, or accidental favorable circumstances or +situations, or all together, preserved me, through this dangerous +time of youth, and the hazardous situations I was sometimes in among +strangers, remote from the eye and advice of my father, free from any +_wilful_ gross immorality or injustice, that might have been expected +from my want of religion. I say wilful because the instances I have +mentioned had something of _necessity_ in them, from my youth, +inexperience, and the knavery of others. I had therefore a tolerable +character to begin the world with; I valued it properly, and determined +to preserve it. + +We had not been long returned to Philadelphia, before the new types +arrived from London. We settled with Keimer and left him by his consent +before he heard of it. We found a house to let near the market, and took +it. To lessen the rent, which was then but twenty-four pounds a year, +though I have since known it to let for seventy, we took in Thomas +Godfrey, a glazier, and his family, who were to pay a considerable part +of it to us, and we to board with them. We had scarce opened our letters +and put our press in order, before George House, an acquaintance of +mine, brought a countryman to us, whom he had met in the street, +inquiring for a printer. All our cash was now expended in the variety of +particulars we had been obliged to procure, and this countryman's five +shillings, being our first-fruits, and coming so seasonably, gave me +more pleasure than any crown I have since earned; and the gratitude +I felt towards House has made me often more ready, than perhaps I +otherwise should have been, to assist young beginners. + +There are croakers in every country, always boding its ruin. Such a one +there lived in Philadelphia; a person of note, an elderly man, with +a wise look and a very grave manner of speaking; his name was Samuel +Mickle. This gentleman, a stranger to me, stopped me one day at my +door, and asked me if I was the young man, who had lately opened a new +printing-house? Being answered in the affirmative, he said he was sorry +for me, because it was an expensive undertaking, and the expense would +be lost; for Philadelphia was a sinking place, the people already half +bankrupts, or near being so; all the appearances of the contrary, such +as new buildings and the rise of rents, being to his certain knowledge +fallacious; for they were in fact among the things that would ruin us. +Then he gave me such a detail of misfortunes now existing, or that were +soon to exist, that he left me half melancholy. Had I known him before +I engaged in this business, probably I never should have done it. This +person continued to live in this decaying place, and to declaim in the +same strain, refusing for many years to buy a house there, because all +was going to destruction; and at last I had the pleasure of seeing him +give him five times as much for one, as he might have bought it for when +he first began croaking. + + * * * * * + +From a Letter to Peter Collinson. + +=_14._= FRANKLIN'S ELECTRICAL KITE. + +As frequent mention is made in public papers from Europe of the success +of the Philadelphia experiment for drawing the electric fire from +clouds, by means of pointed rods of iron erected on high, buildings, +&c., it may be agreeable to the curious to be informed that the same +experiment has succeeded in Philadelphia, though made in a different and +more easy manner, which is as follows: + +Make a small cross of two light strips of cedar, the arms so long as +to reach to the four corners of a large thin silk handkerchief, when +extended; tie the corners of the handkerchief to the extremities of +the cross, so you have the body of a kite; which, being properly +accommodated with a tail, loop, and string, will rise in the air, like +those made of paper; but this, being of silk, is fitter to bear the wet +and wind of a thundergust without tearing. To the top of the upright +stick of the cross is to be fixed a very sharp-pointed wire, rising a +foot or more above the wood. To the end of the twine, next the hand, is +to be tied a silk ribbon, and where the silk and twine join, a key may +be fastened. This kite is to be raised when a thundergust appears to be +coming on, and the person who holds the string must stand within a door +or window, or under some cover, so that the silk ribbon may not be wet; +and care must be taken that the twine does not touch the frame of the +door or window. As soon as any of the thunder-clouds come over the kite, +the pointed wire will draw the electric fire from them, and the kite, +with all the twine, will be electrified, and the loose filaments of +the twine will stand out every way, and be attracted by an approaching +finger. And when the rain has wetted the kite and twine, so that it +can conduct the electric fire freely, you will find it stream out +plentifully from the key on the approach of your knuckle. At this key +the phial may be charged; and all the other electric experiments be +performed, which are usually done by the help of a rubbed glass globe +or tube, and thereby the sameness of the electric matter with that of +lightning be completely demonstrated. + + * * * * * + +=_15._= MOTION FOR PRAYERS IN THE CONVENTION. + +Mr. President: + +The small progress we have made, after four or five weeks close +attendance and continual reasonings with each other, our different +sentiments on almost every question, several of the last producing +as many _Noes_ as _Ayes_, is, methinks, a melancholy proof of the +imperfection of the human understanding. We indeed seem to _feel_ our +own want of political wisdom, since we have been running all about +in search of it. We have gone back to ancient history for models of +government, and examined the different forms of those republics, which, +having been originally formed with the seeds of their own dissolution, +now no longer exist; and we have viewed modern States all round Europe, +but find none of their constitutions suitable to our circumstances. + +In this situation of this assembly, groping, as it were, in the dark to +find political truth, and scarce able to distinguish it when presented +to us, how has it happened, Sir, that we have not hitherto once +thought of humbly applying to the Father of Lights to illuminate our +understandings? In the beginning of the contest with Britain, when we +were sensible of danger, we had daily prayers in this room for the +divine protection. Our prayers, Sir, were heard; and they were +graciously answered. All of us, who were engaged in the struggle, must +have observed frequent instances of a superintending Providence in +our favor. To that kind Providence we owe this happy opportunity of +consulting in peace on the means of establishing our future national +felicity. And have we now forgotten that powerful Friend? or do we +imagine we no longer need His assistance? I have lived, Sir, a long +time; and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this +truth, _that God governs in the affairs of men_. And if a sparrow cannot +fall to the ground without his notice, is it probable that an empire can +rise without his aid? We have been assured, Sir, in the Sacred Writings, +that "except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build +it." I firmly believe this; and I also believe, that without his +concurring aid, we shall succeed in this political building no better +than the builders of Babel; we shall be divided by our little, partial, +local interests, our projects will be confounded, and we ourselves shall +become a reproach and a by-word down to future ages. And, what is worse, +mankind may hereafter, from this unfortunate instance, despair of +establishing government by human wisdom, and leave it to chance, war, +and conquest. + +I therefore beg leave to move, + +That henceforth, prayers, imploring the assistance of Heaven and its +blessing on our deliberations, be held in this assembly every morning +before we proceed to business; and that one or more of the clergy of +this city be requested to officiate in that service. + + * * * * * + +From his "Essays." + +=_16._= THE EPHEMERON. AN EMBLEM. + +"It was," said he, "the opinion of learned philosophers of our race, +who lived and flourished long before my time, that this vast world, the +Moulin Joly, could not itself subsist more than eighteen hours; and I +think there was some foundation for that opinion, since, by the apparent +motion of the great luminary that gives life to all nature, and which in +my time has evidently declined considerably towards the ocean at the end +of our earth, it must then finish its course, be extinguished in the +waters that surround us, and leave the world in cold and darkness, +necessarily producing universal death and destruction. I have lived +seven of those hours--a great age, being no less than four hundred and +twenty minutes of time. How very few of us continue so long! I have seen +generations born, flourish, and expire ... And I must soon follow them; +for, by the course of nature, though still in health, I cannot expect to +live above seven or eight minutes longer. What now avail all my toil +and labor in amassing honey-dew on this leaf, which I cannot live to +enjoy!--what the political struggles I have been engaged in for the good +of my compatriot inhabitants of this bush, or my philosophical studies +for the benefit of our race in general! for in politics what can laws +do without morals? Our present race of ephemera will, in a course of +minutes, become corrupt, like those of other and older bushes, and +consequently as wretched. And in philosophy how small our progress! +Alas! art is long, and life is short. My friends would comfort me with +the idea of a name they say I shall leave behind me.... But what will +fame be to an ephemeron who no longer exists? and what will become of +all history, in the eighteenth hour, when the world itself, even the +whole Moulin Joly, shall come to its end, and be buried in universal +ruin?" + + * * * * * + + + +LATER RELIGIOUS WRITERS AND DIVINES. + + +=_John Woolman,[5] 1720-1772._= + +From his "Life and Travels." + +=_17._= REMARKS ON SLAVERY AND LABOR. + +A people used to labor moderately for their living, training up their +children in frugality and business, have a happier life than those who +live on the labor of slaves. Freemen find satisfaction in improving and +providing for their families; but negroes, laboring to support others +who claim them as their property, and expecting nothing but slavery +during life, have not the like inducement to be industrious.... Men +having power, too often misapply it: though we make slaves of the +negroes, and the Turks make slaves of the Christians, liberty is the +natural right of all men equally.... The slaves look to me like a +burdensome stone to such who burden themselves with them. The burden +will grow heavier and heavier, till times change in a way disagreeable +to us.... I was troubled to perceive the darkness of their imaginations, +and, in some pressure of spirits, said the love of ease and gain are the +motives, in general, of keeping slaves; and men are wont to take hold of +weak arguments to support a cause which is unreasonable.... + +I was silent during the meeting for worship, and, when business came on, +my mind was exercised concerning the poor slaves, but did not feel my +way clear to speak. In this condition I was bowed in spirit before the +Lord, and, with tears and inward supplication, besought him so to open +my understanding that I might know his will concerning me; and at length +my mind was settled in silence. + +At times when I have felt true love open my heart towards my +fellow-creatures, and have been engaged in weighty conversation in the +cause of righteousness, the instructions I have received under these +exercises in regard to the true use of the outward gifts of God, have +made deep and lasting impressions on my mind. I have beheld how the +desire to provide wealth and to uphold a delicate life has grievously +entangled many, and has been like a snare to their offspring, and though +some have been affected with a sense of their difficulties, and have +appeared desirous at times to be helped out of them, yet for want of +abiding under the humbling power of truth, they have continued in these +entanglements; expensive living in parents and children hath called for +a large supply, and in answering this call, the faces of the poor have +been ground away, and made thin through hard dealing.... + +... In the uneasiness of body which I have many times felt by too much +labor, not as a forced but a voluntary oppression, I have often been +excited to think on the original cause of that oppression which is +imposed on many in the world. The latter part of the time wherein I +labored on our plantation, my heart, through the fresh visitations of +heavenly love, being often tender, and my leisure time being frequently +spent in reading the life and doctrines of our blessed Redeemer, the +account of the sufferings of martyrs, and the history of the first rise +of our Society, a belief was gradually settled in my mind, that if such +as had great estates, generally lived in that humility and plainness +which belong to a Christian life, and laid much easier rents and +interests on their lands and moneys, and thus led the way to a right use +of things, so great a number of people might be employed in things +useful, that labor both for men and other creatures would need to be no +more than an agreeable employ, and divers branches of business, which +serve chiefly to please the natural inclinations of our minds, and which +at present seem necessary to circulate that wealth which some gather, +might, in this way of pure wisdom, be discontinued. + +[Footnote 5: A Quaker preacher, a native of New Jersey, whose Travels +and Autobiography have been much admired abroad, notably by Charles +Lamb.] + + * * * * * + + +=_John M. Mason,[6] 1770-1829._= + +From the Address in behalf of the Bible Society. + +=_18._= GRANDEUR OF THE ENTERPRISE. + +If there be a single measure which can overrule objection, subdue +opposition, and command exertion, this is the measure. That all our +voices, all our affections, all our hands, should be joined in the grand +design of promoting "peace on earth and good will toward man"--that +they should resist the advance of misery--should carry the light of +instruction into the dominions of ignorance, and the balm of joy to the +soul of anguish; and all this by diffusing the oracles of God--addresses +to the understanding an argument which cannot be encountered; and to the +heart an appeal which its holiest emotions rise up to second.... + +_People of the United States_; Have you ever been invited to an +enterprise of such grandeur and glory? Do you not value the Holy +Scriptures? Value them as containing your sweetest hope; your most +thrilling joy? Can you submit to the thought that _you_ should be torpid +in your endeavors to disperse them, while the rest of Christendom is +awake and alert? Shall _you_ hang back in heartless indifference, when +princes come down from their thrones, to bless the cottage of the poor +with the gospel of peace; and imperial sovereigns are gathering their +fairest honors from spreading abroad the oracles of the Lord your God. +Is it possible that _you_ should not see, in this state of human things, +a mighty motion of Divine providence? The most heavenly charity treads +close upon the march of conflict and blood! The world is at peace! +Scarce has the soldier time to unbind his helmet, and to wipe away the +sweat from his brow, ere the voice of mercy succeeds to the clarion of +battle, and calls the nations from enmity to love! Crowned heads bow to +the head which is to wear "many crowns," and, for the first time since +the promulgation of Christianity, appear to act in unison for the +recognition of its gracious principles, as being fraught alike with +happiness to man, and honor to God. + +What has created so strange, so beneficent an alteration. This is no +doubt the doing of the Lord, and it is marvelous in our eyes. But what +instrument has he thought fit chiefly to use. That which contributes in +all latitudes and climes to make Christians feel their unity, to rebuke +the spirit of strife, and to open upon them the day of brotherly +concord--the Bible!--the Bible!--through Bible Societies! + +[Footnote 6: A Presbyterian clergyman of great distinction, long settled +in New York; rarely surpassed in controversial acuteness, and in +religious eloquence.] + + * * * * * + +=_19._= THE RIGHT OF THE STATE TO EDUCATE. + +No sagacity can foretell what characters shall be developed, or what +parts performed, by these boys and girls who throng our streets, and +sport in our fields. In their tender breasts are concealed the germs, in +their little hands are lodged the weapons, of a nation's overthrow +or glory. Would it not, then, be madness, would it not be a sort of +political suicide, for the commonwealth to be unconcerned what direction +their infant powers shall take, or into what habits their budding +affections shall ripen? or will it be disputed that the civil authority +has a _right_ to take care, by a paternal interference on behalf of +the children, that the next generation shall not prostrate in an hour, +whatever has been consecrated to truth, to virtue, and to happiness by +the generations that are past? + + * * * * * + + +=_Timothy Dwight, 1752-1817._= (Manual, pp. 479, 504.) + +From "Travels in New England," &c. + +=_20._= THE WILDERNESS RECLAIMED. + +In these countries _lands are universally held in fee simple_. Every +farmer, with too few exceptions to deserve notice, labors on his own +ground, and for the benefit of himself and his family merely. This, +also, if I am not deceived, is a novelty; and its influence is seen to +be remarkably happy in the industry, sobriety, cheerfulness, personal +independence, and universal prosperity of the people at large.... A +succession of New England villages, composed of neat houses, surrounding +neat schoolhouses and churches, adorned with gardens, meadows, and +orchards, and exhibiting the universal easy circumstances of the +inhabitants, is, at least in my own opinion, one of the most delightful +prospects which this world can afford. + +_The conversion of a wilderness into a desirable residence for man_, +is an object which no intelligent spectator can behold, without being +strongly interested in such a combination of enterprise, patience, and +perseverance. Few of those human efforts which have excited the applause +of mankind, have demanded equal energy, or merited equal approbation. A +forest changed within a short period into fruitful fields covered with +houses, schools, and churches, and filled with inhabitants possessing +not only the necessaries and comforts, but also the conveniences of +life, and devoted to the worship of Jehovah, when seen only in prophetic +vision, enraptured the mind even of Isaiah; and when realized, can +hardly fail to delight that of a spectator. At least, it may compensate +the want of ancient castles, ruined abbeys, and fine pictures. + + * * * * * + +From the Theology. + +=_21._= THE GLORY OF NATURE, FROM GOD. + +There is another and very important view in which this subject demands +our consideration. _Theology spreads its influence over the creation +and providence of God, and gives to both almost all their beauty and +sublimity._ Creation and providence, seen by the eye of theology, +and elucidated by the glorious commentary on both furnished in the +Scriptures, become new objects to the mind; immeasurably more noble, +rich, and delightful, than they can appear to a worldly, sensual mind. +The heavens and the earth, and the great as well as numberless events +which result from the divine administration, are in themselves vast, +wonderful, frequently awful, in many instances solemn, in many +exquisitely beautiful, and in a great number eminently sublime. All +these attributes, however, they possess, if considered only in the +abstract, in degrees very humble and diminutive, compared with the +appearance which they make, when beheld as the works of Jehovah. +Mountains, the ocean, and the heavens, are majestic and sublime. Hills +and valleys, soft landscapes, trees, fruits, and flowers, and many +objects in the animal and mineral kingdoms, are beautiful. But what is +this beauty, what is this grandeur, compared with that agency of God, to +which they owe their being? Think what it is for the Almighty hand to +spread the plains, to heave the mountains, and to pour the ocean. Look +at the verdure, flowers, and fruits which in the mild season adorn the +surface of the earth; the uncreated hand fashions their fine forms, +paints their exquisite colors, and exhales their delightful perfumes. In +the spring, his life re-animates the world; in the summer and autumn, +his bounty is poured out upon the hills and valleys; in the winter, "his +way is in the whirlwind, and in the storm; and the clouds are the dust +of his feet." His hand "hung the earth upon nothing," lighted up the +sun in the heavens, and rolls the planets, and the comets through the +immeasurable fields of ether. His breath kindled the stars; his voice +called into existence worlds innumerable, and filled the expanse with +animated being. To all he is present, over all he rules, for all he +provides. The mind, attempered to divine contemplation, finds him in +every solitude, meets him in every walk, and in all places, and at all +times, sees itself surrounded by God. + + * * * * * + + +=_John Henry Hobart,[7] 1775-1830._= + +From a "Sermon." + +=_22._= THE DIVINE GLORY IN REDEMPTION. + +At the display of the divine power and glory that created the world, +"the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for +joy." Surely not less universal, not less ardent the exultation in those +pure and perfect spirits that continually surround the Divine Majesty +at the view of the infinite wisdom, love, and power which planned the +redemption of a fallen world--which thus devised the mode by which +pardon could be extended to the sinner without sanctioning his sin, and +favor to the offending rebel against the divine government, without +weakening its authority, impeaching its holiness, or subverting its +justice. In the nature of the divine Persons thus counselling for man's +redemption, it is not for him, blind, and erring, and impotent, it is +not for angels, it is not for cherubim or seraphim, for a moment to +look. The inner glory of the divine nature burns with a blaze, if I may +so with reverence speak, too intense, too radiant, for finite vision. +But in its manifestations, in its outer, its more distant rays, shining +on the plan of man's redemption, all is mildness, and softness, and +peace. Holiness, and justice, and mercy are seen blending their sacred +influences, and conveying light and joy in that truth which the counsels +of the Godhead alone could render possible. God can be just, and yet +justify the sinner. + +... Let us not, then, neglect this wonderful counsel of God for our +salvation; let us not be unaffected by this most stupendous display of +divine power, love, and mercy; let us not reject the offers of peace and +salvation from the God whom we have offended, and the Sovereign who is +finally to judge us. But, on the contrary, let us gratefully adore the +mercy and the grace of the Godhead in the plan of redemption, effected +in the incarnation, the obedience, the sufferings, the death, and the +triumphant resurrection of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. Let it be +our great object to be conformed to the likeness of his death, in +mortifying all our corrupt affections, and to experience the power of +his resurrection in living a new and holy life, that we may enjoy the +new and lively hopes of everlasting glory, which his resurrection +assures to all true believers. + +[Footnote 7: An eminent divine and bishop of the Episcopal church; a +native of Pennsylvania.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Lyman Beecher,[8] 1775-1803._= + +From the "Lectures on Political Atheism." + +=_23._= THE BEING OF A GOD. + +It is a thing eminently to be desired that there should be a supreme +benevolent Intelligence, who is the creator and moral governor of the +universe, whose subjects and kingdom shall endure for ever. Such a one +the nature of man demands, and his whole soul pants after. + +We feel our littleness in presence of the majestic elements of nature, +our weakness compared with their power, and our loneliness in the vast +universe, unenlightened, unguided, and unblessed, by any intelligence +superior to our own. We behold the flight of time, the passing fashion +of the world, and the gulf of annihilation curtained with the darkness +of an eternal night. + +At the side of this vortex, which covers with deep oblivion the past, +and impenetrable darkness the future, nature shudders and draws back, +and the soul, with sinking heart, looks mournfully around upon this fair +creation, and up to these beautiful heavens, and in plaintive accents +demands, "Is there, then, no deliverance from this falling back into +nothing? Must this conscious being cease--this reasoning, thinking power, +and these warm affections, their delightful movements? Must this eye +close in an endless night, and this heart fall back upon everlasting +insensibility? O, thou cloudless sun, and ye far-distant stars, in all +your journeyings in light, have ye discovered no blessed intelligence +who called you into being, lit up your fires, marked your orbits, wheels +you in your courses, around whom ye roll, and whose praises ye silently +celebrate? Are ye empty worlds, and desolate, the sport of chance? or, +like our sad earth, are ye peopled with inhabitants, waked up to a brief +existence, and hurried reluctantly, from an almost untested being, back +to nothing? O that there were a God, who made you greater than ye all, +whose being in yours we might see, whose intelligence we might admire, +whose will we might obey, and whose goodness we might adore!" Such, +except where guilt seeks annihilation as the choice of evils, is the +unperverted, universal longing after God and immortality. + +[Footnote 8: A Congregational clergyman, prominent, in the early part +of this century, for his zeal and piety, and for the eloquence and +originality of his sermons: father of a numerous family distinguished in +theology and literature.] + + * * * * * + + +=_William Ellery Channing, 1780-1842._= (Manual, p. 480.) + +From the Essay on Napoleon Bonaparte. + +=_24._= CHARACTER OF NAPOLEON. + +With powers which might have made him a glorious representative and +minister of the beneficent Divinity, and with natural sensibilities +which might have been exalted into sublime virtues, he chose to separate +himself from his kind, to forego their love, esteem, and gratitude, +that he might become their gaze, their fear, their wonder; and for this +selfish, solitary good, parted with peace and imperishable renown. + +His insolent exaltation of himself above the race to which he belonged, +broke out in the beginning of his career. His first success in Italy +gave him the tone of a master, and he never laid it aside to his last +hour. One can hardly help being struck with the _natural air_ with which +he arrogates supremacy in his conversation and proclamations. We never +feel as if he were putting on a lordly air. In his proudest claims, he +speaks from his own mind, and in native language. His style is swollen, +but never strained, as if he were conscious of playing a part above his +real claims. Even when he was foolish and impious enough to arrogate +miraculous powers and a mission from God, his language showed that he +thought there was something in his character and exploits to give a +color to his--blasphemous pretensions. The empire of the world seemed +to him to be in a measure his due, for nothing short of it corresponded +with his conceptions of himself; and he did not use mere verbiage, +but spoke a language to which he gave some credit, when he called his +successive conquests "the fulfilment of his destiny." This spirit +of self-exaggeration wrought its own misery, and drew down upon him +terrible punishments; and this it did by vitiating and perverting his +high powers. First, it diseased his fine intellect, gave imagination the +ascendency over judgment, turned the inventiveness and fruitfulness of +his mind into rash, impatient, restless energies, and thus precipitated +him into projects, which, as the wisdom of his counsellors pronounced, +were fraught with ruin. To a man, whose vanity took him out of the rank +of human beings, no foundation for reasoning was left. All things seemed +possible. His genius and his fortune were not to be bounded by the +barriers which experience had assigned to human powers. Ordinary rules +did not apply to him. He even found excitement and motives in obstacles +before which other men would have wavered; for these would enhance the +glory of triumph, and give a new thrill to the admiration of the world. + +To us there is something radically and increasingly shocking in the +thought of one man's will becoming a law to his race; in the thought of +multitudes, of vast communities, surrendering conscience, intellect, +their affections, their rights, their interests, to the stern mandate of +a fellow-creature. When we see one word of a frail man on the throne +of France, tearing a hundred thousand sons from their homes, breaking +asunder the sacred ties of domestic life, sentencing myriads of the +young to make murder their calling, and rapacity their means of support, +and extorting from nations their treasures to extend this ruinous sway, +we are ready to ask ourselves, Is not this a dream? and, when the sad +reality comes home to us, we blush for a race which can stoop to such an +abject lot. At length, indeed, we see the tyrant humbled, stripped of +power, but stripped by those who, in the main, are not unwilling to play +the despot on a narrower scale, and to break down the spirit of nations +under the same iron sway. + + * * * * * + + +=_Manning._= + +From a Discourse upon Immortality. + +=_25._= GRANDEUR OF THE PROSPECT. + +To me there is but one objection against immortality, if objection it +may be called, and this arises from the very greatness of the truth. +My mind sometimes sinks under its weight, is lost in its immensity; I +scarcely dare believe that such a good is placed within my reach. When I +think of myself, as existing through all future ages, as surviving this +earth and that sky, as exempted from every imperfection and error of my +present being, as clothed with an angel's glory, as comprehending with +my intellect and embracing in my affections, an extent of creation +compared with which the earth is a point; when I think of myself as +looking on the outward universe with an organ of vision that will reveal +to me a beauty and harmony and order not now imagined, and as having +an access to the minds of the wise and good, which will make them in +a sense my own; when I think of myself as forming friendships with +innumerable beings of rich and various intellect and of the noblest +virtue, as introduced to the society of heaven, as meeting there the +great and excellent, of whom I have read in history, as joined with "the +just made perfect" in an ever-enlarging ministry of benevolence, as +conversing with Jesus Christ with the familiarity of friendship, and +especially as having an immediate intercourse with God, such as the +closest intimacies of earth dimly shadow forth;--when this thought of my +future being comes to me, whilst I hope, I also fear; the blessedness +seems too great; the consciousness of present weakness and unworthiness +is almost too strong for hope. But when, in this frame of mind, I +look round on the creation, and see there the marks of an omnipotent +goodness, to which nothing is impossible, and from which every thing may +be Loped; when I see around me the proofs of an Infinite Father, who +must desire the perpetual progress of his intellectual offspring; when +I look next at the human mind, and see what powers a few years have +unfolded, and discern in it the capacity of everlasting improvement: and +especially when I look at Jesus, the conqueror of death, the heir of +immortality, who has gone as the forerunner of mankind into the mansions +of light and purity, I can and do admit the almost overpowering thought +of the everlasting life, growth, felicity, of the human soul. + + * * * * * + +From Remarks on the case of the Ship Creole. + +=_26._= THE DUTY OF THE FREE STATES. + +I have now finished my task. I have considered the Duties of the Free +States in relation to Slavery, and to other subjects of great and +immediate concern. In this discussion I have constantly spoken of Duties +as more important than Interests; but these in the end will be found to +agree. The energy by which men prosper is fortified by nothing so much +as by the lofty spirit which scorns to prosper through abandonment of +duty. + +I have been called by the subjects here discussed to speak much of the +evils of the times, and the dangers of the country; and in treating of +these a writer is almost necessarily betrayed into what may seem a tone +of despondence. His anxiety to save his country from crime or calamity, +leads him to use unconsciously a language of alarm which may excite the +apprehension of inevitable misery. But I would not infuse such fears. I +do not sympathize with the desponding tone of the day. It may be that +there are fearful woes in store for this people; but there are many +promises of good to give spring to hope and effort; and it is not wise +to open our eyes and ears to ill omens alone. It is to be lamented that +men who boast of courage in other trials, should shrink so weakly from +public difficulties and dangers, and should spend in unmanly reproaches, +or complaints, the strength which they ought to give to their country's +safety. But this ought not to surprise us in the present case: for +our lot, until of late, has been singularly prosperous, and great +prosperity enfeebles men's spirits, and prepares them to despond when it +shall have passed away. The country, we are told, is "ruined." What! the +country ruined, when the mass of the population have hardly retrenched +a luxury! We are indeed paying, and we ought to pay, the penalty of +reckless extravagance, of wild and criminal speculation, of general +abandonment to the passion for sudden and enormous gains. But how are +we ruined? Is the kind, nourishing earth about to become a cruel +step-mother? Or is the teeming soil of this magnificent country sinking +beneath our feet? Is the ocean dried up? Are our cities and villages, +our schools and churches, in ruins? Are the stout muscles which have +conquered sea and land, palsied? Are the earnings of past years +dissipated, and the skill which gathered them forgotten? I open my eyes +on this ruined country, and I see around me fields fresh with verdure, +and behold on all sides the intelligent countenance, the sinewy limb, +the kindly look, the free and manly bearing, which indicate any thing +but a fallen people. Undoubtedly we have much cause to humble ourselves +for the vices which our recent prosperity warmed into being, or rather +brought out from the depths of men's souls. But in the reprobation which +these vices awaken, have we no proof that the fountain of moral life in +the nation's heart is not exhausted. In the progress of temperance, of +education, and of religious sensibility, in our land, have we no +proof that there is among us an impulse towards improvement, which no +temporary crime or calamity can overpower. + +After all, there is a growing intelligence in this community; there is +much domestic virtue, there is a deep working of Christianity; there is +going on a struggle of higher truths with narrow traditions, and of a +wider benevolence with social evils; there is a spirit of freedom, a +recognition of the equal rights of men; there are profound impulses +received from our history, from the virtues of our fathers, and +especially from our revolutionary conflict; and there is an indomitable +energy, which, after rearing an empire in the wilderness, is fresh for +new achievements. + +There is one Duty of the Free States of which I have not spoken; it is +the duty of Faith in the intellectual and moral energies of the country, +in its high destiny, and in the good Providence which has guided it +through so many trials and perils to its present greatness. We indeed +suffer much, and deserve to suffer more. Many dark pages are to be +written in our history. But generous seed is still sown in this nation's +mind. Noble impulses are working here. We are called to be witnesses to +the world, of a freer, more equal, more humane, more enlightened social +existence, than has yet been known. May God raise us to a more thorough +comprehension of our work! May he give us faith in the good which we are +summoned to achieve! May he strengthen us to build up a prosperity not +tainted by slavery, selfishness, or any wrong; but pure, innocent, +righteous, and overflowing, through a just and generous intercourse, on +all the nations of the earth! + + * * * * * + + +=_Edward Payson, 1733-1827,_= (Manual, p. 480.) + +From the "Selections." + +=_27._= NATURAL RELIGION. + +I know that those who hate and despise the religion of Jesus because it +condemns their evil deeds, have endeavored to deprive him of the honor +of communicating to mankind the glad tidings of life and immortality. I +know that they have dragged the mouldering carcass of paganism from the +grave, animated her lifeless form with a spark stolen from the sacred +altar, arrayed her in the spoils of Christianity, re-lighted her +extinguished taper at the torch of revelation, dignified her with the +name of natural religion, and exalted her in the temple of reason, as a +goddess, able, without divine assistance, to guide mankind to truth and +happiness. But we also know, that all her boasted pretensions are vain, +the offspring of ignorance, wickedness, and pride. We know that she is +indebted to that revelation which she presumes to ridicule, and contemn, +for every semblance of truth or energy which she displays. We know that +the most she can do, is to find men blind and leave them so; and to +lead them still farther astray, in a labyrinth of vice, delusion, and +wretchedness. This is incontrovertibly evident, both from past and +present experience; and we may defy her most eloquent advocates to +produce a single instance in which she has enlightened or reformed +mankind. If, as is often asserted, she is able to guide us in the path +of truth and happiness, why has she ever suffered her votaries to +remain a prey to vice and ignorance. Why did she not teach the learned +Egyptians to abstain from worshiping their leeks and onions? Why not +instruct the polished Greeks to renounce their sixty thousand gods? +Why not persuade the enlightened Romans to abstain from adoring their +deified murderers? Why not prevail on the wealthy Phoenicians to refrain +from sacrificing their infants to Saturn? Or, if it was a task beyond +her power to enlighten the ignorant multitude, reform their barbarous +and abominable superstitions, and teach them that they were immortal +beings, why did she not, at least, instruct their philosophers in the +great doctrine of the immortality of the soul, which they so earnestly +labored in vain to discover? They enjoyed the light of reason and +natural religion, in its fullest extent, yet so far were they from +ascertaining the nature of our future and eternal existence, that +they--could not determine whether we should exist at all Bevon the +grave; nor could all their advantages preserve them from the grossest +errors, and the most unnatural crimes. + + * * * * * + + +=_Joseph S. Buckminster, 1784-1812._= (Manual, p. 480.) + +From the "Sermons." + +=_28._= NECESSITY OF REGENERATION. + +Look back, my hearers, upon your lives, and observe the numerous +opinions that you have adopted and discarded, the numerous attachments +you have formed and forgotten, and recollect how imperceptible were +the revolutions of your sentiments, how quiet the changes of your +affections. Perhaps, even now, your minds may be passing through some +interesting processes, your pursuits may be taking some new direction, +and your character may soon exhibit to the world some unexpected +transformation. Compare with this the spiritual regeneration of the +heart. So is every one that is born of the Spirit. Perhaps the following +may not be an imperfect description of the process that takes place in +a mind which is the subject of a radical conversion. The motion of the +wind is unseen, its effects are visible; the trees bend and fields are +laid waste; though the altering sentiments and affections are unnoticed, +the altered character obtrudes itself upon our observation. Truths +before contemplated without concern, now seize the mind with a grasp +too firm to be shaken. The world which is to succeed the present is no +longer a subject of accidental thought, of wavering belief, or lifeless +speculation; a region to which no tie binds us, and which no curiosity +leads us to explore. To the regenerated mind, the character and +condition of man appears in a new, and interesting light. To a being +whose existence has but just commenced, death is only a boundary, a +line, that marks off the first, the smallest portion of existence. +Earth with her retinue of allurements, her band of fascinating +syrens, exclaims, "We have lost our hold on this man! He is no longer +ours!" Religion welcomes her new adherent; she beckons him to turn his +steps into a new,--a pleasanter path; and God himself looks down from +heaven with complacency and love, illuminating his track by the light +of his countenance, marking the first step he takes in religion, and +supporting him by the staff of his grace,--the aid of his Holy Spirit. + +The first objects that engage the dawning mind of the child are objects +of sense. That which is born of the flesh is flesh. It is a selfish, +sensual creature, ignorant of its Creator, of its destination; +uninclined to the purity, the spirituality, the power of religion; +alienated from the life of God, the life of the soul. Unrenewed by the +influence of religious truth, undirected by the guiding hand of an +Almighty Father, how shall such a creature reach the regions of immortal +bliss? Is it enthusiasm, is it folly, is it hypocrisy, to say to such, a +creature, "You must be born again before you can see the kingdom of +God?" Is that Redeemer to be disclaimed who offers you his divine aid to +form anew your character, to exalt your affections, to enlighten your +dreary and desolate understanding? + + * * * * * + + +=_Nathaniel W. Taylor[9] 1781-1871._= + +From the "Lectures on the Moral Government of God." + +=_29._= PROOF OF IMMORTALITY FROM THE MORAL NATURE OF MAN. + +The argument from _the moral nature_ of man is made still more +impressive by the superiority of its design and object. If there is no +existence for man beyond the present state, what can we suppose to be +the design of his Creator in forming him a moral being? What powers, +what capacities are involved in his nature! What capacity to enjoy, and +what power to impart happiness to others! Who can reflect on the nature +of such a creature, his intelligence, his susceptibility, his will, his +conscience, the dignity, the excellence of which he is capable, the +moral victories and triumphs he may win, his fitness to hold on his way +with archangels, strong in advancing all that good which infinite wisdom +could devise, and infinite benevolence could love, the graces with which +he may be adorned, and the beatitudes with which he may be blessed, +and not believe that he is made to be one with the God who has created +him--a partaker of his blessedness, a companion of his eternity. + +If we consider what an almost total failure there is, even on the +part of every good man, to attain in any respect the great end of his +creation; how weak in resolution and feeble in heart--how little success +in subduing his passions and governing his temper--how much of life is +spent before he even begins to live in obedience to the demands of +duty and of conscience--how remote he is from the uniform and settled +tranquility of perfect virtue--what dissatisfaction he feels with, the +present, unappeased by all the world can offer--what an Impatience and +disgust with the littleness of all he finds--what an ever-restless +aspiration after nobler and higher things--what anticipations and hopes +from futurity never realized, here on earth--how does our spirit labor +under a sense of the incongruity between his attainments and his powers! +and, unless there is a future state, what an insignificance is imparted +to all that can be called virtue here on earth, and also to man himself! + +[Footnote 9: An eminent Congregational divine, long professor of +theology in Tale College, and distinguished by the vigor and originality +of his thinking.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Edward Hitchcock, 1793-1804._= (Manual, p. 532.) + +From "The Religion of Geology." + +=_30._= GEOLOGICAL PROOF OF DIVINE BENEVOLENCE. + +My second argument in proof of the divine benevolence is derived from +the disturbed, broken, and overturned condition of the earth's crust. + +To the casual observer the rocks have the appearance of being lifted up, +shattered, and overturned; but it is only the geologist who knows +the vast extent of this disturbance. He never finds crystalline, +non-fossiliferous rocks which have not been more or less removed from +their original position. The older fossiliferous strata exhibit almost +equal evidence of the operation of a powerful disturbing force, though +sometimes found in their original horizontal position. The newer rocks +have experienced less of this agency, though but few of them have not +been elevated or dislocated. + +If these strata had remained horizontal, as they were originally +deposited, it is obvious that all the valuable ores, minerals, and +rocks, which man could not have discovered by direct excavation, +must have remained forever unknown to him. Now, man has very seldom +penetrated the rocks below the depth of half a mile, and rarely so deep +as that; whereas, by the elevations, dislocations, and overturnings +that have been described, he obtains access to all deposits of useful +substances that lie within fifteen or twenty miles of the surface; and +many are thus probably brought to light from a greater depth. He is +indebted, then, to this disturbing agency for nearly all the useful +metals, coal, rock salt, marble, gypsum, and other useful minerals; +and when we consider how necessary these substances are to civilized +society, who will doubt that it was a striking act of benevolence which +thus introduced disturbance, dislocation, and apparent ruin into the +earth's crust? + + * * * * * + + +=_John P. Durbin,[10] 1800._= + +From "Observations in the East." + +=_31._= FIRST SIGHT OF MOUNT SINAI. + +For two hours we ascended this wild, narrow pass, enclosed between +stupendous granite cliffs, whose debris encumbered the defile, often +rendering the passage difficult and dangerous. Escaping from the pass, +we crossed the head of a basin-like plain, which declined to the +south-west, and ascending gradually, gloomy, precipitous, mountain +masses rose to view on either hand, with detached snow-beds lying in +their clefts. The caravan moved slowly, and apparently with a more +solemn, measured tread. The Bedouins became serious and silent, and +looked steadily before them, as if to catch the first glimpse of some +revered object. The space before us gradually expanded, when suddenly +Tualeb, pointing to a black, perpendicular cliff, whose two riven and +rugged summits rose some twelve or fifteen hundred feet directly in +front of us, exclaimed, _"Gebel Mousa!"_ How shall I describe the effect +of that announcement? Not a word was spoken by Moslem or Christian, but +slowly and silently we advanced into the still expanding plain, our eyes +immovably fixed on the frowning precipices of the stern and desolate +mountain. We were doubtless on the plain where Israel encamped at the +giving of the law, and that grand and gloomy height before us was Sinai, +on which God descended in fire, and the whole mountain was enveloped In +smoke, and shook under the tread of the Almighty, while his presence was +proclaimed by the long, loud peals of repeated thunder, above which +the blast of the trumpet was heard waxing loader and louder, and +reverberating amid the stern and gloomy mountain heights around; and +then God spoke with Moses. + +[Footnote 10: A native of Kentucky; is deemed one of the most eloquent +divines in the Methodist church.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Leonard Bacon, 1802._= (Manual, p, 480.) + +From a "Missionary Sermon." + +=_32._= THE DAY APPROACHING. + +The time is to come when the world will be filled with the knowledge, +the fear, and the praise of God Not always will war deluge the earth +with fire and blood. Not always will idolatry offend the heavens with +its abominations. Not always will despotism, political and spiritual, +national and domestic, degrade and corrupt the masses of mankind. Not +always will superstition, on the one hand, and infidelity, on the other, +reject and despise the blessed revelation of forgiveness for sinners +through Jesus, the Lamb of God. Not always will cold philosophy, and +erratic enthusiasm, and fanaticism fierce and malignant, conspire to +corrupt and pervert the gospel itself, turning even the streams from the +fountain of life into waters of bitterness and poison. No, no; the time +will come when the sun, in his daily journey round the renovated world, +shall waken with his morning beam in every human dwelling the voice of +joyful, thankful, spiritual worship. Then shall the boundless soul of +Immanuel, who once travailed in the agony of the world's redemption, "be +satisfied" with his victories over death and sin. The ransomed of the +Lord shall return and come to Zion with songs, and with garlands of +everlasting joy; and from the earth, no longer accursed for the sake of +man, sorrow and sighing shall flee away. + + * * * * * + +From the New Englander. + +=_33._= THE BENEFITS OF CAPITAL. + +What wealth can be created without capital? Robinson Crusoe, on his +lonely island, was a capitalist as well as a laborer and a land-holder. +Put him down there without any capital--simply a naked, featherless, +two-legged and two-handed, animal, without clothes, without a gun or a +fish-hook, without hoe, or hatchet, or knife, or rusty nail, without a +particle of food to keep him from fainting, and what will become of him? +He gathers perhaps some wild fruits from the bushes; he picks up perhaps +some shell-fish from the water's edge; he surprises a fawn or a kid, and +throttles it and tears it to pieces with his fingers; he kindles a fire +perhaps by rubbing two dry sticks together till they ignite with the +friction; and so he keeps himself alive for a few days; but how little +progress does he make! But let him by any means have a little to begin +with in the shape of implements and materials; give him an axe or a +spade, a jack-knife, or only a fragment of an iron hoop, give him a gill +of seed wheat, or a single potato, or no more than a grain of maize, for +planting; and how soon will his condition be changed! He has begun to +be, even in this small way, a capitalist; and his labor, drawing +something from the past, begins to reach into the future. Instead of +spending all his time and strength in a constant scratching for the food +of to-day, how soon will he have a blanket of skins, and a hut, and a +garden in which he is preparing to-day the food of future months. Give +him now a little more capital; let him have the means of stocking his +farm with some sort of domestic animals; give him only a steer and a +heifer, or even a pair of goats, and how soon will he begin to be rich. + + * * * * * + + +=_James W. Alexander, 1804-1859._= (Manual, p. 480.) + +From his "Discourses on Christian Faith and Practice." + +=_34._= THE CHURCH A TEMPLE. + +In surveying the past, we observe a beautiful fitness and an enchanting +variety in the materials which have been already built into that part +of the edifice which has thus far been reared. How unlike the corps +of prophets to the corps of apostles; and how unlike the several +individuals of each. We have Scripture authority for placing these +among the most honorable and sustaining parts of the fabric, near the +corner-stone: for we are "built upon the foundation of the apostles and +prophets." Isaiah with his evangelic clarion. Jeremiah with his pastoral +reed of sorrows, and David with his many-voiced harp, sometimes loud in +notes of triumph, and sometimes subdued to the voice of weeping, stand +out with a marked individuality which becomes the more surprising, the +more nearly we examine the distinctive features. They may be likened +to those immense but goodly stones, carried up in courses, along the +precipitous side of the valley, to form the basis for the temple of +Solomon. The twelve apostles, including the last, and humanly speaking, +the greatest, though brethren, how unlike. Who for an instant, could +mistake Paul for Peter, or either of them for John. They occupy salient +angles of the great foundation, and lie nearest to the corner-stone, +elect and precious. Some of their brethren, though not visible in the +front which meets the eye, may have done equal service in the bearing +up of the mass. Martyrs and confessors found their place, in succeeding +ages, as the wall advanced; some as glorious for ornament as strong for +use. When love needed a signal display, amidst the blood of martyrdom, +we see it immortalized in an Ignatius and a Polycarp. When stalking +heresy needed a front of steel to stand unmoved against all its columns, +we find an "Athanasius against the world." When the language of +Greece is to be elevated to new dignity by conveying the wonders of +Christianity, we hear the golden eloquence of a Basil and a Chrysostom. +When Roman philosophy had died out of the world, we behold it revived in +an Augustine, the father of the fathers. Later down in ages, we catch +glimpses even amidst Romish corruptions of a Bernard and a Kempis. The +note of alarm is given to a sleeping carnal church, first by Wicliff, +Huss, and Jerome, then by Zwingle, Luther, Calvin, and Knox. + + * * * * * + + +=_Martin John Spaulding,[11] 1810-1872._= + +From "Sketches of the Early Catholic Missions in Kentucky." + +=_35._= LIFE IN THE NEW SETTLEMENTS. + +The early Catholic emigrants to Kentucky, in common with their brethren +of other denominations, had to endure many privations and hardships. +As we may well conceive, there were few luxuries to be found in the +wilderness, in the midst of which they had fixed their new habitations. +They often suffered even for the most indispensable necessaries of life. +To obtain salt, they had to travel many miles to the licks, through a +country infested with savages; and they were often obliged to remain +there for several days, until they could procure a supply. + +There were then no regular roads in Kentucky. The forests were filled +with a luxuriant undergrowth, thickly interspersed with the cane, and the +whole closely interlaced with the wild pea-vine. These circumstances +rendered them nearly impassable; and almost the only chance of effecting +a passage through this vegetable wilderness, was by following the paths +or traces made by the herds of buffalo and other wild beasts. Luckily +these traces were numerous, especially in the vicinity of the licks, +which the buffalo were in the habit of frequenting, to drink the salt +water, or lick the earth impregnated with salt. + +The new colonists resided in log-cabins, rudely constructed, with no +glass in the windows, with floors of dirt, or, in the better sort of +dwellings, of puncheons of split timber, roughly hewed with the axe. +After they had worn out the clothing brought with them from the old +settlements, both men and women were under the necessity of wearing +buckskin or homespun apparel. Such a thing as a store was not known +in Kentucky for many years: and the names of broadcloth, ginghams +and calicoes, were never even so much as breathed. Moccasins made of +buckskin, supplied the place of our modern shoes, blankets thrown over +the shoulder, answered the purpose of our present fashionable coats and +cloaks; and handkerchiefs tied around the head served instead of hats +and bonnets. A modern fashionable bonnet would have been a matter of +real wonderment in those days of unaffected simplicity. + +The furniture of the cabins was of the same primitive character. Stools +were used instead of chairs: the table was made of slabs of timber, +rudely put together. Wooden vessels and platters supplied the place +of our modern plates and china-ware; and a "tin cup was an article of +delicate furniture, almost as rare as an iron-fork[12]," The beds were +either placed on the floor, or on bedsteads of puncheons, supported by +forked pieces of timber, driven into the ground, or resting on pins +let into auger-holes in the sides of the cabin. Blankets, and bear and +buffalo-skins, constituted often the principal bed-covering. + +One of the chief resources for food was the chase. All kinds of game +were then very abundant; and when the hunter chanced, to have a goodly +supply of ammunition, his fortune was made for the year. The game was +plainly dressed, and served up on wooden platters, with corn-bread, and +the Indian dish-the well known _hominy_. The corn was ground with great +difficulty, on the laborious hand-mills; for mills of other descriptions +were then, and for many years afterwards, unknown in Kentucky. + +Such was the simple manner of life led by our "pilgrim fathers." They +had fewer luxuries, but perhaps were, withal, more happy than their more +fastidious descendants. Hospitality was not then an empty name; every +log-cabin was freely thrown open to all who chose to share in the best +cheer its inmates could afford. The early settlers of Kentucky were +bound together by the strong ties of common hardships and dangers--to +say nothing of other bonds of union--and they clung together with great +tenacity. On the slightest alarm of Indian invasion, they all made +common cause, and flew together to the rescue. There was less +selfishness, and more generous chivalry; less bickering, and more +cordial charity, then, than at present; notwithstanding all our boasted +refinement. + +[Footnote 11: Born in Kentucky, and long eminent as a controversial +writer and a Prelate of the Roman Catholic church. His "sketches" give +much interesting information respecting the early history of that church +at the West.] + +[Footnote 12: Marshall--History of Kentucky.] + + * * * * * + + +=_James Henry Thornwell,[13] 1811-1862._= + +From the "Discourses on Truth." + +=_36._= EVIL TENDENCIES OF AN ACT OF SIN. + +There is a double tendency in every voluntary determination, one to +propagate itself, the other to weaken or support, according to its own +moral quality, the general principle of virtue. Every sin, therefore, +imparts a proclivity to other acts of the same sort, and disturbs and +deranges, at the same time, the whole moral constitution, it tends to +the formation of special habits, and to the superinducing of a general +debility of principle, which lays a man open to defeat from every +species of temptation. The extent to which a single act shall produce +this double effect, depends upon its intensity, its intensity depends +upon the fullness and energy of will which will enter into it, and the +energy of will depends upon the strength of the motives resisted. An +act, therefore, which concludes an earnest and protracted conflict, +which has not been reached without a stormy debate in the soul, which +marks the victory of evil over the love of character, sensibility to +shame, the authority of conscience and the fear of God, an act of this +sort concentrates in itself the essence of all the single determinations +which preceded it, and possesses power to generate a habit and to +derange the constitution, equal to that which the whole series of +resistances to duty, considered as so many individual instances of +transgression, is fitted to impart. By one such act a man is impelled +with an amazing momentum in the path of evil. He lives years of sin in a +day or an hour. It is always a solemn crisis when the first step is to +be taken in a career of guilt, against which nature and education, +or any other strong influences protest. The results are unspeakably +perilous when a man has to fight his way into crime. The victory creates +an epoch in his life. He is from that hour, without a miracle of grace, +a lost man. The earth is strewed with wrecks of character which were +occasioned by one fatal determination at a critical point in life, when +the will stood face to face with duty, and had to make its decision +deliberately and intensely for evil. + +[Footnote 13: A Presbyterian divine, and professor of Theology, in South +Carolina, his native state: a distinguished theological writer of the +South.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Charles P. McIlvaine,[14] 1799-1873._= + +From a Sermon on the Resurrection of Christ. + +=_37._=. ATTESTATIONS OF THE RESURRECTION. + +Here we remark, in general, that his resurrection was the great sign +and crowning miracle to which our Lord, all the way of his ministry, to +the day of his crucifixion, referred both friends and opposers, for the +final confirmation of all his claims and doctrines. He staked all on the +promise that he would rise from death. The Jews asked of him a sign, +that they might believe. He answered, "There shall no sign be given, but +the sign of the prophet Jonas. For as Jonas was three days and nights +in the whale's belly, so shall the Son of Man be three days and three +nights in the heart of the earth." Thus on that single; event, the +resurrection of Christ, the whole of Christianity, as it all centres in, +and depends on him, was made to hinge. Redemption waited the evidence +of resurrection. Nothing was to be accounted as sealed and finally +certified, till Jesus should deliver himself from the power of death. +All of the gospel, all the hopes it brings to us, all the promises with +which it comforts us, were taken for their final verdict, as true or +false, sufficient or worthless, to the door of that jealously-guarded +and stone-sealed sepulchre, waiting the settlement of the question, +_will he rise?_ + +But an event so momentous was not left to but one class of evidences. +There was a way by which thousands at once were made to receive as +powerful assurance that Christ was risen, as if they had seen him in his +risen body. Jesus, before his death, had made a great promise to his +disciples, to be fulfilled by him only after his death and resurrection; +a promise impossible to be fulfilled if his resurrection failed; because +then, not only would he be under the power of death, but all his claim +to divine power would be brought to nought. It was the promise of the +Holy Ghost. "When the Comforter is come whom I will send unto you from +the Father, even the Spirit of Truth, which proceedeth from the Father, +he shall testify of me, he shall glorify me." + +It was after he had "shown himself alive after his passion, by many +infallible proofs, being seen of his disciples forty days, and speaking +to them of the things pertaining to the Kingdom of God," that the day +for the accomplishment of that promise came. The day was that which +commemorated the giving of the law on Mount Sinai. It was now to +witness the going forth of the gospel from Jerusalem. I need not relate +to you the wonderful events of that day of Pentecost, the coming of the +Holy Ghost with the "sound as of a rushing mighty wind" that "filled all +the house;" the cloven tongues "like as of fire," which sat on each of +the disciples; the evidence that it was the Spirit of God which had then +come, given in the sudden and astonishing change which immediately came +over the apostles, transforming them from weak and timid men to the +boldest and strongest; in the change which suddenly came upon the power +of their ministry, converting it from the weak agent it had previously +been in contact with all the unbelief and wickedness of men into an +instrument so mighty that out of a congregation of Jews of all nations, +many of whom had probably partaken in the crucifixion of Christ, three +thousand that day were bowed down to repentance and subdued to his +obedience. + +Thus was the day of Pentecost, a great day of testimony to the life and +divine power, and consequently the resurrection of Christ. Each of those +who heard the divers tongues of the ministry of that day, each of the +three thousand, was a witness of the same. + +[Footnote 14: A native of New Jersey; in early life Chaplain and +Professor of Moral Philosophy in the Military Academy at West Point +and long time Bishop of Ohio in the Protestant Episcopal Church. His +Treatise on the Evidences of Christianity has great merit, and his +theological and controversial writings are in high esteem: greatly +venerated for his truly evangelical character.] + + * * * * * + + +=_George W. Bethune, 1805-1862._= (Manual, p. 487.) + +From the "Expository Lectures on the Heidelberg Catechism." + +=_38._= ASPIRATIONS TOWARDS HEAVEN. + +Our Christian life is a course through, this world, which we are to run +looking unto Jesus, at the right hand of the throne of God. The mark of +the prize of the high calling is in heaven. Nay, it is the hope of +heaven which keeps our souls surely and steadfastly. No matter what +other proofs of his being a Christian, a man may think that he has--what +moral virtue, what present zeal, what reverence for God and sacred +things, what kindness and faithfulness to his fellow-men,--if he have +not this longing thirst for heaven, he should doubt his Christianity. +The regenerate soul can be satisfied with nothing short of awaking with +the divine likeness. We cannot pray aright without hoping for heaven, +for there only will the askings of a pious heart be fully granted. We +cannot give thanks aright without hoping for heaven, for there are the +consummate blessings of the Redeemer's purchase. We cannot serve God +aright without hoping for heaven, for there only is our faithfulness to +be acknowledged, and our wages paid. Our hopes should be submissive, and +our longing patient; we should be willing to remain so long as God has +work for us here, but ever with a yearning sense that to depart and be +with Christ is far better. Grace in the heart is an ascensive power, +ever lifting its desires upward and upward, and so above the temptations +of time and earth. We can never drive this world out of our hearts, but +by bringing heaven into them. And heaven meets our affections when they +ascend, as it met Jesus; and he who so walks, climbing the arduous way +from the Valley of Baca to the temple on the mount (for we must walk +until we get our wings of angelic strength), will so approach the +heavenly threshold, as, like holy Enoch, he can cross it at a step. + +Oh, dear friends, what an advantage have they whose Jesus is in heaven, +over those first disciples when they had him with them personally on +earth. They were for building tabernacles on Tabor, looking for a +temporal kingdom, walking by sight and not by faith; but our Lord now +above, draws up to a better, higher, holier home, our aims, our desires, +and our love. + + * * * * * + +From "A Lecture:" Philadelphia, 1840. + +=_39._= THE PROSPECTS OF ART IN THE UNITED STATES. + +It is well for those who have sufficient wealth, to bring among us good +works of foreign or ancient masters, especially if they allow free +access to them for students and copyists. The true gems are, however, +rare, and very costly. A single masterpiece would swallow up the whole +sum which even the richest of our countrymen would be willing to devote +in the way of paintings. I hope, however, soon to see the day when +there shall be a fondness for making collections of works by _American +artists_, or those resident among us. Such collections, judiciously +made, would supply the best history of the rise and progress of the arts +in the United States. They would, more than any other means, stimulate +artists to a generous emulation. They would reflect high honor upon +their possessors, as men who love Art for its own sake, and are willing +to serve and encourage it. They would highly gratify the foreigner of +taste who comes curious to observe the working of our institutions and +our habits of life. He does not cross the sea to find Vandykes and +Murillos. He can enjoy them at home; but he wishes to discover what the +children of the West can do in following or excelling European example. +The expense of such a collection could not be very great. A few +thousands of dollars, less than is often lavished upon the French plate +glass and lustres, damask hangings, and Turkey carpets of a pair of +parlors (more than which few of our houses can boast), would cover their +walls with good specimens of American art, and do far more credit to the +taste and heart of the owner. + + * * * * * + + +=_William R. Williams,[15] 1804._= (Manual, p. 480.) + +From "The Lectures on the Lord's Prayer." + +=_40._= LEAD US NOT INTO TEMPTATION. + +We are warranted in praying to be brought through, temptation, when it +is not of our own seeking, but of _God's sending_. If we walk without +care and without vigilance, if we acknowledge not God in our ways, and +take counsel at Ekron, and not at Zion,--leaving the Bible unread, and +the closet unvisited,--if the sanctuary and the Sabbath lose their +ancient hold upon us, and we then go on frowardly in the way of our own +eyes, and after the counsel of our own heart, we have reason to tremble. +A conscience quick and sensitive, under the presence of the indwelling +Spirit, is like the safety-lamp of the miner, a ready witness and a +mysterious guardian against the deathful damps, that unseen, but fatal, +cluster around our darkling way. To neglect prayer and watching, is to +lay aside that lamp, and then, though the eye see no danger and the +ear hear no warning, spiritual death may be gathering around us her +invisible vapors, stored with ruin, and rife for a sudden explosion. We +are _tempting God_, and shall _we_ be delivered? + +And if this be so with, the negligent professor of religion, is it not +applicable also to the openly careless, who never acknowledged Christ's +claims to the heart and the life? + +With an evil nature, and a mortal body, and a brittle and brief tenure +of earth, you are traversing perilous paths. Had you God for your +friend, your case would be far other than it is. Peril and snare might +still beset you; but you would confront and traverse them, as the +Hebrews of old did the weedy bed of the Red Sea, its watery walls +guarding their dread way, the pillar of light the vanguard, and the +pillar of cloud the rearguard of their mysterious progress, the ark +and the God of the ark piloting and defending them.... You are like a +presumptuous and unskilful traveller, passing under the arch of the +waters of Niagara. The falling cataract thundering above you; a +slippery, slimy rock beneath your gliding feet; the smoking, roaring +abyss yawning beside you; the imprisoned winds beating back your +breath; the struggling daylight coming but mistily to the bewildered +eyes,--what is the terror of your condition if your guide, in whose +grasp your fingers tremble, be malignant, and treacherous, and suicidal, +determined on destroying your life at the sacrifice of his own? He +assures you that he will bring you safely through upon the other side of +the fall. And SUCH is SATAN. Lost himself, and desperate, he is set on +swelling the number of his compeers in shame, and woe, and ruin. + +[Footnote 15: A Baptist divine, born in New York city, where he has long +been settled over a church; eminent for general scholarship and literary +ability.] + + * * * * * + + +=_George B. Cheever, 1807-_=(Manual, pp. 480, 490.) + +From "The Wanderings of a Pilgrim." + +=_41._= MONT BLANC. + +It is like those heights of ambition so much coveted in the world, and +so glittering in the distance, where, if men live to reach them, they +cannot live upon them. They may have all the appliances and means of +life, as these French _savants_ carried their tents to pitch upon the +summit of Mont Blanc; but the peak that looked so warm and glittering in +the sunshine, and of such a rosy hue in the evening rays, was too deadly +cold, and swept by blasts too fierce and cutting; they were glad to +relinquish the attempt, and come down. The view of the party a few hours +below the summit, was a sight of deep interest. So was the spectacle of +the immeasurable ridges and fields, gulfs and avalanches, heights and +depths, unfathomable chasms and impassable precipices, of ice and snow, +of such dazzling whiteness, of such endless extent, in such gigantic +masses. + + * * * * * + +From "Lectures on the Pilgrim's Progress." + +=_42._=. SIN DISTORTS THE JUDGMENT. + +On the other hand, those who do not love God, cannot expect to find in +his Word a system of truth that will please their own hearts. A sinful +heart can have no right views of God, and of course will have defective +views of his Word: for sin distorts the judgment, and overturns the +balance of the mind on all moral subjects, far more than even the best +of men are aware of. There is, there can be, no true reflection of God +or of his Word, from the bosom darkened with guilt, from the heart at +enmity with him. That man will always look at God through the medium of +his own selfishness, and at God's Word through the coloring of his own +wishes, prejudices, and fears. + +A heart that loves the Saviour, and rejoices in God as its Sovereign, +reflects back in calmness the perfect view of his character, which +it finds in his Word. Behold on the borders of a mountain lake, the +reflection of the scene above, received into the bosom of the lake +below! See that crag projecting, the wild flowers that, hang out from +it, and bend as if to gaze at their own forms in the water beneath. +Observe that plot of green grass above, that tree springing from the +cleft, and over all, the quiet sky reflected in all its softness and +depth from the lake's steady surface. Does it not seem as if there were +two heavens. How perfect the reflection! And just as perfect and clear, +and free from confusion and perplexity, is the reflection of God's +character, and of the truths of his Word, from the quietness of the +heart that loves the Saviour, and rejoices in his supreme and sovereign +glory. + +Now look again. The wind is on the lake, and drives forward its waters +in crested and impetuous waves, angry and turbulent. Where is that sweet +image? There is no change above: the sky is as clear, the crag projects +as boldly, the flowers look just as sweet in their unconscious +simplicity; but below, banks, trees, and skies are all mingled in +confusion. There is just as much confusion in every unholy mind's idea +of God and his blessed Word. God and his truth are always clear, always +the same, but the passions of men fill their own hearts with obscurity +and turbulence; their depravity is itself obscurity; and through all +this perplexity and wilful ignorance, they contend that God is just such +a being as they behold him, and that they are very good beings in his +sight. We have heard of a defect in the bodily vision, that represents +all objects upside down; that man would certainly be called insane, +who, under the influence of this misfortune, should so blind his +understanding, as to believe and assert that men walked on their heads, +and that the trees grew downwards. Now, is it not a much greater +insanity for men who in their hearts do not love God, and in their lives +perhaps insult and disobey him, to give credit to their own perverted +misrepresentations of him and of his Word? As long as men will continue +to look at God's truth through the medium of their own pride and +prejudice, so long will they have mistaken views of God and eternity, so +long will their own self righteousness look better to them for a resting +place, than the glorious righteousness of Him, who of God is made unto +us our Wisdom, Righteousness, Sanctification, and Redemption. + + * * * * * + + +=_Horace Bushnell, 1804-_= (Manual, p, 480.) + +From the "Sermons for the New Life." + +=_43._= UNCONSCIOUS INFLUENCE. + +The Bible calls the good man's life a light, and it is the nature of +light to flow out spontaneously in all directions, and fill the world +unconsciously with its beams. So the Christian shines, it would say, not +so much because he will, as because he is a luminous object. Not that +the active influence of Christians is made of no account in the figure, +but only that this symbol of light has its propriety in the fact +that their unconscious influence is the chief influence, end has the +precedence in its power over the world. And yet there are many who will +be ready to think that light is a very tame and feeble instrument, +because it is noiseless. An earthquake for example, is to them a much +more vigorous, and effective agency. Hear how it comes thundering +through the solid foundations of nature. It rocks a whole continent. The +noblest works of man--cities, monuments, and temples--are in a moment +levelled to the ground or swallowed down the opening gulfs of fire.... +But lot the light of the morning cease, and return no more: let the +hour of morning come, and bring with it no dawn; the outcries of a +horror-stricken world fill the air, and make, as it were, the darkness +audible. The beasts go wild and frantic at the loss of the sun. The +vegetable growths turn pale and die. A. chill creeps on, and frosty +winds begin to howl across the freezing earth. Colder and yet colder +is the night. The vital blood, at length, of all creatures stops, +congealed. Down goes the frost toward the earth's centre. The heart of +the sea is frozen; nay, the earthquakes are themselves frozen in, +under their fiery caverns. The very globe itself, too, and all the +fellow-planets that have lost their sun, are become mere balls of ice, +swinging silent in the darkness. Such is the light which revisits us in +the silence of the morning. It make no shock or scar. It would not wake +an infant in his cradle. And yet it perpetually new creates the world, +rescuing it each morning as a prey from night and chaos. So the +Christian is a light, even "the light of the world;" and we must not +think that, because he shines insensibly or silently, as a mere luminous +object, he is therefore powerless. The greatest powers are ever those +which lie back of the little stirs and commotions of nature: and I +verily believe that the insensible influences of good men are as much +more potent than what I have called their voluntary or active, as the +great silent powers of nature are of greater consequence than her little +disturbances and tumults. The law of human influence is deeper than many +suspect, and they lose sight of it altogether. The outward endeavors +made by good men or bad, to sway others, they call their influence; +whereas it is, in fact, but a fraction, and in most cases, but a very +small fraction, of the good or evil that flows out of their lives. + + * * * * * + +From "Christ and His Salvation." + +=_44._= THE TRUE REST OF THE CHRISTIAN. + +Once more the analogies of the sleep of Jesus suggest the Christian +right, and even duty, of those relaxations, which are necessary, at +times, to loosen the strain of life and restore the freshness of its +powers. Christ, as we have seen, actually tore himself away from +multitudes waiting to be healed, that he might refit himself by sleep. +He had a way, too, of retiring often to mountain solitudes and by-places +on the sea, partly for the resting of his exhausted energies. Sometimes +also he called his disciples off in this manner, saying, "come ye +yourselves apart into a desert place and rest awhile." Not that every +disciple is, of course, to retire into solitudes and desert places, when +he wants recreation. Jesus was obliged to seek such places to escape +the continual press of the crowd. In our day, a waking rest of travel, +change of scene, new society, is permitted, and when it is a privilege +assumed by faithful men, to recruit them for their works of duty they +have it by God's sanction, and even as a part of the sound economy of +life. Going after a turn of gaiety, or dissipation, not after Christian +rest, or going after rest only because you are wearied and worried by +selfish overdoings, troubled and spent by toils that serve an idol, is +a very different matter. The true blessing of rest is on you, only when +you carry a good mind with you, able to look back on works of industry +and faithfulness, suspended for a time, that you may do them more +effectually. Going in such a frame, you shall rest awhile, as none but +such can rest. Nature will dress herself in beauty to your eye, calm +thoughts will fan you with their cooling breath, and the joy of the Lord +will be strength to your wasted brain and body. Ah, there is no luxury +of indulgence to be compared with this true Christian rest! Money will +not buy it, shows and pleasures can not woo its approach, no conjuration +of art, or contrived gaiety, will compass it even for an hour: but it +settles, like dew, unsought, upon the faithful servant of duty, bathing +his weariness and recruiting his powers for a new engagement in his +calling. Go ye thus apart and rest awhile if God permits. + + * * * * * + + +=_Albert Taylor Bledsoe,[16] about 1809-_= + +From "The Theodicy." + +=_45._= MORAL EVIL CONSISTENT WITH THE HOLINESS OF GOD. + +The argument of the atheist assumes, as we have seen, that a Being of +infinite power could easily prevent sin, and cause holiness to exist. It +assumes that it is possible, that it implies no contradiction, to create +an intelligent moral agent, and place It beyond all liability to sin. +But this is a mistake. Almighty power itself, we may say with, the most +profound reverence, cannot create such a being, and place it beyond the +possibility of sinning. If it could not sin, there would be no merit, no +virtue, in its obedience. That is to say, it would not be a moral agent +at all, but a machine merely. The power to do wrong, as well as to do +right, is included in the very idea of a moral and accountable agent, +and no such agent can possibly exist without being invested with such +a power. To suppose such an agent to be created, and placed beyond all +liability to sin, is to suppose it to be what it is, and not what it is, +at one and the same time; it is to suppose a creature to be endowed with +a power to do wrong, and yet destitute of such a power, which is a plain +contradiction. Hence Omnipotence cannot create such a being, and deny to +it a power to do evil, or secure it against the possibility of sinning. + +[Footnote 16: The most prominent among the living philosophical writers +of the South: at present editor of the Southern Review.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Richard Fuller,[17] 1808-_= + +From a Sermon. + +=_46._= THE DESIRE OF ALL NATIONS SHALL COME. _Haggai_ ii. 7. + +Follow the adorable Jesus from scene to scene of ever deepening insult +and sorrow, tracked everywhere by spies hunting for the precious blood. +Behold his sacred face swollen with tears and stripes; and, last of all, +ascend Mount Calvary, and view there the amazing spectacle: earth and +hell gloating on the gashed form of the Lord of Glory; men and devils +glutting their malice in the agony of the Prince of Life; and all the +scattered rays of vengeance which would have consumed our guilty race, +converging and beating in focal intensity upon Him of whom the Eternal +twice exclaimed, in a voice from heaven, "This is my beloved Son, in +whom I am well pleased." After this, what are our emotions? Can we ever +be cold or faithless? No, my brethren, it is impossible, unless we +forget this Saviour, and lose sight of that cross on which he poured out +his soul for us. + +That is an affecting passage in Roman history which records the death +of Manlius. At night, and on the Capitol, fighting hand to hand, had he +repelled the Gauls, and saved the city, when all seemed lost. Afterwards +he was accused; but the Capitol towered in sight of the forum where he +was tried, and, as he was about to be condemned, he stretched out his +hands, and pointed, weeping, to that arena of his triumph. At this the +people burst into tears, and the judges could not pronounce sentence. +Again the trial proceeded, but was again defeated; nor could he be +convicted until they had removed him to a low spot, from which the +Capitol was invisible. And behold my brethren, what I am saying. While +the cross is in view, vainly will earth and sin seek to shake the +Christian's loyalty and devotion; one look at that purple monument of +a love which alone, and when all was dark and lost, interposed for our +rescue, and their efforts will be baffled. Low must we sink, and blotted +from our hearts must be the memory of that deed, before we can become +faithless to the Redeemer's cause, and perfidious to his glory. + +[Footnote 17: A Baptist divine of much distinction: a native of South +Carolina but long settled in Baltimore.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Henry Ward Beecher, 1813-_= (Manual, p. 480.) + +From the "Star Papers." + +=_47._= A PICTURE IN A COLLEGE AT OXFORD. + +I was much affected by a head of Christ. Not that it met my ideal of +that sacred front, but because it took me in a mood that clothed it with +life and reality. For one blessed moment I was with the Lord. I know +him. I loved him. My eyes I could not close for tears. My poor tongue +kept silence; but my heart spoke, and I loved and adored. The amazing +circuit of one's thoughts in so short a period is wonderful. They circle +round through all the past, and up through the whole future; and both +the past and future are the present, and are one. For one moment there +arose a keen anguish, like a shooting pang, for that which I was; and I +thought my heart would break that I could bring but only such a nature +to my Lord; but in a moment, as quick as the flash of sunlight which +follows the shadow of summer clouds across the fields, there seemed to +spring out upon me from my Master a certainty of love so great and noble +as utterly to consume my unworth, and leave me shining bright, as if it +were impossible for Christ to love a heart without making it pure and +beautiful by the resting on it of that illuming affection, just as the +sun bathes into beauty the homeliest object when he looks full upon it. + + * * * * * + +=_48._= FROST ON THE WINDOW. + +But the indefatigable night repairs the desolation. New pictures supply +the waste ones. New cathedrals there are, new forests, fringed and +blossoming, new sceneries, and new races of extinct animals. We are rich +every morning, and poor every noon. One day with us measures the space +of two hundred years in kingdoms--a hundred years to build up, and a +hundred years to decay and destroy; twelve hours to overspread the +evanescent pane with glorious beauty, and twelve to extract and +dissipate the pictures.... Shall we not reverently and rejoicingly +behold in these morning pictures, wrought without color, and kissed upon +the window by the cold lips of Winter, another instance of that Divine +Beneficence of beauty which suffuses the heavens? + + * * * * * + +From "Lectures to Young Men." + +=_49._= NATURE, DESIGNED FOR OUR ENJOYMENT. + +The _necessity_ of amusement is admitted on all hands. There is an +appetite of the eye, of the ear, and of every sense, for which God has +provided the material. Gaiety of every degree, this side of puerile +levity, is wholesome to the body, to the mind, and to the morals. Nature +is a vast repository of manly enjoyments. The magnitude of God's works +is not less admirable than its exhilarating beauty. The rudest forms +have something of beauty; the ruggedest strength is graced with some +charm; the very pins, and rivets, and clasps of nature, are attractive +by qualities of beauty, more than is necessary for mere utility. The sun +could go down without gorgeous clouds; evening could advance without its +evanescent brilliance; trees might have flourished without symmetry; +flowers have existed without odor, and fruit without flavor. When I have +journeyed through forests, where ten thousand shrubs and vines exist +without apparent use; through prairies, whose undulations exhibit sheets +of flowers innumerable, and absolutely dazzling the eye with their +prodigality of beauty--beauty, not a tithe of which is ever seen by +man--I have said, it is plain that God is himself passionately fond of +beauty, and the _earth_ is his garden, as an _acre_ is man's. God has +made us like Himself, to be pleased by the universal beauty of the +world. He has made provision in nature, in society, and in the family, +for amusement and exhilaration enough to fill the heart with the +perpetual sunshine of delight. + +Upon this broad earth, purfled with flowers, scented with odors, +brilliant in colors, vocal with echoing and re-echoing melody, I take +my stand against all demoralizing pleasure. Is it not enough that our +Father's house is so full of dear delights, that we must wander prodigal +to the swine-herd for husks, and to the slough for drink?--when the +trees of God's heritage bend over our head and solicit our hand to pluck +the golden fruitage, must we still go in search of the apples of Sodom, +outside fair and inside ashes. + +Men shall crowd to the circus to hear clowns, and see rare feats of +horsemanship; but a bird may poise beneath the very sun, or flying +downward, swoop from the high heaven; then flit with graceful ease +hither and thither, pouring liquid song as if it were a perennial +fountain of sound--no man cares for that. + +Upon the stage of life, the vastest tragedies are performing in every +act; nations pitching headlong to their final catastrophe; others, +raising their youthful forms to begin the drama of existence. The world +of society is as full of exciting interest, as nature is full of beauty. +The great dramatic throng of life is bustling along--the wise, the fool, +the clown, the miser, the bereaved, the broken-hearted. Life mingles +before us smiles and tears, sighs and laughter, joy and gloom, as the +spring mingles the winter-storm and summer-sunshine. To this vast +Theatre which God hath builded, where stranger plays are seen than ever +author writ, man seldom cares to come. When God dramatizes, when nations +act, or all the human kind conspire to educe the vast catastrophe, men +sleep and snore, and let the busy scene go on, unlocked, unthought +upon.... It is my object then, not to withdraw the young from pleasure, +but from unworthy pleasures; not to lessen their enjoyments, but to +increase them, by rejecting the counterfeit and the vile. + + * * * * * + +From "Norwood." + +=_50._= LIFE IN THE COUNTRY. + +It was this union of seclusion and publicity that made Norwood a place +of favorite resort, through the summer, of artists, of languid scholars, +and of persons of quiet tastes. There was company for all that shunned +solitude, and solitude for all that were weary of company. Each house +was secluded from its neighbor. Yards and gardens full of trees and +shrubbery, the streets lined with venerable trees, gave the town at a +little distance the appearance of having been built in an orchard or a +forest-park. A few steps and you could be alone--a few steps too would +bring you among crowds. Where else could one watch the gentle conflict +between sounds and silence with such dreamy joy?--or make idleness seem +so nearly like meditation?--or more nimbly chase the dreams of night +with even brighter day-dreams, wondering every day what has become of +the day before, and each week where the week has gone, and in autumn +what has become of the summer, that trod so noiselessly that none knew +how swift were its footsteps! The town filled by July, and was not empty +again till late October. + +There are but two perfect months in our year--June and October. People +from the city usually arrange to miss both. June is the month of +gorgeous greens; October, the month of all colors. June has the full +beauty of youth; October has the splendor of ripeness. Both of them are +out-of-door months. If the year has anything to tell you, listen now! If +these months teach the heart nothing, one may well shut up the book of +the year. + + * * * * * + +From "The Life of Jesus the Christ." + +=_51._= THE CONCEPTION OF ANGELS, SUPERHUMAN. + +The angels of the oldest records are like the angels of the latest. The +Hebrew thought had moved through a vast arc of the infinite cycle of +truth, between the days when Abraham came from Ur of Chaldea, and the +times of our Lord's stay on earth. But there is no development in angels +of later over those of an earlier date. They were as beautiful, as +spiritual, as pure and noble, at the beginning as at the close of the +old dispensation. Can such creatures, transcending earthly experience, +and far out-running any thing in the life of man, be creations of the +rude ages of the human understanding? We could not imagine the Advent +stripped of its angelic lore. The dawn without a twilight, the sun +without clouds of silver and gold, the morning on the fields without +dew-diamonds,--but not the Saviour without his angels? They shine within +the Temple, they bear to the matchless mother a message which would have +been a disgrace from mortal lips, but which from theirs fell upon her +as pure as dew-drops upon the lilies of the plain of Esdraelon. They +communed with the Saviour in his glory of transfiguration, sustained +him in the anguish of the garden, watched at the tomb; and as they had +thronged the earth at his coming, so they seem to have hovered in the +air in multitudes at the hour of his ascension. Beautiful as they seem, +they are never mere poetic adornments. The occasions of their appearing +are grand. The reasons are weighty. Their demeanor suggests and befits +the highest conception of superior beings. These are the very elements +that a rude age could not fashion. Could a sensuous age invent an order +of beings, which, touching the earth from a heavenly height on its most +momentous occasions, could still, after ages of culture had refined +the human taste and moral appreciation, remain ineffably superior in +delicacy, in pure spirituality, to the demands of criticism? Their very +coming and going is not with earthly movement. They suddenly are seen +in the air as one sees white clouds round out from the blue sky, in +a summer's day, that melt back even while one looks upon them. They +vibrate between the visible and the invisible. They come without motion. +They go without flight. They dawn and disappear. Their words are few, +but the Advent Chorus yet is sounding its music through the world. + + * * * * * + + +=_John McClintock,[18] 1814-1870._= + +From a Sermon on "The Ground of Man's Love to God." + +=_52._= THE CHRISTIAN THE ONLY TRUE LOVER OF NATURE. + +It is not too much to say that the only _true_ lover of nature, is he +that loves God in Christ. It is as with one standing in one of those +caves of unknown beauty of which travellers tell us. While it is dark, +nothing can be seen but the abyss, or at most, a faint glimmer of +ill-defined forms. But flash into it the light of a single torch, and +myriad splendors crowd upon the gaze of the beholder. He sees long-drawn +colonnades, sparkling with gems; chambers of beauty and glory open on +every hand, flashing back the light a thousand fold increased, and in +countless varied hues. So the sense of God's love in the heart gives an +eye for nature, and supplies the torch to illuminate its recesses of +beauty. For the ear that can hear them, ten thousand voices speak, and +all in harmony, the name of God! The sun, rolling in his majesty,-- + + "And with his tread, of thunder force, + Fulfilling his appointed course,"-- + +is but a faint and feeble image of the great central Light of the +universe. The spheres of heaven, in the perpetual harmony of their +unsleeping motion, swell the praise of God; the earth, radiant with +beauty, and smiling in joy, proclaims its Maker's love; and the +ocean,--that + + "Glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form + Glasses itself in tempests,"-- + +as it murmurs on the shore, or foams with its broad billows over the +deep, declares its God; and even the tempests, that, in their "rising +wrath, sweep sea and sky," still utter the name of Him who rides upon +the whirlwind and directs the storm. In a word, the whole universe is +but a temple, with God for its deity, and the redeemed _man_ for its +worshipper. + +[Footnote 18: Distinguished among the Methodist clergy for eloquence and +learning; a native of Pennsylvania.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Noah Porter,[19] 1811-_= + +From "The Science of Nature versus the Science of Man." + +=_53._= SCIENCE MAGNIFIES GOD. + +We contend at present only for the position that we cannot have a +science of nature which does not regard the spirit of man as a part of +nature. But is this all? Do man and nature exhaust the possibilities of +being? We cannot answer this question here. But we find suggestions from +the spectrum and the spectroscope which may be worth our heeding. The +materials with which we have to do in their most brilliant scientific +theories seem at first to overwhelm us with their vastness and +complexity. The hulks are so enormous, the forces are so mighty, the +laws are so wide-sweeping, and at times so pitiless, the distances are +so over-mastering, even the uses and beauties are so bewildering, that +we bow in mute and almost abject submission to the incomprehensible all; +of which we hesitate to affirm aught, except what has been manifest to +our observant senses and connected by our inseparable associations. We +forget what our overmastering thought has done in subjecting this +universe to its interpretations. Its vast distances have been +annihilated, for we have connected the distant with the near by the one +pervading force which Newton divined. We have analyzed the flame that +burns in our lamp, and the flame that burns in the sun, by the same +instrument,--connecting by a common affinity, at the same instant and +under the same eye, two agents, the farthest removed in place and the +most subtle in essence. As we have overcome distances, so we have +conquered time, reading the story of antecedent cycles with a confidence +equal to that with which we forecast the future ages. The philosopher +who penetrates the distant portions of the universe by the +_omnipresence_ of his scientific generalizations, who reads the secret +of the sun by the glance of his penetrating eye, has little occasion to +deny that all its forces may be mastered by a single all-knowing and +_omnipresent_ Spirit, and that its secrets can be read by one all-seeing +eye. The scientist who evolves the past in his confident thought, under +a few grand titles of generalized forces and relations, and who develops +and almost gives law to the future by his faith in the persistence of +force, has little reason to question the existence of an intellect +capable of deeper insight and larger foresight than his own, which can +grasp all the past and the future by an all-comprehending intelligence, +and can control its wants by a personal energy that is softened to +personal tenderness and love. + +[Footnote 19: A Congregational divine, born in Connecticut, long +Professor of Metaphysics in Yale College, and writer of many critical +Essays and Reviews. His treatise on "The Human Intellect," is the most +elaborate American work upon Psychology.] + + * * * * * + + +=_William Henry Milburn,[20] 1823-_= + +From "Lectures." + +=_54._= THE PIONEER PREACHERS OF THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. + +The spoken eloquence of New England is for the most part from +manuscript. Her first settlers brought old-world forms, and fashions +from the old world, with them. Their preachers were set an appalling +distance from their congregations. Between the pulpit, perched far up +toward the ceiling, and the seats, was an awful abysmal depth. Above the +lofty desk was dimly seen the white cravat, and above that the head +of the preacher. His eye was averted and fastened downward upon his +manuscript, and his discourse, or exercitation, or whatever it might be, +was delivered in a monotonous, regular cadence, probably relieved +from time to time by some quaint blunder, the result of indistinct +penmanship, or dim religious light. It was not this preacher's business +to arouse his audience. The theory of worship of the period was +opposed to that. This people did not wish excitement, or stimulus, or +astonishment, or agitation. They simply desired information; they wished +to be instructed; to have their judgment informed, or their reason +enlightened. Thus the preacher might safely remain perched up in his far +distant unimpassioned eyrie. + +But how would such a style of eloquence--if, indeed, truth will permit +the name of eloquence to be applied to the reading of matter from a +preconcerted manuscript--how would such a style of delivery be received +out in the wild West? Place your textual speaker out in the backwoods, +on the stump, where a surging tide of humanity streams strongly around +him, where the people press up toward him on every side, their keen +eyes intently perusing his to see if he be in real earnest,--"dead in +earnest"--and where, as with a thousand darts, their contemptuous scorn +would pierce him through if he were found playing a false game, trying +to pump up tears by mere acting, or arousing an excitement without +feeling it. Would such a style of oratory succeed there? By no means. +The place is different; the hearers are different; the time, the thing +required, all the circumstances, are totally different. Here, in the +vast unwalled church of nature, with the leafy tree-tops for a ceiling, +their massy stems for columns; with the endless mysterious cadences of +the forest for a choir; with the distant or nearer music and murmur of +streams, and the ever-returning voice of birds, sounding in their ears +for the made-up music of a picked band of exclusive singers: here stand +men whose ears are trained to catch the faintest foot-fall of the +distant deer, or the rustle of their antlers against branch or bough of +the forest track--whose eyes are skilled to discern the trail of savages +who leave scarce a track behind them; and who will follow upon +that trail--utterly invisible to the untrained eye--as surely as a +blood-hound follows the scent, ten or twenty, or a hundred miles, whose +eye and hand are so well practised that they can drive a nail, or snuff +a candle, with the long, heavy western rifle. Such men, educated for +years, or even generations, in that hard school of necessity, where +every one's hand and wood-man's skill must keep his head; where +incessant pressing necessities required ever a prompt and sufficient +answer in deeds; and where words needed to be but few, and those +the plainest and directest, required no delay nor preparation, nor +oratorical coquetting, nor elaborate preliminary scribble; no hesitation +nor doubts in deeds; no circumlocution in words. To restrain, influence, +direct, govern, such a surging sea of life as this, required something +very different from a written address. + +[Footnote 20: Born in Philadelphia; a Methodist divine, long afflicted +with blindness; but widely popular as a preacher and lecturer.] + + * * * * * + + + +ORATORS, AND LEGAL AND POLITICAL WRITERS, OF THE ERA OF THE REVOLUTION. + + +=_John Dickinson, 1732-1808._= (Manual, p. 486.) + +From "The Address of Congress to the States." May 26, 1779. + +=_55._= THE ASPECT OF THE WAR. + +To our constituents we submit the propriety and purity of our +intentions, well knowing they will not forget that we lay no burdens +upon them but those in which we participate with them--a happy sympathy, +that pervades societies formed on the basis of equal liberty. Many +cares, many labors, and may we not add, reproaches, are peculiar to us. +These are the emoluments of our unsolicited stations; and with these we +are content, if YOU approve our conduct. If you do not, we shall return +to our private condition, with no other regret than that which will +arise from our not having served you as acceptably and essentially as +we wished and strove to do, though as cheerfully and faithfully as we +could. + +Think not we despair of the commonwealth, or endeavor to shrink from +opposing difficulties. No! Your cause is too good, your objects too +sacred, to be relinquished. We tell you truths because you are freemen, +who can bear to hear them, and may profit by them; and when they reach +your enemies, we fear not the consequences, because we are not ignorant +of their resources or our own. Let your good sense decide upon the +comparison.... + +We well remember what you said at the commencement of this war. You +saw the immense difference between your circumstances and those of your +enemies, and you knew the quarrel must decide on no less than your +lives, liberties, and estates. All these you greatly put to every +hazard, resolving rather to die freemen than to live slaves; and justice +will oblige the impartial world to confess you have uniformly acted on +the same generous principle. Persevere, and you insure peace, freedom, +safety, glory, sovereignty, and felicity to yourselves, your children, +and your children's children. + +Encouraged by favors already received from Infinite Goodness, gratefully +acknowledging them, earnestly imploring their continuance, constantly +endeavoring to draw them down on your heads by an amendment of your +lives, and a conformity to the Divine will, humbly confiding in the +protection so often and wonderfully experienced, vigorously employ the +means placed by Providence in your hands for completing your labors. + +Fill up your battalions--be prepared in every part to repel the +incursions of your enemies--place your several quotas in the continental +treasury--lend money for public uses--sink the emissions of your +respective States--provide effectually for expediting the conveyance of +supplies for your armies and fleets, and for your allies--prevent the +produce of the country from being monopolized--effectually superintend +the behavior of public officers--diligently promote piety, virtue, +brotherly love, learning, frugality, and moderation--and may you be +approved before Almighty God, worthy of those blessings we devoutly wish +you to enjoy. + + * * * * * + + +=_John Adams, 1735-1826._= (Manual, p. 486.) + +From his "Life and Works." + +=_56._= CHARACTER OF JAMES OTIS. + +JAMES OTIS, of Boston, sprang from families among the earliest of the +planters of the Colonies, and the most respectable in rank, while the +word _rank_, and the idea annexed to it, were tolerated in America. He +was a gentleman of general science and extensive literature. He had been +an indefatigable student during the whole course of his education in +college and at the bar. He was well versed in Greek and Roman history, +philosophy, oratory, poetry, and mythology. His classical studies had +been unusually ardent, and his acquisitions uncommonly great.... It +was a maxim which he inculcated on his pupils, as his patron in the +profession, Mr. Gridley, had done before him, "_that a lawyer ought +never to be without a volume of natural or public law, or moral +philosophy, on his table or in his pocket_." In the history, the common +law, and statute laws, of England, he had no superior, at least in +Boston. + +Thus qualified to resist the system of usurpation and despotism, +meditated by the British ministry, under the auspices of the Earl +of Bute, Mr. Otis resigned his commission from the crown, as +Advocate-General,--an office very lucrative at that time, and a sure +road to the highest favors of government in America,--and engaged in +the cause of his country without fee or reward. His argument, speech, +discourse, oration, harangue,--call it by which name you will, was the +most impressive upon his crowded audience of any that I ever heard +before or since, excepting only many speeches by himself in Faneuil +Hall, and in the House of Representatives, which he made from time to +time for ten years afterwards. There were no stenographers in those +days. Speeches were not printed; and all that was not remembered, like +the harangues of Indian orators, was lost in air. Who, at the distance +of fifty-seven years, would attempt, upon memory, to give even a sketch +of it? Some of the heads are remembered, out of which Livy or Sallust +would not scruple to compose an oration for history. I shall not essay +an analysis or a sketch of it at present. I shall only say, and I do say +in the most solemn manner, that Mr. Otis's oration against "_writs of +assistance_" breathed into this nation the breath of life. + + * * * * * + +From the "Thoughts on Government." + +=_57._= REQUISITES OF A GOOD GOVERNMENT. + +The dignity and stability of government in all its branches, the morals +of the people, and every blessing of society, depend so much upon an +upright and skilful administration of justice, that the judicial power +ought to be distinct from both the legislative and executive, and +independent upon both, that so it may be a check upon both, as both +should be checks upon that. + +... Laws for the liberal education of youth, especially of the lower +class of people, are so extremely wise and useful, that, to a humane +and generous mind, no expense for this purpose would be thought +extravagant.... You and I, my dear friend, have been sent into life at a +time when the greatest lawgivers of antiquity would have wished to live. +How few of the human race have ever enjoyed an opportunity of making +an election of government, more than of air, soil, or climate, for +themselves or their children! When, before the present epocha, had +three millions of people full power and a fair opportunity, to form +and establish the wisest and happiest government that human wisdom can +contrive? + + * * * * * + + +=_Patrick Henry, 1736-1799._= (Manual, p. 484.) + +From "Speech in the Convention of Virginia," 1775. + +=_58._= THE NECESSITY OF THE WAR. + +I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of +experience. I know of no way of judging of the future but by the past. +And judging by the past, I wish to know what has been the conduct of +the British ministry for the last ten years to justify those hopes with +which gentlemen have been pleased to solace themselves and the house. +Is it that insidious smile with which our petition has been lately +received. Trust it not, Sir, it will prove a snare to your feet. Suffer +not yourselves to be betrayed with a kiss. Ask yourselves how this +gracious reception of our petition comports with those warlike +preparations which cover our waters and darken our land. Are fleets and +armies necessary to a work of love and reconciliation? Have we shown +ourselves so unwilling to be reconciled that force must be called in +to win back our love? Let us not deceive ourselves, sir. These are the +implements of war, and subjugation--the last arguments to which kings +resort. There is no longer any room for hope. If we wish to be free, if +we mean to preserve inviolate those inestimable privileges for which we +have been so long contending, if we mean not basely to abandon the +noble struggle in which we have been so long engaged, and which we have +pledged ourselves never to abandon until the glorious object of our +contest is obtained, we must fight, I repeat it, sir, we must fight. An +appeal to arms and to the God of Hosts is all that is left us. + +They tell us, sir, that we are weak; unable to cope with so formidable +an adversary. But when shall we be stronger? Will it be the next week, +or the next year? Will it be when we are totally disarmed, and when +a British guard shall be stationed in every house? Shall we gather +strength by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of +effectual resistance, by lying supinely on our backs, and hugging the +delusive phantom of hope, until our enemies shall have bound us hand and +foot? + +Sir, we are not weak, if we make a proper use of those means which the +God of nature hath placed in our power. Three millions of people, armed +in the holy cause of liberty, and in such a country as that which we +possess, are invincible by any force which our enemy can send against +us. Besides, sir, we shall not fight our battles alone. There is a just +God, who presides over the destinies of nations, and who will raise up +friends to fight our battles for us. The battle, sir, is not to the +strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave. Besides, +sir, we have no election. If we were base enough to desire it, it is +now too late to retire from the contest. There is no retreat but in +submission and slavery. Our chains are forged. Their clanking may be +heard on the plains of Boston. The war is inevitable--and let it come! I +repeat it, sir, let it come! + +It is vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, Peace, +peace; but there is no peace. The war is actually begun. The next +gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of +resounding arms. Our brethren are already in the field. Why stand we +here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life +so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains +and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may +take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death! + + * * * * * + +From a Speech on the Ratification of the Federal Constitution. + +=_59._= NECESSITY OF AMENDMENT BEFORE ADOPTION. + +I exhort gentlemen to think seriously, before they ratify this +constitution, and to indulge a salutary doubt of their being able to +succeed in any effort they may make to get amendments after adoption. +With respect to that part of the proposal, which says that every power +not specially granted to Congress remains with the people; it must be +previous to adoption, or it will involve this country in inevitable +destruction. To talk of it, as a thing to be subsequently obtained, +and not as one of your unalienable rights, is leaving it to the casual +opinion of the Congress who shall take up the consideration of that most +important right. They will not reason with you about the effect of +this constitution. They will not take the opinion of this committee +concerning its operation. They will construe it even as they please. +If you place it subsequently, let me ask the consequences? Among ten +thousand implied powers which they may assume, their may, if we be +engaged in war, liberate every one of your slaves if they please. And +this must and will be done by men, a majority of whom have not a common +interest with you. They will, therefore, have no feeling for _your_ +interests.... Is it not worth while to turn your eyes for a moment from +subsequent amendments, to the real situation of your country? You may +have a union, but can you have a lasting union in these circumstances? +It will be in vain to expect it. But if you agree to previous +amendments, you will have union, firm, solid, permanent. I cannot +conclude without saying, that I shall have nothing to do with it, if +subsequent amendments be determined upon. Oppressions will be carried on +as radically by the majority when adjustments and accommodations will +be held up. I say, I conceive it my duty, if this government be adopted +before it is amended, to go home. I shall act as I think my duty +requires. Every other gentleman will do the same. Previous amendments, +in my opinion, are necessary to procure peace and tranquility. I fear, +if they be not agreed to, every movement and operation of government +will cease, and how long that baneful thing, _civil discord_, will stay +from this country, God only knows. When men are free from restraint, +how long will you suspend their fury? The interval between this and +bloodshed is but a moment. The licentious and wicked of the community +will seize with avidity every thing you hold. In this unhappy situation, +what is to be done? It surpasses my stock of wisdom to determine. If you +will, in the language of freemen, stipulate that there are rights which +no man under heaven can take from you, you shall have me going along +with you; but not otherwise. + + * * * * * + + +=_John Rutledge, 1739-1800._= (Manual, p. 484.) + +From "Speech on the Judiciary Establishment." + +=_60._= AN INDEPENDENT JUDICIARY THE SAFEGUARD OF LIBERTY. + +While this shield remains to the states, it will be difficult to +dissolve the ties which knit and bind them together. As long as this +buckler remains to the people, they cannot be liable to much, or +permanent oppression. The government may be administered with violence, +offices may be bestowed exclusively upon those who have no other merit +than that of carrying votes at elections,--the commerce of our country +may be depressed by nonsensical theories, and public credit may suffer +from bad intentions; but so long as we have an independent judiciary, +the great interests of the people will be safe. Neither the president, +nor the legislature, can violate their constitutional rights. Any +such attempt would be checked by the judges, who are designed by the +constitution to keep the different branches of the government within +the spheres of their respective orbits, and say thus far shall you +legislate, and no further. Leave to the people an independent judiciary, +and they will prove that man is capable of governing himself,--they will +be saved from what has been the fate of all other republics, and they +will disprove the position that governments of a republican form cannot +endure. + +We are asked by the gentleman from Virginia, if the people want judges +to protect them? Yes, sir, in popular governments constitutional checks +are necessary for their preservation; the people want to be protected +against themselves; no man is so absurd as to propose the people +collectedly will consent to the prostration of their liberties; but if +they be not shielded by some constitutional checks, they will suffer +them to be destroyed--to be destroyed by demagogues, who at the time +they are soothing and cajoling the people, with bland and captivating +speeches, are forging chains for them; demagogues who carry, daggers in +their hearts, and seductive smiles in their hypocritical faces, who are +dooming the people to despotism, when they profess to be exclusively the +friends of the people; against such designs and such artifices, were our +constitutional checks made, to preserve the people of this country. + + * * * * * + + +=_Thomas Jefferson, 1743-1826._= (Manual, pp. 486, 490.) + +From his "Inaugural Address", March 4th, 1801. + +=_61._= ESSENTIAL PRINCIPLES OF AMERICAN GOVERNMENT. + +Kindly separated by nature and a wide ocean from the exterminating havoc +of one quarter of the globe, too high-minded to endure the degradations +of the others, possessing a chosen country with room enough for our +descendants to the hundredth and thousandth generation, entertaining a +due sense of our equal right to the use of our own faculties, to the +acquisitions of our industry, to honor and confidence from our fellow +citizens, resulting not from birth but from our actions and their sense +of them, enlightened by a benign religion, professed, indeed, and +practised, in various forms, yet all of them including honesty, truth, +temperance, gratitude, and the love of man; acknowledging and adoring +an overruling Providence, which by all its dispensations proves that +it delights in the happiness of man here and his greater happiness +hereafter; with all these blessings, what more is necessary to make us +a happy and prosperous people? Still one thing more, fellow-citizens, a +wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one +another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own +pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth +of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, +and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities. + +About to enter, fellow-citizens, on the exercise of duties which +comprehend everything dear and valuable to you, it is proper that +you should understand what I deem the essential principles of +our government, and consequently those which ought to shape its +administration. I will compress them within the narrowest compass they +will bear, stating the general principle, but not all its limitations. +Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion, +religious, or political; peace, commerce, and honest friendship, with +all nations, entangling alliances with none; the support of the state +governments in all their rights, as the most competent administrations +for our domestic concerns and the surest bulwarks against +anti-republican tendencies; the preservation of the general government +in its whole constitutional vigor, as the sheet anchor of our peace at +home and safety abroad; a jealous care of the right of election by the +people, a mild and safe corrective of abuses which are lopped by the +sword of revolution where peaceable remedies are unprovided; absolute +acquiescence in the decisions of the majority, the vital, principle +of republics, from which there is no appeal but to force, the vital +principle and immediate parent of despotism; a well disciplined militia, +our best reliance in peace and for the first moments of war, till +regulars may relieve them; the supremacy of the civil over the military +authority; economy in the public expense, that labor may be lightly +burdened; the honest payment of our debts send sacred preservation of +the public faith; encouragement of agriculture, and of commerce as its +handmaid; the diffusion of information and the arraignment of all abuses +at the bar of public reason; freedom of religion; freedom of the press; +freedom of person under the protection of the _habeas corpus_; and +trial by juries impartially selected; these principles form the bright +constellation which has gone before us, and guided our steps through an +age of revolution and reformation. The wisdom of our sages and the blood +of our heroes have been devoted to their attainment. They should be +the creed of our political faith, the text of civil instruction, the +touchstone by which to try the services of those we trust; and should we +wander from them in moments of error or alarm, let us hasten to retrace +our steps and to regain the road which alone leads to peace, liberty, +and safety. + + * * * * * + +=_62._= CHARACTER OF WASHINGTON. + +His mind was great and powerful, without being of the very first order; +his penetration strong, though not so acute as a Newton, Bacon, or +Locke; and as far as he saw no judgment was ever sounder. It was slow in +operation, being little aided by invention or imagination, but sure in +conclusion. Hence the common remark of his officers, of the advantage he +derived from councils of war, where hearing all suggestions, he selected +whatever was best; and certainly no General ever planned his battles +more judiciously. But if deranged during the course of the action, if +any member of his plan was dislocated by sudden circumstances, he was +slow in re-adjustment. The consequence was that he often failed in the +field, and rarely against an enemy in station, as at Boston and York. +He was incapable of fear, meeting personal dangers with the calmest +unconcern. Perhaps the strongest feature in his character was prudence; +never acting until every circumstance, every consideration was maturely +weighed; refraining if he saw a doubt, but when once decided, going +through with his purpose, whatever obstacles opposed. His integrity was +most pure, his justice the most inflexible I have ever known; no motives +of interest or consanguinity, of friendship or hatred, being able to +bias his decision. He was indeed in every sense of the words, a wise, +a good, and a great man. His temper was naturally irritable, and high +toned; but reflection and resolution had obtained a firm and habitual +ascendancy over it. If ever however it broke its bonds, he was most +tremendous in his wrath. In his expenses he was honorable, but exact; +liberal in contributions to whatever promised utility, but frowning and +unyielding on all visionary projects, and all unworthy calls on his +charity. His heart was not warm in its affections; but he exactly +calculated every man's value, and gave him a solid esteem proportioned +to it. His person, you know, was fine, his stature exactly what one +would wish, his deportment easy, erect, and noble; the best horseman of +his age, and the most graceful figure that could be seen on horseback. +Although in the circle of his friends, where he might be unreserved with +safety, he took a free share in conversation, his colloquial talents +were not above mediocrity, possessing neither copiousness of ideas, nor +fluency of words. In public, when called on for a sudden opinion, he was +unready, short, and embarrassed. Yet he wrote readily, rather diffusely, +in an easy and correct style. This he had acquired by conversation with +the world, for his education was merely reading, writing, and common +arithmetic, to which he added surveying at a later day. His time was +employed in action chiefly, reading little, and that only in agriculture +and English history. His correspondence became necessarily extensive, +and with journalizing his agricultural proceedings, occupied most of his +leisure hours within doors. On the whole, his character was in its mass, +perfect; in nothing, bad; in few points indifferent; and it may truly be +said that never did nature and fortune combine more perfectly to make a +man great. + + * * * * * + +From the "Notes on Virginia." + +=_63._= GEOGRAPHICAL LIMITS OF THE ELEPHANT AND THE MAMMOTH. 1781. + +From the thirtieth degree of south latitude to the thirtieth of north +are nearly the limits which nature has fixed for the existence +and multiplication of the elephant known to us. Proceeding thence +northwardly to thirty-six and a half degrees, we enter those assigned +to the mammoth. The farther we advance north, the more their vestiges +multiply, as far as the earth has been explored in that direction; and +it is as probable as otherwise, that this progression continues to the +pole itself, if land extends so far. The centre of the frozen zone, +then, may be the acme of their vigor, as that of the torrid is of the +elephant. Thus nature seems to have drawn a belt of separation between +these two tremendous animals, whose breadth indeed is not precisely +known, though at present we may suppose it to be about six and a half +degrees of latitude; to have assigned to the elephant the regions +south of these confines, and those north to the mammoth, founding the +constitution of the one in her extreme of heat, and that of the other +in the extreme of cold. When the Creator has therefore separated their +nature as far as the extent of the scale of animal life allowed to this +planet would permit, it seems perverse to declare it the same, from a +partial resemblance of their tusks and bones. But to whatever animal we +ascribe these remains, it is certain such a one has existed in America, +and that it has been the largest of all terrestrial beings. + + * * * * * + +=64.= THE UNHAPPY EFFECTS OF SLAVERY. + +These must doubtless be an unhappy influence on the manners of our +people produced by the existence of slavery among us.... With the morals +of the people, their industry also is destroyed. For in a warm climate +no man will labor for himself who can make another labor for him. This +is so true, that of the proprietors of slaves a very small proportion +indeed are ever seen to labor. And can the liberties, of a nation be +thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis--a conviction +in the minds of the people that they are the gift of God? that they are +not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed, I tremble for my country +when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever; +that considering numbers, nature, and natural means only, a revolution +of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation, is among possible +events; that it may become probable by supernatural interference. +The Almighty has no attribute which can take sides with us in such +a contest. But it is impossible to be temperate, and to pursue this +subject through the various considerations of policy, of morals, of +history, natural and civil. We must be contented to hope they will force +their way into every one's mind. I think a change already perceptible +since the origin of the present revolution. The spirit of the master +is abating, that of the slave is rising from the dust, his condition +mollifying, the way I hope preparing, under the auspices of Heaven, for +a total emancipation. + + * * * * * + + +=_John Jay, 1745-1829._= (Manual, pp. 484, 486.) + +From the "Address from the Convention." December 23, 1776. + +=_65._= AN APPEAL TO ARMS. + +Rouse, brave citizens! Do your duty like men; and be persuaded that +Divine Providence will not permit this western world to be involved in +the horrors of slavery. Consider that, from the earliest ages of the +world, religion, liberty, and reason have been bending their course +towards the setting sun. The holy Gospels are yet to be preached to +these western regions; and we have the highest reason to believe that +the Almighty will not suffer slavery and the gospel to go hand in hand. +It cannot, it will not be. + +But if there be any among us dead to all sense of honor and love +of their country; if deaf to all the calls of liberty, virtue, and +religion; if forgetful of the magnanimity of their ancestors, and the +happiness of their children; if neither the examples nor the success of +other nations, the dictates of reason and of nature, or the great duties +they owe to their God, themselves, and their posterity have any effect +upon them; if neither the injuries they have received, the prize they +are contending for, the future blessings or curses of their children, +the applause or the reproach of all mankind, the approbation or +displeasure of the great Judge, or the happiness or misery consequent +upon their conduct, in this and a future state can move them,--then let +them be assured that they deserve to be slaves, and are entitled to +nothing but anguish and tribulation.... Let them forget every duty, +human and divine, remember not that they have children, and beware how +they call to mind the justice of the Supreme Being. + + * * * * * + + +=_Alexander Hamilton, 1757-1804._= (Manual, pp. 484, 486.) + +From "Vindication of the Funding System." + +=_66._= CHARACTER OF THE DEBT. + +A person who, unacquainted with the fact, should learn the history +of our debt from the declamations with which certain newspapers are +perpetually charged, would be led to suppose that it is the mere +creature of the _present_ government, for the purpose of burthening the +people with taxes, and producing an artificial and corrupt influence +over them; he would, at least, take it for granted that it had been +contracted in the pursuit of some wanton or vain project of ambition or +glory; he would scarcely be able to conceive that every part of it was +the relict of a war which had given independence, and preserved liberty +to the country; that the present government found it as it is, in point +of magnitude (except as to the diminutions made by itself), and has done +nothing more than to bring under a regular regimen and provision, what +was before a scattered and heterogeneous mass. + +And yet this is the simple and exact state of the business. The whole of +the debt embraced by the provisions of the funding system, consisted of +the unextinguished principal and arrears of interest, of the debt which +had been contracted by the United States in the course of the late war +with Great Britain, and which remained uncancelled, and the principal +and arrears of interest of the separate debts of the respective States +contracted during the same period, which remained, _outstanding, and +unsatisfied, relating to services and supplies for carrying on the war_. +Nothing more was done by that system, than to incorporate these two +species of debt into the mass, and to make for the whole, one general, +comprehensive provision. There is therefore, no arithmetic, no logic, +by which it can be shown that the funding system has augmented the +aggregate debt of the country. The sum total is manifestly the same; +though the parts which were before divided are now united. There is, +consequently, no color for an assertion, that the system in question +either created any _new_ debt, or made any addition to the _old_. + +And it follows, that the collective burthen upon the people of the +United States must have been as great _without_ as _with_ the union of +the different portions and descriptions of the debt. The only difference +can be, that without it that burthen would have been otherwise +distributed, and would have fallen with unequal weight, instead of being +equally borne as it now is. + +These conclusions which have been drawn respecting the non-increase of +the debt, proceed upon the presumption that every part of the public +debt, as well that of the States individually, as that of the United +States, was to have been honestly paid. If there is any fallacy in this +supposition, the inferences may be erroneous; but the error would imply +the disgrace of the United States, or parts of them,--a disgrace from +which every man of true honor and genuine patriotism will be happy to +see them rescued. + +When we hear the epithets, "vile matter," "corrupt mass," bestowed upon +the public debt, and the owners of it indiscriminately maligned as the +harpies and vultures of the community, there is ground to suspect that +those who hold the language, though they may not dare to avow it, +contemplate a more summary process for getting rid of debts than that of +paying them. Charity itself cannot avoid concluding from the language +and conduct of some men, (and some of them of no inconsiderable +importance,) that in their vocabularies _creditor_ and _enemy_ are +synonymous terms, and that they have a laudable antipathy against every +man to whom they owe money, either as individuals or as members of the +society. + + * * * * * + +From a "Letter to Lafayette," October 6, 1789. + +=_67._= THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. + +I have seen, with a mixture of pleasure and apprehension, the progress +of events which have lately taken place in your country. As a friend to +mankind and to liberty, I rejoice in the efforts which you are making to +establish it, while I fear much for the final success of the attempts, +for the fate of those I esteem who are engaged in them, and for the +danger in case of success, of innovations greater than will consist with +the real felicity of your nation. If your affairs still go well when +this reaches you, you will ask why this foreboding of ill, when all the +appearances have been so much in your favor. I will tell you: I dread +disagreements among those who are now united (which will be likely to be +improved by the adverse party) about the nature of your constitution; I +dread the vehement character of your people, whom I fear you may find it +more easy to bring on, than to keep within proper bounds after you +have put them in motion. I dread the interested refractoriness of your +nobles, who cannot all be gratified, and who may be unwilling to +submit to the requisite sacrifices. And I dread the reveries of your +philosophic politicians, who appear in the moment to have great +influence, and who, being mere speculatists, may aim at more refinement +than suits either with human nature, or the composition of your nation. + + * * * * * + + +=_Fisher Ames, 1738-1808._= (Manual, p. 487.) + +From the "Speech on the British Treaty." April 15, 1795. + +=_68._= OBLIGATION OF NATIONAL GOOD FAITH. + +The consequences of refusing to make provision for the treaty are not +all to be foreseen. By rejecting, vast interests are committed to the +sport of the winds: chance becomes the arbiter of events, and it is +forbidden to human foresight to count their number, or measure their +extent. Before we resolve to leap into this abyss, so dark and so +profound, it becomes us to pause, and reflect upon such of the dangers +as are obvious and inevitable. If this assembly should be wrought into +a temper to defy these consequences, it is vain, it is deceptive, to +pretend that we can escape them. It is worse than weakness to say, that +as to public faith, our vote has already settled the question. Another +tribunal than our own is already erected; the public opinion, not merely +of our own country, but of the enlightened world, will pronounce a +judgment that we cannot resist, that we dare not even affect to despise. + +... This, sir, is a cause that would be dishonored and betrayed if I +contented myself with appealing only to the understanding. It is too +cold, and its processes are too slow, for the occasion. I desire to +thank God that since he has given me an intellect so fallible, he has +impressed upon me an instinct that is sure. On a question of shame and +honor, reasoning is sometimes useless, and worse. I feel the decision in +my pulse; if it throws no light upon the brain, it kindles a fire at the +heart. + +What is patriotism? Is it a narrow affection for the spot where a man +was born? Are the very clods where we tread entitled to this ardent +preference, because they are greener? No, sir, this is not the character +of the virtue, and it soars higher for its object. It is an extended +self-love, mingling with all the enjoyments of life, and twisting itself +with the minutest filaments of the heart. It is thus we obey the laws of +society, because they are the laws of virtue. In their authority we +see not the array of force and terror, but the venerable image of our +country's honor. Every good citizen makes that honor his own, and +cherishes it not only as precious, but as sacred. He is willing to risk +his life in its defence; and is conscious that he gains protection, +while he gives it. For what rights of a citizen will be deemed +inviolable, when a state renounces the principles that constitute +their security? Or, if his life should not be invaded, what would +its enjoyments be in a country odious in the eyes of strangers, and +dishonored in his own? Could he look with affection and veneration to +such a country as his parent? The sense of having one would die within +him; he would blush for his patriotism, if he retained any, and justly. +for it would be a vice; he would be a banished man in his native land. + +I see no exception to the respect that is paid among nations to the law +of good faith. If there are cases in this enlightened period when it +is violated, then are none when it is decried. It is the philosophy of +politics, the religion of governments. It is observed by barbarians; a +whiff of tobacco smoke, or a string of beads, gives not merely binding +force, but sanctity, to treaties. Even in Algiers, a truce may be bought +for money; but when ratified, even Algiers is too wise or too just, to +disown and annul its obligation. Thus we see, neither the ignorance of +savages, nor the principles of an association for piracy and rapine, +permit a nation to despise its engagements. If, sir, there could be a +resurrection from the foot of the gallows, if the victims of justice +could live again, collect together, and form a society, they would, +however loath, soon find themselves obliged to make justice, that +justice under which they fell, the fundamental law of their state. They +would perceive it was their interest to make others respect, and they +would, therefore, soon pay some respect themselves, to the obligations +of good faith. + + * * * * * + + +=_Gouverneur Morris, 1752-1816._= (Manual, p. 484.) + +From a "Report to Congress in 1780." + +=_69._= QUALIFICATIONS OF A MINISTER OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS. + +A minister of foreign affairs should have a genius quick, lively, +penetrating; should write on all occasions with clearness and +perspicuity; be capable of expressing his sentiments with dignity, and +conveying strong sense and argument in easy and agreeable diction; his +temper mild, cool, and placid; festive, insinuating, and pliant, yet +obstinate; communicative, and yet reserved. He should know the human +face and heart, and the connections between them; should be versed +in the laws of nature and nations, and not ignorant of the civil and +municipal law; should be acquainted with the history of Europe, and with +the interests, views, commerce, and productions of the commercial and +maritime powers; should know the interests and commerce of America, +understand the French and Spanish languages, at least the former, and be +skilled in the modes and forms of public business; a man educated more +in the world than in the closet, that by use, as well as by nature, he +may give proper attention to great objects, and have proper contempt for +small ones. He should be attached to the independence of America, and +the alliance with France, as the great pillars of our politics; and this +attachment should not be slight and accidental, but regular, consistent, +and founded in strong conviction. His manners, gentle and polite; +above all things, honest, and least of all things, avaricious. His +circumstances and connections should be such as to give solid pledges +for his fidelity; and he should by no means be disagreeable to the +prince with whom we are in alliance, his ministers, or subjects. + + * * * * * + + +=_William Pinkney,[21] 1764-1820._= + +From "Speech in the Maryland Legislature." 1798. + +=_70._= RESPONSIBILITY FOR SLAVERY. + +For my own part, I would willingly draw the veil of oblivion over this +disgusting scene of iniquity, but that the present abject state of those +who are descended from these kidnapped sufferers, perpetually brings it +forward to the memory. + +But wherefore should we confine the edge of censure to our ancestors, +or those from whom they purchased? Are not we equally guilty? _They_ +strewed around the seeds of slavery; _we_ cherish and sustain the +growth. _They_ introduce the system; _we_ enlarge, invigorate, and +confirm it. Yes, let it be handed down to posterity, that the people of +Maryland, who could fly to arms with the promptitude of Roman citizens, +when the hand of oppression was lifted up against themselves; who could +behold their country desolated and their citizens slaughtered; who could +brave with unshaken firmness every calamity of war before they would +submit to the smallest infringement of their rights--that this very +people could yet see thousands of their fellow-creatures, within the +limits of their territory, bending beneath an unnatural yoke, and, +instead of being assiduous to destroy their shackles, be anxious to +immortalize their duration, so that a nation of slaves might forever +exist in a country whose freedom is its boast. + +[Footnote 21: Highly distinguished as a lawyer, orator, and diplomatist; +a native of Maryland.] + + * * * * * + +From "Speech in the Nereide Case." + +=_71._= WAR, AND AMERICAN BELLIGERENT RIGHTS. + +I throw into the opposite scale the ponderous claim of War; a claim of +high concernment, not to us only, but to the world; a claim connected +with the maritime strength of this maritime state, with public honor and +individual enterprise, with all those passions and motives which can be +made subservient to national success and glory, in the hour of national +trial and danger. I throw into the same scale the venerable code of +universal law, before which it is the duty of this Court, high as it is +in dignity, and great as are its titles to reverence, to bow down with +submission, I throw into the same scale a solemn treaty, binding upon +the claimant and upon you. In a word, I throw into that scale the rights +of belligerent America, and, as embodied with them, the rights of these +captors, by whose efforts and at whose cost the naval exertions of the +government have been seconded, until our once despised and drooping flag +has been made to wave in triumph, where neither France nor Spain could +venture to show a prow. You may call these rights by what name you +please. You may call them _iron_ rights:--I care not. It is more than +enough for me that they are RIGHTS. It is more than enough for me that +they come before you encircled and adorned by the laurels which we have +torn from the brow of the naval genius of England: that they come before +you recommended, and endeared, and consecrated by a thousand +recollections, which it would be baseness and folly not to cherish, and +that they are mingled in fancy and in fact with all the elements of our +future greatness.... + +We are now, thank God, once more at peace. Our belligerent rights may +therefore sleep for a season. May their repose be long and profound! But +the time must arrive when the interests and honor of this great nation +will command them to awake; and when it does arrive, I feel undoubting +confidence that they will rise from their slumber in the fullness of +their strength and majesty, unenfeebled and unimpaired by the judgment +of this high court. + +The skill and valor of our infant navy, which has illuminated every sea, +and dazzled the master states of Europe by the splendor of its triumphs, +have given us a pledge which I trust will continue to be dear to every +American heart, and to influence the future course of our policy, that +the ocean is destined to acknowledge the youthful dominion of the West. + + * * * * * + + +=_James Madison, 1751-1836._= (Manual, p. 486.) + +From his "Report of Debates in the Federal Convention." + +=_72._= VALUE OF A RECORD OF THE DEBATES. + +The close of the war, however, brought no cure for the public +embarrassments. The states relieved from the pressure of foreign danger, +and flushed with the enjoyment of independent and sovereign power, +instead of a diminished disposition to part with it, persevered in +omissions, and in measures, incompatible with their relations to the +federal government, and with those among themselves. + +... It was known that there were individuals who had betrayed a bias +towards monarchy, and there had always been some not unfavorable to a +partition of the Union into several confederacies; either from a better +chance of figuring on a sectional theatre, or that the sections would +require stronger governments, or by their hostile conflicts lead to a +monarchical consolidation. The idea of dismemberment had recently made +its appearance in the newspapers. + +Such were the defects, the deformities, the diseases, and the ominous +prospects, for which the convention were to provide a remedy, and +which ought never to be overlooked in expounding and appreciating the +constitutional charter--the remedy that was provided. + +The curiosity I had felt during my researches into the history of the +most distinguished confederacies, particularly those of antiquity, and +the deficiency I found in the means of satisfying it, more especially +in what related to the process, the principles, the reasons, and the +anticipations, which prevailed in the formation of them, determined me +to preserve, as far as I could, an exact account of what might pass in +the convention whilst executing its trust--with the magnitude of which +I was fully impressed, as I was by the gratification promised to future +curiosity by an authentic exhibition of the objects, the opinions, and +the reasonings, from which the new system of government was to receive +its peculiar structure and organization. Nor was I unaware of the value +of such a contribution to the fund of materials for the history of a +constitution, on which would be staked the happiness of a people great +even in its infancy, and possibly the cause of liberty throughout the +world. + +Of the ability and intelligence of those who composed the Convention +the debates and proceedings may be a test, as the character of the work +which was the offspring of their deliberations must be tested by the +experience of the future added to that of nearly half a century that has +passed. + +But whatever may be the judgment pronounced on the competency of the +architects of the Constitution, or whatever may be the destiny of the +edifice prepared by them, I feel it a duty to express my profound and +solemn conviction, derived from my intimate opportunity of observing and +appreciating the views of the Convention, collectively and individually, +that there never was an assembly of men, charged with a great, and +arduous trust, who were more pure in their motives, or more exclusively +or anxiously devoted to the object committed to them, than were the +members of the Federal Convention of 1787, to the object of devising and +proposing a constitutional system which should best supply the defects +of that which it was to replace, and best secure the permanent liberty +and happiness of their country. + + * * * * * + +=_73._= INSCRIPTION FOR A STATUE OF WASHINGTON. + +The General Assembly of Virginia have caused this statue to be erected +as a monument of affection and gratitude to George Washington, who, +uniting to the endowments of the hero the virtues of the patriot, and +exerting both in establishing the liberties of his country, has rendered +his name dear to his fellow-citizens, and given to the world an immortal +example of true glory. + + * * * * * + + +=_John Randolph, 1773-1832._= (Manual, p. 487.) + +From a Speech in the Virginia Convention. + +=_74._= "CHANGE IS NOT REFORM." + +Sir, I see no wisdom in making this provision for future changes. You +must give Governments time to operate on the People, and give the People +time to become gradually assimilated to their institutions. Almost any +thing is better than this state of perpetual uncertainty. A People may +have the best form of Government that the wit of man ever devised, and +yet, from its uncertainty alone, may, in effect, live under the worst +Government in the world. Sir, how often must I repeat, that _change_ is +not _reform?_ I am willing that this new Constitution shall stand as +long as it is possible for it to stand; and that, believe me, is a very +short time. Sir, it is vain to deny it. They may say what they please +about the old Constitution,--the defect is not there. It is not in the +form of the old edifice,--neither in the design nor in the elevation; it +is in the _material_, it is in the People of Virginia. To my knowledge +that People are changed from what they have been. The four hundred men +who went out with David were _in debt_. The fellow-laborers of Catiline +were _in debt_. The partizans of Caesar were _in debt_. And I defy you +to show me a desperately indebted People, anywhere, who can bear a +regular, sober Government. I throw the challenge to all who hear me. I +say that the character of the good old Virginia planter,--the man who +owned from five to twenty slaves, or less, who, lived by hard work, and +who paid his debts,--is passed away. A new order of things is come. The +period has arrived of living by one's wits; of living by contracting +debts that one cannot pay; and above all, of living by office-hunting. + +Sir, what do we see? Bankrupts,--branded bankrupts,--giving great +dinners, sending their children to the most expensive schools, giving +grand parties, and just as well received as anybody in society! I say +that, in such a state of things, the old Constitution was too good for +them,--they could not bear it. No, Sir; they could not bear a freehold +suffrage, and a property representation. I have always endeavored to do +the People justice; but I will not flatter them,--I will not pander to +their appetite for change. I will do nothing to provide for change. I +will not agree to any rule of future apportionment, or to any provision +for future changes, called amendments to the Constitution. Those who +love change,--who delight in public confusion, who wish to feed the +cauldron, and make it bubble,--may vote if they please for future +changes. But by what spell, by what formula, are you going to bind the +People to all future time? The days of Lycurgus are gone by, when we +could swear the People not to alter the Constitution until he should +return. You may make what entries on parchment you please; give me a +Constitution that will last for half a century; that is all I wish for. +No Constitution that you can make will last the one-half of half a +century. Sir, I will stake anything, short of my salvation, that those +who are malcontent now, will be more malcontent, three years hence, than +they are at this day. I have no favor for this Constitution. I shall +vote against its adoption, and I shall advise all the people of my +district to set their faces, aye, and their shoulders, too, against it. + + * * * * * + +From "Letters to a young Relative." + +=_75._= THE ERROR OF DECAYED FAMILIES. + +One of the best and wisest men I ever knew has often said to me that a +decayed family could never recover its loss of rank in the world, +until the members of it left off talking and dwelling upon its former +opulence. This remark, founded in a long and clear observation +of mankind, I have seen verified in numerous instances in my own +connections, who, to use the words of my oracle, will never thrive until +they can become poor folks. He added, they may make some struggles, and +with apparent success, to recover lost ground; they may, and sometimes +do, get half way up again; but they are sure to fall back, unless, +reconciling themselves to circumstances, they become in form, as well as +in fact, poor folks. + + * * * * * + + +=_James Kent, 1763-1847._= (Manual, pp. 488, 504.) + +From "Commentaries on American Law." + +=_76._= LAW OF THE STATES. + +The judicial power of the United States is necessarily limited to +national objects. The vast field of the law of property, the very +extensive head of equity jurisdiction, and the principal rights and +duties which flow from our civil and domestic relations, fall within the +control, and we might almost say the exclusive cognizance, of the state +governments. We look essentially to the state courts for protection to +all these momentous interests. They touch, in their operation, every +chord of human sympathy, and control our best destinies. It is their +province to reward and to punish. Their blessings and their terrors will +accompany us to the fireside, and "be in constant activity before the +public eye." The elementary principles of the common law are the same +in every state, and equally enlighten and invigorate every part of our +country. Our municipal codes can be made to advance with equal steps +with that of the nation, in discipline, in wisdom, and in lustre, if the +state governments (as they ought in all honest policy) will only render +equal patronage and security to the administration of justice. The true +interests and the permanent freedom of this country require that the +jurisprudence of the individual states should be cultivated, cherished, +and exalted, and the dignity and reputation of the state authorities +sustained, with becoming pride. In their subordinate relation to the +United States, they should endeavor to discharge the duty which they +owe to the latter, without forgetting the respect which they owe to +themselves. In the appropriate language of Sir William Blackstone, +and which he applies to the people of his own country, they should be +"loyal, yet free; obedient, yet independent." + + * * * * * + + +=_Edward Livingston,[22] 1764-1836._= + +From the "Report on the Penal Code for Louisiana." + +=_77._= THE PROPER OFFICE OF THE JUDGE. + +Judges are generally men who have grown old in the practice at the bar. +With the knowledge which this experience gives, they acquire a habit, +very difficult to be shaken off, of taking a side in every question that +they hear debated, and when the mind is once enlisted, their passions, +prejudices, and professional ingenuity are always arrayed on the same +side, and furnish arms for the contest. Neutrality cannot, under +these circumstances, be expected; but the law should limit as much as +possible, the evil that this almost inevitable state of things must +produce. In the theory of our law, judges are the counsel for the +accused, in practice they are, with a few honorable exceptions, his most +virulent prosecutors. The true principles of criminal jurisprudence +require that they should be neither. Perfect impartiality is +incompatible with these duties. A good judge should have no wish that +the guilty should escape, or that the innocent should suffer; no false +pity, no undue severity, should bias the unshaken rectitude of +his judgment; calm in deliberation, firm in resolve, patient in +investigating the truth, tenacious of it when discovered, he should join +urbanity of manners, to dignity of demeanor, and an integrity above +suspicion, to learning and talent; such a judge is what, according to +the true structure of our courts, he ought to be,--the protector, not +the advocate of the accused; his judge, not his accuser; and while +executing these functions, he is the organ by which the sacred will +of the law is pronounced. Uttered by such a voice, it will be heard, +respected, felt, obeyed; but impose on him the task of argument, of +debate; degrade him from the bench to the bar; suffer him to overpower +the accused with his influence, or to enter the lists with his advocate, +to carry on the contest of sophisms, of angry arguments, of tart +replies, and all the wordy war of forensic debate; suffer him to do +this, and his dignity is lost; his decrees are no longer considered as +the oracles of the law; they are submitted to, but not respected; and +even the triumph of his eloquence or ingenuity, in the conviction of the +accused, must be lessened by the suspicion that it has owed its success +to official influence, and the privilege of arguing without reply. For +these reasons, the judge is forbidden to express any opinion on the +facts which are alleged in evidence, much less to address any argument +to the jury; but his functions are confined to expounding the law, and +stating the points of evidence on which the recollection of the jury may +differ. + +[Footnote 22: Was born in New York; eminent as a statesman, and as the +author of a code of laws for Louisiana, his adopted state.] + + * * * * * + + +=_John Quincy Adams, 1767-1848._= (Manual, pp. 487, 504.) + +From the "Speech on the Right of Petition." + +=_78._= THE RIGHT OF PETITION UNIVERSAL. + +Sir, it is well known, that, from the time I entered this House, down to +the present day, I have felt it a sacred duty to present any petition, +couched in respectful language, from any citizen of the United States, +be its object what it may; be the prayer of it that in which I could +concur, or that to which I was utterly opposed. It is for the sacred +right of petition that I have adopted this course.... Where is your law +which says that the mean, and the low, and the degraded, shall be +deprived of the right of petition, if their moral character is not good? +Where, in the land of freemen, was the right of petition ever placed on +the exclusive basis of morality and virtue? Petition is +_supplication_--it is _entreaty_--it is _prayer!_ And where is the +degree of vice or immorality which shall deprive the citizen of the +right to _supplicate_ for a boon, or to _pray for mercy!_ Where is such +a law to be found?... And what does your law say? Does it say that, +before presenting a petition, you shall look into it, and see whether it +comes from the virtuous, and the great, and the mighty. No, sir; it says +no such thing. The right of petition belongs to _all_. And so far from +refusing to present a petition because it might come from those low in +the estimation of the world, it, would be an additional incentive, if +such incentive were wanting. + + * * * * * + +From a "Discourse on the Jubilee of the Constitution." + +=_79._= THE ADMINISTRATION OF WASHINGTON. + +When Solon, by the appointment of the people of Athens, had formed, and +prevailed upon them to adopt a code of fundamental laws, the best that +they would bear, he went into voluntary banishment for ten years, to +save his system from the batteries of rival statesmen working upon +popular passions and prejudices excited against his person. In eight +years of a turbulent and tempestuous administration, Washington +had settled upon firm foundations the practical execution of the +Constitution of the United States. In the midst of the most appalling +obstacles, through the bitterest internal dissensions, and the most +formidable combinations of foreign antipathies and cavils, he had +subdued all opposition to the Constitution itself; had averted all +dangers of European war; had redeemed the captive children of his +country from Algiers; had reduced by chastisement, and conciliated by +kindness, the most hostile of the Indian tribes; had restored the +credit of the nation, and redeemed their reputation of fidelity to +the performance of their obligations; had provided for the total +extinguishment of the public debt; had settled the union upon the +immovable foundation of principle; and had drawn around his head, for +the admiration and emulation of after times, a brighter blaze of glory +than had ever encircled the brows of hero or statesman, patriot or sage. + +The administration of Washington fixed the character of the Constitution +of the United States, as a practical system of government, which it +retains to this day. Upon his retirement, its great antagonist, Mr. +Jefferson, came into the government again, as Vice-President of the +United States, and four years after succeeded to the Presidency itself. +But the funding system and the bank were established. The peace with +both the great belligerent powers of Europe was secured. The disuniting +doctrines of unlimited separate State sovereignty were laid aside. +Louisiana, by a stretch of power in Congress, far beyond the highest +tone of Hamilton, was annexed to the Union--and although dry-docks, and +gun-boats, and embargoes, and commercial restrictions, still refused the +protection of the national arm to commerce, and although an overweening +love of peace, and a reliance upon reason as a weapon of defence against +foreign aggression, eventuated in a disastrous though glorious war +with the gigantic power of Britain,--the Constitution as construed by +Washington, still proved an effective government for the country. + + * * * * * + + +=_Henry Clay, 1777-1832._= (Manual, p. 486.) + +From a "Speech in the United States Senate," March 24, 1818. + +=_80._= EMANCIPATION OF THE SOUTH AMERICAN STATES. + +Our Revolution was mainly directed against the mere theory of tyranny. +We had suffered comparatively but little; we had, in some respects, been +kindly treated; but our intrepid and intelligent forefathers saw, in the +usurpation of the power to levy an inconsiderable tax, the long train of +oppressive acts that were to follow. They rose; they breasted the storm; +they achieved our freedom, Spanish America for centuries has been doomed +to the practical effects of an odious tyranny. If we were justified, she +is more than justified. + +I am no propagandist. I would not seek to force upon other nations +our principles and our liberty if they did not want them. I would not +disturb the repose even of a detestable despotism. But if an abused and +oppressed people will their freedom; if they seek to establish it; if, +in truth, they have established it,--we have a right, as a sovereign +power, to notice the fact, and to act as circumstances and our interest +require. I will say, in the language of the venerated father of my +country, "born in a land of liberty, my anxious recollections, my +sympathetic feelings, and my best wishes, are irresistibly excited, +whensoever, in any country, I see an oppressed nation unfurl the banners +of freedom." + + * * * * * + +From the "Speech in the Senate on the Compromise Bill." + +=_81._= DANGERS OF DISUNION. + +South Carolina must perceive the embarrassments of her situation. She +must be desirous,--it is unnatural to suppose that she is not,--to +remain in the Union. What! a State whose heroes in its gallant ancestry +fought so many glorious battles along with the other States of this +Union,--a State with which this confederacy is linked by bonds of such a +powerful character! I have sometimes fancied what would be her condition +if she goes out of this Union; if her five hundred thousand people +should at once be thrown upon their own resources. She is out of the +Union. What is the consequence? She is an independent power. What +then does she do? She must have armies and fleets, and an expensive +government; have foreign missions; she must raise taxes; enact this very +tariff, which has driven her out of the Union, in order to enable her to +raise money, and to sustain the attitude of an independent power. If she +should have no force, no navy to protect her, she would be exposed to +piratical incursions. Their neighbor, St. Domingo, might pour down a +horde of pirates on her borders, and desolate her plantations. She must +have her embassies; therefore she must have a revenue. And, let me tell +you, there is another consequence, an inevitable one. She has a certain +description of persons recognized as property South of the Potomac, and +West of the Mississippi, which would be no longer recognized as such, +except within their own limits. This species of property would sink to +one half of its present value, for it is Louisiana and the southwestern +States which are her great market. + + * * * * * + +If there be any who want civil war, who want to see the blood of any +portion of our countrymen spilt, I am not one of them. I wish to see war +of no kind; but, above all, I do not desire to see a civil war. When war +begins, whether civil or foreign, no human sight is competent to foresee +when, or how, or where it is to terminate. But when a civil war shall be +lighted up in the bosom of our own happy land, and armies are marching, +and commanders are winning their victories, and fleets are in motion on +our coast, tell me if you can tell me, if any human being can tell its +duration? God alone knows where such a war would end. In what a state +will our institutions be left? In what state our liberties? I want no +war; above all, no war at home. + + * * * * * + + +=_John C. Calhoun, 1782-1850._= (Manual, p. 486.) + +From his "Speech on the Bill to regulate the Power of Removal." + +=_82._= DANGERS OF AN UNLIMITED POWER OF REMOVAL FROM OFFICE. + +Let us not be deceived by names. The power in question is too great for +the chief magistrate of a free state. It is in its nature an imperial +power; and if he be permitted to exercise it, his authority must become +as absolute as that of the autocrat of all the Russias. To give him +the power to dismiss at his will and pleasure, without limitation or +control, is to give him an absolute and unlimited control over the +subsistence of almost all who hold office under government. Let him +have the power, and the sixty thousand who now hold employments +under government would become dependent upon him for the means of +existence.... I know that there are many virtuous and high-minded +citizens who hold public office; but it is not, therefore, the less true +that the tendency of the power of dismissal is such as I have attributed +to it; and that, if the power be left unqualified, and the practice be +continued as it has of late, the result must be the complete corruption +and debasement of those in public employment.... + +I have seen the spirit of independent men, holding public office, sink +under the dread of this fearful power, too honest and too firm to become +the instruments of the flatterers of power, yet too prudent, with all +the consequences before them, to whisper disapprobation of what, in +their hearts, they condemned. Let the present state of things continue, +let it be understood that none are to acquire the public honors or +to retain them, but by flattery and base compliance, and in a few +generations the American character will become utterly corrupt and +debased. + + * * * * * + +From the "Address on the relation of the States to the General +Government." + +=_83._= PECULIAR MERIT OF OUR POLITICAL SYSTEM. + +Happily for us, we have no artificial and separate classes of society. +We have wisely exploded all such distinctions; but we are not, on that +account, exempt from all contrariety of interests, as the present +distracted and dangerous condition of our country, unfortunately, but +too clearly proves. With us they are almost exclusively geographical, +resulting mainly from difference of climate, soil, situation, industry, +and production; but are not, therefore, less necessary to be protected +by an adequate constitutional provision, than where the distinct +interests exist in separate classes. The necessity is, in truth, +greater, as such separate and dissimilar geographical interests are more +liable to come into conflict, and more dangerous, when in that state, +than those of any other description: so much so, that _ours is the +first instance on record where they have not formed, in an extensive +territory, separate and independent communities, or subjected the whole +to despotic sway._ That such may not be our unhappy fate also, must be +the sincere prayer of every lover of his country. + +So numerous and diversified are the interests of our country, that they +could not be fairly represented in a single government, organized so +as to give to each great and leading interest a separate and distinct +voice, as in governments to which I have referred. A plan was adopted +better suited to our situation, but perfectly novel in its character. +The powers of government were divided, not, as heretofore, in reference +to classes, but geographically. One General Government was formed +for the whole, to which were delegated all the powers supposed to be +necessary to regulate the interests common to all the States, leaving +others subject to the separate control of the States, being, from their +local and peculiar character, such that they could not be subject to the +will of a majority of the whole Union, without the certain hazard of +injustice and oppression. It was thus that the interests of the whole +were subjected, as they ought to be, to the will of the whole, while the +peculiar and local interests were left under the control of the States +separately, to whose custody only they could be safely confided. This +distribution of power, settled solemnly by a constitutional compact, to +which all the States are parties, constitutes the peculiar character +and excellence of our political system. It is truly and emphatically +_American, without example or parallel_. + +To realize its perfection, we must view the General Government and those +of the States as a whole, each in its proper sphere independent; +each perfectly adapted to its respective objects; the States acting +separately, representing and protecting the local and peculiar +interests: and acting jointly through one General Government, with the +weight respectively assigned to each by the Constitution, representing +and protecting the interest of the whole, and thus perfecting, by an +admirable but simple arrangement, the great principle of representation +and responsibility, without which no government can be free or just. To +preserve this sacred distribution as originally settled, by coercing +each to move in its prescribed orbit, is the great and difficult +problem, on the solution of which the duration of our Constitution, of +our union, and, in all probability, our liberty depends. How is this to +be effected? + + * * * * * + +From his "Works." + +=_84._= CONCURRENT MAJORITIES SUPERSEDE FORCE. + +It has been already shown, that the same constitution of man which leads +those who govern to oppress the governed,--if not prevented,--will, with +equal force and certainty, lead the latter to resist oppression, when +possessed of the means of doing so peaceably and successfully. But +absolute governments, of all forms, exclude all other means of +resistance to their authority, than that of force; and, of course, leave +no other alternative to the governed, but to acquiesce in oppression, +however great it may be, or to resort to force to put down the +government. But the dread of such a resort must necessarily lead the +government to prepare to meet force in order to protect itself; and +hence, of necessity, force becomes the conservative principle of all +such governments. + +On the contrary, the government of the concurrent majority, where the +organism is perfect, excludes the possibility of oppression, by giving +to each interest, or portion, or order,--where there are established +classes,--the means of protecting itself, by its negative, against all +measures calculated to advance the peculiar interests of others at +its expense. Its effect, then, is to cause the different interests, +portions, or orders,--as the case may be, to desist from attempting to +adopt any measure calculated to promote the prosperity of one, or more, +by sacrificing that of others; and thus to force them to unite in such +measures only as would promote the prosperity of all, as the only +means to prevent the suspension of the action of the government;--and, +thereby, to avoid anarchy, the greatest of all evils. It is by means of +such authorized and effectual resistance, that oppression is prevented, +and the necessity of resorting to force superseded, in governments of +the concurrent majority;--and, hence, compromise, instead of force, +becomes their conservative principle. + +It would, perhaps, be more strictly correct to trace the conservative +principle of constitutional governments to the necessity which compels +the different interests, or portions, or orders, to compromise,--as +the only way to promote their respective prosperity, and to avoid +anarchy,--rather than to the compromise itself. No necessity can be more +urgent and imperious, than that of avoiding anarchy. It is the same as +that which makes government indispensable to preserve society; and is +not less imperative than that which compels obedience to superior +force. Traced to this source, the voice of a people,--uttered under the +necessity of avoiding the greatest of calamities, through the organs of +a government so constructed as to suppress the expression of all partial +and selfish interests, and to give a full and faithful utterance to the +sense of the whole community, in reference to its common welfare,--may +without impiety, be called _the voice of God_. To call any other so, +would be impious. + + * * * * * + + +=_Daniel Webster, 1782-1852._= (Manual, pp. 478, 486.) + +From the "Reply to Hayne, in the United States Senate." + +=_85._= INESTIMABLE VALUE OF THE FEDERAL UNION. + +I cannot, even now, persuade myself to relinquish it, without expressing +once more my deep conviction, that, since it respects nothing less than +the union of the states, it is of most vital and essential importance +to the public happiness. I profess, sir, in my career hitherto, to have +kept steadily in view the prosperity and honor of the whole country, and +the preservation of our Federal Union. It is to that Union we owe our +safety at home, and our consideration and dignity abroad. It is to that +Union we are chiefly indebted for whatever makes us most proud of our +country. That Union we reached only by the discipline of our virtues in +the severe school of adversity. It had its origin in the necessities of +disordered finance, prostrate commerce, and ruined credit. Under its +benign influences, these great interests immediately awoke, as from the +dead, and sprang forth with newness of life. Every year of its duration +has teemed with fresh proofs of its utility and its blessings; and +although our territory has stretched out wider and wider, and our +population spread farther and farther, they have not outrun its +protection or its benefits. It has been to us all a copious fountain of +national, social, personal happiness. I have not allowed myself, sir, to +look beyond the Union, to see what might lie hidden in the dark recess +behind. I have not coolly weighed the chances of preserving liberty, +when the bonds that unite us together shall be broken asunder, I have +not accustomed myself to hang over the precipice of disunion, to see +whether, with my short sight, I can fathom the depth of the abyss below; +nor could I regard him as a safe counsellor in the affairs of this +government, whose thoughts should be mainly bent on considering, not +how the Union should be best preserved, but how tolerable might be the +condition of the people when it shall be broken up and destroyed. While +the Union lasts, we have high, exciting, gratifying prospects spread +out before us, for us and our children. Beyond that I do not seek to +penetrate the veil. God grant that, in my day at least, that curtain may +not rise. God grant that, on my vision never may be opened what lies +behind. When my eyes shall be turned to behold, for the last time, the +sun in heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken and dishonored +fragments of a once glorious Union; on states dissevered, discordant, +belligerent; on a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, +in fraternal blood! Let their last feeble and lingering glance rather +behold the gorgeous ensign of the republic, now known and honored +throughout the earth, still full high advanced, its arms and trophies +streaming in their original lustre, not a stripe erased or polluted, +nor a single star obscured,--bearing for its motto no such miserable +interrogatory as, _What is all this worth?_ nor those other words +of delusion and folly, _Liberty first, and Union afterwards_; but +everywhere, spread all over in characters of living light, blazing on +all its ample folds, as they float over the sea and over the land, and +in every wind under the whole heavens, that other sentiment, dear to +every American heart--Liberty _and_ Union, now and forever, one and +inseparable! + + * * * * * + +From the "Speech at the Laying of the Corner Stone of the Bunker Hill +Monument." + +=_86._= OBJECT OF THE MONUMENT. + +Let it not be supposed that our object is to perpetuate national +hostility, or even to cherish a mere military spirit. It is higher, +purer, nobler. We consecrate our work to the spirit of national +independence, and we wish that the light of peace may rest upon it +forever. We rear a memorial of our conviction of that unmeasured benefit +which has been conferred on our own land, and of the happy influences +which have been produced, by the same events, on the general interests +of mankind. We come, as Americans, to mark a spot which must forever be +dear to us and our posterity. We wish that whoever, in all coming +time, shall turn his eye hither, may behold that the place is not +undistinguished where the first great battle of the Revolution was +fought. We wish that this structure may proclaim the magnitude and +importance of that event to every class and every age. We wish that +infancy may learn the purpose of its erection, from maternal lips, +and that weary and withered age may behold it, and be solaced by the +recollections which it suggests. We wish that labor may look up here, +and be proud in the midst of its toil. We wish that in those days of +disaster, which, as they come upon all nations, must be expected to come +upon us also, desponding patriotism may turn its eyes hitherward, and be +assured that the foundations of our national power are still strong. We +wish that this column, rising towards heaven among the pointed spires of +so many temples dedicated to God, may contribute also to produce, in all +minds, a pious feeling of dependence and gratitude. We wish, finally, +that the last object to the sight of him who leaves his native shore, +and the first to gladden his who revisits it, may be something which +shall remind him of the liberty and the glory of his country. Let it +rise! let it rise, till it meet the sun in his coming; let the earliest +light of the morning gild it, and parting day linger and play on its +summit. + + * * * * * + +From his "Works." + +=_87._= BENEFITS OF THE CONSTITUTION. + +Its benefits are not exclusive. What has it left undone, which any +government could do for the whole country? In what condition has it +placed us? Where do we now stand? Are we elevated, or degraded, by its +operation? What is our condition, under its influence, at the very +moment when some talk of arresting its power and breaking its unity? Do +we not feel ourselves on an eminence? Do we not challenge the respect of +the whole world? What has placed us thus high? What has given us this +just pride? What else is it, but the unrestrained and free operation +of that same Federal Constitution, which it has been proposed now to +hamper, and manacle, and nullify? Who is there among us, that, should +he find himself on any spot of the earth where human beings exist, and +where the existence of other nations is known, would not be proud to +say, I am an American? I am a countryman of Washington? I am a citizen +of that Republic, which although it has suddenly sprung up, yet there +are none on the globe who have ears to hear, and have not heard of +it,--who have eyes to see and have not read of it,--who know any +thing,--and yet do not know of its existence and its glory? And, +gentlemen, let me now reverse the picture. Let me ask, who is there +among us, if he were to be found to-morrow in one of the civilized +countries of Europe, and were there to learn that this goodly form of +Government had been overthrown--that the United States were no longer +united--that a death-blow had been struck upon their bond of Union--that +they themselves had destroyed their chief good and their chief +honor,--who is there, whose heart would not sink within him? Who is +there, who would not cover his face for very shame? + +At this very moment, gentlemen, our country is a general refuge for the +distressed and the persecuted of other nations. Whoever is in affliction +from political occurrences in his own country, looks here for shelter. +Whether he be republican, flying from the oppression of thrones--or +whether he be monarch or monarchist, flying from thrones that crumble +and fall under or around him,--he feels equal assurance, that if he +get foothold on our soil, his person is safe, and his rights will be +respected. + +And who will venture to say, that in any government now existing in the +world, there is greater security for persons or property than in that of +the United States? We have tried these popular institutions in times of +great excitement and commotion; and they have stood substantially firm +and steady, while the fountains of the great deep have been elsewhere +broken up; while thrones, resting on ages of prescription, have tottered +and fallen; and while in other countries, the earthquake of unrestrained +popular commotion has swallowed up all law, and all liberty, and all +right, together. Our Government has been tried in peace, and it has been +tried in war; and has proved itself fit for both. It has been assailed +from without, and it has successfully resisted the shock; it has been +disturbed within, and it has effectually quieted the disturbance. It can +stand trial--it can stand, assault--it, can stand adversity.--it can +stand every thing, but the marring of its own beauty, and the weakening +of its own strength. It can stand every thing, but the effects of +our own rashness, and our own folly. It can stand everything, but +disorganization, disunion, and nullification. + + * * * * * + +From his Correspondence with Lord Ashburton. + +=_88._= THE RIGHT OF CHANGING ALLEGIANCE. + +England acknowledges herself overburdened with population of the poorer +classes. Every instance of the emigration of persons of those classes is +regarded by her as a benefit. England, therefore, encourages emigration; +means are notoriously supplied to emigrants, to assist their conveyance, +from public funds; and the New World, and most especially these United +States, receive the many thousands of her subjects thus ejected from the +bosom of their native land by the necessities of their condition. They +come away from poverty and distress in over-crowded cities, to seek +employment, comfort, and new homes, in a country of free institutions, +possessed by a kindred race, speaking their own language, and having +laws and usages in many respects like those to which they have been +accustomed; and a country which, upon the whole, is found to possess +more attractions for persons of their character and condition, than any +other on the face of the globe. It is stated that, in the quarter of the +year ending with June last, more than twenty-six thousand emigrants left +the single port of Liverpool for the United States, being four or five +times as many as left the same port within the same period, for the +British Colonies and all other parts of the world. Of these crowds +of emigrants, many arrive in our cities in circumstances of great +destitution, and the charities of the country, both public and private, +are severely taxed to relieve their immediate wants. In time they mingle +with the new community in which they find themselves, and seek means of +living. Some find employment in the cities, others go to the frontiers, +to cultivate lands reclaimed from the forest; and a greater or less +number of the residue, becoming in time naturalized citizens, enter into +the merchant service under the flag of their adopted country. + +Now, my Lord, if war should break out between England and a European +power, can any thing be more unjust, any thing more irreconcilable to +the general sentiments of mankind, than that England should seek out +these persons, thus encouraged by her, and compelled by their own +condition, to leave their native homes, tear them away from their +new employments, their new political relations, and their domestic +connections, and force them to undergo the dangers and hardships of +military service for a country which, has thus ceased to be their own +country? Certainly, certainly, my Lord, there can be but one answer to +this question. Is it not far more reasonable that England should either +prevent such emigration of her subjects, or that, if she encourage and +promote it, she should leave them, not to the embroilment of a double +and contradictory allegiance, but to their own voluntary choice, to form +such relations, political or social, as they see fit, in the country +where they are to find their bread, and to the laws and institutions of +which they are to look for defence and protection. + + * * * * * + + +=_Joseph Story, 1779-1845._= (Manual, pp. 487, 531.) + +From his "Miscellaneous Writings." + +=_89._= CHIEF JUSTICE MARSHALL. + +When can we expect to be permitted to behold again so much moderation +united with so much firmness, so much sagacity with so much modesty, so +much learning with so much experience, so much solid wisdom with so +much purity, so much of every thing to love and admire, with +nothing--absolutely nothing, to regret? What, indeed, strikes us as the +most remarkable in his whole character, even more than his splendid +talents, is the entire consistency of his public life and principles. +There is nothing in either which calls for apology or concealment. +Ambition has never seduced him from his principles, nor popular clamor +deterred him from the strict performance of duty. Amid the extravagances +of party spirit he has stood with a calm, and steady inflexibility, +neither bending to the pressure of adversity, nor bounding with the +elasticity of success. He has lived as such a man should live, (and yet, +how few deserve the commendation!) by and with, his principles. Whatever +changes of opinion have occurred in the course of his long life, +have been gradual and slow; the results of genius acting upon larger +materials, and of judgment matured by the lessons of experience. + +If we were tempted to say, in one word, what it was in which he chiefly +excelled other men, we should say, in wisdom--in the union of that +virtue, which has ripened under the hardy discipline of principles, +with that knowledge which has constantly sifted and refined its old +treasures, and as constantly gathered new. The constitution, since its +adoption, owes more to him than to any other single mind, for its true +interpretation and vindication. Whether it lives or perishes, his +exposition of its principles will be an enduring monument to his fame, +as long as solid reasoning, profound analysis, and sober views of +government, shall invite the leisure, or command the attention, of +statesmen and jurists.... Yet it may be affirmed by those who have had +the privilege of intimacy with Mr. Chief Justice Marshall, that he +rises, rather than falls, with the nearest survey; and that in the +domestic circle he is exactly what a wife, a child, a brother, and a +friend would most desire. In that magical circle, admiration of +his talents is forgotten in the indulgence of those affections and +sensibilities which are awakened only to be gratified. + + * * * * * + +From his "Miscellanies." + +=_90._= DIGNITY OF AMERICAN JURISPRUDENCE. + +The most delicate, and at the same time the proudest attribute of +American jurisprudence, is the right of its judicial tribunals to decide +questions of constitutional law. In other governments these questions +cannot be entertained or decided by courts of justice; and, therefore, +whatever may be the theory of the constitution, the legislative +authority is practically omnipotent, and there is no means of contesting +the legality or justice of a law, but by an appeal to arms. This can be +done only when oppression weighs heavily and grievously on the whole +people, and is then resisted by all because it is felt by all. But the +oppression that strikes at a humble individual, though it robs him of +character, or fortune, or life, is remediless; and, if it becomes the +subject of judicial enquiry, judges may lament, but cannot resist, the +mandates of the legislature. Far different is the case in our country; +and the privilege of bringing every law to the test of the constitution +belongs to the humblest citizen, who owes no obedience to any +legislative act which transcends the constitutional limits. + +The discussion of constitutional questions throws a lustre round the +bar, and gives a dignity to its functions, which can rarely belong to +the profession in any other country. Lawyers are here emphatically +placed as sentinels upon the outposts of the constitution, and no nobler +end can be proposed for their ambition or patriotism than to stand as +faithful guardians of the constitution, ready to defend its legitimate +powers, and to stay the arm of legislative, executive, or popular +oppression. If their eloquence can charm, when it vindicates the +innocent, and the suffering under private wrongs; if their learning +and genius can, with almost superhuman witchery, unfold the mazes and +intricacies by which the minute links of title are chained to the +adamantine pillars of the law;--how much more glory belongs to them when +this eloquence, this learning, and this genius, are employed in defence +of their country; when they breathe forth the purest spirit of morality +and virtue in support of the rights of mankind; when they expound the +lofty doctrines which sustain and connect, and guide the destinies of +nations; when they combat popular delusions at the expense of fame, and +friendship, and political honors; when they triumph by arresting the +progress of error and the march of power, and drive back the torrent +that threatens destruction equally to public liberty and to private +property, to all that delights us in private life, and all that gives +grace and authority in public office. + + * * * * * + + +=_Lewis Cass,[23] 1782-1866._= + +From his "Report of the Secretary of War." December 1831. + +=_91._= POLICY OF REMOVING THE INDIANS. + +The associations which bind the Indians to the land of their forefathers +are strong and enduring; and these must be broken by their emigration. +But they are also broken by our citizens, who every day encounter all +the difficulties of similar changes in pursuit of the means of support. +And the experiments that have been made satisfactorily show that, +by proper precautions and liberal appropriations, the removal and +establishment of the Indians can be effected with little comparative +trouble to them, or us.... If they remain, they must decline, and +eventually disappear. Such is the result of all experience. If they +remove, they may be comfortably established, and their moral and +physical condition ameliorated.... + +The great moral debt we owe to this unhappy race is universally felt and +acknowledged. Diversities of opinion exist respecting the proper mode of +discharging this obligation, but its validity is not denied. + +Indolent in his habits, the Indian is opposed to labor; improvident +in his mode of life, he has little foresight in providing, or care in +preserving. Taught from infancy to reverence his own traditions and +institutions, he is satisfied of their value, and dreads the anger of +the Great Spirit, if he should depart from the customs of his fathers. +Devoted to the use of ardent spirits, he abandons himself to +its indulgence without restraint. War and hunting are his only +occupations.... Shall they be advised to remain, or remove? If the +former, their fate is written in the annals of their race; if the +latter, we may yet hope to see them renovated in character and +condition, by our example and instruction, and their exertions. + +[Footnote 23: A native of New Hampshire, but for many years a citizen of +Michigan: conspicuous in public life, and a writer of high authority on +Indian and military affairs, and the settlement of the north-west.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Rufus Choate, 1799-1859._= (Manual, p. 487.) + +From his "Lectures and Addresses." + +=_92._= CONSERVATIVE FORCE OF THE AMERICAN BAR. + +Is it not so that in its nature, in its functions, in the intellectual +and practical habits which it forms, in the opinions to which it +conducts, in all its tendencies and influences of speculation and +action, it is, and ought to be, professionally and peculiarly such an +element and such an agent, that it contributes, or ought to be held to +contribute, more than all things else, or as much as anything else, to +preserve our organic forms, our civil and social order, our public and +private justice, our constitutions of government, even the Union itself? +In these crises through which our liberty is to pass, may not, must not, +this function of conservatism become more and more developed, and more +and more operative? May it not one day be written, for the praise of the +American Bar, that it helped to keep the true idea of the state alive +and germinant in the American mind; that it helped to keep alive the +sacred sentiments of obedience, and reverence, and justice, of the +supremacy of the calm and grand reason of the law over the fitful +will of the individual and the crowd; that it helped to withstand the +pernicious sophism that the successive generations, as they come to +life, are but as so many successive flights of summer flies, without +relations to the past or duties to the future, and taught instead that +all--all the dead, the living, the unborn--were one moral person-one for +action, one for suffering, one for responsibility; that the engagements +of one age may bind the conscience of another; the glory or the shame +of a day may brighten or stain the current of a thousand years of +continuous national being? + + * * * * * + +From the "Address before the New England Society of New York." + +=_93._= THE AGE OF THE PILGRIMS, OUR HEROIC PERIOD. + +I have said that I deemed it a great thing for a nation, in all the +periods of its fortunes, to be able to look back to a race of founders, +and a principle of institution, in which, it might seem to see the +realized idea of true heroism. That felicity, that pride, that help, is +ours. Our past--both its great eras, that of settlement, and that of +independence--should announce, should compel, should spontaneously +evolve as from a germ, a wise, moral, and glorious future. These heroic +men and women should not look down on a dwindled posterity. It should +seem to be almost of course, too easy to be glorious, that they who +keep the graves, bear the name, and boast the blood, of men in whom +the loftiest sense of duty blended itself with the fiercest spirit of +liberty, should add to their freedom, justice: justice to all men, to +all nations; justice, that venerable virtue, without which freedom, +valor, and power, are but vulgar things. + +And yet is the past nothing, even our past, but as you, quickened by its +examples, instructed by its experiences, warned by its voices, assisted +by its accumulated instrumentality, shall reproduce it in the life of +to-day. Its once busy existence, various sensations, fiery trials, +dear-bought triumphs; its dynasty of heroes, all its pulses of joy and +anguish, and hope and fear, and love and praise, are with the years +beyond the flood. "The sleeping and the dead are but as pictures." Yet, +gazing on these, long and intently, and often, we may pass into the +likeness of the departed,--may emulate their labors, and partake of +their immortality. + + * * * * * + + +=_William H. Seward,[24] 1801-1872._= + +"Oration on Lafayette," July 16th, 1834. + +=_94._= HIS MILITARY SERVICES IN AMERICA. + +There were indeed other and heroic volunteers from European countries, +but they were either exiles who had no homes, or they were soldiers by +profession, who followed the sword wherever a harvest was to be reaped +with it.... Lafayette's first act in America gave new evidence of +disinterestedness and magnanimity. He found the small patriot army rent +asunder by jealous feuds growing out of ambition for preferment. What +revolution, however holy, has not suffered by such evils! How many +a revolution has been lost by them! Schuyler, the brave, the +high-spirited, and wise, now the victim of an intrigue, was hesitating +whether to submit to a privation of rank justly due him, or to resign. +Putnam's recent promotion produced bitter complaints; and Gates was +laboring night and day, aided by a powerful faction, to displace +Washington from the chief command. The correspondence of the Father of +his country, now first published, reveals the fact that the compensation +attached to military rank was by no means an unimportant object of the +universal rage for preferment, which then threatened to break up the +army. Lafayette set a noble example to the republican chiefs. He +declined the tender of a commission as major-general, with the +emoluments, and stipulated, on the contrary, for leave to serve without +reward, and even without a command, until he should have made a title to +it by actual achievements. He won his commission by the blood he gave to +his adopted country in the battle of Brandywine, by rallying the troops +in the retreat at Chester Bridge, and by his brave resistance and +capture, with the aid of militia-men, of a superior force of British +and Hessian regulars; and thus, without exciting murmurs among his +compatriots, and with the thanks of Congress, he rose to the command of +a division in the army of the United States. Lavish of gold, as he had +already shown that he was lavish of blood, he clothed and equipped +these troops, numbering two thousand, at his own expense; and they soon +became, under his exact but affectionate discipline, the favorite corps +of the whole army. + +Lafayette stood second to Washington in the affections of the American +people, and in the applauses of the friends of liberty throughout the +world. Certainly whatever honors that people could have conferred upon +any one would have been sure to wait on him. Let those who think that +preferment, power, and applause are always the chief objects of human +ambition, look now at this illustrious and yet youthful personage, +cheerfully resigning his command, and without one murmur of regret for +the honors laid down, or one glance towards the honors gathering before +him, taking affectionate leave of his companions in arms, and their +great chief, and returning to his native land, to resume there the +duties he owed as a subject and member of the State, in France. + +[Footnote 24: A prominent statesman, formerly Governor of New York, of +which state he is a native. He is known in literature by many addresses, +speeches, and diplomatic papers, often of high merit.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Abraham Lincoln,[25] 1809-1865._= + +"Speech at the Dedication of the National Cemetery at Gettysburg," +November 19, 1883. + +=_95._= OBLIGATION TO THE PATRIOT DEAD. + +Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon this +continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the +proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a +great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived +and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of +that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final +resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might +live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But +in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot +hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, +have consecrated it far above our power to add or detract. The world +will little note, nor long remember, what we say here; but it can never +forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather to be +dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here, have +thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to +the great task remaining before us, that from these honored dead we +take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full +measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall +not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new +birth of freedom, and that governments of the people, by the people, and +for the people, shall not perish from the earth. + +[Footnote 25: Born in Kentucky; a prominent lawyer and statesman of +Illinois; was elected President of the United States in 1860; was +eminent for his profound appreciation of 'the subsequent struggle, and +for his patriotic appeals in behalf of the nation. Assassinated April +13, 1865.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Charles Sumner, 1811-1874._= (Manual, p. 487.) + +From the "Speech in the Senate on the Nebraska and Kansas Bill," May 25, +1854. + +=_96._= PROSPECTIVE RESULTS OF THE BILL. + +Sir, the bill which you are now about to pass is at once the worst and +the best bill on which Congress ever acted. Yes, sir, worst and best at +the same time. + +It is the worst bill, inasmuch as it is a present victory of slavery. In +a Christian land, and in an age of civilization, a time-honored statute +of freedom is struck down, opening the way to all the countless woes and +wrongs of human bondage. Among the crimes of history, another is about +to be recorded, which no tears can blot out, and which, in better days, +will be read with universal shame. + +But there is another side, to which I gladly turn. Sir, it is the best +bill on which Congress ever acted; for it annuls all past compromises +with slavery, and makes all future compromises impossible. Thus it puts +freedom and slavery face to face, and bids them grapple. Who can doubt +the result? It opens wide the door of the future, when, at last, there +will really be a North, and the slave power will be broken; when this +wretched despotism will cease to dominate over our government, no longer +impressing itself upon everything at home and abroad; when the national +government shall be divorced in every way from slavery, and according +to the true intention of our fathers, freedom shall be established by +Congress everywhere, at least beyond the local limits of the states. + +Thus, sir, now standing at the very grave of freedom in Kansas and +Nebraska, I lift myself to the vision of that happy resurrection, by +which freedom will be secured, not only in these territories, but +everywhere under the national government. More clearly than ever before, +I now penetrate that "All-Hail-Hereafter" when slavery must disappear. +Proudly I discern the flag of my country, as it ripples in every breeze, +at last become in reality, as in name, the Flag of Freedom, undoubted, +pure, and irresistible. Am I not right, then, in calling this bill the +best on which Congress ever acted? + +Sorrowfully I bend before the wrong you are about to commit. Joyfully I +welcome all the promises of the future. + + * * * * * + +From the "Speech for Union against the Slave Power," June 8, 1848. + +=_97._= HEROIC EFFORTS CANNOT FAIL. + +There are occasions of political difference, I admit, when it may become +expedient to vote for a person who does not completely represent our +sentiments. There are some matters that come legitimately within the +range of expediency and compromise. The Tariff and the Currency are +unquestionably of this character. If a candidate differs from me, more +or less, on these, I may yet be disposed to vote for him. But the +question now before the country is of another character. This will not +admit of compromise. It is not within the domain of expediency. _To be +wrong on this is to be wholly wrong._ It is not merely expedient for us +to defend Freedom, when assailed, but our duty so to do, unreservedly, +and careless of consequences. Who is there in this assembly that would +help to fasten a fetter upon Oregon or Mexico? Who is there that would +not oppose every effort for this purpose? Nobody. Who is there, then, +that can vote for Taylor or Cass? + +But it is said that we shall throw away our votes, and that our +opposition will fail. Sir! no honest, earnest effort in a good cause +ever fails. It may not be crowned with the applause of men; it may not +seem to touch the goal of immediate worldly success, which is the end +and aim of so much of life. But still it is not lost. It helps to +strengthen the weak with new virtue; to arm the irresolute with proper +energy; to animate all with devotion to duty, which in the end conquers +all. Fail! Did the martyrs fail, when with their precious blood they +sowed the seed of the Church? Did the discomfited champions of Freedom +fail, who have left those names in history which can never die? Did the +three hundred Spartans fail, when, in the narrow pass, they did not fear +to brave the innumerable Persian hosts, whose very arrows darkened the +sun? No! Overborne by numbers, crushed to earth, they have left an +example which is greater far than any victory. And this is the least we +can do. Our example shall be the source of triumph hereafter. It +will not be the first time in history that the hosts of Slavery have +outnumbered the champions of Freedom. But where is it written that +Slavery finally prevailed. + + * * * * * + +Returning to our forefathers for our principles, let us borrow, also, +something of their courage and union. Let us summon to our sides the +majestic forms of those civil heroes, whose firmness in council was +equalled only by the firmness of Washington in war. Let us listen +again to the eloquence of the elder Adams, animating his associates in +Congress to independence: let us hang anew upon the sententious wisdom +of Franklin; let us be enkindled, as were the men of other days, by the +fervid devotion to Freedom, which flamed from the heart of Jefferson. +Deriving instruction from our enemies, let us also be taught by the +Slave Power. The two hundred thousand slaveholders are always united in +purpose. Hence their strength. Like arrows in a quiver, they cannot be +broken. The friends of Freedom have thus far been divided. _Union_, +then, must be our watchword,--union, among men of all parties. By such a +union we shall consolidate an opposition which must prevail. + + * * * * * + +From a Speech, September 16, 1863. + +=_98._= OUR FOREIGN RELATIONS. + +It only remains that the Republic should lift itself to the height of +its great duties. War is hard to bear,--with its waste, its pains, its +wounds, its funerals. But in this war we have not been choosers. We have +been challenged to the defence of our country, and in this sacred cause, +to crush Slavery. There is no alternative. Slavery began the combat, +staking its life, and determined to rule or die. That we may continue +freemen there must be no slaves; so that our own security is linked with +the redemption of a race. Blessed lot, amidst the harshness of war, to +wield the arms and deal the blows under which the monster will surely +fall! + +But while thus steady in our purpose at home, we must not neglect +that proper moderation abroad, which becomes the consciousness of our +strength and the nobleness of our cause. The mistaken sympathy which +foreign powers now bestow upon slavery,--or it may be the mistaken +insensibility,--under the plausible name of "neutrality," which they +profess,--will be worse for them than for us. For them it will be a +record of shame which their children would gladly wash out with tears. +For us it will be only another obstacle vanquished in the battle for +civilization, where unhappily false friends are mingled with open +enemies. Even if the cause shall seem for a while imperilled from +foreign powers, yet our duties are none the less urgent. If the pressure +be great, the resistance must be greater; nor can there be any retreat. +Come weal or woe this is the place for us to stand. + +I know not if a republic like ours can count even now upon the certain +friendship of any European power, unless it be the republic of William +Tell. The very name is unwelcome to the full-blown representatives of +monarchical Europe, who forget how proudly, even in modern history, +Venice bore the title of _Serenissima Respublica_. It will be for us +to change all this, and we shall do it. Our successful example will be +enough. Thus far we have been known chiefly through that vital force +which slavery could only degrade, but not subdue. Now at last, by the +death of slavery, will the republic begin to live. For what is life +without liberty? Stretching from ocean to ocean,--teeming with +population, bountiful in resources of all kinds, and thrice-happy in +universal enfranchisement, it will be more than conqueror. Nothing too +vast for its power; nothing too minute for its care. Triumphant over the +foulest wrong ever inflicted, after the bloodiest war ever waged, it +will know the majesty of right and the beauty of peace, prepared always +to uphold the one, and to cultivate the other. Strong in its own mighty +stature, filled with all the fulness of a new life, and covered with a +panoply of renown, it will confess that no dominion is of value which +does not contribute to human happiness. Born in this latter day, and the +child of its own struggles, without ancestral claims, but heir of +all the ages,--it will stand forth to assert the dignity of man, and +wherever any member of the human family is to be succored, there its +voice will reach,--as the voice of Cromwell reached across France +even to the persecuted mountaineers of the Alps. Such will be this +republic;--upstart among the nations. Aye! as the steam-engine, the +telegraph, and chloroform are upstart. Comforter and helper like these, +it can know no bounds to its empire over a willing world. But the first +stage is the death of slavery. + + * * * * * + +From "Prophetic Voices about America." + +=_99._= NATIONAL GREATNESS ATTAINABLE THROUGH PEACE. + +Such are some of the prophetic voices about America, differing in +character and importance, but all having one augury, and opening one +vista, illimitable in extent and vastness. Farewell to the idea of +Montesquieu, that a republic can exist only in a small territory.... + +Such grandeur may justly excite anxiety rather than pride, for duties +are in corresponding proportion. There is occasion for humility also, +as the individual considers his own insignificance in the transcendent +mass. The tiny polyp, in its unconscious life, builds the everlasting +coral; each citizen is little more than the industrious insect. The +result is accomplished by continuous and combined exertion. Millions of +citizens, working in obedience to nature, can accomplish anything. Of +course, war is an instrumentality which a true civilization disowns. +Here some of our prophets have erred. Sir Thomas Browne was so much +overshadowed by his own age, that his vision was darkened by "great +armies," and even "hostile and piratical attacks" on Europe. It was +natural that D'Aranda, schooled in worldly affairs, should imagine the +new-born power ready to seize the Spanish possessions. Among our own +countrymen, Jefferson looked to war for the extension of dominion. The +Floridas he says on one occasion, "are ours on the first moment of war, +and until a war they are of no particular necessity to us." Happily +they were acquired in another way. Then again, while declaring that no +constitution was ever before so calculated as ours for extensive empire +and self-government, and insisting upon Canada as a component part, +he calmly says that "this would be, of course, in the first war." +Afterwards, while confessing a longing for Cuba, "as the most +interesting addition that could ever be made to our system of States," +he says that "he is sensible that this can never be obtained, even with +her own consent, without war." Thus at each stage is the baptism of +blood. In much better mood the good Bishop recognized empire as moving +gently in the pathway of light. All this is much clearer now than when +he prophesied. It is easy to see that empire obtained by force is +unrepublican and offensive to that first principle of our Union +according to which all just government stands only on the consent of the +governed. Our country needs no such ally as war. Its destiny is mightier +than war. Through peace it will have every thing. This is our talisman. +Give us peace, and population will increase beyond all experience; +resources of all kinds will multiply infinitely; arts will embellish the +land with immortal beauty, the name of Republic will be exalted, until +every neighbor, yielding to irresistible attraction, will seek a new +life in becoming a part of the great whole; and the national example +will be more puissant than army or navy for the conquest of the world. + + * * * * * + + +=_Alexander H. Stephens,[26] 1812-._= + +From Appendix to "The Constitutional View." + +=_100._= ORIGIN OF THE AMERICAN FLAG. + +The stars, as a matter of course, represent states. The origin of +the stripes, I think, if searched out, would be found to be a little +curious. All I know upon that point is, that on the 4th day of July, +1776, after the Declaration of Independence was carried, a committee was +appointed by Congress, consisting of Mr. Jefferson, Dr. Franklin, and +John Adams, to prepare a _device_ for a _seal_ of the United States.... +This seal, as reported, or the _device_ in full, as reported, was +never adopted. But in it we see the emblems, in part, which are still +preserved in the flag. + +The stripes, or lines, which, on Mr. Jefferson's original plan, were +to designate the six quarterings of the shield, as signs of the six +countries from which our ancestors came, are now, I believe, considered +as representations of the old thirteen states, and with most persons the +idea of a shield is lost sight of. You perceive that, by drawing six +lines or stripes on a shield figure, it will leave seven spaces of the +original color, and of course give thirteen apparent stripes; hence the +idea of their being all intended to represent the old thirteen states. +My opinion, is, that this was the origin of the stripes. Mr. Jefferson's +quartered shield for a seal device was seized upon as a national emblem, +that was put upon the flag. We have now the stars as well as the +stripes. When each of these was adopted I cannot say; but the flag, as +it now is, was designed by Captain Reid, as I tell you, and adopted by +Congress. + +[Footnote 26: One of the most eminent public men of the south; a native +of Georgia.] + + * * * * * + + + +BIOGRAPHICAL WRITERS. + + +=_Benjamin Rush,[27] 1743-1813._= + +From "Essays, Literary, Moral," etc. + +=_101._= THE LIFE OF EDWARD DRINKER, A CENTENARIAN. + +He saw and heard more of those events which are measured by time, than +have ever been seen or heard since the age of the patriarchs; he saw the +same spot of earth which at one period of his life was covered with wood +and bushes, and the receptacle of beasts and birds of prey, afterwards +become the seat of a city not only the first in wealth and arts in the +new, but rivalling, in both, many of the first cities in the old world. +He saw regular streets where he once pursued a hare; he saw churches +rising upon morasses, where he had often heard the croaking of frogs; he +saw wharves and warehouses where he had often seen Indian savages draw +fish from the river for their daily subsistence; and he saw ships of +every size and use in those streams where he had often seen nothing but +Indian canoes.... He saw the first treaty ratified between the newly +confederated powers of America and the ancient monarchy of France, with +all the formalities of parchment and seals, on the same spot, probably, +where he once saw William Penn ratify his first and last treaty with +the Indians, without the formality of pen, ink, or paper.... He saw the +beginning and end of the empire of Great Britain in Pennsylvania. He +had been the subject of seven successive crowned heads, and afterwards +became a willing citizen of a republic; for he embraced the liberties +and independence of America in his withered arms, and triumphed in the +last years of his life in the salvation of his country. + +[Footnote 27: A native of Pennsylvania, eminent as a writer, and +especially as a teacher and practitioner of medicine.] + + * * * * * + + +=_John Marshall, 1755-1835._= (Manual, p. 490.) + +From the "History of the American Colonies." + +=_102._= THE CONQUEST OF CANADA. + +During these transactions, General Amherst was taking measures for the +annihilation of the remnant of French power in Canada. He determined to +employ the immense force under his command for the accomplishment of +this object, and made arrangements during the winter to bring the armies +from Quebec, Lake Champlain, and Lake Ontario, to act against Montreal. + +The junction of these armies presenting before Montreal a force not +to be resisted, the Governor offered to capitulate. In the month of +September, Montreal, and all other places within the government of +Canada, then remaining in the possession of France, were surrendered to +his Britannic majesty. The troops were to be transported to France, and +the Canadians to be protected in their property, and the full enjoyment +of their religion. + +That colossal power which France had been long erecting in America, with +vast labor and expense; which had been the motive for one of the most +extensive and desolating wars of modern times, was thus entirely +overthrown. The causes of this interesting event are to be found in the +superior wealth and population of the colonies of England, and in +her immense naval strength; an advantage, in distant war, not to be +counterbalanced by the numbers, the discipline, the courage, and the +military talents, which may be combined in the armies of an inferior +maritime power. + +The joy diffused throughout the British dominions by this splendid +conquest, was mingled with a proud sense of superiority, which did +not estimate with exact justice the relative means employed by the +belligerents. In no part of those dominions was this joy felt in a +higher degree, or with more reason, than in America. In that region, the +wars between France and England had assumed a form, happily unknown to +other parts of the civilized world. Not confined as in Europe to men in +arms--women and children were its common victims. It had been carried by +the savage to the fire-side of the peaceful peasant, where the tomahawk +and the scalping-knife were applied indiscriminately to every age, and +to either sex. The hope was now fondly indulged that these scenes, at +least in the northern and middle colonies, were closed forever. + + * * * * * + + +=_John Armstrong,[28] 1759-1843._= + +From the Life of General Wayne. + +=_103._= STORMING OF STONY POINT. + +Wayne, believing that few things were impracticable to discipline and +valor, after a careful reconnoissance, adopted the project, and hastened +to give it execution. Beginning his march on the 15th from Sandy Beach, +he at eight o'clock in the evening took a position within a mile and +a half of his object. By the organization given to the attack, the +regiments of Febiger and Meigs, with Hull's detachment, formed the +column of the right; and the regiment of Butler and Murfey's detachment, +that of the left. A party of twenty men furnished with axes for pioneer +duty, and followed by a sustaining corps of one hundred and fifty men +with unloaded arms, preceded each column, while a small detachment was +assigned to purposes merely of demonstration. + +At half after eleven o'clock, the hour fixed on for the assault, the +columns were in motion; but from delays made inevitable by the nature of +the ground, it was twenty minutes after twelve before this commenced, +when neither the morass, now overflowed by the tide, nor the formidable +and double row of _abattis_, nor the high and strong works on the summit +of the hill, could for a moment damp the ardor or stop the career of +the assailants, who, in the face of an incessant fire of musketry and +a shower of shells and grape-shot, forced their way through every +obstacle, and with so much concert of movement, that both columns +entered the fort and reached its centre, nearly at the same moment. Nor +was the conduct of the victors less conspicuous for humanity than for +valor. Not a man of the garrison was injured after the surrender; and +during the conflict of battle, all were spared who ceased to make +resistance. + +The entire American loss in this enterprise, so formidable in prospect, +did not exceed one hundred men. The pioneer parties, necessarily the +most exposed, suffered most. Of the twenty men led by Lieutenant Gibbons +of the Sixth Pennsylvania Regiment, seventeen were killed or wounded. +Wayne's own escape on this occasion was of the hair-breadth kind. Struck +on the head by a musket-ball, he fell; but immediately rising on one +knee, he exclaimed, "March on, carry me into the fort; for should the +wound be mortal, I will die at the head of the column." The enemy's +loss in killed and captured amounted to six hundred and seven men. This +affair, the most brilliant of the war, covered the commanding general +with laurels. + +[Footnote 28: An officer of the revolutionary army, and a conspicuous +actor in the War of 1812; has written chiefly on military affairs.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Charles Caldwell,[29] 1772-1853._= + +From his "Autobiography." + +=_104._= A LECTURE OF DR. RUSH. + +At length, however, though the class of the winter, all told, amounted +to less than a hundred, a sufficient number had arrived to induce the +professors to commence their lectures; and the introductory of Dr. Rush +was a performance of deep and touching interest, and never, I think, to +be forgotten (while his memory endures), by any one who listened to it, +and was susceptible of the impression it was calculated to make. It +consisted in a well-written and graphical description of the terrible +sweep of the late pestilence; the wild dismay and temporary desolation +it had produced; the scenes of family and individual suffering and woe +he had witnessed during its ravages; the mental dejection, approaching +despair, which he himself had experienced, on account of the entire +failure of his original mode of practice in it, and the loss of his +earliest patients (some of them personal friends); the joy he felt on +the discovery of a successful mode of treating it; the benefactions +which he had afterwards the happiness to confer; and the gratulations +with which, after the success of his practice had become known, he was +often received in sick and afflicted families. The discourse, though +highly colored, and marked by not a few figures of fancy and bursts of +feeling, was, notwithstanding, sufficiently fraught, with substantial +matter to render it no less instructive than it was fascinating. + +[Footnote 29: A native of North Carolina; prominent as a physician and +controversialist.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Thomas H. Benton, 1783-1858._= (Manual, p. 487.) + +From the "Thirty Years' View of the United States Senate." + +=_105._= THE CHARACTER OF MACON.[30] + +He was above the pursuit of wealth, but also above dependence and +idleness, and, like an old Roman of the elder Cato's time, worked in the +fields at the head of his slaves in the intervals of public duty, and +did not cease this labor until advancing age rendered him unable to +stand the hot sun of summer.... I think it was the summer of 1817,--that +was the last time (he told me) he tried it, and found the sun too hot +for him,--then sixty years of age, a senator, and the refuser of all +office. How often I think of him, when I see at Washington robustious +men going through a scene of supplication, tribulation, and degradation, +to obtain office, which the salvation of the soul does not impose upon +the vilest sinner! His fields, his flocks, and his herds, yielded an +ample supply of domestic productions. A small crop of tobacco--three +hogsheads when the season was good, two when bad--purchased the exotics +which comfort and necessity required, and which the farm did not +produce. He was not rich, but rich enough to dispense hospitality and +charity, to receive all guests in his house, from the president to the +day laborer--no other title being necessary to enter his house but that +of an honest man;... and above all, he was rich enough to pay as he +went, and never to owe a dollar to any man. + +... He always wore the same dress,--that is to say, a suit of the same +material, cut, and color, superfine navy-blue,--the whole suit from the +same piece, and in the fashion of the time of the Revolution, and always +replaced by a new one before it showed age. He was neat in his person, +always wore fine linen, a fine cambric stock, a fine fur hat with a +brim to it, fair top-boots--the boot outside of the pantaloons, on the +principle that leather was stronger than cloth. + +... He was an habitual reader and student of the Bible, a pious and +religious man, and of the "_Baptist persuasion_," as he was accustomed +to express it. + +[Footnote 30: Nathaniel Macon, United States Senator from North +Carolina.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Alexander Slidell Mackenzie, 1803-1845._= (Manual, pp. 490, 505.) + +From the Life of Commodore Decatur. + +=_106._= RECAPTURE, AND BURNING OF THE FRIGATE "PHILADELPHIA," AT +TRIPOLI. + +When all were safely assembled on the deck of the Intrepid, (for so +admirably had the service been executed that not a man was missing, and +only one slightly wounded,) Decatur gave the order to cut the fasts and +shove off. The necessity for prompt obedience and exertion was urgent. +The flames had now gained the lower rigging, and ascended to the tops; +they darted furiously from the ports, flashing from the quarter gallery +round the mizzen of the Intrepid, as her stern dropped clear of the +ship. To estimate the perils of their position, it should be borne in +mind, that the fire had been communicated by these fearless men to the +near neighborhood of both magazines of the Philadelphia. The Intrepid +herself was a fire ship, having been supplied with combustibles, a mass +of which, ready to be converted into the means of destroying other +vessels of the enemy, if the opportunity should offer, lay in barrels on +her quarter deck, covered only with a tarpaulin. + +With destruction thus encompassing them within and without, Decatur and +his brave followers were unmoved. Calmly they put forth the necessary +exertion, breasted the Intrepid off with spars, and pressing on their +sweeps, caused her slowly to withdraw from the vicinity of the burning +mass. A gentle breeze from the land came auspiciously at the same +moment, and wafted the Intrepid beyond the reach of the flames, bearing +with it, however, a shower of burning embers, fraught with danger to +a vessel laden with combustibles, had not discipline, order, and calm +self-possession, been at hand for her protection. Soon this peril was +also left behind, and Decatur and his followers were at a sufficient +distance to contemplate securely the spectacle which the Philadelphia +presented. Hull, spars, and rigging, were now enveloped in flames. As +the metal of her guns became heated, they were discharged in succession +from both sides, serving as a brilliant salvo in honor of the victor, +and not harmless for the Tripolitans, as her starboard battery was fired +directly into the town. + +The town itself, the castles, the minarets of the mosques, and the +shipping in the harbor, were all brought into distinct view by the +splendor of the conflagration. It served also to reveal to the enemy the +cause of their disaster, in the little Intrepid, as she slowly withdrew +from the harbor. The shot of the shipping and castles fell thickly +around her, throwing up columns of spray, which the brilliant light +converted into a new ornament of the scene. Only one shot took effect, +and that passed through her top-gallant sail. Three hearty American +cheers were now given in mingled triumph and derision. Soon after, the +boats of the Siren joined company, and assisted in towing the Intrepid +out of the harbor. The cables of the Philadelphia having burned off, she +drifted on the rocks near the westward entrance of the harbor; and then +the whole spectacle, so full of moral sublimity, considering the means +by which it had been effected, and of material grandeur, had its +appropriate termination in the final catastrophe of her explosion. + +Nor were the little band of heroes on board the Intrepid the only +exulting spectators of the scene. Lieutenant Stewart and his companions +on board the Siren, watching with intense interest, beheld in the +conflagration a pledge of Decatur's success; and Captain Bainbridge, +with his fellow-captives in the dungeons of Tripoli, saw in it a motive +of national exultation, and an earnest that a spirit was at work to +hasten the day of their liberation. + + * * * * * + + +=_I.F.H. Claiborne,[31] About 1804-._= + +From "Life and Times of General Samuel Dale." + +=_107._= TECUMSEH'S SPEECH TO THE CREEK INDIANS. + +I saw the Shawnees issue from their lodge; they were painted black, and +entirely naked except the flap about their loins. Every weapon but the +war-club,--then first introduced among the Creeks,--had been laid aside. +An angry scowl sat on all their visages; they looked like a procession +of devils. Tecumseh led, the warriors followed, one in the footsteps of +the other. The Creeks, in dense masses, stood on each side of the path, +but the Shawnees noticed no one; they marched to the pole in the centre +of the square, and then turned to the left. + +... They then marched in the same order to the Council, or King's +house,--as it was termed in ancient times, and drew up before it. The +Big Warrior and the leading men were sitting there. The Shawnee chief +sounded his war-whoop,--a most diabolical yell, and each of his +followers responded. Tecumseh then presented to the Big Warrior a wampum +belt of five different-colored stands, which the Creek chief handed to +his warriors, and it was passed down the line. The Shawnee pipe was then +produced; it was large, long, and profusely decorated with shells, +beads, and painted eagle and porcupine quills. It was lighted from the +fire in the centre, and slowly passed from the Big Warrior along the +line. All this time not a word had been uttered; every thing was still +as death; even the winds slept, and there was only the gentle rustle of +the falling leaves. At length Tecumseh spoke, at first slowly, and in +sonorous tones, but soon he grew impassioned, and the words fell in +avalanches from his lips. His eyes burned with supernatural lustre, and +his whole frame trembled with emotion; his voice resounded over the +multitude,--now sinking in low and musical whispers, now rising to its +highest key, hurling out his words like a succession of thunderbolts. +His countenance varied with his speech; its prevalent expression was a +sneer of hatred and defiance; sometimes a murderous smile; for a brief +interval a sentiment of profound sorrow pervaded it; and at the close, a +look of concentrated vengeance, such, I suppose, as distinguishes the +arch-enemy of mankind, I have heard many great orators, but I never saw +one with the vocal powers of Tecumseh, or the same command of the +muscles of his face. + +... Had I been deaf, the play of his countenance would have told me what +he said. Its effect on that wild, superstitious, untutored, and warlike +assemblage may be conceived; not a word was said, but stern warriors, +the "stoics of the woods," shook with emotion, and a thousand tomahawks +were brandished in the air. Even the Big Warrior, who had been true to +the whites, and remained faithful during the war, was for the moment +visibly affected, and more than once I saw his huge hand clutch, +spasmodically, the handle of his knife.... When he resumed his seat, the +northern pipe was again passed round in solemn silence. The Shawnees +then simultaneously leaped up with one appalling yell, and danced their +tribal war-dance, going through the evolutions of battle, the scout, the +ambush, the final struggle, brandishing their war-clubs, and screaming, +in terrific concert, an infernal harmony fit only for the regions of the +damned. + +[Footnote 31: Was born in Mississippi; by profession a lawyer, and for +some years a member of Congress; author of several biographical works of +interest, chiefly relating to the Southwest.] + + * * * * * + + +=_George Washington Greene,[32] 1811-._= + +From The Life of General Greene. + +=_108._= FOREIGN OFFICERS IN THE REVOLUTIONARY ARMY. + +... Mrs. Greene had joined her husband early in January, bringing with +her her summer's acquisition, a stock of French that quickly made her +little parlor the favorite resort of foreign officers. There was often +to be seen Lafayette, not yet turned of twenty-one, though a husband, a +father, and a major-general; graver somewhat in his manners than +strictly belonged either to his years or his country; and loved and +trusted by all, by Washington and Greene especially. Steuben, too, was +often there, wearing his republican uniform, as, fifteen years before, +he had worn the uniform of the despotic Frederick; as deeply skilled in +the ceremonial of a court as in the manoeuvring of an army; with a +glittering star on his left breast, that bore witness to the faithful +service he had rendered in his native Germany; and revolving in his +accurate mind designs which were to transform this mass of physical +strength, which Americans had dignified with the name of army, into a +real army which Frederick himself might have accepted. He had but little +English at his command as yet, but at his side there was a mercurial +young Frenchman, Peter Duponceau, who knew how to interpret both his +graver thoughts and the lighter gallantries with which the genial old +soldier loved to season his intercourse with the wives and daughters of +his new fellow-citizens. As the years passed away, Duponceau himself +became a celebrated man, and loved to tell the story of these checkered +days. Another German, too, De Kalb, was sometimes seen there, taller, +statelier, graver than Steuben, with the cold, observant eye of the +diplomatist, rather than the quick glance of the soldier, though a +soldier too, and a brave and skillful one; caring very little about the +cause he had forsaken his noble chateau and lovely wife to fight for, +but a great deal about the promotion and decorations which his good +service hero was to win him in France; for he had made himself a +Frenchman, and served the King of France, and bought him French lands, +and married a French wife. Already before this war began, he had come +hither in the service of France to study the progress of the growing +discontent; and now he was here again an American major-general, led +partly by the ambition of rank, partly by the thirst of distinction, but +much, too, by a certain restlessness of nature, and longing for +excitement and action, not to be wondered at in one who had fought his +way up from a butlership to a barony. He and Steuben had served on +opposite sides during the Seven Years War, though born both of them on +the same bank of the Rhine; and though when Steuben first came, De Kalb +was in Albany, yet in May they must have met more than once. How did +they feel towards each other, the soldier of Frederick, and the soldier +of Louis? If we had known more about this, we should have known better, +perhaps, why Lafayette, a fast friend of De Kalb, speaks of the +"methodic mediocrity" of Steuben, and Steuben of the "vanity and +presumption" of the young major-general. + +In the same circle, too, was the young Fleury whom we have seen bearing +himself so gallantly at Fort Mifflin, and who, a year after, was to +render still more brilliant service at Stony Point; and the Marquis de +la Rouerie, concealing his rank under the name of Armand, and combatting +an unsuccessful love by throwing himself headlong into the tumult of +war; and Mauduit Duplessis, whose skill as an engineer had been proved +at Red Bank, and who about this time was breveted Lieutenant-Colonel, +at Washington's recommendation, for "gallant conduct at Brandywine and +Germantown," and "distinguished services at Fort Mercer," and a "degree +of modesty not always found in men who have performed brilliant +actions," but whom neither modesty nor gallantry could save from a +fearful death at San Domingo; and Gimat, aide to Lafayette now, but who +afterwards led Lafayette's van as colonel in the successful assault +of the British redoubts at Yorktown; and La Colombe, who was to serve +Lafayette faithfully in France as he served him here; and Ternant, +distinguished in America, France, and Holland, but who this year +rendered invaluable service to American discipline by his aid in +carrying out the reforms of Steuben. Kosciusko was in the north, but +Poland had still another representative, the gallant Pulaski, who had +done good service during the last campaign, and who the very next year +was to lay down his life for us at the siege of Savannah. + +[Footnote 32: Born in Rhode Island; a grandson of the distinguished +General Greene of the Revolution, whose life he has written, with many +interesting details of that struggle.] + + * * * * * + + +=_James Parton, 1822-._= (Manual, pp. 490, 532.) + +From "Life and Times of Aaron Burr." + +=_109._= CAREER AND CHARACTER OF BURR. + +To judge this man, to decide how far he was unfortunate, and how far +guilty; how much we ought to pity, and how much to blame him,--is a task +beyond my powers. And what occasion is there for judging him, or for +judging any one? We all know that his life was an unhappy failure. He +failed to gain the small honors at which he aimed; he failed to live +a life worthy of his opportunities; he failed to achieve a character +worthy of his powers. It was a great, great pity. And any one is to be +pitied, who, in thinking of it, has any other feelings than those of +compassion--compassion for the man whose life was so much less a blessing +to him than it might have been, and compassion for the country, which +after producing so rare and excellent a kind of man, lost a great part +of the good he might have done her. + +The great error of his career, as before remarked, was his turning +politician. He was too good for a politician, and not great enough for a +statesman. + +If his expedition had succeeded, it was in him, I think, to have run a +career in Spanish America similar to that of Napoleon in Europe. Like +Napoleon, he would have been one of the most amiable despots, and one of +the most destructive. Like Napoleon, he would have been sure, at last, +to have been overwhelmed in a prodigious ruin. Like Napoleon, he would +have been idolized and execrated. Like Napoleon, he would, have had his +half dozen friends to go with him to St. Helena. Like Napoleon, he would +have justified to the last, with the utmost sincerity, nearly every +action of his life. + +We live in a better day than he did. Nearly every thing is better now +in the United States than it was fifty years ago, and a much larger +proportion of the people possess the means of enjoying and improving +life. If some evils are more obvious and rampant than they were, they +are also better known, and the remedy is nearer ... + +Politics, apart from the pursuit of office, have again become real and +interesting. The issue is distinct and important enough to justify the +intense concern of a nation. To a young man coming upon the stage of +life with the opportunities of Aaron Burr, a glorious and genuine +political career is possible. The dainty keeping aloof from the +discussion of public affairs, which has been the fashion until lately, +will not again find favor with any but the very stupid, for a long +time to come. The intellect of the United States once roused to the +consideration of political questions, will doubtless be found competent +to the work demanded of it. + +The career of Aaron Burr can never be repeated in the United States. +That of itself is a proof of progress. The game of politics which he +played is left, in these better days, to far inferior men, and the moral +license which he and Hamilton permitted themselves, is not known in the +circles they frequented. But the graver errors, the radical vices, of +both men belong to human nature, and will always exist to be shunned and +battled. + + * * * * * + +From "Famous Americans." + +=_110._= HENRY CLAY'S CAREER AT THE WESTERN BAR. + +It is surprising how addicted to litigation were the earlier settlers of +the Western States. The imperfect surveys of land, the universal habit +of getting goods on credit at the store, and "difficulties" between +individuals ending in bloodshed, filled the court calendars, with land +disputes, suits for debt, and exciting murder cases, which gave to +lawyers more importance and better chances of advancement than they +possessed in the older States. Mr. Clay had two strings to his bow. +Besides being a man of red-tape and pigeon-holes, exact, methodical, and +strictly attentive to business, he had a power over a Kentucky jury +such as no other man has ever wielded. To this day nothing pleases aged +Kentuckians better than to tell stories which they heard their fathers +tell of Clay's happy repartees to opposing counsel, his ingenious +cross-questioning of witnesses, his sweeping torrents of invective, his +captivating courtesy, his melting pathos. Single gestures, attitudes, +tones, have come down to us through two or three memories, and still +please the curious guest at Kentucky firesides. But when we turn to the +cold records of this part of his life, we find little to justify his +traditional celebrity. It appears that the principal use to which his +talents were applied during the first years of his practice at the bar, +was in defending murderers. He seems to have shared the feeling which +then prevailed in the Western country, that to defend a prisoner at the +bar is a nobler thing than to assist in defending the public against his +further depredations; and he threw all his force into the defence of +some men who would have been "none the worse for a hanging." One day, in +the streets of Lexington, a drunken fellow whom he had rescued from the +murderer's doom, cried out, "Here comes Mr. Clay, who saved my life." +"Ah! my poor fellow," replied the advocate, "I fear I have saved too +many like you, who ought to be hanged.". The anecdotes printed of his +exploits in cheating the gallows of its due, are of a quality which +shows that the power of this man over a jury lay much in his manner. His +delivery, which "bears absolute sway in oratory," was bewitching and +irresistible, and gave to quite common-place wit and very questionable +sentiment, an amazing power to please and subdue. + + * * * * * + +From an Article in the Atlantic Monthly. + +=_111._= WESTERN THEATRES. + +At the West, along with much reckless and defiant unbelief in every +thing high and good, there is also a great deal of that terror-stricken +pietism which refuses to attend the theatre unless it is very bad +indeed, and is called "Museum." This limits the business of the theatre; +and as a good theatre is necessarily a very expensive institution, it +improves very slowly, although the Western people are in precisely that +state of development and culture to which the drama is best adapted and +is most beneficial. We should naturally expect to find the human mind, +in the broad, magnificent West, rising superior to the prejudices +originating in the little sects of little lands. So it will rise in due +time. So it has risen, in some degree. But mere grandeur of nature has +no educating effect upon the soul of man; else Switzerland would not +have supplied Paris with footmen, and the hackmen of Niagara would spare +the tourist. It is only a human mind that can instruct a human mind. + + * * * * * + +To witness the performance, and to observe the rapture expressed +upon the shaggy and good-humored countenances of the boatmen, was +interesting, as showing what kind of banquet will delight a human soul, +starved from its birth. It likes a comic song very much, if the song +refers to fashionable articles of ladies costume, or holds up to +ridicule members of Congress, policemen, or dandies. It is not averse +to a sentimental song, in which "Mother, dear," is frequently +apostrophized. It delights in a farce from which most of the dialogue +has been cut away, while all the action is retained,--in which people +are continually knocked down, or run against one another with great +violence. It takes much pleasure in seeing Horace Greeley play a part in +a negro farce, and become the victim of designing colored brethren. But +what joy, when the beauteous Terpsichorean nymph bounds upon the scene, +rosy with paint, glistening with spangles, robust with cotton and cork, +and bewildering with a cloud of gauzy skirts! What a vision of beauty +to a man who has seen nothing for days and nights but the hold of a +steamboat and the dull shores of the Mississippi! + + * * * * * + + + +HISTORY, GENERAL AND SPECIAL. + + +=_John Heckewelder,[33] 1743-1823._= + +From the "Narrative" of the Moravian Missions among the Indians. + +=_112._= SETTLEMENTS OF THE CHRISTIAN INDIANS. + +Both these congregations, being supplied with missionaries and +schoolmasters, were so prosperous that they became the admiration of +visitors, some of whom thought it next to a miracle that, by the light +of the gospel, a savage race should be brought to live together in peace +and harmony, and above all devote themselves to religion. The people +residing in the neighborhood of those places were also intimate with +these Indians, and both were serviceable to each other; one instance of +which is here inserted. In February of the year 1761, a white man, who +had lost a child, came to Nain weeping, and begging that the Indian +Brethren would assist him and his wife to search for his child, which +had been missing since the day before. Several of the Indian Brethren +immediately went to the house of the parents, and discovered the +footsteps of the child, and tracing the same for the distance of two +miles, found the child in the woods, wrapped up in its petticoat, and +shivering with cold. The joy of the parents was so great that they +reported the circumstance wherever they went. To some of the white +people, who had been in dread of the near settlement of these Indians, +this incident was the means of making them easy, and causing them to +rejoice in having such good neighbors. + +... The war being over, the Indians who had been engaged in it freely +confessed to their friends and relations, and to some white people they +had heretofore been acquainted with, that "the Brethren's settlements +had been as a stumbling-block to them; that had it not been for these, +they would most assuredly have laid waste the whole country from the +mountains to Philadelphia; and that many plans had been formed for +destroying these settlements." + +[Footnote 33: Prominent among the Moravian clergy for his experience of +missionary life among the American Indians, for his knowledge of the +Indian languages, and for his lifelong devotion to the missionary work.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Jeremy Belknap, 1744-1798._= (Manual, p. 490.) + +From "The History of New Hampshire." + +=_113._= THE MAST PINE. + +Another thing worthy of observation is the aged and majestic appearance +of the trees, of which the most noble is the mast pine. This tree often +grows to the height of one hundred and fifty, and sometimes two hundred +feet. It is straight as an arrow, and has no branches but very near the +top. It is from twenty to forty inches in diameter at its base, and +appears like a stately pillar, adorned with a verdant capital, in form +of a cone. Interspersed among these are the common forest trees of +various kinds. + +When a mast tree is to be felled, much preparation is necessary. So tall +a stick, without any limbs nearer the ground than eighty or a hundred +feet, is in great danger of breaking in the fall. To prevent this the +workmen have a contrivance which they call bedding the tree, which is +thus executed. They know in what direction the tree will fall; and they +cut down a number of smaller trees which grow in that direction; or if +there be none, they draw others to the spot, and place them so that the +falling tree may lodge on their branches; which breaking or yielding +under its pressure, render its fall easy and safe. A time of deep snow +is the most favorable season, as the rocks are then covered, and a +natural bed is formed to receive the tree. When fallen, it is examined, +and if to appearance it be sound, it is cut in the proportion of three +feet in length to every inch of its diameter, for a mast; but if +intended for a bow-sprit or a yard, it is cut shorter. If it be not +sound throughout, or if it break in falling, it is cut into logs for the +saw-mill. + +When a mast is to be drawn on the snow, one end is placed on a sled, +shorter, but higher than the common sort, and rests on a strong block, +which is laid across the middle of the sled. + +In descending a long and steep hill they have a contrivance to prevent +the load from making too rapid a descent. Some of the cattle are placed +behind it; a chain which is attached to their yokes is brought forward +and fastened to the hinder end of the load, and the resistance which +is made by these cattle checks the descent. This operation is called +_tailing_. The most dangerous circumstance is the passing over the +top of a sharp hill, by which means the oxen which are nearest to the +tongues are sometimes suspended, till the foremost cattle can draw the +mast so far over the hill as to give them opportunity to recover the +ground. In this case the drivers are obliged to use much judgment and +care to keep the cattle from being killed. There is no other way to +prevent this inconvenience than to level the roads. + + * * * * * + + +=_David Ramsay, 1749-1815._= (Manual, p. 491.) + +From "The History of the Revolution in South Carolina." + +=_114._= FEELING OF THE PROVINCE TOWARD GREAT BRITAIN. + +In South Carolina, an enemy to the Hanoverian succession, or to the +British constitution, was scarcely known. The inhabitants were fond +of British manners even to excess. They for the most part, sent their +children to Great Britain for education, and spoke of that country under +the endearing appellation of Home. They were enthusiasts for that sacred +plan of civil and religious happiness under which they had grown up and +flourished.... Wealth poured in upon them from a thousand channels. The +fertility of the soil generously repaid the labor of the husbandman, +making the poor to sing, and industry to smile, through every corner +of the land. None were indigent but the idle and unfortunate. Personal +independence was fully within the reach of every man who was healthy +and industrious. The inhabitants, at peace with all the world, enjoyed +domestic tranquility, and were secure in their persons and property. +They were also completely satisfied with their government, and wished +not for the smallest change in their political constitution. + +In the midst of these enjoyments, and the most sincere attachment to the +mother country, to their king and his government, the people of South +Carolina, without any original design on their part, were step by step +drawn into an extensive war, which involved them in every species of +difficulty, and finally dissevered them from the parent state. + +... Every thing in the colonies contributed to nourish a spirit of +liberty and independence. They were planted under the auspices of the +English constitution in its purity and vigor. Many of their inhabitants +had imbibed a largo portion of that spirit which brought one tyrant to +the block, and expelled another from his dominions. They were +communities of separate, independent individuals, for the most part +employed in cultivating a fruitful soil, and under no general influence +but of their own feelings and opinions; they were not led by powerful +families, or by great officers in church or state.... Every inhabitant +was, or easily might be, a freeholder. Settled on lands of his own, he +was both farmer and landlord. Having no superior to whom he was obliged +to look up, and producing all the necessaries of life from his own +grounds, he soon became independent. His mind was equally free from all +the restraints of superstition. No ecclesiastical establishment invaded +the rights of conscience, or lettered the free-born mind. At liberty to +act and think as his inclination prompted, he disdained the ideas of +dependence and subjection. + + * * * * * + + +=_Henry Lee,[34] 1736-1818._= + +From "Memoirs" of the War in the South. + +=_115._= CLARKE'S SERVICES AGAINST THE INDIANS. + +JOHN RODGERS CLARKE, colonel in the service of Virginia, against our +neighbors the Indians in the revolutionary war, was among our best +soldiers, and better acquainted with the Indian warfare than any officer +in our army. This gentleman, after one of his campaigns, met in Richmond +several of our cavalry officers, and devoted all his leisure in +ascertaining from them the various uses to which horse were applied, +as well as the manner of such application. The information he acquired +determined him to introduce this species of force against the Indians, +as that of all others the most effectual. + +By himself, by Pickens, and lately by Wayne, was the accuracy of +Clarke's opinion justified.... + +The Indians, when fighting with infantry, are very daring. This temper +of mind results from his consciousness of his superior fleetness; which, +together with his better knowledge of woods, assures to him extrication +out of difficulties, though desperate. This is extinguished when he +finds that, he is to save himself from the pursuit of horse, and with +its extinction falls that habitual boldness. + +[Footnote 34: In the revolutionary war he was distinguished as a cavalry +officer, and subsequently, in political life, as a writer and speaker.] + + * * * * * + +=_116._= THE CAREER OF CAPTAIN KIRKWOOD. + +The State of Delaware furnished one regiment only; and certainly no +regiment in the army surpassed it in soldiership. The remnant of that +corps, less thaw two companies, from the battle of Camden, was commanded +by Captain Kirkwood, who passed through the war with high reputation; +and yet, as the line of Delaware consisted of but one regiment, and +that regiment was reduced to a captain's command. Kirkwood never +could be promoted in regular routine--a very glaring defect in the +organization of the army, as it gave advantages to parts of the same +army denied to other portions of it. The sequel is singularly hard. +Kirkwood retired, upon peace, as a captain; and when the army under St. +Clair was raised to defend the west from the Indian enemy, this veteran +resumed his sword as the eldest captain in the oldest regiment. + +In the decisive defeat of the 4th of November,[35] the gallant +Kirkwood fell, bravely sustaining his point of the action. It was the +thirty-third time he had risked his life for his country; and he died as +he had lived, the brave, meritorious, unrewarded Kirkwood. + +[Footnote 35: St. Clair's defeat.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Peter S. Duponceau,[36] 1760-1844._= + +From "An Address." + +=_117._= CHARACTER OF PENN. + +WILLIAM PENN stands the first among the lawgivers whose names and deeds +are recorded in history. Shall we compare him with Lycurgus, Solon, +Romulus, those founders of military commonwealths, who organized their +citizens in deadly array against the rest of their species, taught them +to consider their fellow-men as barbarians, and themselves as alone +worthy to rule over the earth?... But see William Penn, with weaponless +hand, sitting down peaceably with his followers, in the midst of +savage nations whose only occupation was shedding the blood of their +fellow-men, disarming them by his justice, and teaching them, for the +first time, to view a stranger without distrust. See them bury their +tomahawks in his presence, so deep that man shall never be able to +find them again. See them, under the shade of the thick groves of +Coaquannock, extend the bright chain of friendship, and solemnly promise +to preserve it as long as the sun and moon shall endure. See him then, +with his companions, establishing his commonwealth on the sole basis of +religion, morality, and universal love, and adopting, as the fundamental +maxim of his government, the rule handed down to us from Heaven, "Glory +to God on high, and on earth peace and good will towards men." + +[Footnote 36: An eminent jurist and philologist, of French origin, but +for many years a citizen of Philadelphia.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Charles J. Ingersoll,[37] 1782-1862._= + +From the "Historical Sketch" of the War of 1812. + +=_118._= CALHOUN CHARACTERIZED + +John Caldwell Calhoun was the same slender, erect, and ardent logician, +politician, and sectarian, in the House of Representatives in 1814 that +he is in the Senate of 1847. Speaking with aggressive aspect, flashing +eye, rapid action and enunciation, unadorned argument, eccentricity of +judgment, unbounded love of rule, impatient, precipitate, kind temper, +excellent in colloquial attractions, caressing the young, not courting +rulers; conception, perception, and demonstration quick and clear, with +logical precision arguing paradoxes, and carrying home conviction beyond +rhetorical illustration; his own impressions so intense as to discredit, +scarcely listen to, any other suggestions; well educated and informed. + +[Footnote 37: A native of Pennsylvania; long conspicuous in the law, +literature, and political life.] + + * * * * * + +=_119._= BATTLE OF CHIPPEWA. + +In a fair national trial of the military faculties, courage, activity, +and fortitude, discipline, gunnery, and tactics, for the first time the +palm was awarded by Englishmen to Americans over Englishmen. Without +fortuitous advantage the Americans proved too much for the redoubtable +English, though superior in number, therefore universally arrogating to +themselves even with inferior numbers, a mastery but faintly questioned +by most Americana; no accident to depreciate the triumph of the younger +over the older nation; no more fortune than what favors the bravest. + +Physical and even corporeal national characteristics, did not escape +comparison in this normal contest. The American rather more active and +more demonstrative than his ancestors, many of the officers of imposing +figure, Scott and McNeil particularly, towering with gigantic stature +above the rest, stood opposed in striking contrast to the short, thick, +brawny, burly Briton, hard to overcome.... The Marquis of Tweedale, +with his sturdy, short person, and stubborn courage, represented +the British.... Even the names betokened at once consanguinity and +hostility. Scott, McNeill, and McRee, in arms against Gordon, Hay, and +Maconochie. And the harsh Scotch nomenclature, compared with the more +euphonious savage Canada, Chippewa, Niagara, which latter modern English +prosody has corrupted from the measure of Goldsmith's Traveller:-- + + "Where wild Oswego spreads her swamps around, + And Niagara stuns with thundering sound." + +... Mankind impressed by numbers and bloodshed, regard the second more +extensive battle near the falls of Niagara, on the 25th of the same +month, between the same parties with British reinforcements, known as +the battle of Bridgewater, as more important than its precursor.... The +victory of Chippewa was the resurrection or birth of American arms, +after their prostration by so long disuse, and when at length taken up +again, by such continual and deplorable failures, that the martial and +moral influence of the first decided victory opened and characterized +an epoch in the annals and intercourse of the two kindred and rival +nations, whose language is to be spoken, as their institutions are +rapidly spreading, throughout most of mankind. Fought between only some +three or four thousand men in both armies, at a place remote from +either of their countries, the battle of Chippewa may not bear vulgar +comparison with the great military engagements of modern Europe. + +... The charm of British military invincibility was as effectually +broken, by a single brigade, as that of naval supremacy was by a single +frigate, as much as if a large army or fleet had been the agent. + + * * * * * + + +=_Henry M. Brackenridge,[38] 1786-._= (Manual, p. 505.) + +From "Recollections of the West." + +=_120._= OLD ST. GENEVIEVE, IN MISSOURI. + +The house of M. Beauvais was a long, low building, with a porch or shed +in front, and another in the rear; the chimney occupied the center, +dividing the house into two parts, with each a fireplace. One of these +served for dining-room, parlor, and principal bed-chamber; the other was +the kitchen; and each had a small room taken off at the end for private +chambers or cabinets. There was no loft or garret, a pair of stairs +being a rare thing in the village. The furniture, excepting the beds and +the looking-glass, was of the most common kind.... The yard was enclosed +with cedar pickets, eight or ten inches in diameter, and six feet high, +placed upright, sharpened at the top, in the manner of a stockade fort. +In front the yard was narrow, but in the rear quite spacious, and +containing the barn and stables, the negro quarters, and all the +necessary offices of a farm-yard. Beyond this, there was a spacious +garden enclosed with pickets.... + +The pursuits of the inhabitants were chiefly agricultural, although all +were more or less engaged in traffic for peltries with the Indians, or +in working the lead mines in the interior. Peltry and lead constituted +almost the only circulating medium. All politics, or discussions of the +affairs of government were entirely unknown; the commandant took care +of all that sort of thing. But instead of them, the processions and +ceremonies of the church, and the public balls, furnished ample matter +for occupation and amusement. Their agriculture was carried on in a +field of several thousand acres, enclosed at the common expense, and +divided into lots.... Whatever they may have gained in some respects, I +question very much whether the change of government has contributed to +increase their happiness. About a quarter of a mile off, there was a +village of Kickapoo Indians, who lived on the most friendly terms with +the white people. The boys often intermingled with those of the +white village, and practised shooting with the bow and arrow--an +accomplishment which I acquired with the rest, together with a little +smattering of the Indian language, which I forgot on leaving the place. + +[Footnote 38: Distinguished in literature and as a political writer; a +native of Pennsylvania.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Gulian C. Verplanck, 1786-1870._= (Manual, p. 487.) + +From the "Literary and Historical Discourses." + +=_121._= THE SCHOOLMASTER. + +The schoolmaster's occupation is laborious and ungrateful; its rewards +are scanty and precarious. He may indeed be, and he ought to be animated +by the consciousness of doing good, that best of all consolations, that +noblest of all motives. But that too must be often clouded by doubt and +uncertainty. Obscure and inglorious as his daily occupation may appear +to learned pride or worldly ambition, yet to be truly successful and +happy he must be animated by the spirit of the same great principles +which inspired the most illustrious benefactors of mankind. If he bring +to his task high talent and rich acquirement, he must be content to look +into distant years for the proof that his labors have not been wasted, +that the good seed which he daily scatters abroad does not fall on stony +ground and wither away, or among thorns to be choked by the cares, the +delusions, or the vices of the world. He must solace his toils with +the same prophetic faith that enabled the greatest of modern +philosophers,[39] amidst the neglect or contempt of his own times, to +regard himself as sowing the seeds of truth for posterity and the care +of Heaven. He must arm himself against disappointment and mortification +with a portion of that same noble confidence which soothed the greatest +of modern poets when weighed down by care and danger, by poverty, old +age, and blindness, still + + "--In prophetic dreams he saw + The youth unborn with pious awe + Imbibe each virtue from his sacred page." + +He must know and he must love to teach his pupils not the meager +elements of knowledge, but the secret and the use of their own +intellectual strength, exciting and enabling them hereafter to raise for +themselves the veil which covers the majestic form of Truth. He must +feel deeply the reverence due to the youthful mind fraught with mighty +though undeveloped energies and affections, and mysterious and eternal +destinies. Thence he must have learned to reverence himself and his +profession, and to look upon its otherwise ill-requited toils as their +own exceeding great reward. + +If such are the difficulties and the discouragements, such the duties, +the motives, and the consolations of teachers who are worthy of that +name and trust, how imperious then the obligation upon every enlightened +citizen who knows and feels the value of such men to aid them, to cheer +them, and to honor them. + +But let us not be content with barren honor to buried merit. Let us +prove our gratitude to the dead by faithfully endeavoring to elevate the +station, to enlarge the usefulness, and to raise the character of the +schoolmaster amongst us. Thus shall we best testify our gratitude to the +teachers and guides of our own youth, thus best serve our country, +and thus most effectually diffuse over our land light, and truth, and +virtue. + +[Footnote 39: Bacon.] + + * * * * * + + +=_John W. Francis, 1789-1861._= (Manual, pp. 487, 532.) + +From his "Reminiscences." + +=_122._= PUBLIC CHANGES DURING A SINGLE LIFETIME. + +He who has passed a period of some three score years and upward, some +faithful Knickerbocker for instance, native born, and ever a resident +among us, whose tenacious memory enables him to meditate upon the +thirty thousand inhabitants at the time of his birth, with the almost +oppressive population of some seven hundred thousand which the city at +present contains; who contrasts the cheap and humble dwellings of +that earlier date, with the costly and magnificent edifices which now +beautify the metropolis; who studies the sluggish state of the mechanic +arts at the dawn of the Republic, and the mighty demonstrations of skill +which our Fulton, and our Stevens, our Douglas, our Hoe, and our Morse, +have produced; who remembers the few and humble water-craft conveyances +of days past, and now beholds the majestic leviathans of the ocean which +crowd our harbors; who contemplates the partial and trifling commercial +transactions of the Confederacy, with the countless millions of +commercial business which engross the people of the present day, in our +Union; who estimates the offspring of the press, and the achievements of +the telegraph, he who has been the spectator of all this, may be justly +said to have lived the period of many generations, and to have stored +within his reminiscences the progress of an era the most remarkable in +the history of his species. + +If he awakens his attention to a consideration of the progress of +intellectual and ethical pursuits, if he advert to the prolific +demonstrations which surround him for the advancement of knowledge, +literary and scientific, moral and religious, the indomitable spirit of +the times strikes him with more than logical conviction. The beneficence +and humanity of his countrymen may be pointed out by contemplating her +noble free schools, her vast hospitals and asylums for the alleviation +of physical distress and mental infirmities; with the reflection that +all these are the triumphs of a self-governed people, accomplished +within the limited memory of an ordinary life. Should reading enlarge +the scope of his knowledge, let him study the times of the old Dutch +Governors, when the Ogdens erected the first church in the fort of New +Amsterdam, in 1642, and then survey the vast panoramic view around him +of the two hundred and fifty and more edifices, now consecrated to the +solemnities of religious devotion. It imparts gratification to know that +the old Bible which was used in that primary church of Van Twiller is +still preserved by a descendant of the builder, a precious relic of the +property of the older period, and of the devotional impulse of those +early progenitors. To crown the whole, time in its course has recognized +the supremacy of political and religious toleration, and established +constitutional freedom on the basis of equal rights and even and exact +justice to all men. That New York has given her full measure of toil, +expenditure, and talent in furtherance of these vast results, by her +patriots and statesmen, is proclaimed in grateful accents by the myriad +voice of the nation at large. + + * * * * * + + +=_William, Meade, 1789-1862._= + +From the "Old Churches &c. of Virginia." + +=_123._= Character of the Early Virginia Clergy. + +It has been made a matter of great complaint against the Legislature of +Virginia, that it should not only have withdrawn the stipend of sixteen +thousand weight of tobacco from the clergy, but also have seized upon +the glebes. I do not mean to enter on the discussion of the legality of +that act, or of the motives of those who petitioned for it. Doubtless +there were many who sincerely thought that it was both legal and right, +and that they were doing God and religion a service by it. I hesitate +not, however, to express the opinion, in which I have been and am +sustained by many of the best friends of the Church then and ever +since, that nothing could have been more injurious to the cause of true +religion in the Episcopal Church, or to its growth in any way, than the +continuance of either stipend or glebes. Many clergymen of the most +unworthy character would have been continued among us, and such a +revival as we have seen have never taken place.... Not merely have the +pious members of the Church taken this view of the subject, since the +revival of it under other auspices, but many of those who preferred the +Church at that day, for other reasons than her evangelical doctrine and +worship, saw that It was best that she should be thrown upon her own +resources. I had a conversation with Mr. Madison, soon after he ceased +to be President of the United States, in which I became assured of this. +He himself took an active part in promoting the act for the putting down +the establishment of the Episcopal Church, while his relative was Bishop +of it, and all his family connection attached to it.... + +It may be well here to state, what will more fully appear when we come +to speak of the old glebes and churches in a subsequent number, that +the character of the laymen of Virginia for morals and religion was in +general greatly in advance of that of the clergy. The latter, for the +most part, were the refuse or more indifferent of the English, Irish, +and Scotch Episcopal churches, who could not find promotion and +employment at home. The former were natives of the soil, and descendants +of respectable ancestors, who migrated at an early period.... Some of +the vestries, as their records painfully show, did what they could to +displace unworthy ministers, though they often failed through defect of +law. In order to avoid the danger of having evil ministers fastened upon +them, as well as from the scarcity of ministers, they made much use of +lay-readers as substitutes.... The reading of the service and sermons in +private families, which contributed so much to the preservation of an +attachment to the Church in the same, was doubtless promoted by this +practice of lay-reading. Those whom Providence raised up to resuscitate +the fallen Church of Virginia can testify to the fact that the families +who descended from the above mentioned, have been their most effective +supports.... And when, in the providence of God. they are called on to +leave their ancient homes, and form new settlements in the distant South +and West, none are more active and reliable in transplanting the Church +of their Fathers. + + * * * * * + + +=_Jared Sparks, 1794-1866._= (Manual, p. 490.) + +From "The Life of General Stark." + +=_124._= THE BATTLE OF BENNINGTON. + +The German troops with their battery were advantageously posted upon a +rising ground, at a bend in the Wollamsac (a tributary of the Hoosac), +on its north bank. The ground fell off to the north and west, a +circumstance of which Stark skilfully took advantage. Peters' corps of +Tories were entrenched on the other side of the stream, in lower ground, +and nearly in front of the German Battery. The little river, that +meanders through the scene of the action, is fordable in all places. +Stark was encamped upon the same side of it as the Germans, but, owing +to its serpentine course, it crossed his line of march twice on his way +to their position. Their post was carefully reconnoitered at a mile's +distance, and the plan of attack was arranged in the following manner. +Colonel Nichols, with two hundred men, was detached to attack the rear +of the enemy's left, and Colonel Herrick, with three hundred men, to +fall upon the rear of their right, with orders to form a junction before +they made the assault. Colonels Hubbard and Stickney were also ordered +to advance with two hundred men on their right, and one hundred in +front, to divert their attention from the real point of attack. The +action commenced at three o'clock in the afternoon, on the rear of the +enemy's left, when Colonel Nichols, with great precision, carried into +effect the dispositions of the commander. His example was followed by +every other portion of the little army. General Stark himself moved +forward slowly in front, till he heard the sound of the guns from +Colonel Nichols' party, when he rushed upon the Tories, and in a few +moments the action became general. "It lasted," says Stark, in his +official report, "two hours, and was the hottest I ever saw. It was like +one continued clap of thunder." The Indians, alarmed at the prospect of +being enclosed between the parties of Nichols and Herrick, fled at the +commencement of the action, their main principle of battle array being +to contrive or to escape, an ambush, or an attack in the rear. The +Tories were soon driven over the river, and were thus thrown in +confusion on the Germans, who were forced from their breast-work. +Baum made a brave and resolute defence. The German dragoons, with the +discipline of veterans, preserved their ranks unbroken, and, after their +ammunition was expended, were led to the charge by their Colonel with +the sword; but they were overpowered and obliged to give way, leaving +their artillery and baggage on the field. + +They were well enclosed in two breast-works, which, owing to the rain +on the 15th, they had constructed at leisure. But notwithstanding +this protection, with the advantage of two pieces of cannon, arms and +ammunition in perfect order, and an auxiliary force of Indians, they +were driven from their entrenchments by a band of militia just brought +to the field, poorly armed, with few bayonets, without field-pieces, and +with little discipline. The superiority of numbers on the part of the +Americans, will, when these things are considered, hardly be thought to +abate anything from the praise due to the conduct of the commander, or +the spirit and courage of his men. + + * * * * * + +From the "Life of Count Pulaski." + +=_125._= HIS SERVICES, DEATH, AND CHARACTER. + +(The Battle of Brandywine.)--On that occasion, Count Pulaski, as well as +Lafayette, was destined to strike his first blow in defence of American +liberty. Being a volunteer, and without command, he was stationed near +General Washington till towards the close of the action, when he asked +the command of the General's body guard,--about thirty horse, +and advanced rapidly within pistol-shot of the enemy, and after +reconnoitering their movements, returned and reported that they were +endeavoring to cut off the line of retreat, and particularly the train +of baggage. He was then authorized to collect as many of the scattered +troops as came in his way, and employ them according to his discretion, +which he did in a manner so prompt and bold, as to effect an important +service in the retreat of the army; fully sustaining, by his conduct and +courage, the reputation for which the world had given him credit. Four +days after this event, he was appointed by Congress to the command of +the cavalry, with the rank of brigadier general. + +(Before Charleston in 1779.)--Scarcely waiting till the enemy had +crossed the ferry, Pulaski sallied out with his legion and a few mounted +volunteers, and made an assault upon the advanced parties. With the +design of drawing the British into an ambuscade, he stationed his +infantry on low ground behind a breast-work, and then rode forward a +mile, with his cavalry in the face of a party of light-horse, with whom +he came to close quarters, and kept up a sharp skirmish till he was +compelled to retreat by the increasing numbers of the enemy. His +coolness, courage, and disregard of personal danger, were conspicuous +throughout the rencounter, and the example of this prompt and bold +attack had great influence in raising the spirits of the people, and +inspiring the confidence of the inexperienced troops then assembled in +the city. The infantry, impatient to take part in the conflict, advanced +to higher ground in front of the breast-work and thus the scheme of an +ambuscade was defeated. + +(His death at Savannah.)--The cavalry were stationed in the rear of the +advanced columns, and in the confusion which appeared in front, and in +the obscurity caused by the smoke, Pulaski was uncertain where he ought +to act. To gain information on this point, he determined to ride forward +in the heat of the conflict, and called to Captain Bentalou to accompany +him. They had proceeded but a short distance, when they heard of the +havoc that had been produced in the swamp among the French troops. +Hoping to animate these troops by his presence, he rushed onward, and +while riding swiftly to the place where they were stationed, he received +a wound in the groin from a swivel-shot, and fell from his horse near +the abattis. Captain Bentalou was likewise wounded by a musket-ball. +Count Pulaski was left on the field till nearly all the troops had +retreated, when some of his men returned, in the face of the enemy's +guns, and took him to the camp. (His character.)--He possessed in a +remarkable degree, the power of winning and controlling men, a power so +rare that it may be considered not less the fruit of consummate art than +the gift of nature. Energetic, vigilant, untiring in the pursuit of an +object, fearless, fertile in resources, calm in danger, resolute and +persevering under discouragements, he was always prepared for events, +and capable of effecting his purposes with the best chance of +success.... He embraced our cause as his own, harmonizing, as it did +with his principles and all the noble impulses of his nature, the cause +of liberty and of human rights; he lost his life in defending it; thus +acquiring the highest of all claims to a nation's remembrance and +gratitude. + + * * * * * + + +=_William H. Prescott, 1796-1859._= (Manual, p. 494.) + +From the "History of Ferdinand and Isabella." + +=_126._= MORAL CONSEQUENCES OF THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. + +Whatever be the amount of physical good or evil immediately resulting +to Spain from her new discoveries, their moral consequences were +inestimable. The ancient limits of human thought and action were +overleaped; the veil which had covered the secrets of the deep for so +many centuries was removed; another hemisphere was thrown open; and a +boundless expansion promised to science, from the infinite varieties in +which nature was exhibited in these unexplored regions. The success of +the Spaniards kindled a generous emulation in their Portuguese rivals, +who soon after accomplished their long-sought passage into the Indian +seas, and thus completed the great circle of maritime discovery. It +would seem as if Providence had postponed this grand event, until the +possession of America, with its stores of precious metals, might supply +such materials for a commerce with the east, as should bind together +the most distant quarters of the globe. The impression made on the +enlightened minds of that day is evinced by the tone of gratitude and +exultation, in which they indulge, at being permitted to witness the +consummation of these glorious events, which their fathers had so long, +but in vain, desired to see. + +The discoveries of Columbus occurred most opportunely for the Spanish +nation, at the moment when it was released from its tumultuous struggle +in which it had been engaged for so many years with the Moslems. The +severe schooling of these wars had prepared it for entering on a bolder +theater of action, whose stirring and romantic perils raised still +higher the chivalrous spirit of the people. The operation of this spirit +was shown in the alacrity with which private adventurers embarked in +expeditions to the New World, under cover of the general license, during +the last two years of this century. Their efforts, combined with those +of Columbus, extended the range of discovery from its original limits; +twenty-four degrees of north latitude, to probably more than fifteen +south, comprehending some of the most important territories in the +western hemisphere. Before the end of 1500, the principal groups of +the West India islands had been visited, and the whole extent of +the southern continent coasted from the Bay of Honduras to Cape St. +Augustine. One adventurous mariner, indeed, named Lepe, penetrated +several degrees south of this, to a point not reached by any other +voyager for ten or twelve years after. A great part of the kingdom +of Brazil was embraced in this extent, and two successive Castilian +navigators landed and took formal possession of it for the crown of +Castile, previous to its reputed discovery by the Portuguese Cabral; +although the claims to it were relinquished by the Spanish Government, +conformably to the famous line of demarkation established by the treaty +of Tordesillas. + +While the colonial empire of Spain was thus every day enlarging, the man +to whom it was all due was never permitted to know the extent, or the +value of it. He died in the conviction in which he lived, that the land +he had reached was the long-sought Indies. But it was a country far +richer than the Indies; and had he on quitting Cuba struck into a +westerly, instead of southerly direction, it would have carried him into +the very depths of the golden regions, whose existence he had so long +and vainly predicted. As it was, he "only opened the gates," to use his +own language, for others more fortunate than himself; and, before he +quitted Hispaniola for the last time, the young adventurer arrived +there, who was destined by the conquest of Mexico to realize all the +magnificent visions, which had been derided only as visions, in the +lifetime of Columbus. + + * * * * * + +From "The History of the Conquest of Mexico." + +=_127._= PICTURE-WRITING OF THE MEXICANS. + +While these things were passing, Cortés observed one of Teuhtlile's +attendants busy with a pencil, apparently delineating some object. On +looking at his work, he found that it was a sketch, on canvas, of the +Spaniards, their costumes, arms, and, in short, different objects of +interest, giving to each its appropriate form and color. This was the +celebrated picture-writing of the Aztecs, and as Teuhtlile informed him, +this man was employed in portraying the various objects for the eye of +Montezuma, who would thus gather a more vivid notion of their appearance +than from any description by words. Cortés was pleased with the idea; +and as he knew how much the effect would be heightened by converting +still life into action, he ordered out the cavalry on the beach, the +wet sands of which afforded a firm footing for the horses. The bold +and rapid movements of the troops, as they went through their military +exercises, the apparent ease with which they managed the fiery animals +on which they were mounted, the glancing of their weapons, and the +shrill cry of the trumpet, all filled the spectators with astonishment; +but when they heard the thunders of the cannon, and witnessed the +volumes of smoke and flame issuing from these terrible engines, and the +rushing sound of the balls, as they dashed through the trees of the +neighboring forest, shivering their branches into fragments, they were +filled with consternation, from which the Aztec chief himself was +not wholly free. Nothing of all this was lost on the painters, who +faithfully recorded, after their fashion, every particular, not omitting +the ships--"the water-houses," as they called them--of the strangers, +which, with their dark hulls and snow-white sails reflected from the +water, were swinging lazily at anchor on the calm bosom of the bay. All +was depicted with a fidelity that excited in their turn the admiration +of the Spaniards, who, doubtless unprepared for this exhibition of +skill, greatly overestimated the merits of the execution. + + * * * * * + +From "The History of the Conquest of Peru." + +=_128._= RANSOM AND DOOM OF THE INCA. + +These articles consisted of goblets, ewers, salvers, vases of every +shape and size, ornaments and utensils for the temples and the royal +palaces, tiles and plates for the decoration of the public edifices, +curious imitations of different plants and animals. Among the plants, +the most beautiful was the Indian corn, in which the golden ear was +sheathed in its broad leaves of silver, from which hung a rich tassel of +threads of the same precious metal. A fountain was also much admired, +which sent up a sparkling jet of gold, while birds and animals of the +same material played in the waters at its base. The delicacy of the +workmanship of some of these, and the beauty and ingenuity of the +design, attracted the admiration of better judges than the rude +Conquerors of Peru. + +Before breaking up these specimens of Indian art, it was determined to +send a quantity, which should be deducted from the royal fifth, to the +Emperor. It would serve as a sample of the ingenuity of the natives, +and would show him the value of his conquests. A number of the most +beautiful articles was selected, to the amount of a hundred thousand +ducats, and Hernando Pizarro was appointed to be the bearer of them to +Spain. + +The doom of the Inca was proclaimed by sound of trumpet in the great +square of Caxamalca; and, two hours after sunset, the Spanish soldiery +assembled by torch-light in the _plaza_ to witness the execution of the +sentence. It was on the twenty-ninth of August, 1533. Atahuallpa was led +out chained hand and foot,--for he had been kept in irons ever since the +great excitement had prevailed in the army respecting an assault. Father +Vicente de Valverde was at his side, striving to administer consolation, +and, if possible, to persuade him at this last hour to abjure his +superstition and embrace the religion of his Conquerors. He was willing +to save the soul of his victim from the terrible expiation in the next +world, to which he had so cheerfully consigned his mortal part in this. + +During Atahuallpa's confinement the friar had repeatedly expounded to +him the Christian doctrines, and the Indian monarch discovered much +acuteness in apprehending the discourse of his teacher. But it had not +carried conviction to his mind, and though he listened with patience, +he had shown no disposition to renounce the faith of his fathers. The +Dominican made a last appeal to him in this solemn hour; and, when +Atahuallpa was bound to the stake, with the fagots that were to kindle +his funeral pile lying around him, Valverde, holding up the cross, +besought him to embrace it, and be baptized, promising that by so doing +the painful death to which he had been sentenced should be commuted +for the milder form, of the _garrote_,--a mode of punishment by +strangulation, used for criminals in Spain. + +The unhappy monarch asked if this were really so, and, on its being +confirmed by Pizarro he consented to abjure his own religion, and +receive baptism. The ceremony was performed by Father Valverde, and the +new convert received the name of Juan de Atahuallpa,--the name of Juan +being conferred in honor of John the Baptist, on whose day the event +took place. + +Atahuallpa expressed a desire that his remains might be transported +to Quito, the place of his birth, to be preserved with those of his +maternal ancestors. Then turning to Pizarro, as a last request, he +implored him to take compassion on his young children, and receive them +under his protection. Was there no other one in that dark company who +stood grimly around him, to whom he could look for the projection of his +offspring? Perhaps he thought there was no other so competent to afford +it, and that the wishes so solemnly expressed in that hour might meet +with respect even from his Conqueror. Then, recovering his stoical +bearing, which for a moment had been shaken, he submitted himself calmly +to his fate,--while the Spaniards, gathering around, muttered their +_credos_ for the salvation his soul. Thus by the death of a vile +malefactor perished the last of the Incas. + + * * * * * + + +=_George Bancroft, 1800-._= (Manual, pp. 487, 491, 531.) + +From the "History of the United States." + +=_129._= VIRGINIA AND ITS INHABITANTS IN EARLY TIMES. + +The genial climate and transparent atmosphere delighted those who had +come from the denser air of England. Every object in nature was new and +wonderful. The loud and frequent thunder-storms were phenomena that had +been rarely witnessed in the colder summers of the north; the forests, +majestic in their growth, and free from underwood, deserved admiration +for their unrivalled magnificence; the purling streams and the frequent +rivers, flowing between alluvial banks, quickened the ever-pregnant soil +into an unwearied fertility; the strangest and the most delicate flowers +grew familiarly in the fields; the woods were replenished with sweet +barks and odors; the gardens matured the fruits of Europe, of which the +growth was invigorated and the flavor improved by the activity of the +virgin mould. Especially the birds, with their gay plumage and varied +melodies, inspired delight; every traveller expressed his pleasure in +listening to the mocking-bird, which carolled a thousand several tunes, +imitating and excelling the notes of all its rivals. The humming-bird, +so brilliant in its plumage, and so delicate in its form, quick in +motion, yet not fearing the presence of man, hunting about the flowers +like the bee gathering honey, rebounding from the blossoms into which +it dips its bill, and as soon returning "to renew its addresses to its +delightful objects," was ever admired as the smallest and the most +beautiful of the feathered race. The rattlesnake, with the terrors of +its alarms and the power of its venom; the opossum, soon to become as +celebrated for the care of its offspring as the fabled pelican: the +noisy frog, booming from the shallows like the English bittern; the +flying squirrel; the myriads of pigeons, darkening the air with the +immensity of their flocks, and, as men believed, breaking with their +weight the boughs of trees on which they alighted,--were all honored +with frequent commemoration, and became the subjects of the strangest +tales. The concurrent relation of all the Indians justified the belief +that, within ten days journey towards the setting of the sun, there +was a country where gold might be washed from the sand, and where the +natives themselves had learned the use of the crucible; but definite +and accurate as were the accounts, inquiry was always baffled; and the +regions of gold remained for two centuries an undiscovered land. + +Various were the employments by which the calmness of life was relieved. +George Sandys, an idle man, who had been a great traveller, and who did +not remain in America, a poet, whose verse was tolerated by Dryden +and praised by Isaac Walton, beguiled the ennui of his seclusion by +translating the whole of Ovid's Metamorphoses. To the man of leisure the +chase furnished a perpetual resource. It was not long before the horse +was multiplied in Virginia; and to improve that noble animal was early +an object of pride, soon to be favored by legislation. Speed was +especially valued, and "the planters pace" became a proverb.... + + * * * * * + +=_130_=. CONTRAST OF ENGLISH AND FRENCH COLONIZATION IN AMERICA. + +In Asia, the victories of Olive at Plassy, of Coote at the Wandewash, +and of Watson and Pococke on the Indian seas, had given England the +undoubted ascendency in the East Indies, opening to her suddenly the +promise of untold treasures and territorial acquisitions without end. In +America, the Teutonic race, with its strong tendency to individuality +and freedom, was become the master from the Gulf of Mexico to the Poles; +and the English tongue, which but a century and a half before had for +its entire world a part only of two narrow islands on the outer verge +of Europe, was now to spread more widely than any that had ever given +expression to human thought. + +Go forth, then, language of Milton and Hampden, language of my country, +take possession of the North American continent! Gladden the waste +places with every tone that has been rightly struck on the English lyre, +with every English word that has been spoken well for liberty and for +man! Give an echo to the now silent and solitary mountains; gush out +with the fountains that as yet sing their anthems all day long without +response; fill the valleys with the voices of love in its purity, the +pledges of friendship in its faithfulness; and as the morning sun drinks +the dewdrops from the flowers all the way from the dreary Atlantic to +the Peaceful Ocean, meet him with the joyous hum of the early industry +of freemen! Utter boldly and spread widely through the world the +thoughts of the coming apostles of the people's liberty, till the sound +that cheers the desert shall thrill through the heart of humanity, and +the lips of the messenger of the people's power, as he stands in beauty +upon the mountains, shall proclaim the renovating tidings of equal +freedom for the race!... + +France, of all the states on the continent of Europe the most powerful +by territorial unity, wealth, numbers, industry, and culture, seemed +also by its place marked out for maritime ascendency. Set between many +seas, it rested upon the Mediterranean, possessed harbors on the German +Ocean, and embraced within its wide shores and jutting headlands, the +bays and open, waters of the Atlantic; its people, infolding at one +extreme the offspring of colonists from Greece, and at the other, +the hardy children of the Northmen, were called, as it were, to the +inheritance of life upon the sea. The nation, too, readily conceived or +appropriated great ideas, and delighted in bold resolves. Its travellers +had penetrated farthest into the fearful interior of unknown lands; +its missionaries won most familiarly the confidence of the aboriginal +hordes; its writers described with keener and wiser observation the +forms of nature in her wildness, and the habits and languages of savage +man; its soldiers,--and every lay Frenchman in America owed military +service,--uniting beyond all others celerity with courage, knew best how +to endure the hardships of forest life and to triumph in forest warfare. +Its ocean chivalry had given a name and a colony to Carolina, and its +merchants a people to Acadia. The French discovered the basin of the +St. Lawrence; were the first to explore and possess the banks of the +Mississippi, and planned an American empire that should unite the widest +valleys and most copious inland waters of the world. + +But new France was governed exclusively by the monarchy of its +metropolis; and was shut against the intellectual daring of its +philosophy, the liberality of its political economists, the movements of +its industrial genius, its legal skill, and its infusion of Protestant +freedom. Nothing representing the new activity of thought in modern +France, went to America. Nothing had leave to go there but what was old +and worn out. + +The colonists from England brought over the forms of the government of +the mother country, and the purpose of giving them a better development +and a fairer career in the western world. The French emigrants took with +them only what belonged to the past, and nothing that represented +modern freedom. The English emigrants retained what they called English +privileges, but left behind in the parent country English inequalities, +the monarch, and nobility, and prelacy. French America was closed +against even a gleam of intellectual independence; nor did it contain so +much as one dissenter from the Roman Church; English America had English +liberties in greater purity and with far more of the power of the people +than England. Its inhabitants were self-organized bodies of freeholders, +pressing upon the receding forests, winning their way farther and +farther forward every year, and never going back. They had schools, so +that in several of the colonies there was no one to be found beyond +childhood, who could not read and write; they had the printing press +scattering among them books, and pamphlets, and many newspapers; they +had a ministry chiefly composed of men of their own election. In private +life they were accustomed to take care of themselves; in public affairs +they had local legislatures, and municipal self-direction. And now this +continent from the Gulf of Mexico to where civilized life is stayed by +barriers of frost, was become their dwelling-place and their heritage. + + * * * * * + +From "The History of the United States." + +=_131._= DEATH OF MONTCALM. + +But already the hope of New France was gone. Born and educated in camps, +Montcalm had been carefully instructed, and was skilled in the language +of Homer as well as in the art of war. Greatly laborious, just, +disinterested, hopeful even to rashness, sagacious in council, swift in +action, his mind was a well-spring of bold designs; his career in Canada +a wonderful struggle against inexorable destiny. Sustaining hunger and +cold, vigils and incessant toil, anxious for his soldiers, unmindful +of himself, he set, even to the forest-trained red men, an example of +self-denial and endurance, and in the midst of corruption made the +public good his aim. Struck by a musket ball, as he fought opposite +Monckton, he continued in the engagement, till, in attempting to rally +a body of fugitive Canadians in a copse near St. John's gate, he was +mortally wounded. + +On hearing from the surgeon that death was certain, "I am glad of it," +he cried; "how long shall I survive?" "Ten or twelve hours, perhaps +less." "So much the better; I shall not live to see the surrender of +Quebec." To the council of war he showed that in twelve hours all the +troops near at hand might be concentrated and renew the attack before +the English were intrenched. When De Ramsay, who commanded the garrison, +asked his advice about defending the city, "To your keeping," he +replied, "I commend the honor of France. As for me, I shall pass the +night with God, and prepare myself for death," Having written a letter +recommending the French prisoners to the generosity of the English, his +last hours were given to the hope of endless life, and at five the next +morning he expired. + + * * * * * + +From "The History of the United States." + +=_132._= CHARACTER OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. + +From the fullness of his own mind, without consulting one single book, +Jefferson drafted the declaration, he submitted it separately to +Franklin and to John Adams, accepted from each of them one or two +unimportant verbal corrections, and on the twenty-eighth of June +reported it to Congress, which now on the second of July immediately +after the resolution of independence entered upon its consideration. +During the remainder of that day and the next two, the language, the +statements, and the principles of the paper were closely scanned. + + * * * * * + +This immortal state paper, which for its composer was the aurora of +enduring fame, was "the genuine effusion of the soul of the country +at that time," the revelation of its mind, when, in its youth, its +enthusiasm, its sublime confronting of danger, it rose to the highest +creative powers of which man is capable. The bill of rights which it +promulgates, is of rights that are older than human institutions, and +spring from the eternal justice that is anterior to the state. Two +political theories divided the world: one founded the commonwealth +on the reason of state, the policy of expediency, the other on the +immutable principles of morals; the new republic, as it took its place +among the powers of the world, proclaimed its faith in the truth and +reality and unchangeableness of freedom, virtue, and right. The heart of +Jefferson in writing the declaration, and of Congress in adopting it, +beat for all humanity; the assertion of right was made for the entire +world of mankind, and all coming generations, without any exception +whatever; for the proposition which admits of exceptions can never be +self-evident. As it was put forth in the name of the ascendant people +of that time, it was sure to make the circuit of the world, passing +everywhere through the despotic countries of Europe; and the astonished +nations as they read that all men are created equal, started out of +their lethargy, like those who have been exiles from childhood, when +they suddenly hear the dimly remembered accents of their mother tongue. + + * * * * * + +=_133._= EARLIER POLICY OF SPAIN IN THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. + +The King of France, whilst he declared his wish to make no conquest +whatever in the war, held out to the King of Spain, with the consent of +the United States, the acquisition of Florida; but Florida had not power +to allure Charles the Third, or his ministry, which was a truly Spanish +ministry, and wished to pursue a truly Spanish policy. There was indeed +one word which, if pronounced, would be a spell potent enough to alter +their decision; a word that calls the blood into the cheek of a Spaniard +as an insult to his pride, a brand of inferiority on his nation. That +word was Gibraltar. Meantime, the King of Spain declared that he would +not then, nor in the future, enter into the quarrel of France and +England; that he wished to close his life in tranquility, and valued +peace too highly to sacrifice it to the interests or opinions of +another. + +So the flags of France and the United States went together into the +field against Great Britain, unsupported by any other government, yet +with the good wishes of all the peoples of Europe. The benefit then +conferred on the United States was priceless. In return, the revolution +in America came opportunely for France.... For the blessing of that same +France, America brought new life and hope; she superseded scepticism by +a wise and prudent enthusiasm in action, and bade the nation that became +her ally lift up its heart from the barrenness of doubt to the highest +affirmation of God and liberty, to freedom and union with the good, the +beautiful, and the true. + + * * * * * + + +=_J.G.M. Ramsey,[40] about 1800-._= + +From "The Annals of Tennessee." + +=_134._= SKETCH OF GENERAL JOHN SEVIER. + +The Etowah campaign was the last military service rendered by Sevier, +and the only one for which he ever received compensation from the +government. For nearly twenty years he had been constantly engaged in +incessant and unremitted service. He was in thirty-five battles, some of +them hardly contested, and decisive. He was never wounded, and in all +his campaigns and battles was successful and the victor. He was careful +of the lives of his soldiery; and, although he always led them to the +victory, he lost, in all his engagements with the enemy, but fifty-six +men. The secret of his invariable success was the impetuosity and vigor +of his charge. Himself an accomplished horseman, a graceful rider, +passionately fond of a spirited charger, always well mounted, at the +head of his dragoons, he was at once in the midst of the fight. His +rapid movement, always unexpected and sudden, disconcerted the enemy, +and, at the first onset, decided the victory. He was the first to +introduce the Indian war-whoop in his battles with the savages, the +Tories, and the British. More harmless than the leaden missile, it +was not less efficient, and was always the precursor and attendant of +victory. The prisoners at King's Mountain said, "We could stand your +fighting; but your cursed hallooing confused us. We thought the +mountains had regiments, instead of companies." Sevier's enthusiasm was +contagious; he imparted it to his men. He was the idol of the soldiery; +and his orders were obeyed cheerfully, and executed with precision. In +a military service of twenty years, one instance is not known of +insubordination, on the part of the soldier, or of discipline by the +commander. + +Sevier's troops were generally his neighbors, and the members of his own +family. Often no public provision was made for their pay, equipments, or +subsistence. These were furnished by himself, being at once commander, +commissary, and paymaster. The soldiery rendezvoused at his house, which +often became a cantonment; his fields, ripe or unripe, were given up to +his horsemen; powder and lead, provisions, clothing, even all he had, +belonged to his men. + +The Etowah campaign terminated the military services of General Sevier. +Hereafter, we will have to record his not less important agency in the +civil affairs of Tennessee. + +[Footnote 40: A native of Tennessee. His Annals contain much valuable +material.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Charles Gayarré, 1805-._= (Manual, p. 490.) + +From the "History of Louisiana." + +=_135._= GENERAL JACKSON AT NEW ORLEANS. + +His very physiognomy prognosticated what soul was encased within the +spare but well-ribbed form which had that "lean and hungry look" +described by England's greatest bard as bespeaking little sleep of +nights, but much of ambition, self-reliance, and impatience of control. +His lip and eye denoted the man of unyielding temper, and his very hair, +slightly silvered, stood erect like quills round his wrinkled brow, as +if they scorned to bend. Some sneered, it is true, at what they called +a military tyro, at the impromptu general who had sprung out of the +uncouth lawyer and the unlearned judge, who in arms had only the +experience of a few months, acquired in a desultory war against wild +Indians, and who was, not only without any previous training to his new +profession, but also without the first rudiments of a liberal education, +for he did not even know the orthography of his own native language. +Such was the man who, with a handful of raw militia, was to stand in +the way of the veteran troops of England, whose boast it was to have +triumphed over one of the greatest captains known in history. But those +who entertained such distrust had hardly come in contact with General +Jackson, when they felt that they had to deal with a master-spirit. +True, he was rough hewn from the rock, but rock he was, and of that kind +of rock which Providence chooses to select as a fit material to use in +its structures of human greatness. True, he had not the education of a +lieutenant in a European army; but what lieutenant, educated or not, +who had the will and the remarkable military adaptation so evident in +General Jackson's intellectual and physical organization, ever remained +a subaltern? Much less could General Jackson fail to rise to his proper +place in a country where there was so much more elbow-room, and fewer +artificial obstacles than in less favored lands. But, whatever those +obstacles might have been, General Jackson would have overcome them all. +His will was of such an extraordinary nature that, like Christian faith, +it could almost have accomplished prodigies and removed mountains. It is +impossible to study the life of General Jackson without being convinced +that this is the most remarkable feature of his character. His will had, +as it were, the force and the fixity of fate; that will carried him +triumphantly through his military and civil career, and through the +difficulties of private life. So intense and incessantly active this +peculiar faculty was in him, that one would suppose that his mind was +nothing but will--a will so lofty that it towered into sublimity. In him +it supplied the place of genius--or, rather, it was almost genius. On +many occasions, in the course of his long, eventful life, when his +shattered constitution made his physicians despair of preserving him, he +seemed to continue to live merely because it was his will; and when his +unconquerable spirit departed from his enfeebled and worn-out body, +those who knew him well might almost have been tempted to suppose that +he had not been vanquished by death, but had at last consented to +repose. This man, when he took the command at New Orleans, had made up +his mind to beat the English; and, as that mind was so constituted that +it was not susceptible of entertaining much doubt as to the results of +any of its resolves, he went to work with an innate confidence which +transfused itself into the population he had been sent to protect. + + * * * * * + + +=_Brantz Mayer, 1809-._= (Manual, p. 490.) + +From "Mexico, Aztec," &c. + +=_136._= REKINDLING THE SACRED FIRE. + +At the end of the Aztec or Toltec cycle of fifty-two years,--for it +is not accurately ascertained to which of the tribes the astronomical +science of Tenochtitlan is to be attributed,--these primitive children +of the New World believed that the world was in danger of instant +destruction. Accordingly, its termination became one of their most +serious and awful epochs, and they anxiously awaited the moment when the +sun would be blotted out from the heavens, and the globe itself resolved +once more into chaos. As the cycle ended in the winter, the season of +the year, with its drearier sky and colder air, in the lofty regions of +the valley, added to the gloom that fell upon the hearts of the people. +On the last day of the fifty-two years, all the fires in temples and +dwellings were extinguished, and the natives devoted themselves to +fasting and prayer. They destroyed alike their valuable and worthless +wares; rent their garments, put out their lights, and hid themselves for +awhile in solitude.... + +At dark on the last dread evening,--as soon as the sun had set, as they +imagined, forever,--a sad and solemn procession of priests and people +marched forth from the city to a neighboring hill, to rekindle the "New +Fire." This mournful march was called "the procession of the gods," and +was supposed to be their final departure from their temples and altars. + +As soon as the melancholy array reached the summit of the hill, it +reposed in fearful anxiety until the Pleiades reached the zenith in the +sky, whereupon the priests immediately began the sacrifice of a human +victim, whose breast was covered with a wooden shield, which the chief +_flamen_ kindled by friction. When the sufferer received the fatal stab +from the sacrificial knife of _obsidian,_ the machine was set in motion +on his bosom until the blaze had kindled. The anxious crowd stood round +with fear and trembling. Silence reigned over nature and man. Not a word +was uttered among the countless multitude that thronged the hill-sides +and plains, whilst the priest performed his direful duty to the gods. At +length, as the fire sparks gleamed faintly from the whirling instrument, +low sobs and ejaculations were whispered among the eager masses. As the +sparks kindled into a blaze, and the blaze into a flame, and the flaming +shield and victim were cast together on a pile of combustibles which +burst at once into the brightness of a conflagration, the air was rent +with the joyous shouts of the relieved and panic-stricken Indians. Far +and wide over the dusky crowds beamed the blaze like a star of promise. +Myriads of upturned faces greeted it from hills, mountains, temples, +terraces, teocallis, house-tops, and city walls; and the prostrate +multitudes hailed the emblem of light, life, and fruition, as a blessed +omen of the restored favor of their gods, and the preservation of their +race for another cycle. At regular intervals, Indian couriers held aloft +brands of resinous wood, by which they transmitted the "New Fire" from +hand to hand, from village to village, and town to town, throughout the +Aztec empire. Light was radiated from the imperial or ecclesiastical +center of the realm. In every temple and dwelling it was rekindled from +the sacred source; and when the sun rose again on the following morning, +the solemn procession of priests, princes, and subjects, which had taken +up its march from the capital on the preceding night with solemn steps, +returned once more to the abandoned capital, and, restoring the gods to +their altars, abandoned themselves to joy and festivity, in token of +gratitude and relief from impending doom. + + * * * * * + + +=_Albert James Pickett,[41] 1858-._= (Manual, p. 490.) + +From "The History of Alabama." + +=_137._= THE INDIANS AND THE EARLY SETTLERS OF ALABAMA. + +During my youthful days, I was accustomed to be much with the Creek +Indians, hundreds of whom came almost daily to the trading-house. For +twenty years I frequently visited the Creek nation. Their green-corn +dances, ball plays, war ceremonies, and manners and customs, are all +fresh in my recollection. In my intercourse with them I was thrown into +the company of many old white men called "Indian country men," who had +for years conducted a commerce with them. Some of these men had come to +the Creek nation before the Revolutionary War, and others, being +tories, had fled to it during the war, and after it to escape from whig +persecution. They were unquestionably the shrewdest and most interesting +men with whom I ever conversed. Generally of Scotch descent, many of +them were men of some education. All of them were married to Indian +wives, and some of them had intelligent and handsome children.... I +often conversed with the chiefs while they were seated in the shades +of the spreading mulberry and walnut, upon the banks of the beautiful +Tallapoosa. As they leisurely smoked their pipes, some of them related +to me the traditions of their country. I occasionally saw Choctaw and +Cherokee traders, and learned much from them. I had no particular object +in view, at that time, except the gratification of a curiosity which +led me, for my own satisfaction alone, to learn something of the early +history of Alabama. + +[Footnote 41: A native of North Carolina, who removed in early life to +Alabama. His "History" abounds in interesting matter.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Charles Wentworth Upham, 1802_= (Manual, pp. 490, 532.) + +From the "History of Witchcraft and Salem Village." + +=_138._= DEFEAT OF THE INDIAN KING PHILIP. + +The Indians were carrying all before them. Philip was spreading +conflagration, devastation, and slaughter around the borders, and +striking sudden and deadly blows into the heart of the country. It was +evident that he was consolidating the Indian power into irresistible +strength.... From other scouting parties it became evident that this +opinion was correct, and that the Indians were collecting stores and +assembling their warriors somewhere, to fall upon the colonies at the +first opening of spring. Further information made it certain that +their place of gathering was in the Narragansett country, in the +south-westerly part of the colony of Rhode Island. There was no +alternative but, as a last effort, to strike the enemy at that point +with the utmost available force.... It was between, one and two o'clock +in the afternoon, and the short winter day was wearing away, Winslow saw +the position at a glance, and, by the promptness of his decision, +proved himself a great captain. He ordered an instant assault. +The Massachusetts troops were in the van, the Plymouth, with the +commander-in-chief, in the center, the Connecticut in the rear. The +Indians had erected a block-house near the entrance, filled with +sharpshooters, who also lined the palisades. The men rushed on, although +it was into the Jaws of death, under an unerring fire. The block-house +told them where the entrance was. The companies of Moseley and Davenport +led the way. Moseley succeeded in passing through. Davenport fell +beneath three fatal shots, just within the entrance. Isaac Johnson, +captain of the Roxbury company, was killed while on the log. But death +had no terrors to that army. The center and rear divisions pressed up to +support the front, and fill the gaps, and all equally shared the glory +of the hour. Enough survived the terrible passage to bring the Indians +to a hand-to-hand fight within the fort. After a desperate straggle of +nearly three hours, the savages were driven from their stronghold, and +with the setting of that sun their power was broken. Philip's fortunes +had received a decided overthrow, and the colonies were saved. In all +military history there is not a more daring exploit. Never, on any +field, has more heroic prowess been displayed. + + * * * * * + + +=_John Lothrop Motley, 1814-._= (Manual, p. 532.) + +From "The History of the United Netherlands." + +=_139._= CHARACTER OF ALVA. + +Ferdinando Alvarez de Toledo, Duke of Alva, was now in his sixtieth +year. He was the most successful and experienced general of Spain, or of +Europe. No man had studied more deeply, or practiced more constantly, +the military science. In the most important of all arts at that epoch he +was the most consummate artist. In the only honorable profession of the +age he was the most thorough and the most pedantic professor. Having +proved in his boyhood at Fontarabia, and in his maturity at Mühlberg, +that he could exhibit heroism and headlong courage when necessary, he +could afford to look with contempt upon the witless gibes which his +enemies had occasionally perpetrated at his expense.... "Recollect," +said he to Don John of Austria, "that the first foes with whom one has +to contend are one's own troops--with their clamors for an engagement at +this moment, and their murmurs about results at another; with their 'I +thought that the battle should be fought,' or, 'It was my opinion that +the occasion ought not to be lost.'" + +On the whole, the Duke of Alva was inferior to no general of his age. +As a disciplinarian, he was foremost in Spain, perhaps in Europe. +A spendthrift of time, he was an economist of blood; and this was, +perhaps, in the eye of humanity, his principal virtue.... Such were +his qualities as a military commander. As a statesman, he had neither +experience nor talent. As a man, his character was simple. He did not +combine a great variety of vices; but those which he had were colossal, +and he possessed no virtues. He was neither lustful nor intemperate; but +his professed eulogists admitted his enormous avarice, while the world +has agreed that such an amount of stealth and ferocity, of patient +vindictiveness and universal blood-thirstiness, were never found in a +savage beast of the forest, and but rarely in a human bosom. + + * * * * * + +From "The History of the United Netherlands." + +=_140._= SIEGE AND ABANDONMENT OF OSTEND. + +The Archduke Albert and the Infanta Isabella entered the place in +triumph, if triumph it could be called. It would be difficult to +imagine a more desolate scene. The artillery of the first years of the +seventeenth century was not the terrible enginery of destruction that +it has become in the last third of the nineteenth, but a cannonade, +continued so steadily and so long, had done its work. There were no +churches, no houses, no redoubts, no bastions, no walls, nothing but a +vague and confused mass of ruin. Spinola conducted his imperial guests +along the edge of extinct volcanoes, amid upturned cemeteries, through +quagmires, which once were moats, over huge mounds of sand, and vast +shapeless masses of bricks and masonry, which had been forts. He +endeavored to point out places where mines had been exploded, where +ravelins had been stormed, where the assailants had been successful, and +where they had been bloodily repulsed. But it was all loathsome, hideous +rubbish. There were no human habitations, no hovels, no casemates. The +inhabitants had burrowed at last in the earth, like the dumb creatures +of the swamps and forests. In every direction the dykes had burst, and +the sullen wash of the liberated waves, bearing hither and thither +the floating wreck of fascines and machinery, of planks and building +materials, sounded far and wide over what should have been dry land. The +great ship channel, with the unconquered Half-moon upon one side and +the incomplete batteries and platforms of Bucquoy on the other, still +defiantly opened its passage to the sea, and the retiring fleets of the +garrison were white in the offing. All around was the grey expanse of +stormy ocean, without a cape or a headland to break its monotony, as the +surges rolled mournfully in upon a desolation more dreary than their +own. The atmosphere was murky and surcharged with rain, for the wild, +equinoctial storm which had held Maurice spell-bound, had been raging +over land and sea for many days. At every step the unburied skulls of +brave soldiers who had died in the cause of freedom, grinned their +welcome to the conquerors. Isabella wept at the sight. She had cause to +weep. Upon that miserable sandbank more than a hundred thousand men had +laid down their lives by her decree, in order that she and her husband +might at last take possession of a most barren prize. This insignificant +fragment of a sovereignty which her wicked old father had presented to +her on his deathbed--a sovereignty which he had no more moral right or +actual power to confer than if it had been in the planet Saturn--had +at last been appropriated at the cost of all this misery. It was of no +great value, although its acquisition had caused the expenditure of at +least eight millions of florins, divided in nearly equal proportions +between the two belligerents. It was in vain that great immunities were +offered to those who would remain, or who would consent to settle in the +foul Golgotha. The original population left the place in mass. No human +creatures were left save the wife of a freebooter and her paramour, a +journeyman blacksmith. This unsavory couple, to whom entrance into the +purer atmosphere of Zeeland was denied, thenceforth shared with the +carrion crows the amenities of Ostend. + + * * * * * + +From the Preface to the "Rise of the Dutch Republic." + +=_141._= THE RISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC. + +The rise of the Dutch Republic must ever be regarded as one of the +leading events of modern times. Without the birth of this great +commonwealth, the various historical phenomena of the sixteenth and +following centuries must have either not existed, or have presented +themselves under essential modifications.... From the handbreadth of +territory called the province of Holland, rises a power which wages +eighty years' warfare with the most potent empire upon earth, and which, +during the progress of the struggle, becoming itself a mighty state, and +binding about its own slender form a zone of the richest possessions of +earth, from pole to tropic, finally dictates its decrees to the empire +of Charles. + +... To the Dutch Republic, even more than to Florence at an earlier day +is the world indebted for practical instruction in that great science of +political equilibrium which must always become more and more important +as the various states of the civilized world are pressed more closely +together, and as the struggle for pre-eminence becomes more feverish and +fatal. Courage and skill in political and military combinations enabled +William the Silent to overcome the most powerful and unscrupulous +monarch of his age. The same hereditary audacity and fertility of genius +placed the destiny of Europe in the hands of William's great-grandson, +and enabled him to mould into an impregnable barrier the various +elements of opposition to the overshadowing monarchy of Louis XIV. As +the schemes of the Inquisition and the unparalleled tyranny of Philip, in +one century led to the establishment of the Republic of the United +Provinces, so, in the next, the revocation of the Nantes Edict and the +invasion of Holland are avenged by the elevation of the Dutch Stadholder +upon the throne of the stipendiary Stuarts. + +To all who speak the English language, the history of the great agony +through which the republic of Holland was ushered into life must have +peculiar interest, for it is a portion of the records of the +Anglo-Saxon race--essentially the same whether in Friesland, England, or +Massachusetts. + +... The great Western Republic, therefore--in whose ... veins flows much of +that ancient and kindred blood received from the nation once ruling a +noble portion of its territory, and tracking its own political existence +to the same parent spring of temperate human liberty--must look with +affectionate interest upon the trials of the elder commonwealth. + +... The lessons of history and the fate of free states can never be +sufficiently pondered by those upon whom so large and heavy a +responsibility for the maintenance of rational human freedom rests. + + * * * * * + + +=_Alexander B. Meek,[42] 1814-1865._= (Manual, p. 523.) + +From "Romantic Passages in Southwestern History." + +=_142._= EXILED FRENCH OFFICERS IN ALABAMA. + +Upon the colony they bestowed the name of Marengo, which is still +preserved in the county. Other relics of their nomenclature, drawn +similarly from battles in which some of them had been distinguished, are +to be found in the villages of Linden and Arcola.... + +Who that would have looked upon Marshal Grouchy or General Lefebvre, as, +dressed in their plain, rustic habiliments,--the straw hat, the homespun +coat, the brogan shoes,--they drove the plough in the open field, or +wielded the axe in the new-ground clearing, would, if unacquainted with +their history, have dreamed that those farmer-looking men had sat in the +councils of monarchs, and had headed mighty armies in the fields of the +sternest strife the world has ever seen? "Do you know, sir," said a +citizen to a traveller, who, in 1819, was passing the road from Arcola +to Eaglesville,--"do you know, sir, who is that fine-looking man who +has just ferried you across the creek?" "No. Who is he?" was the reply. +"That," said the citizen, "is the officer who commanded Napoleon's +advanced guard when he returned from Elba." This was Colonel Raoul, now +a general in France. + +[Footnote 42: One of the few writers of Alabama. The "Romantic passages" +is a book of great interest.] + + * * * * * + +=_143._= THE YOUTH OF THE INDIAN CHIEF WEATHERFORD. + +But the mind of the young Indian, though grasping with singular +readiness the knowledge thus imparted, was subject to stronger tastes +and propensities; and he indulged in all the wild pursuits and +amusements of the youth of his nation with an alacrity and spirit which +won their approval and admiration. He became one of the most active, +athletic, and swift-footed participants in their various games and +dances, and was particularly expert and successful, as a hunter, in the +use of the rifle and the bow. He was also noted, even in his youth, for +his reckless daring as a rider, and his graceful feats of horsemanship, +which the fine stables of his father enabled him to indulge. To use the +words of an old Indian woman who knew him at this period, "The squaws +would quit hoeing corn, and smile and gaze upon him as he rode by the +corn-patch." + + * * * * * + + +=_Abel Stevens,[43] 1815-._= + +From "The History of Methodism." + +=_144._= THE EARLY METHODIST CLERGY IN AMERICA. + +They composed a class which, perhaps, will never be seen again. They +were distinguished by native mental vigor, shrewdness, extraordinary +knowledge of human nature, many of them by overwhelming natural +eloquence, the effects of which on popular assemblies are scarcely +paralleled in the history of ancient or modern oratory, and not a few by +powers of satire and wit which made the gainsayer cower before them. To +these intellectual attributes they added great excellences of the heart, +a zeal which only burned more fervently where that of ordinary men would +have grown faint, a courage that exulted in perils, a generosity which +knew no bounds, and left most of them in want in their latter days, a +forbearance and co-operation with each other which are seldom found in +large bodies, an entire devotion to one work, and, withal, a simplicity +of character which extended even to their manners and their apparel. +They were likewise characterized by rare physical abilities. They were +mostly robust. The feats of labor and endurance which they performed, +in incessantly preaching in villages and cities, among slave huts and +Indian wigwams, in journeyings seldom interrupted by stress of weather, +in fording creeks, swimming rivers, sleeping in forests,--these, with +the novel circumstances with which such a career frequently brought them +into contact, afford examples of life and character which, in the hands +of genius, might be the materials for a new department of romantic +literature. They were men who labored as if the judgment fires were +about to break out on the world, and time to end with their day. They +were precisely the men whom the moral wants of the new world at the time +demanded. + +[Footnote 43: A prominent clergyman of the Methodist church. His History +of Methodism is a work of great research and value. A native of +Pennsylvania.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Francis Parkman, 1823-._= (Manual, pp. 496, 505.) + +From "The Conspiracy of Pontiac." + +=_145._= HUNTERS AND TRAPPERS. + +These rude and hardy men, hunters and traders, scouts and guides, who +ranged the woods beyond the English borders, and formed a connecting +link between barbarism and civilization, have been touched upon already. +They were a distinct, peculiar class, marked with striking contrasts of +good and evil. Many, though by no means all, were coarse, audacious, +and unscrupulous; yet, even in the worst, one might often have found a +vigorous growth of warlike virtues, an iron endurance, an undespairing +courage, a wondrous sagacity, and singular fertility of resource. In +them was renewed, with all its ancient energy, that wild and daring +spirit, that force and hardihood of mind, which marked our barbarous +ancestors of Germany and Norway. These sons of the wilderness still +survive. We may find them to this day, not in the valley of the Ohio, +nor on the shores of the lakes, but far westward on the desert range of +the buffalo, and among the solitudes of Oregon. Even now, while I write, +some lonely trapper is climbing the perilous defiles of the Rocky +Mountains, his strong frame cased in time-worn buck-skin, his rifle +griped in his sinewy hand. Keenly he peers from side to side, lest +Blackfoot or Arapahoe should ambuscade his path. The rough earth is his +bed, a morsel of dried meat and a draught of water are his food and +drink, and death and danger his companions. No anchorite could fare +worse, no hero could dare more; yet his wild, hard life has resistless +charms; and while he can wield a rifle, he will never leave it. Go with +him to the rendezvous, and he is a stoic no more. Here, rioting among +his comrades, his native appetites break loose in mad excess, in deep +carouse, and desperate gaming. Then follow close the quarrel, the +challenge, the fight,--two rusty rifles and fifty yards of prairie. + + * * * * * + +From "The Discovery of the Great West." + +=_146._= EXPLORATION OF THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER. + +The river twisted among the lakes and marshes choked with wild rice; +and, but for their guides, they could scarcely have followed the +perplexed and narrow channel. It brought them at last to the portage; +where, after carrying their canoes a mile and a half over the prairie +and through the marsh, they launched them on the Wisconsin, bade +farewell to the waters that flowed to the St. Lawrence, and committed +themselves to the current that was to bear them they knew not +whither,--perhaps to the Gulf of Mexico, perhaps to the South Sea or +the Gulf of California. They glided calmly down the tranquil stream, by +islands choked with trees and matted with entangling grape-vines; by +forests, groves, and prairies,--the parks and pleasure-grounds of a +prodigal nature; by thickets and marshes and broad bare sand-bars; under +the shadowing trees, between whose tops looked down from afar the bold +brow of some woody bluff. At night, the bivouac,--the canoes inverted on +the bank, the flickering fire, the meal of bison-flesh or venison, the +evening pipes and slumber beneath the stars; and when in the morning +they embarked again, the mist hung on the river like a bridal veil; +then melted before the sun, till the glassy water and the languid woods +basked breathless in the sultry glare. + +On the 17th of June, they saw on their right the broad meadows, bounded +in the distance by rugged hills, where now stand the town and fort of +Prairie du Chien. Before them, a wide and rapid current coursed athwart +their way, by the foot of lofty heights wrapped thick in forests. They +had found what they sought, and "with a joy," writes Marquette, "which +I cannot express," they steered forth their canoes on the eddies of the +Mississippi. + +Turning southward, they paddled down the stream, through a solitude +unrelieved by the faintest trace of man. A large fish, apparently one +of the huge cat-fish of the Mississippi, blundered against Marquette's +canoe with a force which seems to have startled him; and once, as +they drew in their net, they caught a "spade-fish," whose eccentric +appearance greatly astonished them. At length, the buffalo began to +appear, grazing in herds on the great prairies which then bordered the +river; and Marquette describes the fierce and stupid look of the old +bulls, as they stared at the intruders through the tangled mane which +nearly blinded them. + + * * * * * + + +=_John Gilmary Shea,[44] 1824-. _= + +From "The History of Catholic Missions among the Indians." + +=_147._= DIFFICULTIES OF THE ENTERPRISE. + +The discovery of America, like every other event in the history of the +world, had, in the designs of God, the great object of the salvation of +mankind. In that event, more clearly, perhaps, than it is often given to +us here below, we can see and adore that Providence which thus gave to +millions, long sundered from the rest of man by pathless oceans, the +light of the gospel, and the proffered boon of redemption.... + +The field was one as yet unmatched for extent and difficulty. That +region now studded with cities and towns, traversed in every direction +by the panting steam-car or lightning telegraph, was then an almost +unbroken forest, save where the wide prairie rolled its billows of grass +towards the western mountains, or was lost in the sterile, salt, and +sandy plains of the southwest. No city raised to heaven spire, dome, or +minaret; no plough turned up the rich, alluvial soil; no metal dug from +the bowels of the earth had been fashioned into instruments to aid man +in the arts of peace and war.... + +The simplest arts of civilized life were unknown. In one little section +of the Gila and Rio Grande, the people spun and wove a native cotton, +manufactured a rude pottery, and lived in houses or castle-towns of +unburnt bricks. Elsewhere the canoe or cabin of bark or hides, and the +arabesque mat, denoted the highest point of social progress. + +Elsewhere the whole country was inhabited by tribes of a nomadic +character, rarely collected in villages except at particular seasons, or +for specific objects, though here and there were found more sedentary +tribes in villages of bark, encircled by walls of earth, or palisades of +wood, whose institutions, commercial spirit, and agriculture, superior +to that of the wild rovers, seemed to show the remnant of some more +civilized tribe in a state of decadence. Around each isolated tribe lay +an unbroken wilderness extending for miles on every side, where the +braves roamed, hunters alike of beasts and men. So little intercourse or +knowledge of each other existed, so desolate was the wilderness that +a vagabond tribe might wander from one extreme of the continent to +another, and language alone could tell the nation to which they +belonged. + +The whole country was thus occupied by comparatively small, but hostile +tribes, so numerous, that almost every river and every lake has handed +down the name of a distinct nation. In form, in manners, and in habits, +these tribes presented an almost uniform appearance: language formed the +great distinctive mark to the European, though the absence of a feather +or a line of paint disclosed to the native the tribe of the wanderer +whom he met. + +The country itself presented a thousand obstacles: there was danger from +flood, danger from wild beasts, danger from the roving savage, danger +from false friends, danger from the furious rapids on rivers, danger of +loss of sight, of health, of use of motion and of limbs, in the new, +strange life of an Indian wigwam.... + +Once established in a tribe, the difficulties were increased. After +months, nay, years, of teaching, the missionaries found that the fickle +savage was easily led astray; never could they form pupils to our life +and manners. The nineteenth century failed, as the seventeenth failed, +in raising up priests from among the Iroquois or the Algonquins; and at +this day a pupil of the Propaganda, who disputed in Latin on theses of +Peter Lombard, roams at the head of a half-naked band in the billowy +plains of Nebraska. + +[Footnote 44: This writer is much distinguished for his numerous works, +most of which relate to the early missions of the Roman Catholic church +in America. He is a native of New York.] + + * * * * * + +From "Introduction to Early Voyages," etc. + +=_148._= EXPLORATION OF THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER. + +Many a river lives embalmed in history and in historic verse. The +Euphrates, the Nile, the Jordan, the Tiber, and the Rhine typify the +course of empires and dynasties. Countries have been described _per +flumina_, but these streams possess renown rather from some city that +frowned on their currents, or some battle fought and won on their banks. +The great River of our West, from its immense length and the still +increasing importance of its valley, possesses a history of its own. Its +discovery by the Spanish adventurers, a Cabeza de Vaca, a De Soto, a +Tristan, who reached, crossed, or followed it, is its period of early +romance, brilliant, brief, and tragic. Its exploration by Marquette and +La Salle follows,--work of patient endurance and investigation, still +tinged with that light of heroism that hovers around all who struggle +with difficulty and adversity to attain a great and useful end. Then +come the early voyages depicting the successive stages of its banks from +a wilderness to civilization. + +The death of La Salle in Texas in his attempt to reach Illinois closes +the chapter of exploration. Iberville opens a new period by his voyage +to the mouth of the Mississippi, which crowning the previous efforts, +gave the valley of the great river to civilization, Christianity, and +progress. The river had become an object of rivalry. English, French, +and Spanish at the same moment sought to secure its mouth, but fortune +favored the bold Canadian, and the white flag reared by La Salle was +planted anew. + +... At the moment when these narratives take us to the valley of the +Mississippi, that immense territory presented a strange contrast to its +present condition. From its head waters amid the lakes of Minnesota to +its mouth; from its western springs in the heart of the Rocky mountains +to its eastern cradle in the Alleghenies, all was yet in its primeval +state. The Europeans had but one spot, Tonty's little fort; no white men +roamed it but the trader or the missionary. With a sparse and scattered +Indian population, the country teeming with buffalo, deer, and game, was +a scene of plenty. The Indian has vanished from its banks with the game +that he pursued. The valley numbers as many states now as it did white +men then; a busy, enterprising, adventurous, population, numbering its +millions, has swept away the unprogressive and unassimilating red man. +The languages of the Illinois, the Quapaw, the Tonica, the Natchez, the +Ouma, are heard no more by the banks of the great water; no calumet now +throws round the traveller its charmed power; the white banner of France +floated long to the breeze, but with the flag of England and the +standard of Spain all disappeared we may say within a century. For fifty +years one single flag met the eye, and appealed to the heart of the +inhabitants of the shores of the Mississippi.[45] Two now divide it: let +us hope that the altered flag may soon resume its original form, and +meet the heart's warm response at the month as at the source of the +Mississippi. + +[Footnote 45: In allusion to the Rebellion.] + + * * * * * + + +=_John Gorham Palfrey, 1796-._= (Manual, pp. 504, 532.) + +From the "History of New England." + +=_149._= HAPPINESS OF WINTHROP'S CLOSING YEARS. + +He was greatly privileged in living so long. Just before he died, that +ecclesiastical arrangement had been made, which he might naturally +hope would preserve the churches of New England in purity, peace, and +strength, to remote times. Religious and political dissensions, which +had disturbed and threatened the infant Church and the forming +State, appeared to be effectually composed. The tribunals, carefully +constituted for the administration of impartial and speedy justice, +understood and did their duty, and commanded respect. The education of +the generations which were to succeed had been provided for with an +enlightened care. The College had bountifully contributed its ripe +first-fruits to the public service; and the novel system of a universal +provision of the elements of knowledge at the public cost, had been +inaugurated with all circumstances of encouragement. + +A generation was coming forward which remembered nothing of what +Englishmen had suffered in New England for want of the necessaries +and comforts of life. The occupations of industry were various and +remunerative. Land was cheap, and the culture of it yielded no penurious +reward to the husbandman; while he who chose to sell his labor was at +least at liberty to place his own estimate upon it, and found it always +in demand. The woods and waters were lavish of gifts which were to be +had simply for the taking. The white wings of commerce, in their long +flight to and from the settler's home, wafted the commodities which +afford enjoyment and wealth to both sender and receiver. The numerous +handicrafts, which in its constantly increasing division of labor, a +thriving society employs, found liberal recompense; and manufactures on +a larger scale were beginning to invite accumulations of capital and +associated labor. + +The Confederacy of the Four Colonies was an humble, but a substantial, +power in the world. It was known to be such by its French, Dutch, and +savage neighbors; by the alienated communities on Narragansett Bay; and +by the rulers of the mother country. + +During Winthrop's last ten years, nowhere else in the world had +Englishmen been so happy as under the generous government which his +mind inspired and regulated. What one mind could do for a community's +well-being, his had done. The prosecution of the issues he had wrought +for was now to be committed to the wisdom and courage of a younger +generation, and to the course of events, under the continued guidance of +a propitious Providence. + + + +CHAPTER II. + + + +ESSAYISTS, MORALISTS, AND REFORMERS. + + +=_Joseph Dennie, 1768-1812._= (Manual, p. 497.) + +From "The Lay Preacher." + +=_150._= REFLECTION'S ON THE SEASONS. + +"Truly the light is sweet, and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to +behold the sun." + +The sensitive Gray, in a frank letter to his friend West, assures him +that, when the sun grows warm enough to tempt him from the fireside, he +will, like all other things, be the better for his influence; for the +sun is an old friend, and an excellent nurse, &c. This is an opinion +which will be easily entertained by every one who has been cramped by +the icy hand of Winter, and who feels the gay and renovating influence +of Spring. In those mournful months when vegetables and animals are +alike coerced by cold, man is tributary to the howling storm and the +sullen sky, and is, in the phrase of Johnson, a "slave to gloom;" but +when the earth is disencumbered of her load of snows, and warmth is +felt, and twittering swallows are heard, he is again jocund and free. +Nature renews her charter to her sons.... Hence is enjoyed, in the +highest luxury,-- + + "Day, and the sweet approach of even and morn, + And sight of vernal bloom and summer's rose, + And flocks, and herds, and human face divine." + +It is nearly impossible for me to convey to my readers an idea of the +"vernal delight" felt at this period by the Lay Preacher, far declined +in the vale of years. My spectral figure, pinched by the rude gripe +of January, becomes as thin as that "dagger of lath" employed by the +vaunting Falstaff, and my mind, affected by the universal desolation of +winter, is nearly as vacant of joy and bright ideas as the forest is of +leaves and the grove is of song. Fortunately for my happiness, this +is only periodical spleen. Though in the bitter months, surveying my +attenuated body, I exclaim with the melancholy prophet, "My leanness, my +leanness! woe is me!" and though, adverting to the state of my mind, I +behold it "all in a robe of darkest grain," yet when April and May +reign in sweet vicissitude, I give, like Horace, care to the winds, and +perceive the whole system excited by the potent stimulus of sunshine.... +I have myself in winter felt hostile to those whom I could smile upon in +May, and clasp to my bosom in June. + + * * * * * + + +=_William Gaston,[46] 1778-1844._= + +From "Essays and Addresses." + +=_151._= THE IMPORTANCE OF INTEGRITY. + +The first great maxim of human conduct--that which it is all-important +to impress on the understandings of young men, and recommend to their +hearty adoption--is, above all things, in all circumstances, and under +every emergency, to preserve a clean heart and an honest purpose.... +Without it, neither genius nor learning, neither the gifts of God, nor +human exertions, can avail aught for the accomplishment of the great +objects of human existence. Integrity is the crowning virtue,--integrity +is the pervading principle which ought to regulate, guide, control, and +vivify every impulse, device, and action. Honesty is sometimes spoken of +as a vulgar virtue; and perhaps, that honesty which barely refrains from +outraging the positive rules ordained by society for the protection +of property, and which ordinarily pays its debts and performs its +engagements, however useful and commendable a quality, is not to be +numbered among the highest efforts of human virtue. But that integrity +which, however tempting the opportunity, or however secure against +detection, no selfishness nor resentment, no lust of power, place, +favor, profit, or pleasure, can cause to swerve from the strict rule of +right, is the perfection of man's moral nature. In this sense, the poet +was right when he pronounced "an honest man's the noblest work of God." +It is almost inconceivable what an erect and independent spirit this +high endowment communicates to the man, and what a moral intrepidity +and vivifying energy it imparts to his character.... Erected on such a +basis, and built up of such materials, fame is enduring. Such is the +fame of our Washington--of the man "inflexible to ill, and obstinately +just." While, therefore, other monuments, intended to perpetuate +human greatness, are daily mouldering into dust, and belie the proud +inscriptions which they bear, the solid, granite pyramid of his glory +lasts from age to age, imperishable, seen afar off, looming high over +the vast desert, a mark, a sign, and a wonder, for the wayfarers though +this pilgrimage of life. + +[Footnote 46: A prominent lawyer and statesman of North Carolina.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Jesse Buel, 1778-1839._= (Manual, p. 504.) + +From "The Farmer's Instructor." + +=_152._= EXTENT AND DEFECTS OF AMERICAN AGRICULTURE. + +We have associated, gentlemen, to increase the pleasures and profits +of rural labor, to enlarge the sphere of useful knowledge, and, by +concentrating our energies, to give them greater effect in advancing the +public good. In no country does the agricultural class bear so great a +proportion to the whole population as in this. In England one-third of +the inhabitants only are employed in husbandry; in France, two-thirds; +in Italy, a little more than three-fourths; while in the United States +the agricultural portion probably exceeds five-sixths. And in no country +does the agricultural population exercise such a controlling political +power, contribute so much to the wealth, or tend so strongly to give an +impress to the character of a nation as in the United States. Hence it +may be truly said of us that our agriculture is our nursing mother, +which nurtures, and gives growth, and wealth, and character to our +country.... Knowing no party, and confined to no sect, its benefits and +its blessings, like dews from heaven, fall upon all. + +... Our agriculture is greatly defective. It is susceptible of much +improvement. How shall we effect this improvement? The old are _too old +to learn_, or, rather, to unlearn what have been the habits of their +lives. The young cannot learn as they ought to learn, and as the public +interests require, because they have no suitable school for their +instruction. We have no place where they can learn the _principles_ upon +which the _practice_ of agriculture is based, none where they can be +instructed in all the modern improvements of the art. + +Much injury has been done to the cause of agriculture by sanguine +speculations, which have only led to expense and disappointments; but +all works on agriculture are not of that character; nor should it be +forgotten that theory is the parent of practical knowledge, and that the +very systems which farmers themselves adopt, were originally founded +upon those theories which they so much affect to despise. Neither can +it be denied that systems grounded upon theory alone, unsupported by +experiment, are properly viewed with distrust; for the most plausible +reasoning upon the operations of nature, without accompanying proof +deduced from facts, may lead to a wrong conclusion, and it is often +difficult to separate that which is really useful, from that which is +merely visionary.... Prudence, therefore, dictates the necessity of +caution; but ignorance is opposed to every change, from the mere want of +judgment to discriminate between that which is purely speculative, and +that which rests upon a more solid foundation. + + * * * * * + + +=_Robert Walsh, 1784-1859._= (Manual, p. 504.) + +From "Didactics, Social, Literary, &c." + +=_153._= FALSE SYMPATHY WITH CRIMINALS. + +Whatever the impulse to guilt, some suppression or aberration of +the reason may ever be alleged and admitted. In this mode, however, +sentimentalists might argue or whine away the whole body of crimes and +punishments. It is the duty of every true friend of humanity and order, +to protest against perverted sensibilities or sophistical refinements, +which find warrant or apology for depraved appetites,--for the worst +distemperature of the mind, and the most fatal catastrophes,--in natural +propension, and unrestrained feeling. Spurious sympathy is a more +prolific evil than sanguinary rigor, useless and pernicious as the +latter is, in our humble opinion. Public executions do more harm than +good,--but are not worse than morbid public commiseration and entreaty +for criminals, to whom the real justice of the law has been applied, +after fair and merciful trial.... + +Many of the worst criminals, who, in different ages and countries, +have justly suffered ignominious death on the wheel, the block, or the +gallows, were men of "extraordinary character," of singular acuteness, +of the most decided spirit. To acknowledge this fact is not to applaud +their conduct, or admire their general ultimate character.... + +We have constantly remembered what we early read in the works of Mr. +Burke, that it is the propensity of degenerate minds to admire or +worship _splendid wickedness_; that, with too many persons, the ideas of +justice and morality are fairly conquered and overpowered by guilt when +it is grown gigantic, and happens to be associated with the lustre +of genius, the glare of fashion, or the robes of power. Against this +species of degeneracy or illusion it has been our uniform endeavor to +guard ourselves, and our conscientious practice to warn and exhort +others. The integrity and delicacy of the moral sense, whether in +individuals or communities, form a most important subject of the care of +all public writers and speakers, in all transactions by which, or the +history or treatment of which, the public, judgment and feelings may +be affected. Hence, when mail robbers or murderers are to be tried or +executed, we should be disposed to avoid all extraordinary bustle, or +concern, or voluminous details about their fate; we should deem it the +true policy of practical ethics to abstain from everything calculated to +produce adventitious interest or consequence for the culprits. It is not +with pleasure that we hear of the crowds that besiege the door of the +court-room, or see in the newspapers the many columns of evidence, with +an endless repetition of trifling circumstances, any more than we +can rejoice for the cause of moral and social order when convicted +highwaymen or murderers are carried to the gallows as _saints_, and hung +amidst vast assemblages, either merely indulging a callous curiosity, +or losing all the horror of their offences in emotions of compassion or +admiration, awakened by the dramatic nature of the whole scene. + + * * * * * + + +=_Thomas S. Grimke,[47] 1786-1834._= + +From "Addresses, Scientific and Literary." + +=_154._= LITERARY EXCELLENCE OF THE ENGLISH BIBLE. + +The translation of the Bible, in the reign of James I., is the most +remarkable and interesting event in the history of translations.... +The great excellence of the translation is due to six considerations. +_First_, it was made under a very solemn sense of the important duty +devolved on those who were thus selected. Hence arose that prevailing +air of dignity, gravity, simplicity, which is so conspicuous. +_Secondly_, the translators came to the task looking to the _thoughts_, +not to the _style_. Their object was not that of all other translators, +to imitate and rival the beauty of _style_. Their sole object was to +render faithfully, and in a plain, appropriate style, the _thoughts_ +of the sacred writers. Hence they became _thoroughly imbued with the +spirit_ of the original, and gave an incomparably better version of the +Hebrew and Greek Testaments than any or all of them together could have +done of any classic. Had each of them left us translations of some +classic, I hesitate not to say they would not now have been found in +any library but as mere curiosities. _Thirdly_, the number of persons +employed contributed very much to prevent any _personal_ style from +prevailing, and gave to the whole an air of plain, simple uniformity. +_Fourthly_, the era was providential in one important view. As the +translation was made before all the bitterness of sectarian spirit +distracted the English Protestant church, it was executed far less with +a view to party differences than could have been the case at any time +afterwards. _Fifthly_, fortunately the only great religious difference +that could have affected it was the dispute with the Catholic church, +and, as to that, all Protestants were agreed in England on every +important point. _Sixthly_, the English language was then at the +happiest stage of its progress, with all the strength, simplicity, and. +clearness of the elder literature, whilst, at the same time, it was free +from the cant of the age of Charles I. and Cromwell, from the vulgarity +and levity of that of Charles II., and from the artificial character of +that of Anne. + +Such a translation is an illustrious monument of the age, the nation, +the language. It is, properly speaking, less a translation than an +original, having most of the merit of the _former_ as to _style_, and +all the merit of the _latter_ as to _thought_. It is the noblest, best, +most finished classic of the English tongue. + +[Footnote 47: A native of South Carolina, distinguished in the law and in +literature.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Henry C. Carey, 1793-._= (Manual, p. 504.) + +From "Principles of Social Science." + +=_155._= AGRICULTURE AS A SCIENCE. + +That agriculture may become a science, it is indispensable that man +always repay to the great bank from which he has drawn his food, the +debt he thereby has contracted. The earth, as has been already said, +gives nothing, but is ready to lend everything; and when the debts are +punctually repaid, each successive loan is made on a larger scale; but +when the debtor fails in punctuality, his credit declines, and the loans +are gradually diminished, until at length he is turned out from house +and home. No truth in the whole range of science is more readily +susceptible of proof than that the community which limits itself to the +exportation of raw produce must end by the exportation of men, and those +men the slaves of nature, even when not actually bought and sold by +their fellow men. + +... With the growth of commerce, the necessity for moving commodities +back, and forth steadily declines, with constant improvement in the +machinery of transportation, and diminution in the risk of losses of the +kind that are covered by insurance against dangers of the sea, or those +of fire. The treasures of the earth then become developed, and stone and +iron take the place of wood in all constructions, while the exchanges +between the miner of coal and of iron--of the man who quarries the +granite, and him who raises the food--rapidly increase in quantity, and +diminish the necessity for resorting to the distant market. + + * * * * * + + +=_Edmund Ruffin, 1793-1863._= + +From "An Essay on Calcarcous Manures." + +=_156._= IMPROVEMENT OF ACID SOILS. + +Nearly all the woodland now remaining in lower Virginia, and also much +of the land which has long been arable, is rendered unproductive by +acidity; and successive generations have toiled on such land, almost +without remuneration, and without suspecting that their worst virgin +land was then richer than their manured lots appeared to be. The +cultivator of such soil, who knows not its peculiar disease, has no +other prospect than a gradual decrease of his always scanty crops. But +if the evil is once understood, and the means of its removal are within +his reach, he has reason to rejoice that his soil was so constituted as +to be preserved from the effects of the improvidence of his forefathers, +who would have worn out any land not almost indestructible. The presence +of acid, by restraining the productive powers of the soil, has, in a +great measure, saved it from exhaustion; and after a course of cropping, +which would have utterly ruined soils much better constituted, the +powers of our acid land remain not greatly impaired, though dormant, +and ready to be called into action by merely being relieved of its acid +quality. A few crops will reduce a new acid field to so low a rate of +product, that it scarcely will pay for its cultivation; but no great +change is afterwards caused, by continuing scourging tillage and +grazing, for fifty years longer. Thus our acid soils have two remarkable +and opposite qualities,--both proceeding from the same cause; they can +neither be enriched by manure, nor impoverished by cultivation, to +any great extent. Qualities so remarkable deserve all our powers of +investigation; yet their very frequency seems to have caused them to be +overlooked; and our writers on agriculture have continued to urge those +who seek improvement, to apply precepts drawn from English authors, +to soils which are totally different from all those for which their +instructions were intended. + + * * * * * + + +=_Francis Wayland, 1796-1865._= (Manual, pp. 487, 502, 504.) + +From "The Limitations of Human Responsibility." + +=_157._= SUPERIORITY OF THE MORAL SENTIMENTS. + +It is a common remark, that, whenever it has been thought necessary to +arouse the mind of man to enterprises of great pith and moment, the +appeal has always been made to his moral sentiments. Hence, among the +most ancient nations, it was the invariable custom to accompany the +declaration of war with religious ceremonies; and if, in later times, +this custom has become somewhat less usual, the change itself, in a more +remarkable manner, illustrates the tendency of our nature.... But let +victory declare for the assailed, let the invader become the invaded, +let it become necessary to stimulate men to put forth the highest effort +of human daring, and the sacred names of conscience, of duty to family, +to country, and to God, are universally invoked, and the Supreme Being +is urgently appealed to, to succor the cause of a sinking commonwealth. +It is, perhaps, worth while to remark, in passing, that this +consciousness of right is a source of power which belongs specially to +the oppressed, and which, other things being equal, will always insure +to them the victory; and, when other things are not equal, it is +frequently sufficient, of itself, to outweigh a vast preponderance of +physical force. It is, moreover, efficient in proportion to the purity of +the moral principle of a people. We hence perceive the elements of +superiority which, by the constitution of our nature, have been bestowed +upon virtue. + +Another illustration of the power of the moral principle, is seen in +the sentiments with which we contemplate the character of confessors, +martyrs, and men of every age, who have sacrificed every thing else +for the sake of adherence to righteousness. The highest glory of human +nature is to love right better than life, and to obey the dictates of +conscience at every conceivable hazard. Even falsehood, when sealed with +blood, acquires not unfrequently, for a time, an irrepressible power. +Truth, when uttered from the stake, or on the scaffold, becomes +absolutely irresistible. We admire Plato, surrounded by listening +princes, and vieing with them in oriental magnificence; but we venerate +Socrates in his dungeon, patiently suffering death for holding forth the +truth; and the dictates of our own bosoms spontaneously assign to him +the highest place among the uninspired teachers of wisdom. Or, to turn +to more awful examples, the foundations of the Christian religion were +laid in blood. The Captain of our salvation "was obedient unto death, +the death of the cross." The martyrdoms of the early age of the church +gave to the world examples of the love of right, of which it had never +before conceived even the possibility, and thus set on foot a moral +reformation, which is destined to work in the character of man a +universal transformation. + + * * * * * + + +=_Horace Mann, 1796-1859._= (Manual, p. 532.) + +From "Lectures on various Subjects." + +=_158._= THOUGHTS FOR A YOUNG MAN. + +In this country most young men are poor. Time is the rock from which +they are to hew out their fortunes; and health, enterprise, and +integrity, the instruments with which to do it. For this, diligence in +business, abstinence from pleasures, privation even, of everything that +does not endanger health, are to be joyfully welcomed and borne. When we +look around us, and see how much of the wickedness of the world +springs from poverty, it seems to sanctify all honest efforts for the +acquisition of an independence; but when an independence is acquired, +then comes the moral crisis, then comes an Ithuriel test, which shows +whether a man is higher than a common man, or lower than a common +reptile. In the duty of accumulation--and I call it a _duty_, in the most +strict and literal signification of that word--all below a competence +is most valuable, and its acquisition most laudable; but all above a +fortune is a misfortune. It is a misfortune to him who amasses it; for +it is a voluntary continuance in the harness of a beast of burden, when +the soul should enfranchise and lift itself up into a higher region of +pursuits and pleasures. It is a persistence in the work of providing +goods for the body after the body has already been provided for; and +it is a denial of the higher demands of the soul, after the time has +arrived, and the means are possessed, of fulfilling those demands.... +Because the lower service was once necessary, and has, therefore, been +performed, it is a mighty wrong, when, without being longer necessary, +it usurps the sacred rights of the higher. + + * * * * * + + +=_Orestes A. Brownson, 1800-._= (Manual, p. 480.) + +From "New Views." + +=_159._= THE DUTY OF PROGRESS. + +Progress is the end for which man was made. To this end it is his duty +to direct all his enquiries, all his systems of religion and philosophy, +all his institutions of politics and society, all the productions of his +genius and taste, in one word, all the modes of his activity. This is +his duty. Hitherto, he has performed it but blindly, without knowing, +and without admitting it. Humanity has but to-day, as it were, risen to +self-consciousness, to a perception of its own capacity, to a glimpse of +its inconceivably grand and holy destiny. Heretofore it has failed to +recognize clearly its duty. It has advanced, but not designedly, +not with foresight; it has done it instinctively, by the aid of the +invisible but safe-guiding hand of its Father. Without knowing what it +did, it has condemned progress while it was progressing. It has stoned +the prophets and reformers, even while it was itself reforming and +uttering glorious prophecies of its future condition. But the time has +now come for humanity to understand itself, to accept the law imposed +upon it for its own good, to foresee its end, and march with intention +steadily towards it. Its future religion is the religion of progress. +The true priests are those who can quicken in mankind a desire for +progress, and urge them forward in the direction of the true, the good, +the perfect. + + * * * * * + +From "The Convert." + +=_160._= POLITICS OF CATHOLIC EUROPE IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY +DESPOTIC. + +In France, Spain, Portugal, and a large part of Italy, all through the +seventeenth century, the youth were trained in the maxim, The prince is +the State, and his pleasure is law. Bossuet, in his politics, did only +faithfully express the political sentiments and convictions of his age, +shared by the great body of Catholics as well as of non-Catholics. +Rational liberty had few defenders, and they were exiled, like Fénelon, +from the court. The politics of Philip II. of Spain, of Richelieu, +Mazarin, and Louis XIV. in France, which were the politics of Catholic +Europe, hardly opposed, except by the popes, through the greater part +of the sixteenth and the whole of the seventeenth centuries, tended +directly to enslave the people, and to restrict the freedom, and +efficiency of the church. Had either Philip, or, after him, Louis, +succeeded, by linking the Catholic cause to his personal ambition, in +realizing his dream of universal monarchy, Europe would most likely have +been plunged into a political and social condition as unenviable as that +into which old Asia has been plunged for these four hundred years; and +it may well be believed that it was Providence that raised and directed +the tempest that scattered the Grand Armada, and that gave victory to +the arms of Eugene and Marlborough. + + * * * * * + + +=_Theodore Dwight Woolsey, 1801-._= + +From his "Introduction to the Study of International Law." + +=_161._= IMPORTANCE OF THE STUDY. + +From all that has been said it has become apparent that the study of +international law is important, as an index of civilization, and not to +the student of law only, but to the student of history. In our land, +especially, it is important, on more than one account, that this science +should do its share in enlightening educated minds. One reason for this +lies in the new inducements which we, as a people, have to swerve from +national rectitude. Formerly our interests threw us on the side of +unrestricted commerce, which is the side towards which justice inclines, +and we lived far within our borders with scarcely the power to injure or +be injured, except on the ocean. Now we are running into the crimes to +which strong nations are liable. Our diplomatists unblushingly moot the +question of taking foreign territory by force if it cannot be purchased; +our executive prevents piratical expeditions against the lands of +neighboring States as feebly and slowly as if it connived at them; we +pick quarrels to gain conquests; and at length, after more than half a +century of public condemnation of the slave-trade, after being the first +to brand it as piracy, we hear the revival of the trade advocated as a +right, as a necessity. Is it not desirable that the sense of justice, +which seems fading out of the national mind before views of political +expediency or destiny, should be deepened and made fast by that study +which frowns on national crimes? + +And, again, every educated person ought to become acquainted with +national law, because he is a responsible member of the body politic; +because there is danger that party views will make our doctrine in this +science fluctuating, unless it is upheld by large numbers of intelligent +persons; and because the executive, if not controlled, will be tempted +to assume the province of interpreting international law for us. As it +regards the latter point it may be said, that while Congress has power +to define offences against the laws of nations, and thus, if any public +power, to pronounce authoritatively what the law of nations is, the +executive through the Secretary of State, in practice, gives the lead in +all international questions. In this way the Monroe doctrine appeared; +in this way most other positions have been advanced; and perhaps this +could not be otherwise. But we ought to remember that the supreme +executives in Europe have amassed power by having diplomatic relations +in their hands, that thus the nation may become involved in war against +its will, and that the prevention of evils must lie, if there be any, +with the men who have been educated in the principles of international +justice. + +I close this treatise here, hoping that it may be of some use to my +native land, and to young men who may need a guide in the science of +which it treats. + + * * * * * + + +=_Taylor Lewis, 1802-.[48]_= + +From "The Six Days of Creation." + +=_162._= UNITY OF THE MOSAIC ACCOUNT. + +Another striking trait of the Mosaic cosmogony is its unbroken wholeness +or unity.... Be it invention or inspiration, it is the invention or the +inspiration of one mind. Other cosmogonies, though bearing unmistakable +evidence of their descent from the Mosaic, have had successive deposits, +in successive series, of mythological strata. This stands towering out +in lonely sublimity, like the everlasting granite of the Alps or the +Himalaya, as compared with the changing alluvium of the Nile or the +Ganges. As the serene air that ever surrounds the head of Mont Blanc +excels in purity the mists of the fen, so does the lofty theism of the +Mosaic account rise high above the nature-worship of the Egyptian and +Hesiodean theogonies. "In the beginning God made the heavens and the +earth. And the earth was waste and void, and darkness was upon the face +of the deep. And the Spirit of God brooded over the waters. And God +said, Let there be light, and it was light. And God saw the light that +it was fair, and God divided the light from the darkness. And thus there +was an evening and a morning--one day!" What is there like it, or to be +at all compared with it, in any mythology on earth? There it stands, +high above them all, and remote from them all, in its air of great +antiquity, in its unaccountableness, in its serene truthfulness, in +its unapproachable sublimity, in that impress of divine majesty and +ineffable holiness which even the unbelieving neologist has been +compelled to acknowledge, and by which every devout reader feels that +the first page in Genesis is forever distinguished from any mere human +production. + +[Footnote 48: Born In New York; a prolific writer, eminent for his +profound scholarship, his wide acquaintance with Oriental and Biblical +literature, and his originality and freedom of mind: long Professor of +Greek in Union College.] + + * * * * * + +From "State Rights." + +=_163._= CRUEL INTESTINE WARS CAUSED BY NATIONAL DIVISION. + +If it were Death alone! But "Hell follows hard after." What a heaving +Tartarus was Greece, when all hope of a true nationality was given up! +From Corcyra to Rhodes, from Byzantium to Cyrene, one bloody scene of +faction, "sedition, privy conspiracy, and rebellion." In the cities, in +the isles, in the colonies, banishments, confiscations, ostracisms, and +cruel deaths. The most ferocious parties everywhere, fomented in the +smaller States by the influence of the larger, and kept alive in the +leading cities by the continual presence of foreign emissaries. With us +it would be far more like Satan's kingdom, inasmuch as our states are +more numerous, relatively more petty, and, from the increased powers of +modern knowledge and modern invention, capable of the greater mutual +mischief. + +We are not prophesying at random. Here is our old guidebook. The road +is all mapped out, the way surveyed, by which we march to ruin. All the +dire calamities of Greece may be traced to this word autonomia.[49] + +... Greece presented the first great proof of a fact of which we are now +in danger of furnishing another and more terrible example to the world. +It is the utter impossibility of peace, in a territory made by nature a +geographical unity, inhabited by a people, or peoples, of one lineage, +one language, bound together in historical reminiscences, yet divided +into petty sovereign States too small for any respectable nationalities +themselves, and yet preventing any beneficent nationality as a whole. No +animosities have been so fierce as those existing among people thus +geographically and politically related. No wars with each other have +been so cruel; no home factions have been so incessant, so treacherous, +and so debasing. The very ties that draw them near only awaken occasions +of strife, which would not have existed between tribes wholly alien to +each other in language and religion. + +[Footnote 49: State sovereignty.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Horace Greeley,[50] 1811-1873._= + +From a "Lecture on the Emancipation of Labor." + +=_164._= THE PROBLEM OF LABOR. + +The worker of the nineteenth century stands a sad and careworn man. +Once in a while a particular flowery Fourth of July oration, political +harangue, or Thanksgiving sermon, catching him well filled with creature +comforts, and a little inclined to soar starward, will take him off his +feet, and for an hour or two he will wonder if ever human lot was so +blessed as that of the free-born American laborer. He hurrahs, and is +ready to knock any man down who will not readily and heartily agree that +this is a great country, and our industrious classes the happiest people +on earth.... The hallucination passes off, however, with the silvery +tones of the orator, and the exhilarating fumes of the liquor which +inspired it. The inhaler of the bewildering gas bends his slow steps at +length to his sorry domicile, or wakes therein on the morrow, in a sober +and practical mood. His very exaltation, now past, has rendered him more +keenly susceptible to the deficiencies and impediments which hem him +in: his house seems narrow, his food coarse, his furniture scanty, his +prospects gloomy, and those of his children more sombre, if possible; +and as he hurries off to the day's task which he has too long neglected, +and for which he has little heart, he too falls into that train of +thought which is beginning to encircle the globe, and of which the +burden may be freely rendered thus: "Why should those by whose toil all +comforts and luxuries are produced, or made available, enjoy so scanty a +share of them? Why should a man able and eager to work, ever stand idle +for want of employment in a world where so much needful work impatiently +awaits the doing? Why should a man be required to surrender something of +his independence, in accepting the employment which will enable him to +earn by honest effort the bread of his family? Why should the man who +faithfully labors for another, and receives therefor less than the +product of his labor, be currently held the obliged party, rather than +he who buys the work and makes a good bargain of it? In short, why +should Speculation and Scheming ride so jauntily in their carriages, +splashing honest Work as it trudges humbly and wearily by on foot?" +Such, as I interpret it, is the problem which occupies and puzzles the +knotted brain of Toil in our day. + +[Footnote 50: The well-known journalist of New York; conspicuous for his +many writings on social and political reform, his reminiscences, &c.; a +native of New Hampshire.] + + * * * * * + +From an Address on Success in Business. + +=_165._= THE BENEFICENCE OF LABOR-SAVING INVENTIONS. + +There is, if not an ever-increasing need, an ever-increasing +consciousness of need, of labor-saving inventions and machinery. And, if +those inventions should render labor twenty times as productive as it +is to-day, should make this a general rule, that all human labor shall +produce twenty times as much as it does to-day--there would be no glut +of products, as so many mistakenly apprehend. There would only be a +very much fuller and broader satisfaction of human needs. Our wants +are infinite. They expand and dilate on every side, according to our +means--often very much in advance of our means,--of satisfying them. If +labor shall become--as I doubt not it will become at an early day, far +more productive, far more effective, than it is now, we shall hear +nothing like a complaint that there are no more wants to be satisfied, +but the contrary. And yet, we know the fact is deplorably true, that the +time is scarcely yet remote when the laboring class, distinctively so +called, set its face resolutely against new inventions--set to work +deliberately to destroy labor-saving machinery, and so to act as more +and more to throw labor back into the barbaric period when probably +every yard of cloth cost a day's labor, as did every bushel of grain. +England herself, it is computed now does the work, by means of steam and +machinery, of eight hundred millions of men. And yet English wants are +no more satisfied to-day than they were a thousand years ago. I do not +say they are altogether unsatisfied; but I say that the consciousness of +want, the demand for products, is just as keen to-day; and I have not +a doubt that if inventions could be introduced into China whereby the +labor of her people should be rendered fifty times as effective as it is +to-day, you would find not a dearth of employment as a consequence, but +rather an increase of activity and an increased demand for labor. To-day +British capital and British talent are fairly grid-ironing the ancient +plains and slopes of Hindostan with British canals, irrigating, and +railroads. It is their _gold_ they say; but it is not British capital, +so much as British genius and British confidence, that are required. +There is wealth enough in India, more gold and silver and gems, probably +to-day than in Europe, for the precious metals always flow thither, and +they very seldom flow thence. + + * * * * * + +From "Recollections of a Busy Life." + +=_166._= LITERATURE AS A VOCATION; THE EDITOR. + +No other public teacher lives so wholly in the present, as the +Editor; and the noblest affirmations of unpopular truth,--the most +self-sacrificing defiance of a base and selfish Public Sentiment that +regards only the most sordid ends, and values every utterance solely +as it tends to preserve quiet and contentment, while the dollars fall +jingling into the merchant's drawer, the land-jobber's vault, and +the miser's bag,--can but be noted in their day, and with their day +forgotten. It is his cue to utter silken and smooth sayings,--to condemn +Vice so as not to interfere with the pleasures, or alarm the consciences +of the vicious,--to praise and champion Liberty so as not to give +annoyance or offence to Slavery, and to commend and glorify Labor +without attempting to expose or repress any of the gainful contrivances +by which Labor is plundered and degraded. Thus sidling dexterously +between somewhere and nowhere, the Able Editor of the Nineteenth Century +may glide through life respectable and in good case, and lie down to his +long rest with the non-achievements of his life emblazoned on the very +whitest marble, surmounting and glorifying his dust. + +There is a different and sterner path,--I know not whether there be +any now qualified to tread it,--I am not sure that even one has ever +followed it implicitly, in view of the certain meagerness of its +temporal rewards, and the haste wherewith any fame acquired in a sphere +so thoroughly ephemeral as the Editor's, must be shrouded by the dark +waters of oblivion. This path demands an ear ever open to the plaints of +the wronged and the suffering, though they can never repay advocacy, and +those who mainly support newspapers will be annoyed and often exposed +by it; a heart as sensitive to oppression and degradation in the next +street as if they were practised in Brazil or Japan; a pen as ready +to expose and reprove the crimes whereby wealth is amassed and luxury +enjoyed in our own country at this hour, as if they had only been +committed by Turks or Pagans in Asia, some centuries ago. Such an +Editor, could one be found or trained, need not expect to lead an easy, +indolent, or wholly joyous life,--to be blessed by Archbishops, or +followed by the approving shouts of ascendant majorities; but he might +find some recompense for their loss, in the calm verdict of an approving +conscience: and the tears of the despised and the friendless, preserved +from utter despair by his efforts and remonstrances, might freshen for a +season the daisies that bloomed above his grave. + + * * * * * + +From "The Crystal Palace and its Lessons." + +=_167._= TRANQUILITY OF RURAL LIFE. + +As for me, long tossed on the stormiest waves of doubtful conflict and +arduous endeavor, I have begun to feel, since the shades of forty years +fell upon me, the weary tempest-driven voyager's longing for land, the +wanderer's yearning for the hamlet where in childhood he nestled by +his mother's knee, and was soothed to sleep on her breast. The sober +down-hill of life dispels many illusions, while it developes or +strengthens within us the attachment, perhaps long smothered or +overlaid, for "that dear hut, our home." And so I, in the sober +afternoon of life, when its sun, if not high, is still warm, have bought +me a few acres of land in the broad, still country, and bearing thither +my household treasures, have resolved to steal from the city's labors +and anxieties at least one day in each week, wherein to revive as a +farmer, the memories of my childhood's humble home. And already I +realize that the experiment cannot cost so much as it is worth. Already +I find in that day's quiet, an antidote and a solace for the feverish, +festering cares of the weeks which environ it. Already, my brook murmurs +a soothing even-song to my burning, throbbing brain; and my trees, +gently stirred by the fresh breezes, whisper to my spirit something of +their own quiet strength and patient trust in God. And thus do I faintly +realize, though but for a brief and flitting day, the serene joy which +shall irradiate the Farmer's vocation, when a fuller and truer education +shall have refined and chastened his animal cravings, and when Science +shall have endowed him with her treasures, redeeming Labor from +drudgery, while quadrupling its efficiency, and crowning with beauty and +plenty our bounteous, beneficent Earth. + + * * * * * + + +=_Theodore Parker_,= about =_1812-1860_=. (Manual, p. 531.) + +From "Lessons from the World of Nature," &c. + +=_168._= WINTER AND SPRING. + +In the hard, cold winter of our northern lands, how do we feel a longing +for the presence of life! Then we love to look on a pine or fir tree, +which seems the only living thing in the woods, surrounded by dead oaks, +birches, maples, looking like the gravestones of buried vegetation: +that seems warm and living then; and at Christmas, men bring it into +meetinghouses and parlors, and set it up, full of life, and laden with +kindly gifts for the little folk. Then even the unattractive crow seems +half sacred, through the winter bearing messages of promise from the +perished autumn to the advancing spring--this dark forerunner of the +tuneful tribes which are to come. We feel a longing for fresh, green +nature, and so in the shelter of our houses keep some little Aaron's +rod, budding alike with promise and memory; or in some hyacinth or +Dutchman's tulip we keep a prophecy of flowers, and start off some +little John to run before, and with his half-gospel tell of some great +Emmanuel, and signify to men that the kingdom of heavenly beauty is near +at hand. Now that forerunner disappears, for the desire of all nations +has truly come; the green grass is creeping everywhere, and it is +spangled with many flowers that came unasked.... + +What if there was a spring time of blossoming but once in a hundred +years! How would men look forward to it, and old men, who had beheld its +wonders, tell the story to their children, how once all the homely trees +became beautiful, and earth was covered with freshness and new growth! +How would young men hope to become old, that they might see so glad a +sight! And when beheld, the aged man would say, "Lord, now lettest thou +thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation." + + * * * * * + +From an "Installation Sermon," January 4th, 1846. + +=_169._= THE TRUE IDEA OF A CHRISTIAN CHURCH. + +The saints of olden time perished at the stake; they hung on gibbets; +they agonized upon the rack; they died under the steel of the tormentor. +It was the heroism of our fathers' day that swam the unknown seas; froze +in the woods; starved with want and cold; fought battles with the red +right hand. It is the sainthood and heroism of our day that toils for +the ignorant, the poor, the weak, the oppressed, the wicked. Yes, it is +our saints and heroes who fight fighting; who contend for the slave, and +his master too, for the drunkard, the criminal; yes, for the wicked or +the weak in all their forms.... But the saints and the heroes of this +day, who draw no sword, whose right hand is never bloody, who burn in no +fires of wood or sulphur, nor languish briefly on the hasty cross; the +saints and heroes who, in a worldly world, dare to be men; in an age of +conformity and selfishness, speak for Truth and Man, living for noble +aims, men who will swear to no lies howsoever popular; who will honor +no sins, though never so profitable, respectable, and ancient; men who +count Christ not their master, but teacher, friend, brother, and strive +like him to practice all they pray; to incarnate and make real the Word +of God, these men I honor far more than the saints of old.... Racks and +fagots soon waft the soul to God, stern messengers, but swift. A boy +could bear that passage,--the martyrdom of death. But the temptation of +a long life of neglect, and scorn, and obloquy, and shame, and want, and +desertion by false friends; to live blameless though blamed, cut off +from human sympathy, that is the martyrdom of to-day. I shed no tears +for such martyrs. I shout when I see one; I take courage and thank God +for the real saints, prophets and heroes of to-day.... Yea, though now +men would steal the rusty sword from underneath the bones of a saint or +hero long deceased, to smite off therewith the head of a new prophet, +that ancient hero's son; though they would gladly crush the heart out of +him with the tombstones they piled up for great men, dead and honored +now; yet in some future day, that mob penitent, baptized with a new +spirit, like drunken men returned to sanity once more, shall search +through all this land for marble white enough to build a monument to +that prophet whom their fathers slew; they shall seek through all the +world for gold of fineness fit to chronicle such names. I cannot wait; +but I will honor such men now, not adjourn the warning of their voice, +and the glory of their example, till another age! The church may cast +out such men; burn them with the torments of an age too refined in its +cruelty to use coarse fagots and the vulgar axe! It is no loss to these +men; but the ruin of the church. I say the Christian church of the +nineteenth century must honor such men, if it would do a church's work; +must take pains to make such men as these, or it is a dead church, with +no claim on us, except that we bury it. A true church will always be +the church of martyrs. The ancients commenced every great work with a +victim! We do not call it so; but the sacrifice is demanded, got ready, +and offered by unconscious priests long ere the enterprise succeeds. Did +not Christianity begin with a martyrdom? + + * * * * * + +From "Historic Americans." + +=_170._= CHARACTER OF FRANKLIN. + +His was the morality of a strong, experienced person, who had seen the +folly of wise men, the meanness of proud men, the baseness of honorable +men, and the littleness of great men, and made liberal allowances for +the failures of all men. If the final end to be reached were just, he +did not always inquire about the provisional means which led thither. He +knew that the right line is the shortest distance between two points, in +morals as in mathematics, but yet did not quarrel with such as attained +the point by a crooked line. Such is the habit of politicians, +diplomatists, statesmen, who look on all men as a commander looks on his +soldiers, and does not ask them to join the church or keep their hands +clean, but to stand to their guns and win the battle. + +Thus, in the legislature of Pennsylvania, Franklin found great +difficulty in carrying on the necessary measures for military defence, +because a majority of the Assembly were Quakers, who, though friendly +to the success of the revolution founded contrary to their principles, +refused to vote the supplies of war. So he caused them to vote +appropriations to purchase bread, flour, wheat, _or other grain_. The +Government said, "I shall take the money, for I understand very well +their meaning,--other grain is gunpowder." He afterwards moved the +purchase of a fire-engine, saying to his friend, "Nominate me on the +committee, and I will nominate you; we will buy a great gun, which is +certainly a fire engine; the Quakers can have no objection to that." + +Such was the course of policy that Franklin took, as I think, to excess; +but yet I believe that no statesman of that whole century did so much to +embody the eternal rules of right in the customs of the people, and to +make the constitution of the universe the common law of all mankind; and +I cannot bestow higher praise than that, on any man whose name I can +recall. He mitigated the ferocities of war. He built new hospitals, and +improved old ones. He first introduced this humane principle into the +Law of Nations, that in time of war, private property on land shall +be unmolested, and peaceful commerce continued, and captive soldiers +treated as well as the soldiers of the captors. Generous during his +life-time, his dead hand still gathers and distributes blessings to the +mechanics of Boston, and their children. True is it that + + "Him only pleasure leads and peace attends, + Whose means are pure and spotless as his ends." + +But it is a great thing in this stage of the world to find a man whose +_ends_ are pure and spotless. Let us thank him for that. + + * * * * * + +From "Historic Americans." + +=_171._= CHARACTER OF THOMAS JEFFERSON. + +Of all those who controlled the helm of affairs during the time of the +Revolution, and while the Constitution and the forms of our National and +State Institutions were carefully organized, there is none who has been +more generally popular, more commonly beloved, more usually believed to +be necessary to the Legislation and Administration of his country, than +Thomas Jefferson. It may not be said of him that of all those famous men +he could least have been spared; for in the rare and great qualities for +patiently and wisely conducting the vast affairs of State and Nation in +pressing emergencies, he seems to have been wanting. But his grand merit +was this--that while his powerful opponents favored a strong government, +and believed it necessary thereby to repress what they called the +lower classes, he, Jefferson, believed in Humanity; believed in a true +Democracy. He respected labor and education, and upheld the right to +education of all men. These were the Ideas in which he was far in +advance of all the considerable men, whether of his State or of his +Nation--ideas which he illustrated through long years of his life and +conduct. The great debt that the Nation owes to him is this--that he so +ably and consistently advocated these needful opinions, that he made +himself the head and the hand of the great party that carried +these ideas into power, that put an end to all possibility of +class-government, made naturalization easy, extended the suffrage and +applied it to judicial office, opened a still wider and better education +to all, and quietly inaugurated reforms, yet incomplete, of which we +have the benefit to this day, and which, but for him, we might not have +won against the party of Strong Government, except by a difficult and +painful Revolution. + + * * * * * + + +=_Wendell Phillips,[51] 1811-._= + +From "A Lecture delivered in December, 1861." + +=_172._= THE WAR FOR THE UNION. + +I would have government announce to the world that we understand the +evil which has troubled our peace for seventy years, thwarting the +natural tendency of our institutions, sending ruin along our wharves +and through our workshops every ten years, poisoning the national +conscience. We know well its character. But democracy, unlike other +governments, is strong enough to let evils work out their own +death--strong enough to face them when they reveal their proportions. It +was in this sublime consciousness of strength, not of weakness, that our +fathers submitted to the well-known evil of slavery, and tolerated it +until the viper we thought we could safely tread on, at the touch of +disappointment, starts up a fiend whose stature reaches the sky. But +our cheeks do not blanch. Democracy accepts the struggle. After this +forbearance of three generations, confident that she has yet power to +execute her will, she sends her proclamation, down to the Gulf--freedom +to every man beneath the stars, and death to every institution that +disturbs our peace, or threatens the future of the republic. + +[Footnote 51: A native of Massachusetts: a vigorous thinker and speaker +on the great moral and political topics of the day, and the most +eloquent of the Anti-Slavery leaders.] + + * * * * * + +From His "Speeches, Lectures." &c. + +=_173._= CHARACTER OF TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE. + +Above the lust of gold, pure in private life, generous in the use of his +power, it was against such a man that Napoleon sent his army, giving to +General Leclerc,--the husband of his beautiful sister Pauline,--thirty +thousand of his best troops, with orders to re-introduce slavery. Among +these soldiers came all of Toussaint's old mulatto rivals and foes. + + * * * * * + +Mounting his horse, and riding to the eastern end of the island, Samana, +he looked out on a sight such as no native had ever seen before. Sixty +ships of the line, crowded by the best soldiers of Europe, rounded the +point. They were soldiers who had never yet met an equal, whose tread, +like Caesar's, had shaken Europe,--soldiers who had scaled the Pyramids, +and planted the French banners on the walls of Rome. He looked a moment, +counted the flotilla, let the reins fall on the neck of his horse, and, +turning to Christophe, exclaimed: "All France is come to Hayti; they can +only come to make us slaves; and we are lost." He then recognized the +only mistake of his life,--his confidence in Bonaparte, which had led +him to disband his army. Returning to the hills, he issued the only +proclamation which bears his name and breathes vengeance: "My children, +France comes to make us slaves. God gave us liberty; France has no right +to take it away. Burn the cities, destroy the harvests, tear up the +roads with cannon, poison the wells, show the white man the hell he +comes to make"; and he was obeyed. When the great William of Orange saw +Louis XIV. cover Holland with troops, he said, "Break down the dykes, +give Holland back to ocean"; and Europe said, "Sublime!" When Alexander +saw the armies of France descend upon Russia, he said: "Burn Moscow, +starve back the invaders"; and Europe said, "Sublime!" This black saw +all Europe marshalled to crush him, and gave to his people the same +heroic example of defiance. + + * * * * * + + +=_Thomas Starr King, 1824-1864._= (Manual, p. 532.) + +From "Patriotism and other Papers." + +=_174._= GREAT PRINCIPLES AND SMALL DUTIES. + +If we go to Nature for our morals, we shall learn the necessity of +perfection in the smallest act. Infinite skill is not exhausted nor +concentrated in the structure of a firmament, in drawing the orbit of a +planet, in laying the strata of the earth, in rearing the mountain cone. +The care for the bursting flower is as wise as the forces displayed in +the rolling star; the smallest leaf that falls and dies unnoticed in the +forest is wrought with a beauty as exquisite as the skill displayed in +the sturdy oak. All the wisdom of Nature is compressed and revealed +in the sting of the bee; and the pride of human art is mocked by the +subtile mechanism and cunning structure of a fly's foot and wing. +However minute the task, it reveals the polish of perfection. Omnipotent +skill is stamped on the infinitely small, as on the infinitely great. +It is a moral stenography like this which we need in daily life.... +The lesson of Christianity, then, urged and enforced by Nature, is +the inestimable worth of common duties, as manifesting the greatest +principles; it bids us attain perfection, not by striving to do dazzling +deeds, but by making our experience divine; it tells us that the +Christian hero will ennoble the humblest field of labor; that nothing is +mean which can be performed as duty; but that religious virtue, like the +touch of Midas, converts the humblest call of conscience into spiritual +gold. + +The Greek philosopher, Plato, has left an instructive and beautiful +poetic picture of the judgment of souls, when they had been collected +from the regions of temporary bliss and pain, and suffered once more to +return to the duties and pleasures of earthly life. The spirits advanced +by lot, to make their choice of the condition and form under which they +should re-enter the world. The dazzling and showy fortunes, the lives of +kings and warriors and statesmen were soon exhausted; and the spirit of +Ulysses, who had been the wisest prince among all the Greeks, came last +to choose. He advanced with sorrow, fearing that his favorite condition +had been selected by some more fortunate soul who had gone before him. +But, to his surprise and pleasure, Ulysses found that the only life +which had not been chosen was the lot of an obscure and private man, +with its humble cares and quiet joys; the lot which he, the wisest, +would have selected, had his turn come first; the life for which he had +longed, since he had felt the folly and meanness of station, wealth, and +power.... + + + + +CHAPTER III. + + + +GENERAL AND POLITE LITERATURE. + + +=_William Wirt, 1772-1834._= (Manual, pp. 487, 490.) + +From the "Life of Patrick Henry." + +=_175._= HENRY'S EXAMPLE NO ARGUMENT FOR INDOLENCE. + +I cannot learn that he gave in his youth any evidence of that precocity +which sometimes distinguishes uncommon genius. His companions recollect +no instance of premature wit, no striking sentiment, no flash of fancy, +no remarkable beauty or strength of expression, and no indication +however slight, either of that impassioned love of liberty, or of that +adventurous daring and intrepidity, which marked so strongly his future +character. So far was he indeed from exhibiting any one prognostic of +this greatness, that every omen foretold a life at best, of mediocrity, +if not of insignificance. His person is represented as having been +coarse, his manners uncommonly awkward, his dress slovenly, his +conversation very plain, his aversion to study invincible, and his +faculties almost entirely benumbed by indolence. No persuasion could +bring him either to read or to work. On the contrary, he ran wild in the +forest like one of the _Aborigines_ of the country, and divided his life +between the dissipation and uproar of the chase, and the languor of +inaction. + +His propensity to observe and comment upon the human character, was, +so far as I can learn, the only circumstance which distinguished him +advantageously from his youthful companions. This propensity seems to +have been born with him, and to have exerted itself instinctively, the +moment that a new subject was presented to his view. Its action was +incessant, and it became at length almost the only intellectual exercise +in which he seemed to take delight. To this cause, may be traced that +consummate knowledge of the human heart which he finally attained, and +which enabled him when he came upon the public stage, to touch the +springs of passion with a master hand, and to control the resolutions +and decisions of his hearers with a power almost more than mortal. + +From what has been already stated, it will be seen how little education +had to do with the formation of this great man's mind. He was indeed a +mere child of nature, and nature seems to have been too proud and too +jealous of her work, to permit it to be touched by the hand of art. She +gave him Shakespeare's genius, and bade him, like Shakespeare, to depend +on that alone. Let not the youthful reader, however, deduce from the +example of Mr. Henry, an argument in favor of indolence, and the +contempt of study. Let him remember that the powers which surmounted the +disadvantage of those early habits, were such as very rarely appear upon +this earth. Let him remember, too, how long the genius even of Mr. Henry +was kept down, and hidden from the public view, by the sorcery of those +pernicious habits; through what years of poverty and wretchedness they +doomed him to struggle; and let him remember, that at length, when in +the zenith of his glory. Mr. Henry himself, had frequent occasions to +deplore the consequences of his early neglect of literature, and to +bewail the ghosts of his departed hours. + + * * * * * + +From "Eulogium on Adams and Jefferson." + +=_176._= JEFFERSON'S SEAT AT MONTICELLO. + +Approaching the house on the east, the visitor instinctively paused, to +cast around one thrilling glance at this magnificent panorama, and then +passed to the vestibule, where, if he had not been previously informed, +he would immediately perceive that he was entering the house of no +common man. In the spacious and lofty hall which opens before him, he +marks no tawdry and unmeaning ornaments, but before, on the right, on +the left, all around, the eye is struck and gratified with objects of +science and taste, so classed and arranged as to produce their finest +effect. On one side, specimens of sculpture set out in such order as to +exhibit ... the historical progress of that art, from the first rude +attempts of the aborigines of our country up to that exquisite and +finished bust of the great patriot himself, from the master-hand +of Ceracchi. On the other side, the visitor sees displayed a vast +collection of specimens of Indian art--their paintings, weapons, +ornaments, and manufactures; on another, an array of the fossil +productions of our country, mineral and animal, the polished remains of +those colossal monsters that once trod our forests, and are no more; and +a variegated display of the branching honors of those "monarchs of the +waste," that still people the wilds of the American continent. + +From this hall he was ushered into a noble saloon, from which the +glorious landscape of the west again bursts upon his view, and which +within is hung thick around with the finest productions of the +pencil--historical paintings of the most striking subjects from all +countries and all ages, the portraits of distinguished men and patriots +both of Europe and America, and medallions and engravings in endless +profusion. + +While the visitor was yet lost in the contemplation of these treasures +of the arts and sciences, he was startled by the approach of a strong +and sprightly step; and, turning with instinctive reverence to the door +of entrance, he was met by the tall, and animated, and stately figure +of the patriot himself, his countenance beaming with intelligence and +benignity, and his outstretched hand, with its strong and cordial +pressure, confirming the courteous welcome of his lips; and then came +that charm of manner and conversation that passes all description--so +cheerful, so unassuming, so free, and easy, and frank, and kind, and +gay, that even the young, and overawed, and embarrassed visitor at once +forgot his fears, and felt himself by the side of an old and familiar +friend. + + * * * * * + + +=_Timothy Flint, 1780-1840._= (Manual, p. 490.) + +From "Recollections of the Mississippi Valley." + +=_177._= THE WESTERN BOATMAN. + +Three is no wonder that the way of life which the boatman, lead, in turn +extremely indolent and extremely laborious, for days together requiring +little or no effort, and attended with no danger, and then on a sudden +laborious and hazardous beyond the Atlantic navigation, generally +plentiful as it regards food, and always so as it regards whiskey, +should always have seductions that prove irresistible to the young +people that live near the banks of the river. The boats float by their +dwellings on beautiful spring mornings, when the verdant forest, the +mild and delicious temperature of the air, the delightful azure of the +sky of this country, the fine bottom on the one hand, and the romantic +bluff on the other, the broad, and smooth stream rolling calmly down +through the forest, and floating the boat gently forward,--all these +circumstances harmonize in the excited youthful imagination. The boatmen +are dancing to the violin on the deck of their boat. They scatter their +wit among the girls on the shore, who come down to the water's edge to +see the pageant pass. The boat glides on until it disappears behind a +point of wood; at this moment, perhaps, the bugle, with which all the +boats are provided, strikes up its note in the distance, over the water. +These scenes, and these notes, echoing from the bluffs of the beautiful +Ohio, have a charm for the imagination, which, although I have heard a +thousand times repeated, and at all hours, and in all positions, is even +to me always new, and always delightful. No wonder that to the young, +who are reared in these remote regions, with that restless curiosity +which is fostered by solitude and silence, who witness scenes like these +so frequently,--no wonder that the severe and unremitting labors of +agriculture, performed directly in the view of such scenes, should +become tasteless and irksome. + + * * * * * + + +=_Washington Irving, 1783-1839._= (Manual, pp. 478, 498.) + +From "Knickerbocker's History of New York." + +=_178._= FROM "TITLE AND TABLE OF CONTENTS." + +A history of New York, from the beginning of the world to the end of the +Dutch dynasty,... being the only authentic history of the times that +ever hath been or ever will be published, by Diedrick Knickerbocker.... +Book I., chap. i. Description of the World.... Book II., chap. i.... +Also of Master Hendrick Hudson, his discovery of a strange country.... +Chap. vii. How the people of Pavonia migrated from Communipaw to the +Island of Manhattan.... Chap. ix. How the city of New Amsterdam waxed +great under the protection of St. Nicholas, and the absence of laws and +statutes. Book III., chap. iii. How the town of New Amsterdam arose out +of mud, and came to be marvellously polished and polite, together with +a picture of the manners of our great-great-grandfathers.... Book IV., +chap. vi. Projects of William the Testy for increasing the currency; he +is outwitted by the Yankees. The great Oyster War.... Book V., chap. +viii. How the Yankee crusade against the New Netherlands was baffled by +the sudden outbreak of witchcraft among the people of the East ... Book +VII., chap. ii. How Peter Stuyvesant labored to civilize the community. +How he was a great promoter of holydays. How he instituted kissing on +New Year's Day.... Chap. iii. How troubles thicken on the province. How +it is threatened by the Helderbergers,--the Merrylanders, and the Giants +of the Susquehanna. + + * * * * * + +=_179._= THE ARMY AT NEW AMSTERDAM. + +First of all came the Van Bummels, who inhabit the pleasant borders +of the Bronx. These were short, fat men, wearing exceeding large +trunk-breeches, and are renowned for feats of the trencher; they were +the first inventors of suppawn, or mush and milk.... Lastly came the +Knickerbockers, of the great town of Schahticoke, where the folks lay +stones upon the houses in windy weather, lest they should be blown away. +These derive their name, as some say, from _Knicker_, to shake, and +_Beker_, a goblet, indicating thereby that they were sturdy tosspots of +yore; but in truth, it was derived from _Knicker_, to nod, and _Bocken_, +books, plainly meaning that they were great nodders or dozers over +books; from them did descend the writer of this History. + + * * * * * + +From the "Tales of a Traveller." + +=_180._= A MOTHER'S MEMORY. + +A part of the church-yard is shaded by large trees. Under one of them +my mother lay buried. You have no doubt thought me a light, heartless +being. I thought myself so; but there are moments of adversity which let +us into some feelings of our nature to which we might otherwise remain +perpetual strangers. + +I sought my mother's grave: the weeds were already matted over it, and +the tombstone was half hid among nettles. I cleared them away, and they +stung my hands; but I was heedless of the pain, for my heart ached too +severely. I sat down on the grave, and read, over and over again, the +epitaph on the stone. + +It was simple,--but it was true. I had written it myself, I had tried +to write a poetical epitaph, but in vain; my feelings refused to utter +themselves in rhyme. My heart had gradually been filling during my +lonely wanderings; it was now charged to the brim, and overflowed, I +sunk upon the grave, and buried my face in the tall grass, and wept like +a child. Yes, I wept in manhood upon the grave, as I had in infancy upon +the bosom, of my mother. Alas! how little do we appreciate a mother's +tenderness while living! how heedless are we in youth of all her +anxieties and kindness! But when she is dead and gone; when the cares +and coldness of the world come withering to our hearts; when we find how +hard it is to find true sympathy;--how few love us for ourselves; how +few will befriend us in our misfortunes--then it is that we think of +the mother we have lost. It is true I had always loved my mother, even +in my most heedless days; but I felt how inconsiderate and ineffectual +had been my love. My heart melted as I retraced the days of infancy, +when I was led by a mother's hand, and rocked to sleep in a mother's +arms, and was without care or sorrow. "O my mother!" exclaimed I, +burying my face again in the grass of the grave, "O that I were once +more by your side; sleeping never to wake again on the cares and +troubles of this world." + +I am not naturally of a morbid temperament, and the violence of my +emotion gradually exhausted itself. It was a hearty, honest, natural +discharge of grief which had been slowly accumulating, and gave me +wonderful relief. I rose from the grave as if I had been offering up a +sacrifice, and I felt as if that sacrifice had been accepted. + +I sat down again on the grass, and plucked one by one the weeds from her +grave: the tears trickled more slowly down my cheeks, and ceased to be +bitter. It was a comfort to think that she had died before sorrow +and poverty came upon her child, and all his great expectations were +blasted. + +I leaned my cheek upon my hand, and looked upon the landscape. Its quiet +beauty soothed me. The whistle of a peasant from an adjoining field came +cheerily to my ear. I seemed to respire hope and comfort with the free +air that whispered through the leaves, and played lightly with my hair, +and dried the tears upon my cheek. A lark, rising from the field before +me, and leaving as it were a stream of song behind him as he rose, +lifted my fancy with him. He hovered in the air just above the place +where the towers of Warwick castle marked the horizon, and seemed as +if fluttering with delight at his own melody. "Surely," thought I, "if +there were such a thing as a transmigration of souls, this might be +taken for some poet let loose from earth, but still revelling in song, +and carolling about fair fields and lordly towers." + + * * * * * + +From "The Life and Voyages of Columbus." + +=_181._= COLUMBUS A PRISONER. + +The arrival of Columbus at Cadiz, a prisoner, and in chains, produced +almost as great a sensation as his triumphant return from his first +voyage. It was one of those striking and obvious facts, which speak to +the feelings of the multitude, and preclude the necessity of reflection. +No one stopped to inquire into the case. It was sufficient to be +told that Columbus was brought home in irons from the world he had +discovered. A general burst of indignation arose in Cadiz, and its +neighboring city, Seville, which was immediately echoed throughout all +Spain.... However Ferdinand might have secretly felt disposed towards +Columbus, the momentary tide of public feeling was not to be resisted. +He joined with his generous queen in her reprobation of the treatment of +the admiral, and both sovereigns hastened to give evidence to the world, +that his imprisonment had been without their authority, and contrary to +their wishes. + + * * * * * + +=_182._= HIS ARRIVAL AT COURT. + +He appeared at court in Granada, on the 17th of December, not as a man +ruined and disgraced, but richly dressed, and attended by an honorable +retinue. He was received by their majesties with unqualified favor and +distinction. When the queen beheld this venerable man approach, and +thought on all that he had deserved, and all that he had suffered, +she was moved to tears. Columbus had borne up firmly against the rude +conflicts of the world; he had endured with lofty scorn the injuries and +insults of ignoble men; but he possessed strong and quick sensibility. +When he found himself thus kindly received by his sovereigns, and beheld +tears in the benign eyes of Isabella, his long-suppressed feelings burst +forth. He threw himself upon his knees, and for some time could not +utter a word for the violence of his tears and sobbings. + + * * * * * + +From Wolfert's Roost. + +=_183._= "A TIME OF UNEXAMPLED PROSPERITY." + +Every now and then the world is visited by one of these delusive +seasons, when "the credit system," as it is called, expands to full +luxuriance; every body trusts every body; a bad debt is a thing unheard +of; the broad way to certain and sudden wealth lies plain and open, and +men are tempted to dash forward boldly, from the facility of borrowing. + +Promissory notes, interchanged between scheming individuals, are +liberally discounted at the banks, which become so many mints to coin +words into cash; and as the supply of words is inexhaustible, it may +readily be supposed what a vast amount of promissory capital is soon +in circulation. Every one now talks in thousands; nothing is heard +but gigantic operations in trade, great purchases and sales of real +property, and immense sums made at every transfer. All, to be sure, +as yet exists in promise; but the believer in promises calculates the +aggregate as solid capital, and falls back in amazement at the amount of +public wealth, "the unexampled state of public prosperity!" + +Now is the time for speculative and dreaming or designing men. They +relate their dreams and projects to the ignorant and credulous, dazzle +them with golden visions, and set them maddening after shadows. The +example of one stimulates another; speculation rises on speculation; +bubble rises on bubble; every one helps with his breath to swell the +windy superstructure, and admires and wonders at the magnitude of the +inflation he has contributed to produce. + +Speculation is the romance of trade, and casts contempt upon all its +sober realities. It renders the stock-jobber a magician, and the +exchange a region of enchantment. It elevates the merchant into a kind +of Knight-errant, or rather a commercial Quixote. The slow but sure +gains of snug percentage become despicable in his eyes: no "operation" +is thought worthy of attention, that does not double or treble the +investment. No business is worth following, that does not promise an +immediate fortune. As he sits musing over his ledger, with pen behind +his ear, he is like La Mancha's hero in his study, dreaming over his +books of chivalry. His dusty counting-house fades before his eyes, or +changes into a Spanish mine; he gropes after diamonds, or dives after +pearls. The subterranean garden of Aladdin is nothing to the realms of +wealth that break upon his imagination. + +When a man of business, therefore, hears on every side rumors of +fortunes suddenly acquired; when he finds banks liberal, and brokers +busy; when he sees adventurers flush of paper capital, and full of +scheme and enterprise; when he perceives a greater disposition to buy +than to sell; when trade overflows its accustomed channels, and deluges +the country; when he hears of new regions of commercial adventure, of +distant marts and distant mines, swallowing merchandise and disgorging +gold; when he finds joint stock companies of all kinds forming; +railroads, canals, and locomotive engines, springing up on every side; +when idlers suddenly become men of business, and dash into the game +of commerce as they would into the hazards of the faro table; when he +beholds the streets glittering with new equipages, palaces conjured up +by the magic of speculation; tradesmen flushed with sudden success, and +vying with each other in ostentatious expense; in a word, when he hears +the whole community joining in the theme of "unexampled prosperity." +let him look upon the whole as a "weather breeder," and prepare for the +impending storm. + + * * * * * + +From The Life of Washington. + +=_184._= DEATH AND BURIAL OF BRADDOCK. + +The proud spirit of Braddock was broken by his defeat. He remained +silent the first evening after the battle, only ejaculating at night, +"Who would have thought it!" He was equally silent the following day; +yet hope still seemed to linger in his breast, from another ejaculation: +"We shall better know how to deal with them another time!" + +He was grateful for the attentions paid to him by Captain Stewart and +Washington, and more than once, it is said, expressed his admiration of +the gallantry displayed by the Virginians in the action. It is said, +moreover, that in his last moments, he apologized to Washington for the +petulance with which he had rejected his advice, and bequeathed to him +his favorite charger and his faithful servant, Bishop, who had helped to +convey him from the field. + +Some of these facts, it is true, rest on tradition, yet we are willing +to believe them, as they impart a gleam of just and generous feeling +to his closing scene. He died on the night of the 13th, at the Great +Meadows, the place of Washington's discomfiture in the preceding year. +His obsequies were performed before break of day. The chaplain having +been wounded, Washington read the funeral service. All was done in +sadness, and without parade, so as not to attract the attention of +lurking savages, who might discover and outrage his grave. It is +doubtful even whether a volley was fired over it, that last military +honor which he had recently paid to the remains of an Indian warrior. +The place of his sepulture, however, is still known, and pointed out. + +Reproach spared him not, even when in his grave. The failure of the +expedition was attributed both in England and America, to his obstinacy, +his technical pedantry, and his military conceit. He had been +continually warned to be on his guard against ambush and surprise, but +without avail. Had he taken the advice urged on him by Washington and +others, to employ scouting parties of Indians and rangers, he would +never have been so signally surprised and defeated. + +Still his dauntless conduct on the field of battle shows him to have +been a man of fearless spirit; and he was universally allowed to be an +accomplished disciplinarian. His melancholy end, too, disarms censure +of its asperity. Whatever may have been his faults and errors, he in a +manner expiated them by the hardest lot that can befall a brave soldier, +ambitious of renown--an unhonored grave in a strange land: a memory +clouded by misfortune, and a name for ever coupled with defeat. + + * * * * * + +=_185._= BARON STEUBEN IN THE REVOLUTIONARY ARMY. + +The committee having made their report, the baron's proffered services +were accepted with a vote of thanks for his disinterestedness, and he +was ordered to join the army of Valley Forge. That army, in its ragged +condition and squalid quarters, presented a sorry aspect to a strict +disciplinarian from Germany, accustomed to the order and appointments +of European camps; and the baron often declared, that under such +circumstances no army in Europe could be kept together for a single +month. The liberal mind of Steuben, however, made every allowance; and +Washington soon found in him a consummate soldier, free from pedantry or +pretension. + + * * * * * + +For a time, there was nothing but drills throughout the camp, then +gradually came evolutions of every kind. The officers were schooled as +well as the men. The troops, says a person who was present in the camp, +were paraded in a single line with shouldered arms; every officer in his +place. The baron passed in front, then took the musket of each soldier +in hand, to see whether it was clean and well polished, and examined +whether the men's accoutrements were in good order. + +He was sadly worried for a time with the militia; especially when any +manoeuvre was to be performed. The men blundered in their exercise; the +baron blundered in his English; his French and German were of no avail; +he lost his temper, which was rather warm; swore in all three languages +at once, which made the matter worse, and at length called his aide +to his assistance, to help him curse the blockheads as it was +pretended--but no doubt to explain the manoeuvre. + +Still the grand marshal of the court of Hohenzollern mingled with the +veteran soldier of Frederick, and tempered his occasional bursts of +impatience; and he had a kind generous heart, that soon made him a +favorite with the men. His discipline extended to their comforts. He +inquired into their treatment by the officers. He examined into the +doctor's reports; visited the sick; and saw that they were well lodged +and attended. + +He was an example, too, of the regularity and system he exacted. One of +the most alert and indefatigable men in the camp; up at day-break if not +before, whenever there were to be any important manoeuvres, he took his +cup of coffee and smoked his pipe while his servant dressed his hair, +and by sunrise he was in the saddle, equipped at all points, with the +star of his order of knighthood glittering on his breast, and was off to +the parade, alone, if his suite were not ready to attend him. + +The strong good sense of the baron was evinced in the manner in which he +adapted his tactics to the nature of the army and the situation of the +country, instead of adhering with bigotry to the systems of Europe. His +instructions were appreciated by all. The officers received them gladly +and conformed to them. The men soon became active and adroit. The army +gradually acquired a proper organization, and began to operate, like +a great machine; and Washington found in the baron an intelligent, +disinterested, truthful coadjutor, well worthy of the badge he wore of +the Order of _Fidelity_. + + * * * * * + + +=_Richard Henry Wilde, 1789-1847._= (Manual, pp. 501, 521.) + +From "Conjectures concerning Torquato Tasso." + +=_186._= INTEREST OF TASSO'S LIFE. + +There is scarcely any poet whose life excites a more profound and +melancholy interest than that of Torquato Tasso. + +His short and brilliant career of glory captivates the imagination, +while the heart is deeply affected by his subsequent misfortunes. +Greater fame and greater misery have seldom been the lot of man, and a +few brief years sufficed for each extreme. + +An exile even in his boyhood, the proscription and confiscation suffered +by his father deprived him of home and patrimony. Honor and love, and +the favor of princes, and enthusiastic praise, dazzled his youth. Envy, +malice, and treachery, tedious imprisonment and imputed madness, insult, +poverty, and persecution, clouded his manhood. The evening of his days +was saddened by a troubled spirit, want, sickness, bitter memories, and +deluded hopes; and when at length a transient gleam of sunshine fell +upon his prospects, death substituted the immortal for the laurel crown. + +Mystery adds its fascination to his story. The causes of his +imprisonment are hidden in obscurity; it is still disputed whether he +was insane or not. + +Few points of literary history, therefore, are more interesting, or more +obscure, than the love, the madness, and the imprisonment of Tasso. + + * * * * * + + +=_George Ticknor, 1791-1871._= (Manual, p. 502.) + +From "The History of Spanish Literature." + +=_187._= DESIGN OF CERVANTES IN WRITING DON QUIXOTE. + +His purpose in writing the Don Quixote has sometimes been enlarged by +the ingenuity of a refined criticism, until it has been made to embrace +the whole of the endless contrast between the poetical and the prosaic +in our natures,--between heroism and generosity on one side, as if they +were mere illusions, and a cold selfishness on the other, as if it were +the truth and reality of life. But this is a metaphysical conclusion +drawn from views of the work at once imperfect and exaggerated; a +conclusion contrary to the spirit of the age, which was not given to a +satire so philosophical and generalizing, and contrary to the character +of Cervantes himself, as we follow it from the time when he first became +a soldier, through all his trials in Algiers, and down to the moment +when his warm and trusting heart dictated the Dedication of "Persiles +and Sigismunda" to the Count de Lemos. His whole spirit, indeed, seems +rather to have been filled with a cheerful confidence in human virtue, +and his whole bearing in life seems to have been a contradiction to that +discouraging and saddening scorn for whatever is elevated and generous, +which such an interpretation of the Don Quixote necessarily implies. + + * * * * * + +At the very beginning of the work, he announces it to be his sole +purpose to break down the vogue and authority of books of chivalry, and +at the end of the whole he declares anew in his own person, that "he +had no other desire than to render abhorred of men the false and absurd +stories contained in books of chivalry;" exulting in his success as an +achievement of no small moment. And such, in fact, it was, for we have +abundant proof that the fanaticism for these romances was so great in +Spain, during the sixteenth century, as to have become matter of alarm +to the more judicious.... + +To destroy a passion that had struck its roots so deeply in the +character of all classes of men, to break up the only reading which +at that time could be considered widely popular and fashionable, was +certainly a bold undertaking, and one that marks anything rather than +a scornful or broken spirit, or a want of faith in what is most to +be valued in our common nature. The great wonder is, that Cervantes +succeeded. But that he did there is no question. No book of chivalry was +written after the appearance of Don Quixote, in 1605; and from the same +date, even those already enjoying the greatest favor ceased, with one or +two unimportant exceptions, to be reprinted; so that, from that time to +the present, they have been constantly disappearing, until they are now +among the rarest of literary curiosities--a solitary instance of the +power of genius to destroy, by a single well-timed blow, an entire +department, and that, too, a flourishing and favored one, in the +literature of a great and proud nation. + +The general plan Cervantes adopted to accomplish this object, without, +perhaps, foreseeing its whole course, and still less all its results, +was simple as well as original. In 1605 he published the first part of +Don Quixote, in which a country gentleman of La Mancha, full of genuine +Castilian honor and enthusiasm, gentle and dignified in his character, +trusted by his friends, and loved by his dependants--is represented as +so completely crazed by long reading the most famous books of chivalry, +that he believes them to be true, and feels himself called on to become +the impossible knight-errant they describe,--nay, actually goes forth, +into the world to defend, the oppressed and avenge the injured, like the +heroes of his romances. + + * * * * * + + +=_James Hall, 1793-1868._= (Manual, p. 510.) + +From "Statistics of the West." + +=_188._= DESCRIPTION OF A PRAIRIE. + +Imagine a stream of a mile in width, whose waters are as transparent as +those of the mountain spring, flowing over beds of rock or gravel. Fancy +the prairie commencing at the water's edge--a natural meadow covered +with grass and flowers, rising, with a gentle slope, for miles, so that +in the vast panorama thousands of acres are exposed to the eye. The +prospect is bounded by a range of low hills, which sometimes approach +the river, and again recede, and whose summits, which are seen gently +waving along the horizon, form the level of the adjacent country.... The +timber is scattered in groves and strips, the whole country being one +vast illimitable prairie, ornamented by small collections of trees.... +But more often we see the single tree, without a companion near, or +the little clump, composed of a few dozen oaks or elms; and not +unfrequently, hundreds of acres embellished with a kind of open +woodland, and exhibiting the appearance of a splendid park, decorated +with skill and care by the hand of taste. Here we behold the beautiful +lawn enriched with flowers, and studded with trees, which are so +dispersed about as not to intercept the prospect, standing singly, so as +not to shade the ground, and occasionally collected in clusters, while +now and then the shade deepens into the gloom of the forest, or opens +into long vistas and spacious plains, destitute of tree or shrub. + +When the eye roves off from the green plain, to the groves, or points of +timber, these also are found ... robed in the most attractive hues. +The rich undergrowth is in full bloom. The red-bud, the dog-wood, the +crab-apple, the wild plum, the cherry, the wild rose, are abundant in +all the rich lands; and the grape-vine, though its blossom is unseen, +fills the air with fragrance. The variety of the wild fruit and +flowering shrubs is so great, and such the profusion of the blossoms +with which they are bowed down, that the eye is regaled almost to +satiety. + +The gayety of the prairie, its embellishments, and the absence of the +gloom and savage wildness of the forest, all contribute to dispel the +feeling of lonesomeness which usually creeps over the mind of the +solitary traveler in the wilderness. Though he may not see a house nor +a human being, and is conscious that he is far from the habitations of +men, he can scarcely divest himself of the idea that he is traveling +through scenes embellished by the hand of art. The flowers so fragile, +so delicate, and so ornamental, seem to have been tastefully disposed +to adorn the scene. The groves and clumps of trees appear to have been +scattered over the lawn to beautify the landscape; and it is not easy to +avoid that illusion of the fancy which persuades the beholder, that such +scenery has been created to gratify the refined taste of civilized man. + + * * * * * + + +=_Henry R. Schoolcraft, 1793-1864._= (Manual, p. 504.) + +From "Oneota." + +=_189._= THE CHIPPEWA INDIAN. + +Of all the existing branches of the Algonquin stock in America, this +extensive and populous tribe appears to have the strongest claims to +intellectual distinction, on the score of their traditions, so far at +least, as the present state of our inquiries extends. They possess +in their curious fictitious legends and lodge-tales, a varied and +exhaustless fund of tradition, which is repeated from generation to +generation. These legends hold, among the wild men of the north, the +relative rank of story-books; and are intended both to amuse and +instruct. This people possess also the art of picture writing in a +degree which denotes that they have been, either more careful, or more +fortunate, in the preservation of this very ancient art of the +human race. Warriors, and the bravest of warriors, they are yet an +intellectual people. + +... They believe that the great Spirit created material matter, and that +He made the earth and heavens, by the power of His will.... He made one +great and master-spirit of evil, to whom He also gave assimilated and +subordinate evil spirits having something of his own nature, to execute +his will. Two antagonist powers, they believe, were thus placed in the +world, who are continually striving for the mastery, and who have power +to affect the lives and fortunes of men. This constitutes the +ground-work of their religion, sacrifices, and worship. + +They believe that animals were created before men, and that they +originally had rule on the earth. By the power of necromancy, some of +these animals were transformed to men, who, as soon as they assumed this +new form, began to hunt the animals, and make war against them. It is +expected that these animals will resume their human shapes, in a future +state, and hence their hunters feign some clumsy excuses for their +present policy of killing them. They believe that all animals, and +birds, and reptiles, and even insects, possess reasoning faculties, +and have souls. It is in these opinions, that we detect the ancient, +doctrine of transmigration. + +One of the most curious opinions of this people is their belief in the +mysterious and sacred character of fire. They obtain sacred fire, for +all national and ecclesiastical purposes, from the flint. Their national +pipes are lighted with this fire. It is symbolical of purity. Their +notions of the boundary between life and death, which is also +symbolically the limit of the material verge between this and a future +state, are revealed in connection with the exhibition of flames of fire. +They also make sacrifices by fire of some part of the first fruits of +the chase. These traits are to be viewed, perhaps, in relation to their +ancient worship of the sun, above noticed, of which the traditions and +belief are still generally preserved. The existence of the numerous +classes of jossakeeds, or mutterers (the word is from the utterance of +sounds low on the earth), is a trait that will remind the reader of a +similar class of men in early ages in the eastern hemisphere. These +persons constitute, indeed, the Magi of our western forests. + + * * * * * + + +=_Edward Everett, 1794-1865._= (Manual, pp. 487, 531.) + +From "Orations and Speeches." + +=_190._= ASTRONOMY, FOR ALL TIME. + +There is much by day to engage the attention of the observatory; the +sun, his apparent motions, his dimensions, the spots on his disk (to +us the faint indications of movements of unimagined grandeur in his +luminous atmosphere), a solar eclipse, a transit of the interior +planets, the mysteries of the spectrum--all phenomena of vast importance +and interest. But night is the astronomer's accepted time: he goes to +his delightful labors when the busy world goes to its rest. A dark pall +spreads over the resorts of active life; terrestrial objects, hill and +valley, and rock and stream, and the abodes of men, disappear; but the +curtain is drawn up which concealed the heavenly hosts. There they shine +and there they move, as they moved and shone to the eyes of Newton and +Galileo, of Kepler and Copernicus, of Ptolemy and Hipparchus; yea, as +they moved and shone when the morning stars sang together, and all the +sons of God shouted for joy. All has changed on earth; but the glorious +heavens remain unchanged. The plough has passed over the remains of +mighty cities, the homes of powerful nations are desolate, the languages +they spoke are forgotten; but the stars that shone for them are shining +for us; the same eclipses run their steady cycle; the same equinoxes +call out the flowers of spring, and send the husbandman to the harvest; +the sun pauses at either tropic, as he did when his course began; and +sun and moon, and planet and satellite, and star, and constellation, and +galaxy, still bear witness to the power, the wisdom, and the love of Him +who placed them in the heavens, and upholds them there. + + * * * * * + +=_191._= DESCRIPTION OF THE SUNRISE. + +Much, however, as we are indebted to our observatories for elevating our +conceptions of the heavenly bodies, they present even to the unaided +sight, scenes of glory which, words are too feeble to describe. I had +occasion, a few weeks since, to take the early train from Providence +to Boston; and for this purpose rose at two o'clock in the morning. +Everything around was wrapt in darkness and hushed in silence, broken +only by what seemed at that hour the unearthly clank and rush of the +train. It was a mild, serene, midsummer's night,--the sky was without a +cloud,--the winds were whist. The moon, then in the last quarter, had +just risen, and the stars shone with a spectral lustre, but little +affected by her presence. Jupiter, two hours high, was the herald of the +day; the Pleiades, just above the horizon, shed their sweet influence +in the east; Lyra sparkled near the zenith; Andromeda veiled her +newly-discovered glories from the naked eye, in the south; the steady +pointers, far beneath the pole, looked meekly up from the depths of the +north, to their sovereign. + +Such was the glorious spectacle as I entered the train. As we proceeded, +the timid approach of twilight became more perceptible; the intense blue +of the sky began to soften; the smaller stars, like little children, +went first to rest; the sister beams of the Pleiades soon melted +together; but the bright constellations of the west and north remained +unchanged. Steadily the wondrous transfiguration went on. Hands of +angels, hidden from mortal eyes, shifted the scenery of the heavens; the +glories of night dissolved into the glories of the dawn. The blue sky +now turned more softly gray; the great watch-stars shut up their holy +eyes; the east began to kindle. Faint streaks of purple soon blushed +along the sky; the whole celestial concave was filled with the inflowing +tides of the morning light, which came pouring down from above in one +great ocean of radiance; till at length, as we reached the Blue Hills, a +flash of purple fire blazed out from above the horizon, and turned the +dewy tear-drops of flower and leaf, into rubies and diamonds. In a few +seconds, the everlasting gates of the morning were thrown wide open, +and the lord of day, arrayed in glories too severe for the gaze of man, +began his state. + +I do not wonder at the superstition of the ancient Magians, who, in the +morning of the world, went up to the hill-tops of Central Asia, and +ignorant of the true God, adored the most glorious work of His hand. But +I am filled with amazement when I am told that in this enlightened age, +and in the heart of the Christian world, there are persons who can +witness this daily manifestation of the power and wisdom of the Creator, +and yet say in their hearts, "there is no God." + + * * * * * + +From a Discourse on the Discover and Colonization of America. + +=_192._= THE CELTIC IMMIGRATION. + +This great Celtic race is one of the most remarkable that has appeared +in history. Whether it belongs to that extensive Indo-European family of +nations, which, in ages before the dawn of history, took up a line of +march in two columns from Lower India, and moving westward by both a +northern and a southward route, finally diffused itself over Western +Asia, Northern Africa, and the greater part of Europe; or whether, as +others suppose, the Celtic race belongs to a still older stock, and was +itself driven down upon the south and into the west of Europe by the +overwhelming force of the Indo-Europeans, is a question which we have +no time at present to discuss. However it may be decided, it would seem +that for the first time, as far as we are acquainted with the fortunes +of this interesting race, they have found themselves in a really +prosperous condition, in this country. Driven from the soil in the west +of Europe, to which their forefathers clang for two thousand years, they +have at length, and for the first time in their entire history, found +a real home in a land of strangers. Having been told, in the frightful +language of political economy, that at the daily table which Nature +spreads for the human family there is no cover laid for them in Ireland, +they have crossed the ocean to find occupation, shelter, and bread, on a +foreign but friendly soil. + +This "Celtic Exodus," as it has been aptly called, is to all the parties +immediately connected with it one of the most important events of the +day. To the emigrants themselves it may be regarded as a passing from +death to life. It will benefit Ireland by reducing a surplus population, +and restoring a sounder and juster relation of capital and labor. It +will benefit the laboring classes in England, where wages have been kept +down to the starvation-point by the struggle between native population +and the inhabitants of the sister island, for that employment and food, +of which there is not enough for both. This benefit will extend from +England to ourselves, and will lessen the pressure of that competition +which our labor is obliged to sustain, with the ill-paid labor of +Europe. In addition to all this, the constant influx into America of +stout and efficient hands supplies the greatest want in a new country, +which is that of labor, gives value to land, and facilitates the +execution of every species of private enterprise and public work. + +I am not insensible to the temporary inconveniences which are to be set +off against these advantages, on both sides of the water. Much suffering +attends the emigrant, there, on his passage, and after his arrival. It +is possible that the value of our native labor may have been depressed +by too sudden and extensive a supply from abroad; and it is certain that +our asylums and alms-houses are crowded with foreign inmates, and the +resources of public and private benevolence have been heavily drawn +upon. These are considerable evils, but they have perhaps been +exaggerated. + + * * * * * + + +=_Hugh S. Legaré, 1797-1843._= (Manual, p. 487.) + +From his "Collected Writings." + +=_193._= THE STUDY OF THE ANCIENT CLASSICS. + +Not to have the curiosity to study the learned languages is not to have +any vocation at all for literature: it is to be destitute of liberal +curiosity and of enthusiasm; to mistake a self-sufficient and +superficial dogmatism for philosophy, and that complacent indolence +which is the bane of all improvement, for a proof of the highest degree +of it.... + +All that we ask, then, is, that a boy should be thoroughly taught the +ancient languages from his eighth to his sixteenth year, or thereabouts, +in which time he will have his taste formed, his love of letters +completely, perhaps enthusiastically, awakened, his knowledge of the +principles of universal grammar perfected, his memory stored with the +history, the geography, and the chronology of all antiquity, and with +a vast fund of miscellaneous literature besides, and his imagination +kindled with the most beautiful and glowing passages of Greek and Roman +poetry and eloquence; all the rules of criticism familiar to him--the +sayings of sages and the achievements of heroes indelibly impressed upon +his heart. He will have his curiosity fired for further acquisition, +and find himself in possession of the golden keys which open all the +recesses where the stores of knowledge have ever been laid up by +civilized man. The consciousness of strength will give him confidence, +and he will go to the rich treasures themselves, and take what he wants, +instead of picking up eleemosynary scraps from those whom, in spite of +himself, he will regard as his betters in literature. He will be let +into that great communion of scholars throughout all ages and all +nations,--like that more awful communion of saints in the holy church +universal,--and feel a sympathy with departed genius, and with the +enlightened and the gifted minds of other countries, as they appear +before him, in the transports of a sort of vision beatific, bowing down +at the same shrines, and flowing with the same holy love of whatever is +most pure, and fair, and exalted, and divine in human nature. + + * * * * * + +From a Review of Kent's Commentaries. + +=_194._= DISADVANTAGES OF COLONIAL LIFE. + +It is our misfortune, in one sense, to have succeeded, at the very +outset of our career, to an over-grown inheritance in the literature of +the mother country, and to have stood for a century in that political +and social relation towards her, which was of all others most +unfavorable to any originality in genius and opinions. Our good +fathers piously spoke of England as their _home_. The inferiority--the +discouraging and degrading inferiority--implied in a state of colonial +dependence, chilled the enthusiasm of talent, and repressed the +aspirations of ambition. Our youth were trained in English schools to +classical learning and good manners; but no scholarship--great as we +believe its efficacy to be--can either inspire or supply, the daring +originality and noble pride of genius, to which, by some mysterious +law of nature, the love of country and a national spirit seem to +be absolutely necessary. We imported our opinions ready-made--"by +balefuls," if it so pleases the Rev. Sidney Smith. We were taught +to read by English school-masters--and to reason by English +authors--English clergymen filled our pulpits, English lawyers our +courts--and above all things, we deferred to and dreaded the dictatorial +authority and withering contempt of English criticism. It is difficult +to imagine a state of things more fatal to intellectual dignity +and enterprise, and the consequences were such as might have been +anticipated. What is still more lamentable, although the cause has in a +good measure ceased, the effect continues, nor do we see any remedy for +the evil until our youth shall be taught to go up to the same original +and ever-living fountains of all literature, at which the Miltons, and +the Barrows, and the Drydens drank in so much of their enthusiasm and +inspiration, and to cast off entirely that slavish dependence upon the +opinions of others which they must feel, who take their knowledge of +what it is either their duty, their interest, or their ambition to +learn, at second hand. + + * * * * * + + +=_Francis L. Hawks, 1798-1866._= (Manual, p. 480.) + +From "Narrative of the United States Expedition to Japan." + +=_195._= JAPAN INTERESTING IN MANY ASPECTS. + +Viewed in any of its aspects, the empire of Japan has long presented to +the thoughtful mind an object of uncommon interest. And this interest +has been greatly increased by the mystery with which, for the last two +centuries, an exclusive policy has sought to surround the institutions +of this remarkable country.... + +The political inquirer, for instance, has wished to study in detail +the form of government, the administration of laws, and the domestic +institutions, under which a nation systematically prohibiting +intercourse with the rest of the world has attained to a state of +civilization, refinement, and intelligence, the mere glimpses of which +so strongly invite further investigation. + +The student of physical geography, aware how much national +characteristics are formed or modified by peculiarities of physical +structure in every country, would fain know more of the lands and the +seas, the mountains and the rivers, the forests and the fields, which +fall within the limits of this almost _terra incognita_. + +... The man of commerce asks to be told of its products and its trade, +its skill in manufactures, the commodities it needs, and the returns it +can supply. + +The scholar asks to be introduced to its literature, that he may +contemplate in historians, poets, and dramatists (for Japan has them +all), a picture of the national mind. + +The Christian desires to know the varied phases of their superstition +and idolatry, and longs for the dawn of that day when a purer faith +and more enlightened worship shall bring them within the circle of +Christendom. + +Amid such a diversity of pursuits as we have enumerated, a common +interest unites all in a common sympathy; and hence the divine and the +philosopher, the navigator and the naturalist, the man of business and +the man of letters, have alike joined in a desire for the thorough +exploration of a field at once so extensive and so inviting. + + * * * * * + + +=_George P. Marsh, 1801-._= (Manual, p. 532.) + +From "Lectures on the English Language." + +=_196._= METHOD OF LEARNING ENGLISH. + +The groundwork of English, indeed, can be, and best is, learned at the +domestic fireside--a school for which there is no adequate substitute; +but the knowledge there acquired is not, as in homogeneous languages, a +root, out of which will spontaneously grow the flowers and the fruits +which adorn and enrich the speech of man. English has been so much +affected by extraneous, alien, and discordant influences, so much +mixed with foreign ingredients, so much overloaded with adventitious +appendages, that it is to most of those who speak it, in a considerable +degree, a conventional and arbitrary symbolism. The Anglo-Saxon tongue +has a craving appetite, and is as rapacious of words, and as tolerant of +forms, as are its children, of territory and of religions. But in spite +of its power of assimilation, there is much of the speech of England +which has never become connatural to the Anglican people; and its +grammar has passively suffered the introduction of many syntactical +combinations, which are not merely irregular, but repugnant. I shall not +here inquire whether this condition of English is an evil. There are +many cases where a complex and cunningly-devised machine, dexterously +guided, can do that which the congenital hand fails to accomplish; but +the computing, of our losses and gains, the striking of our linguistic +balance, belongs elsewhere. Suffice it to say, that English is not a +language which teaches itself by mere unreflecting usage. It can only be +mastered, in all its wealth, in all its power, by conscious, persistent +labor; and therefore, when all the world is awaking to the value of +general philological science, it would ill become us to be slow in +recognizing the special importance of the study of our own tongue. + + * * * * * + +From "Man and Nature." + +=_197._= THE EVERGREENS OF SOUTHERN EUROPE. + +The multitude of species, intermixed as they are in their spontaneous +growth, gives the American forest landscape a variety of aspect not +often seen in the woods of Europe; and the gorgeous tints which nature +repeats from the dying dolphin to paint the falling leaf of the American +maples, oaks, and ash trees, clothe the hill-sides and fringe the +watercourses with a rainbow splendor of foliage, unsurpassed by the +brightest groupings of the tropical flora. It must be admitted, however, +that both the northern and the southern declivities of the Alps exhibit +a nearer approximation to this rich and multifarious coloring of +autumnal vegetation than most American travellers in Europe are willing +to allow; and, besides, the small deciduous shrubs, which often carpet +the forest glades of these mountains, are dyed with a ruddy and orange +glow, which, in the distant landscape, is no mean substitute for the +scarlet and crimson and gold and amber of the trans-atlantic woodland. + +No American evergreen known to me resembles the umbrella pine +sufficiently to be a fair object of comparison with it. A cedar, very +common above the Highlands on the Hudson, is extremely like the cypress, +straight, slender, with erect, compressed ramification, and feathered to +the ground, but its foliage is neither so dark nor so dense, the tree +does not attain the majestic height of the cypress, nor has it the lithe +flexibility of that tree. In mere shape, the Lombardy poplar nearly +resembles this latter, but it is almost a profanation to compare the +two, especially when they are agitated by the wind; for under such +circumstances, the one is the most majestic, the other the most +ungraceful, or--if I may apply such an expression to any thing but human +affectation of movement--the most awkward of trees. The poplar trembles +before the blast, flutters, struggles wildly, dishevels its foliage, +gropes around with its feeblest branches, and hisses as in impotent +passion. The cypress gathers its limbs still more closely to its stem, +bows a gracious salute rather than an humble obeisance to the tempest, +bends to the winds with an elasticity that assures you of its prompt +return to its regal attitude, and sends from its thick leaflets a murmur +like the roar of the far-off ocean. + + * * * * * + + +=_George H. Calvert, 1803-._= (Manual pp. 503, 505.) + +From "First Years in Europe." + +=_198._= ESTIMATE OF COLERIDGE. + +That Coleridge with his mental pockets full of gold, and with a mine in +fee wherefrom he not only replenished his daily purse but enriched his +neighbors, should now and then borrow a guinea, is a fact at which we +should rather smile than frown, or, more fitly, pass by without special +sensation, seeing what has been the practice of the highest,--a practice +which may with full ethical assent be regarded as a privilege inherent +in their supremacy, the free use of all knowledge collected and +experience acquired, no matter when, where, or by whom, being a natural +right of him _who has the genius to turn it to best account_. That in +certain cases where acknowledgment was due it was not made, we may +ascribe to opinion; or to defects which broke the complete rotundity of +such a circle of endowments that without this breach they would have +swollen their possessor to almost preterhuman proportions, empowering +him to "bestride the narrow world like a Colossus." + +Let the truth be spoken of all men. Let no man's greatness be a bar +to full utterance; but let temperance and charity--duties peculiarly +imperative when uttering derogatory truth--be especially observed +towards a resplendent suffering brother like Coleridge, suffering from +his own weakness, but on that very account entitled to a tenderer +consideration from those who are themselves endowed to feel and claim +something more than common human affinity with a nature so large and so +susceptive. Could but a tithe of the fresh insights he has given us be +allowed as an offset against his short-comings, never, from any scholar +of sound sensibilities, would a whisper be heard against his name. Under +the coarse, rusty, one-pronged spur of sectarian or political rancor, +or from the knawing consciousness of sterile inferiority to a creative +mind, plenty of people are ready and eager to try, with their net-work +of flimsy phrases, to cramp the play of a giant's limbs, or, with the +slow slimy poison of envy and malice, to spot and deform his beauty and +his symmetry. To such, to the half-eyed and the half-souled, to the +prosaic and the unsympathetic, be left all harsh condemnation of +Coleridge. + +For the living, not for the dead, are these inadequate words spoken. The +writings of Coleridge--in tone high, refined, noble; in expression rich, +choice, copious; in spirit as pure as the sun's light; intellectually +of rare breadth and mellowness and brilliancy--are a healthful power in +literature, their influence solely for good, warming, strengthening, +elevating. As for Coleridge himself, his is an immortal name; and as +he walks through the ages his robes adjusting themselves with varying +grace, in harmony with the mutations of opinion, his inward life will be +ever fresh to his fellow-men, while his detractors will be shaken from +him as _gryllidoe_ from the tunic of the superb Diana. + + * * * * * + + +=_Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803-_= (Manual pp. 478, 503, 531.) + +From "Essays," Second Series. + +=_199._= INFLUENCE OF NATURE. + +There are days which occur in this climate, at almost any season of +the year, wherein the world reaches its perfection; when the air, the +heavenly bodies, and the earth, make a harmony, as if Nature would +indulge her offspring; when, in these bleak upper sides of the planet, +nothing is to desire that we have heard of the happiest latitudes, and +we bask in the shining hours of Florida and Cuba; when everything that +has life gives sign of satisfaction, and the cattle that lie on the +ground seem to have great and tranquil thoughts. These halcyons may be +looked for with a little more assurance in that pure October weather +which we distinguish by the name of Indian summer. The day, immeasurably +long, sleeps over the broad hills, and warm, wide fields. To have lived +through all its sunny hours seems longevity enough. The solitary places +do not seem quite lonely. At the gates of the forest, the surprised man +of the world is forced to leave his city estimates of great and small, +wise and foolish. The knapsack of custom falls off his back with the +first step he makes into these precincts. Here is sanctity which shames +our religions, and reality which discredits our heroes. + + * * * * * + +From "Society and Solitude." + +=_200._= THE POWER OF CHILDHOOD. + +The perfection of the providence for childhood is easily acknowledged. +The care which covers the seed of the tree under tough husks and, stony +cases, provides, for the human plant, the mother's breast and the +father's house. The size of the nestler is comic, and its tiny +beseeching weakness is compensated perfectly by the happy patronizing +look of the mother, who is a sort of high reposing Providence toward it. +Welcome to the parents the puny straggler, strong in his weakness, his +little arms more irresistible than the soldier's, his lips touched with +persuasion which Chatham and Pericles in manhood had not. His unaffected +lamentations when he lifts up his voice on high, or, more beautiful, the +sobbing child,--the face all liquid grief, as he tries to swallow his +vexation,--soften all hearts to pity, and to mirthful and clamorous +compassion. The small despot asks so little that all reason and all +nature are on his side. His ignorance is more charming than all +knowledge, and his little sins more bewitching than any virtue. His +flesh is angels' flesh, all alive. "Infancy," said Coleridge, "presents +body and spirit in unity: the body is all animated." All day, between +his three or four sleeps, he coos like a pigeon-house, sputters, and +spurs, and puts on his faces of importance; and when he fasts, the +little Pharisee fails not to sound his trumpet before him. By lamp-light +he delights in shadows on the wall; by daylight, in yellow and scarlet. +Carry him out of doors,--he is overpowered by the light and the extent +of natural objects, and is silent. Then presently begins his use of his +fingers, and he studies power, the lesson of his race. First it appears +in no great harm, in architectural tastes. Out of blocks, thread-spools, +cards, and checkers, he will build his pyramid with the gravity of +Palladio. With an acoustic apparatus of whistle and rattle, he explores +the laws of sound. But chiefly, like his senior countrymen, the young +American studies new and speedier modes of transportation. Mistrusting +the cunning of his small legs, he wishes to ride on the necks and +shoulders of all flesh. The small enchanter nothing can withstand, no +seniority of age, no gravity of character; uncles, aunts, grandsires, +grandams, fall an easy prey: he conforms to nobody, all conform to +him; all caper and make mouths, and babble, and chirrup to him. On the +strongest shoulders he rides, and pulls the hair of laurelled heads. + + * * * * * + +=_201._= MAN MUST WORK IN HARMONY WITH PRINCIPLES. + +Civilization depends on morality. Everything good in man leans on what +is higher. This rule holds in small as in great. Thus, all our strength +and success in the work of our hands depend on our borrowing the aid of +the elements. You have seen a carpenter on a ladder with a broad-axe, +chopping upward chips from a beam. How awkward! At what disadvantage he +works! But see him on the ground, dressing his timber under him. Now, +not his feeble muscles, but the force of gravity brings down the axe; +that is to say, the planet itself splits his stick. The farmer had much +ill-temper, laziness, and shirking, to endure from his hand-sawyers +until one day he bethought him to put his saw-mill on the edge of a +waterfall; and the river never tires of turning his wheel; the river is +good-natured, and never hints an objection. + +We had letters to send: couriers could not go fast enough, nor far +enough; broke their wagons, foundered their horses, bad roads in spring, +snow-drifts in winter, heat in summer, could not get the horses out of a +walk. But we found out that the air and earth were full of electricity; +and always going our way,--just the way we wanted to send. _Would he +take a message?_ Just as lief as not; had nothing else to do; +would carry it in no time. Only one doubt occurred, one staggering +objection,--he had no carpet bag, no visible pockets, no hands, not so +much as a mouth, to carry a letter. But, after much thought and many +experiments, we managed to meet the conditions, and to fold up the +letter in such invisible compact form as he could carry in those +invisible pockets of his, never wrought by needle and thread,--and it +went like a charm. + +I admire still more than the saw-mill the skill which, on the sea-shore, +makes the tides drive the wheels and grind corn, and which thus engages +the assistance of the moon like a hired hand, to grind, and wind, and +pump, and saw, and split stone, and roll iron. + +Now that is the wisdom of a man, in every instance of his labor, +to hitch his wagon to a star, and see his chore done by the gods +themselves. That is the way we are strong, by borrowing the might of the +elements. The forces of steam, gravity, galvanism, light, magnets, wind, +fire, serve us day by day, and cost us nothing. + +Our astronomy is full of examples of calling in the aid of these +magnificent helpers. Thus, on a planet so small as ours, the want of +an adequate base for astronomical measurements is early felt, as, for +example, in detecting the parallax of a star. But the astronomer, having +by an observation fixed the place of a star, by so simple an expedient +as waiting six months, and then repeating his observation, contrived +to put the diameter of the earth's orbit, say two hundred millions of +miles, between his first observation and his second, and this line +afforded him a respectable base for his triangle. + +All our arts aim to win this vantage. We cannot bring the heavenly +powers to us, but, if we will only choose our jobs in directions in +which they travel, they will undertake them with the greatest pleasure. +It is a peremptory rule with them, that _they never go out of their +road_. We are dapper little busybodies, and run this way and that +way superserviceably; but they swerve never from their foreordained +paths,--neither the sun, nor the moon, nor a bubble of air, nor a mote +of dust. + +And as our handiworks borrow the elements, so all our social and +political action leans on principles. To accomplish anything excellent, +the will must work for catholic and universal ends. A puny creature +walled in on every side, as Daniel wrote,-- + + "Unless above himself he can, + Erect himself, how poor a thing is man!" + +but when his will leans on a principle, when, he is the vehicle of +ideas, he borrows their omnipotence. Gibraltar may be strong, but ideas +are impregnable, and bestow on the hero their invincibility. "It was +a great instruction," said a saint in Cromwell's war, "that the best +courages are but beams of the Almighty." Hitch your wagon to a star. Let +us not fag in paltry works which serve our pot and bag alone. Let us not +lie and steal. No god will help. We shall find all their teams going the +other way. Charles's Wain, Great Bear, Orion, Leo, Hercules: every god +will leave us. Work rather for those interests which the divinities +honor and promote,--justice, love, freedom, knowledge, utility. + + * * * * * + +=_202._= RULES FOR READING. + +Be sure, then, to read no mean books. Shun the spawn of the press on the +gossip of the hour. Do not read what you shall learn without asking, in +the street and the train. Dr. Johnson said, "he always went into stately +shops;" and good travelers stop at the best hotels; for, though they +cost more, they do not cost much more, and there is the good company and +the best information. In like manner, the scholar knows that the famed +books contain, first and last, the best thoughts and facts. Now and +then, by rarest luck, in some foolish grub street is the gem we want. +But in the best circles is the best information. If you should transfer +the amount of your reading day by day from the newspaper to the standard +authors.--But who dare speak of such a thing. + +The three practical rules, then, which I have to offer, are: 1st. Never +read any book that is not a year old. 2d. Never read any but famed +books. 3d. Never read any but what you like; or, in Shakespeare's +phrase, + + "No profit goes where is no pleasure ta'en: + In brief, sir, study what you most affect." + +Montaigne says, "Books are a languid pleasure;" but I find certain books +vital and spermatic, not leaving the reader what he was: he shuts the +book a richer man. I would never willingly read any others than such. + + * * * * * + + +=_John Russell Bartlett, 1805-._= + +From the "Personal Narrative of Explorations," &c. + +=_203._= LYNCH LAW AT EL PASO. + +On the present occasion, circumstances rendered it necessary for safety, +as well as for the purpose of warning the desperate gang who were now +about to have their deserts, that all should be doubly armed. In the +court-room, therefore, where one of the most solemn scenes of human +experience was enacting, all were armed save the prisoners. There sat +the judge, with a pistol lying on the table before him; the clerks and +attorneys wore revolvers at their sides; and the jurors were either +armed with similar weapons, or carried with them the unerring rifle. The +members of the commission and citizens, who were either guarding the +prisoners or protecting the court, carried by their sides a revolver, a +rifle, or a fowling-piece, thus presenting a scene more characteristic +of feudal times than of the nineteenth century. The fair but sun-burnt +complexion of the American portion of the jury, with their weapons +resting against their shoulders, and pipes in their mouths, presented a +striking contrast to the swarthy features of the Mexicans, muffled in +checkered _serapes_, holding their broad-brimmed glazed hats in their +hands, and delicate cigarritos in their lips. The reckless, unconcerned +appearance of the prisoners, whose unshaven faces and dishevelled hair +gave them the appearance of Italian bandits rather than of Americans or +Englishmen, the grave and determined bearing of the bench; the varied +costume and expression of the spectators and members of the Commission, +clad in serapes, blankets, or overcoats, with their different weapons, +and generally with long beards, made altogether one of the most +remarkable groups which ever graced a court-room.... + +The evidence being closed, a few remarks were now made by the +prosecuting attorney, followed by the charge of the judge, when the case +was given to the jury. In a short time they returned into court with a +verdict of guilty, against William Craig, Marcus Butler, and John Wade; +upon whom the judge then pronounced sentence of death. + +The prisoners were now escorted to the little plaza or open square in +front of the village church, where the priest met them, to give such +consolation as his holy office would afford. But their conduct, +notwithstanding the desire on the part of all to afford them every +comfort their position was susceptible of, continued reckless and +indifferent, even to the last moment. Butler alone was affected. He wept +bitterly, and excited much sympathy by his youthful appearance, being +but 21 years of age. His companions begged him "not to cry, as he could +die but once." + +The sun was setting when they arrived at the place of execution. The +assembled spectators formed a guard around a small alamo, or poplar +tree, which had been selected for the gallows. It was fast growing +dark, and the busy movements of a large number of the associates of the +condemned, dividing and collecting again in small bodies at different +points around and outside of the party, and then approaching nearer +to the centre, proved that an attack was meditated, if the slightest +opportunity should be given. But the sentence of the law was carried +into effect. + + * * * * * + + +=_Nathaniel Parker Willis, 1807-1867._= (Manual, pp. 504, 519.) + +From "Pencillings by the Way." + +=_204._= THE AMERICAN ABROAD. + +It is a queer feeling to find oneself a _foreigner_. One can not realize +long at a time how his face or his manners should have become peculiar; +and after looking at a print for five minutes in a shop-window, or +dipping into an English book, or in any manner throwing off the mental +habit of the instant, the curious gaze of the passer-by, or the accent +of a strange language, strikes one very singularly. Paris is full of +foreigners of all nations, and of course physiognomies of all characters +may be met everywhere; but, differing as the European nations do +decidedly from each other, they differ still more from the American. Our +countrymen, as a class, are distinguishable wherever they are met; not +as Americans however, for of the habits and manners of Our country, +people know nothing this side the water. But there is something in an +American face, of which I never was aware till I met them in Europe, +that is altogether peculiar. The French take the Americans to be +English; but an Englishman, while he presumes him his countryman, shows +a curiosity to know who he is, which is very foreign to his usual +indifference. As far as I can analyze it, it is the independent, +self-possessed bearing of a man unused to look up to any one as his +superior in rank, united to the inquisitive, sensitive, communicative +expression which is the index to our national character. The first is +seldom possessed in England but by a man of decided rank, and the latter +is never possessed by an Englishman at all. The two are united in no +other nation. Nothing is easier than to tell the rank of an Englishman, +and nothing puzzles an European more than to know how to rate the +pretensions of an American.... + + * * * * * + +From "Ephemera." + +=_205._= CHARACTER AND WRITINGS OF JAMES HILLHOUSE. + +Like the public feeling, the condition and powers of criticism toward +an author's fame, are essentially changed by his death. His personal +character, and the events of his life--the foreground, so to speak, in +the picture of his mind, are, till this event, wanting to the critical +perspective; and when the hand to correct is cold, and the ear to be +caressed and wounded is sealed, some of the uses of censure, and all +reserve in comparison and final estimate, are done away. + + * * * * * + +Such men as Hillhouse are not common, even in these days of universal +authorship. In accomplishment of mind and person, he was probably second +to no man. His poems show the first. They are fully conceived, nicely +balanced, exquisitely finished--works for the highest taste to relish, +and for the severest student in dramatic style to erect into a model. +Hadad was published in 1825, during my second year in college, and to +me it was the opening of a new heaven of imagination. The leading +characters possessed me for months, and the bright, clear, harmonious +language was, for a long time, constantly in my ears. The author was +pointed out to me, soon after, and for once, I saw a poet whose mind was +well imaged in his person. In no part of the world have I seen a man of +more distinguished mien, or of a more inborn dignity and elegance of +address. His person was very finely proportioned, his carriage chivalric +and high-bred, and his countenance purely and brightly intellectual. +Add to this a sweet voice, a stamp of high courtesy on everything he +uttered, and singular simplicity and taste in dress, and you have the +portrait of one who, in other days, would have been the mirror of +chivalry, and the flower of nobles and troubadours. Hillhouse was no +less distinguished in oratory. + +... Hillhouse had fallen upon days of thrift, and many years of his life +which he should have passed either in his study, or in the councils of +the nation, were enslaved to the drudgery of business. His constitution +seemed to promise him a vigorous manhood, however, and an old age of +undiminished fire, and when he left his mercantile pursuits, and retired +to the beautiful and poetic home of "Sachem's Wood," his friends looked +upon it as the commencement of a ripe and long enduring career +of literature. In harmony with such a life were all his +surroundings--scenery, society, domestic refinement, and +companionship--and never looked promise fairer for the realization of a +dream of glory. That he had laid out something of such a field in the +future, I chance to know, for, though my acquaintance with him was +slight, he confided to me in a casual conversation, the plan of a series +of dramas, different from all he had attempted, upon which he designed +to work with the first mood and leisure he could command. And with his +scholarship; knowledge of life, taste, and genius, what might not have +been expected from its fulfilment? But his hand is cold, and his lips +still, and his light, just rising to its meridian, is lost now to the +world. Love and honor to the memory of such a man. + + * * * * * + + +=_Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1807-. _= (Manual, pp. 503, 505.) + +From "Hyperion." + +=_206._= THE INTERRUPTED LEGEND. + +One by one the objects of our affection depart from us. But our +affections remain, and like vines stretch forth their broken, wounded +tendrils for support. The bleeding heart needs a balm to heal it; and +there is none but the love of its kind,--none but the affection of a +human heart. Thus the wounded, broken affections of Flemming began to +lift themselves from the dust and cling around this new object. Days +and weeks passed; and, like the Student Crisostomo, he ceased to love, +because he began to adore. And with this adoration mingled the prayer, +that, in that hour when the world is still, and the voices that praise +are mute, and reflection cometh like twilight, and the maiden, in her +day dreams, counted the number of her friends, some voice in the sacred +silence of her thoughts might whisper his name. + +They were sitting together one morning, on the green, flowery meadow, +under the ruins of Burg Unspunnen. She was sketching the ruins. The +birds were singing, one and all, as if there were no aching hearts, no +sin nor sorrow, in the world. So motionless was the bright air, that the +shadow of the trees lay engraven on the grass. The distant snow-peaks +sparkled in the sun, and nothing frowned, save the square tower of the +old ruin above them. + +"What a pity it is," said the lady, as she stopped to rest her weary +fingers, "what a pity it is, that there is no old tradition connected +with this ruin!" + +"I will make you one, if you wish," said Flemming. + +"Can you make old traditions?" + +"O, yes! I made three, the other day, about the Rhine, and one very old +one about the Black Forest. A lady with dishevelled hair; a robber with +a horrible slouched hat; and a night storm among the roaring pines." + +"Delightful! Do make one for me." + +"With the greatest pleasure. Where will you have the scene? Here, or in +the Black Forest." + +"In the Black Forest, by all means! Begin." + +"I will unite this ruin and the forest together. But first promise not +to interrupt me. If you snap the golden threads of thought, they will +float away on the air like the film of the gossamer, and I shall never +be able to recover them." + +"I promise." "Listen, then, to the Tradition of 'THE FOUNTAIN OF +OBLIVION.'" + +"Begin." + +Flemming was reclining on the flowery turf, at the lady's feet, looking +up with dreamy eyes into her sweet face, and then into the leaves of the +linden-trees overhead. + +"Gentle Lady! Dost thou remember the linden trees of Bülach,--those +tall and stately trees, with velvet down upon their shining leaves, and +rustic benches underneath their overhanging eaves? A leafy dwelling, fit +to be the home of elf or fairy, where first I told my love to thee, +thou cold and stately Hermione! A little peasant girl stood near, +and listened all the while, with eyes of wonder and delight, and an +unconscious smile, to hear the stranger still speak on in accents deep +yet mild,--none else was with us in that hour, save God and that little +child!" + +"Why, it is in rhyme!" + +"No, no! the rhyme is only in your imagination. You promised not to +interrupt me, and you have already snapped asunder the gossamer threads +of as sweet a dream as was ever spun from a poet's brain." + +"It certainly did rhyme!" + + * * * * * + + +=_Henry Reed, 1808-1854._= (Manual, p. 501.) + +From "Lectures on English History." + +=_207._= LEGENDARY PERIOD OF BRITISH HISTORY. + +It would be a weary, and probably vain inquiry to consider minutely the +claims which such historical materials have on our belief; and so little +is there attractive in the legends of British history, that I need +not attempt to dwell upon any of the alleged facts. But I wish before +passing from this part of my subject, briefly to examine the curious +tenacity with which the belief in this legendary literature was once +held, and to show that it was not relinquished until a more critical +standard of historic belief was adopted, and scientific investigation +took the place of uninquiring and passive credulity. It has been said +that no man, before the sixteenth century, presumed to doubt that the +Britons were descended from Brutus the Trojan; and it is equally certain +that no modern writer could presume confidently to assert it. + +... It is most difficult for us, in these later days of higher standards +of historic credibility, to form anything like an adequate conception, +of the entire and unquestioning confidence which was felt for the story +of British origin, and the race of ancient British kings. Of this +feeling there is a curious proof in a transaction in the reign of Edward +I., when the sovereignty of Scotland was claimed by the English monarch. +The Scots sought the interposition and protection of the pope, alleging +that the Scottish realm belonged of right to the see of Rome. Boniface +VIII., a pontiff not backward in asserting the claims of the papacy, +did interpose to check the English conquest, and was answered by an +elaborate and respectful epistle from Edward, in which the English claim +is most carefully and confidently derived from the conquest of the whole +country by the Trojans in the times of Eli and Samuel--assuredly a +very respectable antiquity of some two thousand four hundred years. +No Philadelphia estate could be more methodically traced back to the +proprietary title of William Penn, than was this claim to Scotland up to +Brutus, the exile from Troy.... Now, all this is set forth with the most +imperturbable seriousness, and with an air of complete assurance of the +truth. It appears, too, to have fully answered the purpose intended; +and the Scots, finding that the papal antiquity was but a poor defence +against such claims, and as if determined not to be outdone by the +Southron, replied in a document asserting their independence by virtue +of descent from Scota, one of the daughters of Pharaoh. The pope seems +to have been silenced in a conflict of ancestral authority, in which the +succession of St. Peter seemed quite a modern affair, when overshadowed, +by such Trojan and Egyptian antiquity. + + * * * * * + + +=_Caroline M. Kirkland, 1808-1864._= (Manual, p. 484.) + +From "Forest Life." + +=_208._= THE FELLING OF A GREAT TREE. + +One darling tree,--a giant oak which looked as if half a dozen Calibans +might have been pegged in its knotty entrails--this one tree, the +grandfather of the forest, we thought we had saved. It stood a little +apart,--it shadowed no man's land,--it shut the broiling sun from +nobody's windows, so we hoped it might be allowed to die a natural +death. But one unlucky day, a family fresh from "the 'hio" removed into +a house which stood at no great distance from this relic of primeval +grandeur. These people were but little indebted to fortune, and the size +of their potato-patch did not exactly correspond with the number of +rosy-cheeks within doors. So the loan of a piece of ground was a small +thing to ask or to grant. Upon this piece of lent land stood our +favorite oak. The potatoes were scarcely peeping green above the soil, +when we observed that the great boughs which we looked at admiringly a +dozen times a day, as they towered far above the puny race around them, +remained distinct in their outline, instead of exhibiting the heavy +masses of foliage which had usually clothed them before the summer +heat began. Upon nearer inspection it was found that our neighbor had +commenced his plantation by the operation of girdling the tree, for +which favor he expected our thanks, observing pithily that "nothing +wouldn't never grow under sich a great mountain as that!" It is well +that "Goth" and "Vandal" are not actionable. + +Yet the felling of a great tree has something of the sublime in it. When +the axe first falls on the trunk of a stately oak, laden with the green +wealth of a century, or a pine whose aspiring peak might look down on a +moderate church steeple, the contrast between the puny instrument and +the gigantic result to be accomplished approaches the ridiculous. But as +"the eagle towering in his pride of place was, by a mousing owl, hawked +at and killed," so the leaf-crowned monarch of the wood has no small +reason to quiver at the sight of a long-armed Yankee approaching his +deep-rooted trunk with an awkward axe. One blow seems to accomplish +nothing: not even a chip falls. But with another stroke comes a broad +slice of the bark, leaving an ominous, gaping wound. Another pair of +blows extends the gash, and when twenty such have fallen, behold a +girdled tree. This would suffice to kill, and a melancholy death it is; +but to fell is quite another thing.... Two deep incisions are made, +yet the towering crown sits firm as ever. And now the destroyer +pauses,--fetches breath,--wipes his beaded brow, takes a wary view +of the bearings of the tree,--and then with a slow and watchful care +recommences his work. The strokes fall doubtingly, and many a cautious +glance is cast upward, for the whole immense mass now trembles, as if +instinct with life, and conscious of approaching ruin. Another blow! it +waves,--a groaning sound is heard--... yet another stroke is necessary. +It is given with desperate force, and the tall peak leaves its place +with an easy sailing motion accelerated every instant, till it crashes +prone on the earth, sending far and wide its scattered branches, and +letting in the sunlight upon the cool, damp, mossy earth, for the first +time perhaps in half a century. + + * * * * * + +From "Western Clearings." + +=_209._= THE BEE TREE. + +One of the greatest temptations to our friend Silas, and to most of his +class, is a bee hunt. Neither deer, nor 'coons, nor prairie hens, nor +even bears, prove half as powerful enemies to anything like regular +business, as do these little thrifty vagrants of the forest. The +slightest hint of a bee tree will entice Silas Ashburn and his sons from +the most profitable job of the season, even though the defection is sure +to result in entire loss of the offered advantage; and if the hunt prove +successful, the luscious spoil is generally too tempting to allow of +any care for the future, so long as the "sweet'nin" can be persuaded to +last. "It costs nothing," will poor Mrs. Ashburn observe; "let 'em enjoy +it. It isn't often we have such good luck." + + * * * * * + + +=_Margaret Fuller Ossoli, 1810-1850._= (Manual, p. 502.) + +From "At Home and Abroad." + +=_210._= CHARACTER OF CARLYLE. + +Accustomed to the infinite wit and exhuberant richness of his writings, +his talk is still an amazement and a splendor scarcely to be faced with +steady eyes. He does not converse,--only harangues. It is the usual +misfortune of such marked men (happily not one invariable or inevitable) +that they cannot allow other minds room to breathe and show themselves +in their atmosphere, and thus miss the refreshment and instruction which +the greatest never cease to need from the experience of the humblest. +Carlyle allows no one a chance, but bears down all opposition, not only +by his wit and onset of words, resistless in their sharpness as so many +bayonets, but by actual physical superiority, raising his voice and +rushing on his opponent with a torrent of sound. This is not the least +from unwillingness to allow freedom to others; on the contrary, no +man would more enjoy a manly resistance to his thought; but it is the +impulse of a mind accustomed to follow out its own impulse as the hawk +its prey, and which knows not how to stop in the chase. Carlyle, indeed, +is arrogant and overbearing, but in his arrogance there is no littleness +or self-love: it is the heroic arrogance of some old Scandinavian +conqueror,--it is his nature, and the untamable impulse that has given +him power to crush the dragons. You do not love him, perhaps, nor +revere, and perhaps, also, he would only laugh at you if you did; but +you like him heartily, and like to see him the powerful smith, the +Siegfried, melting all the old iron, in his furnace till it glows to a +sunset red, and burns you if you senselessly go too near. He seemed to +me quite isolated, lonely as the desert; yet never was man more fitted +to prize a man, could he find one to match his mood. He finds such, but +only in the past. He sings rather than talks. He pours upon you a kind +of satirical, heretical, critical poem, with regular cadences, and +generally catching up near the beginning some singular epithet, which +serves as a _refrain_ when his song is full, or with which as with a +knitting-needle he catches up the stitches, if he has chanced now and +then to let fall a row. For the higher kinds of poetry he has no sense, +and his talk on that subject is delightfully and gorgeously absurd; he +sometimes stops a minute to laugh at it himself, then begins anew with +fresh vigor; for all the spirits he is driving before him seem to him as +Fata Morgana; ugly masks in fact, if he can but make them turn about, +but he laughs that they seem to others such dainty Ariels. He puts out +his chin sometimes till it looks like the beak of a bird, and his eyes +flash bright instinctive meanings like Jove's bird; yet he is not calm +and grand enough for the eagle: he is more like the falcon, and yet not +of gentle blood enough for that either. He is not exactly like anything +but himself, and therefore you cannot see him without the most hearty +refreshment and goodwill, for he is original, rich, and strong enough to +afford a thousand faults; one expects some wild land in a rich kingdom. +His talk, like his books, is full of pictures, his critical strokes +masterly; allow for his point of view, and his survey is admirable. He +is a large subject; I cannot speak more nor wiselier of him now, nor +needs it; his works are true, to blame and praise him, the Siegfried of +England, great and powerful, if not quite invulnerable, and of a might +rather to destroy evil than legislate for good. At all events, he seems +to be what Destiny intended, and represents fully a certain side; so we +make no remonstrance as to his being and proceeding for himself, though +we sometimes must for us. + + * * * * * + + +=_Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1809-._= (Manual, p. 520.) + +From "The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table." + +=_211._= CONSEQUENCES OF EXPOSING AN OLD ERROR. + +Did you never, in walking in the fields, come across a large flat stone +which had lain, nobody knows how long, just where you found it, with the +grass forming a little hedge, as it were, all round it, close to its +edges,--and have you not, in obedience to a kind of feeling that told +you it had been lying there long enough, insinuated your stick, or your +foot, or your fingers, under its edge, and turned it over as a housewife +turns a cake, when she says to herself, "It's done brown enough by this +time?" What an odd revelation, and what an unforeseen and unpleasant +surprise to a small community, the very existence of which you had not +suspected, until the sudden dismay and scattering among its members +produced by your turning the old stone over! Blades of grass flattened +down, colorless, matted together, as if they had been bleached and +ironed; hideous crawling creatures, some of them coleopterous or +horny-shelled,--turtle-bugs one wants to call them; some of them softer +but cunningly spread out and compressed like Lepine watches; (Nature +never loses a crack or a crevice, mind you, or a joint in a tavern +bedstead, but she always has one of her flat pattern live timekeepers +to slide into it;) black, glossy crickets, with their long filaments +sticking out like the whips of four-horse stage-coaches; motionless, +slug-like creatures, young larvae, perhaps more horrible in their pulpy +stillness than even in the infernal wriggle of maturity. But no sooner +is the stone turned and the wholesome light of day let upon this +compressed and blinded community of creeping things, than all of them +which enjoy the luxury of legs--and some of them have a good many--rush +round wildly, butting each other and everything in their way, and end in +a general stampede for underground retreats from the region poisoned by +sunshine. _Next year_ you will find the grass growing tall and green +where the stone lay; the ground-bird builds her nest where the beetle +had his hole; the dandelion and the buttercup are growing there, and the +broad fans of insect-angels open and shut over their golden disks, as +the rhythmic waves of blissful consciousness pulsate through their +glorified being. + +--The young fellow whom they call John saw fit to say, in his very +familiar way,--at which I do not choose to take offence, but which I +sometimes think it necessary to repress,--that I was coming it rather +strong on the butterflies. + +No, I replied; there is meaning in each of those images, the butterfly +as well as the others. The stone is ancient error. The grass is human +nature borne down and bleached of all its color by it. The shapes which +are found beneath are the crafty beings that thrive in darkness, and the +weaker organisms kept helpless by it. He who turns the stone over is +whosoever puts the staff of truth to the old lying incubus, no matter +whether he do it with a serious face or a laughing one. The next year +stands for the coming time. Then shall the nature which had lain +blanched and broken, rise in its full stature and native hues, in the +sunshine. Then shall God's minstrels build their nests in the hearts of +a new-born humanity. Then shall beauty--Divinity taking outlines and +color--light upon the souls of men as the butterfly, image of the +beautified spirit rising from the dust, soars from the shell that held +a poor grub, which would never have found wings, had not the stone been +lifted. + +You never need think you can turn over any old falsehood without a +terrible squirming and scattering of the horrid little population that +dwells under it. + + * * * * * + +=_212._= PLEASURES OF BOATING. + +I dare not publicly name the rare joys, the infinite delights, that +intoxicate me on some sweet June morning, when the river and bay are +smooth as a sheet of beryl-green silk, and I run along ripping it up +with my knife-edged shell of a boat, the rent closing after me like +those wounds of angels which Milton tells of, but the seam still shining +for many a long road behind me. To lie still, over the Flats, where the +waters are shallow, and see the crabs crawling and the sculpins gliding +busily and silently beneath the boat,--to rustle in through the long +harsh grass that leads up some tranquil creek,--to take shelter from the +sunbeams under one of the thousand-footed bridges, and look down its +interminable colonnades, crusted with green and oozy growths, studded +with minute barnacles, and belted with rings of dark muscles, while +overhead, streams and thunders that other river, whose every wave is +a human soul flowing to eternity as the river below flows to the +ocean,--lying there moored unseen, in loneliness so profound that +the columns of Tadmoor in the Desert could not seem more remote from +life,--the cool breeze on one's forehead, the stream whispering against +the half-sunken pillars,--why should I tell of these things, that I +should live to see my beloved haunts invaded and the waves blackened +with boats as with a swarm of water-beetles? What a city of idiots +we must be, not to have covered this glorious bay with gondolas and +wherries, as we have just learned to cover the ice in winter with +skaters! + + * * * * * + +From "The Guardian Angel." + +=_213._= THE UNSPOKEN DECLARATION. + +Myrtle had, perhaps, never so seriously inclined her ear to the honeyed +accents of the young pleader. He flattered her with so much tact, +that she thought she heard an unconscious echo through his lips of an +admiration which he only shared with all around him. But in him he made +it seem discriminating, deliberate, not blind, but very real. This it +evidently was which had led him to trust her with his ambitions and his +plans,--they might be delusions, but he could never keep them from her, +and she was the one woman in the world to whom he thought he could +safely give his confidence. + +The dread moment was close at had. Myrtle was listening with an +instinctive premonition of what was coming,--ten thousand mothers and +grandmothers, and great-grandmothers, and so on, had passed through it +all in preceding generations, until time readied backwards to the sturdy +savage who asked no questions of any kind, but knocked down the primeval +great-grandmother of all, and carried her off to his hole in the rock, +or into the tree where he had made his nest. Why should not the coming +question announce itself by stirring in the pulses, and thrilling in the +nerves, of the descendant of all these grandmothers? + +She was leaning imperceptibly towards him, drawn by the mere blind +elemental force, as the plummet was attracted to the side of +Schehallien. Her lips were parted, and she breathed a little faster than +so healthy a girl ought to breathe in a state of repose. The steady +nerves of William Murray Bradshaw felt unwonted thrills and tremors +tingling through them, as he came nearer and nearer the few simple words +with which he was to make Myrtle Hazard the mistress of his destiny. His +tones were becoming lower and more serious; there were slight breaks +once or twice in the conversation; Myrtle had cast down her eyes. + +"There is but one word more to add," he murmured softly, as he bent +towards her-- + +A grave voice interrupted him. "Excuse me, Mr. Bradshaw," said Master +Byles Gridley, "I wish to present a young gentleman to my friend here. I +promised to show him the most charming young person I have the honor to +be acquainted with, and I must redeem my pledge. Miss Hazard, I have +the pleasure of introducing to your acquaintance my distinguished young +friend, Mr. Clement Lindsay." + + * * * * * + +From "Currents and Counter Currents." + +=_214._= MECHANISM OF VITAL ACTION. + +But if the student of nature and the student of divinity can once agree +that all the forces of the universe, as well as all its power, +are immediately dependent upon its Creator,--that He is not only +omni_potent_ but omni_movent_,--we have no longer any fear of nebular +theories, or doctrines of equivocal generation, or of progressive +development.... + +We begin then by examining the general rules which the Creator seems +to have prescribed to His own operations. We ask, in the first place, +whether He is wont, so far as we know, to employ a great multitude +of materials, patterns, and forces, or whether He has seen fit to +accomplish many different ends by the employment of a few of these only. + +In all our studies of external nature, the tendency of increasing +knowledge has uniformly been to show that the rules of creation are +simplicity of material, economy of inventive effort, and thrift in the +expenditure of force. All the endless forms in which matter presents +itself to us, are resolved by chemistry into some three-score supposed +simple substances, some of these perhaps being only modifications of the +same element. The shapes of beasts and birds, of reptiles and fishes, +vary in every conceivable degree; yet a single vertebra is the pattern +and representation of the framework of them all, from eels to elephants. +The identity reaches still further,--across a mighty gulf of being,--but +bridges it over with a line of logic as straight as a sunbeam, and as +indestructible as the scymitar-edge that spanned the chasm, in the fable +of the Indian Hades. Strange as it may sound, the tail which the serpent +trails after him in the dust, and the head of Plato, were struck in the +die of the same primitive conception, and differ only in their special +adaptation to particular ends. Again, the study of the movements of the +universe has led us, from their complex phenomena, to the few simple +forces from which they flow. The falling apple and the rolling planet +are shown to obey the same tendency. The stick of sealing-wax which +draws a feather to it, is animated by the same impulse that convulses +the stormy heavens. These generalizations have simplified our view of +the grandest material operations, yet we do not feel that creative power +and wisdom have been shorn of any single ray, by the demonstrations of +Newton, or of Franklin. On the contrary, the larger the collection of +seemingly heterogeneous facts we can bring under the rule of a single +formula, the nearer we feel that we have reached towards the source +of knowledge, and the more perfectly we trace the little arc of +the immeasurable circle which comes within the range of our hasty +observations, at first like the broken fragments of a many-sided +polygon, but at last as a simple curve which encloses all we know, or +can know, of nature. To our own intellectual wealth, the gain is like +that of the over-burdened traveller, who should exchange hundred-weights +of iron for ounces of gold. Evanescent, formless, unstable, impalpable, +a fog of uncondensed experiences hovers over our consciousness like an +atmosphere of uncombined gases. One spark of genius shoots through +it, and its elements rush together and glitter before us in a single +translucent drop. It would hardly be extravagant to call Science the art +of packing knowledge. + + * * * * * + + +=_John William Draper,[52] 1810-._= + +From the "Human Physiology." + +=_215._= TRUTHS IN THE ANCIENT PHILOSOPHIES. + +It is not my intention to enter on an examination, or even enumeration, +of ancient philosophical opinions, nor to show that many of the +doctrines which have been brought forward within the last three +centuries existed in embryo in those times. It may, however, be observed +that, in the midst of much error, there were those who held just views +of the various problems of theology, law, politics, philosophy, and +particularly of the fundamental doctrines of natural science, the +constitution of the solar system, the geological history of the earth, +the nature of chemical forces, the physiological relations of animals +and plants. + +It is supposed by many, whose attention has been casually drawn to the +philosophical opinions of antiquity, that the doctrines which we still +retain as true came to the knowledge of the old philosophers, not so +much by processes of legitimate investigation as by mere guessing or +crude speculation, for which there was an equal chance whether they were +right or wrong; but a closer examination will show that many of them +must have depended on results previously determined or observed by the +Africans or Asiatics, and thus they seem to indicate that the human mind +has undergone in twenty centuries but little change in its manner of +action, and that, commencing with the same data, it always comes to the +same conclusions. Nor is this at all dependent on any inherent logic +of truth. Very many of the errors of antiquity have re-appeared in our +times. If the Greek schools were infected with materialism, pantheism, +and atheism, the later progress of philosophy has shown the same +characters. To a certain extent, such doctrines will receive an +impression from the prevailing creeds, but the arguments which have been +appealed to in their favor have always been the same. The distinction +between these heresies in ancient and modern times lies chiefly in the +grosser characters which they formerly assumed, arising partly from +the reflected influence of the existing mythology, and partly from the +imperfections of exact knowledge. Even the errors of early antiquity are +venerable. We must judge our predecessors by the rules by which we +hope posterity will judge us, making a generous allowance for the +imperfections of reason, the infirmities of character, and especially +for the prejudices of the times. To have devoutly believed in the +existence of a human soul, to have looked forward to its continuing +after the death of the body, to have expected a future state of rewards +and punishments, and to have drawn therefrom, as a philosophical +conclusion, the necessity of leading a virtuous life--these, though +they may be enveloped in a cloud of errors, are noble results of the +intellect of man. + +[Footnote 52: Distinguished as an author in chemistry +and physiology, and as a philosophical historian: a native of England, +but long a professor in New York University.] + + * * * * * + +From "Thoughts on the Future Civil Policy of America." + +=_216._= PROSPECTIVE INFLUENCES OF THE REPUBLIC. + +Now, when, we consider the position of the American continent,--its +Atlantic front looking upon Europe, its Pacific front looking upon +Asia,--when we reflect how much Nature has done for it in the wonderful +river system she has bestowed, and how varied are the mineral and +agricultural products it yields, it would seem as if we should be +constrained by circumstances to carry out spontaneously in practical +life the abstract suggestions of policy.... Great undertakings, such +as the construction of the Pacific Railroad, pressed into existence by +commercial motives and fostered for military reasons, will indirectly +accomplish political objects not yielding in importance to those that +are obvious and avowed. + +A few years more, and the influence of the great republic will +resistlessly extend in a direction that will lead to surprising +results.... The stream of Chinese emigration already setting into +California is but the precursor of the flood that is to come. Here are +the fields, there are the men. The dominant power on the Pacific Ocean +must necessarily exert a controlling influence in the affairs of Asia. + +The Roman empire is regarded, perhaps not unjustly, as the most imposing +of all human political creations. Italy extended her rule across the +eastern and western basins of the Mediterranean Sea, from the confines +of Parthia to Spain. A similar central, but far grander, position is +occupied by the American continent. The partitions of an interior and +narrow sea are replaced by the two great oceans. But, since history ever +repeats itself, the maxims that guided the policy of Rome in her advance +to sovereignty are not without application here. Her mistakes may be +monitions to us. + +A great, a homogeneous, and yet an active people, having strength and +security in its political institutions, may look forward to a career of +glory. It may, without offense, seek to render its life memorable in the +annals of the human race. + + * * * * * + + +=_James Russell Lowell, 1810-._= (Manual, pp. 503, 520.) + +From "Among my Books." + +=_217._= NEW ENGLAND TWO CENTURIES AGO. + +I have little sympathy with declaimers about the Pilgrim Fathers, who +look upon them all as men of grand conceptions and superhuman foresight. +An entire ship's company of Columbuses is what the world never saw. It +is not wise to form any theory and fit our facts to it, as a man in a +hurry is apt to cram his traveling-bag, with a total disregard of shape +or texture. But perhaps it may be found that the facts will only fit +comfortably together on a single plan, namely, that the fathers did have +a conception (which those will call grand who regard simplicity as a +necessary element of grandeur) of founding here a commonwealth on +those two eternal bases of Faith and Work; that they had, indeed, no +revolutionary ideas of universal liberty; but yet, what answered the +purpose quite as well, an abiding faith in the brotherhood of man and +the fatherhood of God; and that they did not so much propose to make all +things new, as to develop the latent possibilities of English law and +English character by clearing away the fences by which the abuse of +the one was gradually discommoning the other from the broad fields of +natural right. They were not in advance of their age, as it is called, +for no one who is so can ever work profitably in it; but they were alive +to the highest and most earnest thinking of their time. + + * * * * * + +=_218._= From an "Essay on Dryden." + +I do not think he added a single word to the language, unless, as +I suspect, he first used magnetism in its present sense of moral +attraction. What he did in his best writing was, to use the English as +if it were a spoken, and not merely an inkhorn language; as if it were +his own to do what he pleased with it, as if it need not be ashamed of +itself. In this respect, his service to our prose was greater than +any other man has ever rendered. He says he formed his style upon +Tillotson's (Bossuet on the other hand, formed _his_ upon Corneille's); +but I rather think he got it at Will's, for its greatest charm is, that +it has the various freedom of talk. In verse, he has a pomp which, +excellent in itself, became pompousness in his imitators. But he had +nothing of Milton's ear for various rhythm and interwoven harmony. He +knew how to give new modulation, sweetness, and force to the pentameter; +but in what used to be called pindarics, I am heretic enough to think +he generally failed. + + * * * * * + +From "My Study Windows." + +=_219._= LOVE OF BIRDS AND SQUIRRELS. + +Wilson's thrush comes every year to remind me of that most poetic of +ornithologists. He flits before me through the pine-walk like the very +genius of solitude. A pair of pewees have built immemorially on a +jutting brick in the arched entrance to the ice-house. Always on the +same brick, and never more than a single pair, though two broods of five +each are raised there every summer. How do they settle their claim to +the homestead? By what right of primogeniture? Once, the children of a +man employed about the place oölogized the nest, and the pewees left us +for a year or two. I felt towards those boys as the messmates of the +Ancient Mariner did towards him after he had shot the albatross. But the +pewees came back at last, and one of them is now on his wonted perch, so +near my window that I can hear the click of his bill as he snaps a fly +on the wing.... The pewee is the first bird to pipe up in the morning; +and, during the early summer he preludes his matutinal ejaculation of +_pewee_ with a slender whistle, unheard at any other time. He saddens +with the season, and, as summer declines, he changes his note to _eheu, +pewee_! I as if in lamentation. Had he been an Italian bird, Ovid would +have had a plaintive tale to tell about him. He is so familiar as often +to pursue a fly through the open window into my library. + +There is something inexpressibly dear to me in these old friendships of +a lifetime. There is scarce a tree of mine but has had, at some time or +other, a happy homestead among its boughs, to which I cannot say, + + "Many light hearts and wings, + Which now be dead, lodged in thy living bowers." + +My walk under the pines would lose half its summer charm were I to miss +that shy anchorite, the Wilson's thrush, nor hear in haying time +the metallic ring of his song, that justifies his rustic name of +_scythe-whet_. I protect my game as jealously as an English squire. If +anybody had oölogized a certain cuckoo's nest I know of (I have a pair +in my garden every year), it would have left me a sore place in my mind +for weeks. I love to bring these aborigines back to the mansuetude they +showed to the early voyagers, and before (forgive the involuntary pun), +they had grown accustomed to man and knew his savage ways. And they +repay your kindness with a sweet familiarity too delicate ever to breed +contempt. I have made a Penn-treaty with them, preferring that to the +Puritan way with the native, which converted them to a little Hebraism +and a great deal of Medford rum. If they will not come near enough to me +(as most of them will), I bring them close with an opera-glass,--a much +better weapon than a gun. I would not, if I could, convert them from +their pretty pagan ways. The only one I sometimes have savage doubts +about, is the red squirrel. I _think_ he oölogizes; I _know_ he eats +cherries, (we counted five of them at one time in a single tree, the +stones pattering down like the sparse hail that preludes a storm), and +that he knaws off the small end of pears to get at the seeds. He steals +the corn from under the noses of my poultry. But what would you have? He +will come down upon the limb of the tree I am lying under, till he is +within a yard of me. He and his mate will scurry up and down the great +black-walnut for my diversion, chattering like monkeys. Can I sign his +death-warrant who has tolerated me about his grounds so long? Not I. Let +them steal, and welcome, I am sure I should, had I the same bringing up +and the same temptation. As for the birds, I do not believe there is one +of them but does more good than harm; and of how many featherless bipeds +can this be said. + + * * * * * + +=_220._= CHAUCER'S LOVE OF NATURE. + +He was the first great poet who really loved outward nature as the +source of conscious pleasurable emotion. The Troubadour hailed the +return of spring, but with him it was a piece of empty ritualism. +Chaucer took a true delight in the new green of the leaves, and the +return of singing birds--a delight as simple as that of Robin Hood:-- + + "In summer when the shaws be sheen, + And leaves be large and long, + It is full merry in fair forest + To hear the small birds' song." + +He has never so much as heard of the burthen and the mystery of all +this unintelligible world. His flowers and trees and birds have never +bothered themselves with Spinoza. He himself sings more like a bird than +any other poet, because it never occurred to him, as to Goethe, that he +ought to do so. He pours himself out in sincere joy and thankfulness. +When we compare Spenser's imitations of him with the original passages, +we feel that the delight of the later poet was more in the expression +than in the thing itself. Nature, with him, is only to be transfigured +by art. We walk among Chaucer's sights and sounds; we listen to +Spenser's musical reproduction of them. In the same way the pleasure +which Chaucer takes in telling his stories, has, in itself, the effect +of consummate skill, and makes us follow all the windings of his fancy +with sympathetic interest. His best tales run on like one of our inland +rivers, sometimes hastening a little and turning upon themselves in +eddies, that dimple without retarding the current, sometimes loitering +smoothly, while here and there a quiet thought, a tender feeling, a +pleasant image, a golden-hearted verse, opens quietly as a water-lily to +float on the surface without breaking it into ripple.... Chaucer never +shows any signs of effort, and it is a main proof of his excellence that +he can be so inadequately sampled by detached passages, by single lines +taken away from the connection in which they contribute to the general +effect. He has that continuity of thought, that evenly prolonged power, +and that delightful equanimity, which characterize the higher orders of +mind. There is something in him of the disinterestedness that made the +Greeks masters in art. His phrase is never importunate. His simplicity +is that of elegance, not of poverty. The quiet unconcern with which he +says his best things is peculiar to him among English poets, though +Goldsmith, Addison, and Thackeray, have approached it in prose. He +prattles inadvertently away, and all the while, like the princess in the +story, lets fall a pearl at every other word. It is such a piece of +good luck to be natural. It is the good gift which the fairy god-mother +brings to her prime favorites in the cradle. If not genius, it is alone +what makes genius amiable in the arts. If a man have it not he will +never find it; for when it is sought it is gone. + + * * * * * + + +=_Edgar Allen Poe, 1811-1849._= (Manual, p. 510.) + +From "The Masque of the Red Death." + +=_221._= CHIMING OF THE CLOCK. + +... The seventh apartment was closely shrouded in black velvet +tapestries that hung all over the ceiling and down the walls, falling in +heavy folds upon a carpet of the same material and hue. But in this +chamber only, the color of the windows failed to correspond with the +decorations. The panes here were scarlet--a deep blood color. Now in no +one of the seven apartments was there any lamp or candelabrum, amid the +profusion of golden ornaments that lay scattered to and fro, or depended +from the roof. There was no light of any kind emanating from lamp or +candle within the suite of chambers. But in the corridors that followed +the suite, there stood, opposite to each window, a heavy tripod, bearing +a brazier of fire, that projected its rays through the tinted glass and +so glaringly illumined the room. And thus were produced a multitude of +gaudy and fantastic appearances. But in the western or black chamber, +the effect of the fire-light that streamed upon the dark hangings +through the blood-tinted panes, was ghastly in the extreme, and produced +so wild a look upon the countenances of those who entered, that there +were few of the company bold enough to set foot within its precincts at +all. + +It was in this apartment, also, that there stood against the western +wall, a gigantic clock of ebony. Its pendulum swung to and fro with a +dull, heavy, monotonous clang; and when the minute-hand made the circuit +of the face, and the hour was to be stricken, there came from the brazen +lungs of the clock a sound which was clear and loud and deep, and +exceedingly musical, but of so peculiar a note and emphasis that, at +each lapse of an hour, the musicians of the orchestra were constrained +to pause, momentarily, in their performance, to hearken to the sound; +and thus the waltzers perforce ceased their evolutions; and there was a +brief disconcert of the whole gay company; and, while the chimes of the +clock yet rang, it was observed that the giddiest grew pale, and the +more aged and sedate passed their hands over their brows, as if in +confused revery or meditation. But when the echoes had fully ceased, a +light laughter at once pervaded the assembly; the musicians looked at +each other and smiled, as if at their own nervousness and folly, and +made whispering vows, each to the other, that the next chiming of the +clock should produce in them no similar emotion; and then, after the +lapse of sixty minutes, (which embrace three thousand and six hundred +seconds of the Time that flies,) there came yet another chiming of +the clock, and then were the same disconcert and tremulousness and +meditation as before. + + * * * * * + +From his "Essays." + +=_222._= The Philosophy of Composition. + +There is a radical error, I think, in the usual mode of constructing +a story. Either history affords a thesis--or one is suggested by an +incident of the day--or, at best, the author sets himself to work in +the combination of striking events to form merely the basis of his +narrative--designing, generally, to fill in with description, dialogue, +or autorial comment, whatever crevices of fact, or action, may, from +page to page, render themselves apparent. + +I prefer commencing with the consideration of an _effect_, keeping +originality _always_ in view--for he is false to himself who ventures to +dispense with so obvious and so easily attainable a source of interest. +I say to myself, in the first place, "Of the innumerable effects, or +impressions, of which the heart, the intellect, or (more generally) +the soul, is susceptible, what one shall I, on the present occasion, +select?" Having chosen a novel, first, and secondly a vivid, effect, I +consider whether it can be best wrought by incident or tone, whether by +ordinary incidents and peculiar tone, or the converse, or by peculiarity +both of incident and tone--afterward looking about me (or rather within) +for such combinations of event, or tone, as shall best aid me in the +construction of the effect. + +I have often thought how interesting a magazine paper might be written +by any author who would--that is to say, who could--detail, step by +step, the process by which any one of his compositions attained its +ultimate point of completion. Why such a paper has never been given to +the world, I am much at a loss to say--but, perhaps, the autorial vanity +has had more to do with the omission than any one other cause. Most +writers, poets in especial, prefer having it understood that they +compose by a species of fine frenzy, an ecstatic intuition, and would +positively shudder at letting the public take a peep behind the scenes, +at the elaborate and vacillating crudities of thought--at the true +purposes seized only at the last moment--at the innumerable glimpses of +idea that arrived not at the maturity of full view--at the fully matured +fancies discarded in despair as unmanageable--at the cautious selections +and rejections--at the painful erasures and interpolations--in a +word, at the wheels and pinions, the tackle for scene-shifting--the +step-ladders and demon-traps--the cock's feathers, the red paint and +the black patches, which, in ninety-nine cases out of the hundred, +constituted the properties of the literary _histrio_. + +I am aware, on the other hand, that the case is by no means common in +which an author is at all in condition to retrace the steps by which his +conclusions have been attained. In general, suggestions having arisen +pell-mell, are pursued and forgotten in a similar manner. + + * * * * * + + +=_Henry T. Tuckerman, 1813-._= + +From "New England Philosophy," an Essay from "The Optimist." + +=_223._= THE HEART SUPERIOR TO THE INTELLECT. + +Constant supplies of knowledge to the intellect, and the exclusive +cultivation of reason, may, indeed, make a pedant and a logician; but +the probability is, these benefits--if such they are--will be gained at +the expense of the soul. Sentiment, in its broadest acceptation, is as +essential to the true enjoyment and grace of life as mind. Technical +information, and that quickness of apprehension which New Englanders +call smartness, are not so valuable to a human being as sensibility to +the beautiful, and a spontaneous appreciation of the divine influences +which fill the realms of vision and of sound, and the world of action +and, feeling. The tastes, affections, and sentiments are more absolutely +the man than his talents or acquirements. And yet it is by, and through, +the latter that we are apt to estimate character, of which they are +at best but fragmentary evidences. It is remarkable that in the New +Testament, allusions to the intellect are so rare, while the "heart" and +the "spirit we are of" are ever appealed to.... + +To what end are society, popular education, churches, and all the +machinery of culture, if no living truth is elicited which fertilizes, +as well as enlightens. Shakespeare undoubtedly owed his marvelous +insight into the human soul, to his profound sympathy with man. He might +have conned whole libraries on the philosophy of the passions, he might +have coldly observed facts for years, and never have conceived of +jealousy like Othello's,--the remorse of Macbeth, or love like that of +Juliet.... + +Sometimes, in musing upon genius in its simpler manifestations, it seems +as if the great art of human culture consisted chiefly in preserving the +glow and freshness of the heart. It is certain that, in proportion as +its merely mental strength and attainment take the place of natural +sentiment, in proportion as we acquire the habit of receiving all +impressions through the reason, the teachings of Nature grow indistinct +and cold.... It is when we are overcome, and the pride of intellect +vanquished before the truth of nature, when instead of coming to a +logical decision we are led to bow in profound reverence before the +mysteries of life, when we are led back to childhood, or up to God, by +some powerful revelation of the sage or minstrel, it is then our natures +grow. To this end is all art. Exquisite vocalism, beautiful statuary, +and painting, and all true literature, have not for their great object +to employ the ingenuity of prying critics, or furnish the world with a +set of new ideas, but to move the whole nature by the perfection and +truthfulness of their appeal. There is a certain atmosphere exhaled from +the inspired page of genius, which gives vitality to the sentiments, and +through these, quickens the mental powers. And this is the chief good of +books. + + * * * * * + + +=_H.N. Hudson, 1814-._= (Manual, pp. 480, 501.) + +From "Preface to the Works of Shakespeare." + +=_224._= Shakespeare's Works Instructive. + +It is true, he often lays on us burdens of passion that would not be +borne in any other writer. But whether he wrings the heart with pity, or +freezes the blood with terror, or fires the soul with indignation, the +genial reader still rises from his pages refreshed. The reason of which +is, instruction keeps pace with excitement: he strengthens the mind +in proportion as he loads it. He has been called the great master of +passion: doubtless he is so; yet he makes us think as intensely as he +requires us to feel; while opening the deepest fountains of the heart, +he at the same time unfolds the highest energies of the head. Nay, with +such consummate art does he manage the fiercest tempests of our being, +that in a healthy mind the witnessing of them is always attended with +an overbalance of pleasure. With the very whirlwinds of passion he so +blends the softening and alleviating influences of poetry, that they +relish of nothing but sweetness and health.... He is not wont to exhibit +either utterly worthless or utterly faultless monsters; persons too +good, or too bad, to exist; too high to be loved, or too low to be +pitied; even his worst characters (unless we should except Goneril and +Regan, and even their blood is red like ours) have some slight fragrance +of humanity about them, some indefinable touches, which redeem them from +utter hatred and execration, and keep them within the pale of human +sympathy, or at least of human pity. + + * * * * * + + +=_Mary Henderson Eastman,[53]_= about =_1815-._= + +From "The American Aboriginal Port Folio." + +=_225._= Lake Itasca, the Source of the Mississippi. + +There it lay--the beautiful lake--swaying its folds of crystal water +between the hills that guarded it from its birth. There it lay, placid +as a sleeping child, the tall pines on the surrounding summits standing +like so many motionless and watchful sentinels for its protection. + +There was the sequestered birthplace of that mighty mass of waters, +that, leaving the wilderness of beauty where they lived undisturbed and +unknown, wound their way through many a desolate prairie, and fiercely +lashed the time-worn bluffs, whose sides were as walls to the great +city, where lived and died the toiling multitude. The lake was as some +fair and pure, maiden, in early youth, so beautiful, so full of repose +and truth, that it was impossible to look and not to love.... There was +but one landing to the lake, our travellers found. It was on a small +island, that they called Schoolcraft's Island. On a tall spruce tree +they raised the American flag. There was enough in the novelty of the +scenery, and of the event, to interest the white men of the party. There +was a solemnity mingled with their pleased emotions; for who had made +this grand picture, stretching out in its beauty and majesty before +them? What were they, in comparison with the great and good Being upon +whose works they were gazing? + +[Footnote 53: This lady--a native of Virginia--has written several +interesting books, chiefly relating to Indian tradition.] + + * * * * * + +=_226._= A PLEA FOR THE INDIANS. + +The light of the great council-fire--its blaze once illumined the entire +country we now call our own--is faintly gleaming out its unsteady and +dying rays. Our fathers were guests, and warmed themselves by its +hospitable rays; now we are lords, and rule with an iron hand over those +who received kindly, and entertained generously, the wanderer who came +from afar to worship his God according to his own will. The very hearth +where moulder the ashes of this once never-ceasing fire, is becoming +desolate, the decaying embers sometimes starting into a brief +brilliancy, and then fading into a gloom more sad, more silent, than +ever. Soon will be scattered, as by the winds of heaven, the last ashes +that remain. Think of it, O legislator! as thou standest in the Capitol, +the great council-hall of thy country; plead for them, "upon whose +pathway death's dark shadow falls." + + * * * * * + + +=_Mary E. Moragne,[54] 1815-._= + +From "The Huguenot Town." + +=_227._= RUINS OF THE OLD FRENCH SETTLEMENT. + +An ignorance of the common methods of agriculture practised here, as +well as strong prejudices in favor of their former habits of living, +prevented them from seizing with avidity on large bodies of land, by +individual possession; but the site of a town being selected, a lot of +four acres was apportioned to every citizen. In a short time a hundred +houses had risen, in a regularly compact body, in the square of which +stood a building superior in size and construction to the rest.... + +... The town was soon busy with the industry of its tradesmen; silk and +flax were manufactured, whilst the cultivators of the soil were taxed +with the supply of corn and wine. The hum of cheerful voices arose +during the week, mingled with the interdicted songs of praise; and on +the Sabbath the quiet worshippers assembled in their rustic church, +listened with fervent response to that faithful pastor, who had been +their spiritual leader through perils by sea and land, and who now +directed their free, unrestrained devotion to the Lord of the forest. + +... The woods still wave on in melancholy grandeur, with the added glory +of near a hundred years; but they who once lived and worshipped beneath +them--where are they? Shades of my ancestors,--where? No crumbling +wreck, no mossy ruin, points the antiquarian research to the place of +their sojourn, or to their last resting-places! The traces of a narrow +trench, surrounding a square plat of ground, now covered with the +interlacing arms of hawthorn and wild honey-suckle, arrest the attention +as we are proceeding along a strongly beaten track in the deep woods, +and we are assured that this is the site of the "old French town" which +has given its name to the portion of country around. + +[Footnote 54: One of the best female writers of South Carolina, who has +of late years laid aside her pen.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Richard H. Dana, Jr., 1815-._= (Manual, p. 504.) + +From "Two years before the Mast." + +=_228._= LOSS OF A MAN AT SEA. + + +Death is at all tunes solemn, but never so much so as at sea. A man dies +on shore; his body remains with his friends, and "the mourners go about +the streets;" but when a man falls overboard at sea and is lost, there +is a suddenness in the event, and a difficulty in realizing it, which +give to it an air of awful mystery. A man dies on shore--you follow his +body to the grave, and a stone marks the spot. You are often prepared +for the event. There is always something which helps you to realize it +when it happens, and to recall it when it has passed. A man is shot down +by your side in battle, and the mangled body remains an object, and a +real evidence; but at sea, the man is near you--at your side--you hear +his voice, and in an instant he is gone, and nothing but a vacancy shows +his loss. Then too, at sea--to use a homely but expressive phrase--you +miss a man so much. A dozen men are shut up together in a little bark, +upon the wide, wide sea, and for months and months see no forms and hear +no voices but their own, and one is taken suddenly from among them, and +they miss him at every turn. It is like losing a limb. There are no new +faces or new scenes to fill up the gap. There is always an empty berth +in the forecastle, and one man wanting when the small night watch is +mustered. There is one less to take the wheel, and one less to lay out +with you upon the yard. You miss his form, and the sound of his voice, +for habit had made them almost necessary to you, and each of your senses +feels the loss. + +All these things make such a death peculiarly solemn, and the effect of +it remains upon the crew for some time. There is more kindness shown by +the officers to the crew, and by the crew to one another. There is more +quietness and seriousness. The oath and the loud laugh are gone. The +officers are more watchful, and the crew go more carefully aloft. The +lost man is seldom mentioned, or is dismissed with a sailor's rude +eulogy, "Well, poor George is gone. His cruise is up soon. He knew his +work, and did his duty, and was a good shipmate." Then usually follows +some allusion to another world, for sailors are almost all believers; +but their notions and opinions are unfixed, and at loose ends. They +say,--"God won't be hard upon the poor fellow," and seldom get beyond +the common phrase which seems to imply that their sufferings and hard +treatment here, will excuse them hereafter. _To work hard, live hard, +die hard, and go to hell after all_, would be hard indeed. + +Yet a sailor's life is at best but a mixture of a little good with much +evil, and a little pleasure with much pain. The beautiful is linked with +the revolting, the sublime with the common-place, and the solemn with +the ludicrous. + +We had hardly returned on board with our sad report, before an auction +was held of the poor man's clothes. The captain had first, however, +called all hands aft, and asked them if they were satisfied that +everything had been done to save the man, and if they thought there was +any use in remaining there longer. The crew all said that it was in +vain, for the man did not know how to swim, and was very heavily +dressed. So we then filled away and kept her off to her course. + + * * * * * + + +=_Evert A. Duyckinck, 1816--._= (Manual, p. 502.) + +Essay from "Arcturus." + +=_229._= NEWSPAPERS. + +No one, it has been said, ever takes up a newspaper without interest, or +lays it down without regret. There is a deeper truth in this observation +than at first thought strikes the mind; it is not the casual +disappointment at the loss of fine writing, or the absence of particular +topics of news, or the variety of subjects that dispel all deep-settled +reflection; but a newspaper is in some measure a picture of human life, +and we can no more read its various paragraphs with pleasure, than +we can look back upon the events of any single day with, unmingled +satisfaction.... A man may learn, sitting by his fireside, more than +an angel would desire to know of human life, by reading well a single +newspaper. It is an instrument of many tones, running through the whole +scale of humanity; from the lightest gayety to the gravest sadness; from +the large interests of nations to the humblest affairs of the smallest +individual. On its single page we read of Births, Marriages, and Deaths; +the daily, almost hourly, register of royalty, how it eat, walked, and +laughed; and the single incident the world deems worth recording of the +life of poverty--how it died. It is a picture of motley human life; +a poet's thought, or an orator's eloquence in one column, and the +condemnation of a pickpocket in another.... + +Doubtless it was a very satisfactory thing for a Roman poet, when the +wind was quiet, to get an audience about him, under a portico, and +unwind his well-written scroll for an hour or two; but there must have +been a vast deal of secret machinery, and influence, and agitation, +to keep up his name with the people. The followers of Pythagoras, in +another country, we know, said he had a golden leg, and this satisfied +the people that his philosophy was divine. Truly were they the dark ages +before the invention of newspapers. Besides, what became of literature +when the poet's voice in the public bath, or library, where he recited, +was drowned by the din of arms?... + +What would we not give for a newspaper of the days of Homer, with +personal recollections of the contractors and commanders in the siege of +Troy; a reminiscence of Helen; the unedited fragments of Nestor; or a +traditional saying of Ulysses, who may be supposed too wise to have +published? What such a passage of literature would be to us, the journal +of to-day may be to some long distant age, when it is disentombed from +the crumbling corner-stone of some Astor House, Exchange, or Trinity +Church, on the deserted shore of an island, once New York. What +matters of curiosity would be poured fourth for the attention of the +inquisitive; how many learned theories which had sprung up in the +interim, put to rest; what anxiety moralists would be under to know the +number of churches, the bookseller's advertisements, and the convictions +at the Sessions! Some might be supposed to sigh over our lack of +improvement, the infant state of the arts, and our ineffectual attempts +at electro-magnetism, while others would dwell upon the old times when +Broadway was gayer with life, and the world got along better, than it +has ever done since. + + * * * * * + + +=_Horace Binney Wallace,[55] 1817-1852._= + +From "Art, Scenery, and Philosophy in Europe." + +=_230._= ART AN EMANATION OF RELIGIOUS AFFECTION. + +The spirit, conscious of an emotion of reverence for some unseen subject +of its own apprehension, desires to substantiate and fix its deity, and +to bring the senses into the same adoring attitude; and this can be done +only by setting before them a material representation of the divine. +This is illustrated in the universal and inveterate tendency of early +nations to idolatry.... + +How and why was it that the sculpture of the Greeks attained a character +so exalted that it shines on through our time, with a beam of glory +peculiar and inextinguishable? When we enter the chambers of the +Vatican, we are presently struck with the mystic influence that rays +from those silent forms that stand ranged along the walls. Like the +moral prestige that might encircle the vital presence of divine beings, +we behold divinities represented in human shapes idealized into a +significance altogether irresistible. What constitutes that idealizing +modification we know not; but we feel that it imparts to the figures +an interest and impressiveness which natural forms possess not. These +sculptured images seem directly to address the imagination. They do not +suffer the cold and critical survey of the eye, but awaken an instant +and vivid mental consideration. + +... It has sometimes been suggested that the superiority of the Greeks +in delineating the figure, arose from the familiarity with it which they +acquired from their frequent opportunities of viewing it nude,--on +account of their usages, costumes, climate, &c. This is too superficial +an account of that vital faculty of skill and knowledge upon this +subject, which was a part of the inherent capacity of the Greek.... The +outflow and characteristic exercise of Grecian inspiration in sculpture, +was in the representation of their mythology, which included heroes, or +deified men, as well as gods of the first rank. Later, it extended to +winners at the public games, athletes, runners, boxers;--but this class +of persons partook, in the national feeling, of a heroic or half-divine +superiority. A particular type of form, highly ideal, became appropriate +to them, as to the heroes, and to each of the gods. It may be added, +that a capacity thus derived from religious impressibility, extended to +a great number of natural forms, which were to the Greeks measurably +objects of a divine regard. Many animals as connected with the gods, or +with sacrifices, were sacred beings to them, and became subjects of +their surpassing gift in sculpture. In general, nature,--the visible, +the sensible, the actual, was to the Hellenic soul, Religion; as inward +and reflective emotions were and are, to the modern European. + +[Footnote 55: A young writer of great cultivation and of uncommon +promise. His premature death occurred while on a tour in Europe. A +native of Philadelphia.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Henry David Thoreau, 1817-1862._= (Manual, p. 532.) + +From "Autumnal Tints." + +=_231._= DESCRIPTION OF "POKE" OR GARGET, (_Phytolacca Decandra_.) + +Some which stand under our cliffs quite dazzle me with their purple +stems now, and early in September. They are as interesting to me as most +flowers, and one of the most important fruits of our autumn. Every part +is flower, (or fruit,) such is its superfluity of color,--stem, +branch, peduncle, pedicel, petiole, and even the at length yellowish +purple-veined leaves. Its cylindrical racemes of berries of various +hues, from green to dark purple, six or seven inches long, are +gracefully drooping on all sides, offering repasts to the birds; and +even the sepals from which the birds have picked the berries are a +brilliant lake-red, with crimson, flame-like reflections, equal to +anything of the kind,--all on fire with ripeness. Hence the _lacca_, +from lac, lake. There are at the same time flower-buds, flowers, green +berries, dark purple or ripe ones, and these flower-like sepals, all on +the same plant. + +We love to see any redness in the vegetation of the temperate zone. It +is the color of colors. This plant speaks to our blood. It asks a bright +sun on it to make it show to best advantage, and it must be seen at +this season of the year. On warm hill-sides its stems are ripe by the +twenty-third of August. At that date I walked through a beautiful grove +of them, six or seven feet high, on the side of one of our cliffs, where +they ripen early. Quite to the ground they were a deep brilliant purple +with a bloom, contrasting with the still clear green leaves. It appears +a rare triumph of Nature to have produced and perfected such a plant, as +if this were enough for a summer. What a perfect maturity it arrives +at! It is the emblem of a successful life concluded by a death not +premature, which is an ornament to Nature. What if we were to mature as +perfectly, root and branch, glowing in the midst of our decay, like the +Poke! I confess that it excites me to behold them. I cut one for a cane, +for I would fain handle and lean on it. I love to press the berries +between my fingers, and see their juice staining my hand. To walk amid +these upright, branching casks of purple wine, which retain and diffuse +a sunset glow, tasting each one with your eye, instead of counting the +pipes on a London dock,--what a privilege! For Nature's vintage is not +confined to the vine. Our poets have sung of wine, the product of a +foreign plant which commonly they never saw, as if our own plants had +no juice in them more than the singers. Indeed, this has been called by +some the American grape, and though a native of America, its juices are +used in some foreign countries to improve the color of the wine; so that +the poetaster maybe celebrating the virtues of the Poke without knowing +it. Here are berries enough to paint afresh the western sky, and play +the bacchanal with, if you will. And what flutes its ensanguined stems +would make, to be used in such a dance! It is truly a royal plant. I +could spend the evening of the year musing amid the Poke-stems. And +perchance amid these groves might arise at last a new school of +philosophy or poetry. + + * * * * * + +From "Walden, or Life in the Woods." + +=_232._= WALDEN POND. + +The greatest depth was exactly one hundred and two feet, to which may +be added the five feet which it has risen since, making one hundred and +seven. This is a remarkable depth for so small an area; yet not an inch +of it can be spared by the imagination. What if all ponds were shallow? +Would it not react on the minds of men? I am thankful that this pond was +made deep and pure for a symbol. While men believe in the infinite, some +ponds will be thought to be bottomless. + + * * * * * + +From "Life without Principle." + +=_233._= WANTS OF THE AGE. + +I saw, the other day, a vessel which had been wrecked, and many lives +lost, and her cargo of rags, juniper-berries, and bitter almonds, was +strewn along the shore. It seemed hardly worth the while to tempt the +dangers of the sea between Leghorn and New York, for the sake of a cargo +of juniper-berries and bitter almonds. America sending to the Old World +for her bitters! Is not the sea-brine,--is not shipwreck, bitter enough, +to make the cup of life go down here? Yet such, to a great extent, is +our boasted commerce; and there are those who style themselves statesmen +and philosophers who are so blind as to think that progress and +civilization depend on precisely this kind of interchange and +activity,--the activity of flies about a molasses-hogshead. Very well, +observes one, if men were oysters. And very well, answer I, if men were +mosquitoes. + +Lieutenant Herndon, whom our Government sent to explore the Amazon, +and, it is said, to extend the area of Slavery, observed that there was +wanting there "an industrious and active population, who know what the +comforts of life are, and who have artificial wants to draw out the +great resources of the country." But what are the "artificial wants" to +be encouraged? Not the love of luxuries, like the tobacco and slaves +of, I believe, his native Virginia, nor the ice and granite and other +material wealth of our native New England; nor are "the great resources +of a country" that fertility or barrenness of soil which produces these. +The chief want, in every State that I have been into, was a high and +earnest purpose in its inhabitants. This alone draws out "the great +resources" of Nature and at last taxes her beyond her resources; for man +naturally dies out of her. When we want culture more than potatoes, and +illumination more than sugar-plums, then the great resources of a world +are taxed and drawn out, and the result, or staple production, is, not +slaves, nor operatives, but men,--those rare fruits called heroes, +saints, poets, philosophers, and redeemers. + + * * * * * + + +=_Elisabeth F. Ellett, 1818-._= (Manual, pp. 484, 490.) + +From "Pioneer Women of the West" + +=_234._= ESCAPE OF MARY BLEDSOE FROM THE INDIANS. + +It was not consistent with Spencer's chivalrous character to attempt to +save himself by leaving his companion to the mercy of the foe. Bidding +her retreat as fast as possible, and encouraging her to keep her seat +firmly, he protected her by following more slowly in her rear, with his +trusty rifle in his hand. When the Indians in pursuit came too near, +he would raise his weapon as if to fire; and as he was known to be an +excellent marksman, the savages were not willing to encounter him, but +hastened to the shelter of trees, while he continued his retreat. In +this manner he kept them at bay for some miles, not firing a single +shot--for he knew that his threatening had more effect--until Mrs. +Bledsoe reached a station. Her life and his own, were, on this occasion, +saved by his prudence and presence of mind; for both would have been +lost had he yielded to the temptation to fire.... + +Bereaved of her husband, sons, and brother-in-law, by the murderous +savages, Mrs. Bledsoe was obliged to undertake not only the charge of +her husband's estate, but the care of the children, and their education +and settlement in life. These duties were discharged with unwavering +energy and Christian patience.... The record of her worth, and of what +she did and suffered, may win little attention from the careless many, +who regard not the memory of our "pilgrim mothers;" but the recollection +of her gentle virtues has not yet faded from the hearts of her +descendants, and those to whom they tell the story of her life will +acknowledge her the worthy companion of those noble men to whom belongs +the praise of having originated a new colony, and built up a goodly +state in the bosom of the forest. Their patriotic labors, their +struggles with the surrounding savages, their efforts in the maintenance +of the community they had founded,--sealed, as they finally were, with +their own blood, and the blood of their sons and relatives,--will never +be forgotten while the apprehension of what is noble, generous, and +good, survives in the hearts of their countrymen. + + * * * * * + + +=_James Jackson Jarves, 1818-._= (Manual, p. 531.) + +From "Art Hints." + +=_235._= THE ART IDEA. + +The first duty of art, as we have already intimated, is to make our +public buildings and places, as instructive and enjoyable as possible. +They should be pleasurable, full of attractive beauty and eloquent +teachings. Picturesque groupings of natural objects, architectural +surprises, sermons from the sculptor's chisel and the painter's palette, +the ravishment of the soul by its superior senses, the refinement of +mind and body by the sympathetic power of beauty,--these are a +portion of the means which a due estimation of art, as an element of +civilization, inspires the ruling will to provide freely for all. If art +be kept a rare and tabooed thing, a specialty for the rich and powerful, +it excites in the vulgar mind, envy and hate; but proffer it freely to +the public, and the public soon learns to delight in and protect it as +its rightful inheritance. It also tends to develop a brotherhood of +thought and feeling. During the civil strifes of Italy, art flourished +and was respected. Indeed, to some extent, it operated as a sort of +peace society, and was held sacred when nothing else was. Even rude +soldiers, amid the perils and necessities of sieges, turned aside +destruction from the walls that sheltered it. The history of art is full +of records of its power to soften and elevate the human heart. As soon +would man, were it possible, mar one of God's sunsets, as cease to +respect what genius has confided to his care, when once his mind has +been awakened to its meaning. + +The desire for art being awakened, museums to illustrate its technical +and historical progress, and galleries to exhibit its master-works, +become indispensable. In the light of education, appropriations for such +purposes are as much a duty of the government as for any other purpose +connected with the true welfare of the people; for its responsibilities +extend over the entire social system. + + * * * * * + + +=_Edwin P. Whipple, 1819-._= (Manual, p. 501.) + +From "Literature and Life." + +=_236._= WIT AND HUMOR IN LITERATURE. + +Every student of English theological literature knows that much of its +best portions gleams with wit. Five of the greatest humorists that ever +made the world ring with laughter were priests,--Rabelais, Scarron, +Swift, Sterne, and Sydney Smith. The prose works of Milton are radiant +with satire of the sharpest kind. Sydney Smith, one of the most +benevolent, intelligent and influential Englishmen of the nineteenth +century, a man of the most accurate insight and extensive information, +embodied the large stores of his practical wisdom in almost every form +of the ludicrous. Many of the most important reforms in England are +directly traceable to him. He really laughed his countrymen out of some +of their most cherished stupidities of legislation. + +And now let us be just to Mirth. Let us be thankful that we have in Wit +a power before which the pride of wealth and the insolence of office are +abased; which can transfix bigotry and tyranny with arrows of lightning; +which can strike its object over thousands of miles of space, across +thousands of years of time; and which, through its sway over an +universal weakness of man, is an everlasting instrument to make the bad +tremble and the foolish wince. Let us be grateful for the social and +humanizing influences of Mirth. Amid the sorrow, disappointment, agony, +and anguish of the world,--over dark thoughts and tempestuous passions, +the gloomy exaggerations of self-will, the enfeebling illusions of +melancholy,--Wit and Humor, light and lightning, shed their soft +radiance, or dart their electric flash. See how life is warmed and +illumined by Mirth! See how the beings of the mind, with which it has +peopled our imaginations, wrestle with the ills of existence,--feeling +their way into the harshest or saddest meditations, with looks that defy +calamity; relaxing muscles made rigid with pain; hovering o'er the couch +of sickness, with sunshine and laughter in their beneficent faces; +softening the austerity of thoughts whose awful shadows dim and +darken the brain,--loosening the gripe of Misery as it tugs at the +heart-strings! Let us court the society of these gamesome, and genial, +and sportive, and sparkling beings,--whom Genius has left to us as a +priceless bequest; push them not from the daily walks of the world's +life: let them scatter some humanities in the sullen marts of business; +let them glide in through the open doors of the heart; let their glee +lighten up the feast, and gladden the fireside of home: + + "That the night may be filled with music, + And the cares that infest the day + May fold their tents, like the Arabs, + And as silently steal away." + + * * * * * + + +=_Jane T.L. Worthington,-1847._= (Manual, p. 524.) + +From "Love Sketches." + +=_237._= THE SISTERS. + +The sisters were together, together for the last time in the happy home +of their childhood. The window before them was thrown open, and the +shadows of evening were slowly passing from each familiar outline on +which the gazers looked. They were both young and fair; and one, the +elder, wore that pale wreath the maiden wears but once. The accustomed +smile had forsaken her lip now, and the orange-flowers were scarcely +whiter than the cheek they shaded. The sister's hands were clasped in +each other, and they sat silently watching the gradual brightening of +the crescent moon, and the coming forth, one by one, of the stars. Not a +cloud was floating in the quiet sky; the light wind hardly stirred the +young leaves, and the air was fraught with the fragrance of early spring +flowers. It was the hour when reverie is deepest, and fantasies have the +earnestness of truth, when memory is melancholy in its vividness, and we +feel, "almost like a reality," the presence of those who may bless our +pathway no more. The loved, the lost-- + + "So many, yet how few!"-- + +gather around us, not as they are, chastened and troubled by battling +with trials and disappointments, but as they used to be, in the glow of +unwearied expectation. Old fears flit before us altered into pleasures, +and old hopes return bathed in tears. + + * * * * * + + +=_Alice Cary, 1820-1871._= (Manual, p. 484.) + +From "Clovernook." + +=_238._= THE END OF THE HISTORY. + +And so with the various seasons of the year. May, with her green lap +full of sprouting leaves and bright blossoms, her song-birds making the +orchards and meadows vocal, and rippling streams and cultivated gardens; +June, with full-blown roses and humming-bees, plenteous meadows and wide +cornfields, with embattled lines rising thick and green; August, with +reddened orchards and heavy-headed harvests of grain, October, with +yellow leaves and swart shadows; December, palaced in snow, and idly +whistling through his numb fingers;-all have their various charm; and in +the rose-bowers of summer, and as we spread our hands before the torches +of winter, we say joyfully, "Thou hast made all things beautiful in +their time." We sit around the fireside, and the angel feared and +dreaded by us all comes in, and one is taken from our midst. Hands that +have caressed us, locks that have fallen over us like a bath of beauty, +are hidden beneath shroud-folds. We see the steep edges of the grave, +and hear the heavy rumble of the clods; and, in the burst of passionate +grief, it seems that we can never still the crying of our hearts. But +the days rise and set, dimly at first, and seasons come and go, and, +by little and little, the weight rises from the heart, and the shadows +drift from before the eyes, till we feel again the spirit of gladness, +and see again the old beauty of the world. + + * * * * * + + +=_Donald G. Mitchell, 1822-._= (Manual, pp. 504, 531.) + +From "Wayside Hints." + +=_239._= A TALK ABOUT PORCHES. + +A country house without a porch is like a man without an eyebrow; it +gives expression, and gives expression where you most want it. The least +office of a porch is that of affording protection against the rain-beat +and the sun-beat. It is an interpreter of character; it humanizes bald +walls and windows; it emphasizes architectural tone; it gives hint of +hospitality; it is a hand stretched out (figuratively and lumberingly, +often) from the world within to the world without. + +At a church door even, a porch seems to me to be a blessed thing, and +a most worthy and patent demonstration of the overflowing Christian +charity, and of the wish to give shelter. Of all the images of wayside +country churches which keep in my mind, those hang most persistently +and agreeably, which show their jutting, defensive rooflets to keep the +brunt of the storm from the church-goer while he yet fingers at the +latch of entrance. + +I doubt if there be not something beguiling in a porch over the door of +a country shop--something that relieves the odium of bargaining, and +imbues even the small grocer with a flavor of cheap hospitalities. The +verandas (which is but a long translation of porch) that stretch along +the great river front of the Bellevue Hospital diffuse somehow a +gladsome cheer over that prodigious caravansery of the sick; and I never +see the poor creatures in their bandaged heads and their flannel +gowns, enjoying their convalescence in the sunshine of those exterior +corridors, but I reckon the old corridors for as much as the young +doctors, in bringing them from convalescence into strength, and a new +fight with the bedevilments of the world. + +What shall we say, too, of inn porches? Does anybody doubt their +fitness? Is there any question of the fact--with any person of +reasonably imaginative mood--that Falstaff and Nym and Bardolph, and the +rest, once lolled upon the benches of the porch that overhung the door +of the Boar's Head Tavern, Eastcheap? Any question about a porch, and a +generous one, at the Tabard, Southwark--presided over by that wonderful +host who so quickened the story-telling humors of the Canterbury +pilgrims of Master Chaucer? + +Then again, in our time, if one were to peel away the verandas and the +exterior corridors from our vast watering-place hostelries, what an arid +baldness of wall and of character would be left! All sentiment, all +glowing memories, all the music of girlish footfalls, all echoes of +laughter and banter and rollicking mirth, and tenderly uttered vows +would be gone. + +King David when he gave out to his son Solomon the designs for the +building of the Temple, included among the very first of them, (1 Chron. +XXVIII. 11) the "pattern of a porch." It is not, however, of porches +of shittim-wood and of gold, that I mean to talk just now--nor even of +those elaborate architectural features which will belong of necessity +to the entrance-way of every complete study of a country house. I plead +only for some little mantling hood about every exterior door-way, +however humble. + +There are hundreds of naked, vulgar-looking dwellings, scattered up and +down our country highroads, which only need a little deft and adroit +adaptation of the hospitable feature which I have made the subject of +this paper, to assume an air of modest grace, in place of the present +indecorous exposure of a wanton. + + * * * * * + + +=_Richard Grant White,[56] 1822-._= + +From "Memoirs of the Life of William Shakespeare." + +=_240._= THE CHARACTER OF SHAKESPEARE'S STYLE. + +Writing for the general public, he used such language as would convey +his meaning to his auditors,--the common phraseology of his period. +But what a language was that! In its capacity for the varied and exact +expression of all moods of mind, all forms of thought, all kinds of +emotion, a tongue unequaled by any other known to literature! A language +of exhaustless variety; strong without ruggedness, and flexible without +effeminacy. A manly tongue; yet bending itself gracefully and lovingly +to the tenderest and the daintiest needs of woman, and capable of giving +utterance to the most awful and impressive thoughts, in homely words +that come from the lips, and go to the heart, of childhood. It would +seem as if this language had been preparing itself for centuries to be +the fit medium of utterance for the world's greatest poet. Hardly more +than a generation had passed since the English tongue had reached its +perfect maturity; just time enough to have it well worked into the +unconscious usage of the people, when Shakespeare appeared, to lay upon +it a burden of thought which would test its extremest capability. He +found it fully formed and developed, but not yet uniformed and cramped +and disciplined by the lexicographers and rhetoricians,--those martinets +of language, who seem to have lost for us in force and flexibility as +much as they have gained for us in precision. The phraseology of that +day was notably large and simple among ordinary writers and speakers. +Among the college-bred writers and their imitators, there was too +great a fondness for little conceits; but even with them this was an +extraneous blemish, like that sometimes found in the ornament upon a +noble building. Shakespeare seized this instrument to whose tones all +ears were open, and with the touch of a master he brought out all its +harmonies. It lay ready to any hand; but his was the first to use it +with absolute control; and among all its successors, great as some +are, he has had, even in this single respect, no rival. No unimportant +condition of his supreme mastery over expression was his entire freedom +from restraint--it may almost be said from consciousness--in the choice +of language. He was no precisian, no etymologist, no purist. He was not +purposely writing literature. The only criticism that he feared was that +of his audience, which represented the English people of all grades +above the peasantry. These he wished should not find his writing +incomprehensible or dull: no more. If we except the translators of the +Bible, Shakespeare wrote the best English that has yet been written. + +[Footnote 56: A native of New York City; distinguished as a student and +editor of Shakespeare, and more recently for his critical articles on +the English language and grammar.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Thomas Wentworth Higginson, 1823-._= (Manual, p. 531). + +From "Atlantic Essays." + +=_241._= ELEGANCE OF FRENCH STYLE. + +In France alone among living nations is literature habitually pursued +as an art; and in consequence of this, despite the seeds of decay which +imperialism sowed, French prose-writing has no rival in contemporary +literature. We cannot fully recognize this fact through translations, +because only the most sensational French books appear to be translated. +But as French painters and actors now habitually surpass all others even +in what are claimed as the English qualities,--simplicity and truth,--so +do French prose-writers excel. To be set against the brutality of +Carlyle and the shrill screams of Ruskin, there is to be seen across +the Channel the extraordinary fact of an actual organization of good +writers, the French Academy, whose influence all nations feel. Under +their authority we see introduced into literary work an habitual +grace and perfection, a clearness and directness, a light and pliable +strength, and a fine shading of expression, such as no other tongue can +even define. We see the same high standard in their criticism, in their +works of research, in the Revue des Deux Mondes, and in short throughout +literature. What is there in any other language, for instance, to be +compared with the voluminous writings of Sainte-Beuve, ranging over all +history and literature, and carrying into all, that incomparable style, +so delicate, so brilliant, so equable, so strong,--touching all themes, +not with the blacksmith's hand of iron, but with the surgeon's hand of +steel. + +In the average type of French novels, one feels the superiority to +the English in quiet power, in the absence of the sensational and +exaggerated, and in keeping close to the level of real human life. They +rely for success upon perfection of style, and the most subtle analysis +of human character; and therefore they are often painful,--just as +Thackeray is painful,--because they look at artificial society, and +paint what they see. Thus they dwell often on unhappy marriages, because +such things grow naturally from the false social system in France. On +the other hand, in France there is very little house-breaking, and +bigamy is almost impossible, so that we hear delightfully little about +them: whereas, if you subtract these from the current English novels, +what is there left? + + * * * * * + + +=_Charles Godfrey Leland,[57] 1824._= + +From "Meister Karl's Sketch-book." + +=_242._= ASPECT OF NUREMBERG. + +There is a picturesque disorder--a lyrical confusion about the entire +place, which is perfectly irresistible. Turrets shoot up in all sorts of +ways, on all sorts of occasions, upon all sorts of houses; and little +boxes, with delicate Gothic windows, cling to their sides and to one +another, like barnacles to a ship; while the houses themselves are +turned round and about in so many positions that you wonder that a few +are not upside down or lying on their sides by way of completing the +original arrangement of no arrangement at all. It always seemed to me as +if the buildings in Nuremberg had, like the furniture in Irving's tale, +been indulging over night in a very irregular dance, and suddenly +stopped in the most complicated part of a confusion worse confounded. +Galleries, quaint staircases, and towers with projecting upper stories, +as well as eccentric chimneys, demented door-ways, insane weather-vanes, +and highly original steeples, form the most common-place materials in +building; and it has more than once occurred to me that the architects +of this city, even at the present day, must have imbibed their +principles; not from the lecture-room, but from the most remarkable +inspirations of some romantic scene-painter. During the last two +centuries men appear to have striven, with a most uncommendable zeal, +all over Christendom, to root out and extirpate every trace of the +Gothic. In Nuremberg alone they have religiously preserved what little +they originally had in domestic architecture, and added to it.... + +Nuremberg, like Avignon, is one of the very few cities which have +retained in an almost perfect state, the feudal walls and turrets with +which they were invested by the middle ages. At regular intervals along +these walls occur little towers, for their defence, reminding one of +beads strung on a rosary; the great watch-tower at the gate, with its +projecting machicolation, forming the pendent cross,--the whole serving +to guard the town within from the dangers of war, even as the rosary +protects the city of Mansoul from the attacks of Sin and Death--though, +sooth to say, since the invention of gunpowder and the Reformation, both +the one and the other appear to have lost much of their former efficacy. +Directly through the center of the town runs a small stream called the +Pegnitz, "dividing the town into two nearly equal halves, named after +the two great churches situated within them; the northern being termed +St. Sebald's, and the southern, St. Lawrence side." + +In the northern part of the division of St. Sebaldus rises a high hill, +formed, at the summit, of vast rocks, on which is situated the ancient +Reicheveste, or Imperial Castle, whose origin is fairly lost in the dark +old days of Heathenesse. From it the traveller can obtain an admirable +view of the romantic town below. In regarding it, I was irresistibly +reminded of the remarkable resemblance existing between most of its +buildings and the children's toys manufactured by the ingenious artisans +of Nuremberg and its vicinity. + +[Footnote 57: A native of Philadelphia, who has resided much abroad, and +pursued a varied literary career; he possesses a familiarity with the +German language and character, which he has turned to good account in +the comic ballads by Hans Breitman.] + + * * * * * + + +=_George William Curtis, 1824-._= (Manual, p. 504.) + +From "Nile Notes of a Howadji." + +=_243._= UNDER THE PALMS. + +Thenceforward, in the land of Egypt, palms are perpetual. They are the +only foliage of the Nile; for we will not harm the modesty of a few +mimosas and sycamores, by foolish claims. They are the shade of the mud +villages, marking their site in the landscape, so that the groups of +palms are the number of villages. They fringe the shore and the horizon. +The sun sets golden behind them, and birds sit swinging upon their +boughs and float gloriously among their trunks; on the ground beneath +are flowers; the sugar-cane is not harmed by the ghostly shade, nor the +tobacco, and the yellow flowers of the cotton-plant star its dusk at +evening. The children play under them; the old men crone and smoke; the +surly bison and the conceited camels repose. The old Bible-pictures +are ceaselessly painted, but with softer, clearer colors, than in the +venerable book. + +... But the eye never wearies of palms, more than the ear of +singing-birds. Solitary they stand upon the sand, or upon the level, +fertile land in groups, with a grace and dignity that no tree surpasses. +Very soon the eye beholds in their forms the original type of the +columns which it will afterwards admire in the temples. Almost the first +palm is architecturally suggestive, even in those western gardens--but +to artists living among them and seeing only them! men's hands are not +delicate in the early ages, and the fountain fairness of the palms is +not very flowingly fashioned in the capitals; but in the flowery +perfection of the Parthenon the palm triumphs. The forms of those +columns came from Egypt, and that which was the suspicion of the earlier +workers, was the success of more delicate designing. So is the palm +inwound with our art, and poetry, and religion, and of all trees would +the Howadji be a palm, wide-waving peace and plenty, and feeling his kin +to the Parthenon and Raphael's pictures. + +But nature is absolute taste, and has no pure ornament, so that the +palm is no less useful than beautiful. The family is infinite, and ill +understood. The cocoa-nut, date, and sago, are all palms. Ropes and +sponges are wrought of their tough interior fibre. The various fruits +are nutritious; the wood, the roots, and the leaves, are all consumed. +It is one of nature's great gifts to her spoiled sun-darlings. Whoso is +born of the sun is made free of the world. Like the poet Thompson, he +may put his hands in his pockets and eat apples at leisure. + + * * * * * + + +=_John L. McConnell, 1826-._= (Manual, p. 510.) + +From "Western Characters." + +=_244._= THE EARLY WESTERN POLITICIAN. + +He was tall, gaunt, angular, swarthy, active, and athletic. His hair was +invariably black as the wing of the raven. Even in that small portion +which the cap of raccoon-skin left exposed to the action of sun and +rain, the gray was but thinly scattered, imparting to the monotonous +darkness only a more iron character.... A stoop in the shoulders +indicated that, in times past, he had been in the habit of carrying a +heavy rifle, and of closely examining the ground over which he walked; +but what the chest thus lost in depth it gained in breadth. His lungs +had ample space in which to play. There was nothing pulmonary even in +the drooping shoulders.... + +From shoulders thus bowed hung long, muscular arms, sometimes, perhaps, +dangling a little ungracefully, but always under the command of their +owner, and ready for any effort, however violent. These were terminated +by broad, bony hands, which looked like grapnels; their grasp, indeed, +bore no faint resemblance to the hold of those symmetrical instruments. +Large feet, whose toes were usually turned in, like those of the Indian, +were wielded by limbs whose vigor and activity were in keeping with the +figure they supported. Imagine, with these peculiarities, a free, bold, +rather swaggering gait, a swarthy complexion, and comformable features +and tones of voice, and, excepting his costume, you have before your +fancy a complete picture of the early western politician. + + * * * * * + + +=_Sarah J. Lippincott,[58]_= about =_1833-_=. (Manual p. 484.) + +From "Records of Five Years." + +=_245._= DEATH IN TOWN AND COUNTRY. + +Up the long ascent it moved,--that shadow of our mortal sorrow and +perishable earthly estate, that shadow of the dead man's hearse, along +the way his feet had often trod, past the spring over whose brink he +may have often bent with thirsting lip, past lovely green glades, mossy +banks, and fairy forests of waving ferns, on which his eye had often +dwelt with a vague and soft delight; and so passed out of our view. But +its memory went not out of our hearts that day. + +In this pure, healthful region, where nature seems so unworn, so +youthful and vigorous, where dwell simplicity, humble comfort, and quiet +happiness, death has startled us as something strange and unnatural.... + +How different is it in the city!... There, on many a corner, one +is confronted with the black, significant sign of the undertaker's +"dreadful trade," or comes upon some marble-yard, filled with a ghastly +assemblage of anticipatory gravestones and monuments; graceful broken +columns, which are to typify the lovely incompleteness of some young +life now full of beauty and promise; melancholy, drooping figures, types +of grief forever inconsolable, destined, perhaps, to stand proxy for +mourning young widows now happy wives; sculptured lambs, patiently +waiting to take their places above the graves of little children whom +yet smiling mothers nightly lay to sleep in soft cribs, without the +thought of a deeper dark and silence of a night not far away, or of the +dreary beds soon to be prepared for their darlings "i' the earth." + +[Footnote 58: Originally and very favorably known by the assumed name of +"Grace Greenwood."] + + * * * * * + + +=_Francis Bret Harte,[59] 1837-._= + +From "The Luck of Roaring Camp," &c. + +=_246._= BIRTH OF A CHILD IN A MINER'S CAMP. + +... The camp lay in a triangular valley, between two hills and a river. +The only outlet was a steep trail over the summit of a hill that faced +the cabin, now illuminated by the rising moon. The suffering woman might +have seen it from the rude bunk whereon she lay,--seen it winding like a +silver thread until it was lost in the stars above. + +A fire of withered pine-boughs added sociability to the gathering. By +degrees the natural levity of Roaring Camp returned. Bets were freely +offered and taken regarding the result. Three to five that "Sal would +get through with it," even, that the child would survive; side bets as +to the sex and complexion of the coming stranger.... + +In the midst of an excited discussion an exclamation came from those +nearest the door, and the camp stopped to listen. Above the swaying and +moaning of the pines, the swift rush of the river, and the crackling of +the fire, rose a sharp, querulous cry. The pines stopped moaning, the +river ceased to rush, and the fire to crackle. It seemed as if Nature +had stopped to listen too. + +The camp rose to its feet as one man! It was proposed to explode a +barrel of gunpowder; but, in consideration of the situation of the +mother, better counsels prevailed, and only a few revolvers were +discharged; for, whether owing to the rude surgery of the camp, or some +other reason, Cherokee Sal was sinking fast. Within an hour she had +climbed, as it were, the rugged road that led to the stars, and so passed +out of Roaring Camp, its sin and shame, forever.... + +I do not think that the announcement disturbed them much, except in +speculation as to the fate of the child, "Can he live now?" was asked of +Stumpy. The answer was doubtful. The only other being of Cherokee Sal's +sex and maternal condition in the settlement, was an ass. There was some +conjecture as to fitness, but the experiment was tried. It was less +problematical than the ancient treatment of Romulus and Remus, and +apparently as successful. + +Strange to say, the child thrived. Perhaps the invigorating climate of +the mountain camp was compensation for maternal deficiencies. Nature +took the foundling to her broader breast. In that rare atmosphere of the +Sierra foot-hills--that air pungent with balsamic odor, that ethereal +cordial at once bracing and exhilarating--he may have found food and +nourishment, or a subtle chemistry that transmuted asses' milk to lime +and phosphorus. Stumpy inclined to the belief that it was the latter +and good nursing, "Me and that ass," he would say, "has been father and +mother to him! Don't you," he would add, apostrophizing the helpless +bundle before him, "never go back on us." + +[Footnote 59: Prominent among the more recent American writers; a native +of New York, but long resident in California; noted for his vivid +portraiture of the early life, and remarkable scenery of that State, in +a style uncommonly suggestive.] + + * * * * * + + +=_William Dean Howells, 1837-._= (Manual, p. 531.) + +From "Venetian Life." + +=_247._= SNOW IN VENICE. + +... The lofty crest of the bell-tower was hidden in the folds of falling +snow, and I could no longer see the golden angel upon its summit. But +looked at across the Piazza, the beautiful outline of St. Mark's Church +was perfectly penciled in the air, and the shifting threads of the +snow-fall were woven into a spell of novel enchantment around a +structure that always seemed to me too exquisite in its fantastic +loveliness to be anything but the creation of magic. The tender snow had +compassionated the beautiful edifice for all the wrongs of time, and so +hid the stains and ugliness of decay that it looked as if just from the +hands of the builder--or, better said, just from the brain of the +architect. There was marvellous freshness in the colors of the mosaics +in the great arches of the facade; and all that glorious harmony into +which the temple rises, of marble scrolls and leafy exuberance airily +supporting the statues of the saints, was a hundred times etherialized +by the purity and whiteness of the drifting flakes. The snow lay lightly +on the golden globes that tremble like peacock-crests above the vast +domes, and plumed them with softest white; it robed the saints in +ermine; and it danced over all its work as if exulting in its beauty.... + +Through the wavering snow-fall, the Saint Theodore upon one of the +granite pillars of the Piazzetta did not show so grim as his wont is, +and the winged lion on the other might have been a winged lamb, so mild +and gentle he looked by the tender light of the storm. The towers of the +island churches loomed faint and far away in the dimness; the sailors in +the rigging of the ships that lay in the Basin, wrought like phantoms +among the shrouds; the gondolas stole in and out of the opaque distance, +more noiselessly and dreamily than ever; and a silence almost palpable, +lay upon the mutest city in the world. + + * * * * * + + +=_Mary Abigail Dodge,[60] 1838-._= + +From "Wool Gathering." + +=_248._= SCENERY OF THE UPPER MISSISSIPPI. + +Up the broad, cold, steel-blue river we wind steadily to its Northern +home. No flutter of its orange groves, no fragrance of its Southern +roses, no echo of its summer lands, can penetrate these distances. Only +prophecies of the sturdy North are here,--the glitter of the Polar sea, +the majesty of Arctic solitudes. The imagination is touched. The eye +looks out upon a hemisphere. Vast spaces, lost ages, the unsealed +mysteries of cold and darkness and eternal silence, sweep around the +central thought, and people the wilderness with their solemn symbolism, +Prettiness of gentle slope, wealth, and splendor of hue, are not +wanting, but they shine with veiled light. Mountains come down to meet +the Great River. The mists of the night lift slowly away, and we are +brought suddenly into the presence-chamber. One by one they stand out in +all their rugged might, only softened here and there by fleecy clouds +still clinging to their sides, and shining pink in the ruddy dawn. Bold +bluffs that have come hundreds of miles from their inland home guard the +river. They rise on both sides, fronting us, bare and black, layer of +solid rock piled on solid rock, defiant fortifications of some giant +race, crowned here and there with frowning tower; here and there +overborne and overgrown with wild-wood beauty, vine and moss and +manifold leafage, gorgeous now with the glory of the vanishing summer. +It is as if the everlasting hills had parted to give the Great River +entrance to the hidden places of the world. And then the bold bluffs +break into sharp cones, lonely mountains rising head and shoulders above +their brethren, and keeping watch over the whole country; groups of +mountains standing sentinels on the shores, almost leaning over the +river, and hushing us to breathless silence as we sail through their +awful shadow. And then the earth smiles again, the beetling cliffs +recede into distances, and we glide through a pleasant valley. Green +levels stretch away to the foot of the far cliffs, level with the +river's blue, and as smooth,--sheltered and fertile, and fit for future +homes. Nay, already the pioneer has found them, and many a hut and +cottage and huddle of houses show whence art and science and all the +amenities of human life, shall one day radiate. And even as we greet +them we have left them, and the heights clasp us again, the hills +overshadow us, the solitude closes around us. + +[Footnote 60: Born in Massachusetts, author of numerous magazine articles +of merit and earnestness, afterwards republished as books; known to her +readers as Gail Hamilton.] + + * * * * * + + + +LATER MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS. + + +=_George Washington[61], 1732-1799._= + +From a Letter to Sir John Sinclair. + +=_249._= NATURAL ADVANTAGES OF VIRGINIA. + +The United States, as you well know, are very extensive, more than +fifteen hundred miles between the northeastern and southwestern +extremities; all parts of which, from the seaboard to the Appalachian +Mountains, which divide the eastern from the western waters, are +entirely settled; though not as compactly as they are susceptible of; +and settlements are progressing rapidly beyond them. + +Within so great a space, you are not to be told, that there is a great +variety of climates, and you will readily suppose, too, that there +are all sorts of land, differently improved, and of various prices, +according to the quality of the soil, its contiguity to, or remoteness +from, navigation, the nature of the improvements, and other local +circumstances.... + +Notwithstanding these abstracts, and although I may incur the charge of +partiality in hazarding such an opinion at this time, I do not hesitate +to pronounce, that the lands on the waters of the Potomac will in a few +years be in greater demand and in higher estimation, than in any other +part of the United States. But, as I ought not to advance this doctrine +without assigning reasons for it, I will request you to examine a +general map of the United States; and the following facts will strike +you at first view; that they lie in the most temperate latitude of +the United States, that the main river runs in a direct course to the +expanded parts of the western country, and approximates nearer to the +principal branches of the Ohio, than any other eastern water, and of +course must become a great, if not (under all circumstances), the best +highway into that region; that the upper seaport of the Potomac is +considerably nearer to a large portion of Pennsylvania, than that +portion is to Philadelphia, besides accommodating the settlers thereof +with inland navigation for more than two hundred miles; that the amazing +extent of tide navigation, afforded by the bay and rivers of the +Chesapeake, has scarcely a parallel. + +When to these it is added, that a site at the junction of the inland and +tide navigations of that river is chosen for the permanent seat of the +general government, and is in rapid preparation for its reception; +that the inland navigation is nearly completed, to the extent above +mentioned; that its lateral branches are capable of great improvement +at a small expense, through the most fertile parts of Virginia in +a southerly direction, and crossing Maryland and extending into +Pennsylvania in a northerly one, through which, independently of what +may come from the western country, an immensity of produce will be +water-borne, thereby making the Federal City the great emporium of the +United States; I say, when these things are taken into consideration, I +am under no apprehension of having the opinion I have given, relative to +the value of land on the Potomac, controverted by impartial men. + +[Footnote 61: Washington's correspondence was voluminous, and on the +subjects relating to climate, agriculture, and internal improvements, +he wrote with interest and ability. The letter to Sinclair is +characteristic.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Matthew F. Maury,[62] 1806-1873._= + +From "The Physical Geography of the Sea." + +=_250._= THE MARINER'S GUIDE ACROSS THE DEEP. + +So to shape the course on voyages as to make the most of the winds and +currents at sea, is the perfection of the navigator's art. How the winds +blow, and the currents flow, along this route or that, is no longer +matter of opinion or subject of speculation, but it is a matter of +certainty determined by actual observation.... The winds and the weather +daily encountered by hundreds who have sailed on the same voyage before +him, and "the distance made good" by each one from day to day, have been +tabulated in a work called Sailing Directions, and they are so arranged +that he may daily see how much he is ahead of time, or how far he is +behind time; nay, his path has been literally blazed through the winds +for him on the sea; mile-posts have been set up on the waves, and +finger-boards planted, and time-tables furnished for the trackless +waste, by which the ship-master, on his first voyage to any port, may +know as well as the most experienced trader whether he be in the right +road or no. + +... The route that affords the bravest winds, the fairest sweep, and the +fastest running to be found among ships, is the route to and from +Australia. But the route which most tries a ship's prowess is the +outward-bound voyage to California. The voyage to Australia and back, +carries the clipper ship along a route which, for more than three +hundred degrees of longitude, runs with the "brave west winds" of the +southern hemisphere. With these winds alone, and with their bounding +seas which follow fast, the modern clipper, without auxiliary power, has +accomplished a greater distance in a day than any sea-steamer has ever +been known to reach. With these fine winds and heaving seas, those ships +have performed their voyages of circumnavigation in sixty days. + +[Footnote 62: Formerly an officer of the navy, eminent for his scientific +researches and writings on maritime subjects; a native of Virginia.] + + * * * * * + +=_251._= THE GULF STREAM. + +As a rule, the hottest water of the Gulf Stream is at, or near, the +surface; and as the deep-sea thermometer is sent down, it shows that +these waters, though still far warmer than the waters on either side +at corresponding depths, gradually become less and less warm until the +bottom of the current is reached. There is reason to believe that the +warm waters of the Gulf Stream are nowhere permitted, in the oceanic +economy, to touch the bottom of the sea. There is everywhere a cushion +of cool water, between them and the solid parts of the earth's crust. +This arrangement is suggestive, and strikingly beautiful. One of the +benign offices of the Gulf Stream is to convey heat from the Gulf of +Mexico, where otherwise it would become excessive, and to dispense it in +regions beyond the Atlantic, or the amelioration of the climates of the +British Islands and of all Western Europe. Now cold water is one of the +best non-conductors of heat, and if the warm water of the Gulf Stream +was sent across the Atlantic in contact with the solid crust of the +earth,--comparatively a good conductor of heat,--instead of being sent +across, as it is, in contact with a cold non-conducting cushion of cool +water to fend it from the bottom, much of its heat would be lost in the +first part of the way, and the soft climates of both France and England +would be, as that of Labrador, severe In the extreme, icebound, and +bitterly cold. + + * * * * * + + +=_Ormsby M. Mitchell,[63] 1810-1862._= + +=_252._= THE GREAT UNFINISHED PROBLEMS OF THE UNIVERSE. + +I do not pretend to indorse the theory of Mädler with reference to his +central sun. If I did indorse it, it would amount simply to nothing at +all, for he needs no indorsement of mine. But it is one of the great +unfinished problems of the universe, which remains yet to be solved. +Future generations yet are to take it up. Materials for its solution are +to accumulate from generation to generation, and possibly from century +to century. Nay, I know not but thousands of years will roll away before +the slow movements of these far distant orbs shall so accumulate as to +give us the data whereby the resolution may be absolutely accomplished. +But shall we fail to work because the end is far off? Had the old +astronomer that once stood upon the watch-tower in Babylon, and there +marked the coming of the dreaded eclipse, said. "I care not for this; +this is the business of posterity; let posterity take care of itself; I +will make no record"--and had, in succeeding ages, the sentinel in the +watch-tower of the skies said, "I will retire from my post; I have no +concern with these matters, which can do me no good; it is nothing +that I can do for the age in which I live,"--where should we have been +to-night? Shall we not do, for those who are to follow us, what has +been done for us by our predecessors? Let us not shrink from the +responsibility which comes down upon the age in which we live. The great +and mighty problem of the universe has been given to the whole human +family for its solution. Not by any clime, not by any age, not by any +nation, not by any individual man or mind, however great or grand, has +this wondrous solution been accomplished; but it is the problem of +humanity, and it will last as long as humanity shall inhabit the globe +on which we live and move. + + * * * * * + +No, here is the temple of our Divinity. Around us and above us rise sun +and system, cluster and universe. And I doubt not that in every region +of this vast empire of God, hymns of praise and anthems of glory are +rising and reverberating from sun to sun, and from, system to system, +heard by Omnipotence alone, across immensity, and through eternity. + +[Footnote 63: An astronomer, and a favorite lecturer on the science; a +native of Kentucky.] + + * * * * * + + + +WRITERS ON NATURAL HISTORY, SCENERY, &c. + + +=_William Bartram, 1739-1813._= (Manual, p. 490.) + +From the "Travels through the Carolinas," &c. + +=_253._= SCENES ON THE UPPER OCONEE. + +At this rural retirement were assembled a charming circle of mountain +vegetable beauties.... Some of these roving beauties stroll over the +mossy, shelving, humid rocks, or from off the expansive wavy boughs of +trees, bending over the floods, salute their delusive shade, playing on +the surface; some plunge their perfumed heads and bathe their flexile +limbs in the silver stream; whilst others by the mountain breezes +are tossed about, their blooming tuffts bespangled with pearly and +crystalline dew-drops collected from the falling mists, glistening in +the rainbow arch. Having collected some valuable specimens at this +friendly retreat, I continued my lonesome pilgrimage. My road for a +considerable time led me winding and turning about the steep rocky +hills: the descent of some of which was very rough and troublesome, by +means of fragments of rocks, slippery clay and talc: but after this I +entered a spacious forest, the land having gradually acquired a more +level surface: a pretty grassy vale appears on my right, through which +my wandering path led me, close by the banks of a delightful creek, +which sometimes falling over steps of rocks, glides gently with +serpentine meanders through the meadows. + +After crossing this delightful brook and mead, the land rises again with +sublime magnificence, and I am led over hills and vales, groves and +high forests, vocal with the melody of the feathered songsters; the +snow-white cascades glittering on the sides of the distant hills. + +It was now afternoon; I approached a charming vale, amidst sublimely +high forests, awful shades! Darkness gathers around; far distant thunder +rolls over the trembling hills: the black clouds with august majesty +and power move slowly forwards, shading regions of towering hills, and +threatening all the destruction of a thunder-storm: all around is now +still as death, not a whisper is heard, but a total inactivity and +silence seem to pervade the earth; the birds afraid to utter a chirrup, +in low tremulous voices take leave of each other, seeking covert and +safety: every insect is silenced, and nothing heard but the roaring of +the approaching hurricane. The mighty cloud now expands its sable wings, +extending from north to south, and is driven irresistibly on by the +tumultuous winds, spreading its livid wings around the gloomy concave, +armed with terrors of thunder and fiery shafts of lightning. Now the +lofty forests bend low beneath its fury; their limbs and wavy boughs are +tossed about and catch hold of each other; the mountains tremble +and seem to reel about, and the ancient hills to be shaken to their +foundations: the furious storm sweeps along, smoking through the vale +and over the resounding hills: the face of the earth is obscured by the +deluge descending from the firmament, and I am deafened by the din of +the thunder. The tempestuous scene damps my spirits, and my horse sinks +under me at the tremendous peals, as I hasten on for the plain. + + * * * * * + +From his "Travels in the Carolinas, Florida," &c. + +=_254._= THE WOOD PELICAN OF FLORIDA. + +This solitary bird does not associate in flocks, but is generally seen +alone, commonly near the banks of great rivers, in vast marshes or +meadows, especially such as are caused by inundations, and also in the +vast deserted rice plantations: he stands alone on the topmost limb +of tall dead cypress trees, his neck contracted or drawn in upon his +shoulders, and beak resting like a long scythe upon his breast: in +this pensive posture and solitary situation, it looks extremely grave, +sorrowful, and melancholy, as if in the deepest thought. + + * * * * * + + +=_Alexander Wilson, 1766-1813._= (Manual, p. 504.) + +From the "American Ornithology." + +=_255._= NEST OF THE RED-HEADED WOODPECKER. + +Notwithstanding the care which this bird, in common with the rest of its +genus, takes to place its young beyond the reach of enemies, within +the hollows of trees, yet there is one deadly foe, against whose +depredations neither the height of the tree nor the depth of the cavity +is the least security. This is the blade snake, who frequently glides +up the trunk of the tree, and, like a skulking savage, enters the +woodpecker's peaceful apartment, devours the eggs or helpless young, in +spite of the cries and flutterings of the parents, and if the place be +large enough, coils himself up in the spot they occupied, where he will +sometimes remain for several days. The eager school-boy, after hazarding +his neck to reach the woodpecker's hole, at the triumphant moment when +he thinks the nestlings his own, and strips his arm, launching it down +into the cavity, and grasping what he conceives to be the callow young, +starts with horror at the sight of a hideous snake, and almost drops +from his giddy pinnacle, retreating down the tree with terror and +precipitation. Several adventures of this kind have come to my +knowledge; and one of them was attended with serious consequences, where +both snake and boy fell to the ground, and a broken thigh, and long +confinement, cured the adventurer completely of his ambition for robbing +woodpeckers' nests. + + * * * * * + +=_256._= THE WHITE-HEADED, OR BALD, EAGLE. + +Elevated on the high dead limb of some gigantic tree that commands +a wide view of the neighboring shore and ocean, he seems calmly to +contemplate the motions of the various feathered tribes that pursue +their busy avocations below,--the snow-white Gulls slowly winnowing +the air; the busy _Tringoe_ coursing along the sands; trains of Ducks +streaming over the surface; silent and watchful Cranes, intent and +wading; clamorous crows; and all the winged multitudes that subsist by +the bounty of this vast liquid magazine of nature. High over all these +hovers one, whose action instantly arrests his whole attention. By his +wide curvature of wing, and sudden suspension in air, he knows him to be +the Fish Hawk, settling over some devoted victim of the deep. His eye +kindles at the sight, and balancing himself with half-opened wings, on +the branch, he watches the result. Down, rapid as an arrow from heaven, +descends the distant object of his attention, the roar of its wings +reaching the ear as it disappears in the deep, making the surges foam +around. At this moment, the eager looks of the Eagle are all ardor; and +levelling his neck for flight, he sees the Fish Hawk once more emerge, +struggling with his prey, and mounting in the air with screams of +exultation. These are the signal for our hero, who launching into the +air, instantly gives chase, and soon gains on the Fish Hawk; each exerts +his utmost to mount above the other, displaying in these rencontres +the most elegant and sublime aerial evolutions. The unincumbered Eagle +rapidly advances, and is just on the point of reaching his opponent, +when, with a sudden scream, probably of despair and honest execration, +the latter drops his fish; the Eagle poising himself for a moment, as if +to take a more certain aim, descends like a whirlwind, snatches it in +his grasp ere it reaches the water, and bears his ill-gotten booty +silently away to the woods. + + * * * * * + + +=_Stephen Elliott,[64] 1771-1830._= + +From "Views of Nature." + +=_257._= COMPLETENESS AND VARIETY OF NATURE. + +What is there that will not be included in the history of nature? The +earth on which we tread, the air we breathe, the waters around the +earth, the material forms that inhabit its surface, the mind of man, +with all its magical illusions and all its inherent energy, the planets +that move around our system, the firmament of heaven--the smallest of +the invisible atoms which float around our globe, and the most majestic +of the orbs that roll through the immeasurable fields of space--all +are parts of one system, productions of one power, creations of one +intellect, the offspring of Him, by whom all that is inert and inorganic +in creation was formed, and from whom all that have life derive their +being. + +Of this immense system,--all that we can examine,--this little globe +that we inherit, is full of animation, and crowded with forms, +organized, glowing with life, and generally sentient. No space is +unoccupied; the exposed surface of the rock is incrusted with living +substances; plants occupy the bark, and decaying limbs, of other plants; +animals live on the surface, and in the bodies, of other animals: +inhabitants are fashioned and adapted to equatorial heats, and polar +ice;--air, earth, and ocean teem with life;--and if to other worlds the +same proportion of life and of enjoyment has been distributed which has +been allotted to ours, if creative benevolence has equally filled every +other planet of every other system, nay, even the suns themselves, with +beings, organized, animated, and intelligent, how countless must be +the generations of the living! What voices which we cannot hear, what +languages that we cannot understand, what multitudes that we cannot see, +may, as they roll along the stream of time, be employed hourly, daily, +and forever, in choral songs of praise, hymning their great Creator! + +And when, in this almost prodigal waste of life, we perceive that every +being, from the puny insect which flutters in the evening ray; from the +lichen which we can scarcely distinguish on the mouldering rock; +from the fungus that springs up and re-animates the mass of dead and +decomposing substances; that every living form possesses a structure as +perfect in its sphere, an organization sometimes as complex, always as +truly and completely adapted to its purposes and modes of existence +as that of the most perfect animal; when we discover them all to be +governed by laws as definite, as immutable, as those which regulate the +planetary movements, great must be our admiration of the wisdom which +has arrayed, and the power which has perfected this stupendous fabric. + +Nor does creation here cease. There are beyond the limits of our system, +beyond the visible forms of matter, other principles, other powers, +higher orders of beings, an immaterial world which we cannot yet know; +other modes of existence which we cannot comprehend; yet however +inscrutable to us, this spiritual world must be guided by its own +unerring laws, and the harmonious order which reigns in all we can see +and understand, ascending through the series of immortal and invisible +existence, must govern even the powers and dominions, the seraphim and +cherubim, that surround the throne of God himself. + +[Footnote 64: Distinguished as a writer and scholar, and especially for +his work on the Botany of South Carolina and Georgia; a native of South +Carolina.] + + * * * * * + + +=_John James Audubon, 1776-1851._= (Manual, p. 504.) + +From the "Ornithological Biography." + +=_258._= THE PASSENGER PIGEON. + +I cannot describe to you the extreme beauty of their aerial evolutions, +when a hawk chanced to press upon the rear of a flock. At once, like a +torrent, and with a noise like thunder, they rushed into a compact mass, +pressing upon each other towards the centre. In these almost solid +masses, they darted forward in undulating and angular lines, descended +and swept close over the earth with inconceivable velocity, mounted +perpendicularly so as to resemble a vast column, and when high, were +seen wheeling and twisting within their continued lines, which then +resembled the coils of a gigantic serpent. + +It is extremely interesting to see flock after flock performing exactly +the same evolutions which had been traced as it were, in the air, by a +preceding flock. Thus should a hawk have charged on a group at a certain +spot, the angles, curves, and undulations that have been described by +the birds, in their efforts to escape from the dreaded talons of the +plunderer, are undeviatingly followed by the next group that comes up. +Should the by-stander happen to witness one of these affrays, and, +struck with the rapidity and elegance of the motions exhibited, feel +desirous of seeing them repeated, his wishes will be gratified, if he +only remain in the place until the next group comes up. + +As soon as the pigeons discover a sufficiency of food to entice them to +alight, they fly around in circles, reviewing the country below. During +their evolutions, on such occasions, the dense mass which they form, +exhibits a beautiful appearance, as it changes its direction, now +displaying a glistening sheet of azure, when the backs of the birds come +simultaneously into view, and anon, suddenly presenting a mass of rich +purple. They then pass lower, over the woods, and for a moment are lost +among the foliage, but again emerge, and are seen gliding aloft. They +now alight, but the next moment, as if suddenly alarmed, they take to +wing, producing by the flapping of their wings a noise like the roar of +distant thunder, and sweep through the forests to see if danger is near. +Hunger, however, soon brings them to the ground. When alighted, they +are seen industriously throwing up the withered leaves in quest of the +falling mast. The rear ranks are continually rising, passing over the +main body, and alighting in front, in such rapid succession, that the +whole flock seems still on wing. The quantity of ground thus swept is +astonishing, and so completely has it been cleared, that the gleaner who +might follow in their rear, would find his labor completely lost. + + * * * * * + +=_259._= EMIGRANTS REMOVING WESTWARD. + +I think I see them at this moment harnessing their horses and attaching +them to their wagons, which are already filled with bedding, +provisions, and the younger children; while on the outside are fastened +spinning-wheels and looms, and a bucket filled with tar and tallow +swings between the hind wheels. Several axes are secured to the bolster, +and the feeding-trough of the horses contains pots, kettles, and pans. +The servant, now become a driver, rides the near saddled horse; the wife +is mounted on another; the worthy husband shoulders his gun; and his +sons, clad in plain, substantial homespun, drive the cattle ahead, and +lead the procession, followed by the hounds and other dogs. + + * * * * * + +=_260._= INTEREST OF EXPLORATION IN THE REMOTE WEST. + +How delightful, I have often exclaimed, must have been the feelings of +those enthusiastic naturalists, my friends Nuttall and Townsend, while +traversing the ridges of the Rocky Mountains! How grand and impressive +the scenery presented to their admiring gaze, when from an elevated +station they saw the mountain torrent hurling its foamy waters over the +black crags of the rugged ravine, while on wide-spread wings the Great +Vulture sailed overhead watching the departure of the travellers, that +he might feast on the Salmon which in striving to ascend the cataract +had been thrown on the stony beach! Now the weary travellers are resting +on the bank of a brawling brook, along which they are delighted to see +the lively Dipper frisking wren-like from stone to stone. On the stunted +bushes above them some curious Jays are chattering, and as my friends +are looking upon the gay and restless birds, they are involuntarily led +to extend their gaze to the green slope beneath the more distant +crags, where they spy a mountain sheep, watching the movements of the +travellers as well as those of yon wolves stealing silently toward the +fleet-footed animal. Again the pilgrims are in motion; they wind their +pathless way round rocks and fissures; they have reached the greatest +height of the sterile platform; and as they gaze on the valleys whose +waters hasten to join the Pacific Ocean, and bid adieu, perhaps for the +last time, to the dear friends they have left in the distant east, how +intense must be their feelings, as thoughts of the past and the +future blend themselves in their anxious minds! But now I see them, +brother-like, with lighter steps, descending toward the head waters +of the famed Oregon. They have reached the great stream, and seating +themselves in a canoe, shoot adown the current, gazing on the beautiful +shrubs and flowers that ornament the banks, and the majestic trees that +cover the sides of the valley, all new to them, and presenting a wide +field of discovery. The melodies of unknown songsters enliven their +spirits, and glimpses of gaudily plumed birds excite their desire to +search those beautiful thickets; but time is urgent, and onward they +must speed. A deer crosses the stream, they pursue and capture it; +and it being now evening, they land and soon form a camp, carefully +concealed from the prying eyes of the lurking savage. The night is past, +the dawn smiles upon the refreshed travellers, who launch their frail +bark; and, as they slowly float on the stream, both listen attentively +to the notes of the Red-and-White-winged Troopial, and wonder how +similar they are to those of the "Red-winged Starling;" they think of +the affinities of species, and especially of those of the lively birds +composing this beautiful group. + + * * * * * + + +=_Daniel Drake,[65] 1785-1852._= + +From a "Picture of Cincinnati, &c." + +=_261._= OBJECTS OF THE WESTERN MOUND-BUILDERS. + +No objects in the State of Ohio seem to have more forcibly arrested the +attention of travellers, nor employed a greater number of pens, than +its antiquities. It is to be regretted, however, that so hastily and +superficially have they been examined by strangers, and so generally +neglected by ourselves, that the materials for a full description have +not yet been collected.... + +The forests over these remains exhibit no appearances of more recent +growth than in other parts. Trees, several hundred years old, are in +many places seen growing out of the ruins of others, which appear to +have been of equal size.... + +Those at Cincinnati, for example, exhibit so few of the characters of a +defensive work, that General Wayne, upon attentively surveying them in +1794, was of opinion that they were not designed for that purpose. It +was from the examination of valley-works only, that Bishop Madison was +led to deny that the remains of the western country were ever intended +for defence, and to conclude that they were enclosures for permanent +residence. It would be precipitate to assert that the relics found in +the valleys were for this purpose, and those of the uplands for defence. +But while it is certain that the latter were military posts, it seems +highly probable that the former were for ordinary abode in times of +peace. They were towns and the seats of chiefs, whose perishable parts +have crumbled into earth, and disappeared with the generations which +formed them. Many of them might have been calculated for defence, as +well as for habitations; but the latter must have been the chief purpose +for which they were erected. On the contrary, the hill-constructions, +which are generally in the strongest military positions of the country, +were designed solely for defence, in open and vigorous war. + +[Footnote 65: A native of New Jersey, who was taken when very young, +to the West, where he became distinguished as a medical professor and +practitioner. His recollections and sketches are very valuable.] + + * * * * * + + +=_John Bachman,[66] 1790-1873._= + +From "The Quadrupeds of North America." + +=_262._= THE OPOSSUM. + +We can imagine to ourselves the surprise with which the opossum was +regarded by Europeans, when they first saw it. Scarcely anything was +known of the marsupial animals, as New Holland had not as yet opened its +unrivalled stores of singularities to astonish the world. Here was a +strange animal, with the head and ears of the pig, sometimes hanging on +the limb of a tree, and occasionally swinging like the monkey by the +tail. Around that prehensile appendage a dozen sharp-nosed, sleek-headed +young had entwined their own tails, and were sitting on the mother's +back. The astonished traveller approaches this extraordinary compound of +an animal, and touches it cautiously with a stick. Instantly it seems +to be struck with some mortal disease: its eyes close, it falls to the +ground, ceases to move, and appears to be dead. He turns it on its back, +and perceives on its stomach a strange, apparently artificial opening. +He puts his fingers into the extraordinary pocket, and lo, another brood +of a dozen or more young, scarcely larger than a pea, are hanging +in clusters on the teats. In pulling the creature about, in great +amazement, he suddenly receives a gripe on the hand; the twinkling of +the half-closed eye, and the breathing of the creature, evince that it +is not dead: and he adds a new term to the vocabulary of his language, +that of "playing possum." + +... When the young are four weeks old, they begin from time to time to +relax their hold on the teats, and may now be seen with their heads +occasionally out of the pouch. A week later, and they venture to steal +occasionally from their snug retreat in the pouch, and are often seen on +the mother's back, securing themselves by entwining their tails around +hers. In this situation she moves from place to place in search of food, +carrying her whole family along with her, to which she is much attached, +and in whose defence she exhibits a considerable degree of courage, +growling at any intruder, and ready to use her teeth with great severity +on man or dog. In travelling, it is amusing to see this large family +moving about. Some of the young, nearly the size of rats, have their +tails entwined around the legs of the mother, and some around her +neck,--thus they are dragged along. They have a mild and innocent look, +and are sleek, and in fine condition, and this is the only age in which +the word pretty can be applied to the Opossum. At this period, the +mother in giving sustenance to so large a family, becomes thin, and is +reduced to one-half of her previous weight. The whole family of young +remain with her about two months, and continue in the vicinity till +autumn. In the meantime, a second, and often a third brood, is produced, +and thus two or more broods of different ages may be seen, sometimes +with the mother, and at other times not far off. + +... Hunting the Opossum is a very favorite amusement among domestics and +field laborers on our Southern plantations, of lads broke loose from +school in the holidays, and even of gentlemen, who are sometimes more +fond of this sport than of the less profitable and more dangerous and +fatiguing one of hunting the gray fox by moonlight. Although we have +never participated in an Opossum hunt, yet we have observed that it +afforded much amusement to the sable group that in the majority of +instances make up the hunting party, and we have on two or three +occasions been the silent and gratified observers of the preparations +that were going on, the anticipations indulged in, and the excitement +apparent around us. + +[Footnote 66: A clergyman of the Lutheran church, for many years a +citizen of Charleston, South Carolina, out originally from New York; +eminent for his attainments and writings in natural history and +science.] + + * * * * * + + +=_J. A. Lapham.[67]_= + +From "Wisconsin, its Geography," &c. + +=_263._= THE SMALLER LAKES. + +BESIDES these immense lakes, Wisconsin abounds in those of smaller size, +scattered profusely over her whole surface. They are from one to twenty +or thirty miles in extent. Many of them are the most beautiful that +can be imagined--the water deep, and of crystal purity and clearness, +surrounded by sloping hills and promontories, covered with scattered +groves and clumps of trees. Some are of a more picturesque kind, being +more rugged in their appearance, with steep, rocky bluffs, crowned +with cedar, hemlock, spruce, and other evergreen trees of a similar +character. Perhaps a small rocky island will vary the scene, covered +with a conical mass of vegetation, the low shrubs and bushes being +arranged around the margin, and the tall trees in the centre. These +lakes usually abound in fish of various kinds, affording food for the +pioneer settler; and among the pebbles on their shores may occasionally +be found fine specimens of agate, carnelian, and other precious stones. +In the bays, where the water is shallow, and but little affected by the +winds, the wild rice grows in abundance, affording subsistence for the +Indian, and attracting innumerable water-birds to these lakes. + +[Footnote 67: The age of this meritorious and industrious writer we have +not been able to learn. The second edition of his book on Wisconsin +appeared in 1846.] + + * * * * * + +=_264._= ANCIENT EARTHWORKS. + +There is a class of ancient earthworks in Wisconsin, not before found +in any other country.... Some have a resemblance to the buffalo, the +eagle, or crane, or to the turtle or lizard. One, representing the human +form, near the Blue Mounds, is, according to R.C. Taylor, Esq., +one hundred and twenty feet in length: it lies in an east and west +direction, the head towards the west, with the arms and legs extended. +The body or trunk is thirty feet in breadth, the head twenty-five, and +its elevation above the general surface of the prairie is about six +feet. Its conformation is so distinct, that there can be no possibility +of mistake in assigning it to the human figure. + + * * * * * + + +=_Charles Wilkins Webber, 1819-1856._= (Manual, p. 505.) + +From "Wild Scenes and Song-birds." + +=_265._= THE MOCKING-BIRD. + +THE next spring a new melody filled the air. A melody such as I had +never heard before burst in clear and overwhelming raptures from +the meadows where I had first seen the graceful stranger with the +white-barred wings, last year.... I saw it now leaping up from its +favorite perch on a tree-top much in the manner I had observed before, +but now it was in a different mood and seemed to mount thus spirit-like +upon the wilder ecstasies, and floating fall upon the subsiding cadence, +of that passionate song it poured into the listening ear of love, for I +could see his mate, with fainter bars across her wings, where she sat +upon a thornbush near, and listened. When this magnificent creature +commenced to sing, the very air was burdened with a thousand different +notes; but his voice rose clear and melodiously loud above them all. +As I listened, one song after another ceased suddenly, until, in a few +minutes, and before I could realize that it was so, I found myself +hearkening to that solitary voice. This is a positive fact. I looked +around me in astonishment. What! Are they awed? But his song only now +grew more exulting, and, as if feeling his triumph, he bounded yet +higher, with each new gush, and in swift and quivering raptures dived, +skimmed, and floated round--round--then rose to fall again more boldly +on the billowy storm of sound. + +... This curious phenomenon I have witnessed many times since. Even in +the morning choir, when every little throat seems strained in emulation, +if the mocking-bird breathes forth in one of its mad, bewildered, and +bewildering extravaganzas, the other birds pause almost invariably, and +remain silent until his song is done. This, I assure you, is no figment +of the imagination, or illusion of an excited fancy; it is just as +substantial a fact as any other one in natural history. Whether the +other birds stop from envy, as has been said, or from awe, cannot be so +well ascertained, but I believe it is from the sentiment of awe, for as +I certainly have felt it myself in listening to the mocking-bird, I do +not know why these inferior creatures should not also. + + * * * * * + + +=_Charles Lanman, 1819-._= (Manual, p. 505.) + +From "Haw-ho-noo." + +=_266._= MAPLE-SUGAR-MAKING AMONG THE INDIANS. + +It is in the month of April, and the hunting season is at an end. +Albeit, the ground is covered with snow, the noonday sun has become +quite powerful; and the annual offering has been made to the Great +Spirit, by the medicine-men, of the first product of one of the earliest +trees in the district. This being the preparatory signal for extensive +business, the women of the encampment proceed to make a large number of +wooden troughs (to receive the liquid treasure), and after these are +finished, the various trees in the neighborhood are tapped, and the +juice begins to run. In the mean time the men of the party have built +the necessary fires, and suspended over them their earthen, brass, or +iron kettles. The sap is now flowing in copious streams, and from one +end of the camp to the other is at once presented an animated and +romantic scene, which continues day and night, until the end of +the sugar season. The principal employment to which the men devote +themselves, is that of lounging about the encampment, shooting at marks, +and playing the moccasin game; while the main part of the labor is +performed by the women, who not only attend to the kettles, but employ +all their leisure time in making the beautiful birchen mocucks, for the +preservation and transportation of the sugar when made; the sap being +brought from the troughs to the kettles, by the boys and girls. Less +attention than usual is paid by the Indians at such times to their +meals; and unless game is very easily obtained, they are quite content +to depend upon the sugar alone. + +It was now about the middle of June, and some fifty birchen canoes have +just been launched upon the waters of Green Bay. They are occupied by +our Ottawa sugar-makers, who have started upon a pilgrimage to Mackinaw. +The distance is near two hundred miles, and as the canoes are heavily +laden not only with mocucks of sugar, but with furs collected by the +hunters during the past winter, and the Indians are travelling at their +leisure, the party will probably reach their desired haven in the course +of ten days. Well content with their accumulated treasures, both the +women and the men are in a particularly happy mood, and many a wild song +is heard to echo over the placid lake. As the evening approaches, day +after day they seek out some convenient landing place, and, pitching the +wigwams on the beach, spend a goodly portion of the night carousing and +telling stories around their camp fires, resuming their voyage after a +morning sleep, long alter the sun has risen above the blue waters of +the east. Another sunset hour, and the cavalcade of canoes is quietly +gliding into the crescent bay of Mackinaw, and, reaching a beautiful +beach at the foot of a lofty bluff, the Indians again draw up their +canoes,--again erect their wigwams. And, as the Indian traders have +assembled on the spot, the more improvident of the party immediately +proceed to exhibit their sugar and furs, which are usually disposed of +for flour and pork, blankets and knives, guns, ammunition, and a great +variety of trinkets, long before the hour of midnight. + + * * * * * + + +=_Ephraim C. Squier, 1821-._= (Manual, p. 504.) + +From "Aboriginal Monuments of the West." + +=_267._= INDIAN POTTERY. + +The site of every Indian town throughout the west is marked by the +fragments of pottery scattered around it; and the cemeteries of the +various tribes abound with rude vessels of clay, piously deposited with +the dead. Previous to the discovery, the art of the potter was much more +important, and its practice more general than it afterwards became, upon +the introduction of metallic vessels. The mode of preparing and moulding +the materials is minutely described by the early observers, and seems to +have been common to all the tribes, and not to have varied materially +from that day to this. The work devolved almost exclusively upon the +women, who kneaded the clay and formed the vessels. Experience seems to +have suggested the means of so tempering the material as to resist +the action of fire; accordingly we find pounded shells, quartz, and +sometimes simple coarse sand from the streams mixed with the clay. +None of the pottery of the present races, found in the Ohio valley, +is destitute of this feature; and it is not uncommon, in certain +localities, where from the abundance of fragments, and from other +circumstances, it is supposed the manufacture was specially carried on, +to find quantities of the decayed shells of the fresh water molluscs, +intermixed with the earth, probably brought to the spot to be used in +the process. Amongst the Indians along the Gulf, a greater degree +of skill was displayed than with those on the upper waters of the +Mississippi, and on the lakes. Their vessels were generally larger and +more symmetrical, and of a superior finish. They moulded them over +gourds and models, and baked them in ovens. In the construction of those +of large size, it was customary to model them in baskets of willow or +splints, which, at the proper period, were burned off, leaving the +vessel perfect in form, and retaining the somewhat ornamental markings +of their moulds. Some of those found on the Ohio seem to have been +modelled in bags or nettings of coarse thread or twisted bark. These +practices are still retained by some of the remote western tribes. + + * * * * * + + +=_Benjamin Silliman, 1779-1864._= (Manual, p. 505.) + +From "A Tour to Canada." + +=_268._= THE FALLS OF MONTMORENCI. + +... The Montmorenci, after a gentle previous declivity, which, greatly +increases its velocity, takes its stupendous leap of two hundred and +forty feet, into a chasm among the rocks, where it boils and foams in a +natural rocky basin, from which, after its force is in some measure +exhausted in its own whirlpools and eddies, it flows away in a gentle +stream towards the St. Lawrence. The fall is nearly perpendicular, and +appears not to deviate more than three or four degrees from it. This +deviation is caused by the ledges of rock below, and is just sufficient +to break the water completely into foam and spray. + +The effect on the beholder is most delightful. The river, at some +distance, seems suspended in a sheet of billowy foam, and contrasted +as it is, with the black frowning abyss into which it falls, it is an +object of the highest interest. As we approached nearer to its foot, the +impressions of grandeur and sublimity were, in the most perfect manner +imaginable, blended with those of extreme beauty. + +This river is of so considerable a magnitude, that, precipitated as it +is from this amazing height, the thundering noise, and mighty rush +of waters, and the never-ceasing wind and rain produced by the fall, +powerfully arrest the attention: the spectator stands in profound awe, +mingled with delight, especially when he contrasts the magnitude of +the fall, with that of a villa, on the edge of the dark precipices +of frowning rock which form the western bank, and with the casual +spectators looking down from the same elevation. + +The sheet of foam which breaks over the ridge, is more and more divided +as it is dashed against the successive layers of rocks, which it +almost completely veils from view; the spray becomes very delicate and +abundant, from top to bottom, hanging over, and revolving around the +torrent, till it becomes lighter and more evanescent than the whitest +fleecy clouds of summer, than the finest attenuated web, than the +lightest gossamer, constituting the most airy and sumptuous drapery that +can be imagined. Yet, like the drapery of some of the Grecian statues, +which, while it veils, exhibits more forcibly the form beneath, this +does not hide, but exalts the effect produced by this noble cataract. + +The rainbow we saw in great perfection; bow within bow, and (what I +never saw elsewhere so perfectly), as I advanced into the spray, the +bow became complete, myself being a part of its circumference, and its +transcendent glories moving with every change of position. + +This beautiful and splendid sight was to be enjoyed only by advancing +quite into the shower of spray; as if, in the language of ancient +poetry, and fable, the genii of the place, pleased with the beholder's +near approach to the seat of their empire, decked the devotee with the +appropriate robes of the cataract, the vestal veil of fleecy spray, and +the heavenly splendors of the bow. + + * * * * * + + +=_John L. Stephens, 1808-1852._= (Manual, p. 504.) + +From the "Travels in Central America." + +=_269._= DISCOVERY OF A RUINED CITY IN THE WOODS + +The sight of this unexpected monument put at rest, at once and forever, +in our minds, all uncertainty in regard to the character of American +antiquities, and gave as the assurance that the objects we were in +search of were interesting, not only as the remains of an unknown +people, but as works of art, proving, like newly-discovered historical +records, that the people who once occupied the continent of America were +not savages. With an interest perhaps stronger than we had ever felt +in wandering among the ruins of Egypt, we followed our guide, who, +sometimes missing his way, with a constant and vigorous use of his +machete, conducted us through the thick forest, among half-buried +fragments, to fourteen monuments of the same character and appearance, +some with more elegant designs, and some in workmanship equal to the +finest monuments of the Egyptians; one displaced from its pedestal by +enormous roots; another locked in the close embrace of branches of +trees, and almost lifted out of the earth; another hurled to the ground, +and bound down by huge vines and creepers; and one standing, with its +altar before it, in a grove of trees which grew around it, seemingly to +shade and shroud it as a sacred thing; in the solemn stillness of the +woods it seemed a divinity mourning over a fallen people. The only +sounds that disturbed the quiet of this buried city, were the noise of +monkeys moving among the tops of the trees, and the cracking of dry +branches broken by their weight. They moved over our heads in long and +swift processions, forty or fifty at a time; some, with little ones +wound in their long arms, walking out to the end of boughs, and holding +on with their hind feet, or a curl of the tail, sprang to a branch of +the next tree, and with a noise like a current of wind, passed on into +the depths of the forest. It was the first time we had seen these +mockeries of humanity, and with the strange monuments around us, they +seemed like wandering spirits of the departed race, guarding the ruins +of their former habitations. + +... We sat down on the very edge of the wall, and strove in vain to +penetrate the mystery by which we were surrounded. Who were the people +that built this city? In the ruined cities of Egypt,--even in the long +lost Petra, the stranger knows the story of the people whose vestiges +are around him. America, say historians, was peopled by savages; but +savages never reared these structures, savages never carved these +stones. + + * * * * * + + +=_John Charles Fremont, 1813-._= (Manual, p. 505.) + +From "Report of an Exploring Expedition." + +=_270._= ASCENT OF A PEAK OF THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS. + +We continued climbing, and in a short time reached the crest. I sprang +upon the summit, and another step would have precipitated me into an +immense snow field five hundred feet below. To the edge of this field +was a sheer icy precipice; and then, with a gradual fall, the field +sloped off for about a mile, until it struck the foot of another lower +ridge. I stood on a narrow crest, about three feet in width, with an +inclination of about 20° N., 51° E. As soon as I had gratified the first +feelings of curiosity, I descended, and each man ascended in his +turn; for I would only allow one at a time to mount the unstable and +precarious slab, which it seemed a breath would hurl into the abyss +below. We mounted the barometer in the snow of the summit, and fixing a +ramrod in a crevice, unfurled the national flag to wave in the breeze, +where never flag waved before. During our morning's ascent, we had met +no sign of animal life, except the small sparrow-like bird already +mentioned. A stillness the most profound, and a terrible solitude forced +themselves constantly on the mind, as the great features of the place. +Here, on the summit, where the stillness was absolute, unbroken by any +sound, and the solitude complete, we thought ourselves beyond the region +of animated life; but while we were sitting on the rock, a solitary bee +(_bromus_, the bumble bee) came winging his flight from the eastern +valley, and lit on the knee of one of the men. + + * * * * * + +=_271._= THE COLUMBIA RIVER, OREGON. + +The Columbia is the only river which traverses the whole breadth of the +country, breaking through all the ranges, and entering the sea. Drawing +its waters from a section of ten degrees of latitude in the Rocky +Mountains, which are collected into one stream by three main forks +(Lewis', Clark's, and the North Fork) near the center of the Oregon +valley, this great river thence proceeds by a single channel to the sea, +while its three forks lead each to a pass in the mountains which opens +the way into the interior of the continent. This fact in relation to the +rivers of this region, gives an immense value to the Columbia. Its mouth +is the only inlet and outlet, to and from the sea; its three forks +lead to the passes in the mountains; it is therefore the only line of +communication between the Pacific and the interior of North America; and +all operations of war or commerce, of national or social intercourse, +must be conducted upon it. This gives it a value beyond estimation, +and would involve irreparable injury if lost. In this unity and +concentration of its waters, the Pacific side of our continent differs +entirely from the Atlantic side, where the waters of the Alleghany +mountains are dispersed into many rivers, having their different +entrances into the sea, and opening many lines of communication with the +interior. + + * * * * * + +=_Elisha Kent Kane,[68] 1822-1857._= + +From "Arctic Explorations." + +=_272._= THE DISCOVERY OF AN OPEN SEA. + +As Morton, leaving Hans and his dogs, passed between Sir John Franklin +Island and the narrow beach-line, the coast became more wall-like, and +dark masses of porphyritic rock abutted into the sea. With growing +difficulty, he managed to climb from rock to rock, in hopes of doubling +the promontory and sighting the coasts beyond, but the water kept +encroaching more and more on his track. + +It must have been an imposing sight, as he stood at this termination of +his journey, looking out upon the great waste of waters before him. Not +a "speck of ice," to use his own words, could be seen. There, from a +height of four hundred and eighty feet, which commanded a horizon of +almost forty miles, his ears were gladdened with the novel music of +dashing waves; and a surf, breaking in among the rocks at his feet, +stayed his farther progress. + +Beyond this cape all is surmise. The high ridges to the north-west +dwindled off into low blue knobs, which blended finally with the air. +Morton called the cape, which baffled his labors, after his commander; +but I have given it the more enduring name of Cape Constitution. + +... I am reluctant to close my notice of this discovery of an open sea +without adding that the details of Mr. Morton's narrative harmonized +with the observations of all our party. I do not propose to discuss here +the causes or conditions of this phenomenon. How far it may +extend--whether it exist simply as a feature of the immediate region, or +as part of a great and unexplored area communicating with the Polar +basin, and what may be the argument in favor of one or the other +hypothesis, or the explanation which reconciles it with established +laws--may be questions for men skilled in scientific deductions. Mine +has been the more humble duty of recording what we saw. Coming as it +did, a mysterious fluidity in the midst of vast plains of solid ice, it +was well calculated to arouse emotions of the highest order; and I do +not believe there was a man among us who did not long for the means of +embarking upon its bright and lonely waters. + +[Footnote 68: A traveller, explorer, and writer of high merit; a native +of Philadelphia, and a Surgeon in the Navy. His early death was much +deplored.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Bayard Taylor, 1825-._= (Manual, pp. 505, 523, 531.) + +From "Eldorado." + +=_273._= MONTEREY, CALIFORNIA. + +No one can be in Monterey a single night, without being startled and +awed by the deep, solemn crashes of the surf, as it breaks along the +shore. There is no continuous roar of the plunging waves, as we hear on +the Atlantic seaboard; the slow, regular swells--quiet pulsations of +the great Pacific's heart--roll inward in unbroken lines, and fall with +single grand crashes, with intervals of dead silence between. They may +be heard through the day, if one listens, like a solemn undertone to all +the shallow noises of the town; but at midnight, when all else is +still, those successive shocks fall upon the ear with a sensation of +inexpressible solemnity. All the air, from the pine forests to the sea, +is filled with a light tremor, and the intermitting beats of sound are +strong enough to jar a delicate ear. Their constant repetition at last +produces a feeling something like terror. A spirit worn and weakened by +some scathing sorrow could scarcely bear the reverberation. + + * * * * * + +=_274._= APPROACH TO SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA. + +Sunset came on as we approached the strait opening from Pablo Bay into +the Bay of San Francisco. The cloudless sky became gradually suffused +with a soft rose-tint, which covered its whole surface, painting alike +the glassy sheet of the bay, and glowing most vividly on the mountains +to the eastward. The color deepened every moment, and the peaks of the +Coast Range burned with a rich vermilion light, like that of a live +coal. This faded gradually into as glowing a purple, and at last into a +blue as intense as that of the sea at noon-day. The first effect of the +light was most wonderful; the mountains stretched around the horizon +like a belt of varying fire and amethyst, between the two roseate deeps +of air and water; the shores were transmuted into solid, the air into +fluid gems. Could the pencil faithfully represent this magnificent +transfiguration of Nature, it would appear utterly unreal and impossible +to eyes which never beheld the reality.... It lingered, and lingered, +changing almost imperceptibly and with so beautiful a decay, that one +lost himself in the enjoyment of each successive charm, without regret +for those which were over. The dark blue of the mountains deepened into +their night-garb of dusky shadow without any interfusion of dead, ashy +color, and the heaven overhead was spangled with all its stars long +before the brilliant arch of orange in the west had sunk below the +horizon. I have seen the dazzling sunsets of the Mediterranean flush +the beauty of its shores, and the mellow skies which Claude used to +contemplate from the Pincian Hill; but lovely as they are in my memory, +they seem cold and pale when I think of the splendor of such a scene, on +the Bay of San Francisco. + + * * * * * + +The Little Land of Appenzell. + +=_275._= SWISS SCENERY,--A BATTLEFIELD; PICTURESQUE DWELLINGS. + +On the right lay the land of Appenzell,--not a table-land, but a region +of mountain, ridge, and summit, of valley and deep, dark gorge, green as +emerald, up to the line of snow, and so thickly studded with dwellings, +grouped or isolated, that there seemed to be one scattered village as +far as the eye could reach. To the south, over forests of fir, the +Sentis lifted his huge towers of rock, crowned with white, wintry +pyramids. + +Here, where we are, said the postillion, "was the first battle; but +there was another, two years afterwards, over there, the other side of +Trogen, where the road goes down to the Rhine. Stoss is the place, and +there's a chapel built on the very spot. Duke Frederick of Austria came +to help the Abbott Runo, and the Appenzellers were only one to ten +against them. It was a great fight, they say, and the women helped,--not +with pikes and guns, but in this way: they put on white shirts, and came +out of the woods, above where the lighting was going on. Now when the +Austrians and the Abbot's people saw them, they thought there were +spirits helping the Appenzellers, (the women were all white you see, +and too far off to show plainly,) and so they gave up the fight, after +losing nine hundred knights and troopers. After that, it was ordered, +that the women should go first to the sacrament, so that no man might +forget the help they gave in that battle. And the people go every year +to the chapel, on the same day when it took place." + +If one could only transport--a few of these houses to the United +States! Our country architecture is not only hideous, but frequently +unpractical, being at worst, shanties, and at best, city residences set +in the fields. An Appenzell farmer lives in a house from forty to sixty +feet square, and rarely less than four stories in height. The two upper +stories, however, are narrowed by the high, steep roof, so that the true +front of the house is one of the gables. The roof projects at least four +feet on all sides, giving shelter to balconies of carved wood, which +cross the front under each row of windows. The outer walls are covered +with upright, overlapping shingles, not more than two or three inches +broad, and rounded at the ends, suggesting the scale armor of ancient +times. This covering secures the greatest warmth; and when the shingles +have acquired from age that rich burnt-sienna tint--which no paint could +exactly imitate, the effect is exceedingly beautiful. The lowest story +is generally of stone, plastered and whitewashed. The stories are low, +(seven to eight feet) but the windows are placed side by side, and each +room is thoroughly lighted. Such a house is very warm, very durable, +and, without any apparent expenditure of ornament, is externally so +picturesque that no ornament could improve it.... + +The view of a broad Alpine landscape dotted all over with such beautiful +homes, from the little shelf of green hanging on the sides of a rocky +gorge, and the strips of sunny pasture between the ascending forests, to +the very summits of the lower heights and the saddles between them, was +something quite new in my experience. + + * * * * * + + + +NOVELISTS AND WRITERS OF FICTION. + + +=_Charles Brockden Brown, 1771-1810._= (Manual, pp. 478, 505.) + +From "Ormond." + +=_276._= THE YELLOW FEVER IN PHILADELPHIA. + +As she approached the house to which she was going, her reluctance to +proceed increased. Frequently she paused to recollect the motives that +had prescribed this task, and to re-enforce her purposes. At length she +arrived at the house. Now, for the first time, her attention was excited +by the silence and desolation that surrounded her. This evidence of fear +and of danger struck upon her heart. All appeared to have fled from the +presence of this unseen and terrible foe. The temerity of adventuring +thus into the jaws of the pest, now appeared to her in glaring colors. + +... She cast her eye towards the house opposite to where she now stood. +Her heart drooped on perceiving proofs that the dwelling was still +inhabited. The door was open, and the windows in the second and third +story were raised. Near the entrance, in the street, stood a cart. The +horse attached to it, in his form, and furniture, and attitude, was an +emblem of torpor and decay. His gaunt sides, motionless limbs, his gummy +and dead eyes, and his head hanging to the ground, were in unison with +the craziness of the vehicle to which he belonged, and the paltry and +bedusted harness which covered him. No attendant nor any human face was +visible. The stillness, though at an hour customarily busy, was +uninterrupted, except by the sound of wheels moving at an almost +indistinguishable distance. + +She paused for a moment to contemplate this unwonted spectacle. Her +trepidations were mingled with emotions not unakin to sublimity; but the +consciousness of danger speedily prevailed, and she hastened to acquit +herself of her engagement. She approached the door for this purpose, but +before she could draw the bell, her motions were arrested by sounds +from within. The staircase was opposite the door. Two persons were now +discovered descending the stair. They lifted between them a heavy mass, +which was presently discerned to be a coffin. Shocked by this discovery, +and trembling, she withdrew from the entrance. + + * * * * * + + +=_Washington Allston, 1779-1843._= (Manual, pp. 504, 510.) + +From "Monaldi." + +=_277._= IMPERSONATION OF THE POWER OF EVIL. + +The light (which descended from above) was so powerful, that for nearly +a minute I could distinguish nothing, and I rested on a form attached +to the wainscoting. I then put up my hand to shade my eyes, when--the +fearful vision is even now before me--I seemed to be standing before +an abyss in space, boundless and black. In the midst of this permeable +pitch stood a colossal mass of gold, in shape like an altar, and girdled +about by a huge serpent, gorgeous and terrible; his body flecked with +diamonds, and his head, an enormous carbuncle, floating like a meteor +on the air above. Such was the Throne. But no words can describe +the gigantic Being that sat thereon--the grace, the majesty, its +transcendent form--and yet I shuddered as I looked, for its superhuman +countenance seemed, as it were, to radiate falsehood; every feature was +in contradiction--the eye, the mouth, even to the nostril--whilst the +expression of the whole was of that unnatural softness which can only be +conceived of malignant blandishment. It was the appalling beauty of the +King of Hell. The frightful discord vibrated through my whole frame, and +I turned for relief to the figure below.... But I had turned from the +first, only to witness in the second object, its withering fascination. +I beheld the mortal conflict between the conscience and the will--the +visible struggle of a soul in the toils of sin. + + * * * * * + +From his "Letters." + +=_278._= ON A PICTURE BY CARRACCI. + +The subject was the body of the virgin borne for interment by four +apostles. The figures are colossal; the tone dark, and of tremendous +color. It seemed, as I looked at it, as if the ground shook at their +tread, and the air was darkened by their grief. + + * * * * * + +=_279._= ORIGINALITY OF MIND. + +An original mind is rarely understood until it has been _reflected_ from +some half dozen congenial with it; so averse are men to admitting the +true in an unusual form; whilst any novelty, however fantastic, however +false, is greedily swallowed. + + * * * * * + + +=_James K. Paulding, 1779-1860._= (Manual, p. 510.) + +From "Letters from the South." + +=_280._= CHARACTER OF THE DUTCH AND GERMAN SETTLERS. + +In almost every part of the United States where I have chanced to be, +except among the Dutch, the Germans, and the Quakers, people seem to +build everything extempore and pro tempore, as if they looked forward +to a speedy removal or did not expect to want it long. Nowhere else, it +seems to me, do people work more for the present, less for the future, +or live so commonly up to the extent of their means. If we build houses, +they are generally of wood, and hardly calculated to outlast the +builder. If we plant trees, they are generally Lombardy poplars, that +spring up of a sudden, give no more shade than a broom stuck on end, and +grow old with their planters. Still, however, I believe all this has +a salutary and quickening influence on the character of the people, +because it offers another spur to activity, stimulating it not only +by the hope of gain, but the necessity of exertion to remedy passing +inconveniences. Thus the young heir, instead of stepping into the +possession of a house completely finished, and replete with every +convenience--an estate requiring no labor or exertion to repair its +dilapidations, finds it absolutely necessary to bestir himself to +complete what his ancestor had only begun, and thus is relieved from the +tedium and temptations of idleness. + +But you can always tell when you get among the Dutch and the Quakers, +for there you perceive that something has been done for posterity. Their +houses are of stone, and built for duration, not for show. If a German +builds a house, its walls are twice as thick as others--if he puts down +a gate-post, it is sure to be nearly as thick as it is long. Every +thing about him, animate and inanimate, partakes of this character of +solidity. His wife even is a jolly, portly dame, his children +chubby rogues, with legs shaped like little old-fashioned mahogany +bannisters--his barns as big as fortresses--his horses like +mammoths--his cattle enormous--and his breeches surprisingly redundant in +linseywoolsey. It matters not to him, whether the form of sideboards or +bureaus changes, or whether other people wear tight breeches or cossack +pantaloons in the shape of meal-bags. Let fashion change as it may, +his low, round-crowned, broad-brimmed hat, keeps its ground, his +galligaskins support the same liberal dimensions, and his old oaken +chest and clothes-press of curled maple, with the Anno Domini of their +construction upon them, together with the dresser glistening with +pewter-plates, still stand their ground, while the baseless fabrics +of fashion fade away, without leaving a wreck behind. Ceaseless and +unwearied industry is his delight, and enterprise and speculation his +abhorrence. Riches do not corrupt, nor poverty depress him; for his +mind is a sort of Pacific ocean, such as the first navigators described +it--unmoved by tempests, and only intolerable from its dead and tedious +calms. Thus he moves on, and when he dies his son moves on in the +same pace, till generations have passed away, without one of the name +becoming distinguished by his exploits or his crimes. These are useful +citizens, for they bless a country with useful works, and add to its +riches. But still, though industry, prudence, and economy are useful +habits, they are selfish after all, and can hardly aspire to the dignity +of virtues, except as they are preservatives against active vices. + + * * * * * + +From "Westward Ho." + +=_281._= ABORTIVE TOWNS. + +Zeno Paddock and his wife Mrs. Judith, departed from the village, never +to return. Such was the reputation of the proprietor of the Western Sun, +that a distinguished speculator, who was going to found a great city +at the junction of Big Dry, and Little Dry, Rivers, made him the most +advantageous offers to come and establish himself there, and puff the +embryo bantling into existence as fast as possible. He offered him a +whole square next to that where the college, the courthouse, the +church, the library, the athenaeum, and all the public buildings were +situated.... Truth obliges us to say, that on his arrival at the city of +New Pekin, as it was called, he found it covered with a forest of trees, +each of which would take a man half a day to walk round; and that on +discovering the square in which all the public buildings were situated, +he found, to his no small astonishment, on the very spot where the +court-house stood on the map, a flock of wild turkeys gobbling like so +many lawyers, and two or three white-headed owls sitting on the high +trees listening with most commendable gravity.... Zeno set himself down, +began to print his paper in a great hollow sycamore, and to live on +anticipation, as many great speculators had done before him. + + * * * * * + + +=_James Fenimore Cooper, 1789-1851._= (Manual, pp. 478, 495, 506.) + +From "The Pioneers." + +=_282._= THE SHOOTING MATCH. + +In the mean while, as Billy Kirby was preparing himself for another +shot, Natty left the goal, with an extremely dissatisfied manner, +muttering to himself, and speaking aloud.-- + +"There hasn't been such a thing as a good flint sold at the foot of +the lake, since the time when the Indian traders used to come into the +country;--and if a body should go into the flats along the streams in +the hills, to hunt, for such a thing, it's ten to one but they will be +all covered up with the plough. Heigho! its seems to me, that just as +the game grows scarce, and a body wants the best of ammunition, to get +a livelihood, everything that's bad falls on him, like a judgment. But +I'll change the stone, for Billy Kirby hasn't the eye for such a mark, I +know." + +The wood-chopper seemed now entirely sensible that his reputation in +a great measure depended on his care; nor did he neglect any means to +ensure his success. He drew up his rifle, and renewed his aim, again and +again, still appearing reluctant to fire. No sound was heard from even +Brom, during these portentous movements, until Kirby discharged his +piece, with the same want of success as before. Then, indeed, the shouts +of the negro rung through the bushes, and sounded among the trees of the +neighboring forest, like the outcries of a tribe of Indians. He laughed, +rolling his head, first on one side, then on the other, until nature +seemed exhausted with mirth. He danced, until his legs were wearied with +motion, in the snow; and in short, he exhibited all that violence of joy +that characterizes the mirth of a thoughtless negro. + +The wood-chopper had exerted his art, and felt a proportionate degree +of disappointment at his failure. He first examined the bird with the +utmost attention, and more than once suggested that he had touched its +feathers, but the voice of the multitude was against him, for it felt +disposed to listen to the often-repeated cries of the black, to "gib a +nigger fair play." + +Finding it impossible to make out a title to the bird, Kirby turned +fiercely to the black, and said-- + +"Shut your oven, you crow! Where is the man that can hit a turkey's head +at a hundred yards? I was a fool for trying. You needn't make an uproar +like a falling pine-tree about it. Show me the man who can do it." + +"Look this a-way, Billy Kirby," said Leather-Stocking, "and let them +clear the mark, and I'll show you a man who's made better shots afore +now, and that when he's been hard pressed by the savages and wild +beasts." + + * * * * * + +Although Natty Bumppo[69] had certainly made hundreds of more momentous +shots, at his enemies or his game, yet he never exerted himself more to +excel. He raised his piece three several times; once to get his range; +once to calculate his distance; and once because the bird, alarmed by +the deathlike stillness that prevailed, turned its head quickly to +examine its foes. But the fourth time he fired. The smoke, the report, +and the momentary shock, prevented most of the spectators from instantly +knowing the result; but Elizabeth, when she saw her champion drop the +end of his rifle in the snow, and open his mouth in one of its silent +laughs, and then proceed very coolly to recharge his piece, knew that he +had been successful. The boys rushed to the mark, and lifted the turkey +on high, lifeless, and with nothing but the remnant of a head. + +"Bring in the critter," said Leather-Stocking, "and put it at the +feet of the lady. I was her deputy in the matter, and the bird is +her property." ... Elizabeth handed the black a piece of silver as a +remuneration for his loss, which had some effect in again unbending his +muscles, and then expressed to her companion her readiness to return +homeward. + +[Footnote 69: Another name of Leather-Stocking.] + + * * * * * + +From "The Pilot." + +=_283._= LONG TOM COFFIN. + +The seaman who was addressed by this dire appellation arose slowly from +the place where he was stationed as cockswain of the boat, and seemed to +ascend high in air by the gradual evolution of numberless folds in his +body. When erect, he stood nearly six feet and as many inches in his +shoes, though, when elevated in his most perpendicular attitude, there +was a forward inclination about his head and shoulders, that appeared to +be the consequence of habitual confinement in limited lodgings.... One +of his hands grasped, with a sort of instinct, the staff of a bright +harpoon, the lower end of which he placed firmly on the rock, as, in +obedience to the order of his commander, he left the place, where, +considering his vast dimensions, he had been established in an +incredibly small space. + +... The hardy old seaman, thus addressed, turned his grave visage on his +commander, and replied with a becoming gravity,-- + +"Give me a plenty of sea-room, and good canvas, where there is no +occasion for pilots at all, sir. For my part, I was born on board a +chebacco-man, and never could see the use of more land than now and then +a small island, to raise a few vegetables, and to dry your fish--I'm +sure the sight of it always makes me feel uncomfortable, unless we have +the wind dead off shore." + +... "I am more than half of your mind, that an island now and then is +all the terra firma that a seaman needs." + +"It's reason and philosophy, sir," returned the sedate cock-swain; "and +what land there is, should always be a soft mud, or a sandy ooze, in +order that an anchor might hold, and to make soundings sartin. I have +lost many a deep-sea, besides hand-leads by the dozens, on rocky +bottoms; but give me the roadstead where a lead comes up light, and an +anchor heavy. There's a boat pulling athwart our fore-foot, Captain +Barnstable; shall I run her aboard, or give her a berth, sir." + + * * * * * + +From "The Prairie." + +=284.= DEATH OF THE AGED TRAPPER, IN THE PAWNEE VILLAGE. + +The trapper had remained nearly motionless for an hour. His eyes alone +had occasionally opened and shut. When opened, his gaze seemed fastened +on the clouds which hung around the western horizon, reflecting the +bright colors, and giving form and loveliness to the glorious tints +of an American sunset. The hour, the calm beauty of the season, the +occasion, all conspired to fill the spectators with solemn awe. +Suddenly, while musing on the remarkable position in which he was +placed, Middleton felt the hand which he held grasp his own with +incredible power, and the old man, supported on either side by his +friends, rose upright to his feet. For a moment he looked about him, as +if to invite all in presence to listen (the lingering remnant of human +frailty), and then, with a fine military elevation of the head, and with +a voice that might be heard in every part of that numerous assembly, he +pronounced the word "Here!" + +A movement so entirely unexpected, and the air of grandeur and humility +which were so remarkably united in the mien of the trapper, together +with the clear and uncommon force of his utterance, produced a short +period of confusion in the faculties of all present. When Middleton and +Hard-Heart, each of whom had involuntarily extended a hand to support +the form of the old man, turned to him again, they found that the +subject of their interest was removed forever beyond the necessity of +their care. + + * * * * * + +From "The Red Rover." + +=_285._= ESCAPE FROM THE WRECK. + +... The boat was soon cleared of what, under their circumstances, was +literally lumber; leaving, however, far more than enough to meet all +their wants, and not a few of their comforts, in the event that the +elements should accord the permission to use them. + +Then, and not till then, did Wilder relax in his exertions. He had +arranged his sails ready to be hoisted in an instant; he had carefully +examined that no straggling rope connected the boat to the wreck, to +draw them under with the foundering mass; and he had assured himself +that food, water, compass, and the imperfect instruments that were there +then in use to ascertain the position of a ship, were all perfectly +disposed of in their several places, and ready to his hand. When all was +in this state of preparation, he disposed of himself in the stern of the +boat, and endeavored by the composure of his manner, to inspire his less +resolute companions with a portion of his own firmness. + +The bright sunshine was sleeping in a thousand places on every side of +the silent and deserted wreck. The sea had subsided to such a state of +utter rest that it was only at long intervals that the huge and helpless +mass, on which the ark of the expectants lay, was lifted from its dull +quietude, to roll heavily, for a moment in the washing waters, and +then to settle lower into the greedy and absorbing element. Still the +disappearance of the hull was slow, and even tedious, to those who +looked forward with such impatience to its total immersion, as to the +crisis of their own fortunes. + + * * * * * + +Then came the moon, with its mild and deceptive light, to throw the +delusion of its glow on the varying but ever frightful scene. + +"See," said Wilder, as the luminary lifted its pale and melancholy orb +out of the bed of the ocean; "we shall have light for our hazardous +launch!" + +"Is it at hand?" demanded Mrs. Wyllis, with all the resolution of manner +she could assume in so trying a situation. + +"It is--the ship has already brought her scuppers to the water. +Sometimes a vessel will float until saturated with the brine. If ours +sink at all, it will be soon." "If at all! Is there then hope that she +can float?" + +"None!" said Wilder, pausing to listen to the hollow and threatening +sounds which issued from the depths of the vessel, as the water broke +through her divisions, in passing from side to side, and which sounded +like the groaning of some heavy monster in the last agony of nature. +"None; she is already losing her level!" + +His companions saw the change; but not for the empire of the world, +could either of them have uttered a syllable. Another low, threatening, +rumbling sound was heard, and then the pent air beneath blew up the +forward part of the deck, with an explosion like that of a gun. + +"Now grasp the ropes I have given you" cried Wilder, breathless with his +eagerness to speak. + +His words were smothered by the rushing and gurgling of waters. The +vessel made a plunge like a dying whale; and raising its stern high into +the air, glided into the depths of the sea, like the leviathan seeking +his secret places. The motionless boat was lifted with the ship, until +it stood in an attitude fearfully approaching to the perpendicular. As +the wreck descended, the bows of the launch met the element, burying +themselves nearly to filling; but buoyant and light, it rose again, and, +struck powerfully on the stern by the settling mass, the little ark shot +ahead, as though it had been driven by the hand of man. Still, as the +water rushed into the vortex, every thing within its influence yielded +to the suction; and at the next instant, the launch was seen darting +down the declivity, as if eager to follow the vast machine, of which it +had so long formed a dependant, through the same gaping whirlpool, to +the bottom. Then it rose, rocking to the surface, and for a moment, was +tossed and whirled like a bubble circling in the eddies of a pool. After +which, the ocean moaned, and slept again; the moon-beams playing across +its treacherous bosom, sweetly and calm, as the rays are seen to quiver +on a lake that is embedded in sheltering mountains. + + * * * * * + +From "The History of the United States Navy." + +=_286._= NAVAL RESULTS OF THE WAR OF 1812. + +Thus terminated the war of 1812, so far as it was connected with the +American marine. The navy came out of this struggle with a vast increase +of reputation. The brilliant style in which the ships had been carried +into action, the steadiness and rapidity with which they had been +handled, and the fatal accuracy of their fire, on nearly every occasion, +produced a new era in naval warfare. Most of the frigate actions had +been as soon decided as circumstances would at all allow, and in no +instance was it found necessary to keep up the fire of a sloop-of-war an +hour, when singly engaged. Most of the combats of the latter, indeed, +were decided in about half that time. The execution done in these short +conflicts was often equal to that made by the largest vessels of +Europe in general actions, and, in some of them, the slain and wounded +comprised a very large proportion of the crews. + +It is not easy to say in which nation this unlooked-for result created +the most surprise, America or England. In the first it produced a +confidence in itself that had been greatly wanted, but which, in the +end, perhaps, degenerated to a feeling of self-esteem and security that +were not without danger, or entirely without exaggeration.... The ablest +and bravest captains of the English fleet were ready to admit that a new +power was about to appear on the ocean, and that it was not improbable +the battle for the mastery of the seas would have to be fought over +again. + +That the tone and discipline of the service were high, is true; but it +must be ascribed to moral, and not to physical, causes, to that aptitude +in the American character for the sea which has been so constantly +manifested, from the day the first pinnace sailed along the coast, on +the trading voyages of the seventeenth century, down to the present +moment. + +Many false modes of accounting for the novel character that had been +given to naval battles were resorted to, and among other reasons, it was +affirmed that the American vessels of war sailed with crews of picked +seamen. That a nation which practiced impressment should imagine that +another in which enlistments were voluntary, could possess an advantage +of this nature, infers a strong disposition to listen to any means but +the right one to account for an unpleasant truth. It is not known that a +single vessel left the country, the case of the Constitution on her two +last cruises excepted, with a crew that could he deemed extraordinary +in this respect. No American man-of-war ever sailed with a complement +composed of nothing but able seamen; and some of the hardest fought +battles that occurred during this war, were fought by ships' companies +that were materially worse than common. The people that manned the +vessels on Lake Champlain, in particular, were of a quality much +inferior to those usually found in ships of war. Neither were the +officers, in general, old or very experienced. The navy itself dated but +fourteen years back, when the war commenced; and some of the commanders +began their professional careers several years after the first +appointments had been made. Perhaps one half of the lieutenants in the +service at the peace of 1815, had first gone on board ship within six +years from the declaration of the war, and very many of them within +three or four. So far from the midshipmen having been masters and mates +of merchantmen, as was reported at the time, they were generally youths +that first went from the ease and comforts of the paternal home, when +they appeared on the quarter-deck of a man-of-war. + + * * * * * + + +=_Catharine M. Sedgwick, 1789-1867._= (Manual, p. 484.) + +From "Hope Leslie." + +=_287._= THE MINISTER CONDEMNING VAIN APPAREL. + +Mr. Cotton, the regular pastor, rose to remind his brethren of the +decree "that private members should be very sparing in their questions +and observations after public sermons," and to say that he should +postpone any further discussion of the precious points before them, as +it was now near nine o'clock, after which it was not suitable for any +Christian family to be unnecessarily abroad. + +Hope now, and many others, instinctively rose, in anticipation of the +dismissing benediction; but Mr. Cotton waved his hand for them to sit +down till he could communicate to the congregation the decision to +which the ruling elders and himself had come on the subject of the last +Sabbath sermon. "He would not repeat what he had before said upon that +lust of costly apparel which was fast gaining ground, and had already, +as was well known, crept into godly families. He was pleased that there +were among them gracious women, ready to turn at a rebuke, as was +manifested in many veils being left at home that were floating over the +congregation like so many butterflies' wings in the morning. Economy," +he justly observed, "was, as well as simplicity, a Christian grace; and, +therefore, the rulers had determined that those persons who had run into +the excess of immoderate veils and sleeves, embroidered caps, and gold +and silver lace, should be permitted to wear them out, but new ones +should be forfeited." + +This sumptuary regulation announced, the meeting was dismissed. + +Madame Winthrop whispered to Everell that she was going, with his +father, to look in upon a sick neighbor, and would thank him to see her +niece home. Everell stole a glance at Hope, and dutifully offered his +arm to Miss Downing. + +Hope, intent only on one object, was hurrying out of the pew, intending, +in the jostling of the crowd, to escape alone; but she was arrested by +Madame Winthrop's saying, "Miss Leslie, Sir Philip offers you his arm;" +and at the same moment, her aunt stooped forward to beg her to wait a +moment, till she could send a message to Deacon Knowles' wife, that she +might wear her new gown with the Turkish sleeves, the next day.... "It +is but doing as a body would be done by, to let Mistress Knowles know +she may come out in her new gown to-morrow." + + * * * * * + +From "The Linwoods." + +=_288._= KOSCIUSKO'S GARDEN AT WEST POINT. + +The harmonies of Nature's orchestra were the only and the fitting sounds +in this seclusion; the early wooing of the birds; the water from the +fountains of the heights, that, filtering through the rocks, dropped +from ledge to ledge with the regularity of a water-clock; the ripple of +the waves, as they broke upon the rocky points of the shore, or softly +kissed its pebbly margin; and the voice of the tiny stream, that, +gliding down a dark, deep, and almost hidden channel in the rocks, +disappeared and welled up again in the center of the turfy slope, stole +over it, and trickled down the lower ledge of granite to the river. +Tradition has named this little, green shelf on the rocks, "Kosciusko's +Garden;" but, as no traces have been discovered of any other than +Nature's plantings, it was probably merely his favorite retreat, and, as +such, is a monument of his taste and love of nature. + + * * * * * + + +=_John Neal, 1793-._= (Manual, p. 510.) + +From "Randolph." + +=_289._= THE NATURE OF TRUE POETRY. + +Poetry is the naked expression of power and eloquence; but, for many +hundred years, poetry has been confounded with false music, measure, +and cadence, the soul with the body, the thought with the language, the +manner of speaking with the mode of thinking.... What I call poetry, +has nothing to do with art or learning. It is a natural music, the +music of woods and waters, not that of the orchestra.... Poetry is +a religion, as well as a music. Nay, it is eloquence. It is whatever +affects, touches, or disturbs the animal or moral sense of man. I care +not how poetry may be expressed, nor in what language; it is still +poetry; as the melody of the waters, wherever they may run, in the +desert or the wilderness, among the rocks or the grass, will always be +melody.... It is not the composition of a master, the language of art, +painfully and entirely exact, but is the wild, capricious melody of +nature, pathetic or brilliant, like the roundelay of innumerable birds +whistling all about you, in the wind and water, sky and air, or the +coquetting of a river breeze over the fine string's of an Aeolian harp, +concealed among green, leaves and apple blossoms. + + * * * * * + + +=_John Pendleton Kennedy, 1795-1870._= (Manual, pp. 490, 510.) + +From "Swallow Barn." + +=_290._= THE MANSION AND THE BARN. + + +Swallow Barn is an aristocratical old edifice, which sits, like a +brooding hen, on the southern bank of the James River. It looks down +upon a shady pocket, or nook, formed by an indentation of the shore, +from a gentle acclivity, thinly sprinkled with oaks, whose magnificent +branches afford habitation to sundry friendly colonies of squirrels and +woodpeckers. + +This time-honored mansion was the residence of the family of Hazards.... + +The main building is more than a century old. It is built with thick +brick walls, but one story in height, and surmounted by a double-faced +or hipped roof, which gives the idea of a ship, bottom upwards. Later +buildings have been added to this, as the wants or ambition of the +family have expanded. These are all constructed of wood, and seem +to have been built in defiance of all laws of congruity, just as +convenience required.... + +... Beyond the bridge, at some distance, stands a prominent object in +the perspective of this picture,--the most venerable appendage to the +establishment,--a huge barn, with an immense roof hanging almost to the +ground, and thatched a foot thick with sun-burnt straw, which reaches +below the eaves in ragged flakes. It has a singularly drowsy and +decrepit aspect. + + * * * * * + +=_291._= A DISAPPOINTED POLITICIAN. + + +"Things are getting worse and worse," replied the other. "I can see how +it's going. Here, the first thing General Jackson did, when he came in, +he wanted to have the president elected for six years; and, by and by, +they will want him for ten; and now they want to cut up our orchards and +meadows, whether or no. That's just the way Bonaparte went on. What's +the use of states, if they are all to be cut up with canals, and +railroads, and tariffs? No, no, gentlemen; you may depend Old Virginny's +not going to let Congress carry on in her day." + +"How can they help it?" asked Sandy. + +"We haven't _fout_ and bled," rejoined the other, taking out of his +pocket a large piece of tobacco, and cutting off a quid, as he spoke in +a somewhat subdued tone,--"we haven't _fout_ and bled for our liberties +to have our posterity and their land circumcised after this rate, to +suit the figaries of Congress. So let them try it when they will." + +"Mr. Ned Hazard, what do you call state rights?" demanded Sandy. + +"It's a sort of a law," said the other speaker, taking the answer to +himself, "against cotton and wool." + + * * * * * + +From his "Life of William Wirt." + +=_292._= WIRT'S STYLE OF ORATORY. + + +He became, in the maturity of his career, one of the most philosophic +and accomplished lawyers of his time. In earlier life, he was remarked +for a florid imagination, and a power of vivid declamation,--faculties +which are but too apt to seduce their possessor to waste his strength +in that flimsier eloquence, which more captivates the crowd without +the bar, than the Judge upon the bench, and whose fatal facility often +ensnares ambitious youth capable of better things, by its cheap applause +and temptation to that indolence which may be indulged without loss of +popularity. The public seem to have ascribed to Mr. Wirt some such, +reputation as this, when he first attracted notice. He came upon the +broader theater of his fame under this disadvantage. He was aware of +it himself, and labored with matchless perseverance to disabuse the +tribunals, with which he was familiar, of this disparaging opinion. How +he succeeded, his compeers at the bar have often testified. None amongst +them ever brought to the judgment-seat a more complete preparation for +trial--none ever more thoroughly argued a case through minute analysis +and nice discrimination of principles. In logical precision of mind, +clearness of statement, full investigation of complicated points, and +close comparison of precedents, he had no superior at the bar of the +Supreme Court. He often relieved the tedium of argument with playful +sallies of wit and humor. He had a prompt and effective talent for +this exercise, to which his extensive and various reading administered +abundant resource; and he indulged it not less to the gratification of +his auditory than to the aid of his cause. In such tactics, Mr. Wirt was +well versed. In sarcasm and invective he was often exceedingly strong, +and denounced with a power that made transgressors tremble; but the bent +of his nature being kindly and tolerant of error, he took more pleasure +in exciting the laugh, than in conjuring the spirit of censure or +rebuke. + +His manner in speaking was singularly attractive. His manly form, +his intellectual countenance and musical voice, set off by a rare +gracefulness of gesture, won, in advance, the favor of his auditory. He +was calm, deliberate, and distinct in his enunciation, not often rising +into any high exhibition of passion, and never sinking into tameness. +His key was that of earnest and animated argument, frequently alternated +with that of a playful and sprightly humor. His language was neat, well +chosen, and uttered without impediment or slovenly repetition. The tones +of his voice played, with a natural skill, through the various cadences +most appropriate to express the flitting emotions of his mind, and the +changes of his thought. To these external properties of his elocution, +we may ascribe the pleasure which persons of all conditions found in +listening to him. Women often crowded the court-rooms to hear him, and +as often astonished him, not only by the patience, but the visible +enjoyment with which they were wont to sit out his argument to the +end,--even when the topic was too dry to interest them, or too abstruse +for them to understand his discourse.... His oratory was not of +that strong, bold, and impetuous nature which is often the chief +characteristic of the highest eloquence, and which is said to sway the +Senate with absolute dominion, and to imprison or set free the storm of +human passion, in the multitude, according to the speaker's will. It was +smooth, polished, scholar-like, sparkling with pleasant fancies, +and beguiling the listener by its varied graces, out of all note or +consciousness of time. + + * * * * * + + +=_William Ware, 1797-1852._= (Manual, p. 510.) + +From "Aurelian, or Rome in the Third Century." + +=_293._= THE CHRISTIAN MARTYR. + +When now he had stood there not many minutes, one of the doors of the +vivaria was suddenly thrown back, and bounding forth with a roar that +seemed to shake the walls of the theatre, a lion of huge dimensions +leaped upon the arena. Majesty and power were inscribed upon his lordly +limbs; and, as he stood there where he had first sprung, and looked +round upon the multitude, how did his gentle eye and noble carriage, +with which no one for a moment could associate meanness, or cruelty, +or revenge, cast shame upon the human monsters assembled to behold a +solitary, unarmed man torn limb from limb! When he had in this way +looked upon that cloud of faces, he then turned, and moved round the +arena through its whole circumference, still looking upwards upon those +who filled the seats, not till he had come again to the point from which +he started so much as noticing him who stood his victim in the midst. +Then, as if apparently for the first time becoming conscious of his +presence, he caught the form of Probus, and, moving slowly towards him, +looked steadfastly upon him, receiving in return the settled gaze of the +Christian. Standing there still a while, each looking upon the other, he +then walked round him, then approached nearer, making suddenly, and for +a moment, those motions which indicated the roused appetite; but, as +it were, in the spirit of self-rebuke, he immediately retreated a few +paces, and lay down in the sand, stretching out his head towards Probus, +and closing his eyes, as if for sleep. + + * * * * * + + +=_Lydia Maria Child, 1802-._= (Manual, p. 434.) + +From "Autumnal Leaves." + +=_294._= ILL TEMPER CONTAGIOUS. + +It is curious to observe how a man's spiritual state reflects itself in +the people and animals around him; nay, in the very garments, trees, and +stones. + +Reuben Black was an infestation in the neighborhood where he resided. +The very sight of him produced effects similar to the Hindoo magical +tune called Raug, which is said to bring on clouds, storms, and +earthquakes. His wife seemed lean, sharp, and uncomfortable. The heads +of his boys had a bristling aspect, as if each individual hair stood on +end with perpetual fear. The cows poked out their horns horizontally, as +soon as he opened the barn-yard gate. The dog dropped his tail between +his legs, and eyed him askance, to see what humor he was in. The cat +looked wild and scraggy, and had been known to rush straight up the +chimney when he moved towards her. Fanny Kemble's expressive description +of the Pennsylvania stage-horses was exactly suited to Reuben's poor +old nag. "His hide resembled an old hair-trunk." Continual whipping and +kicking had made him such a stoic, that no amount of blows could quicken +his pace, and no chirruping could change the dejected drooping of his +head. All his natural language said, as plainly as a horse _could_ +say it, that he was a most unhappy beast. Even the trees on Reuben's +premises had a gnarled and knotted appearance. The bark wept little +sickly tears of gum, and the branches grew awry, as if they felt the +continual discord, and made sorry faces at each other behind their +owner's back. His fields were red with sorrel, or run over with mullein. +Every thing seemed as hard and arid as his own visage. Every day, he +cursed the town and the neighborhood, because they poisoned his dogs, +and stoned his hens, and shot his cats. Continual law-suits involved him +in so much expense, that he had neither time nor money to spend on the +improvement of his farm. + +Against Joe Smith, a poor laborer in the neighborhood, he had brought +three suits in succession. Joe said he had returned a spade he borrowed, +and Reuben swore he had not. He sued Joe, and recovered damages, for +which he ordered the sheriff to seize his pig. Joe, in his wrath, called +him an old swindler, and a curse to the neighborhood. These remarks were +soon repeated to Reuben. He brought an action for slander, and recovered +twenty-five cents. Provoked at the laugh this occasioned, he watched for +Joe to pass by, and set his big dog upon him, screaming furiously, "Call +me an old swindler again, will you." An evil spirit is more contagious +than the plague. Joe went home and scolded his wife, and boxed little +Joe's ears, and kicked the cat; and not one of them knew what it was +all for. A fortnight after, Reuben's big dog was found dead by poison. +Whereupon he brought another action against Joe Smith, and not being +able to prove him guilty of the charge of dog-murder, he took his +revenge by poisoning a pet lamb belonging to Mrs. Smith. Thus the bad +game went on, with mutual worriment and loss. Joe's temper grew more +and more vindictive, and the love of talking over his troubles at the +grog-shop increased on him. Poor Mrs. Smith cried, and said it was all +owing to Reuben Black; for a better hearted man never lived than her +Joe, when she first married him. + + * * * * * + + +=_Robert M. Bird, 1803-1854._= (Manual, p. 510.) + +From "Nick of the Woods: a Tale of Kentucky." + +=_295._= THE QUAKER HUNTSMAN. + +"I have a thing to say to thee, which it concerns thee and the fair +maid, thee cousin, to know. There was a will, friend, a true and lawful +last will and testament of thee deceased uncle, in which theeself and +thee cousin was made the sole heirs of the same. Truly, friend, I did +take it from the breast of the villain that plotted thee ruin; but, +truly, it was taken from me again, I know not how." + +"I have it safe," said Roland, displaying it, for a moment, with great +satisfaction, to Nathan's eyes. "It makes me master of wealth, which +you, Nathan, shall be the first to share. You must leave this wild life +of the border, go with me to Virginia--" + +"I, friend!" exclaimed Nathan, with a melancholy shake of the head; +"thee would not have me back in the Settlements, to scandalize them that +is of my faith? No, friend; my lot is cast in the woods, and thee must +not ask me again to leave them. And, friend, thee must not think I have +served thee for the lucre of money or gain; for truly these things are +now to me as nothing. The meat that feeds me, the skins that cover, the +leaves that make my bed, are all in the forest around me, to be mine +when I want them; and what more can I desire? Yet, friend, if thee +thinks theeself obliged by whatever I have done for thee, I would ask of +thee one favor that thee can grant." + +"A hundred!" said the Virginian, warmly. + +"Nay, friend," muttered Nathan, with both a warning and beseeching +look, "all that I ask is, that thee shall say nothing of me that should +scandalize and disparage the faith to which I was born." + +"I understand you," said Roland, "and will remember your wish.... Come +with us, Nathan; come with us." + +But Nathan, ashamed of the weakness which he could not resist, had +turned away to conceal his emotion, and, stalking silently off, with the +ever-faithful Peter at his heels, was soon hidden from their eyes. + + * * * * * + + +=_Nathaniel Hawthorne,_= about =_1805-1864._= (Manual, pp. 505, 508.) + +From the "Twice-Told Tales." + +=_296._= PORTRAIT OF EDWARD RANDOLPH. + +Within the antique frame which so recently had enclosed a sable waste of +canvas, now appeared a visible picture--still dark, indeed, in its hues +and shadings, but thrown forward in strong relief.... The whole portrait +started so distinctly out of the background, that it had the effect of +a person looking down from the wall at the astonished and awe-stricken +spectators. The expression of the face, if any words can convey an idea +of it, was that of a wretch detected in some hideous guilt, and exposed +to the bitter hatred, and laughter, and withering scorn of a vast, +surrounding multitude. There was the struggle of defiance, beaten down +and overwhelmed by the crushing weight of ignominy. The torture of the +soul had come forth upon the countenance. It seemed as if the picture, +while hidden behind the cloud of immemorial years, had been all the time +acquiring an intenser depth and darkness of expression, till now it +gloomed forth again, and threw its evil omen over the present hour. +Such, if the wild legend may be credited, was the portrait of Edward +Randolph, as he appeared when a people's curse had wrought its influence +upon his nature. + + * * * * * + +=_297._= DESCRIPTION OF AN OLD SAILOR. + +Many such a day did I sit snugly in Mr. Bartlett's store, attentive +to the yarns of Uncle Parker--uncle to the whole village by right of +seniority, but of southern blood, with no kindred in New England. His +figure is before me now, enthroned upon a mackerel barrel--a lean, old +man, of great height, but bent with years, and twisted into an uncouth, +shape by seven broken limbs; furrowed, also, and weather-worn, as if +every gale, for the better part of a century, had caught him somewhere +on the sea. He looked like a harbinger of tempest, a shipmate of the +Flying Dutchman.... One of Uncle Parker's eyes had been blown out with +gunpowder, and the other did but glimmer in its socket. Turning it +upward as he spoke, it was his delight to tell of cruises against the +French, and battles with his own ship-mates, when he and an antagonist +used to be seated astride of a sailor's chest, each fastened down, by a +spike-nail through his trousers, and there to fight it out. + + * * * * * + +From the "Blithedale Romance." + +=_298._= A PICTURE OF GIRLHOOD. + +Priscilla had now grown to be a very pretty girl, and still kept budding +and blossoming, and daily putting on some new charm, which you no sooner +became sensible of than you thought it worth all she had previously +possessed. So unformed, vague, and without substance, as she had come to +us, it seemed as if we could see Nature shaping out a woman before our +very eyes, and yet had only a more reverential sense of the mystery of a +woman's soul and frame. Yesterday, her cheek was pale,--to-day it had +a bloom. Priscilla's smile, like a baby's first one, was a wondrous +novelty. Her imperfections and short-comings affected me with a kind of +playful pathos, which was as absolutely bewitching a sensation as ever I +experienced. After she had been a month or two at Blithedale, her animal +spirits waxed high, and kept her pretty constantly in a state of bubble +and ferment, impelling her to far more bodily activity than she had yet +strength to endure. She was very fond of playing with the other girls +out of doors. There is hardly another sight in the world so pretty as +that of a company of young girls, almost women grown, at play, and so +giving themselves up to their airy impulse that their tiptoes barely +touch the ground. + +Girls are incomparably wilder and more effervescent than boys, more +untamable, and regardless of rule and limit, with an ever-shifting +variety, breaking continually into new modes of fun, yet with a +harmonious propriety through all. Their steps, their voices, appear free +as the wind, but keep consonance with a strain of music inaudible to us. +Young men and boys, on the other hand, play according to recognized law, +old, traditionary games, permitting no caprioles of fancy, but with +scope enough for the outbreak of savage instincts.... + +Especially it is delightful to see a vigorous young girl run a race, +with her head thrown back, her limbs moving more friskily than +they need, and an air between that of a bird and a young colt. But +Priscilla's peculiar, charm, in a foot-race, was the weakness and +irregularity with which she ran.... + +When she had come to be quite at home among us, I used to fancy that +Priscilla played more pranks, and perpetrated more mischief, than any +other girl in the community. For example, I once heard Silas Foster, +in a very gruff voice, threatening to rivet three horse-shoes round +Priscilla's neck, and chain her to a post, because she, with some other +young people, had clambered upon a load of hay, and caused it to slide +off the cart. How she made her peace I never knew; but very soon +afterwards I saw old Silas, with his brawny hands round Priscilla's +waist, swinging her to and fro, and finally depositing her on one of the +oxen, to take her first lessons in riding. She met with terrible mishaps +in her efforts to milk a cow; she let the poultry into the garden; she +generally spoilt whatever part of the dinner she took in charge; +she broke crockery; she dropped our biggest pitcher into the well; +and--except with her needle and those little wooden instruments for +purse-making--was as unserviceable a member of society as any young +lady in the land. There was no other sort of efficiency about her. Yet +everybody was kind to Priscilla; everybody loved her and laughed at her +to her face, and did not laugh behind her back; everybody would have +given her half of his last crust, or the bigger share of his plum-cake. +These were pretty certain indications that we were all conscious of a +pleasant weakness in the girl, and considered her not quite able to look +after her own interests, or fight her battle with the world. + + * * * * * + +From "The Marble Faun." + +=_299._= SCULPTURE: ART AND ARTISTS. + +A sculptor, indeed, to meet the demands which our preconceptions make +upon him, should be even more indispensably a poet than those who deal +in measured verse and rhyme. His material, or instrument, which serves +him in the stead of shifting and transitory language, is a pure, white, +undecaying substance. It insures immortality to whatever is wrought in +it, and therefore makes it a religious obligation to commit no idea +to its mighty guardianship, save such as may repay the marble for +its faithful care, its incorruptible fidelity, by warming it with an +etherial life. Under this aspect, marble assumes a sacred character; and +no man should dare to touch it unless he feels within himself a certain +consecration and a priesthood, the only evidence of which, for the +public eye, will be the high treatment of heroic subjects, or the +delicate evolution of spiritual, through material beauty.... + +No ideas such as the foregoing--no misgivings suggested by +them--probably troubled the self complacency of most of these clever +sculptors. Marble, in their view, had no such sanctity as we impute to +it.... + +Yet we love the artists, in every kind; even these, whose merits we are +not quite able to appreciate. Sculptors, painters, crayon sketchers, or +whatever branch of aesthetics they adopted, were certainly pleasanter +people, as we saw them that evening, than the average whom we meet +in ordinary society. They were not wholly confined within the sordid +compass of practical life; they had a pursuit which, if followed +faithfully out, would lead them to the beautiful, and always had a +tendency thitherward, even if they lingered to gather up golden drops +by the wayside. Their actual business (though they talked about it very +much as other men talk of cotton, politics, flour barrels, and sugar) +necessarily illuminated their conversation with something akin to the +ideal.... + +As interesting as any of these relics was a large portfolio of old +drawings, some of which, in the opinion of their possessor, bore +evidence on their faces of the touch of master-hands. + +... According to the judgment of several connoisseurs, Raphael's own +hand had communicated its magnetism to one of these sketches; and if +genuine, it was evidently his first conception of a favorite Madonna, +now hanging in the private apartment of the Grand Duke, at Florence.... +There were at least half a dozen others, to which the owner assigned as +high an origin. It was delightful to believe in their authenticity, at +all events; for these things make the spectator, more vividly sensible +of a great painter's power, than the final glow and perfected art of the +most consummate picture that may have been elaborated from them. There +is an effluence of divinity in the first sketch; and there, if any +where, you find the pure light of inspiration, which the subsequent toil +of the artist serves to bring out in stronger lustre, indeed, but +likewise adulterates it with what belongs to an inferior mood. The aroma +and fragrance of new thought were perceptible in these designs, after +three centuries of wear and tear. The charm lay partly in their very +imperfection; for this is suggestive, and sets the imagination at work; +whereas, the finished picture, if a good one, leaves the spectator +nothing to do, and if bad, confuses, stupefies, disenchants, and +disheartens him. + + * * * * * + +From the "English Note Books." + +=_300._= RUINS OF FURNESS ABBEY. + +The most interesting part is that which was formerly the church, and +which, though now roofless, is still surrounded by walls, and retains +the remnants of the pillars that formerly supported the intermingling +curves of the arches. The floor is all overgrown with grass strewn with +fragments and capitals of pillars. It was a great and stately edifice, +the length of the nave and choir having been nearly three hundred feet, +and that of the transept more than half as much. The pillars along the +nave were alternately, a round solid one, and a clustered one. Now, what +remains of some of them is even with the ground: others present a stump +just high enough to form a seat; and others are perhaps a man's height +from the ground; and all are mossy, and with grass and weeds rooted into +their chinks, and here and there a tuft of flowers giving its tender +little beauty to their decay. The material of the edifice is a soft red +stone, and it is now extensively overgrown with a lichen of a very light +gray hue, which at a little distance makes the walls look as if they +had long ago been whitewashed and now had partially returned to their +original color. The arches of the nave and transept were noble and +immense; there were four of them together, supporting a tower which has +long since disappeared,--arches loftier than I ever conceived to have +been made by man. Very possibly, in some cathedral that I have seen, +or am yet to see, there may be arches as stately as these, but I doubt +whether they can ever show to such advantage in a perfect edifice as +they do in this ruin,--most of them broken, only one, as far as I +recollect, still completing its sweep. In this state they suggest a +greater majesty and beauty than any finished human work can show; the +crumbling traces of the half-obliterated design producing somewhat of +the effect of the first idea of any thing admirable, when it dawns upon +the mind of an artist or a poet,--an idea which, do what he may, he is +sure to fall short of in his attempt to embody it.... + +Conceive all these shattered walls, with here and there an arched +door, or the great arched vacancy of a window; these broken stones and +monuments scattered about; these rows of pillars up and down the nave, +these arches, through which a giant might have stepped, and not +needed to bow his head, unless in reverence to the sanctity of the +place,--conceive it all, with such verdure and embroidery of flowers as +the gentle, kindly moisture of the English climate procreates on all old +things, making them more beautiful than new, conceive it with the grass +for sole pavement of the long and spacious aisle, and the sky above for +the only roof. The sky, to be sure, is more majestic than the tallest +of those arches; and yet these latter, perhaps, make the stronger +impression of sublimity, because they translate the sweep of the sky to +our finite comprehension. It was a most beautiful, warm, sunny day, and +the ruins had all the pictorial advantage of bright light, and deep +shadows. I must not forget that birds flew in and out among the +recesses, and chirped and warbled, and made themselves at home there. +Doubtless, the birds of the present generation are the posterity of +those who first settled in the ruins, after the Reformation; and perhaps +the old monks of a still earlier day may have watched them building +about the abbey, before it was a ruin at all. + + * * * * * + +From the "American Note Books." + +=_301._= SCENERY OF THE MERRIMAC. + +I never could have conceived that there was so beautiful a river-scene +in Concord as this of the North Branch. The stream flows through the +midmost privacy and deepest heart of a wood, which, as if but half +satisfied with its presence, calm, gentle and unobtrusive as it is, +seems to crowd upon it, and barely to allow it passage, for the trees +are rooted on the very verge of the water, and dip their pendent +branches into it. On one side there is a high bank forming the side of a +hill, the Indian name of which I have forgotten, though Mr. Thoreau told +it to me; and here in some instances the trees stand leaning over the +river, stretching out their arms as if about to plunge in headlong. On +the other side, the bank is almost on a level with the water, and there +the quiet congregation of trees stood with feet in the flood, and +fringed with foliage down to its very surface. Vines here and there +twine themselves about bushes or aspens or alder-trees, and hang their +clusters, though scanty and infrequent this season, so that I can reach +them from my boat, I scarcely remember a scene of more complete and +lovely seclusion than the passage of the river through this wood. Even +an Indian canoe in olden times, could not have floated onward in deeper +solitude than my boat. I have never elsewhere had such an opportunity to +observe how much more beautiful reflection is than what we call reality. +The sky and the clustering foliage on either hand, and the effect of +sunlight as it found its way through the shade, giving lightsome hues in +contrast with the quiet depth of the prevailing tints, all these +seemed unsurpassably beautiful when beheld in upper air. But on gazing +downward, there they were, the same even to the minutest particular, yet +arrayed in ideal beauty which satisfied the spirit incomparably more +than the actual scene. I am half convinced that the reflection is indeed +the reality, the real thing which Nature imperfectly images to our +grosser sense. At any rate the disembodied shadow is nearest to the +soul. + + * * * * * + +From the "French and Italian Note Books." + +=_302._= A DUNGEON OF ANCIENT ROME. + +We were now in the deepest and ugliest part of the old Mamertine Prison, +one of the few remains of the kingly period of Rome, and which served +the Romans as a state prison for hundreds of years before the Christian +era. A multitude of criminals or innocent persons, no doubt, have +languished here in misery, and perished in darkness. Here Jugurtha +starved; here Catiline's adherents were strangled; and methinks, there +can not be in the world another such an evil den, so haunted with black +memories and indistinct surmises of guilt and suffering. In old Rome, I +suppose, the citizens never spoke of this dungeon above their breath. +It looks just as bad as it is; round, only seven paces across, yet so +obscure that our tapers could not illuminate it from side to side,--the +stones of which it is constructed being as black as midnight. The +custode showed us a stone post at the side of the cell, with the hole in +the top of it, into which, he said, St. Peter's chain had been fastened; +and he uncovered a spring of water, in the middle of the stone floor, +which he told us had miraculously gushed up to enable the Saint to +baptize his jailor. The miracle was perhaps the more easily wrought, +inasmuch as Jugurtha had found the floor of the dungeon oozy with wet. +However, it is best to be as simple and childlike as we can in these +matters; and whether St. Peter stamped his visage into the stone, and +wrought this other miracle or no, and whether or no he ever was in the +prison at all, still the belief of a thousand years and more, gives a +sort of reality and substance to such traditions. The custode dipped an +iron ladle into the miraculous water, and we each of us drank a sip; +and, what is very, remarkable, to me it seemed hard water and almost +brackish, while many persons think it the sweetest in Rome. I suspect +that St. Peter still dabbles in this water, and tempers its qualities +according to the faith of those who drink it. + + * * * * * + + +=_William Gilmore Simms, 1806-1870._= (Manual, pp. 490, 510.) + +From "Eutaw, a Sequel to The Foragers." + +=_303._= THE BATTLE OF EUTAW. + +Up to this moment nothing had seemed more certain than the victory of +the Americans. The consternation in the British camp was complete. +Everything was given up for lost by a considerable portion of the army. +The commissaries destroyed their stores, the loyalists and American +deserters, dreading the rope, seizing every horse which they could +command, fled incontinently for Charleston, whither they carried such +an alarm that the stores along the road were destroyed, and the trees +felled across it for the obstruction of the victorious Americans, who +were supposed to be pressing down upon the city with all their might. + +Equally deceived were the conquerors. Flushed with success, the infantry +scattered themselves about the British camp, which, as all the tents had +been left standing, presented a thousand objects to tempt the appetites +of a half-starved and half-naked soldiery. Insubordination followed +disorder.... + +No more could be done. The laurels won in the first act of this exciting +drama, were all withered in the second. Both parties claimed a victory. +It belonged to neither. The British were beaten from the field at the +point of the bayonet, sought shelter in a fortress, and repulsed their +assailants from that fortress. It is to the shame and discredit of the +Americans that they were repulsed. The victory was in their hands. + + * * * * * + +From the "Life of Francis Marion." + +=_304._= CHARACTER AND SERVICES OF GENERAL MARION. + +No commander had ever been more solicitous of the safety and comfort of +his men. It was this which had rendered him so sure of their fidelity, +which had enabled him to extract from them such admirable service. This +simple entreaty stayed their quarrels; ... No duel took place among his +officers during the whole of his command. + +The province which was assigned to his control by Governor Rutledge, was +the constant theatre of war. He was required to cover an immense extent +of country. With a force constantly unequal and constantly fluctuating, +he contrived to supply its deficiencies by the resources of his own +vigilance and skill. His personal bravery was frequently shown, and the +fact that he himself conducted an enterprise, was enough to convince his +men that they were certain to be led to victory.... He had no lives to +waste, and the game he played was that which enabled him to secure the +greatest results, with the smallest amount of hazard. Yet, when the +occasion seemed to require it, he could advance and strike with an +audacity, which in the ordinary relations of the leader with the +soldier, might well be thought inexcusable rashness.... The reader will +perceive a singular discrepancy between the actual events detailed in +the life of every popular hero, and the peculiar fame which he holds in +the minds of his countrymen. Thus, while Marion is every where regarded +as the peculiar representative in the southern States, of the genius of +partizan warfare, we are surprised, when we would trace, in the pages of +the annalist, the sources of this fame, to find the details so meagre +and so unsatisfactory. Tradition mumbles over his broken memories, which +we vainly strive to pluck from his lips, and bind together in coherent +and satisfactory records. The spirited surprise, the happy ambush, the +daring onslaught, the fortunate escape,--these, as they involve no +monstrous slaughter,--no murderous strife of masses,--no rending of +walled towns and sack of cities, the ordinary historian disdains. The +military reputation of Marion consists in the frequent performance of +deeds, unexpectedly, with inferior means, by which the enemy was annoyed +and dispirited, and the hearts and courage of his countrymen warmed into +corresponding exertions with his own. To him we owe that the fires of +patriotism were never extinguished, even in the most disastrous hours, +in the low country of South Carolina. He made our swamps and forests +sacred, as well because of the refuge which they gave to the fugitive +patriot, as for the frequent sacrifices which they enabled him to make, +on the altars of liberty and a befitting vengeance.... It is enough +that his fame has entered largely into that of his country, forming a +valuable portion of its national stock of character. His memory is in +the very hearts of our people. + + * * * * * + + +=_Harriet Beecher Stowe, 1812-._= (Manual, p. 484.) + +From "Uncle Tom's Cabin." + +=_305._= MEMORIALS OF A DEAD CHILD. + +At the door, however, he stopped a moment, and then coming back, he +said, with some hesitation,-- + +"Mary, I don't know how you'd feel about it, but there's that drawer +full of things-of-of-poor little Henry's." So saying, he turned quickly +on his heel, and shut the door after him. + +His wife opened the little bedroom door adjoining her room, and taking +the candle, set it down on the top of a bureau there; then from a small +recess she took a key, and put it thoughtfully in the lock of a drawer, +and made a sudden pause, while two boys, who, boy-like, had followed +close on her heels, stood looking, with silent, significant glances, at +their mother. And O, mother that reads this, has there never been in +your house a drawer, or a closet, the opening of which has been to you +like the opening again of a little grave? Ah! happy mother that you are, +if it has not been so. + +Mrs. Bird slowly opened the drawer. There were little coats, of many a +form and pattern, piles of aprons, and rows of small stockings; and even +a pair of little shoes, worn and rubbed at the toes, were peeping +from the folds of a paper. There was a toy horse and wagon, a top, a +ball,--memorials gathered with many a tear and many a heart-break! She +sat down by the drawer, and leaning her head on her hands over it, wept +till the tears fell through her fingers into the drawer; then, suddenly +raising her head, she began, with nervous haste, selecting the plainest +and most substantial articles, and gathering them into a bundle. + +"Mamma," said one of the boys, gently touching her arm, "are you going +to give away those things?" + +"My dear boys," she said, softly and earnestly, "if our dear loving +little Henry looks down from heaven, he would be glad to have us do +this. I could not find it in my heart to give them away to any common +person--to anybody that was happy; but I give them to a mother more +heart-broken and sorrowful than I am; and I hope God will send his +blessing with, them!" + + * * * * * + +From "Old-Town Folks." + +=_306._= THE OLD MEETING HOUSE. + +Going to meeting, in that state of society into which I was born, was as +necessary and inevitable a consequence of waking up on Sunday morning, +as eating one's breakfast. Nobody thought of staying away,--and, for +that matter, nobody wanted to stay away. Our weekly life was simple, +monotonous, and laborious; and the chance of seeing the whole +neighborhood together in their best clothes on Sunday, was a thing +which, in the dearth of all other sources of amusement, appealed to the +idlest and most unspiritual of loafers. They who did not care for the +sermon or the prayers, wanted to see Major Broad's scarlet coat and +laced ruffles, and his wife's brocade dress, and the new bonnet which +Lady Lothrop had just had sent up from Boston. Whoever had not seen +these would be out of society for a week to come, and not be able to +converse understandingly on the topics of the day. + +The meeting on Sunday united in those days, as nearly as possible, the +whole population of a town,--men, women, and children. There was then +in a village but one fold and one shepherd, and long habit had made the +tendency to this one central point so much a necessity to every one, +that to stay away from "meetin," for any reason whatever, was always a +secret source of uneasiness. I remember in my early days, sometimes when +I had been left at home by reason of some of the transient ailments of +childhood, how ghostly and supernatural the stillness of the whole house +and village outside the meeting-house used to appear to me, how loudly +the clock ticked and the flies buzzed down the window-pane, and how I +listened in the breathless stillness to the distant psalm-singing, the +solemn tones of the long prayer, and then to the monotone of the sermon, +and then again to the closing echoes of the last hymn, and thought +sadly, what if some day I should be left out, when all my relations and +friends had gone to meeting in the New Jerusalem, and hear afar the +music from the crystal walls. + +The arrangement of our house of worship in Oldtown was somewhat +peculiar, owing to the fact of its having originally been built as a +missionary church for the Indians. The central portion of the house, +usually appropriated to the best pews, was in ours devoted to them; and +here were arranged benches of the simplest and most primitive form; on +which were collected every Sunday, the thin and wasted remnants of +what once was a numerous and powerful tribe. There were four or five +respectable Indian families, who owned comfortable farms in the +neighborhood, and came to meeting in their farm-wagons, like any of +their white neighbors. + +... Besides our Indian population, we had also a few negroes, and a side +gallery was appropriated to them. One of them was that of Aunt Nancy +Prime, famous for making election-cake and ginger-pop, and who was sent +for at all the great houses on occasions of high festivity, as learned +in all mysteries relating to the confection of cakes and pies. A tight, +trig, bustling body she, black and polished as ebony, smooth-spoken +and respectful, and quite a favorite with everybody. Nancy had treated +herself to an expensive luxury in the shape of a husband,--an idle, +worthless mulatto man, who was owned as a slave in Boston. Nancy bought +him, by intense labors in spinning flax, but found him an undesirable +acquisition, and was often heard to declare, in the bitterness of her +soul, when her husband returned from his drinking bouts, that she should +never buy another nigger, she knew. Prominent there was the stately form +of old Boston Foodah, an African Prince, who had been stolen from the +coast of Guinea in early youth, and sold in Boston at some period of +antiquity whereto the memory of man runneth not. + + * * * * * + + +=_Maria J. McIntosh, 1815-._= (Manual, p. 484.) + +From "Two Pictures." + +=_307._= DEBATE BETWEEN WEBSTER AND HAYNE. + +... Webster, Clay, Calhoun--the triumvirate to which, it is to be +feared, we shall long have to look back as to our last, were still +living; and as Augusta Moray gazed on the dark, melancholy eyes of the +first, shadowed by that wonderful brow, or looked into the face of the +second, where if prescient thought sometimes rose as a flitting cloud, +it was chased away before the glow of the warm heart and the quick +kindling fancy, or turned to the sharp angular lines and firmly +compressed lips that marked the iron strength of the third, she felt +that she stood in the midst of her dream fulfilment. The session was one +of peculiar interest. Great questions agitated the public mind, and were +treated greatly. Two great parties, springing from the very foundations +of our civil polity, strove for supremacy in our legislative halls. The +one, looking into the depths of our colonial history, took its stand on +the unquestionable truth, that each state of the Union was sovereign +over herself, from which was drawn the corollary, that she was as free +to leave as she had been to enter the Union. The other contended that +the present constitution of these United States defined the boundary of +the powers of each state, as well as of the great whole into which they +had been voluntarily fused; that to look behind that, was such a resort +to first principles or natural rights, as is involved in revolution, and +must be decided as revolution ever is, by the relative strength of the +ruling and the revolting forces. + +On neither side was there any trickery, any bullying, any flimsy display +of rhetorical power. All was grand as the subject for which they +contended, solemn as the doom to which they seemed, approaching. In the +chief magistrate of that time all saw the unflinching executor of the +nation's will--a man whose words were the sure prefigurements of his +deeds. Their verdict must be carefully weighed, for it would be surely +executed. In stern silence each sat to hear, to deliberate, to judge. +The sharp logic and fiery vehemence of Hayne called up no angry flash, +roused no personal vindictiveness; and the deep tones of Webster found +as ready an entrance to southern as to northern hearts, while in those +powerful, words which seemed the fit weapons of a nation's champion, his +mighty mind swept away all that opposed it, save that principle which +lay imbedded in the very deepest stratum of the life of his opponents, +and which could not be torn away from them till feeling and life were +extinct. + +It was in the capital, and in the presence of these great men, that +Augusta liked best to find herself. We are afraid she did not always +listen when men of more ordinary power occupied the floor,--the gallery +was an excellent dreaming place at such times. + + * * * * * + + +=_Catharine Anne Warfield,[70] 1817-._= + +From "The Romance of Beauseincourt." + +=_308._= VIEW OF THE SKY BY NIGHT. + +I had derived great and constant pleasure from the undisturbed +possession of this place of promenade during my whole sojourn.... Often, +when my mind had been distracted with anxious cares, I had literally +waited down its excitement and anguish in my fierce and rapid movements +to and fro, over its smooth painted floor, the daily care of Sylphy, who +might be heard in the hot season busily employed in refreshing it with +mop and broom and water during the first hours of the morning, the +pleasant, dewy freshness of which operation might be felt gratefully in +the atmosphere of our heated chamber. + +The long gallery was very solitary, of course, at an hour like this, and +it was with a feeling of calm relief that I paced its lonely length, +stopping at intervals to look out upon the night; one of cloudy +sultriness, occasionally relieved by gusts of warm, damp wind, that bore +the distant odors of swamp and forest on its wings, and promised speedy +rain. Here and there in the dappled heavens were liquid purple spaces, +like the open sea described by Arctic voyagers, around which hung masses +of silvery clouds, projecting like ice cliffs; and into these patches of +sky the large yellow moon would now and then sail majestically, suddenly +emerging, like a ship from a fog, from the fleecy screen that veiled her +light, to cross these spaces, and plunge into mist and shadow again. + +There was something in the whole effect calculated to absorb the mind of +an absent dreamer, intent on the future, and for the first time for many +weeks putting aside all foreign considerations, in favor of self too +long merged in others and neglected. + +[Footnote 70: One of our most accomplished female writers; a native of +Mississippi, but long resident in Kentucky.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Herman Melville, 1819-._= (Manual, p. 505.) + +From "Moby Dick." + +=_309._= SPERM WHALE FISHING. + +It was a sight full of quick wonder and awe! The vast swells of the +omnipotent sea; the surging, hollow roar they made as they rolled along +the eight gunwales, like gigantic bowls in a boundless bowling-green; +the brief suspended agony of the boat, as it would tip for an instant on +the knife-like edge of the sharper waves, that almost seemed threatening +to cut it in two; the sudden profound dip into the watery glens and +hollows; the keen spurrings and goadings to gain the top of the opposite +hill; the headlong, sled-like slide down its other side; all these, with +the cries of the headsmen and harpooners, and the shuddering gasps of +the oarsmen, with the wondrous sight of the ivory Pequod bearing down +upon her boats, with outstretched sails, like a wild hen after her +screaming brood; all this was thrilling. Not the raw recruit, marching +from the bosom of his wife into the fever heat of his first battle; not +the dead man's ghost, encountering the first unknown phantom in the +other world; neither of these can feel stranger and stronger emotions +than that man does, who for the first time finds himself pulling into +the charmed, churned circle of the hunted sperm whale. + +Soon we were running through a suffusing wide veil of mist; neither ship +nor boat to be seen. + +"Give way, men," whispered Starbuck, drawing still further aft the sheet +of his sail; "there is time to kill a fish yet before the squall comes. +There's white water again! close to! Spring!" Though not one of the +oarsmen was then facing the life and death peril so close to them ahead, +yet with their eyes on the intense countenance of the mate in the stern +of the boat, they knew that the imminent instant had come; they heard, +too, an enormous wallowing sound as of fifty elephants stirring in their +litter. Meanwhile the boat was still booming through the mist, the +waves curling and hissing around us like the erected crests of enraged +serpents. + +"That's his hump. _There, there_, give it to him!" whispered Starbuck. + +A short rushing sound leaped out of the boat; it was the darted iron of +Queequeg. Then all in one welded commotion, came an invisible push from +astern, while forward the boat seemed striking on a ledge; the sail +collapsed and exploded; a gush of scalding vapor shot up near by; +something rolled and tumbled like an earthquake beneath us. The whole +crew were half suffocated as they were tossed helter-skelter into the +white curdling cream of the squall. Squall, whale, and harpoon had all +blended together and the whale, merely grazed by the iron, escaped. + +Though completely swamped, the boat was nearly unharmed. Swimming round +it we picked up the floating oars, and lashing them across the gunwale, +tumbled back to our places. There we sat up to our knees in the sea, the +water covering every rib and plank, so that to our downward gazing eyes, +the suspended craft seemed a coral boat grown up to us from the bottom +of the ocean. + + * * * * * + + +=_Josiah Gilbert Holland, 1819-._= + +From The Bay Path. + +=_310._= THE WEDDING-PRESENT. + +John Woodcock was the first to break the silence. Rising from his seat, +and making his way out of the crowd around him, he crossed the room to +where his daughter was standing absorbed in, and half bewildered by the +scene, and whispering a few words in her ear, took her by the hand, and +led her before the married pair. Mary extended her hand to him instantly +and cordially, and exclaimed, "I knew that you would come to me and +congratulate me." + +"That wan't my arrant any way," said Woodcock bluntly, "and I shouldn't +begin with you if it was." + +"Why John! I am astonished!" exclaimed the bride; "I thought you was one +of the best friends I had in the world." + +But Mary was somewhat affected with Woodcock's seriousness, and, with no +reply to Holyoke, beyond a smile, she asked Woodcock's reasons for the +statement he had made. + +"I didn't come up here to talk about this, and p'raps it ain't the right +time to do it, but there's no use backin' down when you begin. I've got +a consait that men and women ain't built out of the same kind of timber. +Look at my hand--a great pile o' bones covered with brown luther, with +the hair on,--and then look at yourn. White oak ain't bass, is it? Every +man's hand ain't so black as mine, and every woman's ain't so white as +yourn, but there's always difference enough to show, and there's just as +much odds in their doin's and dispositions as there is in their hands. I +know what women be. I've wintered and summered with 'em, and take 'em by +and large, they're better'n men. Now and then a feller gets hitched to a +hedgehog, but most of 'em get a woman that's too good for 'em. They're +gentle and kind, and runnin' over with good feelin's, and will stick to +a fellow a mighty sight longer'n he'll stick to himself. My woman's dead +and gone, but if there wan't any women in the world, and I owned it, I'd +sell out for three shillin's, and throw in stars enough to make it an +object for somebody to take it off my hands. + +"Some time ago," resumed Woodcock. "I heerd the little ones and some of +the old ones tellin' what they was goin' to give Mary Pynchon when she +got married; and it set me to thinkin' what I could give her, for I +knew if anybody ought to give her anything, it was me. But I hadn't any +money, and I couldn't send to the Bay for anything, and I shouldn't 'a +known what to get if I could, I might have shot a buck, but I couldn't +'a brought it to the weddin', and it didn't seem exactly ship-shape to +give her anything she could eat up and forget. So I thought I'd give her +a keepsake my wife left me when she died. It's all I've got of any vally +to me, and it's somethin' that'll grow better every day it is kep', if +you'll take care of it. I don't know what'll come of me, and I want to +leave it in good hands." + +The bride began to grow curious, and despite their late repulse the +group began to collect again. + +"It's a queer thing for a present, perhaps, (and Woodcock's lip began to +quiver and his eye to moisten,) but I hope it'll do you some service. +'Taint anything't you can wear in your hair, or throw over your +shoulders. It's--it's--" + +"It's what?" inquired Mary, with an encouraging smile. + +Woodcock took hold of the hand of his child, and placing it in that of +the questioner, burst out with, "God knows that's the handle to it," and +retreated to the window, where he spent several minutes looking out into +the night, and endeavoring to repress the spasms of a choking throat. +Neither Mary Holyoke nor her husband could disguise their emotions, as +they saw before them the living testimonial of Woodcock's gratitude and +trust. Mary stooped and kissed the gift-child, who clung to her as +if, contrary to her father's statement, she was an article of wearing +apparel. + + * * * * * + + +=_John Esten Cooke,[71] 1830-._= + +From "Estcourt, or the Memoirs of a Virginia Gentleman." + +=_311._= THE PORTRAIT. + +"I see you are prepared now," said the painter; "the thought I +endeavored to suggest has entered your mind, for I read the expression +in your face like an open book. Well, see if I have deceived you--look!" + +And as he spoke, the painter removed a green curtain from the frame of a +picture, so arranged that the full light of the middle window fell upon +it. + +Estcourt almost cried out with astonishment. Here, before him, as +though ready to start from the canvas, was the woman who had been, his +fate--who had died long years before; there in the full blaze of light, +he saw her who had thrown the shadow upon his existence, which still +clouded it, fresh, softly smiling, alive almost on the speaking and +eloquent canvas. The blue eyes beamed with a tender and subdued +sweetness, the delicate forehead, with its soft brown curls, rose airily +above the perfectly arched brows, the innocent lips were half parted, +and the portrait seemed almost ready to move from its frame, and +descend, a living woman, into the apartment. + +[Footnote 71: Conspicuous among the younger writers of Virginia, of which +State he is a native; author of many novels.] + + * * * * * + +=_312._= ASPECTS OF SUMMER. + +The glory of the summer deepened and grew more intense, the foliage +assumed a darker tint of emerald, the sky glowed with a more dazzling +blue, and the songs of the busy harvesters came sad and slow, like the +long, melancholy swell of pensive sighs across the hills and fields, +dying away finally into the "harvest home," which told that the golden +grain would wave no more in the wind until another year. The "harvest +moon" looked down on bare fields now, and June was dead. At last came +August, the month of great white clouds and imperial sunsets, the +crowning hours of the rich summer, soon to fade away into the yellow +autumn, the month of reveries and dreams on the banks of shadowy +streams, or beneath, the old majestic trees of silent forests. + + * * * * * + + +=_Sarah A. Dorsey,[72] about 1835-._= + +From "Lucia Dare." + +=_313._= SCENERY AND SOCIETY AT NATCHEZ, MISSISSIPPI. + +The village of Natchez, under the hill, was clustered close to the +water's edge; the bluffs rose precipitously, garnished with pine trees, +and locusts, and tufted grasses; the vista here terminated in Brown's +beautiful gardens, gay with flower-beds and closely-clipped hedges. Far +away over the river stretched the broad emerald plain of Louisiana, +level with the stream, extending for many, many miles, its champaign +checkered with groups of white plantation-houses, spotted with groves of +trees, rich in autumnal beauty, glowing with crimson, gold, and green, +softened by veils of long, gray moss. This plain was dotted with lovely +lakes, whose waters shone in the slanting rays of the declining sun.... +The sun went down quickly, as he does at sea, a round, red fire-ball, +while light, splendid clouds of purple, pink, lilac, and gray, on the +blue, blue heavens, refracted the ascending, slender, quivering rays of +the disappearing orb, the type of Deity in all natural religions, the +Totem of the Natchez Indians. Beloved city--bright "city of the Sun"! +How often have I paced with restless child's feet, the road that Lucian +was now traveling over, and listened, as he did, but more lingeringly, +to the sounds of gentle human life, stirring within thy peaceful homes! +How often have I thanked God for my beautiful childhood's home--for my +precious Southern Land--for its sunshine, its verdure, its forests, +its flowers, its perfume; but oh! above all, for the loving, refined, +intelligent, gentle race of people it was my great, my priceless +privilege, to be born amongst--a people worthy to live with, yes, +_worthy to die for_! The stern besom of war has wept over you, beloved +Natchez--your fairest homes have been desolated, your lovely gardens are +now only remembrances--your family circles are broken up--your bravest +sons are sleeping in the dust of death, or weeping tears of bitterness +in exile--your daughters, bowed down with penury and grief, are mourning +beside their darkened firesides--your joyous households transferred to +other and kindlier lands. The forms of my kindred faded into phantoms of +the past--strangers sit now in the place that once was mine; but yet, +thou art lovely, still beloved in thy ruin, in thy desolation--city of +my heart--city of my love--city of my childish joy! Oh! city of my dead! + +[Footnote 72: Prominent among the living authors of Louisiana.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Anne Moncure Crane.[73]_= + +From "Opportunity;" a Novel. + +=_314._= IMPRESSION OF A SEA SCENE. + +The tide had been out, but it was now rising; and they stood silently +watching the long, low waves dissolve in foam, whose white edges each +time crept nearer and nearer their feet. No one was conscious of the +duration of the silence. The sea's monotony of motion and sound seemed +to fill the void, and lull them to quietude. But beautiful as was the +scene that lay before her, Harvey gradually forgot it ... + +The two women had been nearly facing each other; and in a moment or two +Harvey put his hand upon Rose's shoulder, and with the other, motioned +her to look out upon the sea at her side. As she obeyed, her faint, +inarticulate expression of surprise and pleasure made both men follow +her example. It was only a coasting vessel, which had come rather close +to the shore, and was sailing swiftly by, before the freshening breeze; +but Its broad, white sails, with the moonlight upon them, and its +gliding, soundless motion, gave it an unearthly effect, as of a phantom +of light floating between the dark sea and sky, or a great white-winged +spirit sweeping past. When it had vanished into the distance and +darkness, Rose turned, and looked up at Harvey with mute but half-parted +lips, with eyes dilating with light, only this for a moment, but Miss +Barney knew she had accomplished her wish. + +The others also did not speak. But Grahame made an involuntary angry +movement of his foot upon the sand. + +[Footnote 73: A young authoress of Maryland: has written two novels of +unusual promise.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Mary Clemmer Ames,[74] about 1837-._= + +From "A Woman's Right." + +=_315._= A RAILWAY DEPOT IN THE COUNTRY. + +... Yet this depot was the centre of attraction for miles around. It was +the grand hall of re-union for all the people of the scattered town, +not second in importance even to the meeting-house. Here, twice a day, +stopped the great Western and Eastern trains, the two fiery arteries +through which flowed all the tumultuous life of the vast outer world +that had ever come to this secluded hamlet. Its primitive inhabitants +in their isolated farm-houses, under the hills and on the stony +mountain-moors, could never have realized the existence of another world +than the green, grand world of nature around them and above them, and +would have been as oblivious of the great god "News" as the denizens of +Greenland, if it had not been for the daily visits of this Cyclops with +the burning eye. Now twice a day, the shriek of his diabolical whistle +pierced the umbrageous woods and hilly gorges for miles away, and its +cry to many a solitary household was the epoch of the day. Hearing it, +John mounted his nag and scampered away to the station for the Boston +journals of yesterday. Seth harnessed Peggy, and drove off in the buggy +in all possible haste, to see if the mail had brought a letter from Amzi +who was in New York, or from Nimrod who had gone to work in "Bosting," +or if the train had brought Sally and her children from the city, who +were expected home on a visit. Here, under pretext of waiting for the +cars, congregated the drones and supernumeraries of the different +neighborhoods, lounging on the steps, hacking the benches with their +jack-knives for hours together, while they discussed politics, and +talked over their own and their neighbors' affairs. + +A walk to the station on a summer evening, was more to the boys and +girls of this rural region, than a Broadway promenade to a metropolitan +belle. Their day's task done, here they met in pairs, comparing finery +and indulging in flirtations, with an impunity which would not have been +tolerated by their elders at the Sunday recess in the meeting-house. +Then, besides, it was such an exciting sight to see the cars come in, +to see the long rows of strange faces, and to catch glimpses of the new +fashions at their open windows. Besides, at rare intervals, a real city +lady would actually alight at the rustic station of Hilltop, followed +by an avalanche of trunks, "larger than hen-houses," the girls would +afterwards affirm to their astonished mothers, when it was discovered +that the city-lady, in her languishing necessity for country-air, had +really condescended to come in search of a remote country-cousin. +Besides the fine lady, sometimes small companies of dashing young +gentlemen, with fishing-rods and retinues of long-eared dogs, or a +long-haired artist with a portfolio under his arm, all lured by the +mountains and woods and streams, to seek pleasure in far different ways, +would alight at the station, and ask of some staring rustic where they +could find the hotel. + +[Footnote 74: An active writer, chiefly known as a newspaper +correspondent from Washington; a native of Vermont, has published a +novel of much descriptive vigor.] + + + + +CHAPTER IV + + + +POETS. + + +=_Francis Hopkinson,[75] 1737-1791._= + +From "The Battle of the Kegs.[76]" + +=_316._= + + Gallants, attend, and hear a friend + Trill forth harmonious ditty; + Strange things I'll tell, which late befell + In Philadelphia city. + + 'Twas early day, as poets say, + Just when the sun was rising, + A soldier stood on a log of wood, + And saw a thing surprising. + + As in amaze he stood to gaze,-- + The truth can't be denied, sir,-- + He spied a score of kegs, or more, + Come floating down the tide, sir. + + A sailor, too, in jerkin blue, + This strange appearance viewing, + First rubbed his eyes, in great surprise, + Then said some mischief's brewing. + + * * * * * + + Some fire cried, which some denied, + But said the earth had quakéd; + And girls and boys, with hideous noise, + Ran through the streets half naked. + + * * * * * + + The royal band now ready stand, + All ranged in dread array, sir, + With stomach stout, to see it out, + And make a bloody day, sir. + + The cannons roar from shore to shore; + The small arms make a rattle; + Since wars began, I'm sure no man + E'er saw so strange a battle. + + A hundred men, with each a pen, + Or more,--upon my word, sir, + It is most true,--would be too few + Their valor to record, sir. + +[Footnote 75: A prominent author of the revolutionary era.] + +[Footnote 76: In the revolutionary war, while the British held +Philadelphia, some floating torpedoes were one day sent down the river +to destroy their vessels, and this novel mode of attack caused the alarm +described by the poet.] + + * * * * * + + +=_John Trumbull, 1750-1831._= (Manual, pp. 490, 512.) + +From "McFingal." + +=_317._= + + Though this, not all his time was lost on, + He fortified the town of Boston, + Built breastworks that might lend assistance + To keep the patriots at a distance; + For, howsoe'er the rogues might scoff, + He liked them best the farthest off; + Works of important use to aid + His courage when he felt afraid. + + * * * * * + + For Providence, disposed to tease us, + Can use what instruments it pleases; + To pay a tax, at Peter's wish, + His chief cashier was once a fish. + + * * * * * + + An English bishop's cur of late + Disclosed rebellions 'gainst the State; + So frogs croaked Pharaoh to repentance, + And lice delayed the fatal sentence: + And Heaven can rain you at pleasure, + By Gage, as soon as by a Caesar. + Yet did our hero in these days + Pick up some laurel-wreaths of praise; + And as the statuary of Seville + Made his cracked saint an excellent devil. + So, though our war small triumph brings, + We gained great fame in other things. + Did not our troops show great discerning, + And skill, your various arts in learning? + Outwent they not each native noodle + By far, in playing Yankee-doodle? + Which, as 'twas your New England tune, + 'Twas marvellous they took so soon. + And ere the year was fully through, + Did they not learn to foot it too, + And such a dance as ne'er was known + For twenty miles on end lead down? + Did they not lay their heads together, + And gain your art to tar and feather, + When Colonel Nesbitt, thro' the town, + In triumph bore the country-clown? + Oh! what a glorious work to sing + The veteran troops of Britain's king, + Adventuring for th'heroic laurel + With bag of feathers and tar-barrel! + To paint the cart where culprits ride, + And Nesbitt marching at its side. + Great executioner and proud, + Like hangman high, on Holborn road; + And o'er the slow-drawn rumbling car, + The waving ensigns of the war! + + * * * * * + + +=_Philip Freneau, 1752-1832._= (Manual, pp. 486, 511.) + +From "An Indian Burying-ground." + +=_318._= + + In spite of all the learned have said, + I still my old opinion keep; + The posture that we give the dead, + Points out the soul's eternal sleep. + + Not so the ancients of these lands;-- + The Indian, when from life released, + Again is seated with his friends, + And shares again the joyous feast. + + His imaged birds, and painted bowl, + And venison, for a journey dressed, + Bespeak the nature of the soul,-- + Activity, that wants no rest. + + His bow, for action ready bent, + And arrows, with a head of bone, + Can only mean that life is spent, + And not the finer essence gone. + + * * * * * + + Here still a lofty rock remains, + On which the curious eye may trace, + Now wasted half by wearing rains, + The fancies of a ruder race. + + * * * * * + + By midnight moons, o'er moistening dews, + In vestments for the chase arrayed. + The hunter still the deer pursues, + The hunter and the deer--a shade. + + * * * * * + +=_David Humphreys, 1783-1818._= (Manual, p. 512.) + +From "The Happiness of America." + +=_319._= RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. + + I too, perhaps, should Heaven prolong my date, + The oft-repeated tale shall oft relate; + Shall tell the feelings in the first alarms, + Of some bold enterprise the unequalled charms; + Shall tell from whom I learnt the martial art, + With what high chiefs I played my early part-- + With Parsons first-- + + * * * * * + Death-daring Putnam--then immortal Greene-- + Then how great Washington my youth approved, + In rank preferred, and as a parent loved. + With him what hours on warlike plains I spent, + Beneath the shadow of th' imperial tent; + With him how oft I went the nightly round + Through moving hosts, or slept on tented ground; + From him how oft--(nor far below the first, + In high behests and confidential trust)-- + From him how oft I bore the dread commands, + Which destined for the fight the eager bands; + With him how oft I passed the eventful day, + Bode by his side, as down the long array + His awful voice the columns taught to form, + To point the thunders and direct the storm. + But, thanks to Heaven! those days of blood are o'er; + The trumpet's clangor, the loud cannon's roar. + + * * * * * + + No more this hand, since happier days succeed, + Waves the bright blade, or reins the fiery steed. + No more for martial fame this bosom burns; + Now white-robed Peace to bless a world returns; + Now fostering Freedom all her bliss bestows, + Unnumbered blessings for unnumbered woes. + + * * * * * + + +=_Samuel J. Smith,[77] 1771-1835._= + +=_320._= PEACE, BE STILL. + + When, on his mission from his home in heaven, + In the frail bark the Saviour deigned to sleep, + The tempest rose--with headlong fury driven, + The wave-tossed vessel whirled along the deep: + Wild shrieked the storm amid the parting shrouds, + And the vexed billows dashed the darkening clouds. + + Ah! then how futile human skill and power,-- + "Save us! we perish in the o'erwhelming wave!" + They cried, and found in that tremendous hour, + "An eye to pity, and an arm to save." + He spoke, and lo! obedient to His will, + The raging waters, and the winds were still. + + And thou, poor trembler on life's stormy sea, + Where dark the waves of sin and sorrow roll, + To Him for refuge from the tempest flee,-- + To Him, confiding, trust the sinking soul; + For O, He came to calm the tempest-tossed, + To seek the wandering, and to save the lost. + + For thee, and such as thee, impelled by love, + He left the mansions of the blessed on high; + Mid sin, and pain, and grief, and fear, to move, + With lingering anguish, and with shame to die. + The debt to Justice, boundless Mercy paid, + For hopeless guilt, complete atonement made. + + O, in return for such surpassing grace, + Poor, blind, and naked, what canst thou impart? + Canst thou no offering on his altar place? + Yes, lowly mourner; give him all thy heart: + That simple offering he will not disown,-- + That living incense may approach his throne. + +[Footnote 77: A gentleman of fortune and literary culture; a life-long +resident in the country, in his native State, New Jersey.] + + * * * * * + + +=_William Clifton, 1772-1790._= (Manual, p. 512.) + +From lines "To Fancy." + +=_321._= PLEASURES OF IMAGINATION. + + Is my lonely pittance past? + Fleeting good too light to last? + Lifts my friend the latch no more? + Fancy, thou canst all restore; + Thou canst, with thy airy shell, + To a palace raise my cell. + + * * * * * + + With thee to guide my steps, I'll creep + In some old haunted nook to sleep, + Lulled by the dreary night-bird's scream, + That flits along the wizard stream, + And there, till morning 'gins appear, + The tales of troubled spirits hear. + + Sweet's the dawn's ambiguous light, + Quiet pause 'tween day and night, + When afar the mellow horn + Chides the tardy gaited morn, + And asleep is yet the gale + On sea-beat mount, and rivered vale. + But the morn, though sweet and fair; + Sweeter is when thou art there; + Hymning stars successive fade, + Fairies hurtle through the shade, + Lovelorn flowers I weeping see, + If the scene is touched by thee. + + * * * * * + Thus through life with thee I'll glide, + Happy still what'er betide, + And while plodding sots complain + Of ceaseless toil and slender gain, + Every passing hour shall be + Worth a golden age to me. + + * * * * * + +=_Robert Treat Paine, 1773-1811._= (Manual, p. 512.) + +From "The Ruling Passion." + +=_322._= THE MISER. + + Next comes the miser; palsied, jealous, lean, + He looks the very skeleton of Spleen! + 'Mid forests drear, he haunts, in spectred gloom, + Some desert abbey or some druid's tomb; + Where hearsed in earth, his occult riches lay, + Fleeced from the world, and buried from the day. + With crutch in hand, he points his mineral rod, + Limps to the spot, and turns the well-known sod. + While there, involved in night, he counts his store + By the soft tinklings of the golden ore, + He shakes with terror lest the moon should spy, + And the breeze whisper, where his treasures lie. + + This wretch, who, dying, would not take one pill, + If, living, he must pay a doctor's bill, + Still clings to life, of every joy bereft; + His God is gold, and his religion theft! + And, as of yore, when modern vice was strange, + Could leathern money current pass on 'change, + His reptile soul, whose reasoning powers are pent + Within the logic bounds of cent per cent, + Would sooner coin his ears than stocks should fall, + And cheat the pillory, than not cheat at all! + + * * * * * + + +=_John Blair Linn,[78] 1777-1804._= + +From "The Powers of Genius." + +=_323._= WRETCHEDNESS OF SAVAGE LIFE. + + The human fabric early from its birth, + Feels some fond influence from its parent earth; + In different regions different forms we trace, + Here dwells a feeble, there an iron race; + Here genius lives, and wakeful fancies play, + Here noiseless stupor sleeps its life away. + * * * * * + Chill through his trackless pines the hunter passed, + His yell arose upon the howling blast; + Before him fled, with all the speed of fear, + His wealth--and victim, yonder helpless deer. + Saw you the savage man, how fell and wild, + With what grim pleasure, as he passed, he smiled? + Unhappy man! a wretched wigwam's shed + Is his poor shelter, some dry skins his bed; + Sometimes alone upon the woodless height + He strikes his fire, and spends his watchful night; + His dog with howling bays the moon's red beam, + And starts the wild deer in his nightly dream. + Poor savage man! for him no yellow grain + Waves its bright billows o'er the fruitful plain; + For him no harvest yields its full supply, + When winter hurls his tempest through the sky. + No joys he knows but those which spring from strife, + Unknown to him the charms of social life. + Rage, malice, envy, all his thoughts control, + And every dreadful passion burns his soul. + Should culture meliorate his darksome home, + And cheer those wilds where he is wont to roam; + * * * * * + Should fields of tillage yield their rich increase, + And through his wastes walk forth the arts of peace, + His sullen soul would feel a genial glow, + Joy would break in upon the night of woe; + Knowledge would spread her mild, reviving ray, + And on his wigwam rise the dawn of day. + +[Footnote 78: A Presbyterian clergyman, who died prematurely; an +associate and connection of Charles Brockden Brown. Has left several +poems of merit. A native of Pennsylvania.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Francis S. Key, 1779-1843._= (Manual, p. 523.) + +=_324._= THE STAR-SPANGLED BANNER. + + O say, can you see, by the dawn's early light, + What so proudly we hailed, at the twilight's last gleaming? + Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the perilous fight, + O'er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming; + And the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air, + Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there: + + On that shore, dimly seen through the mist of the deep, + Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes, + What is that which the breeze, o'er the towering steep, + As it fitfully blows, now conceals, now discloses? + Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam, + In full glory reflected now shines in the stream: + 'Tis the Star-Spangled Banner; O, long may it wave + O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave! + + And where are the foes who so vauntingly swore + That the havoc of war, and the battle's confusion, + A home and a country should leave us no more? + Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps' pollution. + No refuge could save the hireling and slave + From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave; + And the Star-Spangled Banner in triumph doth wave + O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave! + + O thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand + Between their loved homes and the war's desolation; + Blest with victory and peace, may the heav'n-rescued land + Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation! + Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just; + And this be our motto, "In God is our trust;" + And the Star-Spangled Banner in triumph shall wave + O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave! + + * * * * * + + +=_Washington Alston, 1779-1843._= (Manual, pp. 504. 510.) + +From the "Sylphs of the Seasons." + +=_325._= + + Methought, within a desert cave, + Cold, dark, and solemn as the grave, + I suddenly awoke. + It seemed of sable night the cell + Where, save when from the ceiling fell + An oozing drop, her silent spell + No sound had ever broke. + + There motionless I stood alone, + Like some strange monument of stone + Upon a barren wild; + Or like (so solid and profound + The darkness seemed that walled me round) + A man that's buried under ground, + Where pyramids are piled. + + * * * * * + + Then spake the Sylph of Spring serene, + "'Tis I thy joyous heart, I ween. + With sympathy shall move: + For I with living melody + Of birds in choral symphony, + First waked thy soul to poesy, + To piety and love. + + "When thou, at call of vernal breeze, + And beckoning bough of budding trees, + Hast left thy sullen fire; + And stretched thee in some mossy dell, + And heard the browsing wether's bell, + Blithe echoes rousing from their cell + To swell the tinkling choir: + + "Or lured by some fresh-scented gale + That wooed the moored fisher's sail + To tempt the mighty main, + Hast watched the dim, receding shore, + Now faintly seen the ocean o'er, + Like hanging cloud, and now no more + To bound the sapphire plain. + + "Then, wrapped in night, the scudding bark, + (That seemed, self-poised amid the dark, + Through upper air to leap,) + Beheld, from thy most fearful height, + The rapid dolphin's azure light + Cleave, like a living meteor bright, + The darkness of the deep." + + * * * * * + + +=_John Pierpont, 1785-1866._= (Manual, p. 513.) + +=_326._= A TEMPERANCE SONG. + + In Eden's green retreats, + A water-brook--that played + Between soft, mossy seats, + Beneath a plane tree's shade, + Whose rustling leaves + Danced o'er its brink-- + Was Adam's drink, + And also Eve's. + + * * * * * + + And, when the man of God + From Egypt led his flock, + They thirsted, and his rod + Smote the Arabian rock, + And forth a rill + Of water gushed, + And on they rushed, + And drank their fill. + + Had Moses built a still, + And dealt out to that host + To every man his gill, + And pledged him in a toast, + Would cooler brains, + Or stronger hands, + Have braved the sands + Of those hot plains? + + If Eden's strength and bloom, + Gold water thus hath given, + If e'en beyond the tomb, + It is the drink of heaven, + Are not good wells + And crystal springs + _The very things + for our Hotels?_ + + * * * * * + +=_327._= THE PILGRIM FATHERS. + + The Pilgrim Fathers,--where are they? + The waves that brought them o'er + Still roll in the bay, and throw their spray, + As they break along the shore: + Still roll in the bay, as they roll'd that day + When the Mayflower moor'd below, + When the sea around was black with storms, + And white the shore with snow. + + The mists, that wrapp'd the Pilgrim's sleep, + Still brood upon the tide; + And his rocks yet keep their watch by the deep, + To stay its waves of pride. + But the snow-white sail, that he gave to the gale + When the heavens look'd dark, is gone;-- + As an angel's wing, through an opening cloud, + Is seen, and then withdrawn. + + The Pilgrim exile,--sainted name! + The hill, whose icy brow + Rejoiced when he came, in the morning's flame, + In the morning's flame burns now. + And the moon's cold light, as it lay that night + On the hill-side and the sea, + Still lies where he laid his houseless head;-- + But the Pilgrim,--where is he? + + The Pilgrim Fathers are at rest. + When summer's throned on high, + And the world's warm breast is in verdure dress'd + Go, stand on the hill where they lie. + The earliest ray of the golden day + On that hallow'd spot is cast; + And the evening sun, as he leaves the world, + Looks kindly on that spot last. + + The Pilgrim _spirit_ has not fled; + It walks in the noon's broad light; + And it watches the bed of the glorious dead, + With their holy stars, by night. + It watches the bed of the brave who have bled, + And shall guard this ice-bound shore, + Till the waves of the bay, where the Mayflower lay, + Shall foam and freeze no more. + + * * * * * + + +=_James G. Percival, 1786-1856._= (Manual, p. 515.) + +=_328._= THE CORAL GROVE. + + Deep in the wave is a coral grove, + Where the purple mullet and gold-fish rove; + Where the sea-flower spreads its leaves of blue, + That never are wet with the falling dew, + But in bright and changeful beauty shine, + Far down in the green and glassy brine. + The floor is of sand, like the mountain drift, + And the pearl-shells spangle the flinty snow; + From coral rocks, the sea-plants lift + Their boughs, where the tides and billows flow; + The water is calm and still below, + For the winds and waves are absent there, + And the sands are bright as the stars that glow + In the motionless fields of upper air. + There, with its waving blade of green, + The sea-flag streams through the silent water, + And the crimson leaf of the dulse is seen + To blush like a banner bathed in slaughter. + There, with a light and easy motion, + The fan-coral sweeps through the clear, deep sea, + And the yellow and scarlet tufts of ocean + Are bending like corn on the upland lea, + And life, in rare and beautiful forms, + Is sporting amid those bowers of stone. + + * * * * * + + +=_Richard H. Dana, 1787-._= (Manual, pp. 501, 504, 514.) + +From "The Buccaneer." + +=_329._= + + A sweet, low voice, in starry nights, + Chants to his ear a 'plaining song; + Its tones come winding up the heights, + Telling of woe and wrong; + And he must listen, till the stars grow dim, + The song that gentle voice doth sing to him. + + O, it is sad that aught so mild + Should bind the soul with bands of fear; + That strains to soothe a little child + The man should dread to hear! + But sin hath broke the world's sweet peace, unstrung + The harmonious chords to which the angels sung. + + * * * * * + + But he no more shall haunt the beach, + Nor sit upon the tall cliff's crown, + Nor go the round of all that reach, + Nor feebly sit him down, + Watching the swaying weeds; another day, + And he'll have gone far hence that dreadful way. + + To-night the charméd number's told. + "Twice have I come for thee," it said. + "Once more, and none shall thee behold. + Come, live one, to the dead!" + So hears his soul, and fears the coming night, + Yet sick and weary of the soft, calm light. + + Again he sits within that room; + All day he leans at that still board; + None to bring comfort to his gloom, + Or speak a friendly word. + Weakened with fear, lone, haunted by remorse, + Poor, shattered wretch, there waits he that pale horse. + + * * * * * + + +=_Richard Henry Wilde, 1789-._= (Manual, pp. 521, 501.) + +=_330._= MY LIFE IS LIKE THE SUMMER ROSE. + + My life is like the summer rose + That opens to the morning sky, + But, ere the shades of evening close, + Is scattered on the ground to die; + Yet on that rose's humble bed + The softest dews, of night are shed, + As if she wept such waste to see; + But none shall drop a tear for me. + + My life is like the autumn leaf + That trembles in the moon's pale ray; + Its hold is frail, its state is brief, + Restless, and soon to pass away; + But when that leaf shall fall and fade, + The parent tree will mourn its shade, + The winds bewail the leafless tree; + But none shall breathe a sigh, for me. + + My life is like the print which feet + Have left on Tampa's desert strand; + Soon as the rising tide shall beat, + Their track will vanish from the sand; + Yet, as if grieving to efface + All vestige of the human race, + On that lone shore loud moans the sea; + But none shall thus lament for me. + + * * * * * + + +=_James A. Hillhouse, 1789-1844._= (Manual, p. 487.) + +From "Hadad." + +=_331._= + + _Hadad._ Confide in me. + I can transport thee, O, to a paradise + To which this Canaan is a darksome span. + Beings shall welcome, serve thee, lovely as angels; + The elemental powers shall stoop, the sea + Disclose her wonders, and receive thy feet + Into her sapphire chambers; orbéd clouds + Shall chariot thee from zone to zone, while earth, + A dwindled, islet, floats beneath thee. Every + Season and clime shall blend for thee the garland. + The Abyss of time shall cast its secrets, ere + The flood marred primal nature, ere this orb + Stood in her station. Thou shalt know the stars, + The houses of eternity, their names, + Their courses, destiny--all marvels high. + + _Tam._ Talk not so madly. + + * * * * * + +From "The Judgment." + +=_332._= + + As, when from some proud capital that crowns + Imperial Ganges, the reviving breeze + Sweeps the dank mist, or hoary river fog + Impervious mantled o'er her highest towers, + Bright on the eye rush Bramah's temples, capp'd + With spiry tops, gay-trellised minarets, + Pagods of gold, and mosques with burnish'd domes, + Gilded, and glistening in the morning sun, + So from the hill the cloudy curtains roll'd, + And, in the lingering lustre of the eve, + Again the Saviour and his seraphs shone. + Emitted sudden in his rising, flash'd + Intenser light, as toward the right hand host + Mild turning, with a look ineffable, + The invitation he proclaim'd in accents + Which on their ravish'd ears pour'd thrilling, like + The silver sound of many trumpets, heard + Afar in sweetest jubilee: then, swift + Stretching his dreadful sceptre to the left, + That shot forth horrid lightnings, in a voice + Clothed but in half its terrors, yet to them + Seem'd like the crush of heaven, pronounced the doom. + The sentence utter'd as with life instinct, + The throne uprose majestically slow; + Each angel spread his wings; in one dread swell + Of triumph mingling as they mounted, trumpets + And harps, and golden lyres, and timbrels sweet, + And many a strange and deep-toned instrument + Of heavenly minstrelsy unknown on earth, + And angels' voices, and the loud acclaim + Of all the ransom'd like a thunder shout, + Far through the skies melodious echoes roll'd + And faint hosannas distant climes return'd. + + * * * * * + + +=_John M. Harney,[79] 1789-1855._= + +From "Crystallina: a Fairy Tale." + +=_333._= + + On the stormy heath a ring they form; + They place therein the fearful maid, + And round her dance in the howling storm. + The winds beat hard on her lovely head: + But she clasped her hands, and nothing said. + + O, 'twas, I ween, a ghastly sight + To see their uncouth revelry. + The lightning was the taper bright, + The thunder was the melody, + To which they danced with horrid glee. + + The fierce-eyed owl did on them scowl, + The bat played round on leathern wing, + The coal-black wolf did at them howl, + The coal-black raven did croak and sing, + And o'er them flap his dusky wing. + + An earthquake heaved beneath their feet, + Pale meteors revelled in the sky, + The clouds sailed by like a routed fleet, + The night-winds shrieked as they passed by, + The dark-red moon was eclipsed on high. + +[Footnote 79: One of the earliest poets of the West, but a native of +Delaware.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Charles Sprague, 1791-._= (Manual, p. 514.) + +From "Curiosity." + +=_334._= THE NEWSPAPER. + + Turn to the Press--its teeming sheets survey, + Big with the wonders of each passing day; + Births, deaths, and weddings, forgeries, fires, and wrecks, + Harangues and hailstorms, brawls and broken necks; + Where half-fledged bards, on feeble pinions, seek + An immortality of near a week; + Where cruel eulogists the dead restore, + In maudlin praise, to martyr them once more; + Where ruffian slanderers wreak their coward spite, + And need no venomed dagger while they write. + + * * * * * + + Yet, sweet or bitter, hence what fountains burst, + While still the more we drink the more we thirst. + Trade hardly deems the busy day begun + Till his keen eye along the page has run; + The blooming daughter throws her needle by, + And reads her schoolmate's marriage with a sigh; + While the grave mother puts her glasses on, + And gives a tear to some old crony gone. + The preacher, too, his Sunday theme lays down. + To know what last new folly fills the town. + Lively or sad, life's meanest, mightiest things, + The fate of fighting cocks, or fighting kings-- + Nought comes amiss; we take the nauseous stuff, + Verjuice or oil, a libel or a puff. + + * * * * * + + +=_Lydia H. Sigourney, 1791-1865._= (Manual, pp. 484, 523.) + +=_335._= THE WIDOW AT HER DAUGHTER'S BRIDAL. + + Deal gently, thou whose hand hath won + The young bird from its nest away, + Where, careless, 'neath a vernal sun, + She gayly carolled day by day; + The haunt is lone, the heart must grieve, + From where her timid wing doth soar + They pensive lisp at hush of eve, + Yet hear her gushing song no more. + + Deal gently with her; thou art dear, + Beyond what vestal lips have told, + And, like a lamb from fountains clear, + She turns, confiding, to thy fold. + She round thy sweet, domestic bower + The wreath of changeless love shall twine, + Watch for thy step at vesper hour, + And blend her holiest prayer with thine. + + Deal gently, thou, when, far away, + 'Mid stranger scenes her foot shall rove, + Nor let thy tender care decay; + The soul of woman lives in love. + And shouldst thou, wondering, mark a tear, + Unconscious, from her eyelids break, + Be pitiful, and soothe the fear + That man's strong heart may ne'er partake. + + A mother yields her gem to thee, + On thy true breast to sparkle rare; + She places 'neath thy household tree + The idol of her fondest care; + And, by thy trust to be forgiven + When judgment wakes in terror wild, + By all thy treasured hopes of heaven, + Deal gently with the widow's child. + + * * * * * + + +=_William O. Sutler,[80] 1793-._= + +From "The Boatman's Horn." + +=_336._= + + O Boatman, wind that horn again; + For never did the listening air + Upon its lambent bosom bear + So wild, so soft, so sweet a strain. + What though thy notes are sad and few, + By, every simple boatman blown? + Yet is each pulse to nature true, + And melody in every tone. + How oft, in boyhood's joyous day, + Unmindful of the lapsing hours, + I've loitered on my homeward way, + By wild Ohio's bank of flowers, + While some lone boatman from the deck + Poured his soft numbers to that tide, + As if to charm from storm and wreck + The boat where all his fortunes ride! + Delighted Nature drank the sound, + Enchanted Echo bore it round + In whispers soft and softer still, + From hill to plain, and plain to hill. + +[Footnote 80: A native of Kentucky; a favorite Western poet; at one time +prominent as a politician.] + + * * * * * + +=_337._= THE BATTLE-FIELD OF RAISIN. + + The battle's o'er; the din is past; + Night's mantle on the field is cast; + The Indian yell is heard no more; + The silence broods o'er Erie's shore. + At this lone hour I go to tread + The field where valor vainly bled; + To raise the wounded warrior's crest, + Or warm with tears his icy breast; + To treasure up his last command, + And bear it to his native land. + It may one pulse of joy impart + To a fond mother's bleeding heart, + Or, for a moment, it may dry + The tear-drop in the widow's eye. + Vain hopes, away! The widow ne'er + Her warrior's dying wish shall hear. + The passing zephyr bears no sigh; + No wounded warrior meets the eye; + Death is his sleep by Erie's wave; + Of Raisin's snow we heap his grave. + How many hopes lie buried here-- + The mother's joy, the father's pride, + The country's boast, the foeman's fear, + In 'wildered havoc, side by side! + Lend me, thou silent queen of night, + Lend me a while thy waning light, + That I may see each well-loved form + That sank beneath the morning storm. + + * * * * * + + +=_William Cullen Bryant, 1794-._= (Manual, pp. 487, 524.) + +From his "Poems." + +=_338._= LINES TO A WATER FOWL. + + Whither, midst falling dew, + While glow the heavens with the last steps of day, + Far through their rosy depths dost thou pursue + Thy solitary way? + + Vainly the fowler's eye + Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong, + As, darkly seen against the crimson sky, + Thy figure floats along. + + Seek'st thou the plashy brink + Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide, + Or where the rocking billows rise and sink + On the chafed ocean side? + + There is a Power whose care + Teaches thy way along that pathless coast,-- + The desert and illimitable air,-- + Lone wandering, but not lost. + + All day thy wings have fanned, + At that far height, the cold, thin atmosphere, + Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land, + Though the dark night is near. + + And soon that toil shall end, + Soon shalt thou find a summer home and rest, + And scream among thy fellows; reeds shall bend + Soon, o'er thy sheltered nest. + + Thou'rt gone; the abyss of heaven + Hath swallowed up thy form; yet on my heart + Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given, + And shall not soon depart. + + He who, from zone to zone, + Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight, + In the long way that I must tread alone, + Will lead my steps aright. + + * * * * * + +From "The Antiquity of Freedom." + +=_339._= FREEDOM IRREPRESSIBLE. + + O Freedom, thou art not, as poets dream, + A fair, young girl, with light and delicate limbs, + And wavy tresses gushing from the cap + With which the Roman master crowned his slave + When he took off the gyves. A bearded man, + Armed to the teeth, art thou; one mailéd hand + Grasps the broad shield, and one the sword; thy brow, + Glorious in beauty though it be, is scarred + With tokens of old wars; thy massive limbs + Are strong with struggling. Power at thee has launched + His bolts, and with his lightnings smitten thee. + They could not quench the life thou hast from heaven. + Merciless power has dug thy dungeon deep, + And his swart armorers, by a thousand fires, + Have forged thy chain; yet, while he deems thee bound, + The links are shivered, and the prison walls + Fall outward; terribly thou springest forth, + As springs the flame above a burning pile, + And shoutest to the nations, who return + Thy shoutings, while the pale oppressor flies. + + * * * * * + +From "Thanatopsis." + +=_340._= COMMUNION WITH NATURE, SOOTHING. + + To him who in the love of Nature holds + Communion with her visible forms, she speaks + A various language: for his gayer hours + She has a voice of gladness, and a smile, + An eloquence of beauty, and she glides + Into his darker musings, with a mild + And healing sympathy, that steals away + Their sharpness, ere he is aware. When thoughts + Of the last bitter hour come like a blight + Over thy spirit, and sad images + Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall, + And breathless darkness, and the narrow house. + Make thee to shudder, and grow sick at heart;-- + Go forth, under the open sky, and list + To Nature's teachings, while from all around-- + Earth and her waters, and the depths of air,-- + Comes a still voice. Yet a few days, and thee + The all-beholding sun shall see no more + In all his course; nor yet in the cold ground. + Where thy pale form was laid, with many tears, + Nor in the embrace of ocean, shall exist + Thy image. Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim + Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again, + And lost each human trace, surrendering up + Thine individual being, shalt thou go + To mix for ever with the elements, + To be a brother to the insensible rock, + And to the sluggish clod which the rude swain + Turns with his share, and treads upon. The oak + Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mould. + + * * * * * + + As the long train + Of ages glide away, the sons of men, + The youth in life's green spring, and he who goes + In the full strength of years, matron, and maid, + And the sweet babe, and the gray-headed man,-- + Shall one by one be gathered to thy side, + By those, who in their turn shall follow them. + So live, that when thy summons comes to join + The innumerable caravan, that moves + To that mysterious realm where each shall take + His chamber in the silent halls of death, + Thou go not like the quarry-slave at night, + Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed + By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave, + Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch + About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams. + + * * * * * + + =_341._= THE LIVING LOST. + + Matron! the children of whose love, + Each to his grave, in youth had passed, + and now the mould is heaped above + The dearest and the last! + Bride! who dost wear the widow's veil + Before the wedding flowers are pale! + Ye deem the human heart endures + No deeper, bitterer grief than yours. + + Yet there are pangs of keener wo, + Of which the sufferers never speak, + Nor to the world's cold pity show + The tears that scald the cheek, + Wrung from their eyelids by the shame + And guilt of those they shrink to name, + Whom once they loved with cheerful will, + And love, though fallen and branded, still. + + Weep, ye who sorrow for the dead; + Thus breaking hearts their pain relieve; + And reverenced are the tears ye shed. + And honored ye who grieve. + The praise of those who sleep in earth, + The pleasant memory of their worth, + The hope to meet when life is past, + Shall heal the tortured mind at last. + + But ye, who for the living lost + That agony in secret bear, + Who shall with soothing words accost + The strength of your despair? + Grief for your sake is scorn for them + Whom ye lament, and all condemn; + And o'er the world of spirits lies + A gloom from which ye turn your eyes. + + * * * * * + +=_342._= THE SONG OF THE SOWER. + + Brethren, the sower's task is done. + The seed is in its Winter bed. + Now let the dark-brown mould be spread, + To hide it from the sun, + And leave it to the kindly care + Of the still earth and brooding air. + As when the mother, from her breast, + Lays the hushed babe apart to rest, + And shades its eyes, and waits to see + How sweet its waking smile will be. + The tempest now may smite, the sleet + All night on the drowned furrow beat, + And winds that from the cloudy hold + Of winter, breathe the bitter cold, + Stiffen to stone the yellow-mould, + Yet safe shall lie the wheat; + Till, out of heaven's unmeasured blue, + Shall walk again the genial year, + To wake with warmth, and nurse with dew, + The germs we lay to slumber here. + O blessed harvest yet to be! + Abide thou with the love that keeps, + In its warm bosom tenderly, + The life which wakes, and that which sleeps. + The love that leads the willing spheres + Along the unending track of years, + And watches o'er the sparrow's nest, + Shall brood above thy winter rest, + And raise thee from the dust, to hold + Light whisperings with the winds of May; + And fill thy spikes with living gold, + From Summer's yellow ray. + Then, as thy garners give thee forth, + On what glad errands shalt thou go, + Wherever, o'er the waiting earth, + Roads wind, and rivers flow! + The ancient East shall welcome thee + To mighty marts beyond the sea; + And they who dwell where palm-groves sound + To summer winds the whole year round, + Shall watch, in gladness, from the shore, + The sails that bring thy glistening store. + + * * * * * + +=_343._= THE PLANTING OF THE APPLE-TREE. + + Come, let us plant the apple-tree! + Cleave the tough greensward with the spade; + Wide let its hollow bed be made; + There gently lay the roots, and there + Sift the dark mould with kindly care, + And press it o'er them tenderly, + As, round the sleeping infant's feet, + We softly fold the cradle-sheet: + So plant we the apple-tree. + + What plant we in the apple-tree? + Buds, which the breath of summer days + Shall lengthen into leafy sprays; + Boughs, where the thrush with crimson breast + Shall haunt and sing and hide her nest. + We plant upon the sunny lea + A shadow for the noontide hour, + A shelter from the summer shower, + When we plant the apple-tree. + + What plant we in the apple-tree? + Sweets for a hundred flowery springs, + To load the May-wind's restless wings, + When, from the orchard-row, he pours + Its fragrance through our open doors; + A world of blossoms for the bee; + Flowers for the sick girl's silent room; + For the glad infant, sprigs of bloom, + We plant with the apple-tree. + + What plant we in the apple-tree? + Fruits that shall swell in sunny June, + And redden in the August noon, + And drop as gentle airs come by + That fan the blue September sky; + While children, wild with noisy glee, + Shall scent their fragrance as they pass, + And search for them the tufted grass + At the foot of the apple-tree. + + And when above this apple-tree + The winter stars are quivering bright, + And winds go howling through the night, + Girls, whose young eyes o'erflow with mirth, + Shall peel its fruit by cottage-hearth, + And guests in prouder homes shall see, + Heaped with the orange and the grape, + As fair as they in tint and shape, + The fruit of the apple-tree. + + The fruitage of this apple-tree, + Winds, and our flag of stripe and star, + Shall bear to coasts that lie afar, + Where men shall wonder at the view, + And ask in what fair groves they grew; + And they who roam beyond the sea, + Shall look, and think of childhood's day, + And long hours passed in summer play + In the shade of the apple-tree. + + Each year shall give this apple-tree + A broader flush of roseate bloom, + A deeper maze of verdurous gloom, + And loosen, when the frost-clouds lower, + The crisp brown leaves in thicker shower; + The years shall come and pass, but we + Shall hear no longer, where we lie, + The summer's songs, the autumn's sigh, + In the boughs of the apple-tree. + + And time shall waste this apple tree. + Oh, when its aged branches throw + Thin shadows on the sward below, + Shall fraud and force and iron-will + Oppress the weak and helpless still? + What shall the tasks of mercy be, + Amid the toils, the strifes, the tears + Of those who live when length of years + Is wasting this apple-tree? + + "Who planted this old apple-tree?" + The children of that distant day + Thus to some aged man shall say; + And gazing on its mossy stem, + The gray-haired man shall answer them: + "A poet of the land was he. + Born in the rude, but good, old times; + 'Tis said he made some quaint old rhymes + On planting the apple-tree." + + * * * * * + + +=_Maria Brooks, 1795-1845._= (Manual, p. 523.) + +=_344._= MARRIAGE. + + The bard has sung, God never formed a soul + Without its own peculiar mate, to meet + Its wandering half, when ripe to crown the whole + Bright plan of bliss, most heavenly, most complete! + + But thousand evil things there are that hate + To look on happiness: these hurt, impede, + And, leagued with time, space, circumstance, and fate, + Keep kindred heart from heart, to pine, and pant, and bleed. + + And as the dove to far Palmyra flying, + From where her native founts of Antioch beam, + Weary, exhausted, longing, panting, sighing, + Lights sadly at the desert's bitter stream; + + So, many a soul, o'er life's drear desert faring, + Love's pure, congenial spring unfound, unquaffed, + Suffers, recoils, then thirsty and despairing + Of what it would, descends, and sips the nearest draught. + + * * * * * + + +=_Joseph Rodman Drake, 1795-1820._= (Manual, p. 517.) + +From "The Culprit Fay." + +=_345._= THE FAY'S DEPARTURE. + + * * * * * + + The moon looks down on old Crow-nest, + She mellows the shades, on his shaggy breast, + And seems his huge grey form to throw + In a silver cone on the wave below; + His sides are broken by spots of shade, + By the walnut bough and the cedar made, + And through their clustering branches dark + Glimmers and dies the fire-fly's spark-- + Like starry twinkles that momently break, + Through the rifts of the gathering tempest's rack. + + The stars are on the moving stream, + And fling, as its ripples gently flow, + A burnished length of wavy beam + In an eel-like, spiral line below; + The winds are whist, and the owl is still, + The bat in the shelvy rock is hid. + And naught is heard on the lonely hill + But the cricket's chirp, and the answer shrill + Of the gauze-winged katy-did; + And the plaint of the wailing whip-poor-will, + Who mourns unseen, and ceaseless sings, + Ever a note of wail and woe, + Till morning spreads her rosy wings, + And earth and sky in her glances grow. + + The moth-fly, as he shot in air, + Crept under the leaf, and hid her there; + The katy-did forgot its lay, + The prowling gnat fled fast away, + The fell mosquito checked his drone + And folded his wings till the Fay was gone, + And the wily beetle dropped his head, + And fell on the ground as if he were dead; + They crouched them close in the darksome shade, + They quaked all o'er with awe and fear, + For they had felt the blue-bent blade, + And writhed at the prick of the elfin spear; + Many a time on a summer's night. + When the sky was clear, and the moon was bright, + They had been roused from the haunted ground, + By the yelp and bay of the fairy hound; + They had heard the tiny bugle-horn, + They had heard the twang of the maize-silk string, + When the vine-twig bows were tightly drawn, + And the nettle shaft through air was borne, + Feathered with down of the hum-bird's wing. + And now they deemed the courier-ouphe, + Some hunter sprite of the elfin ground; + And they watched till they saw him mount the roof + That canopies the world around; + Then glad they left their covert lair, + And freaked about in the midnight air. + + * * * * * + + +=_Fitz-Greene Halleck, 1795-1869._= (Manual, p. 515.) + +=_346._= MARCO BOZZARIS. + + At midnight, in his guarded tent, + The Turk was dreaming of the hour + When Greece, her knee in suppliance bent, + Should tremble at his power; + In dreams, through camp and court he bore + The trophies of a conqueror; + In dreams his song of triumph heard; + Then wore his monarch's signet ring: + Then pressed that monarch's throne--a king; + As wild his thoughts, and gay of wing, + As Eden's garden bird. + + At midnight, in the forest shades, + Bozzaris ranged his Suliote band, + True as the steel of their tried blades, + Heroes in heart and hand. + There had the Persian thousands stood, + There had the glad earth drunk their blood + On old Platoea's day; + And now there breathed that haunted air + The sons of sires that conquer'd there, + With arm to strike and soul to dare, + As quick, as far as they. + + An hour pass'd on--the Turk awoke; + That bright dream was his last; + He woke to hear his sentries shriek, + "To arms! they come! the Greek! the Greek!" + He woke--to die, midst flame, and smoke, + And shout, and groan, and sabre-stroke, + And death-shots, falling thick and fast + As lightnings from the mountain-cloud; + And heard, with voice as trumpet loud, + Bozzaris cheer his band: + "Strike--till the last arm'd foe expires; + Strike--for your altars and your fires; + Strike--for the green graves of your sires: + God, and your native land!" + + They fought--like brave men, long and well; + They piled that ground with Moslem slain; + They conquer'd--but Bozzaris fell, + Bleeding at every vein. + His few surviving comrades saw-- + His smile when rang their proud hurrah, + And the red field was won: + Then saw in death his eyelids close + Calmly, as to a night's repose + Like flowers at set of sun. + + Come to the bridal chamber, Death! + Come to the mother's, when she feels, + For the first time, her first-born's breath; + Come when the blessed seals + That close the pestilence, are broke, + And crowded cities wail its stroke; + Come in consumption's ghastly form, + The earthquake shock, the ocean storm; + Come when the heart beats high and warm, + With banquet-song, and dance, and wine; + And thou art terrible: the tear, + The groan, the knell, the pall, the bier, + And all we know, or dream, or fear, + Of agony, are thine. + + But to the hero, when his sword + Has won the battle for the free, + Thy voice sounds like a prophet's word; + And in its hollow tones are heard + The thanks of millions yet to be. + Come, when his task of fame is wrought-- + Come, with her laurel-leaf blood-bought-- + Come, in her crowning hour--and then + Thy sunken eye's unearthly light + To him is welcome as the sight + Of sky and stars to prison'd men: + Thy grasp is welcome as the hand + Of brother in a foreign land; + Thy summons welcome as the cry + That told the Indian isles were nigh, + To the world-seeking Genoese; + When the land-wind from woods of palm, + And orange-groves, and fields of balm, + Blew o'er the Haytian seas. + + Bozzaris! with the storied brave + Greece nurtured in her glory's time, + Rest thee--there is no prouder grave, + E'en in her own proud clime. + Site wore no funeral weeds for thee, + Nor bade the dark hearse wave its plume, + Like torn branch, from death's leafless tree, + In sorrow's pomp and pageantry, + The heartless luxury of the tomb: + But she remembers thee as one + Long loved and for a season gone, + For thee her poet's lyre is wreathed, + Her marble wrought, her music breathed: + For thee she rings the birth-day bells; + Of thee her babes' first lisping tells, + For thine, her evening prayer is said + At palace couch, and cottage bed; + Her soldier, closing with the foe, + Gives for thy sake a deadlier blow; + His plighted maiden, when she fears + For him, the joy of her young years, + Thinks of thy fate, and checks her tears. + And she, the mother of thy boys, + Though in her eye and faded cheek + Is read the grief she will not speak, + The memory of her buried joys, + And even she who gave thee birth, + Will by their pilgrim-circled hearth, + Talk of thy doom without a sigh: + For thou art Freedom's now, and Fame's, + One of the few, the immortal names, + That were not born to die. + + * * * * * + +From "Fanny." + +=_347._= THE BROKEN MERCHANT. + + Fanny! 'twas with her name my song began; + 'Tis proper and polite her name should end it; + If in my story of her woes, or plan + Or moral can be traced, 'twas not intended; + And if I've wronged her, I can only tell her + I'm sorry for it--so is my bookseller. + + * * * * * + + Her father sent to Albany a prayer + For office, told how fortune had abused him, + And modestly requested to be mayor-- + The council very civilly refused him; + Because, however much they might desire it, + The "public good," it seems, did not require it. + + Some evenings since, he took a lonely stroll + Along Broadway, scene of past joys and evils; + He felt that withering bitterness of soul, + Quaintly denominated the "blue devils;" + And thought of Bonaparte and Belisarius, + Pompey, and Colonel Burr, and Caius Marius. + + And envying the loud playfulness and mirth. + Of those who passed him, gay in youth and hope, + He took at Jupiter a shilling's worth + Of gazing, through the showman's telescope; + Sounds as of far-off bells came on his ears, + He fancied 'twas the music of the spheres. + + He was mistaken, it was no such thing, + 'Twas Yankee Doodle, played by Scudder's band; + He muttered, as he lingered listening, + Something of freedom and our happy land; + Then sketched, as to his home he hurried fast, + This sentimental song--his saddest and his last. + + * * * * * + + +=_John G.C. Brainard, 1796-1828._= (Manual, p. 523.) + +From Lines "To the Connecticut River." + +=_348._= THE PAST AND THE PRESENT. + + From that lone lake, the sweetest of the chain, + That links the mountain to the mighty main, + Fresh from the rock and swelling by the tree, + Rushing to meet, and dare, and breast the sea-- + Fair, noble, glorious river! in thy wave + The sunniest slopes and sweetest pastures lave; + The mountain torrent, with its wintry roar, + Springs from its home and leaps upon thy shore: + The promontories love thee--and for this + Turn their rough cheeks, and stay thee for thy kiss. + + * * * * * + + Dark as the forest leaves that strew the ground, + The Indian hunter here his shelter found; + Here cut his bow and shaped his arrows true, + Here built his wigwam and his bark canoe, + Speared the quick salmon leaping up the fall, + And slew the deer without the rifle-ball. + + * * * * * + + What Art can execute, or Taste devise, + Decks thy fair course and gladdens in thine eyes-- + As broader sweep the bendings of thy stream, + To meet the southern sun's more constant beam. + Here cities rise, and sea-washed commerce hails + Thy shores and winds with all her flapping sails, + From Tropic isles, or from the torrid main-- + Where grows the grape, or sprouts the sugar-cane-- + Or from the haunts where the striped haddock play, + By each cold northern bank and frozen bay. + Here, safe returned from every stormy sea, + Waves the striped flag, the mantle of the free-- + That star-lit flag, by all the breezes curled + Of yon vast deep whose waters grasp the world. + + * * * * * + + +=_Robert C. Sands, 1799-1832._= (Manual, p. 504.) + +From "Weehawken." + +=_349._= HISTORICAL REMINISCENCES. + + Eve o'er our path is stealing fast: + Yon quivering splendors are the last + The sun will fling, to tremble o'er + The waves that kiss the opposing shore; + His latest glories fringe the height + Behind us, with their golden light. + + * * * * * + + Yet should the stranger ask what lore + Of by-gone days, this winding shore, + Yon cliffs, and fir-clad steeps, could tell + If vocal made by Fancy's spell, + The varying legend might rehearse + Fit themes for high romantic verse. + + O'er yon rough heights and moss-clad sod + Oft hath the stalwart warrior trod; + Or peered with hunter's gaze, to mark + The progress of the glancing bark. + Spoils, strangely won on distant waves. + Have lurked in yon obstructed caves. + + When the great strife for Freedom rose, + Here scouted oft her friends and foes, + Alternate, through the changeful war, + And beacon-fires flashed bright and far; + And here, when Freedom's strife was won, + Fell, in sad feud, her favored son;-- + + Her son,--the second of the band, + The Romans of the rescued land. + Where round yon capes the banks descend, + Long shall the pilgrim's footsteps bend; + There, mirthful hearts shall pause to sigh + There, tears shall dim the patriot's eye. + + There last he stood. Before his sight + Flowed the fair river, free and bright; + The rising Mart, and isles and bay, + Before him in their glory lay,-- + Scenes of his love and of his fame,-- + The instant ere the death-shot came. + + * * * * * + + +=_George W. Doane, 1799-1859._= (Manual, p. 523.) + +From "Evening." + +=_350._= + + Softly now the light of day + Fades upon my sight away; + Free from care, from labor free, + Lord, I would commune with thee. + + Thou, whose all-pervading eye + Nought escapes, without, within, + Pardon each infirmity, + Open fault, and secret sin. + + Soon for me the light of day + Shall forever pass away; + Then, from sin and sorrow free, + Take me, Lord, to dwell with thee! + + Thou who sinless, yet hast known + All of man's infirmity; + Then, from thy eternal throne, + Jesus, look with pitying eye. + + * * * * * + + +=_George P. Morris, 1801-1864._= (Manual, p. 523.) + +=_351._= HIGHLANDS OF THE HUDSON. + + Where Hudson's wave o'er silvery sands + Winds through the hills afar, + Old Crow-nest like a monarch stands, + Crowned with, a single star. + And there amid the billowy swells + Of rock-ribbed, cloud-capped earth, + My fair and gentle Ida dwells, + A nymph of mountain birth. + + The snow-flake that the cliff receives-- + The diamonds of the showers-- + Spring's tender blossoms, buds, and leaves-- + The sisterhood of flowers-- + Morn's early beam, eve's balmy breeze-- + Her purity define;-- + But Ida's dearer far than these + To this fond breast of mine. + + * * * * * + + +=_George D. Prentice, 1802-1869._= (Manual, p. 487.) + +From "The Mammoth Cave." + +=_352._= CONTRAST OF NATURE WITHOUT. + + All day, as day is reckoned on the earth, + I've wandered in these dim and awful aisles, + Shut from the blue and breezy dome of heaven, + ... And now + I'll sit me down upon yon broken rock, + To muse upon the strange and solemn things + Of this mysterious realm. + All day my steps + Have been amid the beautiful, the wild, + The gloomy, the terrific; crystal founts + Almost invisible in their serene + And pure transparency, high pillared domes + With stars and flowers, all fretted like the halls + Of Oriental monarchs--rivers dark, + And drear, and voiceless, as Oblivion's stream, + That flows through Death's dim vale of silence,--gulfs + All fathomless, down which the loosened rock + Plunges, until its far-off echoes come + Fainter and fainter, like the dying roll + Of thunders in the distance. + ... Beautiful + Are all the thousand snow-white gems that lie + In these mysterious chambers, gleaming out + Amid the melancholy gloom, and wild + These rocky hills and cliffs, and gulfs, but far + More beautiful and wild, the things that greet + The wanderer in our world of light--the stars + Floating on high, like islands of the blest,-- + The autumn sunsets glowing like the gate + Of far-off Paradise; the gorgeous clouds + On which the glories of the earth and sky + Meet, and commingle; earth's unnumbered flowers, + All turning up their gentle eyes to heaven; + The birds, with bright wings glancing in the sun, + Filling the air with rainbow miniatures; + The green old forests surging in the gale; + The everlasting mountains, on whose peaks + The setting sun burns like an altar-flame. + + * * * * * + + +=_Charles Constantine Pise, 1802-1866._= (Manual, p. 532.) + +From "The Pleasures of Religion." + +=_353._= THE RAINBOW. + + Mark, o'er yon wild, as melts the storm away, + The rainbow tints their various hues display; + Beauteous, though faint, though deeply shaded, bright, + They span the clearing heavens, and charm the sight. + Yes, as I gaze, methinks I view--the while, + Hope's radiant form, and Mercy's genial smile. + Who doth not see, in that sweet bow of heaven, + Circling around the twilight hills of even, + Religion's light, which o'er the wilds of life + Shoots its pure rays through misery and strife; + Soothes the lone bosom, as it pines in woe, + And turns to heaven this barren world below? + O, what were man, did not her hallowed ray + Disperse, the clouds that thicken on his way! + A weary pilgrim, left in cheerless gloom, + To grope his midnight journey to the tomb; + His life a tempest, death, a wreck forlorn, + In sorrow dying, as in sorrow born. + + * * * * * + +From "The Tourist" + +=_354._= VIEW AT GIBRALTAR. + + And from this height, how beauteous to survey + The neighboring shores, the bright cerulean bay: + Myriads of sails are swelling on the deep, + And oars, in myriads, through the waters sweep. + Behold, in peace, all nations here unite, + Their various pennons streaming to the sight: + The red cross glows, the Danish crown appears, + The half-moon rises, and the lion rears, + But mark, bold-towering o'er the conscious wave, + The starry banners of my country brave, + Stream like a meteor to the wooing breeze, + And float all-radiant o'er the sunny seas! + Hail, native flag! for ever mayst thou blow-- + Hope to the friend, and terror to the foe! + Again I hail thee, Calpe! on thy steep + I wandered high, and gazed upon the deep! + Nature's best fortress, which no warlike foe, + No martial scheme, can ever overthrow. + Art, too, had added strength, and given a grace + That smooths the rugged aspect of thy face. + What wondrous halls along the mountain made! + What trains of cannon in those halls arrayed! + They frown imperious from their lofty state, + Prepared around to deal the scourge of fate. + + * * * * * + + +=_Elijah P. Lovejoy,[81] 1802-1816._= + +From "Lines to my Mother." + +=_355._= + + There is a fire that burns on earth, + A pure and holy flame; + It came to men from heavenly birth, + And still it is the same + As when it burned the chords along + That bore the first-born seraph's song; + Sweet as the hymn of gratitude + That swelled to Heaven when "all was good." + No passion in the choirs above + Is purer than a mother's love. + * * * * * + My mother! I am far away + From home, and love, and thee; + And stranger hands may heap the clay + That soon may cover me; + Yet we shall meet--perhaps not here, + But in yon shining, azure sphere; + And if there's aught assures me more, + Ere yet my spirit fly, + That Heaven has mercy still in store + For such a wretch as I, + 'Tis that a heart so good as thine + Must bleed, must burst, along with mine. + + And life is short, at best, and time + Must soon prepare the tomb; + And there is sure a happier clime + Beyond this world of gloom. + And should it be my happy lot, + After a life of care and pain, + In sadness spent, or spent in vain, + To go where sighs and sin are not, + 'Twill make the half my heaven to be, + My mother, evermore with thee. + +[Footnote 81: Born in Maine, but lived at the West; was editor of a +religions newspaper, which early assailed slavery as wrong; lost his +life in defending his press against a mob at Alton, Illinois, July, +1836.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Edward Coate Pinkney, 1802-1828_.= (Manual, p. 521.) + +=356=. A HEALTH. + + I fill this cup to one made up of loveliness alone; + A woman, of her gentle sex the seeming paragon, + To whom the better elements and kindly stars have given + A form so fair, that, like the air, 'tis less of earth than heaven. + + Her every tone is music's own, like those of morning birds; + And something more than melody dwells ever in her words. + The coinage of her heart are they, and from her lips each flows, + As one may see the burdened bee forth issue from the rose. + + Affections are as thoughts to her, the measures of her hours; + Her feelings have the fragrance and the freshness of young flowers; + And lovely passions, changing oft, so fill her, she appears + The image of themselves by turns, the idol of past years. + + Of her bright face, one glance will trace a picture on the brain, + And of her voice, in echoing hearts a sound must long remain; + But memory such as mine of her, so very much, endears + When death is nigh, my latest sigh will not be life's, but hers. + + I fill this cup to one made up of loveliness alone, + A woman, of her gentle sex, the seeming paragon. + Her health! and would on earth there stood some more of such a frame, + That life might be all poetry, and weariness a name. + + * * * * * + + +=_Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803-._= (Manual, pp. 478, 503, 531.) + +=357.= HYMN SUNG AT THE COMPLETION OF THE CONCORD MONUMENT. + + By the rude bridge that arched the flood, + Their flag to April's breeze unfurled, + Here once the embattled farmers stood, + And fired the shot heard round the world. + + The foe long since in silence slept; + Alike the conqueror silent sleeps; + And Time the ruined bridge has swept + Down the dark stream which seaward creeps. + + On this green bank, by this soft stream, + We set to-day a votive stone, + That memory may their deed redeem, + When, like our sires, our sons are gone. + + Spirit, that made those heroes dare + To die, or leave their children free, + Bid Time and Nature gently spare + The shaft we raise to them and thee. + + * * * * * + +From "May Day." + +=_358._= DISAPPEARANCE OF WINTER. + + Not for a regiment's parade, + Nor evil laws or rulers made, + Blue Walden rolls its cannonade, + But for a lofty sign + Which the Zodiac threw, + That the bondage-days are told, + And waters free as winds shall flow. + Lo! how all the tribes combine + To rout the flying foe. + See, every patriot oak-leaf throws + His elfin length upon the snows, + Not idle, since the leaf all day + Draws to the spot the solar ray, + Ere sunset quarrying inches down, + And half-way to the mosses brown; + While the grass beneath the rime + Has hints of the propitious time, + And upward pries and perforates + Through the cold slab a thousand gates, + Till the green lances peering through + Bend happy in the welkin blue, + * * * * * + The ground-pines wash their rusty green, + The maple-tops their crimson tint, + On the soft path each track is seen, + The girl's foot leaves its neater print. + The pebble loosened from the frost + Asks of the urchin to be tost. + In flint and marble beats a heart, + The kind Earth takes her children's part, + The green lane is the school-boy's friend, + Low leaves his quarrel apprehend, + The fresh ground loves his top and ball, + The air rings jocund to his call, + The brimming brook invites a leap, + He dives the hollow, climbs the steep. + The youth reads omens where he goes, + And speaks all languages, the rose. + The wood-fly mocks with tiny noise + The far halloo of human voice; + The perfumed berry on the spray + Smacks of faint memories far away. + A subtle chain of countless rings + The next unto the farthest brings, + And, striving to be man, the worm + Mounts through all the spires of form. + + * * * * * + +From "Voluntaries II." + +=_359._= INSPIRATION OF DUTY. + + In an age of joys and toys, + Wanting wisdom, void of right, + Who shall nerve heroic boys + To hazard all in Freedom's fight,-- + Break shortly off their jolly games, + Forsake their comrades gay, + And quit proud homes and youthful dames, + For famine, toil, and fray? + Yet on the nimble air benign + Speed nimbler messages, + That waft the breath of grace divine + To hearts in sloth and ease. + So nigh is grandeur to our dust, + So near is God to man, + When duty whispers low, _Thou must_, + The youth replies, _I can_. + * * * * * + Stainless soldier on the walls, + Knowing this,--and knows no more,-- + Whoever fights, whoever falls + Justice conquers evermore, + Justice after as before.-- + + * * * * * + + +=_Thomas C. Upham,[82] 1799-1873._= + +=_360._= ON A SON LOST AT SEA. + + Boy of my earlier days and hopes! Once more, + Dear child of memory, of love, of tears! + I see thee, as I saw in days of yore, + As in thy young, and in thy lovely, years. + + The same in youthful look, the same in form; + The same the gentle voice I used to hear; + Though many a year hath passed, and many a storm + Hath dashed its foam around thy cruel bier. + + Deep in the stormy ocean's hidden cave + Buried, and lost to human care and sight, + What power hath interposed to rend thy grave? + What arm hath brought thee thus to life and light? + + I weep,--the tears my aged cheek that stain, + The throbs that once more swell my aching breast, + Embodying one of anxious thought and pain, + That wept and watched around that place of rest. + + O leave me not, my child! Or, if it be, + That coming thus, thou canst not longer stay, + Yet shall this kindly visit's mystery + Give rise to hopes that never can decay. + + Dear cherished image from thy stormy bed! + Child of my early woe, and early joy! + 'Tis thus at last the sea shall yield her dead, + And give again my loved, my buried boy. + +[Footnote 82: A philosophical and religious writer of much merit and +earnestness; author of a volume of poems; for a long time professor +of moral and mental philosophy in Bowdoin College. A native of New +Hampshire.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Jacob Leonard Martin,[83] 1803-1848._= + +=_361_=. THE CHURCH OF SANTA CROCE, FLORENCE. + + Tomb of the mighty dead,[84] illustrious shrine, + Where genius, in the majesty of death, + Reposes solemn, sepulchred beneath, + Temple o'er every other fane divine! + Dark Santa Crocé, in whose dust recline + Their mouldering relics whose immortal wreath. + Blooms on, unfaded by Time's withering breath, + In these proud ashes what a prize is thine! + Sure it is holy ground I tread upon; + Nor do I breathe unconsecrated air, + As, rapt, I gaze on each undying name. + These monuments are fragments of the throne + Once reared by genius on this spot so fair, + When Florence was the seat of arts and early fame. + +[Footnote 83: A native of North Carolina; best known in political life, +but meritorious in literature.] + +[Footnote 84: In this church repose Galileo, Michael Angelo, Alfieri, and +other illustrious Italians.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Geo. W. Bethune, 1803-1862._= (Manual, p. 487.) + +Invocation. + +=_362._= MYTHOLOGY GIVES PLACE TO CHRISTIANITY. + + Hushed is their song; from long-frequented grove, + Pale Memory, are thy bright-eyed daughters gone; + No more in strains of melody and love, + Gush forth thy sacred waters, Helicon; + Prostrate on Egypt's plain, Aurora's son, + God of the sunbeam and the living lyre, + No more shall hail thee with mellifluous tone; + Nor shall thy Pythia, raving from thy fire, + Speak of the future sooth to those who would inquire. + + No more at Delos, or at Delphi now, + Or e'en at mighty Ammon's Lybian shrine, + The white-robed priests before the altar bow, + To slay the victim and to pour the wine, + While gifts of kingdoms round each pillar twine; + Scarce can the classic pilgrim, sweeping free + From fallen architrave the desert vine. + Trace the dim names of their divinity-- + Gods of the ruined temples, where, oh where! are ye? + + The Naiad bathing in her crystal spring, + The guardian Nymph of every leafy tree, + The rushing Aeolus on viewless wing, + The flower-crowned Queen of every cultured lea, + And he who walked, with monarch-tread, the sea, + The awful Thunderer, threatening them aloud, + God! were their vain imaginings of Thee, + Who saw Thee only through the illusive cloud + That sin had flung around their spirits, like a shroud. + + As fly the shadows of uncertain night, + On misty vapors of the early day, + When bursts o'er earth the sun's resplendent light-- + Fantastic visions! they have passed away, + Chased by the purer Gospel's orient ray. + My soul's bright waters flow from out thy throne, + And on my ardent breast thy sunbeam's play; + Fountain of thought! True Source of light! I own + In joyful strains of praise, thy sovereign power alone. + + O breathe upon my soul thy Spirit's fire, + That I may glow like seraphim on high, + Or rapt Isaiah kindling o'er his lyre; + And sent by Thee, let holy Hope be nigh, + To fill with prescient joy my ravished eye, + And gentle Love; to tune each jarring string + Accordant with the heavenly harmony; + Then upward borne, on Faith's aspiring wing, + The praises of my God to listening earth, I sing. + + * * * * * + + +=_Charles Fenno Hoffman, 1806-._= (Manual, pp. 487, 505, 519.) + +From "The Vigil of Faith." + +=_363._= THE RED MAN'S HEAVEN. + + White man! I say not that they lie + Who preach a faith so dark and drear, + That wedded hearts in yon cold sky + Meet not as they were mated here. + But scorning not thy faith, thou must + Stranger, in mine have equal trust,-- + The Red man's faith, by Him implanted, + Who souls to both our bodies granted. + Thou know'st in life we mingle not; + Death cannot change our different lot! + He who hath placed the White man's heaven + Where hymns in vapory clouds are chanted, + To harps by angel fingers play'd, + Not less on his Red children smiles, + To whom a land of souls is given, + Where in the ruddy West array'd. + Brighten our blessed hunting isles. + + * * * * * + + Those blissful ISLANDS OF THE WEST! + I've seen, myself, at sunset time, + The golden lake in which they rest; + Seen, too, the barks that bear The Blest, + Floating toward that fadeless clime: + First dark, just as they leave our shore, + Their sides then brightening more and more, + Till in a flood of crimson light + They melted from my straining sight. + And she who climb'd the storm-swept steep, + She who the foaming wave would dare, + So oft love's vigil here to keep,-- + Stranger, albeit thou think'st I dote, + I know, I know she watches there! + Watches upon that radiant strand, + Watches to see her lover's boat + Approach The Spirit-Land. + + He ceased, and spoke no more that night, + Though oft, when chillier blew the blast, + I saw him moving in the light + The fire, that he was feeding, cast; + While I, still wakeful, ponder'd o'er + His wondrous story more and more. + I thought, not wholly waste the mind + Where Faith so deep a root could find, + Faith which both love and life could save, + And keep the first, in age still fond. + Thus blossoming this side the grave + In steadfast trust of fruit beyond. + And when in after years I stood + By INCA-PAH-CHO'S haunted water, + Where long ago that hunter woo'd + In early youth its island daughter, + And traced the voiceless solitude + Once witness of his loved one's slaughter-- + At that same season of the leaf + In which I heard him tell his grief,-- + I thought some day I'd weave in rhyme, + That tale of mellow autumn time. + + * * * * * + + +=_William Gilmore Simms, 1806-1870._= (Manual, pp. 523, 490, 510.) + +From "The Cassique of Accabee." + +=_364._= NATURE INSPIRES SENTIMENT. + + It was a night of calm. O'er Ashley's waters + Crept the sweet billows to their own soft tune, + While she, most bright of Keawah's fair daughters, + Whose voice might spell the footsteps of the moon, + As slow we swept along, + Poured forth her own sweet song-- + A lay of rapture not forgotten soon. + + Hushed was our breathing, stayed the lifted oar, + Our spirits rapt, our souls no longer free, + While the boat, drifting softly to the shore, + Brought us within the shades of Accabee. + "Ah!" sudden cried the maid, + In the dim light afraid, + "'Tis here the ghost still walks of the old Yemassee." + + And sure the spot was haunted by a power + To fix the pulses in each youthful heart; + Never was moon more gracious in a bower, + Making delicious fancy-work for art, + Weaving so meekly bright + Her pictures of delight, + That, though afraid to stay, we sorrowed to depart. + + "If these old groves are haunted"--sudden then, + Said she, our sweet companion,--"it must be + By one who loved, and was beloved again, + And joy'd all forms of loveliness to see:-- + Here, in these groves they went, + Where love and worship, blent, + Still framed the proper God for each idolatry. + + "It could not be that love should here be stern, + Or beauty fail to sway with sov'reign might; + These from so blesséd scenes should something learn, + And swell with tenderness, and shape delight: + These groves have had their power, + And bliss, in by-gone hour, + Hath charm'd with sight and song the passage of the night." + + "It were a bliss to think so;" made reply + Our Hubert--"yet the tale is something old, + That checks us with denial;--and our sky, + And these brown woods that, in its glittering fold, + Look like a fairy clime, + Still unsubdued by time, + Have evermore the tale of wrong'd devotion told." + + "Give us thy legend, Hubert;" cried the maid;-- + And, with down-dropping oars, our yielding prow + Shot to a still lagoon, whose ample shade + Droop'd from the gray moss of an old oak's brow: + The groves, meanwhile, lay bright, + Like the broad stream, in light, + Soft, sweet as ever yet the lunar loom display'd. + + * * * * * + + +=_Nathaniel Parker Willis, 1807-1867._= (Manual, pp. 504, 519.) + +From the "Sacred Poems." + +=_365._= HAGAR IN THE WILDERNESS. + + * * * * * + The morning pass'd, and Asia's sun rose up + In the clear heaven, and every beam was heat. + The cattle of the hills were in the shade, + And the bright plumage of the Orient lay + On beating bosoms in her spicy trees. + It was an hour of rest; but Hagar found + No shelter in the wilderness, and on + She kept her weary way, until the boy + Hung down his head, and open'd his parch'd lips + For water; but she could not give it him. + She laid him down beneath the sultry sky,-- + For it was better than the close, hot breath + Of the thick pines,--and tried to comfort him,-- + But he was sore athirst, and his blue eyes + Were dim and bloodshot, and he could not know + Why God denied him water in the wild. + + She sat a little longer, and he grew + Ghastly and faint, as if he would have died. + It was too much for her, she lifted him, + And bore him further on, and laid his head + Beneath the shadow of a desert shrub; + And, shrouding up her face, she went away, + And sat to watch where he could see her not, + Till he should die; and watching him, she mourned: + + "God stay thee in thine agony, my boy! + I cannot see thee die; I cannot brook + Upon thy brow to look, + And see death settle on my cradle-joy. + How have I drunk the light of thy blue eye! + And could I see thee die? + + "I did not dream of this when thou wert straying, + Like an unbound gazelle, among the flowers; + Or wearing rosy hours, + By the rich gush of water-sources playing, + Then sinking weary to thy smiling sleep, + So beautiful and deep. + + "O, no! and when I watch'd by thee the while, + And saw thy bright lip curling in thy dream, + And thought of the dark stream + In my own land of Egypt, the far Nile, + How pray'd I that my father's land might be + An heritage for thee! + + "And now the grave for its cold breast hath won thee, + And thy white, delicate limbs the earth will press; + And, O, my last caress + Must feel thee cold, for a chill hand is on thee. + How can I leave my boy, so pillow'd there + Upon his clustering hair!" + + She stood beside the well her God had given + To gush in that deep wilderness, and bathed + The forehead of her child until he laugh'd + In his reviving happiness, and lisp'd + His infant thought of gladness at the sight + Of the cool plashing of his mother's hand. + + * * * * * + +=_366._= UNSEEN SPIRITS. + + The shadows lay along Broadway,-- + 'Twas near the twilight tide,-- + And slowly there, a lady fair + Was waiting in her pride. + Alone walked she, yet viewlessly + Walked spirits at her side. + + Peace charmed the street beneath her feet, + And honor charmed the air, + And all astir looked kind on her, + And called her good as fair; + For all God ever gave to her, + She kept with chary care. + + She kept with care her beauties rare, + From lovers warm and true; + For her heart was cold to all but gold, + And the rich came not to woo. + Ah, honored well, are charms to sell, + When priests the selling do! + + Now, walking there, was one more fair-- + A slight girl, lily pale, + And she had unseen company + To make the spirit quail; + 'Twixt want and scorn, she walked forlorn, + And nothing could avail. + + No mercy now can clear her brow + For this world's peace to pray; + For, as love's wild prayer dissolved in air, + Her woman's heart gave way, + And the sin forgiven by Christ in heaven + By man is cursed alway. + + * * * * * + + +=_Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1807-._= (Manual, pp. 503, 505, 519, 531.) + +=_367._= LINES TO RESIGNATION. + + There is no flock, however watched and tended + But one dead lamb is there! + There is no fireside, howso'er defended, + But has one vacant chair! + + The air is full of farewells to the dying, + And mournings for the dead; + The heart of Rachel, for her children crying, + Will not be comforted! + + Let us be patient! these severe afflictions + Not from the ground arise, + But oftentimes celestial benedictions + Assume this dark disguise. + + We see but dimly through the mists and vapors; + Amid these earthly damps, + What seem to us but sad, funereal tapers + May be heaven's distant lamps. + + There is no Death! What seems so is transition. + This life of mortal breath + Is but a suburb of the life elysian, + Whose portal we call Death. + + She is not dead,--the child of our affection,-- + But gone unto that school + Where she no longer needs our poor protection, + And Christ himself doth rule. + + In that great cloister's stillness and seclusion, + By guardian angels led, + Safe from temptation, safe from sin's pollution, + She lives, whom we call dead. + + Day after day we think what she is doing + In those bright realms of air; + Year after year, her tender steps pursuing, + Behold her grown more fair. + + Thus do we walk with her, and keep unbroken + The bond which nature gives, + Thinking that our remembrance, though unspoken, + May reach her where she lives. + + Not as a child shall we again behold her; + For when with raptures wild + In our embraces we again enfold her, + She will not be a child; + + But a fair maiden, in her Father's mansion, + Clothed with celestial grace; + And beautiful with all the soul's expansion + Shall we behold her face. + + And though at times impetuous with emotion + And anguish long suppressed, + The swelling heart heaves, moaning like the ocean, + That cannot be at rest,-- + + We will be patient, and assuage the feeling + We may not wholly stay; + By silence sanctifying, not concealing, + The grief that must have way. + + * * * * * + +From "The Seaside and The Fireside." + +=_368._= THE WEDDING; THE LAUNCH; THE SHIP. + + The prayer is said, + The service read, + The joyous bridegroom bows his head; + And in tears the good old Master + Shakes the brown hand of his son, + Kisses his daughter's glowing cheek + In silence, for he cannot speak, + And ever faster + Down his own the tears begin to run. + The worthy pastor-- + The Shepherd of that wandering flock, + That has the ocean for its wold, + That has the vessel for its fold, + Leaping ever from rock to rock-- + Spake, with accents mild and clear, + Words of warning, words of cheer, + But tedious to the bridegroom's ear. + + * * * * * + + Then the Master, + With a gesture of command, + Waved his hand; + And at the word, + Loud and sudden there was heard, + All around them and below, + The sound of hammers, blow on blow, + Knocking away the shores and spurs. + And see! she stirs! + She starts,--she moves,--she seems to feel + The thrill of life along her keel, + And, spurning with her foot the ground, + With one exulting, joyous bound, + She leaps into the ocean's arms! + + And lo! from the assembled crowd + There rose a shout, prolonged and loud, + That to the ocean, seemed to say,-- + "Take her, O bridegroom, old and gray, + Take her to thy protecting arms, + With all her youth and all her charms!" + How beautiful she is! How fair + She lies within those arms, that press + Her form with many a soft caress + Of tenderness and watchful care! + Sail forth into the sea, O ship! + Through wind and wave, right onward steer! + The moistened eye, the trembling lip, + Are not the signs of doubt or fear. + + Sail forth into the sea of life, + O gentle, loving, trusting wife, + And safe from all adversity + Upon the bosom of that sea + Thy comings and thy goings be! + For gentleness and love and trust + Prevail o'er angry wave and gust; + And in the wreck of noble lives + Something immortal still survives! + + Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State! + Sail on, O Union strong and great! + Humanity with all its fears, + With all the hopes of future years, + Is hanging breathless on thy fate! + We know what master laid thy keel, + What workman wrought thy ribs of steel, + Who made each mast, and sail, and rope, + What anvils rang, what hammers beat, + In what a forge and what a heat + Were shaped the anchors of thy hope! + Fear not each sudden sound and shock, + 'Tis of the wave and not the rock; + 'Tis but the flapping of the sail, + And not a rent made by the gale! + In spite of rock and tempest-roar, + In spite of false lights on the shore, + Sail on, nor fear to breast the sea! + Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee, + Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears, + Our faith triumphant o'er our fears, + Are all with thee,--are all with thee. + + * * * * * + +From "Evangeline." + +=_369._= SONG OF THE MOCKING-BIRD, AT SUNSET. + + Softly the evening came. The sun, from the western horizon, + Like a magician, extended his golden wand o'er the landscape; + Twinkling vapors arose; and sky and water and forest + Seemed all on fire at the touch, and melted and mingled together. + Hanging between two skies, a cloud with edges of silver, + Floated the boat, with its dripping oars, on the motionless + water. + Filled was Evangeline's heart with inexpressible sweetness. + Touched by the magic spell, the sacred fountains of feeling + Glowed with the light of love, as the skies and waters around + her. + Then from a neighboring thicket the mocking-bird, wildest of + singers, + Swinging aloft on a willow spray that hung o'er the water, + Shook from his little throat such floods of delirious music, + That the whole air and the woods and the waves seemed silent + to listen. + Plaintive at first were the tones and sad; then soaring to madness, + Seemed they to follow or guide the revel of frenzied Bacchantes. + Single notes were then heard, in sorrowful, low lamentation; + Till, having gathered them all, he flung them abroad in derision, + As when, after a storm, a gust of wind through the tree-tops + Shakes down the rattling rain in a crystal shower on the + branches. + With such a prelude as this, and hearts that throbbed with + emotion, + Slowly they entered the Têche, where it flows through the green + Opelousas, + And through the amber air, above the crest of the woodland, + Saw the column of smoke that arose from a neighboring dwelling;-- + Sounds of a horn they heard, and the distant lowing of cattle. + + * * * * * + +From "The Song of Hiawatha." + +=_370._= HIAWATHA'S DEPARTURE. + + On the shore stood Hiawatha, + Turned and waved his hand at parting; + On the clear and luminous water + Launched his birch canoe for sailing, + From the pebbles of the margin + Shoved it forth into the water; + Whispered to it, "Westward! westward!" + And with speed it darted forward. + And the evening sun descending + Set the clouds on fire with redness, + Burned the broad sky, like a prairie, + Left upon the level water + One long track and trail of splendor, + Down whose streams, as down a river, + Westward, westward Hiawatha + Sailed into the fiery sunset, + Sailed into the purple vapors, + Sailed into the dusk of evening. + And the people from the margin + Watched him floating, rising, sinking, + Till the birch canoe seemed lifted + High into that sea of splendor, + Till it sank into the vapors + Like the new moon slowly, slowly + Sinking in the purple distance. + And they said, "Farewell for ever!" + Said, "Farewell, O Hiawatha!" + And the forests, dark and lonely, + Moved through all their depth of darkness, + Sighed, "Farewell, O Hiawatha!" + And the waves upon the margin + Rising, rippling on the pebbles, + Sobbed, "Farewell, O Hiawatha!" + And the heron, the Shu-shuh-gah, + From her haunts among the fen-lands, + Screamed, "Farewell, O Hiawatha!" + Thus departed Hiawatha, + Hiawatha the beloved, + In the glory of the sunset, + In the purple mists of evening, + To the regions of the home-wind, + Of the Northwest wind Keewaydin, + To the islands of the Blessed, + To the kingdom of Ponemah, + To the land of the Hereafter! + + * * * * * + + +=_William D. Gallagher, 1808-._= (Manual, p. 523.) + +=_371._= THE LABORER. + + Stand up--erect! Thou hast the form, + And likeness of thy God!--who more? + A soul as dauntless mid the storm + Of daily life, a heart as warm + And pure, as breast e'er bore. + + What then?--Thou art as true a Man + As moves the human mass among; + As much a part of the Great plan + That with creation's dawn began, + As any of the throng. + + Who is thine enemy? the high + In station, or in wealth the chief? + The great, who coldly pass thee by, + With proud step and averted eye? + Nay! nurse not such belief. + + * * * * * + + No:--uncurbed passions--low desires-- + Absence of noble self-respect-- + Death, in the breast's consuming fires, + To that high Nature which aspires + For ever, till thus checked: + + * * * * * + + True, wealth thou hast not: 'tis but dust! + Nor place; uncertain as the wind! + But that thou hast, which, with thy crust + And water, may despise the lust + Of both--a noble mind. + + With this and passions under ban, + True faith, and holy trust in God, + Thou art the peer of any man. + Look up, then--that thy little span + Of life, may be well trod! + + * * * * * + + +=_John G. Whittier, 1808-._= (Manual, pp. 490, 522.) + +=_372._= WHAT THE VOICE SAID. + + Maddened by Earth's wrong and evil, + "Lord," I cried in sudden ire, + "From thy right hand, clothed with thunder, + Shake the bolted fire! + + "Love is lost, and Faith is dying; + With the brute, the man is sold; + And the dropping blood of labor + Hardens into gold." + + * * * * * + + "Thou, the patient Heaven upbraiding," + Spake a solemn Voice within; + "Weary of our Lord's forbearance, + Art thou free from sin?" + + * * * * * + + "Earnest words must needs be spoken + When the warm heart bleeds or burns + With its scorn of wrong, or pity + For the wronged, by turns. + + "But, by all thy nature's weakness, + Hidden faults and follies known, + Be thou, in rebuking evil, + Conscious of thine own. + + "Not the less shall stern-eyed Duty + To thy lips her trumpet set, + But with harsher blasts shall mingle + Wailings of regret." + + Cease not, Voice of holy speaking, + Teacher sent of God, be near, + Whispering through the day's cool silence, + Let my spirit hear! + + So, when thoughts of evil doers + Waken scorn, or hatred move, + Shall a mournful fellow-feeling + Temper all with love. + + * * * * * + +From "The Tent on the Beach." + +=_373._= THE ATLANTIC TELEGRAPH. + + O lonely bay of Trinity, + O dreary shores, give ear! + Lean down unto the white-lipped sea + The voice of God to hear! + + From world to world his couriers fly, + Thought-winged, and shod with fire; + The angel of his stormy sky + Rides down the sunken wire. + + What saith the herald of the Lord? + "The world's long strife is done; + Close wedded by that mystic cord, + Its continents are one. + + "And one in heart, as one in blood, + Shall all her peoples be; + The hands of human brotherhood + Are clasped beneath the sea. + + "Through Orient seas, o'er Afric's plain + And Asian mountains borne, + The vigor of the Northern brain + Shall nerve the world outworn. + + "From clime to clime, from shore to shore, + Shall thrill the magic thread; + The new Prometheus steals once more + The fire that wakes the dead." + + Throb on, strong pulse of thunder! beat + From answering beach to beach; + Fuse nations in thy kindly heat, + And melt the chains of each! + + Wild terror of the sky above, + Glide tamed and dumb below! + Bear gently, Ocean's carrier-dove, + Thy errands to and fro. + + Weave on, swift shuttle of the Lord, + Beneath the deep so far, + The bridal robe of earth's accord, + The funeral shroud of war! + + For lo! the fall of Ocean's wall, + Space mocked, and time outrun; + And round the world the thought of all + Is as the thought of one! + + The poles unite, the zones agree, + The tongues of striving cease; + As on the sea of Galilee, + The Christ is whispering, Peace! + + * * * * * + +From Snow-Bound. + +=_374._= DESCRIPTION OF A SNOW STORM. + + The sun that brief December day + Rose cheerless over hills of gray, + And, darkly circled, gave at noon + A sadder light than waning moon, + Slow tracing down the thickening sky + Its mute and ominous prophecy, + A portent seeming less than threat, + It sank from sight before it set. + A chill no coat, however stout, + Of homespun stuff could quite shut out, + A hard, dull bitterness of cold, + That checked, mid-vein, the circling race + Of life-blood in the sharpened face, + The coming of the snow-storm told. + The wind blew east: we heard the roar + Of Ocean on his wintry shore, + And felt the strong pulse throbbing there + Beat with low rhythm our inland air. + + * * * * * + + Unwarmed by any sunset light + The gray day darkened into night, + A night made hoary with the swarm + And whirl-dance of the blinding storm, + A zigzag wavering to and fro + Crossed and recrossed the wingéd snow: + And ere the early bed-time came + The white drift piled the window-frame, + And, through the glass, the clothes-line posts + Looked in like tall and sheeted ghosts. + + So all night long the storm rolled on: + The morning broke without a sun; + In tiny spherule traced with lines + Of Nature's geometric signs, + In starry flake and pellicle, + All day the hoary meteor fell; + And, when the second morning shone, + We looked upon a world unknown, + On nothing we could call our own. + Around the glistening wonder bent + The blue walls of the firmament, + No cloud above, no earth below,-- + A universe of sky and snow! + + * * * * * + +From "The Pennsylvania Pilgrim." + +=_375._= THE QUAKER'S CREED. + + * * * * * + + Gathered from many sects, the Quaker brought + His old beliefs, adjusting to the thought + That moved his soul, the creed his fathers taught. + + One faith alone, so broad that all mankind + Within themselves its secret witness find, + The soul's communion with the Eternal Mind, + + The Spirit's law, the Inward Rule and Guide, + Scholar and peasant, lord and serf, allied, + The polished Penn, and Cromwell's Ironside. + + As still in Hemskerck's Quaker meeting, face + By face, in Flemish detail, we may trace + How loose-mouthed boor, and fine ancestral grace, + + Sat in close contrast,--the clipt-headed churl, + Broad market-dame, and simple serving-girl, + By skirt of silk and periwig in curl! + + For soul touched soul; the spiritual treasure-trove + Made all men equal, none could rise above, + Nor sink below, that level of God's love. + + So, with his rustic neighbors sitting down, + The homespun frock beside the scholar's gown, + Pastorius, to the manners of the town + + Added the freedom of the woods, and sought + The bookless wisdom by experience taught, + And learned to love his new-found home, while not + + Forgetful of the old; the seasons went + Their rounds, and somewhat to his spirit lent + Of their own calm and measureless content. + + Glad even to tears, he heard the robin sing + His song of welcome to the Western spring, + And bluebird borrowing from the sky his wing. + + And when the miracle of autumn came, + And all the woods with many-colored flame + Of splendor, making summer's greenness tame, + + Burned unconsumed, a voice without a sound + Spake to him from each kindled bush around + And made the strange, new landscape holy ground. + + * * * * * + + +=_Albert Pike, 1809-._= (Manual, p. 523.) + +From "Lines on the Rocky Mountains." + +=_376._= THE EVERLASTING HILLS. + + The deep, transparent sky is full + Of many thousand glittering lights-- + Unnumbered stars that calmly rule + The dark dominions of the night. + The mild, bright moon has upward risen, + Out of the gray and boundless plain, + And all around the white snows glisten, + Where frost, and ice, and silence, reign,-- + While ages roll away, and they unchanged remain. + + These mountains, piercing the blue sky + With their eternal cones of ice,-- + The torrents dashing from on high, + O'er rock, and crag, and precipice,-- + Change not, but still remain as ever, + Unwasting, deathless, and sublime, + And will remain while lightnings quiver, + Or stars the hoary summits climb, + Or rolls the thunder-chariot of eternal Time. + + * * * * * + + +=_Anne C. Lynch Botta._= + +From her "Poems." + +=_377._= THE DUMB CREATION. + + Deal kindly with those speechless ones, + That throng our gladsome earth; + Say not the bounteous gift of life + Alone is nothing worth. + + What though with mournful memories + They sigh not for the past? + What though their ever joyous now + No future overcast. + + No aspirations fill their breast + With longings undefined; + They live, they love, and they are blest + For what they seek they find. + + They see no mystery in the stars, + No wonder in the plain, + And Life's enigma wakes in them, + No questions dark and vain. + + To them earth is a final home, + A bright and blest abode; + Their lives unconsciously flow on + In harmony with God. + + To this fair world our human hearts + Their hopes and longings bring, + And o'er its beauty and its bloom, + Their own dark shadows fling. + + Between the future and the past + In wild unrest we stand, + And ever as our feet advance, + Retreats the promised land. + + And though Love, Fame, and Wealth, and Power + Bind in their gilded bond, + We pine to grasp the unattained-- + The _something_ still beyond. + + And, beating on their prison bars, + Our spirits ask more room, + And with unanswered questionings, + They pierce beyond the tomb. + + Then say thou not, oh, doubtful heart! + There is no life to come: + That in some tearless, cloudless land; + Thou shalt not find thy home. + + * * * * * + + +=_Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1809-._= (Manual, pp. 478, 520.) + +From his Poems. + +=_378._= THE LAST LEAF. + + I saw him once before, + As he passed by the door, + And again + The pavement stones resound, + As he totters o'er the ground + With his cane. + + + My grandmamma has said,-- + Poor old lady, she is dead + Long ago,-- + That he had a Roman nose, + And his cheek was like a rose + In the snow. + + But now his nose is thin, + And it rests upon his chin + Like a staff, + And a crook is in his back. + And a melancholy crack + In his laugh. + + I know it is a sin + For me to sit and grin + At him here; + But the old three-cornered hat, + And the breeches, and all that, + Are so queer! + + And if I should live to be + The last leaf upon the tree + In the spring,-- + Let them smile, as I do now, + At the old forsaken bough + Where I cling. + + * * * * * + +From "The Professor at the Breakfast Table." + +=_379._= A MOTHER'S SECRET. + + * * * * * + + They reach the holy place, fulfill the days + To solemn feasting given, and grateful praise. + At last they turn, and far Moriah's height + Melts into southern sky and fades from sight. + All day the dusky caravan has flowed + In devious trails along the winding road,-- + (For many a step their homeward path attends, + And all the sons of Abraham are as friends.) + Evening has come,--the hour of rest and joy;-- + Hush! hush! that whisper,--"Where is Mary's boy?" + O weary hour! O aching days that passed, + Filled with strange fears, each wilder than the last: + The soldier's lance,--the fierce centurion's sword,-- + The crushing wheels that whirl some Roman lord,-- + The midnight crypt that sucks the captive's breath,-- + The blistering sun on Hinnom's vale of death! + Thrice on his cheek had rained the morning light, + Thrice on his lips the mildewed kiss of night, + Crouched by some porphyry column's shining plinth, + Or stretched beneath the odorous terebinth. + At last, in desperate mood, they sought once more + The Temple's porches, searched in vain before; + They found him seated with the ancient men,-- + The grim old rufflers of the tongue and pen,-- + Their bald heads glistening as they clustered near, + Their gray beards slanting as they turned to hear, + Lost In half-envious wonder and surprise + That lips so fresh should utter words so wise. + And Mary said,--as one who, tried too long, + Tells all her grief and half her sense of wrong.-- + "What is this thoughtless thing which thou hast done? + Lo, we have sought thee sorrowing, O my son!" + Few words he spake, and scarce of filial tone,-- + Strange words, their sense a mystery yet unknown; + Then turned with them and left the holy hill, + To all their mild commands obedient still. + The tale was told to Nazareth's sober men, + And Nazareth's matrons told it oft again; + The maids retold it at the fountain's side; + The youthful shepherds doubted or denied; + It passed around among the listening friends, + With all that fancy adds and fiction lends, + Till newer marvels dimmed the young renown + Of Joseph's son, who talked the Rabbies down. + But Mary, faithful to its lightest word, + Kept in her heart the sayings she had heard, + Till the dread morning rent the Temple's veil, + And shuddering Earth confirmed the wondrous tale. + + Youth fades; love droops; the leaves of friendship fall; + A mother's secret hope outlives them all. + + * * * * * + + +=_Willis Gaylord Clark, 1810-1841._= (Manual, pp. 503, 523.) + +From his "Literary Remains." + +=_380._= AN INVITATION TO EARLY PIETY. + + Come, while the morning of thy life is glowing-- + Ere the dim phantoms thou art chasing die; + Ere the gay spell which earth is round thee throwing, + Fade like the sunset of a summer sky; + Life hath but shadows, save a promise given, + Which lights the future with a fadeless ray; + O, touch the sceptre--win a hope in heaven-- + Come--turn thy spirit from the world away. + + Then will the crosses of this brief existence, + Seem airy nothings to thine ardent soul; + And shining brightly in the forward distance, + Will of thy patient race appear the goal; + Home of the weary! where in peace reposing, + The spirit lingers in unclouded bliss, + Though o'er its dust the curtained grave is closing-- + Who would not _early_ choose a lot like this? + + * * * * * + + +=_James Russell Lowell, 1819-._= (Manual, p. 520.) + +From his "Miscellaneous Poems," &c. + +=_381._= A SONG. + + Violet! sweet violet! + Thine eyes are full of tears; + Are they wet + Even yet, + With the thought of other years? + Or with gladness are they full, + For the night so beautiful, + And longing for those far-off spheres? + + Loved-one of my youth thou wast, + Of my merry youth, + And I see, + Tearfully, + All the fair and sunny past, + All its openness and truth, + Ever fresh and green in thee + As the moss is in the sea. + + Thy little heart, that hath with love + Grown colored like the sky above, + On which thou lookest ever,-- + Can it know + All the woe + Of hope for what returneth never, + All the sorrow and the longing + To these hearts of ours belonging? + + Out on it! no foolish pining + For the sky + Dims thine eye, + Or for the stars so calmly shining; + Like thee let this soul of mine + Take hue from that wherefor I long, + Self-stayed and high, serene and strong, + Not satisfied with hoping--but divine. + + Violet! dear violet! + Thy blue eyes are only wet + With joy and love of him who sent thee, + And for the fulfilling sense + Of that glad obedience + Which made thee all that Nature meant thee! + + * * * * * + +From "The Present Crisis." + +=_382._= IMPORTANCE OF A NOBLE DEED. + + When a deed is done for Freedom, through the broad earth's aching breast + Runs a thrill of joy prophetic, trembling on from east to west, + And the slave, where'er he cowers, feels the soul within him climb + To the awful verge of manhood, as the energy sublime + Of a century, bursts full-blossomed on the thorny stem of Time. + + * * * * * + + Once, to every man and nation, comes the moment to decide, + In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or evil side; + Some great cause, God's new Messiah, offering each the bloom or blight, + Parts the goats upon the left hand, and the sheep upon the right, + And the choice goes by for ever, twist that darkness and that light. + + * * * * * + + We see dimly in the Present what is small and what is great, + Slow of faith how weak an arm may turn the iron helm of fate, + But the soul is still oracular; amid the market's din, + List the ominous stern whisper from the Delphic cave within,-- + "They enslave their children's children, who make compromise with sin." + + * * * * * + +From The Atlantic Monthly. + +=_383._= THE SPANIARDS' GRAVES AT THE ISLES OF SHOALS. + + O sailors, did sweet eyes look after you, + The day you sailed away from sunny Spain? + Bright eyes that followed fading ship and crew, + Melting in tender rain? + + Did no one dream of that drear night to be, + Wild with the wind, fierce with the stinging snow, + When, on yon granite point that frets the sea, + The ship met her death-blow? + + Fifty long years ago these sailors died: + (None know how many sleep beneath the waves:) + Fourteen gray head-stones, rising side by side, + Point out their nameless graves,-- + + Lonely, unknown, deserted, but for me, + And the wild birds that flit with mournful cry, + And sadder winds, and voices of the sea + That moans perpetually. + + Wives, mothers, maidens, wistfully, in vain + Questioned the distance for the yearning sail, + That, leaning landward, should have stretched again + White arms wide on the gale, + + To bring back their beloved. Year by year, + Weary they watched, till youth and beauty passed, + And lustrous eyes grew dim, and age drew near, + And hope was dead at last. + + Still summer broods o'er that delicious land, + Rich, fragrant, warm with skies of golden glow: + Live any yet of that forsaken band + Who loved so long ago? + + O Spanish women, over the far seas, + Could I but show you where your dead repose! + Could I send tidings on this northern breeze, + That strong and steady blows! + + Dear dark-eyed sisters, you remember yet + These you have lost, but you can never know + One stands at their bleak graves whose eyes are wet + With thinking of your woe! + + * * * * * + + +=_Edgar Allen Poe._= (Manual, p. 510.) + +From his Works. + +=_384._= "THE RAVEN." + + Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, + Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,-- + While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, + As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door; + "'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door,-- + Only this, and nothing more." + + Ah! distinctly I remember, it was in the bleak December, + And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor. + Eagerly I wished the morrow;--vainly I had sought to borrow, + From my books, surcease of sorrow,--sorrow for the lost Lenore,-- + For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore,-- + Nameless here for evermore. + + And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain + Thrilled me--filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before; + So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating, + "'Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door-- + Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door; + This it is, and nothing more." + + Presently my soul grew stronger: hesitating then no longer, + "Sir," said I, "or madam, truly your forgiveness I implore; + But the fact is, I was napping, and so gently you came rapping, + And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door, + That I scarce was sure I heard you." Here I opened wide the door; + Darkness there,--and nothing more. + + Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing, + Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before; + But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token, + And the only word there spoken was the whisper'd word, "Lenore!" + This I whisper'd, and an echo murmur'd back the word, "Lenore!" + Merely this, and nothing more. + + Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning, + Soon again I heard a tapping, something louder than before. + "Surely," said I,--"surely that is something at my window-lattice; + Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore,-- + Let my heart be still a moment, and this mystery explore;-- + 'Tis the wind, and nothing more." + + Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter, + In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore. + Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or staid he; + But with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door,-- + Perched upon a bust of Pallas, just above my chamber door,-- + Perched, and sat, and nothing more. + + Then, this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling, + By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore, + "Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou," I said, "art sure no + craven, + Ghastly, grim, and ancient Raven wandering from the nightly shore-- + Tell me what thy lordly name is on the night's Plutonian shore!" + Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore." + + Much I marvell'd this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly, + Though its answer little meaning, little relevancy bore; + For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being + Ever yet was bless'd with seeing bird above his chamber door,-- + Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door,-- + With such name as "Nevermore." + + But the Raven, sitting lonely on that placid bust, spoke only + That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour. + Nothing further then he utter'd; not a feather then he flutter'd-- + Till I scarcely more than mutter'd, "Other friends have flown before-- + On the morrow _he_ will leave me, as my Hopes have flown before," + Then the bird said, "Nevermore." + + Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken, + "Doubtless," said I, "what it utters is its only stock and store, + Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful disaster + Follow'd fast and follow'd faster, till his songs one burden bore-- + Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy burden bore + Of 'Never--never--more!'" + + But the Raven still beguiling all my sad soul into smiling, + Straight I wheel'd a cushioned seat in front of bird, and bust, and + door; + Then upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking + Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore-- + What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore + Meant in croaking "Nevermore." + + This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing + To the fowl, whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom's core; + This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining + On the cushion's velvet lining that the lamp-light gloated o'er, + But whose velvet violet lining which the lamp-light gloated o'er + _She_ shall press, ah, never more! + + Then methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer + Swung by seraphim whose footfalls tinkled on the tufted floor. + "Wretch," I cried, "thy God hath lent thee--by these angels he hath sent + thee + Respite--respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore! + Quaff, O quaff, this kind nepenthe, and forget this lost Lenore!" + Quoth the Raven, "Never more." + + "Prophet," said I, "thing of evil! prophet still, if bird or devil!-- + Whether tempter sent, or whether tempest toss'd thee here ashore, + Desolate, though all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted-- + On this home by Horror haunted--tell me truly, I implore-- + Is there--is there balm in Gilead?--tell me--tell me, I implore!" + Quoth the Raven, "Never more." + + "Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil!--prophet still, if bird or devil! + By that heaven that bends above us--by that God we both adore-- + Tell this soul, with sorrow laden, if within the distant Aidenn, + It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore-- + Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore!" + Quoth the Raven, "Never more." + + "Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!" I shrieked, + upstarting-- + "Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian shore! + Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken! + Leave my loneliness unbroken!--quit the bust above my door! + Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!" + Quoth the Raven, "Never more." + + And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting, + On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door; + And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming, + And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor; + And my soul from out that shadow, that lies floating on the floor, + Shall be lifted--never more. + + * * * * * + + +=_Alfred B. Street, 1811-._= (Manual, pp. 522, 531.) + +From his "Poems." + +=_385._= AN AUTUMN LANDSCAPE. + + Overhead + There is a blending of cloud, haze, and sky; + A silvery sheet, with spaces of soft hue; + A trembling veil of gauze is stretched athwart + The shadowy hill-sides and dark forest-flanks; + A soothing quiet broods upon the air, + And the faint sunshine winks with drowsiness. + Far sounds melt mellow on the ear: the bark, + The bleat, the tinkle, whistle, blast of horn, + The rattle of the wagon-wheel, the low, + The fowler's shot, the twitter of the bird, + And even the hue of converse from the road. + + * * * * * + + The sunshine flashed on streams, + Sparkled on leaves, and laughed on fields and woods. + All, all was life and motion, as all now + Is sleep and quiet. Nature in her change + Varies each day, as in the world of man + She moulds the differing features. Yea, each leaf + Is variant from its fellow. Yet her works + Are blended in a glorious harmony, + For thus God made his earth. Perchance His breath + Was music when He spake it into life, + Adding thereby another instrument + To the innumerable choral orbs + Sending the tribute of their grateful praise + In ceaseless anthems towards His sacred throne. + + * * * * * + +From "Drawings and Tintings." + +=_386._= THE FALLS OF THE MONGAUP. + + Struggling along the mountain path, + We hear, amid the gloom, + Like a roused giant's voice of wrath, + A deep-toned, sullen boom: + Emerging on the platform high, + Burst sudden to the startled eye + Rocks, woods, and waters, wild and rude-- + A scene of savage solitude. + + Swift as an arrow from the bow; + Headlong the torrent leaps, + Then tumbling round, in dazzling snow + And dizzy whirls it sweeps; + Then, shooting through the narrow aisle + Of this sublime cathedral pile, + Amidst its vastness, dark and grim, + It peals its everlasting hymn. + + Pyramid on pyramid of rock + Towers upward, wild and riven, + As piled by Titan hand, to mock + The distant smiling heaven. + And where its blue streak is displayed, + Branches their emerald net-work braid + So high, the eagle in his flight + Seems but a dot upon the sight. + + Here column'd hemlocks point in air + Their cone-like fringes green; + Their trunks hang knotted, black and bare, + Like spectres o'er the scene; + Here lofty crag and deep abyss, + And awe-inspiring precipice; + There grottoes bright in wave-worn gloss, + And carpeted with velvet moss. + + No wandering ray e'er kissed with light + This rock-walled sable pool, + Spangled with foam-gems thick and white, + And slumbering deep and cool; + But where yon cataract roars down, + Set by the sun, a rainbow crown + Is dancing, o'er the dashing strife-- + Hope glittering o'er the storm of life. + + Beyond, the smooth and mirror'd sheet + So gently steals along, + The very ripples, murmuring sweet, + Scarce drown the wild bee's song; + The violet from the grassy side + Dips its blue chalice in the tide; + And, gliding o'er the leafy brink, + The deer, unfrightened, stoops to drink. + + Myriads of man's time-measured race + Have vanished from the earth, + Nor left a memory of their trace, + Since first this scene had birth; + These waters, thundering now along, + Joined in Creation's matin-song; + And only by their dial-trees + Have known the lapse of centuries! + + * * * * * + + +=_Laura M.H. Thurston, 1812-1842._= (Manual, P. 524.) + +=_387._= LINES ON CROSSING THE ALLEGHANIES. + + I hail thee, Valley of the West, + For what thou yet shalt be! + I hail thee for the hopes that rest + Upon thy destiny! + Here from this mountain height, I see + Thy bright waves floating rapidly, + Thine emerald fields outspread; + And feel that in the book of fame, + Proudly shall thy recorded name + In later days be read. + + Oh! brightly, brightly glow thy skies + In Summer's sunny hours! + The green earth seems a paradise + Arrayed in summer flowers! + But oh! there is a land afar, + Whose skies to me all brighter are, + Along the Atlantic shore! + For eyes beneath their radiant shrine + In kindlier glances answered mine: + Can these their light restore? + + Upon the lofty bound I stand, + That parts the East and West; + Before me lies a fairy land; + Behind--_a home of rest!_ + _Here_, Hope her wild enchantment flings, + Portrays all bright and lovely things, + My footsteps to allure-- + But _there_, in memory's light I see + All that was once most dear to me-- + My young heart's cynosure! + + * * * * * + + +=_Francis S. Osgood, 1812-1850_= (Manual, p. 523.) + +=_388._= "The Parting." + + I looked not, I sighed not, I dared not betray + The wild storm of feeling that strove to have way, + For I knew that each sign of the sorrow _I_ felt + _Her_ soul to fresh pity and passion would melt, + And calm was my voice, and averted my eyes, + As I parted from all that in being I prize. + + I pined but one moment that form to enfold. + Yet the hand that touched hers, like the marble was cold,-- + I heard her voice falter a timid farewell, + Nor trembled, though soft on my spirit it fell, + And she knew not, she dreamed not, the anguish of soul + Which only my pity for her could control. + + It is over--the loveliest dream of delight + That ever illumined a wanderer's night! + Yet one gleam of comfort will brighten my way, + Though mournful and desolate ever I stray: + It is this--that to her, to my idol, I spared + The pang that her love could have softened and shared! + + * * * * * + + +=_Harriet Beecher Stowe._= (Manual, p. 484.) + +From the "Religious Poems." + +=_389._= THE PEACE OF FAITH. + + When winds are raging o'er the upper ocean, + And billows wild contend with angry roar, + 'Tis said, far down, beneath the wild commotion, + That peaceful stillness reigneth evermore. + + Far, far beneath, the noise of tempests dieth, + And silver waves chime ever peacefully, + And no rude storm, how fierce soe'er it flieth, + Disturbs the Sabbath of that deeper sea. + + So to the heart that knows Thy love, O Purest! + There is a temple, sacred evermore, + And all the babble of life's angry voices + Dies in hushed stillness at its peaceful door. + + Far, far away, the roar of passion dieth, + And loving thoughts rise calm and peacefully, + And no rude storm, how fierce soe'er it flieth, + Disturbs that soul that dwells, O Lord, in Thee. + + O Rest of rests! O Peace, serene, eternal! + Thou ever livest, and Thou changest never; + And in the secret of Thy presence dwelleth + Fullness of joy, for ever and for ever. + + * * * * * + +=_390._= "ONLY A YEAR." + + One year ago,--a ringing voice, + A clear blue eye, + And clustering curls of sunny hair, + Too fair to die. + + Only a year,--no voice, no smile, + No glance of eye, + No clustering curls of golden hair, + Fair but to die! + + One year ago,--what loves, what schemes + Far into life! + What joyous hopes, what high, resolves, + What generous strife! + + The silent picture on the wall, + The burial stone, + Of all that beauty, life, and joy + Remain alone! + + One year,--one year,--one little year, + And so much gone! + And yet the even flow of life + Moves calmly on. + + The grave grows green, the flowers bloom fair, + Above that head; + No sorrowing tint of leaf or spray + Says he is dead. + + No pause or hush of merry birds + That sing above, + Tells us how coldly sleeps below + The form we love. + + Where hast thou been this year, beloved? + What hast thou seen? + What visions fair, what glorious life, + Where thou hast been? + + The veil! the veil! so thin, so strong! + 'Twixt us and thee; + The mystic veil! when shall it fall, + That we may see? + + Not dead, not sleeping, not even gone, + But present still, + And waiting for the coming hour + Of God's sweet will. + + Lord of the living and the dead, + Our Saviour dear! + We lay in silence at thy feet + This sad, sad year! + + * * * * * + + +=_Henry T. Tuckerman._= + +From his "Poems." + +=_391._= THE STATUE OF WASHINGTON. + + The quarry whence thy form majestic sprung, + Has peopled earth with grace, + Heroes and gods that elder bards have sung, + A bright and peerless race, + But from its sleeping veins ne'er rose before, + A shape of loftier name + Than his, who, Glory's wreath with meekness wore, + The noblest son of fame + Sheathed is the sword that Passion never stained; + His gaze around is cast, + As if the joys of Freedom, newly gained, + Before his vision passed; + As if a nation's shout of love and pride + With music filled the air, + And his calm soul was lifted on the tide + Of deep and grateful prayer; + As if the crystal mirror of his life + To fancy sweetly came, + With scenes of patient toil and noble strife, + Undimmed by doubt or shame; + As if the lofty purpose of his soul + Expression would betray-- + The high resolve Ambition to control, + And thrust her crown away! + O, it was well in marble, firm and white, + To carve our hero's form, + Whose angel guidance was our strength in fight, + Our star amid the storm; + Whose matchless truth has made his name divine, + And human freedom sure, + His country great, his tomb earth's dearest shrine, + While man and time endure! + And it is well to place his image there, + Beneath, the dome he blest; + Let meaner spirits who its councils share, + Revere that silent guest! + Let us go up with high and sacred love, + To look on his pure brow, + And as, with solemn grace, he points above, + Renew the patriot's vow! + + * * * * * + + +=_John G. Saxe, 1816-._= (Manual, p. 523, 531.) + +From "Early Rising." + +=_392._= THE BLESSING OF SLEEP. + + "God bless the man who first invented sleep!" + So Sancho Panza said, and so say I: + And bless him, also, that he didn't keep + His great discovery to himself; nor try + To make it--as the lucky fellow might-- + A close monopoly by patent-right! + + * * * * * + + 'Tis beautiful to leave the world a while + For the soft visions of the gentle night; + And free, at last, from mortal care or guile, + To live as only in the angels' sight, + In Sleep's sweet realm so cosily shut in, + Where, at the worst, we only dream of sin! + + So let us sleep, and give the Maker praise. + I like the lad, who, when his father thought + To clip his morning nap by hackneyed praise + Of vagrant worm by early songster caught, + Cried, "Served him right!--it's not at all surprising; + The worm was punished, sir, for early rising!" + + * * * * * + +=_393._= "YE TAILYOR-MAN; A CONTEMPLATIVE BALLAD." + + Right jollie is ye tailyor-man + As annie man may be; + And all ye daye, upon ye benche + He worketh merrilie. + + And oft, ye while in pleasante wise + He coileth up his lymbes, + He singeth songs ye like whereof + Are not in Watts his hymns. + + And yet he toileth all ye while + His merrie catches rolle; + As true unto ye needle as + Ye needle to ye pole. + + What cares ye valiant tailyor-man + For all ye cowarde fears? + Against ye scissors of ye Fates, + He points his mightie shears. + + He heedeth not ye anciente jests + That witless sinners use; + What feareth ye bolde tailyor-man + Ye hissinge of a goose? + + He pulleth at ye busie threade, + To feede his lovinge wife + And eke his childe; for unto them + It is the threade of life. + + He cutteth well ye rich man's coate, + And with unseemlie pride, + He sees ye little waistcoate In + Ye cabbage bye his side, + + Meanwhile ye tailyor-man his wife, + To labor nothing loth, + Sits bye with readie hande to baste + Ye urchin, and ye cloth. + + Full happie is ye tailyor-man + Yet is he often tried, + Lest he, from fullness of ye dimes, + Wax wanton in his pride. + + Full happie is ye tailyor-man, + And yet he hath a foe, + A cunning enemie that none + So well as tailyors knowe. + + It is ye slipperie customer + Who goes his wicked wayes, + And wears ye tailyor-man his coate, + But never, never payes! + + * * * * * + +From "The Money King." + +=_394._= ANCIENT AND MODERN GHOSTS CONTRASTED. + + In olden times,--if classic poets say + The simple truth, as poets do to-day,-- + When Charon's boat conveyed a spirit o'er + The Lethean water to the Hadean shore, + The fare was just a penny,--not too great, + The moderate, regular, Stygian statute rate. + _Now_, for a shilling, he will cross the stream, + (His paddles whirling to the force of steam!) + And bring, obedient to some wizard power, + Back to the Earth more spirits in an hour, + Than Brooklyn's famous ferry could convey, + Or thine, Hoboken, in the longest day! + Time was when men bereaved of vital breath, + Were calm and silent in the realms of Death; + When mortals dead and decently inurned + Were heard no more; no traveler returned, + Who once had crossed the dark Plutonian strand, + To whisper secrets of the spirit-land,-- + Save when perchance some sad, unquiet soul-- + Among the tombs might wander on parole,-- + A well-bred ghost, at night's bewitching noon, + Returned to catch some glimpses of the moon, + Wrapt in a mantle of unearthly white, + (The only rapping of an ancient sprite!) + Stalked round in silence till the break of day, + Then from the Earth passed unperceived away. + Now all is changed: the musty maxim fails, + And dead men _do_ repeat the queerest tales! + Alas, that here, as in the books, we see + The travelers clash, the doctors disagree! + Alas, that all, the further they explore, + For all their search are but confused the more! + Ye great departed!--men of mighty mark,-- + Bacon and Newton, Adams, Adam Clarke, + Edwards and Whitefield, Franklin, Robert Hall, + Calhoun, Clay, Channing, Daniel Webster,--all + Ye great quit-tenants of this earthly ball,-- + If in your new abodes ye cannot rest, + But must return, O, grant us this request: + Come with a noble and celestial air, + To prove your title to the names ye bear! + Give some clear token of your heavenly birth; + Write as good English as ye wrote on earth! + Show not to all, in ranting prose and verse, + The spirit's progress is from bad to worse; + And, what were once superfluous to advise, + Don't tell, I beg you, such, egregious lies!-- + Or if perchance your agents are to blame, + Don't let them trifle with your honest fame; + Let chairs and tables rest, and "rap" instead, + Ay, "knock" your slippery "Mediums" on the head! + + * * * * * + +=_395._= "Boys" + + "The proper study of mankind is man,"-- + The most perplexing one, no doubt, is woman, + The subtlest study that the mind can scan, + Of all deep problems, heavenly or human! + + But of all studies in the round of learning, + From nature's marvels down to human toys, + To minds well fitted for acute discerning, + The very queerest one is that of boys! + + If to ask questions that would puzzle Plato, + And all the schoolmen of the Middle Age,-- + If to make precepts worthy of old Cato, + Be deemed philosophy, your boy's a sage! + + If the possession of a teeming fancy, + (Although, forsooth, the younker doesn't know it,) + Which he can use in rarest necromancy, + Be thought poetical, your boy's a poet! + + If a strong will and most courageous bearing, + If to be cruel as the Roman Nero; + If all that's chivalrous, and all that's daring, + Can make a hero, then the boy's a hero! + + But changing soon with his increasing stature, + The boy is lost in manhood's riper age, + And with him goes his former triple nature,-- + No longer Poet, Hero, now, nor Sage! + + * * * * * + +=_396._= SONNET TO A CLAM. + + Inglorious friend! most confident I am + Thy life is one of very little ease; + Albeit men mock thee with their similes, + And prate of being "happy as a clam!" + What though thy shell protects thy fragile head + From the sharp bailiffs of the briny sea? + Thy valves are, sure, no safety-valves to thee, + While rakes are free to desecrate thy bed, + And bear thee off,--as foemen take their spoil,-- + Far from thy friends and family to roam; + Forced, like a Hessian, from thy native home, + To meet destruction in a foreign broil! + Though thou art tender, yet thy humble bard + Declares, O clam! thy case is shocking hard! + + * * * * * + + +=_Lucy Hooper, 1816-1841._= (Manual, p. 524.) + +=_397._= "THE DEATH-SUMMONS." + + A voice is on mine ear--a solemn voice: + I come, I come, it calls me to my rest; + Faint not, my yearning heart; rejoice, rejoice; + Soon shalt thou reach the gardens of the blest: + On the bright waters there, the living streams, + Soon shalt thou launch in peace thy weary bark, + Waked by rude waves no more from gentle dreams, + Sadly to feel that earth to thee is dark-- + Not bright as once; O, vain, vain memories, cease, + I cast your burden down--I strive for peace. + + I heed the warning voice: oh, spurn me not, + My early friend; let the bruised heart go free: + Mine were high fancies, but a wayward lot + Hath made my youthful dreams in sadness flee; + Then chide not, I would linger yet awhile, + Thinking o'er wasted hours, a weary train, + Cheered by the moon's soft light, the sun's glad smile, + Watching the blue sky o'er my path of pain, + Waiting nay summons: whose shall be the eye + To glance unkindly--I have come to die! + + Sweet words--to die! O, pleasant, pleasant sounds, + What bright revealings to my heart they bring; + What melody, unheard in earth's dull rounds, + And floating from the land of glorious Spring + The eternal home! my weary thoughts revive, + Fresh flowers my mind puts forth, and buds of love, + Gentle and kindly thoughts for all that live, + Fanned by soft breezes from the world above: + And pausing not, I hasten to my rest-- + Again, O, gentle summons, thou art blest! + + * * * * * + + +=_Catharine Ann Warfield._= + +=_398._= "THE RETURN TO ASHLAND.[85]" + + Unfold the silent gates, + The Lord of Ashland waits + Patient without, to enter his domain; + Tell not who sits within, + With sad and stricken mien, + That he, her soul's beloved, hath come again. + + Long hath she watched for him, + Till hope itself grew dim, + And sorrow ceased to wake the frequent tear; + But let these griefs depart, + Like shadows from her heart-- + Tell her, the long expected host is here. + + He comes--but not alone, + For darkly pressing on, + The people pass beneath his bending trees, + Not as they came of yore, + When torch and banner bore + Their part amid exulting harmonies. + + But still, and sad, they sweep + Amid the foliage deep, + Even to the threshold of that mansion gray, + Whither from life's unrest, + As an eagle seeks his nest, + It ever was his wont to flee away. + + And he once more hath come + To that accustomed home, + To taste a calm, life never offered yet; + To know a rest so deep, + That they who watch and weep, + In this vain world may well its peace regret. + +[Footnote 85: The home of Henry Clay.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Arthur Cleveland Coxe, 1818-._= (Manual, p. 523.) + +=_399._= THE HEART'S SONG. + + In the silent midnight watches, + List thy bosom door; + How it knocketh, knocketh, knocketh, + Knocketh evermore! + Say not 'tis thy pulse's beating; + 'Tis thy heart of sin; + 'Tis thy Saviour knocks, and crieth, + "Rise, and let me in." + + Death comes down with reckless footstep + To the hall and hut; + Think you Death will tarry knocking + Where the door is shut? + Jesus waiteth, waiteth, waiteth; + But thy door is fast. + Grieved, away thy Saviour goeth; + Death breaks in at last. + + Then 'tis thine to stand entreating + Christ to let thee in, + At the gate of heaven beating, + Wailing for thy sin. + Nay, alas! thou foolish virgin, + Hast thou then forgot? + Jesus waited long to know thee,-- + Now he knows thee not. + + * * * * * + + +=_William Ross Wallace, 1819-._= (Manual, p. 523.) + +=_400._= THE NORTH EDDA. + + Noble was the old North Edda, + Filling many a noble grave, + That for "man the one thing needful + In his world is to be brave." + + This, the Norland's blue-eyed mother + Nightly chanted to her child, + While the Sea-King, grim and stately, + Looked upon his boy and smiled. + + * * * * * + + Let us learn that old North Edda + Chanted grandly on the grave, + Still for man the one thing needful + In his world is to be brave. + + Valkyrs yet are forth and choosing + Who must be among the slain; + Let us, like that grim old Sea-King, + Smile at Death upon the plain,-- + + Smile at tyrants leagued with falsehood, + Knowing Truth, eternal, stands + With the book God wrote for Freedom + Always open in her hands,-- + + Smile at fear when in our duty, + Smile at Slander's Jotun-breath, + Smile upon our shrouds when summoned + Down the darkling deep of death. + + Valor only grows a manhood; + Only this upon our sod, + Keeps us in the golden shadow + Falling from the throne of God. + + * * * * * + + +=_Walter Whitman, 1819-.[86]_= + +From Leaves of Grass. + +=_401._= THE BROOKLYN FERRY AT TWILIGHT. + + I too, many and many a time cross'd the river, the sun half an hour + high; + I watched the Twelfth-month sea-gulls--I saw them high in + the air, floating with motionless wings, oscillating their + bodies, + I saw how the glistening yellow lit up parts of their bodies, + and left the rest in strong shadow, + I saw the slow-wheeling circles, and the gradual edging toward + the south. + + I too saw the reflection of the summer sky in the water, + Had my eyes dazzled by the shimmering track of beams, + Look'd at the fine centrifugal spokes of light round the shape + of my head, in the sun-lit water, + Look'd on the haze on the hills southward and south-westward, + Look'd on the vapor as it flew in fleeces tinged with violet, + Look'd towards the lower bay to notice the arriving ships, + Saw their approach, saw aboard those that were near me, + Saw the white sails of schooners and sloops, saw the ships at + anchor, + The sailors at work in the rigging, or out astride the spars, + The round masts, the swimming motion of the hulls, the slender + serpentine pennants, + The large and small steamers in motion, the pilots in their + pilot-houses, + The white wake left by the passage, the quick tremulous whirl + of the wheels, + The flags of all nations, the falling of them at sun-set, + The scallop-edged waves in the twilight, the ladled cups, the + frolicsome crests and glistening, + The stretch afar growing dimmer and dimmer, the gray walls + of the granite store-houses by the docks, + On the river the shadowy group, the big steam-tug closely + flank'd on each side by the barges--the hay-boat, the + belated lighter, + On the neighboring shore, the fires from the foundry chimneys + burning high and glaringly into the night. + Casting their flicker of black, contrasted with wild red and + yellow light, over the tops of houses, and down into the + clefts of streets. + + These and all else, were to me the same as they are to you; + I project myself a moment to tell you--also I return. + +[Footnote 86: Was born in New York in 1819, and has been printer, +teacher, and later, an official at Washington. His poetry, though +irregular in form, and often coarse in sentiment, is decidedly original +and vigorous.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Amelia B. Welby, 1819-1852._= (Manual, p. 523.) + +=_402._= "THE BEREAVED." + + It is a still and lovely spot + Where they have laid thee down to rest; + The white rose and forget-me-not + Bloom sweetly on thy breast, + And birds and streams with liquid lull + Have made the stillness beautiful. + + And softly through the forest bars + Light, lovely shapes, on glossy plumes, + Float ever in, like winged stars, + Amid the purpling glooms. + Their sweet songs, borne from tree to tree, + Thrill the light leaves with melody. + + Alas! too deep a weight of thought + Had filled thy heart in youth's sweet hour; + It seemed with love and bliss o'erfraught; + As fleeting passion-flower + Unfolding 'neath a southern sky, + To blossom soon, and soon to die. + + Alas! the very path I trace, + In happier hours thy footsteps made; + This spot was once thy resting place, + Within the silent shade. + Thy white hand trained the fragrant bough + That drops its blossoms o'er me now. + + * * * * * + + Yet in those calm and blooming bowers + I seem to feel thy presence still, + Thy breath seems floating o'er the flowers, + Thy whisper on the hill; + The clear, faint starlight, and the sea, + Are whispering to my heart of thee. + + No more thy smiles my heart rejoice, + Yet still I start to meet thy eye, + And call upon the low, sweet voice, + That gives me no reply-- + And list within my silent door + For the light feet that come no more. + + * * * * * + + +=_Rebecca S. Nichols,_= about =_1820-._= (Manual, pp. 503, 524.) + +From "Musings." + +=_403._= + + How like a conquerer the king of day + Folds back the curtains of his orient couch, + Bestrides the fleecy clouds, and speeds his way + Through skies made brighter by his burning touch; + For, as a warrior from the tented field + Victorious, hastes his wearied limbs to rest, + So doth the sun his brazen sceptre yield, + And sink, fair Night, upon thy gentle breast. + + * * * * * + + Fair Vesper, when thy golden tresses gleam + Amid the banners of the sunset sky, + Thy spirit floats on every radiant beam + That gilds with beauty thy sweet home on high; + Then hath my soul its hour of deepest bliss, + And gentle thoughts like angels round me throng, + Breathing of worlds (O, how unlike to this!) + Where dwell eternal melody and song. + + * * * * * + + +=_Alice Cary._= + +"The Old House." + +=_404._= ATTRACTIONS OF OUR EARLY HOME. + + My little birds, with backs as brown + As sand, and throats as white as frost, + I've searched the summer up and down, + And think the other birds have lost + The tunes, you sang so sweet, so low, + About the old house, long ago. + + My little flowers, that with your bloom + So hid the grass you grew upon, + A child's foot scarce had any room + Between you,--are you dead and gone? + I've searched through fields and gardens rare, + Nor found your likeness any where. + + My little hearts, that beat so high + With love to God, and trust in men, + Oh come to me, and say if I + But dream, or was I dreaming then, + What time we sat within the glow + Of the old house-hearth, long ago? + + My little hearts, so fond, so true, + I searched the world all far and wide, + And never found the like of you: + God grant we meet the other side + The darkness 'twixt us, now that stands, + In that new house not made with hands! + + * * * * * + + +=_Sidney Dyer,_=[87] about =_1820-._= + +=_405._= THE POWER OF SONG. + + However humble be the bard who sings, + If he can touch one chord of love that slumbers, + His name, above the proudest line of kings, + Shall live immortal in his truthful numbers. + + The name of him who sung of "Home, sweet home,[88]" + Is now enshrined with every holy feeling; + And though he sleeps beneath no sainted dome, + Each heart a pilgrim at his shrine is kneeling. + + The simple lays that wake no tear when sung, + Like chords of feeling from the music taken, + Are, in the bosom of the singer, strung, + Which every throbbing heart-pulse will awaken. + +[Footnote 87: A Baptist clergyman, who has lived for many years at +Indianapolis, Indiana; the author of numerous songs.] + +[Footnote 88: John Howard Payne.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Austin T. Earle,[89] 1821-._= + +From "Warm Hearts had We." + +=_406._= + + The autumn winds were damp and cold, + And dark the clouds that swept along, + As from the fields, the grains of gold + We gathered, with the husker's song. + Our hardy forms, though thinly clad, + Scarce felt the winds that swept us by, + For she a child, and I a lad, + Warm hearts had we, my Kate and I. + + We heaped the ears of yellow corn, + More worth than bars of gold to view: + The crispy covering from it torn, + The noblest grain that ever grew; + Nor heeded we, though thinly clad, + The chilly winds that swept us by; + For she a child, and I a lad, + Warm hearts had we, my Kate and I. + +[Footnote 89: Was born in Tennessee; a well-known Western writer of both +verse and prose.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Thomas Buchanan Read, 1822-1872._= (Manual, p. 523.) + +From "Sylvia, or the Last Shepherd." + +=_407._= THE MOURNFUL MOWERS. + + * * * * * + + Thus sang the shepherd crowned at noon + And every breast was heaved with sighs;-- + Attracted by the tree and tune, + The winged singers left the skies. + + Close to the minstrel sat the maid; + His song had drawn her fondly near: + Her large and dewy eyes betrayed + The secret to her bosom dear. + + The factory people through the fields, + Pale men and maids and children pale, + Listened, forgetful of the wheel, + Till the last summons woke the vale. + + And all the mowers rising said, + "The world has lost its dewy prime; + Alas! the Golden age is dead, + And we are of the Iron time! + + "The wheel and loom have left our homes,-- + Our maidens sit with empty hands, + Or toil beneath yon roaring domes, + And fill the factory's pallid bands, + + "The fields are swept as by a war, + Our harvests are no longer blythe; + Yonder the iron mower's-car, + Comes with his devastating scythe. + + "They lay us waste by fire and steel, + Besiege us to our very doors; + Our crops before the driving wheel + Fall captive to the conquerors. + + "The pastoral age is dead, is dead! + Of all the happy ages chief; + Let every mower bow his head, + In token of sincerest grief. + + "And let our brows be thickly bound + With every saddest flower that blows; + And all our scythes be deeply wound + With every mournful herb that grows." + + Thus sang the mowers; and they said, + "The world has lost its dewy prime; + Alas! the Golden age is dead, + And we are of the Iron time!" + + Each wreathed his scythe and twined his head; + They took their slow way through the plain: + The minstrel and the maiden led + Across the fields the solemn train. + + The air was rife with clamorous sounds, + Of clattering factory-thundering forge,-- + Conveyed from the remotest bounds + Of smoky plain and mountain gorge. + + Here, with a sudden shriek and roar, + The rattling engine thundered by; + A steamer past the neighboring shore + Convulsed the river and the sky. + + The brook that erewhile laughed abroad, + And o'er one light wheel loved to play, + Now, like a felon, groaning trod + Its hundred treadmills night and day. + + The fields were tilled with steeds of steam, + Whose fearful neighing shook the vales; + Along the road there rang no team,-- + The barns were loud, but not with flails. + + And still the mournful mowers said, + "The world has lost its dewy prime; + Alas! the Golden age is dead, + And we are of the Iron time!" + + * * * * * + +From "The Closing Scene." + +=_408._= + + All sights were mellowed, and all sounds subdued, + The hills seemed farther, and the streams sang low; + As in a dream, the distant woodman hewed + His winter log, with many a muffled blow. + + * * * * * + + The sentinel cock upon the hill-side crew, + Crew thrice, and all was stiller than before, + Silent, till some replying warder blew + His alien horn, and then was heard no more. + + Where erst the jay, within the elm's tall crest, + Made garrulous trouble round her unfledged young, + And where the oriole hung her swaying nest, + By every light wind, like a censer, swung. + + * * * * * + + Amid all this, the centre of the scene, + The white-haired matron, with monotonous tread, + Plied the swift wheel, and, with her joyless mien, + Sat like a Fate, and watched the flying thread. + + * * * * * + + While yet her cheek was bright with summer bloom, + Her country summoned, and she gave her all; + And twice war bowed to her his sable plume, + Re-gave the swords to rust upon the wall-- + + Re-gave the swords, but not the hand that drew, + And struck for Liberty its dying blow; + Nor him who, to his sire and country true, + Fell 'mid the ranks of the invading foe. + + Long, but not loud, the droning wheel went on, + Like the low murmur of a hive at noon; + Long, but not loud, the memory of the gone + Breathed through her lips a sad and tremulous tune. + + At last the thread was snapped; her head was bowed; + Life dropped the distaff through his hands serene; + And loving neighbors smoothed her careful shroud, + While death and winter closed the autumn scene. + + * * * * * + + +=_Margaret M. Davidson, 1823-1837._= (Manual, p. 523.) + +From Lines in Memory of her Sister Lucretia. + +=_409._= + + O thou, so early lost, so long deplored! + Pure spirit of my sister, be thou near; + And, while I touch this hallowed harp of thine, + Bend from the skies, sweet sister, bend and hear. + + For thee I pour this unaffected lay; + To thee these simple numbers all belong: + For though thine earthly form has passed away, + Thy memory still inspires my childish song. + + Take, then, this feeble tribute; 'tis thine own; + Thy fingers sweep my trembling heartstrings o'er, + Arouse to harmony each buried tone, + And bid its wakened music sleep no more. + + Long has thy voice been silent, and thy lyre + Hung o'er thy grave, in death's unbroken rest; + But when its last sweet tones were borne away, + One answering echo lingered in my breast. + + O thou pure spirit! if thou hoverest near, + Accept these lines, unworthy though they be, + Faint echoes from thy fount of song divine, + By thee inspired, and dedicate to thee. + + * * * * * + + +=_John R. Thompson,[90] 1823-1873._= + +=_410._= MUSIC IN CAMP. + + Two armies covered hill and plain, + Where Rappahannock's waters + Ran deeply crimsoned with the stain + Of battle's recent slaughters. + + The summer clouds lay pitched like tents + In meads of heavenly azure, + And each dread gun of the elements + Slept in its hid embrazure. + + The breeze so softly blew, it made + No forest leaf to quiver, + And the smoke of the random cannonade + Rolled slowly from the river. + + And now, where circling hills looked down, + With cannon grimly planted, + O'er listless camp and silent town + The golden sunset slanted. + + When on the fervid air there came + A strain--now rich and tender; + The music seemed itself aflame + With day's departing splendor. + + And yet once more the bugles sang + Above the stormy riot; + No shout upon the evening rang-- + There reigned a holy quiet, + + The sad, slow stream, its noiseless flood + Poured o'er the glistening pebbles; + All silent now the Yankees stood, + And silent stood the Rebels. + + No unresponsive soul had heard + That plaintive note's appealing, + So deeply "Home, Sweet Home" had stirred + The hidden founts of feeling. + + Or Blue, or Gray, the soldier sees, + As by the wand of fairy, + The cottage 'neath the live-oak trees, + The cabin by the prairie. + + Or cold or warm, his native skies + Bend in their beauty o'er him; + Seen through the tear-mist in his eyes, + His loved ones stand before him. + + As fades the iris after rain + In April's tearful weather, + The vision vanished, as the strain + And daylight died together. + + But memory, waked by music's art, + Expressed in simplest numbers, + Subdued the sternest Yankee's heart, + Made light the Rebel's slumbers. + + And fair the form of music shines, + That bright, celestial creature, + Who still 'mid war's embattled lines, + Gave this one touch of Nature. + +[Footnote 90: Received a liberal education and relinquishing his +profession--the law--for literature, was for some years editor of the +Southern Literary Messenger. Has written chiefly for the magazines and +for the newspapers. A native of Virginia.] + + * * * * * + + +=_George Henry Boker, 1824-._= (Manual, p. 520.) + +From the "Ode to a Mountain Oak." + +=_411._= THE OAK AN EMBLEM. + + Type of unbending Will! + Type of majestic self-sustaining Power! + Elate in sunshine, firm when tempests lower, + May thy calm strength my wavering spirit fill! + Oh! let me learn from thee, + Thou proud and steadfast tree, + To bear unmurmuring what stern Time may send; + Nor 'neath life's ruthless tempests bend: + But calmly stand like thee, + Though wrath and storm shake me, + Though vernal hopes in yellow Autumn end, + And, strong in truth, work out my destiny. + Type of long-suffering Power! + Type of unbending Will! + Strong in the tempest's hour, + Bright when the storm is still; + Rising from every contest with an unbroken heart, + Strengthen'd by every struggle, emblem of might thou art! + Sign of what man can compass, spite of an adverse state, + Still from thy rocky summit, teach us to war with Fate! + + * * * * * + +=_412._= DIRGE FOR A SAILOR. + + Slow, slow! toll it low, + As the sea-waves break and flow; + With the same dull slumberous motion. + As his ancient mother, Ocean, + Rocked him on, through storm and calm, + From the iceberg to the palm: + So his drowsy ears may deem + That the sound which breaks his dream + Is the ever-moaning tide + Washing on his vessel's side. + + Slow, slow! as we go. + Swing his coffin to and fro; + As of old the lusty billow + Swayed him on his heaving pillow: + So that he may fancy still, + Climbing up the watery hill, + Plunging in the watery vale, + With her wide-distended sail, + His good ship securely stands + Onward to the golden lands. + + Slow, slow! heave-a-ho!-- + Lower him to the mould below; + With the well-known sailor ballad, + Lest he grow more cold and pallid + At the thought that Ocean's child, + From his mother's arms beguiled. + Must repose for countless years, + Reft of all her briny tears, + All the rights he owned by birth, + In the dusty lap of earth. + + * * * * * + + +=_William Allen Butler, 1825-._= (Manual, p. 521.) + +From "Nothing to Wear." + +=_413._= + + O ladies, dear ladies, the next sunny day + Please trundle your hoops just out of Broadway, + From its whirl and its bustle, its fashion and pride, + And the temples of Trade which tower on each side, + To the alleys and lanes, where Misfortune and Guilt + Their children have gathered, their city have built; + Where Hunger and Vice, like twin beasts of prey, + Have hunted their victims to gloom and despair; + Raise the rich, dainty dress, and the fine broidered skirt, + Pick your delicate way through the dampness and dirt, + Grope through the dark dens, climb the rickety stair + To the garret, where wretches, the young and the old, + Half-starved, and half-naked, lie crouched from the cold. + See those skeleton limbs, and those frost-bitten feet, + All bleeding and bruised by the stones of the street; + Hear the sharp cry of childhood, the deep groans that swell + From the poor dying creature who writhes on the floor, + Hear the curses that sound like the echoes of Hell, + As you sicken and shudder and fly from the door; + Then home to your wardrobes, and say, if you dare, + Spoiled children of Fashion--you've nothing to wear! + + And O, if perchance there should be a sphere, + Where all is made right which so puzzles us here, + + * * * * * + + Where the soul, disenchanted of flesh and of sense, + Unscreened by its trappings, and shows, and pretence, + Must be clothed for the life and the service above, + With purity, truth, faith, meekness, and love; + O daughters of Earth! foolish virgins, beware! + Lest in that upper realm, you have nothing to wear! + + * * * * * + + +=_Bayard Taylor, 1825-._= (Manual, pp. 523, 531.) + +From "The Atlantic Monthly." + +=_414._= "THE BURDEN OF THE DAY." + + I. + + Who shall rise and cast away, + First, the Burden of the Day? + Who assert his place, and teach + Lighter labor, nobler speech, + Standing firm, erect, and strong, + Proud as Freedom, free as song? + + II. + + Lo! we groan beneath the weight + Our own weaknesses create; + Crook the knee and shut the lip, + All for tamer fellowship; + Load our slack, compliant clay + With the Burden of the Day! + + III. + + Higher paths there are to tread; + Fresher fields around us spread; + Other flames of sun and star + Flash at hand and lure afar; + Larger manhood might we share, + Surer fortune, did we dare! + + IV. + + In our mills of common thought + By the pattern all is wrought: + In our school of life, the man + Drills to suit the public plan, + And through labor, love and play, + Shifts the Burden of the Day. + + V. + + Power of all is right of none! + Right hath each beneath the sun + To the breadth and liberal space + Of the independent race,-- + To the chariot and the steed, + To the will, desire, and deed! + + VI. + + Ah, the gods of wood and stone + Can a single saint dethrone, + But the people who shall aid + 'Gainst the puppets they have made? + First they teach and then obey: + 'Tis the Burden of the Day. + + VII. + + Thunder shall we never hear + In this ordered atmosphere? + Never this monotony feel + Shattered by a trumpet's peal? + Never airs that burst and blow + From eternal summits, know? + + VIII. + + Though no man resent his wrong, + Still is free the poet's song: + Still, a stag, his thought may leap + O'er the herded swine and sheep, + And in pastures far away + Lose the burden of the Day! + + * * * * * + + +=_John Townsend Trowbridge,[91] 1827-._= + +From the Atlantic Monthly. + +=_415._= "DOROTHY IN THE GARRET." + + In the low-raftered garret, stooping + Carefully over the creaking boards, + Old Maid Dorothy goes a-groping + Among its dusty and cobwebbed hoards; + Seeking some bundle of patches, hid + Far under the eaves, or bunch of sage, + Or satchel hung on its nail, amid + The heir-looms of a by-gone age. + + There is the ancient family chest, + There the ancestral cards and hatchel; + Dorothy, sighing, sinks down to rest, + Forgetful of patches, sage, and satchel. + Ghosts of faces peer from the gloom + Of the chimney, where, with swifts and reel, + And the long-disused, dismantled loom, + Stands the old-fashioned spinning wheel. + + She sees it back in the clean-swept kitchen, + A part of her girlhood's little world; + Her mother is there by the window, stitching; + Spindle buzzes, and reel is whirled + With many a click; on her little stool + She sits, a child by the open door, + Watching, and dabbling her feet in the pool + Of sunshine spilled on the gilded floor. + + Her sisters are spinning all day long; + To her wakening sense, the first sweet warning + Of daylight come, is the cheerful song + To the hum of the wheel, in the early morning. + Benjie, the gentle, red-cheeked boy, + On his way to school, peeps in at the gate; + In neat, white pinafore, pleased and coy, + She reaches a hand to her bashful mate; + + And under the elms, a prattling pair, + Together they go, through glimmer and gloom + It all comes back to her, dreaming there + In the low-raftered garret room; + The hum of the wheel, and the summer weather + The heart's first trouble, and love's beginning, + Are all in her memory linked together; + And now it is she herself that is spinning. + + With the bloom of youth on cheek and lip, + Turning the spokes with the flashing pin, + Twisting the thread from the spindle-tip, + Stretching it out and winding it in, + To and fro, with a blithesome tread, + Singing she goes, and her heart is full, + And many a long-drawn golden thread + Of fancy, is spun with the shining wool. + +[Footnote 91: After struggling through many early discouragements has +attained high repute, both in prose and verse. Has written several +novels. New York is his native State.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Henry Timrod,[92] 1829-1867._= + +From his "Poems." + +=_416._= THE UNKNOWN DEAD. + + The rain is plashing on my sill, + But all the winds of Heaven are still; + And so it falls with that dull sound + Which thrills us in the church-yard ground, + When the first spadeful drops like lead + Upon the coffin of the dead. + Beyond my streaming window-pane, + I cannot see the neighboring vane, + Yet from its old familiar tower + The bell comes, muffled, through the shower + What strange and unsuspected link + Of feeling touched, has made me think-- + While with a vacant soul and eye + I watch that gray and stony sky-- + Of nameless graves on battle-plains + Washed by a single winter's rains, + Where--some beneath Virginian hills, + And some by green Atlantic rills, + Some by the waters of the West-- + A myriad unknown heroes rest? + Ah! not the chiefs, who, dying, see + Their flags in front of victory, + Or, at their life-blood's noble cost + Pay for a battle nobly lost, + Claim from their monumental beds + The bitterest tears a nation sheds. + Beneath yon lonely mound--the spot + By all save some fond few, forgot-- + Lie the true martyrs of the fight + Which strikes for freedom and for right. + Of them, their patriot zeal and pride, + The lofty faith that with them died, + No grateful page shall farther tell + Than that so many bravely fell; + And we can only dimly guess + What worlds of all this world's distress, + What utter woe, despair, and dearth, + Their fate has brought to many a hearth. + Just such a sky as this should weep + Above them, always, where they sleep; + Yet, haply, at this very hour + Their graves are like a lover's bower; + And Nature's self, with eyes unwet, + Oblivious of the crimson debt + To which she owes her April grace, + Laughs gayly o'er their burial-place. + +[Footnote 92: A native of South Carolina. He has a fine poetic sentiment, +with much beauty of expression, and is an especial favorite in the +South.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Susan A. Talley Von Weiss,_=[93] about =_1830-._= + +=_417._= THE SEA-SHELL. + + Sadly the murmur, stealing + Through the dim windings of the mazy shell, + Seemeth some ocean-mystery concealing + Within its cell. + + And ever sadly breathing, + As with the tone of far-off waves at play, + That dreamy murmur through the sea-shell wreathing + Ne'er dies away. + + It is no faint replying + Of far-off melodies of wind and wave, + No echo of the ocean billow, sighing + Through gem-lit cave. + + It is no dim retaining + Of sounds that through the dim sea-caverns swell + But some lone ocean spirit's sad complaining, + Within that cell. + + + * * * * * + + I languish for the ocean-- + I pine to view the billow's heaving crest; + I miss the music of its dream-like motion, + That lulled to rest. + + How like art thou, sad spirit, + To many a one, the lone ones of the earth! + Who in the beauty of their souls inherit + A purer birth; + + * * * * * + + Yet thou, lone child of ocean, + May'st never more behold thine ocean-foam, + While they shall rest from each wild, sad emotion, + And find their home! + +[Footnote 93: A native of Virginia; her poetical pieces have been much +admired.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Albert Sutliffe,[94] 1830-._= + +=_418._= "MAY NOON." + + The farmer tireth of his half-day toil, + He pauseth at the plough, + He gazeth o'er the furrow-lined soil, + Brown hand above his brow. + + He hears, like winds lone muffled 'mong the hills, + The lazy river run; + From shade of covert woods, the eager rills + Bound forth into the sun. + + The clustered clouds of snowy apple-blooms, + Scarce shivered by a breeze, + With odor faint, like flowers in feverish rooms, + Fall, flake by flake, in peace. + + 'Tis labor's ebb; a hush of gentle joy, + For man, and beast, and bird; + The quavering songster ceases its employ; + The aspen is not stirred. + + But Nature hath no pause; she toileth still; + Above the last-year leaves + Thrusts the lithe germ, and o'er the terraced hill + A fresher carpet weaves. + + From many veins she sends her gathered streams + To the huge-billowed main, + Then through the air, impalpable as dreams, + She calls them back again. + + She shakes the dew from her ambrosial locks, + She pours adown the steep + The thundering waters; in her palm, she rocks + The flower-throned bee to sleep. + + Smile in the tempest, faint and fragile man, + And tremble in the calm! + God plainest shows what great. Jehovah can, + In these fair days of balm. + +[Footnote 94: A native of Connecticut, but has lived for many years in +the West, and latterly in Minnesota.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Elijah E. Edwards,[95] 1831-._= + +=_419._= "LET ME REST." + + "Let me rest!" + It was the voice of one + Whose life-long journey was but just begun. + With genial radiance shone his morning sun; + The lark sprang up rejoicing from her nest, + To warble praises in her Maker's ear; + The fields were clad in flower-enamelled vest, + And air of balm, and sunshine clear, + Failed not to cheer + That yet unweary pilgrim; but his breast + Was harrowed with a strange, foreboding fear; + Deeming the life to come, at best, + But weariness, he murmured, "Let me rest." + + * * * * * + + "Let me rest!" + But not at morning's hour, + Nor yet when clouds above my pathway lower; + Let me bear up against affliction's power, + Till life's red sun has sought its quiet west, + Till o'er me spreads the solemn, silent night, + When, having passed the portals of the blessed, + I may repose upon the Infinite, + And learn aright + Why He, the wise, the ever-loving, traced + The path to heaven through a desert waste. + Courage, ye fainting ones! at His behest + Ye pass through labor unto endless rest. + +[Footnote 95: Born in Ohio; of late professor of ancient languages in +Minnesota; a contributor in prose and verse to various magazines.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Paul Hamilton Hayne,[96] 1831-._= + +=_420._= "OCTOBER." + + The passionate summer's dead! the sky's aglow + With roseate flushes of matured desire; + The winds at eve are musical and low + As sweeping chords of a lamenting lyre, + Far up among the pillared clouds of fire, + Whose pomp in grand procession upward grows, + With gorgeous blazonry of funereal shows, + To celebrate the summer's past renown. + Ah, me! how regally the heavens look down, + O'ershadowing beautiful autumnal woods, + And harvest-fields with hoarded incense brown, + And deep-toned majesty of golden floods, + That lift their solemn dirges to the sky, + To swell the purple pomp that floateth by. + +[Footnote 96: A poet and critic of much Note; a native of South +Carolina.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Rosa V. Johnson Jeffrey_=[97] about =_1832-._= + +=_421._= ANGEL WATCHERS. + + Angel faces watch my pillow, angel voices haunt my sleep,-- + And upon the winds of midnight, shining pinions round me sweep; + Floating downward on the starlight, two bright infant-forms I see-- + They are mine, my own bright darlings, come from heaven to visit me. + + Earthly children smile upon me, but those little ones' above, + Were the first to stir the fountains of a mother's deathless love, + And, as now they watch my slumber, while their soft eyes on me shine, + God forgive a mortal yearning still to call his angels mine. + + Earthly children fondly call me, but no mortal voice can seem + Sweet as those that whisper "Mother!" 'mid the glories of my dream; + Years will pass, and earthly prattlers cease perchance to lisp my name; + But my angel babies' accents shall be evermore the same. + + And the bright band now around me, from their home perchance will rove, + In their strength no more depending on my constant care and love; + But my first-born still shall wander, from the sky in dreams to rest + Their soft cheeks and shining tresses on an earthly mother's breast. + + Time may steal away the freshness, or some 'whelming grief destroy + All the hopes that erst had blossomed, in my summer-time of joy; + Earthly children may forsake me, earthly friends perhaps betray, + Every tie that now unites me to this life may pass away;-- + + But, unchanged, those angel watchers, from their blest immortal home, + Pure and fair, to cheer the sadness of my darkened dreams shall come; + And I cannot feel forsaken, for, though 'reft of earthly love, + Angel children call me "Mother," and my soul will look above. + +[Footnote 97: A native of Mississippi, but of late a resident of +Kentucky; the author of several novels, and of many poetical pieces.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Sarah J. Lippincott._= + +From Putnam's Magazine. + +=_422._= "ABSOLUTION." + + The long day waned, when spent with pain, I seemed + To drift on slowly toward the restful shore,-- + So near, I breathed in balm, and caught faint gleams + Of Lotus-blooms that fringe the waves of death, + And breathless Palms that crown the heights of God. + + Then I bethought me how dear hands would close + These wistful eyes in welcome night, and fold + These poor, tired hands in blameless idleness. + In tender mood I pictured forth the spot + Wherein I should be laid to take my rest. + + "It shall be in some paradise of graves, + Where Sun and Shade do hold alternate watch; + Where Willows sad trail low their tender green, + And pious Elms build arches worshipful, + O'ertowered by solemn Pines, in whose dark tops + Enchanted storm-winds sigh through summer-nights; + The stalwart exile from fair Lombardy, + And slender Aspens, whose quiet, watchful leaves + Give silver challenge to the passing breeze, + And softly flash and clash like fairy shields, + Shall sentinel that quiet camping ground; + The glow and grace of flowers will flood those mounds + An ever-widening sea of billowy bloom; + And not least lovely shall my grave-sod be, + With Myrtles blue, and nestling Violets, + And Star-flowers pale with watching--Pansies, dark, + With mourning thoughts, and Lilies saintly pure; + Deep-hearted Roses, sweet as buried love, + And Woodbine-blossoms dripping honeyed dew + Over a tablet and a sculptured name. + There little song-birds, careless of my sleep, + Shall shake fine raptures from their throats, and thrill + With life's triumphant joy the ear of Death; + And lovely, gauzy creatures of an hour + Preach immortality among the graves. + The chime of silvery waters shall be there-- + A pleasant stream that winds among the flowers, + But lingers not, for that it ever hears, + Through leagues of wood and field and towered town, + The great sea calling from his secret deeps." + + 'Twas here, methought or dreamed, an angel came + And stood beside my couch, and bent on me + A face of solemn questioning, still and stern, + But passing beautiful, and searched my soul + With steady eyes, the while he seemed to say. + + What hast thou done here, child, that thy poor dust + Should lie embosomed in such loveliness? + Why should the gracious trees stand guard o'er thee? + Hast thou aspired, like them, through all thy life, + And rest and healing with thy shadow cast? + Have deeds of thine brightened the world like flowers, + And sweetened it with holiest charities? + + * * * * * + + +=_Edmund Clarence Stedman,[98] 1833-._= + +From "The Blameless Prince and other Poems." + +=_423._= THE MOUNTAINS. + + Two thousand feet in air it stands + Betwixt the bright and shaded lands, + Above the regions it divides + And borders with its furrowed sides. + The seaward valley laughs with light + Till the round sun o'erhangs this height; + But then, the shadow of the crest + No more the plains that lengthen west + Enshrouds, yet slowly, surely creeps + Eastward, until the coolness steeps + A darkling league of tilth and wold, + And chills the flocks that seek their fold. + + Not like those ancient summits lone, + Mont Blanc on his eternal throne,-- + The city-gemmed Peruvian, peak,-- + The sunset portals landsmen seek, + Whose train, to reach the Golden Land, + Crawls slow and pathless through the sand,-- + Or that whose ice-lit beacon guides + The mariner on tropic tides, + And flames across the Gulf afar, + A torch by day, by night a star,-- + Not thus to cleave the outer skies. + Does my serener mountain rise. + Nor aye forget its gentle birth + Upon the dewey, pastoral earth. + + But ever, in the noonday light, + Are scenes whereof I love the sight,-- + Broad pictures of the lower world + Beneath my gladdened eyes unfurled. + Irradiate distances reveal + Fair nature wed to human weal; + The rolling valley made a plain; + Its chequered squares of grass and grain; + The silvery rye, the golden wheat, + The flowery elders where they meet,-- + Ay, even the springing corn I see, + And garden haunts of bird and bee; + And where, in daisied meadows, shines + The wandering river through its vines, + Move, specks at random, which I know + Are herds a-grazing to and fro. + +[Footnote 98: Was born in Connecticut but has long resided in New York, +where he has combined an active business life with literary pursuits--a +favorite contributor to that magazines.] + + * * * * * + + +=_John James Piatt,[99] 1835-._= + +From "Landmarks and other Poems." + +=_424._= LONG AGO. + + Though for the soul a lovely Heaven awaits, + Through years of woe, + The Paradise with angels in its gates + Is Long Ago. + + The heart's lost Home! Ah, thither winging ever, + In silence, show + Vanishing faces! but they vanish never + In Long Ago! + + Ye toil'd through desert sands to reach To-morrow, + With footsteps slow, + Poor Yesterdays! Immortal gleams ye borrow + In Long Ago. + + The world is dark: backward our thoughts are yearning, + Our eyes o'erflow: + Sweet Memories, angels to our tears returning, + Leave Long Ago. + + We climb: child-roses to our knees are climbing, + From valleys low; + To call us back, dear birds and brooks are rhyming + In Long Ago. + + Hands clasp'd, tears shed, sad songs are sung!--the fair + Beloved ones, lo! + Shine yonder, through the angel gates of air, + In Long Ago. + +[Footnote 99: Of Western birth and education. His verse though somewhat +crude, has a flow of tenderness and freshness.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Celia Thaxter,[100] 1835-._= + +From The Atlantic Monthly. + +=_425._= "REGRET." + + Softly Death touched her, and she passed away, + Out of this glad, bright world she made more fair; + Sweet as the apple blossoms, when in May, + The orchards flush, of summer grown aware. + + All that fresh delicate beauty gone from sight, + That gentle, gracious presence felt no more! + How must the house be emptied of delight! + What shadows on the threshold she passed o'er! + + She loved me. Surely I was grateful, yet + I could not give her back all she gave me,-- + Ever I think of it with vain regret, + Musing upon a summer by the sea: + + Remembering troops of merry girls who pressed + About me, clinging arms and tender eyes, + And love, light scent of roses. With the rest + She came to fill my heart with new surprise. + + The day I left them all and sailed away, + While o'er the calm sea, 'neath the soft gray sky + They waved farewell, she followed me to say + Yet once again her wistful, sweet "good by." + + At the boat's bow she drooped; her light green dress + Swept o'er the skiff in many a graceful fold, + Her glowing face, bright with a mute caress, + Crowned with her lovely hair of shadowy gold: + + And tears she dropped into the crystal brine + For me, unworthy, as we slowly swung + Free of the mooring. Her last look was mine, + Seeking me still the motley crowd among. + + O tender memory of the dead I hold + So precious through the fret and change of years! + Were I to live till Time itself grew old, + The sad sea would be sadder for those tears. + +[Footnote 100: A native of New Hampshire; long resident on the Isles of +Shoals, and remarkable for her vivid pictures of ocean life, in both +prose and verse.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Theophilus H. Hill.[101] 1836-._= + +From "The Song of the Butterfly." + +=_426._= + + When the shades of evening fall, + Like the foldings of a pall,-- + When the dew is on the flowers, + And the mute, unconscious hours, + Still pursue their noiseless flight + Through the dreamy realms of night, + In the shut or open rose + Ah, how sweetly I repose! + + * * * * * + + And Diana's starry train, + Sweetly scintillant again, + Never sleep while I repose + On the petals of the rose. + Sweeter couch hath who than I? + Quoth the brilliant Butterfly. + + Life is but a summer day, + Gliding languidly away; + Winter comes, alas! too soon,-- + Would it were forever June! + Yet though brief my flight may be, + Fun and frolic still for me! + When the summer leaves and flowers, + Now so beautiful and gay, + In the cold autumnal showers, + Droop and fade, and pine away, + Who would not prefer to die? + What were life to _such as I_? + Quoth the flaunting Butterfly. + +[Footnote 101: Born in North Carolina; in the intervals of his law +practice has published a volume of poems.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Thomas Hailey Aldrich.[102] 1836-._= + +From his "Poems." + +=_427._= THE CRESCENT AND THE CROSS. + + Kind was my friend who, in the Eastern land, + Remembered me with such a gracious hand, + And sent this Moorish Crescent which has been + Worn on the tawny bosom of a queen. + + No more it sinks and rises in unrest + To the soft music of her heathen breast; + No barbarous chief shall bow before it more, + No turbaned slave shall envy and adore! + + I place beside this relic of the Sun + A cross of Cedar brought from Lebanon, + Once 'borne, perchance, by some pale monk who trod + The desert to Jerusalem--and his God! + + Here do they lie, two symbols of two creeds, + Each meaning something to our human needs, + Both stained with blood, and sacred made by faith, + By tears, and prayers, and martyrdom, and death. + + That for the Moslem is, but this for me! + The waning Crescent lacks divinity: + It gives me dreams of battles, and the woes + Of women shut in hushed seraglios. + + But when this Cross of simple wood I see, + The Star of Bethlehem shines again for me, + And glorious visions break upon my gloom-- + The patient Christ, and Mary at the Tomb! + +[Footnote 102: Born in New Hampshire, but long connected with the press in +New York. Has produced several volumes of poetry of unusual beauty and +finish.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Francis Bret Harte._= + +From his "Poems." + +=_428._= DICKENS IN CAMP. + + Above the pines the moon was slowly drifting, + The river ran below; + The dim Sierras, far beyond, uplifting + Their minarets of snow. + + The roaring camp-fire, with rude humor, painted + The ruddy tints of health, + On haggard face, and form that drooped and fainted + In the fierce race for wealth; + + Till one arose, and from his pack's scant treasure + A hoarded volume drew, + And cards were dropped from hands of listless leisure, + To hear the tale anew; + + And then, while round them shadows gathered faster, + And as the firelight fell, + He read aloud the book wherein the Master + Had writ of "Little Nell." + + Perhaps 'twas boyish fancy,--for the reader + Was youngest of them all,-- + But, as he read, from clustering pine and cedar, + A silence seemed to fall. + + The fir-trees, gathering closer in the shadows, + Listened in every spray, + While the whole camp, with "Nell" on English meadows, + Wandered, and lost their way. + + And so in mountain solitudes--o'ertaken + As by some spell divine-- + Their cares dropped from them like the needles shaken + From out the gusty pine. + + Lost is that camp I and wasted all its fire: + And he who wrought that spell?-- + Ah, towering pine and stately Kentish spire, + Ye have one tale to tell! + + Lost is that camp! but let its fragrant story + Blend with the breath that thrills + With hop-vines' incense all the pensive glory + That fills the Kentish hills. + + And on that grave where English oak and holly + And laurel wreaths intwine, + Deem it not all a too presumptuous folly,-- + This spray of Western pine! + + * * * * * + +From "East and West Poems." + +=_429._= THE TWO SHIPS. + + As I stand by the cross on the lone mountain's crest, + Looking over the ultimate sea, + In the gloom of the mountain a ship lies at rest, + And one sails away from the lea: + One spreads its white wings on a far-reaching track, + With pennant and sheet flowing free; + One hides in the shadow with sails laid aback,-- + The ship that is waiting for me! + + But lo, in the distance the clouds break away! + The Gate's glowing portals I see; + And I hear from the outgoing ship in the bay + The song of the sailors in glee: + So I think of the luminous footprints that bore + The comfort o'er dark Galilee, + And wait for the signal to go to the shore, + To the ship that is waiting for me. + + * * * * * + + +=_Charles Dimitry,[103] 1838-._= + +=_430._= "THE SERGEANT'S STORY." + + Our army lay, + At break of day, + A full league from the foe away. + At set of sun, + The battle done, + We cheered our triumph, dearly won. + + * * * * * + + All night before, + We marked the roar + Of hostile guns that on us bore; + And 'here and there, + The sudden blare + Of fitful bugles smote the air. + + No idle word + The quiet stirred + Among us as the morning neared; + And brows were bent, + As silent went + Unto its post each regiment. + + Blank broke the day, + And wan and gray + The drifting clouds went on their way. + So sad the morn, + Our colors torn, + Upon the ramparts drooped forlorn! + + At early sun, + The vapors dun + Were lifted by a nearer gun; + At stroke of nine, + Auspicious sign + The sun shone out along the line. + + Then loud and clear, + From cannoneer + And rifleman arose a cheer; + For as the gray + Mists cleared away, + We saw the charging foe's array. + +[Footnote 103: Of a Louisiana family: is considered one of the most +promising of the young writers of the South. The present is a favorable +specimen of the poetry of the secession writers.] + + * * * * * + + +=_John Hay._=[104] + +From "Pike County Ballads." + +=_431._= THE PRAIRIE. + + The skies are blue above my head, + The prairie green below, + And flickering o'er the tufted grass + The shifting shadows go, + Vague-sailing, where the feathery clouds + Fleck white the tranquil skies, + Black javelins darting where aloft + The whirring pheasant flies. + + A glimmering plain in drowsy trance + The dim horizon bounds, + Where all the air is resonant + With sleepy summer sounds,-- + The life that sings among the flowers, + The lisping of the breeze, + The hot cicada's sultry cry, + The murmurous dream of bees. + + The butterfly--a flying flower-- + Wheels swift in flashing rings, + And flutters round his quiet kin + With brave flame-mottled wings. + The wild Pinks burst in crimson fire, + The Phlox' bright clusters shine, + And Prairie-cups are swinging free + To spill their airy wine. + + * * * * * + + Far in the East, like low-hung clouds + The waving woodlands lie; + Far in the West, the glowing plain + Melts warmly in the sky; + No accent wounds the reverent air, + No foot-print dints the sod,-- + Lone in the light the prairie lies, + Rapt in a dream of God. + +[Footnote 104: Born in Indiana. Gave up the practice of the law to become +Secretary and Aide-de-camp to President Lincoln. Served briefly in the +Rebellion war with the rank of Colonel, and was afterward Secretary of +Legation at Paris and Madrid, and for some months, Chargé d'Affaires at +Vienna. Subsequently applied himself to literature and journalism.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Joaquin Miller._=[105] + +From "Songs of the Sierras." + +=_432._= THE FUTURE OF CALIFORNIA. + + Dared I but say a prophecy, + As sang the holy men of old, + Of rock-built cities yet to be + Along those shining shores of gold, + Crowding athirst into the sea, + What wondrous marvels might be told! + Enough to know that empire here + Shall burn her brightest, loftiest star; + Here art and eloquence shall reign, + As o'er the wolf-reared realm of old; + Here learn'd and famous from afar, + To pay their noble court, shall come, + And shall not seek or see in vain, + But look on all, with wonder dumb. + + Afar the bright Sierras lie, + A swaying line of snowy white, + A fringe of heaven hung in sight + Against the blue base of the sky. + + I look along each gaping gorge, + I near a thousand sounding strokes, + Like giants rending giant oaks, + Or brawny Vulcan at his forge; + I see pick-axes flash and shine, + And great wheels whirling in a mine. + Here winds a thick and yellow thread, + A moss'd and silver stream instead; + And trout that leap'd its rippled tide + Have turn'd upon their sides and died. + + Lo! when the last pick in the mine + Is rusting red with idleness, + And rot yon cabins in the mould, + And wheels no more croak in distress, + And tall pines reassert command, + Sweet bards along this sunset shore + Their mellow melodies will pour; + Will charm as charmers very wise, + Will strike the harp with master-hand, + Will sound unto the vaulted skies + The valor of these men of old-- + The mighty men of 'Forty-nine; + Will sweetly sing and proudly say, + Long, long agone, there was a day + When there were giants in the land. + +[Footnote 105: Cincinnatus Heine Miller, commonly known by his assumed +name of Joaquin Miller. Born in Indiana, but was taken when very young +to Oregon. After a wild career in Oregon and California, he at length +studied for the law. His poetry, like his life, is of an eccentric +cast.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Joel Chandler Harris,[106] 1846-._= + +=_433._= "AGNES." + + She has a tender, winning way, + And walks the earth with gentle grace, + And roses with the lily play + Amid the beauties of her face. + + When'er she tunes her voice to sing, + The song-birds list, with anxious looks, + For it combines the notes of spring + With all the music of the brooks. + + Her merry laughter, soft and low, + Is as the chimes of silver bells,-- + That like sweet anthems float, and flow + Through woodland groves and bosky dells, + + And when the violets see her eyes, + They flush and glow--with love and shame, + They meekly droop with sad surprise, + As though unworthy of the name. + + But still they bloom where'er she throws + Her dainty glance and smiles so sweet. + And e'en amid stern winter's snows + The daisies spring beneath her feet. + + She wears a crown of Purity, + Full set with woman's brightest gem,-- + A wreath of maiden modesty, + And Virtue is the diadem. + + And when the pansies bloom again, + And spring and summer intertwine. + Great joys will fall on me like rain, + For she will be for ever mine! + +[Footnote 106: A native of Georgia; is deemed one of the best of the +younger poets of the South.] + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Choice Specimens of American +Literature, And Literary Reader, by Benj. N. Martin + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 11122 *** diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..316cec2 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #11122 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11122) diff --git a/old/11122-8.txt b/old/11122-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..062b637 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/11122-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,21525 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Choice Specimens of American Literature, +And Literary Reader, by Benj. N. Martin + +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: Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader + Being Selections from the Chief American Writers + +Author: Benj. N. Martin + +Release Date: February 17, 2004 [EBook #11122] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHOICE SPECIMENS *** + + + + +Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Keren Vergon, Gene Smethers and PG +Distributed Proofreaders + + + + + +CHOICE SPECIMENS + +OF + +AMERICAN LITERATURE, + +AND + +LITERARY READER, + + + +BEING SELECTIONS FROM THE CHIEF AMERICAN WRITERS, + +BY + +PROF. BENJ. N. MARTIN, D.D., L.H.D., PROFESSOR OF THE UNIVERSITY OF THE +CITY OF NEW YORK. 1874 + + + +PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. + +The former edition of this work was prepared simply as a supplement to +Shaw's "Choice Specimens of English Literature." Though it extended to +a larger size than had been anticipated, and was therefore issued in a +separate volume, it still proved so straitened in point of space as to +be in some important respects defective and inadequate. The decision of +the publishers to reprint it in an enlarged form furnishes to the editor +a welcome opportunity to correct its deficiencies, and to make several +important emendations. + +When the work of collecting suitable extracts from the great body of our +literature was fairly entered upon, it soon became apparent that little +aid could be had from the earlier manuals. Besides being in great +measure obsolete, they were from the beginning disproportionate, and +geographically too local in subject and spirit; both of which may be +deemed grave defects. + +The last twenty years have made great changes in American authorship. +Many new names must now be added to the older lists, and many formerly +familiar ones must be dropped from them. Hence these extracts have for +the most part been derived, with assiduous care, directly from the +collected works of our standard authors. This part of my labor has been +greatly facilitated by the courtesy of the gentlemen connected with the +Society, the Mercantile, and the Astor, Library, whose constant kindness +I gratefully acknowledge. + +The principal alterations which will be found in this edition are the +following. + +1. The extracts, formerly, of necessity, brief and fragmentary, have +given place to more extended and coherent passages. + +2. A much larger space has been allotted to the more eminent authors. +Such writers as Franklin, Jefferson, Calhoun, Webster, Wirt, Irving, +Cooper, Hawthorne, Channing, Beecher, Prescott, Motley, Shea, Bryant, +Poe, Emerson, and Lowell, have been much more adequately exhibited. + +3. Many later writers have been added, so that the work more fully +represents the rapid development of literary effort among us. + +4. A few writers, formerly included, have been dropped from the list, +not always as less deserving a place, but sometimes as having less +adaptation to the purposes of the book. + +Much care has been bestowed upon the dates of the several authors, and +in bringing up details of information to the latest period. The same +pains have been taken to furnish a just representation of the writers, +too often overlooked in our manuals, of the Southern and Western +portions of our country. Though often wanting in mere grace of style, +they are apt to be original and vigorous; and often possessing valuable +material, they are well worthy of perusal. In all these respects this +collection has been carefully elaborated; and the editor hopes that it +will be found to give a somewhat proportionate and complete view for its +compass, of our best literature. + +In adapting the selections to Mr. Tuckerman's interesting "Sketch of +American Literature," specimens have generally been taken from several +authors in each of his groups. Some names not found in his "Sketch," +have been introduced, chiefly for the fuller illustration of the +literature of the south and west. In this particular, Coggeshall's +"Poets and Poetry of the West" has afforded great assistance. Among +the more recent aids of the same kind, I must also mention Davidson's +"Living Writers of the South," and Raymond's "Southland Writers." +Especial acknowledgment is due to the "Cyclopedia" of the Messrs. +Duyckinck; Appleton's "Annual Cyclopedia" has furnished many important +dates; and I have occasionally been indebted to the works of Allibone, +Cheever, Griswold, Cleveland, Hart, and Underwood. Not only the local +literature however, but the several professions, and the great religious +denominations, are also represented by prominent writers. + +It seemed unnecessary to treat the female writers as a distinct class; +they are, therefore, arranged under the departments to which they +respectively belong, as Essayists, Novelists, Poets, &c. + +I should be claiming a merit which does not belong to me, should I fail +to say, that, for much of the labor which this treatise has involved, I +am indebted to the co-operation of my brother, Mr. William T. Martin, +whose acquaintance with our literature has not often been surpassed, and +whose valuable aid and counsel have been freely afforded me. + +The hours which have been spent in culling extracts from so many able +and entertaining writers, though laborious, have been to the editor full +of interest, and often of delight. He trusts that these fruits of his +labor will be useful, in imparting, especially to his youthful readers, +not only an acquaintance with the best of our national authors, but a +taste for literature, and a good ideal of literary excellence, than +which few things in intellectual education are more to be esteemed. If +successful in these respects, he will be abundantly satisfied; and in +this hope, he submits his work to the judgment of the public. + + + + +CONTENTS + + + +CHAPTER I. + + +=_1._= RELIGIOUS WRITERS OF THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES. + + Roger Williams, 1598-1683 + 1. True Liberty defined. + + Cotton Mather, 1663-1728 + 2. Preservation of New England Principles. + + Jonathan Edwards, 1703-1758 + 3. Meaning of the Phrase Moral Inability. + + Samuel Davies, 1725-1761 + 4. Life and Immortality revealed through the Gospel. + + Nathaniel Emmons, 1745-1840 + 5. Rule of Private Judgment. + + + =_2._= HISTORICAL WRITERS OF THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH + CENTURIES. + + Cadwallader Colden, 1688-1776 + 6. The Five Nations assert their Superiority. + + William Stith, 1689-1755 + 7. The rule of Powhatan. + 8. Pocahontas in England. + + William Smith, 1728-1793 + 9. Manners of the People of New York. + + + =_3._= MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS OF THE SEVENTEENTH AND + EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES. + + John Winthrop, 1587-1649 + 10. True Liberty defined. + 11. Proposed Treatment of the Indians. + + William Byrd, 1674-1744 + 12. The Ginseng and Snakeroot Plants. + + Benjamin Franklin, 1706-1790 + 13. Good Resolutions.--The Croaker. + 14. Franklin's Electrical Kite. + 15. Motion for Prayers in the Convention. + 16. The Ephemeron. An Emblem. + + + =_4._= LATER RELIGIOUS WRITERS AND DIVINES. + + John Woolman, 1730-1772 + 17. Remarks on Slavery and Labor. + + John M. Mason, 1770-1829 + 18. Grandeur of the Bible Society. + 19. The Right of the State to Educate. + + Timothy Dwight, 1752-1817 + 20. The Wilderness reclaimed. + 21. The Glory of Nature, from God. + + John Henry Hobart, 1775-1830 + 22. The Divine Glory in Redemption. + + Lyman Beecher, 1775-1863 + 23. The Being of a God. + + William Ellery Channing, 1780-1842 + 24. Character of Napoleon. + 25. Grandeur of the prospect of Immortality. + 26. The Duty of the Free States. + + Edward Payson, 1783-1827 + 27. Natural Religion. + + Joseph S. Buckminster, 1784-1812 + 28. Necessity of Regeneration. + + Nathaniel W. Taylor, 1786-1858 + 29. Proof of Immortality from the Moral Nature of Man. + + Edward Hitchcock, 1793-1864 + 30. Geological Proof of Divine Benevolence. + + John P. Durbin, 1800- + 31. First Sight of Mount Sinai. + + Leonard Bacon, 1802- + 32. The Day approaching. + 33. The Benefits of Capital. + + James W. Alexander, 1804-1859 + 34. The Church a Temple. + + Martin J. Spaulding, 1810-1872 + 35. Trials of the Pioneer Catholic Clergy in the West. + + James H. Thornwell, 1811-1862 + 36. Evil tendencies of an act of Sin. + + Charles P. McIlvaine, 1799-1873 + 37. Attestations of the Resurrection. + + George W. Bethune, 1805-1862 + 38. Aspirations towards Heaven. + 39. The Prospects of Art in the United States. + + William R. Williams, 1804- + 40. Lead us not into Temptation. + + George B. Cheever, 1807- + 41. Sin distorts the judgment. + 42. Mont Blanc. + + Horace Bushnell, 1804- + 43. Unconscious Influence. + 44. The True Rest of the Christian. + + Alfred T. Bledsoe, about 1809- + 45. Moral Evil consistent with the Holiness of God. + + Richard Fuller, 1808- + 46. The Desire of all Nations shall come. _Haggai_ ii. 7. + + Henry Ward Beecher, 1813- + 47. A Picture in a College at Oxford. + 48. Frost on the Window. + 49. Nature designed for our enjoyment. + 50. Life in the Country. + 51. The Conception of Angels, Superhuman. + + John McClintock, 1814-1870 + 52. The Christian the only true Lover of Nature. + + Noah Porter, 1811- + 53. Science magnifies God. + + William H. Milburn, 1823- + 54. The Pioneer Preachers of the Mississippi Valley. + + + =_5._= ORATORS, AND LEGAL AND POLITICAL WRITERS, OF THE ERA + OF THE REVOLUTION. + + John Dickinson, 1732-1808 + 55. Aspect of the War in May, 1779. + + John Adams, 1735-1826 + 56. Character of James Otis. + 57. The Requisites of a Good Government. + + Patrick Henry, 1736-1799 + 58. The Necessity of the War. + 59. The Constitution should be amended before Adoption. + + John Rutledge, 1735-1826 + 60. An Independent Judiciary the Safeguard of Liberty. + + Thomas Jefferson, 1743-1826 + 61. Essential Principles of American Government. + 62. Character of Washington. + 63. Geographical Limits of the Elephant and the Mammoth. + 64. The Unhappy Effects of Slavery. + + John Jay, 1745-1829 + 65. An Appeal to Arms. + + + =_6._= ORATORS, AND LEGAL AND POLITICAL WRITERS, OF THE ERA + SUBSEQUENT TO THE REVOLUTION. + + Alexander Hamilton, 1757-1804 + 66. Nature of the Federal Debt. + 67. The French Revolution. + + Fisher Ames, 1758-1808 + 68. Obligation of National Good Faith. + + Gouverneur Morris, 1752-1816 + 69. Qualifications of a Minister of Foreign Affairs. + + William Pinkney, 1764-1820 + 70. Responsibility for Slavery. + 71. American Belligerent Rights. + + James Madison, 1751-1836 + 72. Value of a Record of the Debates on the Federal Constitution. + 73. Inscription for a Statue of Washington. + + John Randolph, 1773-1832 + 74. Change is not Reform. + 75. The Error of Decayed Families. + + James Kent, 1763-1847 + 76. Law of the States. + + Edward Livingston, 1764-1836 + 77. The Proper Office of the Judge. + + John Quincy Adams, 1767-1848 + 78. The Right of Petition Universal. + 79. The Administration of Washington. + + Henry Clay, 1777-1852 + 80. Emancipation of the South American States. + 81. Dangers of Disunion. + + John C. Calhoun, 1782-1850 + 82. Dangers of an Unlimited Power of Removal from Office. + 83. Peculiar merit of our Political System. + 84. Concurrent Majorities supersede Force. + + Daniel Webster, 1782-1852 + 85. Inestimable Value of the Federal Union;--Extract from the Reply + to Hayne. + 86. Object of the Bunker Hill Monument. + 87. Benefits of the U.S. Constitution. + 88. Right of changing Allegiance. + + Joseph Story, 1779-1845 + 89. Chief Justice Marshall. + 90. Progress of Jurisprudence. + + Lewis Cass, 1782-1866 + 91. Policy of Removing the Indians. + + Rufus Choate, 1799-1859 + 92. Conservative Force of the American Bar. + 93. The Age of the Pilgrims the Heroic Period of our History. + + William H. Seward, 1801-1872 + 94. Military Services of Lafayette in America. + + Abraham Lincoln, 1809-1865 + 95. Obligation to the Patriot Dead. + + Charles Sumner, 1811-1873 + 96. Prospective Results of the Kansas and Nebraska Bill. + 97. Heroic Effort cannot Fail. + 98. Our Foreign Relations. + 99. Prophetic Voices about America. + + Alexander H. Stephens, 1812- + 100. Origin of the American Flag. + + + =_7._= BIOGRAPHICAL WRITERS. + + Benjamin Rush, 1745-1813 + 101. Life of Edward Drinker, a Centenarian. + + John Marshall, 1755-1835 + 102. The Conquest of Canada. + + John Armstrong, 1759-1843 + 103. Capture of Stoney Point. + + Charles Caldwell, 1772-1853 + 104. A Lecture of Dr. Rush. + + Thomas H. Benton, 1783-1858 + 105. The Character of Macon. + + Alexander Slidell Mackenzie, 1803-1848 + 106. Recapture of the Frigate Philadelphia, at Tripoli. + + I.F.H. Claiborne. About 1804- + 107. Tecumseh's Speech to the Creek Indians. + + George W. Greene, 1811- + 108. Foreign Officers in the Revolutionary Army. + + James Parton, 1822- + 109. Career and Character of Aaron Burr. + 110. Henry Clay and the Western Bar. + 111. Western Theatres. + + + =_8._= HISTORY, GENERAL AND SPECIAL. + + John Heckewelder, 1743-1823 + 112. Settlements of the Christian Indians. + + Jeremy Belknap, 1744-1798 + 113. The Mast Pine. + + David Ramsay, 1749-1815 + 114. Feeling of South Carolina towards the Mother Country. + + Henry Lee, 1756-1818 + 115. Indian Services of General Rodgers Clarke. + 116. The career of Captain Kirkwood. + + Peter S. Duponceau. 1760-1844 + 117. Character of William Penn. + + Charles J. Ingersoll, 1782-1862 + 118. Calhoun Characterized. + 119. Battle of Chippewa. + + Henry M. Brackenridge, 1786-1871 + 120. Old St. Genevieve, in Missouri. + + Gulian C. Verplanck, 1786-1870 + 121. The Profession of the Schoolmaster. + + John W. Francis, 1789-1861 + 122. Public Changes during a Single Lifetime. + + William Meade, 1789-1862 + 123. Character of the Early Virginia Clergy. + + Jared Sparks, 1794-1866 + 124. The Battle of Bennington. + 125. Services, Death, and Character of Pulaski. + + William H. Prescott, 1796-1859 + 126. Moral Consequences of the Discovery of America. + 127. Picture-writing of the Mexicans. + 128. Ransom and Doom of the Inca. + + George Bancroft, 1800- + 129. Virginia and its Inhabitants, in early times. + 130. Contrast of English and French Colonization in America. + 131. Death of Montcalm. + 132. Character of the Declaration of Independence. + 133. The First Policy of Spain in the American Revolution. + + J.G.M. Ramsey. About 1800- + 134. The Military Services of General Sevier. + + Charles Gayarré, 1805- + 135. General Jackson at New Orleans. + + Brantz Mayer, 1809- + 136. Rekindling the Sacred Fire in Mexico. + + Albert J. Pickett, 1810-1858 + 137. The Indians and the First Settlers in Alabama. + + Charles W. Upham, 1803- + 138. Defeat of the Indian King Philip. + + John L. Motley, 1814- + 139. Character of Alva. + 140. Siege and Abandonment of Ostend. + 141. The Rise of the Dutch Republic. + + Alex'r B. Meek, 1814-1865 + 142. Exiled French Officers in Alabama. + 143. The Youth of the Indian Chief, Weatherford. + + Abel Stevens, 1815- + 144. The Early Methodist Clergy in America. + + Francis Parkman, 1823- + 145. The Old Western Hunters and Trappers. + 146. Marquette Exploring the Upper Mississippi. + + John G. Shea, 1824- + 147. Difficulties of the Catholic Indian Missionaries. + 148. Exploration of the Mississippi. + + John G. Palfrey, 1796- + 149. Happiness of Winthrop's Closing Years. + + + + CHAPTER II. + + + =_1._= ESSAYISTS, MORALISTS, AND REFORMERS. + + Joseph Dennie, 1768-1813 + 150. Reflections on the Seasons. + + William Gaston, 1778-1844 + 151. The Importance of Integrity. + + Jesse Buel, 1778-1839 + 152. Extent and Defects of American Agriculture. + + Robert Walsh, 1784-1859 + 153. False Sympathy with Criminals. + + Thomas S. Grimke, 1786-1834 + 154. Literary Excellence of the English Bible. + + Henry C. Carey, 1793- + 155. Agriculture as a Science. + + Edmund Ruffin, 1793-1863 + 156. Improvement of Acid Soils. + + Francis Wayland, 1796-1865 + 157. Superiority of the Moral Sentiments. + + Horace Mann, 1796-1857 + 158. Thoughts for a Young Man. + + Orestes A. Brownson, 1800- + 159. The Duty of Progress. + 160. Catholic Europe in the Seventeenth Century, despotic. + + Theodore D. Woolsey, 1801- + 161. Importance of the Study of International Law. + + Taylor Lewis, 1802- + 162. Unity of the Mosaic Account of the Creation. + 163. Cruel Intestine Wars caused by National Division. + + Horace Greeley, 1811-1872 + 164. The Problem of Labor. + 165. The Beneficence of Labor-saving Inventions. + 166. Literature as a Vocation;--the Editor. + 167. Tranquility of Rural Life. + + Theodore Parker, 1810-1860 + 168. Winter and Spring. + 169. The true idea of a Christian Church. + 170. Character of Franklin. + 171. Character of Jefferson. + + Wendell Phillips, 1811- + 172. The War for the Union. + 173. Character of Toussaint L'Ouverture. + + Thomas Starr King, 1824-1864 + 174. Great Principles and Small Duties. + + + =_2._= GENERAL AND POLITE LITERATURE. + + William Wirt, 1772-1834 + 175. The Example of Patrick Henry no argument for Indolence. + 176. Jefferson's Seat at Monticello. + + Timothy Flint, 1780-1840 + 177. The Western Boatman. + + Washington Irving, 1783-1859 + 178. Title and Table of Contents of Knickerbocker's History of New + York. + 179. The Army at New Amsterdam. + 180. A Mother's Memory. + 181. Columbus a Prisoner. + 182. Arrival of Columbus at Court. + 183. A Time of Unexampled Prosperity. + 184. Death and Burial of General Braddock. + 185. Baron Steuben in the Revolutionary Army. + + Richard H. Wilde, 1780-1847 + 186. Interest of Tasso's Life. + + George Ticknor, 1791-1871 + 187. The Design of Cervantes in writing Don Quixote. + + James Hall, 1793-1868 + 188. Description of a Prairie. + + H.R. Schoolcraft, 1793-1864 + 189. The Chippewa Indian. + + Edward Everett, 1794-1865 + 190. Astronomy for all Time. + 191. Description of a Sunrise. + 192. The Celtic Immigration. + + Hugh S. Legaré. 1797-1843 + 193. The Study of the Ancient Classics. + 194. Disadvantages of Colonial Life. + + Francis L. Hawks, 1798-1866 + 195. Japan interesting in many Aspects. + + George P. Marsh, 1801- + 196. Method of learning English. + 197. The Evergreens of Southern Europe. + + George H. Calvert, 1803- + 198. Estimate of Coleridge. + + Ralph W. Emerson, 1803- + 199. Influence of Nature. + 200. The power of Childhood. + 201. Advantage of working in harmony with Nature. + 202. Rules for Reading. + + John R. Bartlett, 1805- + 203. Lynch Law at El Paso. + + Nat'l P. Willis, 1807-1867 + 204. The American Abroad. + 205. Character and Writings of James Hillhouse. + + H.W. Longfellow, 1807- + 206. The interrupted Legend. + + Henry Reed, 1808-1854 + 207. Legendary Period of Britain. + + C.M. Kirkland, 1808-1864 + 208. The Felling of a Great Tree. + 209. The Bee Tree. + + Margaret Fuller Ossoli 1810-1850 + 210. Carlyle characterized. + + Oliver W. Holmes, 1809- + 211. Consequences of exposing an old error. + 212. Pleasures of Boating. + 213. The unspoken Declaration. + 214. Mechanics of Vital Action. + + John Wm. Draper, 1810- + 215. Truths in the ancient Philosophies. + 216. Future Influence of America. + + James R. Lowell, 1810- + 217. New England two Centuries ago. + 218. From an Essay on Dryden. + 219. Love of Birds and Squirrels. + 220. Chaucer's love of Nature. + + Edgar A. Poe, 1811-1849 + 221. The Chiming of the Clock. + 222. The Philosophy of Composition. + + H.T. Tuckerman, 1813-1871 + 223. The Heart superior to the Intellect. + + H.N. Hudson, 1814- + 224. Instructive Character of Shakespeare's Works. + + Mary H. Eastman. About 1817- + 225. Lake Itasca, the Source of the Mississippi. + 226. A Plea for the Indians. + + Mary E. Moragne, 1815- + 227. The Huguenot Town. + + Richard H. Dana, Jr., 1815- + 228. A Death at Sea. + + Evert A. Duyckinck, 1816- + 229. Newspapers. + + Horace B. Wallace, 1817-1852 + 230. Art an Emanation of Religious Affection. + + H.D. Thoreau, 1817-1862 + 231. Description of "Poke" or Garget, (Phytolacca Decandra). + 232. Walden Pond. + 233. Wants of the Age. + + Elizabeth F. Ellett, 1818- + 234. Escape of Mary Bledsoe from the Indians. + + James J. Jarves, 1818- + 235. The Art Idea. + + Edwin P. Whipple, 1819- + 236. Poets and Poetry of America. + + J.T.L. Worthington, 1847- + 237. The Sisters. + + Alice Cary, 1820-1871 + 238. Clovernook, the End of the History. + + Donald G. Mitchell, 1822- + 239. A Talk about Porches. + + Richard Grant White, 1822- + 240. The Character of Shakespeare's Style. + + Thos. W. Higginson, 1823- + 241. Elegance of French Style. + + Charles G. Leland, 1824- + 242. Aspect of Nuremberg. + + Geo. Wm. Curtis, 1824- + 243. Under the Palms. + + John L. McConnell, 1826- + 244. The Early Western Politician. + + Sarah J. Lippincott. About 1833 + 245. Death in Town, and in Country. + + Francis Bret Harte, 1837- + 246. Birth of a Child in a Miner's Camp. + + Wm. D. Howells, 1837- + 247. Snow in Venice. + + Mary A. Dodge, 1838- + 248. Scenery of the Upper Mississippi. + + + =_3._= LATER MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS. + + George Washington, 1732-1799 + 249. Natural advantages of Virginia. + + Matthew F. Maury, 1806-1873 + 250. The Mariner's Guide across the Deep. + 251. The Gulf Stream. + + O.M. Mitchell, 1810-1862 + 252. The Great Unfinished Problems of the Universe. + + + =_4._= NATURAL HISTORY, SCENERY, ETC. + + William Bartram, 1739-1813 + 253. Scenes on the Upper Oconee, Georgia. + 254. The Wood Pelican of Florida. + + + Alex'r Wilson, 1766-1813 + 255. Nest of the Red-headed Woodpecker. + 256. The White-headed, or Bald Eagle. + + Stephen Elliott, 1771-1830 + 257. Completeness and variety of Nature. + + John J. Audubon, 1776-1851 + 258. The Passenger Pigeon. + 259. Emigrants Removing Westward. + 260. Interest of Exploration in the Remote West. + + Daniel Drake, 1785-1852 + 261. Objects of the Western Mound Builders. + + John Bachman, 1790-1874 + 262. The Opossum. + + J.A. Lapham, 1811- + 263. The Smaller Lakes of Wisconsin. + 264. Ancient Earthworks. + + Chas. W. Webber, 1819-1856 + 265. The Mocking Bird. + + Chas. Lanman, 1819- + 266. Maple Sugar-Making among the Indians. + + Ephraim G. Squier, 1821- + 267. Indian Pottery. + + + =_5._= WRITERS OF TRAVEL AND ADVENTURE. + + Benj'n Silliman, 1779-1864 + 268. The Falls of Montmorenci. + + John L. Stephens, 1805-1852 + 269. Discovery of a Ruined City in the Woods. + + John C. Fremont, 1813- + 270. Ascent of a Peak of the Rocky Mountains. + 271. The Columbia River, Oregon. + + Elisha K. Kane, 1822-1857 + 272. Discovery of an Open Arctic Sea. + + Bayard Taylor, 1825- + 273. Monterey, California. + 274. Approach to San Francisco. + 275. Swiss Scenery;--a Battlefield;--Picturesque Dwellings. + + + =_6._= NOVELISTS AND WRITERS OF FICTION. + + Chas. Brockden Brown, 1771-1810 + 276. The Yellow Fever in Philadelphia. + + Washington Allston, 1779-1843 + 277. Impersonation of the Power of Evil. + 278. On a Picture by Caracci. + 279. Originality of Mind. + + James K. Paulding, 1779-1860 + 280. Characteristics of the Dutch and German Settlers. + 281. Abortive Towns. + + Jas. Fenimore Cooper, 1789-1851 + 282. The Shooting Match. + 283. Long Tom Coffin. + 284. Death of the Old Trapper in the Pawnee Village. + 285. Escape from the Wreck. + 286. Naval Results of the War of 1812. + + Catharine M. Sedgwick, 1789-1867 + 287. The Minister Condemning Vain Apparel. + 288. Kosciusko's Garden at West Point. + + John Neal, 1793- + 289. The Nature of True Poetry. + + John P. Kennedy, 1795-1870 + 290. The Mansion at Swallow Barn. + 291. A Disappointed Politician. + 292. Wirt's Style of Oratory. + + William Ware, 1797-1852 + 293. The Christian Martyr. + + Lydia M. Child, 1802- + 294. Ill temper contagious. + + Robert M. Bird, 1803-1854 + 295. The Quaker Huntsman. + + Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1805-1864 + 296. Portrait of Edward Randolph. + 297. Description of an Old Sailor. + 298. A Picture of Girlhood. + 299. Sculpture: Art and Artists. + 300. Ruins of Furness Abbey. + 301. Scenery of the Merrimac. + 302. A Dungeon of Ancient Rome. + + Wm. Gilmore Simms, 1806-1870 + 303. The Battle of Eutaw. + 304. Character and Services of Gen. Marion. + + Harriet B. Stowe, 1812- + 305. Memorials of a Dead Child. + 306. The Old Meeting House. + + Maria J. McIntosh, 1815- + 307. Debate between Webster and Hayne. + + Catharine A. Warfield, 1817- + 308. View of the Sky by Night. + + Herman Melville, 1819- + 309. Sperm-Whale Fishing. + + Josiah G. Holland, 1819- + 310. The Wedding-Present. + + John Esten Cooke, 1830- + 311. The Portrait. + 312. Aspects of Summer. + + Sarah A. Dorsey. About 1835- + 313. Scenery at Natchez, Mississippi. + + Anne M. Crane, + 314. Impression of a Sea-Scene. + + Mary C. Ames. About 1837- + 315. A Railway Station in the Country. + + + + CHAPTER III. + + + POETS. + + Francis Hopkinson, 1737-1791 + 316. From "The Battle of the Kegs." + + John Trumbull, 1750-1831 + 317. From "McFingall." + + Philip Freneau, 1752-1832 + 318. From "An Indian Burying-ground." + + David Humphreys, 1753-1818 + 319. From "The Happiness of America." + + Sam'l J. Smith, 1771-1835 + 320. "Peace, Be Still." + + William Clifton, 1772-1799 + 321. From "Lines to Fancy." + + Robert Treat Paine, 1773-1811 + 322. The Miser. + + John Blair Linn, 1777-1804 + 323. From "The Powers of Genius." + + Francis S. Key, 1779-1843 + 324. "The Star-Spangled Banner." + + Washington Allston, 1779-1843 + 325. From "The Sylphs of the Seasons." + + John Pierpont, 1785-1866 + 326. A Temperance Song. + 327. The. Pilgrim Fathers. + + Jas. G. Percival, 1786-1856 + 328. The Coral Grove. + + Richard H. Dana, 1787- + 329. From "The Buccaneer." + + Richard H. Wilde, 1789-1847 + 330. My Life is like the Summer Rose. + + Jas. A. Hillhouse, 1789-1841 + 331. From "Hadad." + 332. From "The Judgment." + + John M. Harney, 1789-1825 + 333. From "Cristalina; a fairy tale." + + Charles Sprague, 1791- + 334. From "Curiosity." + + L.H. Sigourney, 1791-1865 + 335. The Widow at her Daughter's Bridal. + + Wm. O. Butler, 1793- + 336. From "The Boatman's Horn." + 337. The Battle-field of Raisin. + + Wm. C. Bryant, 1794- + 338. Lines to a Water Fowl. + 339. Freedom Irrepressible. + 340. Communion with Nature, Soothing. + 341. The Living Lost. + 342. The Song of the Sower. + 343. The Planting of the Apple-Tree. + + Maria Brooks, 1795-1845 + 344. "Marriage." + + Joseph R. Drake, 1705-1820 + 345. The Fay's Departure. + + Fitz-Greene Halleck, 1795-1869 + 346. Marco Bozzaris. + 347. The Broken Merchant. + + J.G.C. Brainard, 1796-1828 + 348. From "Lines to the Connecticut River." + + Robert C. Sands, 1799-1832 + 349. From "Weehawken." + + George W. Doane, 1799-1859 + 350. From "Evening." + + Geo. P. Morris, 1801-1864 + 351. Highlands of the Hudson. + + Geo. D. Prentice, 1802-1869 + 352. From "The Mammoth Cave." + + Chas. C. Pise, 1802-1866 + 353. The Rainbow. + 354. View at Gibraltar. + + E.P. Lovejoy, 1802-1836 + 355. From "Lines to my Mother." + + Edward C. Pinkney, 1802-1828 + 356. A Health. + + R.W. Emerson, 1803- + 357. Hymn sung at the Completion of the Concord Monument. + 358. Disappearance of Winter. + 359. Inspiration of Duty. + + Thos. C. Upham, 1799-1873 + 360. On a Son Lost at Sea. + + Jacob L. Martin, 1805-1848 + 361. The Church of Santa Croce, Florence. + + Geo. W. Bethune, 1805-1862 + 362. Mythology gives place to Christianity. + + Chas. F. Hoffman, 1806- + 363. The Red Man's Heaven. + + Wm. Gilmore Simms, 1806-1870 + 364. Nature inspires sentiment. + + Nath'l P. Willis, 1807-1867 + 365. From "Hagar in the Wilderness." + 366. Unseen Spirits. + + H.W. Longfellow, 1807- + 367. Lines to Resignation. + 368. From The Wedding; The Launch: The Ship. + 369. Song of the Mocking-bird, at Sunset. + 370. Hiawatha's Departure. + + Wm. D. Gallagher, 1808- + 371. The Laborer. + + John G. Whittier, 1808- + 372. What the Voice said. + 373. The Atlantic Telegraph. + 374. Description of a Snow Storm. + 375. The Quaker's Creed. + + Albert Pike, 1809- + 376. The Everlasting Hills. + + Anne C. Lynch Botta. About 1809 + 377. The Dumb Creation. + + Oliver W. Holmes, 1809- + 378. From "The Last Leaf." + 379. A Mother's Secret. + + Willis G. Clark, 1810-1841 + 380. "An Invitation to Early Piety." + + James R. Lowell, 1810- + 381 A Song, "The Violet." + 382. Importance of a Noble Deed. + 383. The Spaniards' Graves at the Isles of Shoals. + + Edgar A. Poe, 1811-1849 + 384. The Raven. + + Alfred B. Street, 1811- + 385. An Autumn Landscape. + 386. The Falls of the Mongaup. + + Laura M. H. Thurston, 1812-1842 + 387. Lines on Crossing the Alleghanies. + + Frances S. Osgood, 1812-1850 + 388. From "The Parting." + + Harriet B. Stowe, 1812- + 389. The Peace of Faith. + 390. Only a Year. + + H.T. Tuckerman, 1813-1871 + 391. The Statue of Washington. + + John G. Saxe, 1816- + 392. The Blessings of Sleep. + 393. "Ye Tailyor man; a contemplative ballad." + 394. Ancient and Modern Ghosts contrasted. + 395. Boys. + 396. Sonnet to a Clam. + + Lucy Hooper, 1816-1841 + 397. The "Death-Summons." + + Catharine A. Warfield, 1817- + 398. From "The Return to Ashland." + + Arthur C. Coxe, 1818- + 399. The Heart's Song. + + Wm. Ross Wallace, 1819- + 400. The North Edda. + + Walter Whitman, 1819- + 401. The Brooklyn Ferry at Twilight. + + Amelia B. Welby, 1819-1852 + 402. The Bereaved. + + R.S. Nichols. About 1820- + 403. From "Musings." + + Alice Cary, 1820-1871 + 404. Attractions of our early Home. + + Sidney Dyer. About 1820- + 405. The Power of Song. + + Austin T. Earle, 1822- + 406. From "Warm Hearts had We." + + Thos. Buchanan Read, 1822- + 407. The Mournful Mowers. + 408. From "The Closing Scene." + + Margaret M. Davidson, 1823-1837 + 409. From Lines in Memory of her Sister Lucretia. + + John R. Thompson, 1823-1873 + 410. Music in Camp. + + Geo. H. Boker, 1824- + 411. From the "Ode to a Mountain Oak" + 412. Dirge for a Sailor. + + Wm. Allen Butler, 1825- + 413. From "Nothing to Wear." + + Bayard Taylor, 1825- + 414. "The Burden of the Day." + + John T. Trowbridge, 1827- + 415. "Dorothy in the Garret." + + Henry Timrod, 1829-1867 + 416. The Unknown Dead. + + Susan A. Talley Von Weiss. About 1830- + 417. The Sea-Shell. + + Albert Sutliffe, 1830- + 418. "May Noon." + + Elijah E. Edwards, 1831- + 419. "Let me Rest." + + Paul H. Hayne, 1831- + 420. October. + + Rosa V. Johnson Jeffrey. About 1832- + 421. From "Angel Watchers." + + Sarah J. Lippincott, 1833- + 422. "Absolution." + + E.C. Stedman, 1833- + 423. The Mountain. + + John J. Piatt, 1835- + 424. Long Ago. + + Celia Thaxter, 1835- + 425. "Regret." + + Theophilus H. Hill, 1836- + 426. From "The Song of the Butterfly." + + Thos. B. Aldrich, 1836- + 427. The Crescent and the Cross. + + Francis Bret Harte, 1837- + 428. Dickens in Camp. + 429. The Two Ships. + + Charles Dimitry, 1838- + 430. From "The Sergeant's Story." + + John Hay, 1841- + 431. The Prairie. + + Joaquin Miller, + 432. The Future of California. + + Joel C. Harris, 1846- + 433. Agnes. + + +ALPHABETICAL INDEX OF AUTHORS. + + * * * * * + +(The Figures refer to the Number of the Selection.) + + * * * * * + + ADAMS, JOHN 56, 57 + ADAMS, JOHN QUINCY 78, 79 + ALEXANDER, JAMES W. 34 + ALDRICH, THOMAS B. 427 + ALLSTON, WASHINGTON 277, 278, 279, 325 + AMES, FISHER 68 + AMES, MARY C. 315 + ARMSTRONG, JOHN 103 + AUDUBON, JOHN J. 258, 259, 260 + + BACHMAN, JOHN 262 + BACON, LEONARD 32, 33 + BANCROFT, GEORGE 129, 130, 131, 132, 133 + BARTLETT, JOHN R. 203 + BARTRAM, WILLIAM 253, 254 + BEECHER, HENRY WARD 47, 48, 49, 50, 51 + BEECHER, LYMAN 23 + BELKNAP, JEREMY 113 + BENTON, THOMAS H. 105 + BETHUNE, GEORGE W. 38, 39, 362 + BIRD, ROBERT M. 295 + BLEDSOE, ALBERT T. 45 + BOKER, GEORGE HENRY 411, 412 + BOTTA, ANNE C. LYNCH 377 + BRACKENRIDGE, HENRY M. 120 + BRAINARD, JOHN G.C. 348 + BROOKS, MARIA 344 + BROWN, C. BROCKDEN 276 + BROWNSON, ORESTES A. 159, 160 + BRYANT, WILLIAM C. 338, 339, 340, 341, 342, 343 + BUCKMINSTER, JOSEPH S. 28 + BUEL, JESSE 152 + BUSHNELL, HORACE 43, 44 + BUTLER, WILLIAM ALLEN 413 + BUTLER, WILLIAM O. 336, 337 + BYRD, WILLIAM 12 + + CALDWELL, CHARLES 104 + CALHOUN, JOHN C. 82, 83, 84 + CALVERT, GEORGE H. 198 + CAREY, HENRY C. 155 + CARY, ALICE 238, 404 + CASS, LEWIS 91 + CHANNING, WM. ELLERY 24, 25, 26 + CHEEVER, GEORGE B. 41, 42 + CHILD, LYDIA MARIA 294 + CHOATE, RUFUS 92, 93 + CLAIBORNE, I.F.H. 107 + CLARK, WILLIS G. 380 + CLAY, HENRY 80, 81 + CLIFTON, WILLIAM 321 + COLDEN, CADWALLADER 6 + COOKE, JOHN ESTEN 311, 312 + COOPER, J. FENIMORE 282, 283, 284, 285, 286 + COXE, ARTHUR C. 399 + CRANE, ANNE M. 314 + CURTIS, GEORGE WM. 243 + + DANA, RICHARD H. 329 + DANA, RICHARD H., JR. 228 + DAVIDSON, MARGARET M. 409 + DAVIES, SAMUEL 4 + DENNIE, JOSEPH 150 + DICKINSON, JOHN 55 + DIMITRY, CHARLES 430 + DOANE, GEORGE W. 350 + DODGE, MARY A. 248 + DORSEY, SARAH A. 313 + DRAKE, DANIEL 261 + DRAKE, JOSEPH R. 345 + DRAPER, JOHN WM. 215, 216 + DUPONCEAU, PETER S. 117 + DWIGHT, TIMOTHY 20, 21 + DURBIN, JOHN P. 31 + DUYCKINCK, EVERT A. 229 + DYER, SIDNEY 405 + + EARLE, AUSTIN T. 406 + EASTMAN, MARY H. 225, 226 + EDWARDS, ELIJAH E. 419 + EDWARDS, JONATHAN 3 + ELLETT, ELIZABETH F. 234 + ELLIOTT, STEPHEN 257 + EMERSON, RALPH WALDO 199, 200, 201, 202, 357, 358, 359 + EMMONS, NATHANIEL 5 + EVERETT, EDWARD 190, 191, 192 + + FLINT, TIMOTHY 177 + FRANCIS, JOHN W. 122 + FRANKLIN, BENJAMIN 13, 14, 15, 16 + FREMONT, JOHN C. 270, 271 + FRENEAU, PHILIP 318 + FULLER, RICHARD 46 + + GALLAGHER, WILLIAM D. 371 + GASTON, WILLIAM 151 + GAYARRÉ, CHARLES 135 + GREELEY, HORACE 164, 165, 166, 167 + GREENE, GEORGE W. 108 + GRIMKE, THOMAS S. 154 + + HALL, JAMES 188 + HALLECK, FITZ-GREENE 346, 347 + HAMILTON, ALEXANDER 66, 67 + HARNEY, JOHN M. 333 + HARRIS, JOEL C. 433 + HARTE, FRANCIS BRET 246, 428, 429 + HAWKS, FRANCIS L. 195 + HAWTHORNE, NATHANIEL 296, 297, 298, 299, 300, 301, 302 + HAY, JOHN 431 + HAYNE, PAUL H. 420 + HECKEWELDER, JOHN 112 + HENRY, PATRICK 58, 59 + HIGGINSON, THOMAS 241 + HILL, THEOPHILUS H. 426 + HILLHOUSE, JAMES A. 331, 332 + HITCHCOCK, EDWARD 30 + HOBART, JOHN H. 22 + HOFFMAN, CHARLES F. 363 + HOLLAND, JOSIAH G. 310 + HOLMES, OLIVER W. 211, 212, 213, 214, 378, 379 + HOOPER, LUCY 397 + HOPKINSON, FRANCIS 316 + HUDSON, HENRY N. 224 + HOWELLS, WILLIAM D. 247 + HUMPHREYS, DAVID 319 + + INGERSOLL, CHARLES J. 118, 119 + IRVING, WASHINGTON 178, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183, 184, 185 + + JARVES, JAMES J. 235 + JAY, JOHN 65 + JEFFERSON, THOMAS 61, 62, 63, 64 + JEFFREY, ROSA V. JOHNSON 421 + + KANE, ELISHA K. 272 + KENNEDY, JOHN P. 290, 291, 292 + KENT, JAMES 76 + KEY, FRANCIS S. 324 + KING, THOS. STARR 174 + KIRKLAND, CAROLINE M. 208, 209 + + LANMAN, CHARLES 266 + LAPHAM, J.A. 263, 264 + LEE, HENRY 115, 116 + LEGARÉ, HUGH S. 193, 194 + LELAND, CHARLES G. 242 + LEWIS, TAYLOR 162, 163 + LINCOLN, ABRAHAM 95 + LINN, JOHN B. 323 + LIPPINCOTT, SARAH J. 245, 422 + LIVINGSTON, EDWARD 77 + LONGFELLOW, HENRY W. 206, 367, 368, 369, 370 + LOVEJOY, ELIJAH P. 355 + LOWELL, JAS. RUSSELL 217, 218, 219, 220, 381, 382, 383 + + MACKENZIE, A. SLIDELL 106 + McCLINTOCK, JOHN 52 + McCONNELL, JOHN L. 244 + McILVAINE, CHARLES P. 37 + McINTOSH, MARIA J. 307 + MADISON, JAMES 73, 73 + MANN, HORACE 158 + MARSH, GEORGE P. 196, 197 + MARSHALL, JOHN 102 + MARTIN, JACOB L. 361 + MASON, JOHN M. 18, 19 + MATHER, COTTON 2 + MAURY, MATTHEW F. 250, 251 + MAYER, BRANTZ 136 + MEADE, WILLIAM 123 + MEEK, ALEXANDER B. 142, 143 + MELVILLE, HERMAN 309 + MILBURN, WILLIAM H. 54 + MILLER, JOAQUIN 432 + MITCHELL, DONALD G. 239 + MITCHELL, ORMSBY M. 252 + MORAGNE, MARY E. 227 + MORRIS, GEORGE P. 351 + MORRIS, GOUVERNEUR 69 + MOTLEY, JOHN L. 139, 140, 141 + + NEAL, JOHN 289 + NICHOLS, REBECCA S. 403 + + OSGOOD, FRANCIS S. 388 + OSSOLI, MARGARET FULLER 210 + + PAINE, ROBERT T. 322 + PALFREY, JOHN G. 149 + PARKER, THEODORE 168, 169, 170, 171 + PARKMAN, FRANCIS 145, 146 + PARTON, JAMES 109, 110, 111 + PAULDING, JAMES K. 280, 281 + PAYSON, EDWARD 27 + PERCIVAL, JAMES G. 328 + PHILLIPS, WENDELL 172, 173 + PIATT, JOHN J. 424 + PICKETT, ALBERT J. 137 + PIERPONT, JOHN 326, 327 + PIKE, ALBERT 376 + PINKNEY, EDWARD C. 356 + PINKNEY, WILLIAM 70, 71 + PISE, CHARLES C. 353, 354 + POE, EDGAR A. 221, 222, 384 + PORTER, NOAH 53 + PRENTICE, GEORGE 352 + PRESCOTT, WILLIAM H. 126, 127, 128 + + RAMSAY, DAVID 114 + RAMSEY, J.G.M. 134 + RANDOLPH, JOHN 74, 75 + READ, THOS. BUCHANAN 407, 408 + REED, HENRY 207 + RUFFIN, EDMUND 156 + RUSH, BENJAMIN 101 + RUTLEDGE, JOHN 60 + + SANDS, ROBERT C. 349 + SAXE, JOHN G. 392, 393, 394, 395, 396 + SCHOOLCRAFT, HENRY R. 189 + SEDGWICK, CATHARINE M. 287, 288 + SEWARD, WILLIAM 94 + SHEA, JOHN G. 147, 148 + SIGOURNEY, LYDIA H. 335 + SILLIMAN, BENJAMIN 268 + SIMMS, WM. GILMORE 303, 304, 364 + SMITH, SAMUEL J. 320 + SMITH, WILLIAM 9 + SPARKS, JARED 124, 125 + SPAULDING, MARTIN J. 35 + SPRAGUE, CHARLES 334 + SQUIER, EPHRAIM G. 267 + STEDMAN, E.C. 423 + STEPHENS, ALEXANDER H. 100 + STEPHENS, JOHN L. 269 + STEVENS, ABEL 144 + STITH, WILLIAM 7, 8 + STORY, JOSEPH 89, 90 + STOWE, HARRIET BEECHER 305, 306, 389, 390 + STREET, ALFRED B. 385, 386 + SUMNER, CHARLES 96, 87, 98, 99 + SUTLIFFE, ALBERT 418 + + TAYLOR, BAYARD 273, 274, 275, 414 + TAYLOR, NATHANIEL W. 29 + THAXTER, CELIA 425 + THOMPSON, JOHN R. 410 + THORNWELL, JAMES H. 36 + THOREAU, HENRY D. 231, 232, 233 + THURSTON, LAURA M.H. 387 + TICKNOR, GEORGE 187 + TIMROD, HENRY 416 + TROWBRIDGE, JOHN T. 415 + TRUMBULL, JOHN 317 + TUCKERMAN, HENRY T. 223, 391 + + UPHAM, CHARLES W. 138 + UPHAM, THOMAS C. 360 + + VERPLANCK, GULIAN C. 121 + VON WEISS, SUSAN A. TALLEY 417 + + WALLACE, HORACE B. 230 + WALLACE, WILLIAM R. 400 + WALSH, ROBERT 153 + WARE, WILLIAM 293 + WARFIELD, CATHERINE A. 308, 398 + WASHINGTON, GEORGE 249 + WAYLAND, FRANCIS 157 + WEBBER, CHARLES W. 265 + WEBSTER, DANIEL 85, 86, 87, 88 + WELBY, AMELIA B. 402 + WHIPPLE, EDWIN P. 236 + WHITE, RICHARD GRANT 240 + WHITMAN, WALTER 401 + WHITTIER, JOHN G. 372, 373, 374, 375 + WILDE, RICHARD H. 186, 330 + WILLIAMS, ROGER 1 + WILLIAMS, WILLIAM R. 40 + WILLIS, NATHANIEL P. 204, 205, 365, 366 + WILSON, ALEXANDER 255, 256 + WINTHROP, JOHN 10, 11 + WIRT, WILLIAM 176 + WOOLMAN, JOHN 17 + WOOLSEY, THEODORE D. 161 + WORTHINGTON, JANE T.L. 237 + + + +CHOICE SPECIMENS + +OF + +AMERICAN LITERATURE. + + * * * * * + + + +CHAPTER I. + + +RELIGIOUS WRITERS OF THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES. + + +=_Roger Williams, 1598-1683._= (Manual, pp. 480, 512.) + +From his "Memoirs." + +=_1.=_ EXTENT OF RELIGIOUS FREEDOM. + +There goes many a ship to sea, with many hundred souls in one ship, +whose weal and woe is common, and is a true picture of a commonwealth, +or a human combination or society. It hath fallen out, sometimes, that +both Papists and Protestants, Jews and Turks, may be embarked into one +ship. Upon which supposal, I affirm that all the liberty of conscience, +that ever I pleaded for, turns upon these two hinges; that none of the +Papists, Protestants, Jews, or Turks, be forced to come to the ship's +prayers, nor compelled from their own particular prayers or worship, +if they practice any.... If any of the seamen refuse to perform their +service, or passengers to pay their freight; if any refuse to help, in +person or purse, towards the common charges or defence; if any refuse to +obey the common laws or orders of the ship concerning their common +peace or preservation; if any shall mutiny and rise up against their +commanders and officers; if any should preach or write, that there ought +to be no commanders nor officers, because all are equal in Christ, +therefore no masters nor officers, no laws, nor orders, no corrections +nor punishments,--I say I never denied but in such cases, whatever is +pretended, the commander or commanders may judge, resist, compel, and +punish such transgressors, according to their deserts and merits. + + * * * * * + + +=_Cotton Mather, 1663-1728._= (Manual pp. 479, 512.) + +From the "Antiquities," or Book I, of the "Magnalia." + +=2.= PRESERVATION OF NEW ENGLAND PRINCIPLES. + +'Tis now time for me to tell my reader, that in _our age_, there has +been another essay made, not by French, but by English PROTESTANTS, to +fill a certain country in America with _Reformed Churches_; nothing +in _doctrine_, little in _discipline_, different from that of Geneva. +Mankind will pardon _me_, a native of that country, if smitten with a +just fear of encroaching and ill-bodied _degeneracies_, I shall use my +modest endeavors to prevent the _loss_ of a country so signalized for +the _profession_ of the purest _Religion_, and for the _protection_ of +God upon it in that holy profession. I shall count my country _lost_, in +the loss of the primitive _principles_, and the primitive _practices_, +upon which it was at first established: but certainly one good way to +save that _loss_, would be to do something, that the memory of _the +great things done for us by our God_, may not be _lost_, and that the +story of the circumstances attending the _foundation_ and _formation_ +of this country, and of its _preservation_ hitherto, may be impartially +handed unto posterity. THIS is the undertaking whereto I now address +myself; and now, _Grant me thy gracious assistances, O my God! that in +this my undertaking I may be kept from every false way._ + + * * * * * + + +=_Jonathan Edwards, 1703-1758_=. (Manual, p. 479.) + +From the "Inquiry, &c., into the Freedom of the Will." + +=_3._= MEANING OF THE PHRASE "MORAL INABILITY." + +It must be observed concerning Moral Inability, in each kind of it, that +the word _Inability_ is used in a sense very diverse from its original +import.... In the strictest propriety of speech, a man has a thing in +his power, if he has it in his choice, or at his election; and a man +cannot be truly said to be unable to do a thing, when he can do it if he +will. It is improperly said, that a person cannot perform those external +actions which are dependent on the act of the will, and which would be +easily performed, if the act of the will were present. And if it be +improperly said, that he cannot perform those external voluntary actions +which depend on the will, it is in some respect more improperly said, +that he is unable to exert the acts of the will themselves; because it +is more evidently false, with respect to these, that he cannot if he +will; for to say so is a downright contradiction: it is to say he cannot +will if he does will. And in this case, not only is it true, that it is +easy for a man to do the thing if he will, but the very willing is the +doing; when once he has willed, the thing is performed; and nothing +else remains to be done. Therefore, in these things to ascribe a +non-performance to the want of power or ability, is not just; because +the thing wanting is not a being able, but a being willing. There +are faculties of mind, and capacity of nature, and everything else +sufficient, but a disposition; nothing is wanting but a will. + + * * * * * + + +=_Samuel Davies, 1725-1761._= (Manual, p. 480.) + +From his "Sermons." + +=_4._= LIFE AND IMMORTALITY REVEALED THROUGH THE GOSPEL. + +So extensive have been the havoc and devastation which death has made +in the world for near six thousand years, ever since it was first +introduced by the sin of man, that this earth is now become one vast +grave-yard or burying-place for her sons. The many generations that have +followed upon each other, in so quick a succession, from Adam to this +day, are now in the mansions under ground.... Some make a short journey +from the womb to the grave; they rise from nothing at the creative +fiat of the Almighty, and take an immediate flight into the world of +spirits.... Like a bird on the wing, they perch on our globe, rest a +day, a month, or a year, and then fly off for some other regions. It is +evident these were not formed for the purposes of the present state, +where they make so short a stay; and yet we are sure they are not made +in vain by an all-wise Creator; and therefore we conclude they are young +immortals, that immediately ripen in the world of spirits, and there +enter upon scenes for which it was worth their while coming into +existence.... A few creep into their beds of dust under the burden of +old age and the gradual decays of nature. In short, the grave is _the +place appointed for all living_; the general rendezvous of all the sons +of Adam. There the prince and the beggar, the conqueror and the slave, +the giant and the infant, the scheming politician and the simple +peasant, the wise and the fool, Heathens, Jews, Mahometans, and +Christians, all lie equally low, and mingle their dust without +distinction.... There lie our ancestors, our neighbors, our friends, +our relatives, with whom we once conversed, and who were united to our +hearts by strong and endearing ties; and there lies our friend, the +sprightly, vigorous youth, whose death is the occasion of this funeral +solemnity. This earth is overspread with the ruins of the human frame: +it is a huge carnage, a vast charnel-house, undermined and hollowed with +the graves, the last mansions of mortals. + + * * * * * + + +=_Nathaniel Emmons,[1] 1745-1840._= + +From his "Sermons." + +=_5._= THE RIGHT OF PRIVATE JUDGMENT. + +The right of private judgment involves the right of forming our opinions +according to the best light we can obtain. After a man knows what +others have said or written, and after he has thought and searched the +Scriptures, upon any religious subject, he has a right to form his own +judgment exactly according to evidence. He has no right to exercise +prejudice or partiality; but he has a right to exercise impartiality, in +spite of all the world. After all the evidence is collected from every +quarter, then it is the proper business of the understanding or judgment +to compare and balance evidence, and to form a decisive opinion or +belief, according to apparent truth. We have no more right to judge +without evidence than we have to judge contrary to evidence; and we have +no more right to doubt without, or contrary to, evidence, than we have +to believe without, or contrary to, evidence. We have no right to keep +ourselves in a state of doubt or uncertainty, when we have sufficient +evidence to come to a decision. The command is, "Prove all things; hold +fast that which is good." The meaning is, Examine all things; and after +examination, decide what is right. + +[Footnote 1: A Congregational clergyman of Massachusetts, original in +theology, and eminently lucid in style.] + + + * * * * * + + + +HISTORICAL WRITERS OF THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES. + + +=_Cadwallader Colden,[2] 1688-1776._= + +From "The History of the Five Nations." + +=_6._= CONVICTION OF THEIR SUPERIORITY + +The _Five Nations_ think themselves by nature superior to the rest of +mankind.... All the nations round them have, for many years, entirely +submitted to them, and pay a yearly tribute to them in _wampum_; they +dare neither make war nor peace without the consent of the _Mohawks_. +Two old men commonly go, about every year or two, to receive this +tribute; and I have often had opportunity to observe what anxiety the +poor Indians were under while these two old men remained in that part of +the country where I was. An old Mohawk Sachem, in a poor blanket and +a dirty shirt, may be seen issuing his orders with as arbitrary an +authority as a Roman dictator. It is not for the sake of tribute, +however, that they make war, but from the notions of glory which they +have ever most strongly imprinted on their minds; and the farther they +go to seek an enemy, the greater glory they think they gain; there +cannot, I think, be a greater or stronger instance than this, how +much the sentiments impressed on a people's mind conduce to their +grandeur.... The Five Nations, in their love of liberty and of their +country, in their bravery in battle, and their constancy in enduring +torments, equal the fortitude of the most renowned Romans. + +[Footnote 2: A native of Scotland, but for many years a resident of New +York, where he was eminent in politics and science.] + + * * * * * + + +=_William Stith, 1755._= (Manual, p. 490.) + +From "The History of Virginia." + +=_7._= THE RULE OF POWHATAN. + +Although both himself and people were very barbarous, and void of all +letters and civility, yet was there such a government among them, that +the magistrates for good command, and the people for due subjection, +excelled many places that would be counted very civil. He had under him +above thirty inferior Kings or Werowances, who had power of life and +death, but were bound to govern according to the customs of their +country. However, his will was in all cases, their supreme law, and must +be obeyed. They all knew their several lands, habitations, and limits, +to fish, fowl, or hunt in. But they held all of their great Werowance, +_Powhatan_; to whom they paid tribute of skins, beads, copper, pearl, +deer, turkies, wild beasts, and corn. All his subjects reverenced him, +not only as a King, but as half a God; and it was curious to behold, +with what fear and adoration they obeyed him. For at his feet they +presented whatever he commanded; and a frown of his brow would make +their greatest Spirits tremble. And indeed it was no wonder; for he was +very terrible and tyrannous in punishing such as offended him, with +variety of cruelty, and the most exquisite torture. + + * * * * * + +=_8._= POCAHONTAS IN ENGLAND. + +However, Pocahontas was eagerly sought and kindly entertained +everywhere. Many courtiers, and others of his acquaintance, daily +flocked to Captain Smith to be introduced to her. They generally +confessed that the hand of God did visibly appear in her conversion, +and that they had seen many English ladies worse favored, of less exact +proportion, and genteel carriage than she was.... The whole court were +charmed and surprised at the decency and grace of her deportment; and +the king himself, and queen, were pleased honorably to receive and +esteem her. The Lady Delawarr, and those other persons of quality, +also waited on her to the masks, balls, plays, and other public +entertainments, with which she was wonderfully pleased and delighted. +And she would, doubtless, have well deserved, and fully returned, all +this respect and kindness, had she lived to arrive in Virginia. + + * * * * * + + +=_William Smith, 1793._= (Manual, p. 490.) + +From "The History of the Province of New York." + +=_9._=. MANNERS OF THE INHABITANTS. + +New York is one of the most social places on the continent. The men +collect themselves into weekly evening clubs. The ladies, in winter, are +frequently entertained either at concerts of music or assemblies, and +make a very good appearance. They are comely, and dress well, and scarce +any of them have distorted shapes. Tinctured with a Dutch education, +they manage their families with becoming parsimony, good providence, and +singular neatness. The practice of extravagant gaming, common to the +fashionable part of the fair sex in some places, is a vice with which +my countrywomen cannot justly be charged. There is nothing they +so generally neglect as reading, and indeed all the arts for the +improvement of the mind; in which, I confess, we have set them the +example. They are modest, temperate, and charitable; naturally +sprightly, sensible, and good-humored; and, by the helps of a more +elevated education, would possess all the accomplishments desirable +in the sex. Our schools are in the lowest order: the instructors want +instruction; and, through a long, shameful neglect of all the arts and +sciences, our common speech is extremely corrupt, and the evidences of +a bad taste, both as to thought and language, are visible in all our +proceedings, public and private. + +The history of our diseases belongs to a profession with which I am +very little acquainted. Few physicians amongst us are eminent for +their skill. Quacks abound like locusts in Egypt, and too many have +recommended themselves to a full practice and profitable subsistence. +Loud as the call is, to our shame be it remembered, we have no law +to protect the lives of the king's subjects from the malpractice of +pretenders. Any man, at his pleasure, sets up for physician, apothecary, +and chirurgeon. The natural history of this province would of itself +furnish a small volume; and, therefore, I leave this also to such as +have capacity and leisure to make useful observations in that curious +and entertaining branch of natural philosophy. + +The clergy of this province are, in general, but indifferently +supported, it is true they live easily, but few of them leave any thing +to their children.... As to the number of our clergymen, it is large +enough at present, there being but few settlements unsupplied with a +ministry and some superabound. In matters of religion we are not so +intelligent in general as the inhabitants of the New England colonies, +but both in this respect and good morals we certainly have the advantage +of the Southern provinces. One of the king's instructions to our +governors recommends the investigation of means for the conversion of +negroes and Indians. An attention to both, especially the latter, has +been too little regarded. If the missionaries of the English Society for +propagating the Gospel instead of being seated in opulent christianized +towns had been sent out to preach among the savages, unspeakable +political advantages would have flowed from such a salutary measure. + + * * * * * + + + +MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS OF THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES. + + +=_John Winthrop, 1587-1649._= (Manual, p. 490.) + +From his "Life and Letters." + +=_10._= TRUE LIBERTY DEFINED. + +For the other point concerning liberty, I observe a great mistake in the +country about that. There is a twofold liberty,--natural (I mean as our +nature is now corrupt) and civil, or federal. The first is common to man +with beasts and other creatures. By this, man, as he stands in relation +to man simply, hath liberty to do what he lists: it is a liberty to evil +as well as to good. This liberty is incompatible and inconsistent with +authority, and cannot endure the least restraint of the most just +authority. The exercise and maintaining of this liberty makes men grow +more evil, and, in time, to be worse than brute beasts. This is +that great enemy of truth and peace, that wild beast, which all the +ordinances of God are bent against, to restrain and subdue it. The other +kind of liberty I call civil, or federal; it may also be termed moral, +in reference to the covenant between God and man in the moral law, and +the politic covenants and constitutions amongst men themselves. This +liberty is the proper end and object of authority, and cannot subsist +without it; and it is a liberty to that only which is good, just, and +honest. This liberty you are to stand for, with the hazard not only of +your goods, but of your lives, if need be. + + * * * * * + +From "The History of New England." + +=_11._= PROPOSED TREATMENT OF THE INDIANS. + +We received a letter at the General Court from the magistrates of +Connecticut, and New Haven, and of Aquiday,[3] wherein they declared +their dislike of such as would have the Indians rooted out, as being of +the cursed race of Ham, and their desire of our mutual accord in seeking +to gain them by justice and kindness, and withal to watch over them to +prevent any danger by them, &c. We returned answer of our consent with +them in all things propounded, only we refused to include those of +Aquiday in our answer, or to have any treaty with them. + +[Footnote 3: The original name of Rhode Island.] + + * * * * * + + +=_William Byrd,[4] 1674-1744._= + +From "History of the Dividing Line between Virginia and North Carolina." + +=_12._= THE GINSENG AND SNAKEROOT PLANTS. + +Though practice will soon make a man of tolerable vigor an able footman, +yet, as a help to bear fatigue, I used to chew a root of ginseng as I +walked along. This kept up my spirits, and made me trip away as nimbly +in my half jack-boots as younger men could in their shoes.... The +Emperor of China sends ten thousand men every year on purpose to gather +it.... Providence has planted it very thin in every country. Nor, +indeed, is mankind worthy of so great a blessing, since health and +long life are commonly abused to ill purposes. This noble plant grows +likewise at the Cape of Good Hope. It grows also on the northern +continent of America, near the mountains, but as sparingly as truth and +public spirit. + +Its virtues are, that it gives an uncommon warmth and vigor to the +blood, and frisks the spirits beyond any other cordial. It cheers the +heart even of a man that has a bad wife, and makes him look down with +great composure on the crosses of the world. It promotes insensible +perspiration, dissolves all phlegmatic and viscous humors that are apt +to obstruct the narrow channels of the nerves. It helps the memory, and +would quicken even Helvetian dullness. 'Tis friendly to the lungs, much +more than scolding itself. It comforts the stomach and strengthens the +bowels, preventing all colics and fluxes. In one word, it will make a +man live a great while, and very well while he does live; and, what +is more, it will even make old age amiable, by rendering it lively, +cheerful, and good-humored.... + +I found near our camp some plants of that kind of Rattlesnake +root, called star-grass. The leaves shoot out circularly, and grow +horizontally and near the ground. The root is in shape not unlike the +rattle of that serpent, and is a strong antidote against the bite of it. +It is very bitter, and where it meets with any poison, works by violent +sweats, but where it meets with none, has no sensible operation but +that of putting the spirits into a great hurry, and so of promoting +perspiration. + +The rattlesnake has an utter antipathy to this plant, insomuch that if +you smear your hands with the juice of it, you may handle the viper +safely. Thus much I can say on my own experience, that once in July, +when these snakes are in their greatest vigor, I besmeared a dog's nose +with the powder of this root, and made him trample on a large snake +several times, which, however, was so far from biting him, that it +perfectly sickened at the dog's approach, and turned his head from him +with the utmost aversion. + +In our march one of the men killed a small rattlesnake, which had no +more than two rattles. Those vipers remain in vigor generally till +towards the end of September, or sometimes later, if the weather +continues a little warm. On this consideration we had provided three +several sorts of rattlesnake root, made up into proper doses, and ready +for immediate use, in case any one of the men or their horses had been +bitten.... + +In the low grounds the Carolina gentlemen shewed us another plant, which +they said was used in their country to cure the bite of the rattlesnake. +It put forth several leaves, in figure like a heart, and was clouded so +like the common Assarabacca, that I conceived it to be of that family. +[Footnote 4: A native of Virginia:--was sent to England for his +education, where he became intimate with the wits of Queen Anne's time. +On his return to Virginia, he became a prominent official. He has left +very pleasing accounts of his explorations.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Benjamin Franklin, 1706-1790._= (Manual, pp. 478, 486.) + +Extract from his Autobiography. + +=_13._= GOOD RESOLUTIONS.--THE CROAKER. + +I grew convinced, that _truth, sincerity_, and _integrity_, in dealings +between man and man, were of the utmost importance to the felicity of +life, and I formed written resolutions, which still remain in my journal +book, to practice them ever while I lived. Revelation had indeed no +weight with me, as such; but I entertained an opinion, that, though +certain actions might not be bad, _because_ they were forbidden by it, +or good _because_ it commended them; yet probably those actions might be +forbidden _because_ they were bad for us, or commanded because they were +beneficial to us, in their own natures, all the circumstances of things +considered. And this persuasion, with the kind hand of Providence, +or some guardian angel, or accidental favorable circumstances or +situations, or all together, preserved me, through this dangerous +time of youth, and the hazardous situations I was sometimes in among +strangers, remote from the eye and advice of my father, free from any +_wilful_ gross immorality or injustice, that might have been expected +from my want of religion. I say wilful because the instances I have +mentioned had something of _necessity_ in them, from my youth, +inexperience, and the knavery of others. I had therefore a tolerable +character to begin the world with; I valued it properly, and determined +to preserve it. + +We had not been long returned to Philadelphia, before the new types +arrived from London. We settled with Keimer and left him by his consent +before he heard of it. We found a house to let near the market, and took +it. To lessen the rent, which was then but twenty-four pounds a year, +though I have since known it to let for seventy, we took in Thomas +Godfrey, a glazier, and his family, who were to pay a considerable part +of it to us, and we to board with them. We had scarce opened our letters +and put our press in order, before George House, an acquaintance of +mine, brought a countryman to us, whom he had met in the street, +inquiring for a printer. All our cash was now expended in the variety of +particulars we had been obliged to procure, and this countryman's five +shillings, being our first-fruits, and coming so seasonably, gave me +more pleasure than any crown I have since earned; and the gratitude +I felt towards House has made me often more ready, than perhaps I +otherwise should have been, to assist young beginners. + +There are croakers in every country, always boding its ruin. Such a one +there lived in Philadelphia; a person of note, an elderly man, with +a wise look and a very grave manner of speaking; his name was Samuel +Mickle. This gentleman, a stranger to me, stopped me one day at my +door, and asked me if I was the young man, who had lately opened a new +printing-house? Being answered in the affirmative, he said he was sorry +for me, because it was an expensive undertaking, and the expense would +be lost; for Philadelphia was a sinking place, the people already half +bankrupts, or near being so; all the appearances of the contrary, such +as new buildings and the rise of rents, being to his certain knowledge +fallacious; for they were in fact among the things that would ruin us. +Then he gave me such a detail of misfortunes now existing, or that were +soon to exist, that he left me half melancholy. Had I known him before +I engaged in this business, probably I never should have done it. This +person continued to live in this decaying place, and to declaim in the +same strain, refusing for many years to buy a house there, because all +was going to destruction; and at last I had the pleasure of seeing him +give him five times as much for one, as he might have bought it for when +he first began croaking. + + * * * * * + +From a Letter to Peter Collinson. + +=_14._= FRANKLIN'S ELECTRICAL KITE. + +As frequent mention is made in public papers from Europe of the success +of the Philadelphia experiment for drawing the electric fire from +clouds, by means of pointed rods of iron erected on high, buildings, +&c., it may be agreeable to the curious to be informed that the same +experiment has succeeded in Philadelphia, though made in a different and +more easy manner, which is as follows: + +Make a small cross of two light strips of cedar, the arms so long as +to reach to the four corners of a large thin silk handkerchief, when +extended; tie the corners of the handkerchief to the extremities of +the cross, so you have the body of a kite; which, being properly +accommodated with a tail, loop, and string, will rise in the air, like +those made of paper; but this, being of silk, is fitter to bear the wet +and wind of a thundergust without tearing. To the top of the upright +stick of the cross is to be fixed a very sharp-pointed wire, rising a +foot or more above the wood. To the end of the twine, next the hand, is +to be tied a silk ribbon, and where the silk and twine join, a key may +be fastened. This kite is to be raised when a thundergust appears to be +coming on, and the person who holds the string must stand within a door +or window, or under some cover, so that the silk ribbon may not be wet; +and care must be taken that the twine does not touch the frame of the +door or window. As soon as any of the thunder-clouds come over the kite, +the pointed wire will draw the electric fire from them, and the kite, +with all the twine, will be electrified, and the loose filaments of +the twine will stand out every way, and be attracted by an approaching +finger. And when the rain has wetted the kite and twine, so that it +can conduct the electric fire freely, you will find it stream out +plentifully from the key on the approach of your knuckle. At this key +the phial may be charged; and all the other electric experiments be +performed, which are usually done by the help of a rubbed glass globe +or tube, and thereby the sameness of the electric matter with that of +lightning be completely demonstrated. + + * * * * * + +=_15._= MOTION FOR PRAYERS IN THE CONVENTION. + +Mr. President: + +The small progress we have made, after four or five weeks close +attendance and continual reasonings with each other, our different +sentiments on almost every question, several of the last producing +as many _Noes_ as _Ayes_, is, methinks, a melancholy proof of the +imperfection of the human understanding. We indeed seem to _feel_ our +own want of political wisdom, since we have been running all about +in search of it. We have gone back to ancient history for models of +government, and examined the different forms of those republics, which, +having been originally formed with the seeds of their own dissolution, +now no longer exist; and we have viewed modern States all round Europe, +but find none of their constitutions suitable to our circumstances. + +In this situation of this assembly, groping, as it were, in the dark to +find political truth, and scarce able to distinguish it when presented +to us, how has it happened, Sir, that we have not hitherto once +thought of humbly applying to the Father of Lights to illuminate our +understandings? In the beginning of the contest with Britain, when we +were sensible of danger, we had daily prayers in this room for the +divine protection. Our prayers, Sir, were heard; and they were +graciously answered. All of us, who were engaged in the struggle, must +have observed frequent instances of a superintending Providence in +our favor. To that kind Providence we owe this happy opportunity of +consulting in peace on the means of establishing our future national +felicity. And have we now forgotten that powerful Friend? or do we +imagine we no longer need His assistance? I have lived, Sir, a long +time; and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this +truth, _that God governs in the affairs of men_. And if a sparrow cannot +fall to the ground without his notice, is it probable that an empire can +rise without his aid? We have been assured, Sir, in the Sacred Writings, +that "except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build +it." I firmly believe this; and I also believe, that without his +concurring aid, we shall succeed in this political building no better +than the builders of Babel; we shall be divided by our little, partial, +local interests, our projects will be confounded, and we ourselves shall +become a reproach and a by-word down to future ages. And, what is worse, +mankind may hereafter, from this unfortunate instance, despair of +establishing government by human wisdom, and leave it to chance, war, +and conquest. + +I therefore beg leave to move, + +That henceforth, prayers, imploring the assistance of Heaven and its +blessing on our deliberations, be held in this assembly every morning +before we proceed to business; and that one or more of the clergy of +this city be requested to officiate in that service. + + * * * * * + +From his "Essays." + +=_16._= THE EPHEMERON. AN EMBLEM. + +"It was," said he, "the opinion of learned philosophers of our race, +who lived and flourished long before my time, that this vast world, the +Moulin Joly, could not itself subsist more than eighteen hours; and I +think there was some foundation for that opinion, since, by the apparent +motion of the great luminary that gives life to all nature, and which in +my time has evidently declined considerably towards the ocean at the end +of our earth, it must then finish its course, be extinguished in the +waters that surround us, and leave the world in cold and darkness, +necessarily producing universal death and destruction. I have lived +seven of those hours--a great age, being no less than four hundred and +twenty minutes of time. How very few of us continue so long! I have seen +generations born, flourish, and expire ... And I must soon follow them; +for, by the course of nature, though still in health, I cannot expect to +live above seven or eight minutes longer. What now avail all my toil +and labor in amassing honey-dew on this leaf, which I cannot live to +enjoy!--what the political struggles I have been engaged in for the good +of my compatriot inhabitants of this bush, or my philosophical studies +for the benefit of our race in general! for in politics what can laws +do without morals? Our present race of ephemera will, in a course of +minutes, become corrupt, like those of other and older bushes, and +consequently as wretched. And in philosophy how small our progress! +Alas! art is long, and life is short. My friends would comfort me with +the idea of a name they say I shall leave behind me.... But what will +fame be to an ephemeron who no longer exists? and what will become of +all history, in the eighteenth hour, when the world itself, even the +whole Moulin Joly, shall come to its end, and be buried in universal +ruin?" + + * * * * * + + + +LATER RELIGIOUS WRITERS AND DIVINES. + + +=_John Woolman,[5] 1720-1772._= + +From his "Life and Travels." + +=_17._= REMARKS ON SLAVERY AND LABOR. + +A people used to labor moderately for their living, training up their +children in frugality and business, have a happier life than those who +live on the labor of slaves. Freemen find satisfaction in improving and +providing for their families; but negroes, laboring to support others +who claim them as their property, and expecting nothing but slavery +during life, have not the like inducement to be industrious.... Men +having power, too often misapply it: though we make slaves of the +negroes, and the Turks make slaves of the Christians, liberty is the +natural right of all men equally.... The slaves look to me like a +burdensome stone to such who burden themselves with them. The burden +will grow heavier and heavier, till times change in a way disagreeable +to us.... I was troubled to perceive the darkness of their imaginations, +and, in some pressure of spirits, said the love of ease and gain are the +motives, in general, of keeping slaves; and men are wont to take hold of +weak arguments to support a cause which is unreasonable.... + +I was silent during the meeting for worship, and, when business came on, +my mind was exercised concerning the poor slaves, but did not feel my +way clear to speak. In this condition I was bowed in spirit before the +Lord, and, with tears and inward supplication, besought him so to open +my understanding that I might know his will concerning me; and at length +my mind was settled in silence. + +At times when I have felt true love open my heart towards my +fellow-creatures, and have been engaged in weighty conversation in the +cause of righteousness, the instructions I have received under these +exercises in regard to the true use of the outward gifts of God, have +made deep and lasting impressions on my mind. I have beheld how the +desire to provide wealth and to uphold a delicate life has grievously +entangled many, and has been like a snare to their offspring, and though +some have been affected with a sense of their difficulties, and have +appeared desirous at times to be helped out of them, yet for want of +abiding under the humbling power of truth, they have continued in these +entanglements; expensive living in parents and children hath called for +a large supply, and in answering this call, the faces of the poor have +been ground away, and made thin through hard dealing.... + +... In the uneasiness of body which I have many times felt by too much +labor, not as a forced but a voluntary oppression, I have often been +excited to think on the original cause of that oppression which is +imposed on many in the world. The latter part of the time wherein I +labored on our plantation, my heart, through the fresh visitations of +heavenly love, being often tender, and my leisure time being frequently +spent in reading the life and doctrines of our blessed Redeemer, the +account of the sufferings of martyrs, and the history of the first rise +of our Society, a belief was gradually settled in my mind, that if such +as had great estates, generally lived in that humility and plainness +which belong to a Christian life, and laid much easier rents and +interests on their lands and moneys, and thus led the way to a right use +of things, so great a number of people might be employed in things +useful, that labor both for men and other creatures would need to be no +more than an agreeable employ, and divers branches of business, which +serve chiefly to please the natural inclinations of our minds, and which +at present seem necessary to circulate that wealth which some gather, +might, in this way of pure wisdom, be discontinued. + +[Footnote 5: A Quaker preacher, a native of New Jersey, whose Travels +and Autobiography have been much admired abroad, notably by Charles +Lamb.] + + * * * * * + + +=_John M. Mason,[6] 1770-1829._= + +From the Address in behalf of the Bible Society. + +=_18._= GRANDEUR OF THE ENTERPRISE. + +If there be a single measure which can overrule objection, subdue +opposition, and command exertion, this is the measure. That all our +voices, all our affections, all our hands, should be joined in the grand +design of promoting "peace on earth and good will toward man"--that +they should resist the advance of misery--should carry the light of +instruction into the dominions of ignorance, and the balm of joy to the +soul of anguish; and all this by diffusing the oracles of God--addresses +to the understanding an argument which cannot be encountered; and to the +heart an appeal which its holiest emotions rise up to second.... + +_People of the United States_; Have you ever been invited to an +enterprise of such grandeur and glory? Do you not value the Holy +Scriptures? Value them as containing your sweetest hope; your most +thrilling joy? Can you submit to the thought that _you_ should be torpid +in your endeavors to disperse them, while the rest of Christendom is +awake and alert? Shall _you_ hang back in heartless indifference, when +princes come down from their thrones, to bless the cottage of the poor +with the gospel of peace; and imperial sovereigns are gathering their +fairest honors from spreading abroad the oracles of the Lord your God. +Is it possible that _you_ should not see, in this state of human things, +a mighty motion of Divine providence? The most heavenly charity treads +close upon the march of conflict and blood! The world is at peace! +Scarce has the soldier time to unbind his helmet, and to wipe away the +sweat from his brow, ere the voice of mercy succeeds to the clarion of +battle, and calls the nations from enmity to love! Crowned heads bow to +the head which is to wear "many crowns," and, for the first time since +the promulgation of Christianity, appear to act in unison for the +recognition of its gracious principles, as being fraught alike with +happiness to man, and honor to God. + +What has created so strange, so beneficent an alteration. This is no +doubt the doing of the Lord, and it is marvelous in our eyes. But what +instrument has he thought fit chiefly to use. That which contributes in +all latitudes and climes to make Christians feel their unity, to rebuke +the spirit of strife, and to open upon them the day of brotherly +concord--the Bible!--the Bible!--through Bible Societies! + +[Footnote 6: A Presbyterian clergyman of great distinction, long settled +in New York; rarely surpassed in controversial acuteness, and in +religious eloquence.] + + * * * * * + +=_19._= THE RIGHT OF THE STATE TO EDUCATE. + +No sagacity can foretell what characters shall be developed, or what +parts performed, by these boys and girls who throng our streets, and +sport in our fields. In their tender breasts are concealed the germs, in +their little hands are lodged the weapons, of a nation's overthrow +or glory. Would it not, then, be madness, would it not be a sort of +political suicide, for the commonwealth to be unconcerned what direction +their infant powers shall take, or into what habits their budding +affections shall ripen? or will it be disputed that the civil authority +has a _right_ to take care, by a paternal interference on behalf of +the children, that the next generation shall not prostrate in an hour, +whatever has been consecrated to truth, to virtue, and to happiness by +the generations that are past? + + * * * * * + + +=_Timothy Dwight, 1752-1817._= (Manual, pp. 479, 504.) + +From "Travels in New England," &c. + +=_20._= THE WILDERNESS RECLAIMED. + +In these countries _lands are universally held in fee simple_. Every +farmer, with too few exceptions to deserve notice, labors on his own +ground, and for the benefit of himself and his family merely. This, +also, if I am not deceived, is a novelty; and its influence is seen to +be remarkably happy in the industry, sobriety, cheerfulness, personal +independence, and universal prosperity of the people at large.... A +succession of New England villages, composed of neat houses, surrounding +neat schoolhouses and churches, adorned with gardens, meadows, and +orchards, and exhibiting the universal easy circumstances of the +inhabitants, is, at least in my own opinion, one of the most delightful +prospects which this world can afford. + +_The conversion of a wilderness into a desirable residence for man_, +is an object which no intelligent spectator can behold, without being +strongly interested in such a combination of enterprise, patience, and +perseverance. Few of those human efforts which have excited the applause +of mankind, have demanded equal energy, or merited equal approbation. A +forest changed within a short period into fruitful fields covered with +houses, schools, and churches, and filled with inhabitants possessing +not only the necessaries and comforts, but also the conveniences of +life, and devoted to the worship of Jehovah, when seen only in prophetic +vision, enraptured the mind even of Isaiah; and when realized, can +hardly fail to delight that of a spectator. At least, it may compensate +the want of ancient castles, ruined abbeys, and fine pictures. + + * * * * * + +From the Theology. + +=_21._= THE GLORY OF NATURE, FROM GOD. + +There is another and very important view in which this subject demands +our consideration. _Theology spreads its influence over the creation +and providence of God, and gives to both almost all their beauty and +sublimity._ Creation and providence, seen by the eye of theology, +and elucidated by the glorious commentary on both furnished in the +Scriptures, become new objects to the mind; immeasurably more noble, +rich, and delightful, than they can appear to a worldly, sensual mind. +The heavens and the earth, and the great as well as numberless events +which result from the divine administration, are in themselves vast, +wonderful, frequently awful, in many instances solemn, in many +exquisitely beautiful, and in a great number eminently sublime. All +these attributes, however, they possess, if considered only in the +abstract, in degrees very humble and diminutive, compared with the +appearance which they make, when beheld as the works of Jehovah. +Mountains, the ocean, and the heavens, are majestic and sublime. Hills +and valleys, soft landscapes, trees, fruits, and flowers, and many +objects in the animal and mineral kingdoms, are beautiful. But what is +this beauty, what is this grandeur, compared with that agency of God, to +which they owe their being? Think what it is for the Almighty hand to +spread the plains, to heave the mountains, and to pour the ocean. Look +at the verdure, flowers, and fruits which in the mild season adorn the +surface of the earth; the uncreated hand fashions their fine forms, +paints their exquisite colors, and exhales their delightful perfumes. In +the spring, his life re-animates the world; in the summer and autumn, +his bounty is poured out upon the hills and valleys; in the winter, "his +way is in the whirlwind, and in the storm; and the clouds are the dust +of his feet." His hand "hung the earth upon nothing," lighted up the +sun in the heavens, and rolls the planets, and the comets through the +immeasurable fields of ether. His breath kindled the stars; his voice +called into existence worlds innumerable, and filled the expanse with +animated being. To all he is present, over all he rules, for all he +provides. The mind, attempered to divine contemplation, finds him in +every solitude, meets him in every walk, and in all places, and at all +times, sees itself surrounded by God. + + * * * * * + + +=_John Henry Hobart,[7] 1775-1830._= + +From a "Sermon." + +=_22._= THE DIVINE GLORY IN REDEMPTION. + +At the display of the divine power and glory that created the world, +"the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for +joy." Surely not less universal, not less ardent the exultation in those +pure and perfect spirits that continually surround the Divine Majesty +at the view of the infinite wisdom, love, and power which planned the +redemption of a fallen world--which thus devised the mode by which +pardon could be extended to the sinner without sanctioning his sin, and +favor to the offending rebel against the divine government, without +weakening its authority, impeaching its holiness, or subverting its +justice. In the nature of the divine Persons thus counselling for man's +redemption, it is not for him, blind, and erring, and impotent, it is +not for angels, it is not for cherubim or seraphim, for a moment to +look. The inner glory of the divine nature burns with a blaze, if I may +so with reverence speak, too intense, too radiant, for finite vision. +But in its manifestations, in its outer, its more distant rays, shining +on the plan of man's redemption, all is mildness, and softness, and +peace. Holiness, and justice, and mercy are seen blending their sacred +influences, and conveying light and joy in that truth which the counsels +of the Godhead alone could render possible. God can be just, and yet +justify the sinner. + +... Let us not, then, neglect this wonderful counsel of God for our +salvation; let us not be unaffected by this most stupendous display of +divine power, love, and mercy; let us not reject the offers of peace and +salvation from the God whom we have offended, and the Sovereign who is +finally to judge us. But, on the contrary, let us gratefully adore the +mercy and the grace of the Godhead in the plan of redemption, effected +in the incarnation, the obedience, the sufferings, the death, and the +triumphant resurrection of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. Let it be +our great object to be conformed to the likeness of his death, in +mortifying all our corrupt affections, and to experience the power of +his resurrection in living a new and holy life, that we may enjoy the +new and lively hopes of everlasting glory, which his resurrection +assures to all true believers. + +[Footnote 7: An eminent divine and bishop of the Episcopal church; a +native of Pennsylvania.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Lyman Beecher,[8] 1775-1803._= + +From the "Lectures on Political Atheism." + +=_23._= THE BEING OF A GOD. + +It is a thing eminently to be desired that there should be a supreme +benevolent Intelligence, who is the creator and moral governor of the +universe, whose subjects and kingdom shall endure for ever. Such a one +the nature of man demands, and his whole soul pants after. + +We feel our littleness in presence of the majestic elements of nature, +our weakness compared with their power, and our loneliness in the vast +universe, unenlightened, unguided, and unblessed, by any intelligence +superior to our own. We behold the flight of time, the passing fashion +of the world, and the gulf of annihilation curtained with the darkness +of an eternal night. + +At the side of this vortex, which covers with deep oblivion the past, +and impenetrable darkness the future, nature shudders and draws back, +and the soul, with sinking heart, looks mournfully around upon this fair +creation, and up to these beautiful heavens, and in plaintive accents +demands, "Is there, then, no deliverance from this falling back into +nothing? Must this conscious being cease--this reasoning, thinking power, +and these warm affections, their delightful movements? Must this eye +close in an endless night, and this heart fall back upon everlasting +insensibility? O, thou cloudless sun, and ye far-distant stars, in all +your journeyings in light, have ye discovered no blessed intelligence +who called you into being, lit up your fires, marked your orbits, wheels +you in your courses, around whom ye roll, and whose praises ye silently +celebrate? Are ye empty worlds, and desolate, the sport of chance? or, +like our sad earth, are ye peopled with inhabitants, waked up to a brief +existence, and hurried reluctantly, from an almost untested being, back +to nothing? O that there were a God, who made you greater than ye all, +whose being in yours we might see, whose intelligence we might admire, +whose will we might obey, and whose goodness we might adore!" Such, +except where guilt seeks annihilation as the choice of evils, is the +unperverted, universal longing after God and immortality. + +[Footnote 8: A Congregational clergyman, prominent, in the early part +of this century, for his zeal and piety, and for the eloquence and +originality of his sermons: father of a numerous family distinguished in +theology and literature.] + + * * * * * + + +=_William Ellery Channing, 1780-1842._= (Manual, p. 480.) + +From the Essay on Napoleon Bonaparte. + +=_24._= CHARACTER OF NAPOLEON. + +With powers which might have made him a glorious representative and +minister of the beneficent Divinity, and with natural sensibilities +which might have been exalted into sublime virtues, he chose to separate +himself from his kind, to forego their love, esteem, and gratitude, +that he might become their gaze, their fear, their wonder; and for this +selfish, solitary good, parted with peace and imperishable renown. + +His insolent exaltation of himself above the race to which he belonged, +broke out in the beginning of his career. His first success in Italy +gave him the tone of a master, and he never laid it aside to his last +hour. One can hardly help being struck with the _natural air_ with which +he arrogates supremacy in his conversation and proclamations. We never +feel as if he were putting on a lordly air. In his proudest claims, he +speaks from his own mind, and in native language. His style is swollen, +but never strained, as if he were conscious of playing a part above his +real claims. Even when he was foolish and impious enough to arrogate +miraculous powers and a mission from God, his language showed that he +thought there was something in his character and exploits to give a +color to his--blasphemous pretensions. The empire of the world seemed +to him to be in a measure his due, for nothing short of it corresponded +with his conceptions of himself; and he did not use mere verbiage, +but spoke a language to which he gave some credit, when he called his +successive conquests "the fulfilment of his destiny." This spirit +of self-exaggeration wrought its own misery, and drew down upon him +terrible punishments; and this it did by vitiating and perverting his +high powers. First, it diseased his fine intellect, gave imagination the +ascendency over judgment, turned the inventiveness and fruitfulness of +his mind into rash, impatient, restless energies, and thus precipitated +him into projects, which, as the wisdom of his counsellors pronounced, +were fraught with ruin. To a man, whose vanity took him out of the rank +of human beings, no foundation for reasoning was left. All things seemed +possible. His genius and his fortune were not to be bounded by the +barriers which experience had assigned to human powers. Ordinary rules +did not apply to him. He even found excitement and motives in obstacles +before which other men would have wavered; for these would enhance the +glory of triumph, and give a new thrill to the admiration of the world. + +To us there is something radically and increasingly shocking in the +thought of one man's will becoming a law to his race; in the thought of +multitudes, of vast communities, surrendering conscience, intellect, +their affections, their rights, their interests, to the stern mandate of +a fellow-creature. When we see one word of a frail man on the throne +of France, tearing a hundred thousand sons from their homes, breaking +asunder the sacred ties of domestic life, sentencing myriads of the +young to make murder their calling, and rapacity their means of support, +and extorting from nations their treasures to extend this ruinous sway, +we are ready to ask ourselves, Is not this a dream? and, when the sad +reality comes home to us, we blush for a race which can stoop to such an +abject lot. At length, indeed, we see the tyrant humbled, stripped of +power, but stripped by those who, in the main, are not unwilling to play +the despot on a narrower scale, and to break down the spirit of nations +under the same iron sway. + + * * * * * + + +=_Manning._= + +From a Discourse upon Immortality. + +=_25._= GRANDEUR OF THE PROSPECT. + +To me there is but one objection against immortality, if objection it +may be called, and this arises from the very greatness of the truth. +My mind sometimes sinks under its weight, is lost in its immensity; I +scarcely dare believe that such a good is placed within my reach. When I +think of myself, as existing through all future ages, as surviving this +earth and that sky, as exempted from every imperfection and error of my +present being, as clothed with an angel's glory, as comprehending with +my intellect and embracing in my affections, an extent of creation +compared with which the earth is a point; when I think of myself as +looking on the outward universe with an organ of vision that will reveal +to me a beauty and harmony and order not now imagined, and as having +an access to the minds of the wise and good, which will make them in +a sense my own; when I think of myself as forming friendships with +innumerable beings of rich and various intellect and of the noblest +virtue, as introduced to the society of heaven, as meeting there the +great and excellent, of whom I have read in history, as joined with "the +just made perfect" in an ever-enlarging ministry of benevolence, as +conversing with Jesus Christ with the familiarity of friendship, and +especially as having an immediate intercourse with God, such as the +closest intimacies of earth dimly shadow forth;--when this thought of my +future being comes to me, whilst I hope, I also fear; the blessedness +seems too great; the consciousness of present weakness and unworthiness +is almost too strong for hope. But when, in this frame of mind, I +look round on the creation, and see there the marks of an omnipotent +goodness, to which nothing is impossible, and from which every thing may +be Loped; when I see around me the proofs of an Infinite Father, who +must desire the perpetual progress of his intellectual offspring; when +I look next at the human mind, and see what powers a few years have +unfolded, and discern in it the capacity of everlasting improvement: and +especially when I look at Jesus, the conqueror of death, the heir of +immortality, who has gone as the forerunner of mankind into the mansions +of light and purity, I can and do admit the almost overpowering thought +of the everlasting life, growth, felicity, of the human soul. + + * * * * * + +From Remarks on the case of the Ship Creole. + +=_26._= THE DUTY OF THE FREE STATES. + +I have now finished my task. I have considered the Duties of the Free +States in relation to Slavery, and to other subjects of great and +immediate concern. In this discussion I have constantly spoken of Duties +as more important than Interests; but these in the end will be found to +agree. The energy by which men prosper is fortified by nothing so much +as by the lofty spirit which scorns to prosper through abandonment of +duty. + +I have been called by the subjects here discussed to speak much of the +evils of the times, and the dangers of the country; and in treating of +these a writer is almost necessarily betrayed into what may seem a tone +of despondence. His anxiety to save his country from crime or calamity, +leads him to use unconsciously a language of alarm which may excite the +apprehension of inevitable misery. But I would not infuse such fears. I +do not sympathize with the desponding tone of the day. It may be that +there are fearful woes in store for this people; but there are many +promises of good to give spring to hope and effort; and it is not wise +to open our eyes and ears to ill omens alone. It is to be lamented that +men who boast of courage in other trials, should shrink so weakly from +public difficulties and dangers, and should spend in unmanly reproaches, +or complaints, the strength which they ought to give to their country's +safety. But this ought not to surprise us in the present case: for +our lot, until of late, has been singularly prosperous, and great +prosperity enfeebles men's spirits, and prepares them to despond when it +shall have passed away. The country, we are told, is "ruined." What! the +country ruined, when the mass of the population have hardly retrenched +a luxury! We are indeed paying, and we ought to pay, the penalty of +reckless extravagance, of wild and criminal speculation, of general +abandonment to the passion for sudden and enormous gains. But how are +we ruined? Is the kind, nourishing earth about to become a cruel +step-mother? Or is the teeming soil of this magnificent country sinking +beneath our feet? Is the ocean dried up? Are our cities and villages, +our schools and churches, in ruins? Are the stout muscles which have +conquered sea and land, palsied? Are the earnings of past years +dissipated, and the skill which gathered them forgotten? I open my eyes +on this ruined country, and I see around me fields fresh with verdure, +and behold on all sides the intelligent countenance, the sinewy limb, +the kindly look, the free and manly bearing, which indicate any thing +but a fallen people. Undoubtedly we have much cause to humble ourselves +for the vices which our recent prosperity warmed into being, or rather +brought out from the depths of men's souls. But in the reprobation which +these vices awaken, have we no proof that the fountain of moral life in +the nation's heart is not exhausted. In the progress of temperance, of +education, and of religious sensibility, in our land, have we no +proof that there is among us an impulse towards improvement, which no +temporary crime or calamity can overpower. + +After all, there is a growing intelligence in this community; there is +much domestic virtue, there is a deep working of Christianity; there is +going on a struggle of higher truths with narrow traditions, and of a +wider benevolence with social evils; there is a spirit of freedom, a +recognition of the equal rights of men; there are profound impulses +received from our history, from the virtues of our fathers, and +especially from our revolutionary conflict; and there is an indomitable +energy, which, after rearing an empire in the wilderness, is fresh for +new achievements. + +There is one Duty of the Free States of which I have not spoken; it is +the duty of Faith in the intellectual and moral energies of the country, +in its high destiny, and in the good Providence which has guided it +through so many trials and perils to its present greatness. We indeed +suffer much, and deserve to suffer more. Many dark pages are to be +written in our history. But generous seed is still sown in this nation's +mind. Noble impulses are working here. We are called to be witnesses to +the world, of a freer, more equal, more humane, more enlightened social +existence, than has yet been known. May God raise us to a more thorough +comprehension of our work! May he give us faith in the good which we are +summoned to achieve! May he strengthen us to build up a prosperity not +tainted by slavery, selfishness, or any wrong; but pure, innocent, +righteous, and overflowing, through a just and generous intercourse, on +all the nations of the earth! + + * * * * * + + +=_Edward Payson, 1733-1827,_= (Manual, p. 480.) + +From the "Selections." + +=_27._= NATURAL RELIGION. + +I know that those who hate and despise the religion of Jesus because it +condemns their evil deeds, have endeavored to deprive him of the honor +of communicating to mankind the glad tidings of life and immortality. I +know that they have dragged the mouldering carcass of paganism from the +grave, animated her lifeless form with a spark stolen from the sacred +altar, arrayed her in the spoils of Christianity, re-lighted her +extinguished taper at the torch of revelation, dignified her with the +name of natural religion, and exalted her in the temple of reason, as a +goddess, able, without divine assistance, to guide mankind to truth and +happiness. But we also know, that all her boasted pretensions are vain, +the offspring of ignorance, wickedness, and pride. We know that she is +indebted to that revelation which she presumes to ridicule, and contemn, +for every semblance of truth or energy which she displays. We know that +the most she can do, is to find men blind and leave them so; and to +lead them still farther astray, in a labyrinth of vice, delusion, and +wretchedness. This is incontrovertibly evident, both from past and +present experience; and we may defy her most eloquent advocates to +produce a single instance in which she has enlightened or reformed +mankind. If, as is often asserted, she is able to guide us in the path +of truth and happiness, why has she ever suffered her votaries to +remain a prey to vice and ignorance. Why did she not teach the learned +Egyptians to abstain from worshiping their leeks and onions? Why not +instruct the polished Greeks to renounce their sixty thousand gods? +Why not persuade the enlightened Romans to abstain from adoring their +deified murderers? Why not prevail on the wealthy Phoenicians to refrain +from sacrificing their infants to Saturn? Or, if it was a task beyond +her power to enlighten the ignorant multitude, reform their barbarous +and abominable superstitions, and teach them that they were immortal +beings, why did she not, at least, instruct their philosophers in the +great doctrine of the immortality of the soul, which they so earnestly +labored in vain to discover? They enjoyed the light of reason and +natural religion, in its fullest extent, yet so far were they from +ascertaining the nature of our future and eternal existence, that +they--could not determine whether we should exist at all Bevon the +grave; nor could all their advantages preserve them from the grossest +errors, and the most unnatural crimes. + + * * * * * + + +=_Joseph S. Buckminster, 1784-1812._= (Manual, p. 480.) + +From the "Sermons." + +=_28._= NECESSITY OF REGENERATION. + +Look back, my hearers, upon your lives, and observe the numerous +opinions that you have adopted and discarded, the numerous attachments +you have formed and forgotten, and recollect how imperceptible were +the revolutions of your sentiments, how quiet the changes of your +affections. Perhaps, even now, your minds may be passing through some +interesting processes, your pursuits may be taking some new direction, +and your character may soon exhibit to the world some unexpected +transformation. Compare with this the spiritual regeneration of the +heart. So is every one that is born of the Spirit. Perhaps the following +may not be an imperfect description of the process that takes place in +a mind which is the subject of a radical conversion. The motion of the +wind is unseen, its effects are visible; the trees bend and fields are +laid waste; though the altering sentiments and affections are unnoticed, +the altered character obtrudes itself upon our observation. Truths +before contemplated without concern, now seize the mind with a grasp +too firm to be shaken. The world which is to succeed the present is no +longer a subject of accidental thought, of wavering belief, or lifeless +speculation; a region to which no tie binds us, and which no curiosity +leads us to explore. To the regenerated mind, the character and +condition of man appears in a new, and interesting light. To a being +whose existence has but just commenced, death is only a boundary, a +line, that marks off the first, the smallest portion of existence. +Earth with her retinue of allurements, her band of fascinating +syrens, exclaims, "We have lost our hold on this man! He is no longer +ours!" Religion welcomes her new adherent; she beckons him to turn his +steps into a new,--a pleasanter path; and God himself looks down from +heaven with complacency and love, illuminating his track by the light +of his countenance, marking the first step he takes in religion, and +supporting him by the staff of his grace,--the aid of his Holy Spirit. + +The first objects that engage the dawning mind of the child are objects +of sense. That which is born of the flesh is flesh. It is a selfish, +sensual creature, ignorant of its Creator, of its destination; +uninclined to the purity, the spirituality, the power of religion; +alienated from the life of God, the life of the soul. Unrenewed by the +influence of religious truth, undirected by the guiding hand of an +Almighty Father, how shall such a creature reach the regions of immortal +bliss? Is it enthusiasm, is it folly, is it hypocrisy, to say to such, a +creature, "You must be born again before you can see the kingdom of +God?" Is that Redeemer to be disclaimed who offers you his divine aid to +form anew your character, to exalt your affections, to enlighten your +dreary and desolate understanding? + + * * * * * + + +=_Nathaniel W. Taylor[9] 1781-1871._= + +From the "Lectures on the Moral Government of God." + +=_29._= PROOF OF IMMORTALITY FROM THE MORAL NATURE OF MAN. + +The argument from _the moral nature_ of man is made still more +impressive by the superiority of its design and object. If there is no +existence for man beyond the present state, what can we suppose to be +the design of his Creator in forming him a moral being? What powers, +what capacities are involved in his nature! What capacity to enjoy, and +what power to impart happiness to others! Who can reflect on the nature +of such a creature, his intelligence, his susceptibility, his will, his +conscience, the dignity, the excellence of which he is capable, the +moral victories and triumphs he may win, his fitness to hold on his way +with archangels, strong in advancing all that good which infinite wisdom +could devise, and infinite benevolence could love, the graces with which +he may be adorned, and the beatitudes with which he may be blessed, +and not believe that he is made to be one with the God who has created +him--a partaker of his blessedness, a companion of his eternity. + +If we consider what an almost total failure there is, even on the +part of every good man, to attain in any respect the great end of his +creation; how weak in resolution and feeble in heart--how little success +in subduing his passions and governing his temper--how much of life is +spent before he even begins to live in obedience to the demands of +duty and of conscience--how remote he is from the uniform and settled +tranquility of perfect virtue--what dissatisfaction he feels with, the +present, unappeased by all the world can offer--what an Impatience and +disgust with the littleness of all he finds--what an ever-restless +aspiration after nobler and higher things--what anticipations and hopes +from futurity never realized, here on earth--how does our spirit labor +under a sense of the incongruity between his attainments and his powers! +and, unless there is a future state, what an insignificance is imparted +to all that can be called virtue here on earth, and also to man himself! + +[Footnote 9: An eminent Congregational divine, long professor of +theology in Tale College, and distinguished by the vigor and originality +of his thinking.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Edward Hitchcock, 1793-1804._= (Manual, p. 532.) + +From "The Religion of Geology." + +=_30._= GEOLOGICAL PROOF OF DIVINE BENEVOLENCE. + +My second argument in proof of the divine benevolence is derived from +the disturbed, broken, and overturned condition of the earth's crust. + +To the casual observer the rocks have the appearance of being lifted up, +shattered, and overturned; but it is only the geologist who knows +the vast extent of this disturbance. He never finds crystalline, +non-fossiliferous rocks which have not been more or less removed from +their original position. The older fossiliferous strata exhibit almost +equal evidence of the operation of a powerful disturbing force, though +sometimes found in their original horizontal position. The newer rocks +have experienced less of this agency, though but few of them have not +been elevated or dislocated. + +If these strata had remained horizontal, as they were originally +deposited, it is obvious that all the valuable ores, minerals, and +rocks, which man could not have discovered by direct excavation, +must have remained forever unknown to him. Now, man has very seldom +penetrated the rocks below the depth of half a mile, and rarely so deep +as that; whereas, by the elevations, dislocations, and overturnings +that have been described, he obtains access to all deposits of useful +substances that lie within fifteen or twenty miles of the surface; and +many are thus probably brought to light from a greater depth. He is +indebted, then, to this disturbing agency for nearly all the useful +metals, coal, rock salt, marble, gypsum, and other useful minerals; +and when we consider how necessary these substances are to civilized +society, who will doubt that it was a striking act of benevolence which +thus introduced disturbance, dislocation, and apparent ruin into the +earth's crust? + + * * * * * + + +=_John P. Durbin,[10] 1800._= + +From "Observations in the East." + +=_31._= FIRST SIGHT OF MOUNT SINAI. + +For two hours we ascended this wild, narrow pass, enclosed between +stupendous granite cliffs, whose debris encumbered the defile, often +rendering the passage difficult and dangerous. Escaping from the pass, +we crossed the head of a basin-like plain, which declined to the +south-west, and ascending gradually, gloomy, precipitous, mountain +masses rose to view on either hand, with detached snow-beds lying in +their clefts. The caravan moved slowly, and apparently with a more +solemn, measured tread. The Bedouins became serious and silent, and +looked steadily before them, as if to catch the first glimpse of some +revered object. The space before us gradually expanded, when suddenly +Tualeb, pointing to a black, perpendicular cliff, whose two riven and +rugged summits rose some twelve or fifteen hundred feet directly in +front of us, exclaimed, _"Gebel Mousa!"_ How shall I describe the effect +of that announcement? Not a word was spoken by Moslem or Christian, but +slowly and silently we advanced into the still expanding plain, our eyes +immovably fixed on the frowning precipices of the stern and desolate +mountain. We were doubtless on the plain where Israel encamped at the +giving of the law, and that grand and gloomy height before us was Sinai, +on which God descended in fire, and the whole mountain was enveloped In +smoke, and shook under the tread of the Almighty, while his presence was +proclaimed by the long, loud peals of repeated thunder, above which +the blast of the trumpet was heard waxing loader and louder, and +reverberating amid the stern and gloomy mountain heights around; and +then God spoke with Moses. + +[Footnote 10: A native of Kentucky; is deemed one of the most eloquent +divines in the Methodist church.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Leonard Bacon, 1802._= (Manual, p, 480.) + +From a "Missionary Sermon." + +=_32._= THE DAY APPROACHING. + +The time is to come when the world will be filled with the knowledge, +the fear, and the praise of God Not always will war deluge the earth +with fire and blood. Not always will idolatry offend the heavens with +its abominations. Not always will despotism, political and spiritual, +national and domestic, degrade and corrupt the masses of mankind. Not +always will superstition, on the one hand, and infidelity, on the other, +reject and despise the blessed revelation of forgiveness for sinners +through Jesus, the Lamb of God. Not always will cold philosophy, and +erratic enthusiasm, and fanaticism fierce and malignant, conspire to +corrupt and pervert the gospel itself, turning even the streams from the +fountain of life into waters of bitterness and poison. No, no; the time +will come when the sun, in his daily journey round the renovated world, +shall waken with his morning beam in every human dwelling the voice of +joyful, thankful, spiritual worship. Then shall the boundless soul of +Immanuel, who once travailed in the agony of the world's redemption, "be +satisfied" with his victories over death and sin. The ransomed of the +Lord shall return and come to Zion with songs, and with garlands of +everlasting joy; and from the earth, no longer accursed for the sake of +man, sorrow and sighing shall flee away. + + * * * * * + +From the New Englander. + +=_33._= THE BENEFITS OF CAPITAL. + +What wealth can be created without capital? Robinson Crusoe, on his +lonely island, was a capitalist as well as a laborer and a land-holder. +Put him down there without any capital--simply a naked, featherless, +two-legged and two-handed, animal, without clothes, without a gun or a +fish-hook, without hoe, or hatchet, or knife, or rusty nail, without a +particle of food to keep him from fainting, and what will become of him? +He gathers perhaps some wild fruits from the bushes; he picks up perhaps +some shell-fish from the water's edge; he surprises a fawn or a kid, and +throttles it and tears it to pieces with his fingers; he kindles a fire +perhaps by rubbing two dry sticks together till they ignite with the +friction; and so he keeps himself alive for a few days; but how little +progress does he make! But let him by any means have a little to begin +with in the shape of implements and materials; give him an axe or a +spade, a jack-knife, or only a fragment of an iron hoop, give him a gill +of seed wheat, or a single potato, or no more than a grain of maize, for +planting; and how soon will his condition be changed! He has begun to +be, even in this small way, a capitalist; and his labor, drawing +something from the past, begins to reach into the future. Instead of +spending all his time and strength in a constant scratching for the food +of to-day, how soon will he have a blanket of skins, and a hut, and a +garden in which he is preparing to-day the food of future months. Give +him now a little more capital; let him have the means of stocking his +farm with some sort of domestic animals; give him only a steer and a +heifer, or even a pair of goats, and how soon will he begin to be rich. + + * * * * * + + +=_James W. Alexander, 1804-1859._= (Manual, p. 480.) + +From his "Discourses on Christian Faith and Practice." + +=_34._= THE CHURCH A TEMPLE. + +In surveying the past, we observe a beautiful fitness and an enchanting +variety in the materials which have been already built into that part +of the edifice which has thus far been reared. How unlike the corps +of prophets to the corps of apostles; and how unlike the several +individuals of each. We have Scripture authority for placing these +among the most honorable and sustaining parts of the fabric, near the +corner-stone: for we are "built upon the foundation of the apostles and +prophets." Isaiah with his evangelic clarion. Jeremiah with his pastoral +reed of sorrows, and David with his many-voiced harp, sometimes loud in +notes of triumph, and sometimes subdued to the voice of weeping, stand +out with a marked individuality which becomes the more surprising, the +more nearly we examine the distinctive features. They may be likened +to those immense but goodly stones, carried up in courses, along the +precipitous side of the valley, to form the basis for the temple of +Solomon. The twelve apostles, including the last, and humanly speaking, +the greatest, though brethren, how unlike. Who for an instant, could +mistake Paul for Peter, or either of them for John. They occupy salient +angles of the great foundation, and lie nearest to the corner-stone, +elect and precious. Some of their brethren, though not visible in the +front which meets the eye, may have done equal service in the bearing +up of the mass. Martyrs and confessors found their place, in succeeding +ages, as the wall advanced; some as glorious for ornament as strong for +use. When love needed a signal display, amidst the blood of martyrdom, +we see it immortalized in an Ignatius and a Polycarp. When stalking +heresy needed a front of steel to stand unmoved against all its columns, +we find an "Athanasius against the world." When the language of +Greece is to be elevated to new dignity by conveying the wonders of +Christianity, we hear the golden eloquence of a Basil and a Chrysostom. +When Roman philosophy had died out of the world, we behold it revived in +an Augustine, the father of the fathers. Later down in ages, we catch +glimpses even amidst Romish corruptions of a Bernard and a Kempis. The +note of alarm is given to a sleeping carnal church, first by Wicliff, +Huss, and Jerome, then by Zwingle, Luther, Calvin, and Knox. + + * * * * * + + +=_Martin John Spaulding,[11] 1810-1872._= + +From "Sketches of the Early Catholic Missions in Kentucky." + +=_35._= LIFE IN THE NEW SETTLEMENTS. + +The early Catholic emigrants to Kentucky, in common with their brethren +of other denominations, had to endure many privations and hardships. +As we may well conceive, there were few luxuries to be found in the +wilderness, in the midst of which they had fixed their new habitations. +They often suffered even for the most indispensable necessaries of life. +To obtain salt, they had to travel many miles to the licks, through a +country infested with savages; and they were often obliged to remain +there for several days, until they could procure a supply. + +There were then no regular roads in Kentucky. The forests were filled +with a luxuriant undergrowth, thickly interspersed with the cane, and the +whole closely interlaced with the wild pea-vine. These circumstances +rendered them nearly impassable; and almost the only chance of effecting +a passage through this vegetable wilderness, was by following the paths +or traces made by the herds of buffalo and other wild beasts. Luckily +these traces were numerous, especially in the vicinity of the licks, +which the buffalo were in the habit of frequenting, to drink the salt +water, or lick the earth impregnated with salt. + +The new colonists resided in log-cabins, rudely constructed, with no +glass in the windows, with floors of dirt, or, in the better sort of +dwellings, of puncheons of split timber, roughly hewed with the axe. +After they had worn out the clothing brought with them from the old +settlements, both men and women were under the necessity of wearing +buckskin or homespun apparel. Such a thing as a store was not known +in Kentucky for many years: and the names of broadcloth, ginghams +and calicoes, were never even so much as breathed. Moccasins made of +buckskin, supplied the place of our modern shoes, blankets thrown over +the shoulder, answered the purpose of our present fashionable coats and +cloaks; and handkerchiefs tied around the head served instead of hats +and bonnets. A modern fashionable bonnet would have been a matter of +real wonderment in those days of unaffected simplicity. + +The furniture of the cabins was of the same primitive character. Stools +were used instead of chairs: the table was made of slabs of timber, +rudely put together. Wooden vessels and platters supplied the place +of our modern plates and china-ware; and a "tin cup was an article of +delicate furniture, almost as rare as an iron-fork[12]," The beds were +either placed on the floor, or on bedsteads of puncheons, supported by +forked pieces of timber, driven into the ground, or resting on pins +let into auger-holes in the sides of the cabin. Blankets, and bear and +buffalo-skins, constituted often the principal bed-covering. + +One of the chief resources for food was the chase. All kinds of game +were then very abundant; and when the hunter chanced, to have a goodly +supply of ammunition, his fortune was made for the year. The game was +plainly dressed, and served up on wooden platters, with corn-bread, and +the Indian dish-the well known _hominy_. The corn was ground with great +difficulty, on the laborious hand-mills; for mills of other descriptions +were then, and for many years afterwards, unknown in Kentucky. + +Such was the simple manner of life led by our "pilgrim fathers." They +had fewer luxuries, but perhaps were, withal, more happy than their more +fastidious descendants. Hospitality was not then an empty name; every +log-cabin was freely thrown open to all who chose to share in the best +cheer its inmates could afford. The early settlers of Kentucky were +bound together by the strong ties of common hardships and dangers--to +say nothing of other bonds of union--and they clung together with great +tenacity. On the slightest alarm of Indian invasion, they all made +common cause, and flew together to the rescue. There was less +selfishness, and more generous chivalry; less bickering, and more +cordial charity, then, than at present; notwithstanding all our boasted +refinement. + +[Footnote 11: Born in Kentucky, and long eminent as a controversial +writer and a Prelate of the Roman Catholic church. His "sketches" give +much interesting information respecting the early history of that church +at the West.] + +[Footnote 12: Marshall--History of Kentucky.] + + * * * * * + + +=_James Henry Thornwell,[13] 1811-1862._= + +From the "Discourses on Truth." + +=_36._= EVIL TENDENCIES OF AN ACT OF SIN. + +There is a double tendency in every voluntary determination, one to +propagate itself, the other to weaken or support, according to its own +moral quality, the general principle of virtue. Every sin, therefore, +imparts a proclivity to other acts of the same sort, and disturbs and +deranges, at the same time, the whole moral constitution, it tends to +the formation of special habits, and to the superinducing of a general +debility of principle, which lays a man open to defeat from every +species of temptation. The extent to which a single act shall produce +this double effect, depends upon its intensity, its intensity depends +upon the fullness and energy of will which will enter into it, and the +energy of will depends upon the strength of the motives resisted. An +act, therefore, which concludes an earnest and protracted conflict, +which has not been reached without a stormy debate in the soul, which +marks the victory of evil over the love of character, sensibility to +shame, the authority of conscience and the fear of God, an act of this +sort concentrates in itself the essence of all the single determinations +which preceded it, and possesses power to generate a habit and to +derange the constitution, equal to that which the whole series of +resistances to duty, considered as so many individual instances of +transgression, is fitted to impart. By one such act a man is impelled +with an amazing momentum in the path of evil. He lives years of sin in a +day or an hour. It is always a solemn crisis when the first step is to +be taken in a career of guilt, against which nature and education, +or any other strong influences protest. The results are unspeakably +perilous when a man has to fight his way into crime. The victory creates +an epoch in his life. He is from that hour, without a miracle of grace, +a lost man. The earth is strewed with wrecks of character which were +occasioned by one fatal determination at a critical point in life, when +the will stood face to face with duty, and had to make its decision +deliberately and intensely for evil. + +[Footnote 13: A Presbyterian divine, and professor of Theology, in South +Carolina, his native state: a distinguished theological writer of the +South.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Charles P. McIlvaine,[14] 1799-1873._= + +From a Sermon on the Resurrection of Christ. + +=_37._=. ATTESTATIONS OF THE RESURRECTION. + +Here we remark, in general, that his resurrection was the great sign +and crowning miracle to which our Lord, all the way of his ministry, to +the day of his crucifixion, referred both friends and opposers, for the +final confirmation of all his claims and doctrines. He staked all on the +promise that he would rise from death. The Jews asked of him a sign, +that they might believe. He answered, "There shall no sign be given, but +the sign of the prophet Jonas. For as Jonas was three days and nights +in the whale's belly, so shall the Son of Man be three days and three +nights in the heart of the earth." Thus on that single; event, the +resurrection of Christ, the whole of Christianity, as it all centres in, +and depends on him, was made to hinge. Redemption waited the evidence +of resurrection. Nothing was to be accounted as sealed and finally +certified, till Jesus should deliver himself from the power of death. +All of the gospel, all the hopes it brings to us, all the promises with +which it comforts us, were taken for their final verdict, as true or +false, sufficient or worthless, to the door of that jealously-guarded +and stone-sealed sepulchre, waiting the settlement of the question, +_will he rise?_ + +But an event so momentous was not left to but one class of evidences. +There was a way by which thousands at once were made to receive as +powerful assurance that Christ was risen, as if they had seen him in his +risen body. Jesus, before his death, had made a great promise to his +disciples, to be fulfilled by him only after his death and resurrection; +a promise impossible to be fulfilled if his resurrection failed; because +then, not only would he be under the power of death, but all his claim +to divine power would be brought to nought. It was the promise of the +Holy Ghost. "When the Comforter is come whom I will send unto you from +the Father, even the Spirit of Truth, which proceedeth from the Father, +he shall testify of me, he shall glorify me." + +It was after he had "shown himself alive after his passion, by many +infallible proofs, being seen of his disciples forty days, and speaking +to them of the things pertaining to the Kingdom of God," that the day +for the accomplishment of that promise came. The day was that which +commemorated the giving of the law on Mount Sinai. It was now to +witness the going forth of the gospel from Jerusalem. I need not relate +to you the wonderful events of that day of Pentecost, the coming of the +Holy Ghost with the "sound as of a rushing mighty wind" that "filled all +the house;" the cloven tongues "like as of fire," which sat on each of +the disciples; the evidence that it was the Spirit of God which had then +come, given in the sudden and astonishing change which immediately came +over the apostles, transforming them from weak and timid men to the +boldest and strongest; in the change which suddenly came upon the power +of their ministry, converting it from the weak agent it had previously +been in contact with all the unbelief and wickedness of men into an +instrument so mighty that out of a congregation of Jews of all nations, +many of whom had probably partaken in the crucifixion of Christ, three +thousand that day were bowed down to repentance and subdued to his +obedience. + +Thus was the day of Pentecost, a great day of testimony to the life and +divine power, and consequently the resurrection of Christ. Each of those +who heard the divers tongues of the ministry of that day, each of the +three thousand, was a witness of the same. + +[Footnote 14: A native of New Jersey; in early life Chaplain and +Professor of Moral Philosophy in the Military Academy at West Point +and long time Bishop of Ohio in the Protestant Episcopal Church. His +Treatise on the Evidences of Christianity has great merit, and his +theological and controversial writings are in high esteem: greatly +venerated for his truly evangelical character.] + + * * * * * + + +=_George W. Bethune, 1805-1862._= (Manual, p. 487.) + +From the "Expository Lectures on the Heidelberg Catechism." + +=_38._= ASPIRATIONS TOWARDS HEAVEN. + +Our Christian life is a course through, this world, which we are to run +looking unto Jesus, at the right hand of the throne of God. The mark of +the prize of the high calling is in heaven. Nay, it is the hope of +heaven which keeps our souls surely and steadfastly. No matter what +other proofs of his being a Christian, a man may think that he has--what +moral virtue, what present zeal, what reverence for God and sacred +things, what kindness and faithfulness to his fellow-men,--if he have +not this longing thirst for heaven, he should doubt his Christianity. +The regenerate soul can be satisfied with nothing short of awaking with +the divine likeness. We cannot pray aright without hoping for heaven, +for there only will the askings of a pious heart be fully granted. We +cannot give thanks aright without hoping for heaven, for there are the +consummate blessings of the Redeemer's purchase. We cannot serve God +aright without hoping for heaven, for there only is our faithfulness to +be acknowledged, and our wages paid. Our hopes should be submissive, and +our longing patient; we should be willing to remain so long as God has +work for us here, but ever with a yearning sense that to depart and be +with Christ is far better. Grace in the heart is an ascensive power, +ever lifting its desires upward and upward, and so above the temptations +of time and earth. We can never drive this world out of our hearts, but +by bringing heaven into them. And heaven meets our affections when they +ascend, as it met Jesus; and he who so walks, climbing the arduous way +from the Valley of Baca to the temple on the mount (for we must walk +until we get our wings of angelic strength), will so approach the +heavenly threshold, as, like holy Enoch, he can cross it at a step. + +Oh, dear friends, what an advantage have they whose Jesus is in heaven, +over those first disciples when they had him with them personally on +earth. They were for building tabernacles on Tabor, looking for a +temporal kingdom, walking by sight and not by faith; but our Lord now +above, draws up to a better, higher, holier home, our aims, our desires, +and our love. + + * * * * * + +From "A Lecture:" Philadelphia, 1840. + +=_39._= THE PROSPECTS OF ART IN THE UNITED STATES. + +It is well for those who have sufficient wealth, to bring among us good +works of foreign or ancient masters, especially if they allow free +access to them for students and copyists. The true gems are, however, +rare, and very costly. A single masterpiece would swallow up the whole +sum which even the richest of our countrymen would be willing to devote +in the way of paintings. I hope, however, soon to see the day when +there shall be a fondness for making collections of works by _American +artists_, or those resident among us. Such collections, judiciously +made, would supply the best history of the rise and progress of the arts +in the United States. They would, more than any other means, stimulate +artists to a generous emulation. They would reflect high honor upon +their possessors, as men who love Art for its own sake, and are willing +to serve and encourage it. They would highly gratify the foreigner of +taste who comes curious to observe the working of our institutions and +our habits of life. He does not cross the sea to find Vandykes and +Murillos. He can enjoy them at home; but he wishes to discover what the +children of the West can do in following or excelling European example. +The expense of such a collection could not be very great. A few +thousands of dollars, less than is often lavished upon the French plate +glass and lustres, damask hangings, and Turkey carpets of a pair of +parlors (more than which few of our houses can boast), would cover their +walls with good specimens of American art, and do far more credit to the +taste and heart of the owner. + + * * * * * + + +=_William R. Williams,[15] 1804._= (Manual, p. 480.) + +From "The Lectures on the Lord's Prayer." + +=_40._= LEAD US NOT INTO TEMPTATION. + +We are warranted in praying to be brought through, temptation, when it +is not of our own seeking, but of _God's sending_. If we walk without +care and without vigilance, if we acknowledge not God in our ways, and +take counsel at Ekron, and not at Zion,--leaving the Bible unread, and +the closet unvisited,--if the sanctuary and the Sabbath lose their +ancient hold upon us, and we then go on frowardly in the way of our own +eyes, and after the counsel of our own heart, we have reason to tremble. +A conscience quick and sensitive, under the presence of the indwelling +Spirit, is like the safety-lamp of the miner, a ready witness and a +mysterious guardian against the deathful damps, that unseen, but fatal, +cluster around our darkling way. To neglect prayer and watching, is to +lay aside that lamp, and then, though the eye see no danger and the +ear hear no warning, spiritual death may be gathering around us her +invisible vapors, stored with ruin, and rife for a sudden explosion. We +are _tempting God_, and shall _we_ be delivered? + +And if this be so with, the negligent professor of religion, is it not +applicable also to the openly careless, who never acknowledged Christ's +claims to the heart and the life? + +With an evil nature, and a mortal body, and a brittle and brief tenure +of earth, you are traversing perilous paths. Had you God for your +friend, your case would be far other than it is. Peril and snare might +still beset you; but you would confront and traverse them, as the +Hebrews of old did the weedy bed of the Red Sea, its watery walls +guarding their dread way, the pillar of light the vanguard, and the +pillar of cloud the rearguard of their mysterious progress, the ark +and the God of the ark piloting and defending them.... You are like a +presumptuous and unskilful traveller, passing under the arch of the +waters of Niagara. The falling cataract thundering above you; a +slippery, slimy rock beneath your gliding feet; the smoking, roaring +abyss yawning beside you; the imprisoned winds beating back your +breath; the struggling daylight coming but mistily to the bewildered +eyes,--what is the terror of your condition if your guide, in whose +grasp your fingers tremble, be malignant, and treacherous, and suicidal, +determined on destroying your life at the sacrifice of his own? He +assures you that he will bring you safely through upon the other side of +the fall. And SUCH is SATAN. Lost himself, and desperate, he is set on +swelling the number of his compeers in shame, and woe, and ruin. + +[Footnote 15: A Baptist divine, born in New York city, where he has long +been settled over a church; eminent for general scholarship and literary +ability.] + + * * * * * + + +=_George B. Cheever, 1807-_=(Manual, pp. 480, 490.) + +From "The Wanderings of a Pilgrim." + +=_41._= MONT BLANC. + +It is like those heights of ambition so much coveted in the world, and +so glittering in the distance, where, if men live to reach them, they +cannot live upon them. They may have all the appliances and means of +life, as these French _savants_ carried their tents to pitch upon the +summit of Mont Blanc; but the peak that looked so warm and glittering in +the sunshine, and of such a rosy hue in the evening rays, was too deadly +cold, and swept by blasts too fierce and cutting; they were glad to +relinquish the attempt, and come down. The view of the party a few hours +below the summit, was a sight of deep interest. So was the spectacle of +the immeasurable ridges and fields, gulfs and avalanches, heights and +depths, unfathomable chasms and impassable precipices, of ice and snow, +of such dazzling whiteness, of such endless extent, in such gigantic +masses. + + * * * * * + +From "Lectures on the Pilgrim's Progress." + +=_42._=. SIN DISTORTS THE JUDGMENT. + +On the other hand, those who do not love God, cannot expect to find in +his Word a system of truth that will please their own hearts. A sinful +heart can have no right views of God, and of course will have defective +views of his Word: for sin distorts the judgment, and overturns the +balance of the mind on all moral subjects, far more than even the best +of men are aware of. There is, there can be, no true reflection of God +or of his Word, from the bosom darkened with guilt, from the heart at +enmity with him. That man will always look at God through the medium of +his own selfishness, and at God's Word through the coloring of his own +wishes, prejudices, and fears. + +A heart that loves the Saviour, and rejoices in God as its Sovereign, +reflects back in calmness the perfect view of his character, which +it finds in his Word. Behold on the borders of a mountain lake, the +reflection of the scene above, received into the bosom of the lake +below! See that crag projecting, the wild flowers that, hang out from +it, and bend as if to gaze at their own forms in the water beneath. +Observe that plot of green grass above, that tree springing from the +cleft, and over all, the quiet sky reflected in all its softness and +depth from the lake's steady surface. Does it not seem as if there were +two heavens. How perfect the reflection! And just as perfect and clear, +and free from confusion and perplexity, is the reflection of God's +character, and of the truths of his Word, from the quietness of the +heart that loves the Saviour, and rejoices in his supreme and sovereign +glory. + +Now look again. The wind is on the lake, and drives forward its waters +in crested and impetuous waves, angry and turbulent. Where is that sweet +image? There is no change above: the sky is as clear, the crag projects +as boldly, the flowers look just as sweet in their unconscious +simplicity; but below, banks, trees, and skies are all mingled in +confusion. There is just as much confusion in every unholy mind's idea +of God and his blessed Word. God and his truth are always clear, always +the same, but the passions of men fill their own hearts with obscurity +and turbulence; their depravity is itself obscurity; and through all +this perplexity and wilful ignorance, they contend that God is just such +a being as they behold him, and that they are very good beings in his +sight. We have heard of a defect in the bodily vision, that represents +all objects upside down; that man would certainly be called insane, +who, under the influence of this misfortune, should so blind his +understanding, as to believe and assert that men walked on their heads, +and that the trees grew downwards. Now, is it not a much greater +insanity for men who in their hearts do not love God, and in their lives +perhaps insult and disobey him, to give credit to their own perverted +misrepresentations of him and of his Word? As long as men will continue +to look at God's truth through the medium of their own pride and +prejudice, so long will they have mistaken views of God and eternity, so +long will their own self righteousness look better to them for a resting +place, than the glorious righteousness of Him, who of God is made unto +us our Wisdom, Righteousness, Sanctification, and Redemption. + + * * * * * + + +=_Horace Bushnell, 1804-_= (Manual, p, 480.) + +From the "Sermons for the New Life." + +=_43._= UNCONSCIOUS INFLUENCE. + +The Bible calls the good man's life a light, and it is the nature of +light to flow out spontaneously in all directions, and fill the world +unconsciously with its beams. So the Christian shines, it would say, not +so much because he will, as because he is a luminous object. Not that +the active influence of Christians is made of no account in the figure, +but only that this symbol of light has its propriety in the fact +that their unconscious influence is the chief influence, end has the +precedence in its power over the world. And yet there are many who will +be ready to think that light is a very tame and feeble instrument, +because it is noiseless. An earthquake for example, is to them a much +more vigorous, and effective agency. Hear how it comes thundering +through the solid foundations of nature. It rocks a whole continent. The +noblest works of man--cities, monuments, and temples--are in a moment +levelled to the ground or swallowed down the opening gulfs of fire.... +But lot the light of the morning cease, and return no more: let the +hour of morning come, and bring with it no dawn; the outcries of a +horror-stricken world fill the air, and make, as it were, the darkness +audible. The beasts go wild and frantic at the loss of the sun. The +vegetable growths turn pale and die. A. chill creeps on, and frosty +winds begin to howl across the freezing earth. Colder and yet colder +is the night. The vital blood, at length, of all creatures stops, +congealed. Down goes the frost toward the earth's centre. The heart of +the sea is frozen; nay, the earthquakes are themselves frozen in, +under their fiery caverns. The very globe itself, too, and all the +fellow-planets that have lost their sun, are become mere balls of ice, +swinging silent in the darkness. Such is the light which revisits us in +the silence of the morning. It make no shock or scar. It would not wake +an infant in his cradle. And yet it perpetually new creates the world, +rescuing it each morning as a prey from night and chaos. So the +Christian is a light, even "the light of the world;" and we must not +think that, because he shines insensibly or silently, as a mere luminous +object, he is therefore powerless. The greatest powers are ever those +which lie back of the little stirs and commotions of nature: and I +verily believe that the insensible influences of good men are as much +more potent than what I have called their voluntary or active, as the +great silent powers of nature are of greater consequence than her little +disturbances and tumults. The law of human influence is deeper than many +suspect, and they lose sight of it altogether. The outward endeavors +made by good men or bad, to sway others, they call their influence; +whereas it is, in fact, but a fraction, and in most cases, but a very +small fraction, of the good or evil that flows out of their lives. + + * * * * * + +From "Christ and His Salvation." + +=_44._= THE TRUE REST OF THE CHRISTIAN. + +Once more the analogies of the sleep of Jesus suggest the Christian +right, and even duty, of those relaxations, which are necessary, at +times, to loosen the strain of life and restore the freshness of its +powers. Christ, as we have seen, actually tore himself away from +multitudes waiting to be healed, that he might refit himself by sleep. +He had a way, too, of retiring often to mountain solitudes and by-places +on the sea, partly for the resting of his exhausted energies. Sometimes +also he called his disciples off in this manner, saying, "come ye +yourselves apart into a desert place and rest awhile." Not that every +disciple is, of course, to retire into solitudes and desert places, when +he wants recreation. Jesus was obliged to seek such places to escape +the continual press of the crowd. In our day, a waking rest of travel, +change of scene, new society, is permitted, and when it is a privilege +assumed by faithful men, to recruit them for their works of duty they +have it by God's sanction, and even as a part of the sound economy of +life. Going after a turn of gaiety, or dissipation, not after Christian +rest, or going after rest only because you are wearied and worried by +selfish overdoings, troubled and spent by toils that serve an idol, is +a very different matter. The true blessing of rest is on you, only when +you carry a good mind with you, able to look back on works of industry +and faithfulness, suspended for a time, that you may do them more +effectually. Going in such a frame, you shall rest awhile, as none but +such can rest. Nature will dress herself in beauty to your eye, calm +thoughts will fan you with their cooling breath, and the joy of the Lord +will be strength to your wasted brain and body. Ah, there is no luxury +of indulgence to be compared with this true Christian rest! Money will +not buy it, shows and pleasures can not woo its approach, no conjuration +of art, or contrived gaiety, will compass it even for an hour: but it +settles, like dew, unsought, upon the faithful servant of duty, bathing +his weariness and recruiting his powers for a new engagement in his +calling. Go ye thus apart and rest awhile if God permits. + + * * * * * + + +=_Albert Taylor Bledsoe,[16] about 1809-_= + +From "The Theodicy." + +=_45._= MORAL EVIL CONSISTENT WITH THE HOLINESS OF GOD. + +The argument of the atheist assumes, as we have seen, that a Being of +infinite power could easily prevent sin, and cause holiness to exist. It +assumes that it is possible, that it implies no contradiction, to create +an intelligent moral agent, and place It beyond all liability to sin. +But this is a mistake. Almighty power itself, we may say with, the most +profound reverence, cannot create such a being, and place it beyond the +possibility of sinning. If it could not sin, there would be no merit, no +virtue, in its obedience. That is to say, it would not be a moral agent +at all, but a machine merely. The power to do wrong, as well as to do +right, is included in the very idea of a moral and accountable agent, +and no such agent can possibly exist without being invested with such +a power. To suppose such an agent to be created, and placed beyond all +liability to sin, is to suppose it to be what it is, and not what it is, +at one and the same time; it is to suppose a creature to be endowed with +a power to do wrong, and yet destitute of such a power, which is a plain +contradiction. Hence Omnipotence cannot create such a being, and deny to +it a power to do evil, or secure it against the possibility of sinning. + +[Footnote 16: The most prominent among the living philosophical writers +of the South: at present editor of the Southern Review.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Richard Fuller,[17] 1808-_= + +From a Sermon. + +=_46._= THE DESIRE OF ALL NATIONS SHALL COME. _Haggai_ ii. 7. + +Follow the adorable Jesus from scene to scene of ever deepening insult +and sorrow, tracked everywhere by spies hunting for the precious blood. +Behold his sacred face swollen with tears and stripes; and, last of all, +ascend Mount Calvary, and view there the amazing spectacle: earth and +hell gloating on the gashed form of the Lord of Glory; men and devils +glutting their malice in the agony of the Prince of Life; and all the +scattered rays of vengeance which would have consumed our guilty race, +converging and beating in focal intensity upon Him of whom the Eternal +twice exclaimed, in a voice from heaven, "This is my beloved Son, in +whom I am well pleased." After this, what are our emotions? Can we ever +be cold or faithless? No, my brethren, it is impossible, unless we +forget this Saviour, and lose sight of that cross on which he poured out +his soul for us. + +That is an affecting passage in Roman history which records the death +of Manlius. At night, and on the Capitol, fighting hand to hand, had he +repelled the Gauls, and saved the city, when all seemed lost. Afterwards +he was accused; but the Capitol towered in sight of the forum where he +was tried, and, as he was about to be condemned, he stretched out his +hands, and pointed, weeping, to that arena of his triumph. At this the +people burst into tears, and the judges could not pronounce sentence. +Again the trial proceeded, but was again defeated; nor could he be +convicted until they had removed him to a low spot, from which the +Capitol was invisible. And behold my brethren, what I am saying. While +the cross is in view, vainly will earth and sin seek to shake the +Christian's loyalty and devotion; one look at that purple monument of +a love which alone, and when all was dark and lost, interposed for our +rescue, and their efforts will be baffled. Low must we sink, and blotted +from our hearts must be the memory of that deed, before we can become +faithless to the Redeemer's cause, and perfidious to his glory. + +[Footnote 17: A Baptist divine of much distinction: a native of South +Carolina but long settled in Baltimore.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Henry Ward Beecher, 1813-_= (Manual, p. 480.) + +From the "Star Papers." + +=_47._= A PICTURE IN A COLLEGE AT OXFORD. + +I was much affected by a head of Christ. Not that it met my ideal of +that sacred front, but because it took me in a mood that clothed it with +life and reality. For one blessed moment I was with the Lord. I know +him. I loved him. My eyes I could not close for tears. My poor tongue +kept silence; but my heart spoke, and I loved and adored. The amazing +circuit of one's thoughts in so short a period is wonderful. They circle +round through all the past, and up through the whole future; and both +the past and future are the present, and are one. For one moment there +arose a keen anguish, like a shooting pang, for that which I was; and I +thought my heart would break that I could bring but only such a nature +to my Lord; but in a moment, as quick as the flash of sunlight which +follows the shadow of summer clouds across the fields, there seemed to +spring out upon me from my Master a certainty of love so great and noble +as utterly to consume my unworth, and leave me shining bright, as if it +were impossible for Christ to love a heart without making it pure and +beautiful by the resting on it of that illuming affection, just as the +sun bathes into beauty the homeliest object when he looks full upon it. + + * * * * * + +=_48._= FROST ON THE WINDOW. + +But the indefatigable night repairs the desolation. New pictures supply +the waste ones. New cathedrals there are, new forests, fringed and +blossoming, new sceneries, and new races of extinct animals. We are rich +every morning, and poor every noon. One day with us measures the space +of two hundred years in kingdoms--a hundred years to build up, and a +hundred years to decay and destroy; twelve hours to overspread the +evanescent pane with glorious beauty, and twelve to extract and +dissipate the pictures.... Shall we not reverently and rejoicingly +behold in these morning pictures, wrought without color, and kissed upon +the window by the cold lips of Winter, another instance of that Divine +Beneficence of beauty which suffuses the heavens? + + * * * * * + +From "Lectures to Young Men." + +=_49._= NATURE, DESIGNED FOR OUR ENJOYMENT. + +The _necessity_ of amusement is admitted on all hands. There is an +appetite of the eye, of the ear, and of every sense, for which God has +provided the material. Gaiety of every degree, this side of puerile +levity, is wholesome to the body, to the mind, and to the morals. Nature +is a vast repository of manly enjoyments. The magnitude of God's works +is not less admirable than its exhilarating beauty. The rudest forms +have something of beauty; the ruggedest strength is graced with some +charm; the very pins, and rivets, and clasps of nature, are attractive +by qualities of beauty, more than is necessary for mere utility. The sun +could go down without gorgeous clouds; evening could advance without its +evanescent brilliance; trees might have flourished without symmetry; +flowers have existed without odor, and fruit without flavor. When I have +journeyed through forests, where ten thousand shrubs and vines exist +without apparent use; through prairies, whose undulations exhibit sheets +of flowers innumerable, and absolutely dazzling the eye with their +prodigality of beauty--beauty, not a tithe of which is ever seen by +man--I have said, it is plain that God is himself passionately fond of +beauty, and the _earth_ is his garden, as an _acre_ is man's. God has +made us like Himself, to be pleased by the universal beauty of the +world. He has made provision in nature, in society, and in the family, +for amusement and exhilaration enough to fill the heart with the +perpetual sunshine of delight. + +Upon this broad earth, purfled with flowers, scented with odors, +brilliant in colors, vocal with echoing and re-echoing melody, I take +my stand against all demoralizing pleasure. Is it not enough that our +Father's house is so full of dear delights, that we must wander prodigal +to the swine-herd for husks, and to the slough for drink?--when the +trees of God's heritage bend over our head and solicit our hand to pluck +the golden fruitage, must we still go in search of the apples of Sodom, +outside fair and inside ashes. + +Men shall crowd to the circus to hear clowns, and see rare feats of +horsemanship; but a bird may poise beneath the very sun, or flying +downward, swoop from the high heaven; then flit with graceful ease +hither and thither, pouring liquid song as if it were a perennial +fountain of sound--no man cares for that. + +Upon the stage of life, the vastest tragedies are performing in every +act; nations pitching headlong to their final catastrophe; others, +raising their youthful forms to begin the drama of existence. The world +of society is as full of exciting interest, as nature is full of beauty. +The great dramatic throng of life is bustling along--the wise, the fool, +the clown, the miser, the bereaved, the broken-hearted. Life mingles +before us smiles and tears, sighs and laughter, joy and gloom, as the +spring mingles the winter-storm and summer-sunshine. To this vast +Theatre which God hath builded, where stranger plays are seen than ever +author writ, man seldom cares to come. When God dramatizes, when nations +act, or all the human kind conspire to educe the vast catastrophe, men +sleep and snore, and let the busy scene go on, unlocked, unthought +upon.... It is my object then, not to withdraw the young from pleasure, +but from unworthy pleasures; not to lessen their enjoyments, but to +increase them, by rejecting the counterfeit and the vile. + + * * * * * + +From "Norwood." + +=_50._= LIFE IN THE COUNTRY. + +It was this union of seclusion and publicity that made Norwood a place +of favorite resort, through the summer, of artists, of languid scholars, +and of persons of quiet tastes. There was company for all that shunned +solitude, and solitude for all that were weary of company. Each house +was secluded from its neighbor. Yards and gardens full of trees and +shrubbery, the streets lined with venerable trees, gave the town at a +little distance the appearance of having been built in an orchard or a +forest-park. A few steps and you could be alone--a few steps too would +bring you among crowds. Where else could one watch the gentle conflict +between sounds and silence with such dreamy joy?--or make idleness seem +so nearly like meditation?--or more nimbly chase the dreams of night +with even brighter day-dreams, wondering every day what has become of +the day before, and each week where the week has gone, and in autumn +what has become of the summer, that trod so noiselessly that none knew +how swift were its footsteps! The town filled by July, and was not empty +again till late October. + +There are but two perfect months in our year--June and October. People +from the city usually arrange to miss both. June is the month of +gorgeous greens; October, the month of all colors. June has the full +beauty of youth; October has the splendor of ripeness. Both of them are +out-of-door months. If the year has anything to tell you, listen now! If +these months teach the heart nothing, one may well shut up the book of +the year. + + * * * * * + +From "The Life of Jesus the Christ." + +=_51._= THE CONCEPTION OF ANGELS, SUPERHUMAN. + +The angels of the oldest records are like the angels of the latest. The +Hebrew thought had moved through a vast arc of the infinite cycle of +truth, between the days when Abraham came from Ur of Chaldea, and the +times of our Lord's stay on earth. But there is no development in angels +of later over those of an earlier date. They were as beautiful, as +spiritual, as pure and noble, at the beginning as at the close of the +old dispensation. Can such creatures, transcending earthly experience, +and far out-running any thing in the life of man, be creations of the +rude ages of the human understanding? We could not imagine the Advent +stripped of its angelic lore. The dawn without a twilight, the sun +without clouds of silver and gold, the morning on the fields without +dew-diamonds,--but not the Saviour without his angels? They shine within +the Temple, they bear to the matchless mother a message which would have +been a disgrace from mortal lips, but which from theirs fell upon her +as pure as dew-drops upon the lilies of the plain of Esdraelon. They +communed with the Saviour in his glory of transfiguration, sustained +him in the anguish of the garden, watched at the tomb; and as they had +thronged the earth at his coming, so they seem to have hovered in the +air in multitudes at the hour of his ascension. Beautiful as they seem, +they are never mere poetic adornments. The occasions of their appearing +are grand. The reasons are weighty. Their demeanor suggests and befits +the highest conception of superior beings. These are the very elements +that a rude age could not fashion. Could a sensuous age invent an order +of beings, which, touching the earth from a heavenly height on its most +momentous occasions, could still, after ages of culture had refined +the human taste and moral appreciation, remain ineffably superior in +delicacy, in pure spirituality, to the demands of criticism? Their very +coming and going is not with earthly movement. They suddenly are seen +in the air as one sees white clouds round out from the blue sky, in +a summer's day, that melt back even while one looks upon them. They +vibrate between the visible and the invisible. They come without motion. +They go without flight. They dawn and disappear. Their words are few, +but the Advent Chorus yet is sounding its music through the world. + + * * * * * + + +=_John McClintock,[18] 1814-1870._= + +From a Sermon on "The Ground of Man's Love to God." + +=_52._= THE CHRISTIAN THE ONLY TRUE LOVER OF NATURE. + +It is not too much to say that the only _true_ lover of nature, is he +that loves God in Christ. It is as with one standing in one of those +caves of unknown beauty of which travellers tell us. While it is dark, +nothing can be seen but the abyss, or at most, a faint glimmer of +ill-defined forms. But flash into it the light of a single torch, and +myriad splendors crowd upon the gaze of the beholder. He sees long-drawn +colonnades, sparkling with gems; chambers of beauty and glory open on +every hand, flashing back the light a thousand fold increased, and in +countless varied hues. So the sense of God's love in the heart gives an +eye for nature, and supplies the torch to illuminate its recesses of +beauty. For the ear that can hear them, ten thousand voices speak, and +all in harmony, the name of God! The sun, rolling in his majesty,-- + + "And with his tread, of thunder force, + Fulfilling his appointed course,"-- + +is but a faint and feeble image of the great central Light of the +universe. The spheres of heaven, in the perpetual harmony of their +unsleeping motion, swell the praise of God; the earth, radiant with +beauty, and smiling in joy, proclaims its Maker's love; and the +ocean,--that + + "Glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form + Glasses itself in tempests,"-- + +as it murmurs on the shore, or foams with its broad billows over the +deep, declares its God; and even the tempests, that, in their "rising +wrath, sweep sea and sky," still utter the name of Him who rides upon +the whirlwind and directs the storm. In a word, the whole universe is +but a temple, with God for its deity, and the redeemed _man_ for its +worshipper. + +[Footnote 18: Distinguished among the Methodist clergy for eloquence and +learning; a native of Pennsylvania.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Noah Porter,[19] 1811-_= + +From "The Science of Nature versus the Science of Man." + +=_53._= SCIENCE MAGNIFIES GOD. + +We contend at present only for the position that we cannot have a +science of nature which does not regard the spirit of man as a part of +nature. But is this all? Do man and nature exhaust the possibilities of +being? We cannot answer this question here. But we find suggestions from +the spectrum and the spectroscope which may be worth our heeding. The +materials with which we have to do in their most brilliant scientific +theories seem at first to overwhelm us with their vastness and +complexity. The hulks are so enormous, the forces are so mighty, the +laws are so wide-sweeping, and at times so pitiless, the distances are +so over-mastering, even the uses and beauties are so bewildering, that +we bow in mute and almost abject submission to the incomprehensible all; +of which we hesitate to affirm aught, except what has been manifest to +our observant senses and connected by our inseparable associations. We +forget what our overmastering thought has done in subjecting this +universe to its interpretations. Its vast distances have been +annihilated, for we have connected the distant with the near by the one +pervading force which Newton divined. We have analyzed the flame that +burns in our lamp, and the flame that burns in the sun, by the same +instrument,--connecting by a common affinity, at the same instant and +under the same eye, two agents, the farthest removed in place and the +most subtle in essence. As we have overcome distances, so we have +conquered time, reading the story of antecedent cycles with a confidence +equal to that with which we forecast the future ages. The philosopher +who penetrates the distant portions of the universe by the +_omnipresence_ of his scientific generalizations, who reads the secret +of the sun by the glance of his penetrating eye, has little occasion to +deny that all its forces may be mastered by a single all-knowing and +_omnipresent_ Spirit, and that its secrets can be read by one all-seeing +eye. The scientist who evolves the past in his confident thought, under +a few grand titles of generalized forces and relations, and who develops +and almost gives law to the future by his faith in the persistence of +force, has little reason to question the existence of an intellect +capable of deeper insight and larger foresight than his own, which can +grasp all the past and the future by an all-comprehending intelligence, +and can control its wants by a personal energy that is softened to +personal tenderness and love. + +[Footnote 19: A Congregational divine, born in Connecticut, long +Professor of Metaphysics in Yale College, and writer of many critical +Essays and Reviews. His treatise on "The Human Intellect," is the most +elaborate American work upon Psychology.] + + * * * * * + + +=_William Henry Milburn,[20] 1823-_= + +From "Lectures." + +=_54._= THE PIONEER PREACHERS OF THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. + +The spoken eloquence of New England is for the most part from +manuscript. Her first settlers brought old-world forms, and fashions +from the old world, with them. Their preachers were set an appalling +distance from their congregations. Between the pulpit, perched far up +toward the ceiling, and the seats, was an awful abysmal depth. Above the +lofty desk was dimly seen the white cravat, and above that the head +of the preacher. His eye was averted and fastened downward upon his +manuscript, and his discourse, or exercitation, or whatever it might be, +was delivered in a monotonous, regular cadence, probably relieved +from time to time by some quaint blunder, the result of indistinct +penmanship, or dim religious light. It was not this preacher's business +to arouse his audience. The theory of worship of the period was +opposed to that. This people did not wish excitement, or stimulus, or +astonishment, or agitation. They simply desired information; they wished +to be instructed; to have their judgment informed, or their reason +enlightened. Thus the preacher might safely remain perched up in his far +distant unimpassioned eyrie. + +But how would such a style of eloquence--if, indeed, truth will permit +the name of eloquence to be applied to the reading of matter from a +preconcerted manuscript--how would such a style of delivery be received +out in the wild West? Place your textual speaker out in the backwoods, +on the stump, where a surging tide of humanity streams strongly around +him, where the people press up toward him on every side, their keen +eyes intently perusing his to see if he be in real earnest,--"dead in +earnest"--and where, as with a thousand darts, their contemptuous scorn +would pierce him through if he were found playing a false game, trying +to pump up tears by mere acting, or arousing an excitement without +feeling it. Would such a style of oratory succeed there? By no means. +The place is different; the hearers are different; the time, the thing +required, all the circumstances, are totally different. Here, in the +vast unwalled church of nature, with the leafy tree-tops for a ceiling, +their massy stems for columns; with the endless mysterious cadences of +the forest for a choir; with the distant or nearer music and murmur of +streams, and the ever-returning voice of birds, sounding in their ears +for the made-up music of a picked band of exclusive singers: here stand +men whose ears are trained to catch the faintest foot-fall of the +distant deer, or the rustle of their antlers against branch or bough of +the forest track--whose eyes are skilled to discern the trail of savages +who leave scarce a track behind them; and who will follow upon +that trail--utterly invisible to the untrained eye--as surely as a +blood-hound follows the scent, ten or twenty, or a hundred miles, whose +eye and hand are so well practised that they can drive a nail, or snuff +a candle, with the long, heavy western rifle. Such men, educated for +years, or even generations, in that hard school of necessity, where +every one's hand and wood-man's skill must keep his head; where +incessant pressing necessities required ever a prompt and sufficient +answer in deeds; and where words needed to be but few, and those +the plainest and directest, required no delay nor preparation, nor +oratorical coquetting, nor elaborate preliminary scribble; no hesitation +nor doubts in deeds; no circumlocution in words. To restrain, influence, +direct, govern, such a surging sea of life as this, required something +very different from a written address. + +[Footnote 20: Born in Philadelphia; a Methodist divine, long afflicted +with blindness; but widely popular as a preacher and lecturer.] + + * * * * * + + + +ORATORS, AND LEGAL AND POLITICAL WRITERS, OF THE ERA OF THE REVOLUTION. + + +=_John Dickinson, 1732-1808._= (Manual, p. 486.) + +From "The Address of Congress to the States." May 26, 1779. + +=_55._= THE ASPECT OF THE WAR. + +To our constituents we submit the propriety and purity of our +intentions, well knowing they will not forget that we lay no burdens +upon them but those in which we participate with them--a happy sympathy, +that pervades societies formed on the basis of equal liberty. Many +cares, many labors, and may we not add, reproaches, are peculiar to us. +These are the emoluments of our unsolicited stations; and with these we +are content, if YOU approve our conduct. If you do not, we shall return +to our private condition, with no other regret than that which will +arise from our not having served you as acceptably and essentially as +we wished and strove to do, though as cheerfully and faithfully as we +could. + +Think not we despair of the commonwealth, or endeavor to shrink from +opposing difficulties. No! Your cause is too good, your objects too +sacred, to be relinquished. We tell you truths because you are freemen, +who can bear to hear them, and may profit by them; and when they reach +your enemies, we fear not the consequences, because we are not ignorant +of their resources or our own. Let your good sense decide upon the +comparison.... + +We well remember what you said at the commencement of this war. You +saw the immense difference between your circumstances and those of your +enemies, and you knew the quarrel must decide on no less than your +lives, liberties, and estates. All these you greatly put to every +hazard, resolving rather to die freemen than to live slaves; and justice +will oblige the impartial world to confess you have uniformly acted on +the same generous principle. Persevere, and you insure peace, freedom, +safety, glory, sovereignty, and felicity to yourselves, your children, +and your children's children. + +Encouraged by favors already received from Infinite Goodness, gratefully +acknowledging them, earnestly imploring their continuance, constantly +endeavoring to draw them down on your heads by an amendment of your +lives, and a conformity to the Divine will, humbly confiding in the +protection so often and wonderfully experienced, vigorously employ the +means placed by Providence in your hands for completing your labors. + +Fill up your battalions--be prepared in every part to repel the +incursions of your enemies--place your several quotas in the continental +treasury--lend money for public uses--sink the emissions of your +respective States--provide effectually for expediting the conveyance of +supplies for your armies and fleets, and for your allies--prevent the +produce of the country from being monopolized--effectually superintend +the behavior of public officers--diligently promote piety, virtue, +brotherly love, learning, frugality, and moderation--and may you be +approved before Almighty God, worthy of those blessings we devoutly wish +you to enjoy. + + * * * * * + + +=_John Adams, 1735-1826._= (Manual, p. 486.) + +From his "Life and Works." + +=_56._= CHARACTER OF JAMES OTIS. + +JAMES OTIS, of Boston, sprang from families among the earliest of the +planters of the Colonies, and the most respectable in rank, while the +word _rank_, and the idea annexed to it, were tolerated in America. He +was a gentleman of general science and extensive literature. He had been +an indefatigable student during the whole course of his education in +college and at the bar. He was well versed in Greek and Roman history, +philosophy, oratory, poetry, and mythology. His classical studies had +been unusually ardent, and his acquisitions uncommonly great.... It +was a maxim which he inculcated on his pupils, as his patron in the +profession, Mr. Gridley, had done before him, "_that a lawyer ought +never to be without a volume of natural or public law, or moral +philosophy, on his table or in his pocket_." In the history, the common +law, and statute laws, of England, he had no superior, at least in +Boston. + +Thus qualified to resist the system of usurpation and despotism, +meditated by the British ministry, under the auspices of the Earl +of Bute, Mr. Otis resigned his commission from the crown, as +Advocate-General,--an office very lucrative at that time, and a sure +road to the highest favors of government in America,--and engaged in +the cause of his country without fee or reward. His argument, speech, +discourse, oration, harangue,--call it by which name you will, was the +most impressive upon his crowded audience of any that I ever heard +before or since, excepting only many speeches by himself in Faneuil +Hall, and in the House of Representatives, which he made from time to +time for ten years afterwards. There were no stenographers in those +days. Speeches were not printed; and all that was not remembered, like +the harangues of Indian orators, was lost in air. Who, at the distance +of fifty-seven years, would attempt, upon memory, to give even a sketch +of it? Some of the heads are remembered, out of which Livy or Sallust +would not scruple to compose an oration for history. I shall not essay +an analysis or a sketch of it at present. I shall only say, and I do say +in the most solemn manner, that Mr. Otis's oration against "_writs of +assistance_" breathed into this nation the breath of life. + + * * * * * + +From the "Thoughts on Government." + +=_57._= REQUISITES OF A GOOD GOVERNMENT. + +The dignity and stability of government in all its branches, the morals +of the people, and every blessing of society, depend so much upon an +upright and skilful administration of justice, that the judicial power +ought to be distinct from both the legislative and executive, and +independent upon both, that so it may be a check upon both, as both +should be checks upon that. + +... Laws for the liberal education of youth, especially of the lower +class of people, are so extremely wise and useful, that, to a humane +and generous mind, no expense for this purpose would be thought +extravagant.... You and I, my dear friend, have been sent into life at a +time when the greatest lawgivers of antiquity would have wished to live. +How few of the human race have ever enjoyed an opportunity of making +an election of government, more than of air, soil, or climate, for +themselves or their children! When, before the present epocha, had +three millions of people full power and a fair opportunity, to form +and establish the wisest and happiest government that human wisdom can +contrive? + + * * * * * + + +=_Patrick Henry, 1736-1799._= (Manual, p. 484.) + +From "Speech in the Convention of Virginia," 1775. + +=_58._= THE NECESSITY OF THE WAR. + +I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of +experience. I know of no way of judging of the future but by the past. +And judging by the past, I wish to know what has been the conduct of +the British ministry for the last ten years to justify those hopes with +which gentlemen have been pleased to solace themselves and the house. +Is it that insidious smile with which our petition has been lately +received. Trust it not, Sir, it will prove a snare to your feet. Suffer +not yourselves to be betrayed with a kiss. Ask yourselves how this +gracious reception of our petition comports with those warlike +preparations which cover our waters and darken our land. Are fleets and +armies necessary to a work of love and reconciliation? Have we shown +ourselves so unwilling to be reconciled that force must be called in +to win back our love? Let us not deceive ourselves, sir. These are the +implements of war, and subjugation--the last arguments to which kings +resort. There is no longer any room for hope. If we wish to be free, if +we mean to preserve inviolate those inestimable privileges for which we +have been so long contending, if we mean not basely to abandon the +noble struggle in which we have been so long engaged, and which we have +pledged ourselves never to abandon until the glorious object of our +contest is obtained, we must fight, I repeat it, sir, we must fight. An +appeal to arms and to the God of Hosts is all that is left us. + +They tell us, sir, that we are weak; unable to cope with so formidable +an adversary. But when shall we be stronger? Will it be the next week, +or the next year? Will it be when we are totally disarmed, and when +a British guard shall be stationed in every house? Shall we gather +strength by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of +effectual resistance, by lying supinely on our backs, and hugging the +delusive phantom of hope, until our enemies shall have bound us hand and +foot? + +Sir, we are not weak, if we make a proper use of those means which the +God of nature hath placed in our power. Three millions of people, armed +in the holy cause of liberty, and in such a country as that which we +possess, are invincible by any force which our enemy can send against +us. Besides, sir, we shall not fight our battles alone. There is a just +God, who presides over the destinies of nations, and who will raise up +friends to fight our battles for us. The battle, sir, is not to the +strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave. Besides, +sir, we have no election. If we were base enough to desire it, it is +now too late to retire from the contest. There is no retreat but in +submission and slavery. Our chains are forged. Their clanking may be +heard on the plains of Boston. The war is inevitable--and let it come! I +repeat it, sir, let it come! + +It is vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, Peace, +peace; but there is no peace. The war is actually begun. The next +gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of +resounding arms. Our brethren are already in the field. Why stand we +here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life +so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains +and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may +take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death! + + * * * * * + +From a Speech on the Ratification of the Federal Constitution. + +=_59._= NECESSITY OF AMENDMENT BEFORE ADOPTION. + +I exhort gentlemen to think seriously, before they ratify this +constitution, and to indulge a salutary doubt of their being able to +succeed in any effort they may make to get amendments after adoption. +With respect to that part of the proposal, which says that every power +not specially granted to Congress remains with the people; it must be +previous to adoption, or it will involve this country in inevitable +destruction. To talk of it, as a thing to be subsequently obtained, +and not as one of your unalienable rights, is leaving it to the casual +opinion of the Congress who shall take up the consideration of that most +important right. They will not reason with you about the effect of +this constitution. They will not take the opinion of this committee +concerning its operation. They will construe it even as they please. +If you place it subsequently, let me ask the consequences? Among ten +thousand implied powers which they may assume, their may, if we be +engaged in war, liberate every one of your slaves if they please. And +this must and will be done by men, a majority of whom have not a common +interest with you. They will, therefore, have no feeling for _your_ +interests.... Is it not worth while to turn your eyes for a moment from +subsequent amendments, to the real situation of your country? You may +have a union, but can you have a lasting union in these circumstances? +It will be in vain to expect it. But if you agree to previous +amendments, you will have union, firm, solid, permanent. I cannot +conclude without saying, that I shall have nothing to do with it, if +subsequent amendments be determined upon. Oppressions will be carried on +as radically by the majority when adjustments and accommodations will +be held up. I say, I conceive it my duty, if this government be adopted +before it is amended, to go home. I shall act as I think my duty +requires. Every other gentleman will do the same. Previous amendments, +in my opinion, are necessary to procure peace and tranquility. I fear, +if they be not agreed to, every movement and operation of government +will cease, and how long that baneful thing, _civil discord_, will stay +from this country, God only knows. When men are free from restraint, +how long will you suspend their fury? The interval between this and +bloodshed is but a moment. The licentious and wicked of the community +will seize with avidity every thing you hold. In this unhappy situation, +what is to be done? It surpasses my stock of wisdom to determine. If you +will, in the language of freemen, stipulate that there are rights which +no man under heaven can take from you, you shall have me going along +with you; but not otherwise. + + * * * * * + + +=_John Rutledge, 1739-1800._= (Manual, p. 484.) + +From "Speech on the Judiciary Establishment." + +=_60._= AN INDEPENDENT JUDICIARY THE SAFEGUARD OF LIBERTY. + +While this shield remains to the states, it will be difficult to +dissolve the ties which knit and bind them together. As long as this +buckler remains to the people, they cannot be liable to much, or +permanent oppression. The government may be administered with violence, +offices may be bestowed exclusively upon those who have no other merit +than that of carrying votes at elections,--the commerce of our country +may be depressed by nonsensical theories, and public credit may suffer +from bad intentions; but so long as we have an independent judiciary, +the great interests of the people will be safe. Neither the president, +nor the legislature, can violate their constitutional rights. Any +such attempt would be checked by the judges, who are designed by the +constitution to keep the different branches of the government within +the spheres of their respective orbits, and say thus far shall you +legislate, and no further. Leave to the people an independent judiciary, +and they will prove that man is capable of governing himself,--they will +be saved from what has been the fate of all other republics, and they +will disprove the position that governments of a republican form cannot +endure. + +We are asked by the gentleman from Virginia, if the people want judges +to protect them? Yes, sir, in popular governments constitutional checks +are necessary for their preservation; the people want to be protected +against themselves; no man is so absurd as to propose the people +collectedly will consent to the prostration of their liberties; but if +they be not shielded by some constitutional checks, they will suffer +them to be destroyed--to be destroyed by demagogues, who at the time +they are soothing and cajoling the people, with bland and captivating +speeches, are forging chains for them; demagogues who carry, daggers in +their hearts, and seductive smiles in their hypocritical faces, who are +dooming the people to despotism, when they profess to be exclusively the +friends of the people; against such designs and such artifices, were our +constitutional checks made, to preserve the people of this country. + + * * * * * + + +=_Thomas Jefferson, 1743-1826._= (Manual, pp. 486, 490.) + +From his "Inaugural Address", March 4th, 1801. + +=_61._= ESSENTIAL PRINCIPLES OF AMERICAN GOVERNMENT. + +Kindly separated by nature and a wide ocean from the exterminating havoc +of one quarter of the globe, too high-minded to endure the degradations +of the others, possessing a chosen country with room enough for our +descendants to the hundredth and thousandth generation, entertaining a +due sense of our equal right to the use of our own faculties, to the +acquisitions of our industry, to honor and confidence from our fellow +citizens, resulting not from birth but from our actions and their sense +of them, enlightened by a benign religion, professed, indeed, and +practised, in various forms, yet all of them including honesty, truth, +temperance, gratitude, and the love of man; acknowledging and adoring +an overruling Providence, which by all its dispensations proves that +it delights in the happiness of man here and his greater happiness +hereafter; with all these blessings, what more is necessary to make us +a happy and prosperous people? Still one thing more, fellow-citizens, a +wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one +another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own +pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth +of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, +and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities. + +About to enter, fellow-citizens, on the exercise of duties which +comprehend everything dear and valuable to you, it is proper that +you should understand what I deem the essential principles of +our government, and consequently those which ought to shape its +administration. I will compress them within the narrowest compass they +will bear, stating the general principle, but not all its limitations. +Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion, +religious, or political; peace, commerce, and honest friendship, with +all nations, entangling alliances with none; the support of the state +governments in all their rights, as the most competent administrations +for our domestic concerns and the surest bulwarks against +anti-republican tendencies; the preservation of the general government +in its whole constitutional vigor, as the sheet anchor of our peace at +home and safety abroad; a jealous care of the right of election by the +people, a mild and safe corrective of abuses which are lopped by the +sword of revolution where peaceable remedies are unprovided; absolute +acquiescence in the decisions of the majority, the vital, principle +of republics, from which there is no appeal but to force, the vital +principle and immediate parent of despotism; a well disciplined militia, +our best reliance in peace and for the first moments of war, till +regulars may relieve them; the supremacy of the civil over the military +authority; economy in the public expense, that labor may be lightly +burdened; the honest payment of our debts send sacred preservation of +the public faith; encouragement of agriculture, and of commerce as its +handmaid; the diffusion of information and the arraignment of all abuses +at the bar of public reason; freedom of religion; freedom of the press; +freedom of person under the protection of the _habeas corpus_; and +trial by juries impartially selected; these principles form the bright +constellation which has gone before us, and guided our steps through an +age of revolution and reformation. The wisdom of our sages and the blood +of our heroes have been devoted to their attainment. They should be +the creed of our political faith, the text of civil instruction, the +touchstone by which to try the services of those we trust; and should we +wander from them in moments of error or alarm, let us hasten to retrace +our steps and to regain the road which alone leads to peace, liberty, +and safety. + + * * * * * + +=_62._= CHARACTER OF WASHINGTON. + +His mind was great and powerful, without being of the very first order; +his penetration strong, though not so acute as a Newton, Bacon, or +Locke; and as far as he saw no judgment was ever sounder. It was slow in +operation, being little aided by invention or imagination, but sure in +conclusion. Hence the common remark of his officers, of the advantage he +derived from councils of war, where hearing all suggestions, he selected +whatever was best; and certainly no General ever planned his battles +more judiciously. But if deranged during the course of the action, if +any member of his plan was dislocated by sudden circumstances, he was +slow in re-adjustment. The consequence was that he often failed in the +field, and rarely against an enemy in station, as at Boston and York. +He was incapable of fear, meeting personal dangers with the calmest +unconcern. Perhaps the strongest feature in his character was prudence; +never acting until every circumstance, every consideration was maturely +weighed; refraining if he saw a doubt, but when once decided, going +through with his purpose, whatever obstacles opposed. His integrity was +most pure, his justice the most inflexible I have ever known; no motives +of interest or consanguinity, of friendship or hatred, being able to +bias his decision. He was indeed in every sense of the words, a wise, +a good, and a great man. His temper was naturally irritable, and high +toned; but reflection and resolution had obtained a firm and habitual +ascendancy over it. If ever however it broke its bonds, he was most +tremendous in his wrath. In his expenses he was honorable, but exact; +liberal in contributions to whatever promised utility, but frowning and +unyielding on all visionary projects, and all unworthy calls on his +charity. His heart was not warm in its affections; but he exactly +calculated every man's value, and gave him a solid esteem proportioned +to it. His person, you know, was fine, his stature exactly what one +would wish, his deportment easy, erect, and noble; the best horseman of +his age, and the most graceful figure that could be seen on horseback. +Although in the circle of his friends, where he might be unreserved with +safety, he took a free share in conversation, his colloquial talents +were not above mediocrity, possessing neither copiousness of ideas, nor +fluency of words. In public, when called on for a sudden opinion, he was +unready, short, and embarrassed. Yet he wrote readily, rather diffusely, +in an easy and correct style. This he had acquired by conversation with +the world, for his education was merely reading, writing, and common +arithmetic, to which he added surveying at a later day. His time was +employed in action chiefly, reading little, and that only in agriculture +and English history. His correspondence became necessarily extensive, +and with journalizing his agricultural proceedings, occupied most of his +leisure hours within doors. On the whole, his character was in its mass, +perfect; in nothing, bad; in few points indifferent; and it may truly be +said that never did nature and fortune combine more perfectly to make a +man great. + + * * * * * + +From the "Notes on Virginia." + +=_63._= GEOGRAPHICAL LIMITS OF THE ELEPHANT AND THE MAMMOTH. 1781. + +From the thirtieth degree of south latitude to the thirtieth of north +are nearly the limits which nature has fixed for the existence +and multiplication of the elephant known to us. Proceeding thence +northwardly to thirty-six and a half degrees, we enter those assigned +to the mammoth. The farther we advance north, the more their vestiges +multiply, as far as the earth has been explored in that direction; and +it is as probable as otherwise, that this progression continues to the +pole itself, if land extends so far. The centre of the frozen zone, +then, may be the acme of their vigor, as that of the torrid is of the +elephant. Thus nature seems to have drawn a belt of separation between +these two tremendous animals, whose breadth indeed is not precisely +known, though at present we may suppose it to be about six and a half +degrees of latitude; to have assigned to the elephant the regions +south of these confines, and those north to the mammoth, founding the +constitution of the one in her extreme of heat, and that of the other +in the extreme of cold. When the Creator has therefore separated their +nature as far as the extent of the scale of animal life allowed to this +planet would permit, it seems perverse to declare it the same, from a +partial resemblance of their tusks and bones. But to whatever animal we +ascribe these remains, it is certain such a one has existed in America, +and that it has been the largest of all terrestrial beings. + + * * * * * + +=64.= THE UNHAPPY EFFECTS OF SLAVERY. + +These must doubtless be an unhappy influence on the manners of our +people produced by the existence of slavery among us.... With the morals +of the people, their industry also is destroyed. For in a warm climate +no man will labor for himself who can make another labor for him. This +is so true, that of the proprietors of slaves a very small proportion +indeed are ever seen to labor. And can the liberties, of a nation be +thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis--a conviction +in the minds of the people that they are the gift of God? that they are +not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed, I tremble for my country +when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever; +that considering numbers, nature, and natural means only, a revolution +of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation, is among possible +events; that it may become probable by supernatural interference. +The Almighty has no attribute which can take sides with us in such +a contest. But it is impossible to be temperate, and to pursue this +subject through the various considerations of policy, of morals, of +history, natural and civil. We must be contented to hope they will force +their way into every one's mind. I think a change already perceptible +since the origin of the present revolution. The spirit of the master +is abating, that of the slave is rising from the dust, his condition +mollifying, the way I hope preparing, under the auspices of Heaven, for +a total emancipation. + + * * * * * + + +=_John Jay, 1745-1829._= (Manual, pp. 484, 486.) + +From the "Address from the Convention." December 23, 1776. + +=_65._= AN APPEAL TO ARMS. + +Rouse, brave citizens! Do your duty like men; and be persuaded that +Divine Providence will not permit this western world to be involved in +the horrors of slavery. Consider that, from the earliest ages of the +world, religion, liberty, and reason have been bending their course +towards the setting sun. The holy Gospels are yet to be preached to +these western regions; and we have the highest reason to believe that +the Almighty will not suffer slavery and the gospel to go hand in hand. +It cannot, it will not be. + +But if there be any among us dead to all sense of honor and love +of their country; if deaf to all the calls of liberty, virtue, and +religion; if forgetful of the magnanimity of their ancestors, and the +happiness of their children; if neither the examples nor the success of +other nations, the dictates of reason and of nature, or the great duties +they owe to their God, themselves, and their posterity have any effect +upon them; if neither the injuries they have received, the prize they +are contending for, the future blessings or curses of their children, +the applause or the reproach of all mankind, the approbation or +displeasure of the great Judge, or the happiness or misery consequent +upon their conduct, in this and a future state can move them,--then let +them be assured that they deserve to be slaves, and are entitled to +nothing but anguish and tribulation.... Let them forget every duty, +human and divine, remember not that they have children, and beware how +they call to mind the justice of the Supreme Being. + + * * * * * + + +=_Alexander Hamilton, 1757-1804._= (Manual, pp. 484, 486.) + +From "Vindication of the Funding System." + +=_66._= CHARACTER OF THE DEBT. + +A person who, unacquainted with the fact, should learn the history +of our debt from the declamations with which certain newspapers are +perpetually charged, would be led to suppose that it is the mere +creature of the _present_ government, for the purpose of burthening the +people with taxes, and producing an artificial and corrupt influence +over them; he would, at least, take it for granted that it had been +contracted in the pursuit of some wanton or vain project of ambition or +glory; he would scarcely be able to conceive that every part of it was +the relict of a war which had given independence, and preserved liberty +to the country; that the present government found it as it is, in point +of magnitude (except as to the diminutions made by itself), and has done +nothing more than to bring under a regular regimen and provision, what +was before a scattered and heterogeneous mass. + +And yet this is the simple and exact state of the business. The whole of +the debt embraced by the provisions of the funding system, consisted of +the unextinguished principal and arrears of interest, of the debt which +had been contracted by the United States in the course of the late war +with Great Britain, and which remained uncancelled, and the principal +and arrears of interest of the separate debts of the respective States +contracted during the same period, which remained, _outstanding, and +unsatisfied, relating to services and supplies for carrying on the war_. +Nothing more was done by that system, than to incorporate these two +species of debt into the mass, and to make for the whole, one general, +comprehensive provision. There is therefore, no arithmetic, no logic, +by which it can be shown that the funding system has augmented the +aggregate debt of the country. The sum total is manifestly the same; +though the parts which were before divided are now united. There is, +consequently, no color for an assertion, that the system in question +either created any _new_ debt, or made any addition to the _old_. + +And it follows, that the collective burthen upon the people of the +United States must have been as great _without_ as _with_ the union of +the different portions and descriptions of the debt. The only difference +can be, that without it that burthen would have been otherwise +distributed, and would have fallen with unequal weight, instead of being +equally borne as it now is. + +These conclusions which have been drawn respecting the non-increase of +the debt, proceed upon the presumption that every part of the public +debt, as well that of the States individually, as that of the United +States, was to have been honestly paid. If there is any fallacy in this +supposition, the inferences may be erroneous; but the error would imply +the disgrace of the United States, or parts of them,--a disgrace from +which every man of true honor and genuine patriotism will be happy to +see them rescued. + +When we hear the epithets, "vile matter," "corrupt mass," bestowed upon +the public debt, and the owners of it indiscriminately maligned as the +harpies and vultures of the community, there is ground to suspect that +those who hold the language, though they may not dare to avow it, +contemplate a more summary process for getting rid of debts than that of +paying them. Charity itself cannot avoid concluding from the language +and conduct of some men, (and some of them of no inconsiderable +importance,) that in their vocabularies _creditor_ and _enemy_ are +synonymous terms, and that they have a laudable antipathy against every +man to whom they owe money, either as individuals or as members of the +society. + + * * * * * + +From a "Letter to Lafayette," October 6, 1789. + +=_67._= THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. + +I have seen, with a mixture of pleasure and apprehension, the progress +of events which have lately taken place in your country. As a friend to +mankind and to liberty, I rejoice in the efforts which you are making to +establish it, while I fear much for the final success of the attempts, +for the fate of those I esteem who are engaged in them, and for the +danger in case of success, of innovations greater than will consist with +the real felicity of your nation. If your affairs still go well when +this reaches you, you will ask why this foreboding of ill, when all the +appearances have been so much in your favor. I will tell you: I dread +disagreements among those who are now united (which will be likely to be +improved by the adverse party) about the nature of your constitution; I +dread the vehement character of your people, whom I fear you may find it +more easy to bring on, than to keep within proper bounds after you +have put them in motion. I dread the interested refractoriness of your +nobles, who cannot all be gratified, and who may be unwilling to +submit to the requisite sacrifices. And I dread the reveries of your +philosophic politicians, who appear in the moment to have great +influence, and who, being mere speculatists, may aim at more refinement +than suits either with human nature, or the composition of your nation. + + * * * * * + + +=_Fisher Ames, 1738-1808._= (Manual, p. 487.) + +From the "Speech on the British Treaty." April 15, 1795. + +=_68._= OBLIGATION OF NATIONAL GOOD FAITH. + +The consequences of refusing to make provision for the treaty are not +all to be foreseen. By rejecting, vast interests are committed to the +sport of the winds: chance becomes the arbiter of events, and it is +forbidden to human foresight to count their number, or measure their +extent. Before we resolve to leap into this abyss, so dark and so +profound, it becomes us to pause, and reflect upon such of the dangers +as are obvious and inevitable. If this assembly should be wrought into +a temper to defy these consequences, it is vain, it is deceptive, to +pretend that we can escape them. It is worse than weakness to say, that +as to public faith, our vote has already settled the question. Another +tribunal than our own is already erected; the public opinion, not merely +of our own country, but of the enlightened world, will pronounce a +judgment that we cannot resist, that we dare not even affect to despise. + +... This, sir, is a cause that would be dishonored and betrayed if I +contented myself with appealing only to the understanding. It is too +cold, and its processes are too slow, for the occasion. I desire to +thank God that since he has given me an intellect so fallible, he has +impressed upon me an instinct that is sure. On a question of shame and +honor, reasoning is sometimes useless, and worse. I feel the decision in +my pulse; if it throws no light upon the brain, it kindles a fire at the +heart. + +What is patriotism? Is it a narrow affection for the spot where a man +was born? Are the very clods where we tread entitled to this ardent +preference, because they are greener? No, sir, this is not the character +of the virtue, and it soars higher for its object. It is an extended +self-love, mingling with all the enjoyments of life, and twisting itself +with the minutest filaments of the heart. It is thus we obey the laws of +society, because they are the laws of virtue. In their authority we +see not the array of force and terror, but the venerable image of our +country's honor. Every good citizen makes that honor his own, and +cherishes it not only as precious, but as sacred. He is willing to risk +his life in its defence; and is conscious that he gains protection, +while he gives it. For what rights of a citizen will be deemed +inviolable, when a state renounces the principles that constitute +their security? Or, if his life should not be invaded, what would +its enjoyments be in a country odious in the eyes of strangers, and +dishonored in his own? Could he look with affection and veneration to +such a country as his parent? The sense of having one would die within +him; he would blush for his patriotism, if he retained any, and justly. +for it would be a vice; he would be a banished man in his native land. + +I see no exception to the respect that is paid among nations to the law +of good faith. If there are cases in this enlightened period when it +is violated, then are none when it is decried. It is the philosophy of +politics, the religion of governments. It is observed by barbarians; a +whiff of tobacco smoke, or a string of beads, gives not merely binding +force, but sanctity, to treaties. Even in Algiers, a truce may be bought +for money; but when ratified, even Algiers is too wise or too just, to +disown and annul its obligation. Thus we see, neither the ignorance of +savages, nor the principles of an association for piracy and rapine, +permit a nation to despise its engagements. If, sir, there could be a +resurrection from the foot of the gallows, if the victims of justice +could live again, collect together, and form a society, they would, +however loath, soon find themselves obliged to make justice, that +justice under which they fell, the fundamental law of their state. They +would perceive it was their interest to make others respect, and they +would, therefore, soon pay some respect themselves, to the obligations +of good faith. + + * * * * * + + +=_Gouverneur Morris, 1752-1816._= (Manual, p. 484.) + +From a "Report to Congress in 1780." + +=_69._= QUALIFICATIONS OF A MINISTER OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS. + +A minister of foreign affairs should have a genius quick, lively, +penetrating; should write on all occasions with clearness and +perspicuity; be capable of expressing his sentiments with dignity, and +conveying strong sense and argument in easy and agreeable diction; his +temper mild, cool, and placid; festive, insinuating, and pliant, yet +obstinate; communicative, and yet reserved. He should know the human +face and heart, and the connections between them; should be versed +in the laws of nature and nations, and not ignorant of the civil and +municipal law; should be acquainted with the history of Europe, and with +the interests, views, commerce, and productions of the commercial and +maritime powers; should know the interests and commerce of America, +understand the French and Spanish languages, at least the former, and be +skilled in the modes and forms of public business; a man educated more +in the world than in the closet, that by use, as well as by nature, he +may give proper attention to great objects, and have proper contempt for +small ones. He should be attached to the independence of America, and +the alliance with France, as the great pillars of our politics; and this +attachment should not be slight and accidental, but regular, consistent, +and founded in strong conviction. His manners, gentle and polite; +above all things, honest, and least of all things, avaricious. His +circumstances and connections should be such as to give solid pledges +for his fidelity; and he should by no means be disagreeable to the +prince with whom we are in alliance, his ministers, or subjects. + + * * * * * + + +=_William Pinkney,[21] 1764-1820._= + +From "Speech in the Maryland Legislature." 1798. + +=_70._= RESPONSIBILITY FOR SLAVERY. + +For my own part, I would willingly draw the veil of oblivion over this +disgusting scene of iniquity, but that the present abject state of those +who are descended from these kidnapped sufferers, perpetually brings it +forward to the memory. + +But wherefore should we confine the edge of censure to our ancestors, +or those from whom they purchased? Are not we equally guilty? _They_ +strewed around the seeds of slavery; _we_ cherish and sustain the +growth. _They_ introduce the system; _we_ enlarge, invigorate, and +confirm it. Yes, let it be handed down to posterity, that the people of +Maryland, who could fly to arms with the promptitude of Roman citizens, +when the hand of oppression was lifted up against themselves; who could +behold their country desolated and their citizens slaughtered; who could +brave with unshaken firmness every calamity of war before they would +submit to the smallest infringement of their rights--that this very +people could yet see thousands of their fellow-creatures, within the +limits of their territory, bending beneath an unnatural yoke, and, +instead of being assiduous to destroy their shackles, be anxious to +immortalize their duration, so that a nation of slaves might forever +exist in a country whose freedom is its boast. + +[Footnote 21: Highly distinguished as a lawyer, orator, and diplomatist; +a native of Maryland.] + + * * * * * + +From "Speech in the Nereide Case." + +=_71._= WAR, AND AMERICAN BELLIGERENT RIGHTS. + +I throw into the opposite scale the ponderous claim of War; a claim of +high concernment, not to us only, but to the world; a claim connected +with the maritime strength of this maritime state, with public honor and +individual enterprise, with all those passions and motives which can be +made subservient to national success and glory, in the hour of national +trial and danger. I throw into the same scale the venerable code of +universal law, before which it is the duty of this Court, high as it is +in dignity, and great as are its titles to reverence, to bow down with +submission, I throw into the same scale a solemn treaty, binding upon +the claimant and upon you. In a word, I throw into that scale the rights +of belligerent America, and, as embodied with them, the rights of these +captors, by whose efforts and at whose cost the naval exertions of the +government have been seconded, until our once despised and drooping flag +has been made to wave in triumph, where neither France nor Spain could +venture to show a prow. You may call these rights by what name you +please. You may call them _iron_ rights:--I care not. It is more than +enough for me that they are RIGHTS. It is more than enough for me that +they come before you encircled and adorned by the laurels which we have +torn from the brow of the naval genius of England: that they come before +you recommended, and endeared, and consecrated by a thousand +recollections, which it would be baseness and folly not to cherish, and +that they are mingled in fancy and in fact with all the elements of our +future greatness.... + +We are now, thank God, once more at peace. Our belligerent rights may +therefore sleep for a season. May their repose be long and profound! But +the time must arrive when the interests and honor of this great nation +will command them to awake; and when it does arrive, I feel undoubting +confidence that they will rise from their slumber in the fullness of +their strength and majesty, unenfeebled and unimpaired by the judgment +of this high court. + +The skill and valor of our infant navy, which has illuminated every sea, +and dazzled the master states of Europe by the splendor of its triumphs, +have given us a pledge which I trust will continue to be dear to every +American heart, and to influence the future course of our policy, that +the ocean is destined to acknowledge the youthful dominion of the West. + + * * * * * + + +=_James Madison, 1751-1836._= (Manual, p. 486.) + +From his "Report of Debates in the Federal Convention." + +=_72._= VALUE OF A RECORD OF THE DEBATES. + +The close of the war, however, brought no cure for the public +embarrassments. The states relieved from the pressure of foreign danger, +and flushed with the enjoyment of independent and sovereign power, +instead of a diminished disposition to part with it, persevered in +omissions, and in measures, incompatible with their relations to the +federal government, and with those among themselves. + +... It was known that there were individuals who had betrayed a bias +towards monarchy, and there had always been some not unfavorable to a +partition of the Union into several confederacies; either from a better +chance of figuring on a sectional theatre, or that the sections would +require stronger governments, or by their hostile conflicts lead to a +monarchical consolidation. The idea of dismemberment had recently made +its appearance in the newspapers. + +Such were the defects, the deformities, the diseases, and the ominous +prospects, for which the convention were to provide a remedy, and +which ought never to be overlooked in expounding and appreciating the +constitutional charter--the remedy that was provided. + +The curiosity I had felt during my researches into the history of the +most distinguished confederacies, particularly those of antiquity, and +the deficiency I found in the means of satisfying it, more especially +in what related to the process, the principles, the reasons, and the +anticipations, which prevailed in the formation of them, determined me +to preserve, as far as I could, an exact account of what might pass in +the convention whilst executing its trust--with the magnitude of which +I was fully impressed, as I was by the gratification promised to future +curiosity by an authentic exhibition of the objects, the opinions, and +the reasonings, from which the new system of government was to receive +its peculiar structure and organization. Nor was I unaware of the value +of such a contribution to the fund of materials for the history of a +constitution, on which would be staked the happiness of a people great +even in its infancy, and possibly the cause of liberty throughout the +world. + +Of the ability and intelligence of those who composed the Convention +the debates and proceedings may be a test, as the character of the work +which was the offspring of their deliberations must be tested by the +experience of the future added to that of nearly half a century that has +passed. + +But whatever may be the judgment pronounced on the competency of the +architects of the Constitution, or whatever may be the destiny of the +edifice prepared by them, I feel it a duty to express my profound and +solemn conviction, derived from my intimate opportunity of observing and +appreciating the views of the Convention, collectively and individually, +that there never was an assembly of men, charged with a great, and +arduous trust, who were more pure in their motives, or more exclusively +or anxiously devoted to the object committed to them, than were the +members of the Federal Convention of 1787, to the object of devising and +proposing a constitutional system which should best supply the defects +of that which it was to replace, and best secure the permanent liberty +and happiness of their country. + + * * * * * + +=_73._= INSCRIPTION FOR A STATUE OF WASHINGTON. + +The General Assembly of Virginia have caused this statue to be erected +as a monument of affection and gratitude to George Washington, who, +uniting to the endowments of the hero the virtues of the patriot, and +exerting both in establishing the liberties of his country, has rendered +his name dear to his fellow-citizens, and given to the world an immortal +example of true glory. + + * * * * * + + +=_John Randolph, 1773-1832._= (Manual, p. 487.) + +From a Speech in the Virginia Convention. + +=_74._= "CHANGE IS NOT REFORM." + +Sir, I see no wisdom in making this provision for future changes. You +must give Governments time to operate on the People, and give the People +time to become gradually assimilated to their institutions. Almost any +thing is better than this state of perpetual uncertainty. A People may +have the best form of Government that the wit of man ever devised, and +yet, from its uncertainty alone, may, in effect, live under the worst +Government in the world. Sir, how often must I repeat, that _change_ is +not _reform?_ I am willing that this new Constitution shall stand as +long as it is possible for it to stand; and that, believe me, is a very +short time. Sir, it is vain to deny it. They may say what they please +about the old Constitution,--the defect is not there. It is not in the +form of the old edifice,--neither in the design nor in the elevation; it +is in the _material_, it is in the People of Virginia. To my knowledge +that People are changed from what they have been. The four hundred men +who went out with David were _in debt_. The fellow-laborers of Catiline +were _in debt_. The partizans of Caesar were _in debt_. And I defy you +to show me a desperately indebted People, anywhere, who can bear a +regular, sober Government. I throw the challenge to all who hear me. I +say that the character of the good old Virginia planter,--the man who +owned from five to twenty slaves, or less, who, lived by hard work, and +who paid his debts,--is passed away. A new order of things is come. The +period has arrived of living by one's wits; of living by contracting +debts that one cannot pay; and above all, of living by office-hunting. + +Sir, what do we see? Bankrupts,--branded bankrupts,--giving great +dinners, sending their children to the most expensive schools, giving +grand parties, and just as well received as anybody in society! I say +that, in such a state of things, the old Constitution was too good for +them,--they could not bear it. No, Sir; they could not bear a freehold +suffrage, and a property representation. I have always endeavored to do +the People justice; but I will not flatter them,--I will not pander to +their appetite for change. I will do nothing to provide for change. I +will not agree to any rule of future apportionment, or to any provision +for future changes, called amendments to the Constitution. Those who +love change,--who delight in public confusion, who wish to feed the +cauldron, and make it bubble,--may vote if they please for future +changes. But by what spell, by what formula, are you going to bind the +People to all future time? The days of Lycurgus are gone by, when we +could swear the People not to alter the Constitution until he should +return. You may make what entries on parchment you please; give me a +Constitution that will last for half a century; that is all I wish for. +No Constitution that you can make will last the one-half of half a +century. Sir, I will stake anything, short of my salvation, that those +who are malcontent now, will be more malcontent, three years hence, than +they are at this day. I have no favor for this Constitution. I shall +vote against its adoption, and I shall advise all the people of my +district to set their faces, aye, and their shoulders, too, against it. + + * * * * * + +From "Letters to a young Relative." + +=_75._= THE ERROR OF DECAYED FAMILIES. + +One of the best and wisest men I ever knew has often said to me that a +decayed family could never recover its loss of rank in the world, +until the members of it left off talking and dwelling upon its former +opulence. This remark, founded in a long and clear observation +of mankind, I have seen verified in numerous instances in my own +connections, who, to use the words of my oracle, will never thrive until +they can become poor folks. He added, they may make some struggles, and +with apparent success, to recover lost ground; they may, and sometimes +do, get half way up again; but they are sure to fall back, unless, +reconciling themselves to circumstances, they become in form, as well as +in fact, poor folks. + + * * * * * + + +=_James Kent, 1763-1847._= (Manual, pp. 488, 504.) + +From "Commentaries on American Law." + +=_76._= LAW OF THE STATES. + +The judicial power of the United States is necessarily limited to +national objects. The vast field of the law of property, the very +extensive head of equity jurisdiction, and the principal rights and +duties which flow from our civil and domestic relations, fall within the +control, and we might almost say the exclusive cognizance, of the state +governments. We look essentially to the state courts for protection to +all these momentous interests. They touch, in their operation, every +chord of human sympathy, and control our best destinies. It is their +province to reward and to punish. Their blessings and their terrors will +accompany us to the fireside, and "be in constant activity before the +public eye." The elementary principles of the common law are the same +in every state, and equally enlighten and invigorate every part of our +country. Our municipal codes can be made to advance with equal steps +with that of the nation, in discipline, in wisdom, and in lustre, if the +state governments (as they ought in all honest policy) will only render +equal patronage and security to the administration of justice. The true +interests and the permanent freedom of this country require that the +jurisprudence of the individual states should be cultivated, cherished, +and exalted, and the dignity and reputation of the state authorities +sustained, with becoming pride. In their subordinate relation to the +United States, they should endeavor to discharge the duty which they +owe to the latter, without forgetting the respect which they owe to +themselves. In the appropriate language of Sir William Blackstone, +and which he applies to the people of his own country, they should be +"loyal, yet free; obedient, yet independent." + + * * * * * + + +=_Edward Livingston,[22] 1764-1836._= + +From the "Report on the Penal Code for Louisiana." + +=_77._= THE PROPER OFFICE OF THE JUDGE. + +Judges are generally men who have grown old in the practice at the bar. +With the knowledge which this experience gives, they acquire a habit, +very difficult to be shaken off, of taking a side in every question that +they hear debated, and when the mind is once enlisted, their passions, +prejudices, and professional ingenuity are always arrayed on the same +side, and furnish arms for the contest. Neutrality cannot, under +these circumstances, be expected; but the law should limit as much as +possible, the evil that this almost inevitable state of things must +produce. In the theory of our law, judges are the counsel for the +accused, in practice they are, with a few honorable exceptions, his most +virulent prosecutors. The true principles of criminal jurisprudence +require that they should be neither. Perfect impartiality is +incompatible with these duties. A good judge should have no wish that +the guilty should escape, or that the innocent should suffer; no false +pity, no undue severity, should bias the unshaken rectitude of +his judgment; calm in deliberation, firm in resolve, patient in +investigating the truth, tenacious of it when discovered, he should join +urbanity of manners, to dignity of demeanor, and an integrity above +suspicion, to learning and talent; such a judge is what, according to +the true structure of our courts, he ought to be,--the protector, not +the advocate of the accused; his judge, not his accuser; and while +executing these functions, he is the organ by which the sacred will +of the law is pronounced. Uttered by such a voice, it will be heard, +respected, felt, obeyed; but impose on him the task of argument, of +debate; degrade him from the bench to the bar; suffer him to overpower +the accused with his influence, or to enter the lists with his advocate, +to carry on the contest of sophisms, of angry arguments, of tart +replies, and all the wordy war of forensic debate; suffer him to do +this, and his dignity is lost; his decrees are no longer considered as +the oracles of the law; they are submitted to, but not respected; and +even the triumph of his eloquence or ingenuity, in the conviction of the +accused, must be lessened by the suspicion that it has owed its success +to official influence, and the privilege of arguing without reply. For +these reasons, the judge is forbidden to express any opinion on the +facts which are alleged in evidence, much less to address any argument +to the jury; but his functions are confined to expounding the law, and +stating the points of evidence on which the recollection of the jury may +differ. + +[Footnote 22: Was born in New York; eminent as a statesman, and as the +author of a code of laws for Louisiana, his adopted state.] + + * * * * * + + +=_John Quincy Adams, 1767-1848._= (Manual, pp. 487, 504.) + +From the "Speech on the Right of Petition." + +=_78._= THE RIGHT OF PETITION UNIVERSAL. + +Sir, it is well known, that, from the time I entered this House, down to +the present day, I have felt it a sacred duty to present any petition, +couched in respectful language, from any citizen of the United States, +be its object what it may; be the prayer of it that in which I could +concur, or that to which I was utterly opposed. It is for the sacred +right of petition that I have adopted this course.... Where is your law +which says that the mean, and the low, and the degraded, shall be +deprived of the right of petition, if their moral character is not good? +Where, in the land of freemen, was the right of petition ever placed on +the exclusive basis of morality and virtue? Petition is +_supplication_--it is _entreaty_--it is _prayer!_ And where is the +degree of vice or immorality which shall deprive the citizen of the +right to _supplicate_ for a boon, or to _pray for mercy!_ Where is such +a law to be found?... And what does your law say? Does it say that, +before presenting a petition, you shall look into it, and see whether it +comes from the virtuous, and the great, and the mighty. No, sir; it says +no such thing. The right of petition belongs to _all_. And so far from +refusing to present a petition because it might come from those low in +the estimation of the world, it, would be an additional incentive, if +such incentive were wanting. + + * * * * * + +From a "Discourse on the Jubilee of the Constitution." + +=_79._= THE ADMINISTRATION OF WASHINGTON. + +When Solon, by the appointment of the people of Athens, had formed, and +prevailed upon them to adopt a code of fundamental laws, the best that +they would bear, he went into voluntary banishment for ten years, to +save his system from the batteries of rival statesmen working upon +popular passions and prejudices excited against his person. In eight +years of a turbulent and tempestuous administration, Washington +had settled upon firm foundations the practical execution of the +Constitution of the United States. In the midst of the most appalling +obstacles, through the bitterest internal dissensions, and the most +formidable combinations of foreign antipathies and cavils, he had +subdued all opposition to the Constitution itself; had averted all +dangers of European war; had redeemed the captive children of his +country from Algiers; had reduced by chastisement, and conciliated by +kindness, the most hostile of the Indian tribes; had restored the +credit of the nation, and redeemed their reputation of fidelity to +the performance of their obligations; had provided for the total +extinguishment of the public debt; had settled the union upon the +immovable foundation of principle; and had drawn around his head, for +the admiration and emulation of after times, a brighter blaze of glory +than had ever encircled the brows of hero or statesman, patriot or sage. + +The administration of Washington fixed the character of the Constitution +of the United States, as a practical system of government, which it +retains to this day. Upon his retirement, its great antagonist, Mr. +Jefferson, came into the government again, as Vice-President of the +United States, and four years after succeeded to the Presidency itself. +But the funding system and the bank were established. The peace with +both the great belligerent powers of Europe was secured. The disuniting +doctrines of unlimited separate State sovereignty were laid aside. +Louisiana, by a stretch of power in Congress, far beyond the highest +tone of Hamilton, was annexed to the Union--and although dry-docks, and +gun-boats, and embargoes, and commercial restrictions, still refused the +protection of the national arm to commerce, and although an overweening +love of peace, and a reliance upon reason as a weapon of defence against +foreign aggression, eventuated in a disastrous though glorious war +with the gigantic power of Britain,--the Constitution as construed by +Washington, still proved an effective government for the country. + + * * * * * + + +=_Henry Clay, 1777-1832._= (Manual, p. 486.) + +From a "Speech in the United States Senate," March 24, 1818. + +=_80._= EMANCIPATION OF THE SOUTH AMERICAN STATES. + +Our Revolution was mainly directed against the mere theory of tyranny. +We had suffered comparatively but little; we had, in some respects, been +kindly treated; but our intrepid and intelligent forefathers saw, in the +usurpation of the power to levy an inconsiderable tax, the long train of +oppressive acts that were to follow. They rose; they breasted the storm; +they achieved our freedom, Spanish America for centuries has been doomed +to the practical effects of an odious tyranny. If we were justified, she +is more than justified. + +I am no propagandist. I would not seek to force upon other nations +our principles and our liberty if they did not want them. I would not +disturb the repose even of a detestable despotism. But if an abused and +oppressed people will their freedom; if they seek to establish it; if, +in truth, they have established it,--we have a right, as a sovereign +power, to notice the fact, and to act as circumstances and our interest +require. I will say, in the language of the venerated father of my +country, "born in a land of liberty, my anxious recollections, my +sympathetic feelings, and my best wishes, are irresistibly excited, +whensoever, in any country, I see an oppressed nation unfurl the banners +of freedom." + + * * * * * + +From the "Speech in the Senate on the Compromise Bill." + +=_81._= DANGERS OF DISUNION. + +South Carolina must perceive the embarrassments of her situation. She +must be desirous,--it is unnatural to suppose that she is not,--to +remain in the Union. What! a State whose heroes in its gallant ancestry +fought so many glorious battles along with the other States of this +Union,--a State with which this confederacy is linked by bonds of such a +powerful character! I have sometimes fancied what would be her condition +if she goes out of this Union; if her five hundred thousand people +should at once be thrown upon their own resources. She is out of the +Union. What is the consequence? She is an independent power. What +then does she do? She must have armies and fleets, and an expensive +government; have foreign missions; she must raise taxes; enact this very +tariff, which has driven her out of the Union, in order to enable her to +raise money, and to sustain the attitude of an independent power. If she +should have no force, no navy to protect her, she would be exposed to +piratical incursions. Their neighbor, St. Domingo, might pour down a +horde of pirates on her borders, and desolate her plantations. She must +have her embassies; therefore she must have a revenue. And, let me tell +you, there is another consequence, an inevitable one. She has a certain +description of persons recognized as property South of the Potomac, and +West of the Mississippi, which would be no longer recognized as such, +except within their own limits. This species of property would sink to +one half of its present value, for it is Louisiana and the southwestern +States which are her great market. + + * * * * * + +If there be any who want civil war, who want to see the blood of any +portion of our countrymen spilt, I am not one of them. I wish to see war +of no kind; but, above all, I do not desire to see a civil war. When war +begins, whether civil or foreign, no human sight is competent to foresee +when, or how, or where it is to terminate. But when a civil war shall be +lighted up in the bosom of our own happy land, and armies are marching, +and commanders are winning their victories, and fleets are in motion on +our coast, tell me if you can tell me, if any human being can tell its +duration? God alone knows where such a war would end. In what a state +will our institutions be left? In what state our liberties? I want no +war; above all, no war at home. + + * * * * * + + +=_John C. Calhoun, 1782-1850._= (Manual, p. 486.) + +From his "Speech on the Bill to regulate the Power of Removal." + +=_82._= DANGERS OF AN UNLIMITED POWER OF REMOVAL FROM OFFICE. + +Let us not be deceived by names. The power in question is too great for +the chief magistrate of a free state. It is in its nature an imperial +power; and if he be permitted to exercise it, his authority must become +as absolute as that of the autocrat of all the Russias. To give him +the power to dismiss at his will and pleasure, without limitation or +control, is to give him an absolute and unlimited control over the +subsistence of almost all who hold office under government. Let him +have the power, and the sixty thousand who now hold employments +under government would become dependent upon him for the means of +existence.... I know that there are many virtuous and high-minded +citizens who hold public office; but it is not, therefore, the less true +that the tendency of the power of dismissal is such as I have attributed +to it; and that, if the power be left unqualified, and the practice be +continued as it has of late, the result must be the complete corruption +and debasement of those in public employment.... + +I have seen the spirit of independent men, holding public office, sink +under the dread of this fearful power, too honest and too firm to become +the instruments of the flatterers of power, yet too prudent, with all +the consequences before them, to whisper disapprobation of what, in +their hearts, they condemned. Let the present state of things continue, +let it be understood that none are to acquire the public honors or +to retain them, but by flattery and base compliance, and in a few +generations the American character will become utterly corrupt and +debased. + + * * * * * + +From the "Address on the relation of the States to the General +Government." + +=_83._= PECULIAR MERIT OF OUR POLITICAL SYSTEM. + +Happily for us, we have no artificial and separate classes of society. +We have wisely exploded all such distinctions; but we are not, on that +account, exempt from all contrariety of interests, as the present +distracted and dangerous condition of our country, unfortunately, but +too clearly proves. With us they are almost exclusively geographical, +resulting mainly from difference of climate, soil, situation, industry, +and production; but are not, therefore, less necessary to be protected +by an adequate constitutional provision, than where the distinct +interests exist in separate classes. The necessity is, in truth, +greater, as such separate and dissimilar geographical interests are more +liable to come into conflict, and more dangerous, when in that state, +than those of any other description: so much so, that _ours is the +first instance on record where they have not formed, in an extensive +territory, separate and independent communities, or subjected the whole +to despotic sway._ That such may not be our unhappy fate also, must be +the sincere prayer of every lover of his country. + +So numerous and diversified are the interests of our country, that they +could not be fairly represented in a single government, organized so +as to give to each great and leading interest a separate and distinct +voice, as in governments to which I have referred. A plan was adopted +better suited to our situation, but perfectly novel in its character. +The powers of government were divided, not, as heretofore, in reference +to classes, but geographically. One General Government was formed +for the whole, to which were delegated all the powers supposed to be +necessary to regulate the interests common to all the States, leaving +others subject to the separate control of the States, being, from their +local and peculiar character, such that they could not be subject to the +will of a majority of the whole Union, without the certain hazard of +injustice and oppression. It was thus that the interests of the whole +were subjected, as they ought to be, to the will of the whole, while the +peculiar and local interests were left under the control of the States +separately, to whose custody only they could be safely confided. This +distribution of power, settled solemnly by a constitutional compact, to +which all the States are parties, constitutes the peculiar character +and excellence of our political system. It is truly and emphatically +_American, without example or parallel_. + +To realize its perfection, we must view the General Government and those +of the States as a whole, each in its proper sphere independent; +each perfectly adapted to its respective objects; the States acting +separately, representing and protecting the local and peculiar +interests: and acting jointly through one General Government, with the +weight respectively assigned to each by the Constitution, representing +and protecting the interest of the whole, and thus perfecting, by an +admirable but simple arrangement, the great principle of representation +and responsibility, without which no government can be free or just. To +preserve this sacred distribution as originally settled, by coercing +each to move in its prescribed orbit, is the great and difficult +problem, on the solution of which the duration of our Constitution, of +our union, and, in all probability, our liberty depends. How is this to +be effected? + + * * * * * + +From his "Works." + +=_84._= CONCURRENT MAJORITIES SUPERSEDE FORCE. + +It has been already shown, that the same constitution of man which leads +those who govern to oppress the governed,--if not prevented,--will, with +equal force and certainty, lead the latter to resist oppression, when +possessed of the means of doing so peaceably and successfully. But +absolute governments, of all forms, exclude all other means of +resistance to their authority, than that of force; and, of course, leave +no other alternative to the governed, but to acquiesce in oppression, +however great it may be, or to resort to force to put down the +government. But the dread of such a resort must necessarily lead the +government to prepare to meet force in order to protect itself; and +hence, of necessity, force becomes the conservative principle of all +such governments. + +On the contrary, the government of the concurrent majority, where the +organism is perfect, excludes the possibility of oppression, by giving +to each interest, or portion, or order,--where there are established +classes,--the means of protecting itself, by its negative, against all +measures calculated to advance the peculiar interests of others at +its expense. Its effect, then, is to cause the different interests, +portions, or orders,--as the case may be, to desist from attempting to +adopt any measure calculated to promote the prosperity of one, or more, +by sacrificing that of others; and thus to force them to unite in such +measures only as would promote the prosperity of all, as the only +means to prevent the suspension of the action of the government;--and, +thereby, to avoid anarchy, the greatest of all evils. It is by means of +such authorized and effectual resistance, that oppression is prevented, +and the necessity of resorting to force superseded, in governments of +the concurrent majority;--and, hence, compromise, instead of force, +becomes their conservative principle. + +It would, perhaps, be more strictly correct to trace the conservative +principle of constitutional governments to the necessity which compels +the different interests, or portions, or orders, to compromise,--as +the only way to promote their respective prosperity, and to avoid +anarchy,--rather than to the compromise itself. No necessity can be more +urgent and imperious, than that of avoiding anarchy. It is the same as +that which makes government indispensable to preserve society; and is +not less imperative than that which compels obedience to superior +force. Traced to this source, the voice of a people,--uttered under the +necessity of avoiding the greatest of calamities, through the organs of +a government so constructed as to suppress the expression of all partial +and selfish interests, and to give a full and faithful utterance to the +sense of the whole community, in reference to its common welfare,--may +without impiety, be called _the voice of God_. To call any other so, +would be impious. + + * * * * * + + +=_Daniel Webster, 1782-1852._= (Manual, pp. 478, 486.) + +From the "Reply to Hayne, in the United States Senate." + +=_85._= INESTIMABLE VALUE OF THE FEDERAL UNION. + +I cannot, even now, persuade myself to relinquish it, without expressing +once more my deep conviction, that, since it respects nothing less than +the union of the states, it is of most vital and essential importance +to the public happiness. I profess, sir, in my career hitherto, to have +kept steadily in view the prosperity and honor of the whole country, and +the preservation of our Federal Union. It is to that Union we owe our +safety at home, and our consideration and dignity abroad. It is to that +Union we are chiefly indebted for whatever makes us most proud of our +country. That Union we reached only by the discipline of our virtues in +the severe school of adversity. It had its origin in the necessities of +disordered finance, prostrate commerce, and ruined credit. Under its +benign influences, these great interests immediately awoke, as from the +dead, and sprang forth with newness of life. Every year of its duration +has teemed with fresh proofs of its utility and its blessings; and +although our territory has stretched out wider and wider, and our +population spread farther and farther, they have not outrun its +protection or its benefits. It has been to us all a copious fountain of +national, social, personal happiness. I have not allowed myself, sir, to +look beyond the Union, to see what might lie hidden in the dark recess +behind. I have not coolly weighed the chances of preserving liberty, +when the bonds that unite us together shall be broken asunder, I have +not accustomed myself to hang over the precipice of disunion, to see +whether, with my short sight, I can fathom the depth of the abyss below; +nor could I regard him as a safe counsellor in the affairs of this +government, whose thoughts should be mainly bent on considering, not +how the Union should be best preserved, but how tolerable might be the +condition of the people when it shall be broken up and destroyed. While +the Union lasts, we have high, exciting, gratifying prospects spread +out before us, for us and our children. Beyond that I do not seek to +penetrate the veil. God grant that, in my day at least, that curtain may +not rise. God grant that, on my vision never may be opened what lies +behind. When my eyes shall be turned to behold, for the last time, the +sun in heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken and dishonored +fragments of a once glorious Union; on states dissevered, discordant, +belligerent; on a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, +in fraternal blood! Let their last feeble and lingering glance rather +behold the gorgeous ensign of the republic, now known and honored +throughout the earth, still full high advanced, its arms and trophies +streaming in their original lustre, not a stripe erased or polluted, +nor a single star obscured,--bearing for its motto no such miserable +interrogatory as, _What is all this worth?_ nor those other words +of delusion and folly, _Liberty first, and Union afterwards_; but +everywhere, spread all over in characters of living light, blazing on +all its ample folds, as they float over the sea and over the land, and +in every wind under the whole heavens, that other sentiment, dear to +every American heart--Liberty _and_ Union, now and forever, one and +inseparable! + + * * * * * + +From the "Speech at the Laying of the Corner Stone of the Bunker Hill +Monument." + +=_86._= OBJECT OF THE MONUMENT. + +Let it not be supposed that our object is to perpetuate national +hostility, or even to cherish a mere military spirit. It is higher, +purer, nobler. We consecrate our work to the spirit of national +independence, and we wish that the light of peace may rest upon it +forever. We rear a memorial of our conviction of that unmeasured benefit +which has been conferred on our own land, and of the happy influences +which have been produced, by the same events, on the general interests +of mankind. We come, as Americans, to mark a spot which must forever be +dear to us and our posterity. We wish that whoever, in all coming +time, shall turn his eye hither, may behold that the place is not +undistinguished where the first great battle of the Revolution was +fought. We wish that this structure may proclaim the magnitude and +importance of that event to every class and every age. We wish that +infancy may learn the purpose of its erection, from maternal lips, +and that weary and withered age may behold it, and be solaced by the +recollections which it suggests. We wish that labor may look up here, +and be proud in the midst of its toil. We wish that in those days of +disaster, which, as they come upon all nations, must be expected to come +upon us also, desponding patriotism may turn its eyes hitherward, and be +assured that the foundations of our national power are still strong. We +wish that this column, rising towards heaven among the pointed spires of +so many temples dedicated to God, may contribute also to produce, in all +minds, a pious feeling of dependence and gratitude. We wish, finally, +that the last object to the sight of him who leaves his native shore, +and the first to gladden his who revisits it, may be something which +shall remind him of the liberty and the glory of his country. Let it +rise! let it rise, till it meet the sun in his coming; let the earliest +light of the morning gild it, and parting day linger and play on its +summit. + + * * * * * + +From his "Works." + +=_87._= BENEFITS OF THE CONSTITUTION. + +Its benefits are not exclusive. What has it left undone, which any +government could do for the whole country? In what condition has it +placed us? Where do we now stand? Are we elevated, or degraded, by its +operation? What is our condition, under its influence, at the very +moment when some talk of arresting its power and breaking its unity? Do +we not feel ourselves on an eminence? Do we not challenge the respect of +the whole world? What has placed us thus high? What has given us this +just pride? What else is it, but the unrestrained and free operation +of that same Federal Constitution, which it has been proposed now to +hamper, and manacle, and nullify? Who is there among us, that, should +he find himself on any spot of the earth where human beings exist, and +where the existence of other nations is known, would not be proud to +say, I am an American? I am a countryman of Washington? I am a citizen +of that Republic, which although it has suddenly sprung up, yet there +are none on the globe who have ears to hear, and have not heard of +it,--who have eyes to see and have not read of it,--who know any +thing,--and yet do not know of its existence and its glory? And, +gentlemen, let me now reverse the picture. Let me ask, who is there +among us, if he were to be found to-morrow in one of the civilized +countries of Europe, and were there to learn that this goodly form of +Government had been overthrown--that the United States were no longer +united--that a death-blow had been struck upon their bond of Union--that +they themselves had destroyed their chief good and their chief +honor,--who is there, whose heart would not sink within him? Who is +there, who would not cover his face for very shame? + +At this very moment, gentlemen, our country is a general refuge for the +distressed and the persecuted of other nations. Whoever is in affliction +from political occurrences in his own country, looks here for shelter. +Whether he be republican, flying from the oppression of thrones--or +whether he be monarch or monarchist, flying from thrones that crumble +and fall under or around him,--he feels equal assurance, that if he +get foothold on our soil, his person is safe, and his rights will be +respected. + +And who will venture to say, that in any government now existing in the +world, there is greater security for persons or property than in that of +the United States? We have tried these popular institutions in times of +great excitement and commotion; and they have stood substantially firm +and steady, while the fountains of the great deep have been elsewhere +broken up; while thrones, resting on ages of prescription, have tottered +and fallen; and while in other countries, the earthquake of unrestrained +popular commotion has swallowed up all law, and all liberty, and all +right, together. Our Government has been tried in peace, and it has been +tried in war; and has proved itself fit for both. It has been assailed +from without, and it has successfully resisted the shock; it has been +disturbed within, and it has effectually quieted the disturbance. It can +stand trial--it can stand, assault--it, can stand adversity.--it can +stand every thing, but the marring of its own beauty, and the weakening +of its own strength. It can stand every thing, but the effects of +our own rashness, and our own folly. It can stand everything, but +disorganization, disunion, and nullification. + + * * * * * + +From his Correspondence with Lord Ashburton. + +=_88._= THE RIGHT OF CHANGING ALLEGIANCE. + +England acknowledges herself overburdened with population of the poorer +classes. Every instance of the emigration of persons of those classes is +regarded by her as a benefit. England, therefore, encourages emigration; +means are notoriously supplied to emigrants, to assist their conveyance, +from public funds; and the New World, and most especially these United +States, receive the many thousands of her subjects thus ejected from the +bosom of their native land by the necessities of their condition. They +come away from poverty and distress in over-crowded cities, to seek +employment, comfort, and new homes, in a country of free institutions, +possessed by a kindred race, speaking their own language, and having +laws and usages in many respects like those to which they have been +accustomed; and a country which, upon the whole, is found to possess +more attractions for persons of their character and condition, than any +other on the face of the globe. It is stated that, in the quarter of the +year ending with June last, more than twenty-six thousand emigrants left +the single port of Liverpool for the United States, being four or five +times as many as left the same port within the same period, for the +British Colonies and all other parts of the world. Of these crowds +of emigrants, many arrive in our cities in circumstances of great +destitution, and the charities of the country, both public and private, +are severely taxed to relieve their immediate wants. In time they mingle +with the new community in which they find themselves, and seek means of +living. Some find employment in the cities, others go to the frontiers, +to cultivate lands reclaimed from the forest; and a greater or less +number of the residue, becoming in time naturalized citizens, enter into +the merchant service under the flag of their adopted country. + +Now, my Lord, if war should break out between England and a European +power, can any thing be more unjust, any thing more irreconcilable to +the general sentiments of mankind, than that England should seek out +these persons, thus encouraged by her, and compelled by their own +condition, to leave their native homes, tear them away from their +new employments, their new political relations, and their domestic +connections, and force them to undergo the dangers and hardships of +military service for a country which, has thus ceased to be their own +country? Certainly, certainly, my Lord, there can be but one answer to +this question. Is it not far more reasonable that England should either +prevent such emigration of her subjects, or that, if she encourage and +promote it, she should leave them, not to the embroilment of a double +and contradictory allegiance, but to their own voluntary choice, to form +such relations, political or social, as they see fit, in the country +where they are to find their bread, and to the laws and institutions of +which they are to look for defence and protection. + + * * * * * + + +=_Joseph Story, 1779-1845._= (Manual, pp. 487, 531.) + +From his "Miscellaneous Writings." + +=_89._= CHIEF JUSTICE MARSHALL. + +When can we expect to be permitted to behold again so much moderation +united with so much firmness, so much sagacity with so much modesty, so +much learning with so much experience, so much solid wisdom with so +much purity, so much of every thing to love and admire, with +nothing--absolutely nothing, to regret? What, indeed, strikes us as the +most remarkable in his whole character, even more than his splendid +talents, is the entire consistency of his public life and principles. +There is nothing in either which calls for apology or concealment. +Ambition has never seduced him from his principles, nor popular clamor +deterred him from the strict performance of duty. Amid the extravagances +of party spirit he has stood with a calm, and steady inflexibility, +neither bending to the pressure of adversity, nor bounding with the +elasticity of success. He has lived as such a man should live, (and yet, +how few deserve the commendation!) by and with, his principles. Whatever +changes of opinion have occurred in the course of his long life, +have been gradual and slow; the results of genius acting upon larger +materials, and of judgment matured by the lessons of experience. + +If we were tempted to say, in one word, what it was in which he chiefly +excelled other men, we should say, in wisdom--in the union of that +virtue, which has ripened under the hardy discipline of principles, +with that knowledge which has constantly sifted and refined its old +treasures, and as constantly gathered new. The constitution, since its +adoption, owes more to him than to any other single mind, for its true +interpretation and vindication. Whether it lives or perishes, his +exposition of its principles will be an enduring monument to his fame, +as long as solid reasoning, profound analysis, and sober views of +government, shall invite the leisure, or command the attention, of +statesmen and jurists.... Yet it may be affirmed by those who have had +the privilege of intimacy with Mr. Chief Justice Marshall, that he +rises, rather than falls, with the nearest survey; and that in the +domestic circle he is exactly what a wife, a child, a brother, and a +friend would most desire. In that magical circle, admiration of +his talents is forgotten in the indulgence of those affections and +sensibilities which are awakened only to be gratified. + + * * * * * + +From his "Miscellanies." + +=_90._= DIGNITY OF AMERICAN JURISPRUDENCE. + +The most delicate, and at the same time the proudest attribute of +American jurisprudence, is the right of its judicial tribunals to decide +questions of constitutional law. In other governments these questions +cannot be entertained or decided by courts of justice; and, therefore, +whatever may be the theory of the constitution, the legislative +authority is practically omnipotent, and there is no means of contesting +the legality or justice of a law, but by an appeal to arms. This can be +done only when oppression weighs heavily and grievously on the whole +people, and is then resisted by all because it is felt by all. But the +oppression that strikes at a humble individual, though it robs him of +character, or fortune, or life, is remediless; and, if it becomes the +subject of judicial enquiry, judges may lament, but cannot resist, the +mandates of the legislature. Far different is the case in our country; +and the privilege of bringing every law to the test of the constitution +belongs to the humblest citizen, who owes no obedience to any +legislative act which transcends the constitutional limits. + +The discussion of constitutional questions throws a lustre round the +bar, and gives a dignity to its functions, which can rarely belong to +the profession in any other country. Lawyers are here emphatically +placed as sentinels upon the outposts of the constitution, and no nobler +end can be proposed for their ambition or patriotism than to stand as +faithful guardians of the constitution, ready to defend its legitimate +powers, and to stay the arm of legislative, executive, or popular +oppression. If their eloquence can charm, when it vindicates the +innocent, and the suffering under private wrongs; if their learning +and genius can, with almost superhuman witchery, unfold the mazes and +intricacies by which the minute links of title are chained to the +adamantine pillars of the law;--how much more glory belongs to them when +this eloquence, this learning, and this genius, are employed in defence +of their country; when they breathe forth the purest spirit of morality +and virtue in support of the rights of mankind; when they expound the +lofty doctrines which sustain and connect, and guide the destinies of +nations; when they combat popular delusions at the expense of fame, and +friendship, and political honors; when they triumph by arresting the +progress of error and the march of power, and drive back the torrent +that threatens destruction equally to public liberty and to private +property, to all that delights us in private life, and all that gives +grace and authority in public office. + + * * * * * + + +=_Lewis Cass,[23] 1782-1866._= + +From his "Report of the Secretary of War." December 1831. + +=_91._= POLICY OF REMOVING THE INDIANS. + +The associations which bind the Indians to the land of their forefathers +are strong and enduring; and these must be broken by their emigration. +But they are also broken by our citizens, who every day encounter all +the difficulties of similar changes in pursuit of the means of support. +And the experiments that have been made satisfactorily show that, +by proper precautions and liberal appropriations, the removal and +establishment of the Indians can be effected with little comparative +trouble to them, or us.... If they remain, they must decline, and +eventually disappear. Such is the result of all experience. If they +remove, they may be comfortably established, and their moral and +physical condition ameliorated.... + +The great moral debt we owe to this unhappy race is universally felt and +acknowledged. Diversities of opinion exist respecting the proper mode of +discharging this obligation, but its validity is not denied. + +Indolent in his habits, the Indian is opposed to labor; improvident +in his mode of life, he has little foresight in providing, or care in +preserving. Taught from infancy to reverence his own traditions and +institutions, he is satisfied of their value, and dreads the anger of +the Great Spirit, if he should depart from the customs of his fathers. +Devoted to the use of ardent spirits, he abandons himself to +its indulgence without restraint. War and hunting are his only +occupations.... Shall they be advised to remain, or remove? If the +former, their fate is written in the annals of their race; if the +latter, we may yet hope to see them renovated in character and +condition, by our example and instruction, and their exertions. + +[Footnote 23: A native of New Hampshire, but for many years a citizen of +Michigan: conspicuous in public life, and a writer of high authority on +Indian and military affairs, and the settlement of the north-west.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Rufus Choate, 1799-1859._= (Manual, p. 487.) + +From his "Lectures and Addresses." + +=_92._= CONSERVATIVE FORCE OF THE AMERICAN BAR. + +Is it not so that in its nature, in its functions, in the intellectual +and practical habits which it forms, in the opinions to which it +conducts, in all its tendencies and influences of speculation and +action, it is, and ought to be, professionally and peculiarly such an +element and such an agent, that it contributes, or ought to be held to +contribute, more than all things else, or as much as anything else, to +preserve our organic forms, our civil and social order, our public and +private justice, our constitutions of government, even the Union itself? +In these crises through which our liberty is to pass, may not, must not, +this function of conservatism become more and more developed, and more +and more operative? May it not one day be written, for the praise of the +American Bar, that it helped to keep the true idea of the state alive +and germinant in the American mind; that it helped to keep alive the +sacred sentiments of obedience, and reverence, and justice, of the +supremacy of the calm and grand reason of the law over the fitful +will of the individual and the crowd; that it helped to withstand the +pernicious sophism that the successive generations, as they come to +life, are but as so many successive flights of summer flies, without +relations to the past or duties to the future, and taught instead that +all--all the dead, the living, the unborn--were one moral person-one for +action, one for suffering, one for responsibility; that the engagements +of one age may bind the conscience of another; the glory or the shame +of a day may brighten or stain the current of a thousand years of +continuous national being? + + * * * * * + +From the "Address before the New England Society of New York." + +=_93._= THE AGE OF THE PILGRIMS, OUR HEROIC PERIOD. + +I have said that I deemed it a great thing for a nation, in all the +periods of its fortunes, to be able to look back to a race of founders, +and a principle of institution, in which, it might seem to see the +realized idea of true heroism. That felicity, that pride, that help, is +ours. Our past--both its great eras, that of settlement, and that of +independence--should announce, should compel, should spontaneously +evolve as from a germ, a wise, moral, and glorious future. These heroic +men and women should not look down on a dwindled posterity. It should +seem to be almost of course, too easy to be glorious, that they who +keep the graves, bear the name, and boast the blood, of men in whom +the loftiest sense of duty blended itself with the fiercest spirit of +liberty, should add to their freedom, justice: justice to all men, to +all nations; justice, that venerable virtue, without which freedom, +valor, and power, are but vulgar things. + +And yet is the past nothing, even our past, but as you, quickened by its +examples, instructed by its experiences, warned by its voices, assisted +by its accumulated instrumentality, shall reproduce it in the life of +to-day. Its once busy existence, various sensations, fiery trials, +dear-bought triumphs; its dynasty of heroes, all its pulses of joy and +anguish, and hope and fear, and love and praise, are with the years +beyond the flood. "The sleeping and the dead are but as pictures." Yet, +gazing on these, long and intently, and often, we may pass into the +likeness of the departed,--may emulate their labors, and partake of +their immortality. + + * * * * * + + +=_William H. Seward,[24] 1801-1872._= + +"Oration on Lafayette," July 16th, 1834. + +=_94._= HIS MILITARY SERVICES IN AMERICA. + +There were indeed other and heroic volunteers from European countries, +but they were either exiles who had no homes, or they were soldiers by +profession, who followed the sword wherever a harvest was to be reaped +with it.... Lafayette's first act in America gave new evidence of +disinterestedness and magnanimity. He found the small patriot army rent +asunder by jealous feuds growing out of ambition for preferment. What +revolution, however holy, has not suffered by such evils! How many +a revolution has been lost by them! Schuyler, the brave, the +high-spirited, and wise, now the victim of an intrigue, was hesitating +whether to submit to a privation of rank justly due him, or to resign. +Putnam's recent promotion produced bitter complaints; and Gates was +laboring night and day, aided by a powerful faction, to displace +Washington from the chief command. The correspondence of the Father of +his country, now first published, reveals the fact that the compensation +attached to military rank was by no means an unimportant object of the +universal rage for preferment, which then threatened to break up the +army. Lafayette set a noble example to the republican chiefs. He +declined the tender of a commission as major-general, with the +emoluments, and stipulated, on the contrary, for leave to serve without +reward, and even without a command, until he should have made a title to +it by actual achievements. He won his commission by the blood he gave to +his adopted country in the battle of Brandywine, by rallying the troops +in the retreat at Chester Bridge, and by his brave resistance and +capture, with the aid of militia-men, of a superior force of British +and Hessian regulars; and thus, without exciting murmurs among his +compatriots, and with the thanks of Congress, he rose to the command of +a division in the army of the United States. Lavish of gold, as he had +already shown that he was lavish of blood, he clothed and equipped +these troops, numbering two thousand, at his own expense; and they soon +became, under his exact but affectionate discipline, the favorite corps +of the whole army. + +Lafayette stood second to Washington in the affections of the American +people, and in the applauses of the friends of liberty throughout the +world. Certainly whatever honors that people could have conferred upon +any one would have been sure to wait on him. Let those who think that +preferment, power, and applause are always the chief objects of human +ambition, look now at this illustrious and yet youthful personage, +cheerfully resigning his command, and without one murmur of regret for +the honors laid down, or one glance towards the honors gathering before +him, taking affectionate leave of his companions in arms, and their +great chief, and returning to his native land, to resume there the +duties he owed as a subject and member of the State, in France. + +[Footnote 24: A prominent statesman, formerly Governor of New York, of +which state he is a native. He is known in literature by many addresses, +speeches, and diplomatic papers, often of high merit.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Abraham Lincoln,[25] 1809-1865._= + +"Speech at the Dedication of the National Cemetery at Gettysburg," +November 19, 1883. + +=_95._= OBLIGATION TO THE PATRIOT DEAD. + +Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon this +continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the +proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a +great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived +and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of +that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final +resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might +live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But +in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot +hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, +have consecrated it far above our power to add or detract. The world +will little note, nor long remember, what we say here; but it can never +forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather to be +dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here, have +thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to +the great task remaining before us, that from these honored dead we +take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full +measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall +not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new +birth of freedom, and that governments of the people, by the people, and +for the people, shall not perish from the earth. + +[Footnote 25: Born in Kentucky; a prominent lawyer and statesman of +Illinois; was elected President of the United States in 1860; was +eminent for his profound appreciation of 'the subsequent struggle, and +for his patriotic appeals in behalf of the nation. Assassinated April +13, 1865.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Charles Sumner, 1811-1874._= (Manual, p. 487.) + +From the "Speech in the Senate on the Nebraska and Kansas Bill," May 25, +1854. + +=_96._= PROSPECTIVE RESULTS OF THE BILL. + +Sir, the bill which you are now about to pass is at once the worst and +the best bill on which Congress ever acted. Yes, sir, worst and best at +the same time. + +It is the worst bill, inasmuch as it is a present victory of slavery. In +a Christian land, and in an age of civilization, a time-honored statute +of freedom is struck down, opening the way to all the countless woes and +wrongs of human bondage. Among the crimes of history, another is about +to be recorded, which no tears can blot out, and which, in better days, +will be read with universal shame. + +But there is another side, to which I gladly turn. Sir, it is the best +bill on which Congress ever acted; for it annuls all past compromises +with slavery, and makes all future compromises impossible. Thus it puts +freedom and slavery face to face, and bids them grapple. Who can doubt +the result? It opens wide the door of the future, when, at last, there +will really be a North, and the slave power will be broken; when this +wretched despotism will cease to dominate over our government, no longer +impressing itself upon everything at home and abroad; when the national +government shall be divorced in every way from slavery, and according +to the true intention of our fathers, freedom shall be established by +Congress everywhere, at least beyond the local limits of the states. + +Thus, sir, now standing at the very grave of freedom in Kansas and +Nebraska, I lift myself to the vision of that happy resurrection, by +which freedom will be secured, not only in these territories, but +everywhere under the national government. More clearly than ever before, +I now penetrate that "All-Hail-Hereafter" when slavery must disappear. +Proudly I discern the flag of my country, as it ripples in every breeze, +at last become in reality, as in name, the Flag of Freedom, undoubted, +pure, and irresistible. Am I not right, then, in calling this bill the +best on which Congress ever acted? + +Sorrowfully I bend before the wrong you are about to commit. Joyfully I +welcome all the promises of the future. + + * * * * * + +From the "Speech for Union against the Slave Power," June 8, 1848. + +=_97._= HEROIC EFFORTS CANNOT FAIL. + +There are occasions of political difference, I admit, when it may become +expedient to vote for a person who does not completely represent our +sentiments. There are some matters that come legitimately within the +range of expediency and compromise. The Tariff and the Currency are +unquestionably of this character. If a candidate differs from me, more +or less, on these, I may yet be disposed to vote for him. But the +question now before the country is of another character. This will not +admit of compromise. It is not within the domain of expediency. _To be +wrong on this is to be wholly wrong._ It is not merely expedient for us +to defend Freedom, when assailed, but our duty so to do, unreservedly, +and careless of consequences. Who is there in this assembly that would +help to fasten a fetter upon Oregon or Mexico? Who is there that would +not oppose every effort for this purpose? Nobody. Who is there, then, +that can vote for Taylor or Cass? + +But it is said that we shall throw away our votes, and that our +opposition will fail. Sir! no honest, earnest effort in a good cause +ever fails. It may not be crowned with the applause of men; it may not +seem to touch the goal of immediate worldly success, which is the end +and aim of so much of life. But still it is not lost. It helps to +strengthen the weak with new virtue; to arm the irresolute with proper +energy; to animate all with devotion to duty, which in the end conquers +all. Fail! Did the martyrs fail, when with their precious blood they +sowed the seed of the Church? Did the discomfited champions of Freedom +fail, who have left those names in history which can never die? Did the +three hundred Spartans fail, when, in the narrow pass, they did not fear +to brave the innumerable Persian hosts, whose very arrows darkened the +sun? No! Overborne by numbers, crushed to earth, they have left an +example which is greater far than any victory. And this is the least we +can do. Our example shall be the source of triumph hereafter. It +will not be the first time in history that the hosts of Slavery have +outnumbered the champions of Freedom. But where is it written that +Slavery finally prevailed. + + * * * * * + +Returning to our forefathers for our principles, let us borrow, also, +something of their courage and union. Let us summon to our sides the +majestic forms of those civil heroes, whose firmness in council was +equalled only by the firmness of Washington in war. Let us listen +again to the eloquence of the elder Adams, animating his associates in +Congress to independence: let us hang anew upon the sententious wisdom +of Franklin; let us be enkindled, as were the men of other days, by the +fervid devotion to Freedom, which flamed from the heart of Jefferson. +Deriving instruction from our enemies, let us also be taught by the +Slave Power. The two hundred thousand slaveholders are always united in +purpose. Hence their strength. Like arrows in a quiver, they cannot be +broken. The friends of Freedom have thus far been divided. _Union_, +then, must be our watchword,--union, among men of all parties. By such a +union we shall consolidate an opposition which must prevail. + + * * * * * + +From a Speech, September 16, 1863. + +=_98._= OUR FOREIGN RELATIONS. + +It only remains that the Republic should lift itself to the height of +its great duties. War is hard to bear,--with its waste, its pains, its +wounds, its funerals. But in this war we have not been choosers. We have +been challenged to the defence of our country, and in this sacred cause, +to crush Slavery. There is no alternative. Slavery began the combat, +staking its life, and determined to rule or die. That we may continue +freemen there must be no slaves; so that our own security is linked with +the redemption of a race. Blessed lot, amidst the harshness of war, to +wield the arms and deal the blows under which the monster will surely +fall! + +But while thus steady in our purpose at home, we must not neglect +that proper moderation abroad, which becomes the consciousness of our +strength and the nobleness of our cause. The mistaken sympathy which +foreign powers now bestow upon slavery,--or it may be the mistaken +insensibility,--under the plausible name of "neutrality," which they +profess,--will be worse for them than for us. For them it will be a +record of shame which their children would gladly wash out with tears. +For us it will be only another obstacle vanquished in the battle for +civilization, where unhappily false friends are mingled with open +enemies. Even if the cause shall seem for a while imperilled from +foreign powers, yet our duties are none the less urgent. If the pressure +be great, the resistance must be greater; nor can there be any retreat. +Come weal or woe this is the place for us to stand. + +I know not if a republic like ours can count even now upon the certain +friendship of any European power, unless it be the republic of William +Tell. The very name is unwelcome to the full-blown representatives of +monarchical Europe, who forget how proudly, even in modern history, +Venice bore the title of _Serenissima Respublica_. It will be for us +to change all this, and we shall do it. Our successful example will be +enough. Thus far we have been known chiefly through that vital force +which slavery could only degrade, but not subdue. Now at last, by the +death of slavery, will the republic begin to live. For what is life +without liberty? Stretching from ocean to ocean,--teeming with +population, bountiful in resources of all kinds, and thrice-happy in +universal enfranchisement, it will be more than conqueror. Nothing too +vast for its power; nothing too minute for its care. Triumphant over the +foulest wrong ever inflicted, after the bloodiest war ever waged, it +will know the majesty of right and the beauty of peace, prepared always +to uphold the one, and to cultivate the other. Strong in its own mighty +stature, filled with all the fulness of a new life, and covered with a +panoply of renown, it will confess that no dominion is of value which +does not contribute to human happiness. Born in this latter day, and the +child of its own struggles, without ancestral claims, but heir of +all the ages,--it will stand forth to assert the dignity of man, and +wherever any member of the human family is to be succored, there its +voice will reach,--as the voice of Cromwell reached across France +even to the persecuted mountaineers of the Alps. Such will be this +republic;--upstart among the nations. Aye! as the steam-engine, the +telegraph, and chloroform are upstart. Comforter and helper like these, +it can know no bounds to its empire over a willing world. But the first +stage is the death of slavery. + + * * * * * + +From "Prophetic Voices about America." + +=_99._= NATIONAL GREATNESS ATTAINABLE THROUGH PEACE. + +Such are some of the prophetic voices about America, differing in +character and importance, but all having one augury, and opening one +vista, illimitable in extent and vastness. Farewell to the idea of +Montesquieu, that a republic can exist only in a small territory.... + +Such grandeur may justly excite anxiety rather than pride, for duties +are in corresponding proportion. There is occasion for humility also, +as the individual considers his own insignificance in the transcendent +mass. The tiny polyp, in its unconscious life, builds the everlasting +coral; each citizen is little more than the industrious insect. The +result is accomplished by continuous and combined exertion. Millions of +citizens, working in obedience to nature, can accomplish anything. Of +course, war is an instrumentality which a true civilization disowns. +Here some of our prophets have erred. Sir Thomas Browne was so much +overshadowed by his own age, that his vision was darkened by "great +armies," and even "hostile and piratical attacks" on Europe. It was +natural that D'Aranda, schooled in worldly affairs, should imagine the +new-born power ready to seize the Spanish possessions. Among our own +countrymen, Jefferson looked to war for the extension of dominion. The +Floridas he says on one occasion, "are ours on the first moment of war, +and until a war they are of no particular necessity to us." Happily +they were acquired in another way. Then again, while declaring that no +constitution was ever before so calculated as ours for extensive empire +and self-government, and insisting upon Canada as a component part, +he calmly says that "this would be, of course, in the first war." +Afterwards, while confessing a longing for Cuba, "as the most +interesting addition that could ever be made to our system of States," +he says that "he is sensible that this can never be obtained, even with +her own consent, without war." Thus at each stage is the baptism of +blood. In much better mood the good Bishop recognized empire as moving +gently in the pathway of light. All this is much clearer now than when +he prophesied. It is easy to see that empire obtained by force is +unrepublican and offensive to that first principle of our Union +according to which all just government stands only on the consent of the +governed. Our country needs no such ally as war. Its destiny is mightier +than war. Through peace it will have every thing. This is our talisman. +Give us peace, and population will increase beyond all experience; +resources of all kinds will multiply infinitely; arts will embellish the +land with immortal beauty, the name of Republic will be exalted, until +every neighbor, yielding to irresistible attraction, will seek a new +life in becoming a part of the great whole; and the national example +will be more puissant than army or navy for the conquest of the world. + + * * * * * + + +=_Alexander H. Stephens,[26] 1812-._= + +From Appendix to "The Constitutional View." + +=_100._= ORIGIN OF THE AMERICAN FLAG. + +The stars, as a matter of course, represent states. The origin of +the stripes, I think, if searched out, would be found to be a little +curious. All I know upon that point is, that on the 4th day of July, +1776, after the Declaration of Independence was carried, a committee was +appointed by Congress, consisting of Mr. Jefferson, Dr. Franklin, and +John Adams, to prepare a _device_ for a _seal_ of the United States.... +This seal, as reported, or the _device_ in full, as reported, was +never adopted. But in it we see the emblems, in part, which are still +preserved in the flag. + +The stripes, or lines, which, on Mr. Jefferson's original plan, were +to designate the six quarterings of the shield, as signs of the six +countries from which our ancestors came, are now, I believe, considered +as representations of the old thirteen states, and with most persons the +idea of a shield is lost sight of. You perceive that, by drawing six +lines or stripes on a shield figure, it will leave seven spaces of the +original color, and of course give thirteen apparent stripes; hence the +idea of their being all intended to represent the old thirteen states. +My opinion, is, that this was the origin of the stripes. Mr. Jefferson's +quartered shield for a seal device was seized upon as a national emblem, +that was put upon the flag. We have now the stars as well as the +stripes. When each of these was adopted I cannot say; but the flag, as +it now is, was designed by Captain Reid, as I tell you, and adopted by +Congress. + +[Footnote 26: One of the most eminent public men of the south; a native +of Georgia.] + + * * * * * + + + +BIOGRAPHICAL WRITERS. + + +=_Benjamin Rush,[27] 1743-1813._= + +From "Essays, Literary, Moral," etc. + +=_101._= THE LIFE OF EDWARD DRINKER, A CENTENARIAN. + +He saw and heard more of those events which are measured by time, than +have ever been seen or heard since the age of the patriarchs; he saw the +same spot of earth which at one period of his life was covered with wood +and bushes, and the receptacle of beasts and birds of prey, afterwards +become the seat of a city not only the first in wealth and arts in the +new, but rivalling, in both, many of the first cities in the old world. +He saw regular streets where he once pursued a hare; he saw churches +rising upon morasses, where he had often heard the croaking of frogs; he +saw wharves and warehouses where he had often seen Indian savages draw +fish from the river for their daily subsistence; and he saw ships of +every size and use in those streams where he had often seen nothing but +Indian canoes.... He saw the first treaty ratified between the newly +confederated powers of America and the ancient monarchy of France, with +all the formalities of parchment and seals, on the same spot, probably, +where he once saw William Penn ratify his first and last treaty with +the Indians, without the formality of pen, ink, or paper.... He saw the +beginning and end of the empire of Great Britain in Pennsylvania. He +had been the subject of seven successive crowned heads, and afterwards +became a willing citizen of a republic; for he embraced the liberties +and independence of America in his withered arms, and triumphed in the +last years of his life in the salvation of his country. + +[Footnote 27: A native of Pennsylvania, eminent as a writer, and +especially as a teacher and practitioner of medicine.] + + * * * * * + + +=_John Marshall, 1755-1835._= (Manual, p. 490.) + +From the "History of the American Colonies." + +=_102._= THE CONQUEST OF CANADA. + +During these transactions, General Amherst was taking measures for the +annihilation of the remnant of French power in Canada. He determined to +employ the immense force under his command for the accomplishment of +this object, and made arrangements during the winter to bring the armies +from Quebec, Lake Champlain, and Lake Ontario, to act against Montreal. + +The junction of these armies presenting before Montreal a force not +to be resisted, the Governor offered to capitulate. In the month of +September, Montreal, and all other places within the government of +Canada, then remaining in the possession of France, were surrendered to +his Britannic majesty. The troops were to be transported to France, and +the Canadians to be protected in their property, and the full enjoyment +of their religion. + +That colossal power which France had been long erecting in America, with +vast labor and expense; which had been the motive for one of the most +extensive and desolating wars of modern times, was thus entirely +overthrown. The causes of this interesting event are to be found in the +superior wealth and population of the colonies of England, and in +her immense naval strength; an advantage, in distant war, not to be +counterbalanced by the numbers, the discipline, the courage, and the +military talents, which may be combined in the armies of an inferior +maritime power. + +The joy diffused throughout the British dominions by this splendid +conquest, was mingled with a proud sense of superiority, which did +not estimate with exact justice the relative means employed by the +belligerents. In no part of those dominions was this joy felt in a +higher degree, or with more reason, than in America. In that region, the +wars between France and England had assumed a form, happily unknown to +other parts of the civilized world. Not confined as in Europe to men in +arms--women and children were its common victims. It had been carried by +the savage to the fire-side of the peaceful peasant, where the tomahawk +and the scalping-knife were applied indiscriminately to every age, and +to either sex. The hope was now fondly indulged that these scenes, at +least in the northern and middle colonies, were closed forever. + + * * * * * + + +=_John Armstrong,[28] 1759-1843._= + +From the Life of General Wayne. + +=_103._= STORMING OF STONY POINT. + +Wayne, believing that few things were impracticable to discipline and +valor, after a careful reconnoissance, adopted the project, and hastened +to give it execution. Beginning his march on the 15th from Sandy Beach, +he at eight o'clock in the evening took a position within a mile and +a half of his object. By the organization given to the attack, the +regiments of Febiger and Meigs, with Hull's detachment, formed the +column of the right; and the regiment of Butler and Murfey's detachment, +that of the left. A party of twenty men furnished with axes for pioneer +duty, and followed by a sustaining corps of one hundred and fifty men +with unloaded arms, preceded each column, while a small detachment was +assigned to purposes merely of demonstration. + +At half after eleven o'clock, the hour fixed on for the assault, the +columns were in motion; but from delays made inevitable by the nature of +the ground, it was twenty minutes after twelve before this commenced, +when neither the morass, now overflowed by the tide, nor the formidable +and double row of _abattis_, nor the high and strong works on the summit +of the hill, could for a moment damp the ardor or stop the career of +the assailants, who, in the face of an incessant fire of musketry and +a shower of shells and grape-shot, forced their way through every +obstacle, and with so much concert of movement, that both columns +entered the fort and reached its centre, nearly at the same moment. Nor +was the conduct of the victors less conspicuous for humanity than for +valor. Not a man of the garrison was injured after the surrender; and +during the conflict of battle, all were spared who ceased to make +resistance. + +The entire American loss in this enterprise, so formidable in prospect, +did not exceed one hundred men. The pioneer parties, necessarily the +most exposed, suffered most. Of the twenty men led by Lieutenant Gibbons +of the Sixth Pennsylvania Regiment, seventeen were killed or wounded. +Wayne's own escape on this occasion was of the hair-breadth kind. Struck +on the head by a musket-ball, he fell; but immediately rising on one +knee, he exclaimed, "March on, carry me into the fort; for should the +wound be mortal, I will die at the head of the column." The enemy's +loss in killed and captured amounted to six hundred and seven men. This +affair, the most brilliant of the war, covered the commanding general +with laurels. + +[Footnote 28: An officer of the revolutionary army, and a conspicuous +actor in the War of 1812; has written chiefly on military affairs.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Charles Caldwell,[29] 1772-1853._= + +From his "Autobiography." + +=_104._= A LECTURE OF DR. RUSH. + +At length, however, though the class of the winter, all told, amounted +to less than a hundred, a sufficient number had arrived to induce the +professors to commence their lectures; and the introductory of Dr. Rush +was a performance of deep and touching interest, and never, I think, to +be forgotten (while his memory endures), by any one who listened to it, +and was susceptible of the impression it was calculated to make. It +consisted in a well-written and graphical description of the terrible +sweep of the late pestilence; the wild dismay and temporary desolation +it had produced; the scenes of family and individual suffering and woe +he had witnessed during its ravages; the mental dejection, approaching +despair, which he himself had experienced, on account of the entire +failure of his original mode of practice in it, and the loss of his +earliest patients (some of them personal friends); the joy he felt on +the discovery of a successful mode of treating it; the benefactions +which he had afterwards the happiness to confer; and the gratulations +with which, after the success of his practice had become known, he was +often received in sick and afflicted families. The discourse, though +highly colored, and marked by not a few figures of fancy and bursts of +feeling, was, notwithstanding, sufficiently fraught, with substantial +matter to render it no less instructive than it was fascinating. + +[Footnote 29: A native of North Carolina; prominent as a physician and +controversialist.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Thomas H. Benton, 1783-1858._= (Manual, p. 487.) + +From the "Thirty Years' View of the United States Senate." + +=_105._= THE CHARACTER OF MACON.[30] + +He was above the pursuit of wealth, but also above dependence and +idleness, and, like an old Roman of the elder Cato's time, worked in the +fields at the head of his slaves in the intervals of public duty, and +did not cease this labor until advancing age rendered him unable to +stand the hot sun of summer.... I think it was the summer of 1817,--that +was the last time (he told me) he tried it, and found the sun too hot +for him,--then sixty years of age, a senator, and the refuser of all +office. How often I think of him, when I see at Washington robustious +men going through a scene of supplication, tribulation, and degradation, +to obtain office, which the salvation of the soul does not impose upon +the vilest sinner! His fields, his flocks, and his herds, yielded an +ample supply of domestic productions. A small crop of tobacco--three +hogsheads when the season was good, two when bad--purchased the exotics +which comfort and necessity required, and which the farm did not +produce. He was not rich, but rich enough to dispense hospitality and +charity, to receive all guests in his house, from the president to the +day laborer--no other title being necessary to enter his house but that +of an honest man;... and above all, he was rich enough to pay as he +went, and never to owe a dollar to any man. + +... He always wore the same dress,--that is to say, a suit of the same +material, cut, and color, superfine navy-blue,--the whole suit from the +same piece, and in the fashion of the time of the Revolution, and always +replaced by a new one before it showed age. He was neat in his person, +always wore fine linen, a fine cambric stock, a fine fur hat with a +brim to it, fair top-boots--the boot outside of the pantaloons, on the +principle that leather was stronger than cloth. + +... He was an habitual reader and student of the Bible, a pious and +religious man, and of the "_Baptist persuasion_," as he was accustomed +to express it. + +[Footnote 30: Nathaniel Macon, United States Senator from North +Carolina.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Alexander Slidell Mackenzie, 1803-1845._= (Manual, pp. 490, 505.) + +From the Life of Commodore Decatur. + +=_106._= RECAPTURE, AND BURNING OF THE FRIGATE "PHILADELPHIA," AT +TRIPOLI. + +When all were safely assembled on the deck of the Intrepid, (for so +admirably had the service been executed that not a man was missing, and +only one slightly wounded,) Decatur gave the order to cut the fasts and +shove off. The necessity for prompt obedience and exertion was urgent. +The flames had now gained the lower rigging, and ascended to the tops; +they darted furiously from the ports, flashing from the quarter gallery +round the mizzen of the Intrepid, as her stern dropped clear of the +ship. To estimate the perils of their position, it should be borne in +mind, that the fire had been communicated by these fearless men to the +near neighborhood of both magazines of the Philadelphia. The Intrepid +herself was a fire ship, having been supplied with combustibles, a mass +of which, ready to be converted into the means of destroying other +vessels of the enemy, if the opportunity should offer, lay in barrels on +her quarter deck, covered only with a tarpaulin. + +With destruction thus encompassing them within and without, Decatur and +his brave followers were unmoved. Calmly they put forth the necessary +exertion, breasted the Intrepid off with spars, and pressing on their +sweeps, caused her slowly to withdraw from the vicinity of the burning +mass. A gentle breeze from the land came auspiciously at the same +moment, and wafted the Intrepid beyond the reach of the flames, bearing +with it, however, a shower of burning embers, fraught with danger to +a vessel laden with combustibles, had not discipline, order, and calm +self-possession, been at hand for her protection. Soon this peril was +also left behind, and Decatur and his followers were at a sufficient +distance to contemplate securely the spectacle which the Philadelphia +presented. Hull, spars, and rigging, were now enveloped in flames. As +the metal of her guns became heated, they were discharged in succession +from both sides, serving as a brilliant salvo in honor of the victor, +and not harmless for the Tripolitans, as her starboard battery was fired +directly into the town. + +The town itself, the castles, the minarets of the mosques, and the +shipping in the harbor, were all brought into distinct view by the +splendor of the conflagration. It served also to reveal to the enemy the +cause of their disaster, in the little Intrepid, as she slowly withdrew +from the harbor. The shot of the shipping and castles fell thickly +around her, throwing up columns of spray, which the brilliant light +converted into a new ornament of the scene. Only one shot took effect, +and that passed through her top-gallant sail. Three hearty American +cheers were now given in mingled triumph and derision. Soon after, the +boats of the Siren joined company, and assisted in towing the Intrepid +out of the harbor. The cables of the Philadelphia having burned off, she +drifted on the rocks near the westward entrance of the harbor; and then +the whole spectacle, so full of moral sublimity, considering the means +by which it had been effected, and of material grandeur, had its +appropriate termination in the final catastrophe of her explosion. + +Nor were the little band of heroes on board the Intrepid the only +exulting spectators of the scene. Lieutenant Stewart and his companions +on board the Siren, watching with intense interest, beheld in the +conflagration a pledge of Decatur's success; and Captain Bainbridge, +with his fellow-captives in the dungeons of Tripoli, saw in it a motive +of national exultation, and an earnest that a spirit was at work to +hasten the day of their liberation. + + * * * * * + + +=_I.F.H. Claiborne,[31] About 1804-._= + +From "Life and Times of General Samuel Dale." + +=_107._= TECUMSEH'S SPEECH TO THE CREEK INDIANS. + +I saw the Shawnees issue from their lodge; they were painted black, and +entirely naked except the flap about their loins. Every weapon but the +war-club,--then first introduced among the Creeks,--had been laid aside. +An angry scowl sat on all their visages; they looked like a procession +of devils. Tecumseh led, the warriors followed, one in the footsteps of +the other. The Creeks, in dense masses, stood on each side of the path, +but the Shawnees noticed no one; they marched to the pole in the centre +of the square, and then turned to the left. + +... They then marched in the same order to the Council, or King's +house,--as it was termed in ancient times, and drew up before it. The +Big Warrior and the leading men were sitting there. The Shawnee chief +sounded his war-whoop,--a most diabolical yell, and each of his +followers responded. Tecumseh then presented to the Big Warrior a wampum +belt of five different-colored stands, which the Creek chief handed to +his warriors, and it was passed down the line. The Shawnee pipe was then +produced; it was large, long, and profusely decorated with shells, +beads, and painted eagle and porcupine quills. It was lighted from the +fire in the centre, and slowly passed from the Big Warrior along the +line. All this time not a word had been uttered; every thing was still +as death; even the winds slept, and there was only the gentle rustle of +the falling leaves. At length Tecumseh spoke, at first slowly, and in +sonorous tones, but soon he grew impassioned, and the words fell in +avalanches from his lips. His eyes burned with supernatural lustre, and +his whole frame trembled with emotion; his voice resounded over the +multitude,--now sinking in low and musical whispers, now rising to its +highest key, hurling out his words like a succession of thunderbolts. +His countenance varied with his speech; its prevalent expression was a +sneer of hatred and defiance; sometimes a murderous smile; for a brief +interval a sentiment of profound sorrow pervaded it; and at the close, a +look of concentrated vengeance, such, I suppose, as distinguishes the +arch-enemy of mankind, I have heard many great orators, but I never saw +one with the vocal powers of Tecumseh, or the same command of the +muscles of his face. + +... Had I been deaf, the play of his countenance would have told me what +he said. Its effect on that wild, superstitious, untutored, and warlike +assemblage may be conceived; not a word was said, but stern warriors, +the "stoics of the woods," shook with emotion, and a thousand tomahawks +were brandished in the air. Even the Big Warrior, who had been true to +the whites, and remained faithful during the war, was for the moment +visibly affected, and more than once I saw his huge hand clutch, +spasmodically, the handle of his knife.... When he resumed his seat, the +northern pipe was again passed round in solemn silence. The Shawnees +then simultaneously leaped up with one appalling yell, and danced their +tribal war-dance, going through the evolutions of battle, the scout, the +ambush, the final struggle, brandishing their war-clubs, and screaming, +in terrific concert, an infernal harmony fit only for the regions of the +damned. + +[Footnote 31: Was born in Mississippi; by profession a lawyer, and for +some years a member of Congress; author of several biographical works of +interest, chiefly relating to the Southwest.] + + * * * * * + + +=_George Washington Greene,[32] 1811-._= + +From The Life of General Greene. + +=_108._= FOREIGN OFFICERS IN THE REVOLUTIONARY ARMY. + +... Mrs. Greene had joined her husband early in January, bringing with +her her summer's acquisition, a stock of French that quickly made her +little parlor the favorite resort of foreign officers. There was often +to be seen Lafayette, not yet turned of twenty-one, though a husband, a +father, and a major-general; graver somewhat in his manners than +strictly belonged either to his years or his country; and loved and +trusted by all, by Washington and Greene especially. Steuben, too, was +often there, wearing his republican uniform, as, fifteen years before, +he had worn the uniform of the despotic Frederick; as deeply skilled in +the ceremonial of a court as in the manoeuvring of an army; with a +glittering star on his left breast, that bore witness to the faithful +service he had rendered in his native Germany; and revolving in his +accurate mind designs which were to transform this mass of physical +strength, which Americans had dignified with the name of army, into a +real army which Frederick himself might have accepted. He had but little +English at his command as yet, but at his side there was a mercurial +young Frenchman, Peter Duponceau, who knew how to interpret both his +graver thoughts and the lighter gallantries with which the genial old +soldier loved to season his intercourse with the wives and daughters of +his new fellow-citizens. As the years passed away, Duponceau himself +became a celebrated man, and loved to tell the story of these checkered +days. Another German, too, De Kalb, was sometimes seen there, taller, +statelier, graver than Steuben, with the cold, observant eye of the +diplomatist, rather than the quick glance of the soldier, though a +soldier too, and a brave and skillful one; caring very little about the +cause he had forsaken his noble chateau and lovely wife to fight for, +but a great deal about the promotion and decorations which his good +service hero was to win him in France; for he had made himself a +Frenchman, and served the King of France, and bought him French lands, +and married a French wife. Already before this war began, he had come +hither in the service of France to study the progress of the growing +discontent; and now he was here again an American major-general, led +partly by the ambition of rank, partly by the thirst of distinction, but +much, too, by a certain restlessness of nature, and longing for +excitement and action, not to be wondered at in one who had fought his +way up from a butlership to a barony. He and Steuben had served on +opposite sides during the Seven Years War, though born both of them on +the same bank of the Rhine; and though when Steuben first came, De Kalb +was in Albany, yet in May they must have met more than once. How did +they feel towards each other, the soldier of Frederick, and the soldier +of Louis? If we had known more about this, we should have known better, +perhaps, why Lafayette, a fast friend of De Kalb, speaks of the +"methodic mediocrity" of Steuben, and Steuben of the "vanity and +presumption" of the young major-general. + +In the same circle, too, was the young Fleury whom we have seen bearing +himself so gallantly at Fort Mifflin, and who, a year after, was to +render still more brilliant service at Stony Point; and the Marquis de +la Rouerie, concealing his rank under the name of Armand, and combatting +an unsuccessful love by throwing himself headlong into the tumult of +war; and Mauduit Duplessis, whose skill as an engineer had been proved +at Red Bank, and who about this time was breveted Lieutenant-Colonel, +at Washington's recommendation, for "gallant conduct at Brandywine and +Germantown," and "distinguished services at Fort Mercer," and a "degree +of modesty not always found in men who have performed brilliant +actions," but whom neither modesty nor gallantry could save from a +fearful death at San Domingo; and Gimat, aide to Lafayette now, but who +afterwards led Lafayette's van as colonel in the successful assault +of the British redoubts at Yorktown; and La Colombe, who was to serve +Lafayette faithfully in France as he served him here; and Ternant, +distinguished in America, France, and Holland, but who this year +rendered invaluable service to American discipline by his aid in +carrying out the reforms of Steuben. Kosciusko was in the north, but +Poland had still another representative, the gallant Pulaski, who had +done good service during the last campaign, and who the very next year +was to lay down his life for us at the siege of Savannah. + +[Footnote 32: Born in Rhode Island; a grandson of the distinguished +General Greene of the Revolution, whose life he has written, with many +interesting details of that struggle.] + + * * * * * + + +=_James Parton, 1822-._= (Manual, pp. 490, 532.) + +From "Life and Times of Aaron Burr." + +=_109._= CAREER AND CHARACTER OF BURR. + +To judge this man, to decide how far he was unfortunate, and how far +guilty; how much we ought to pity, and how much to blame him,--is a task +beyond my powers. And what occasion is there for judging him, or for +judging any one? We all know that his life was an unhappy failure. He +failed to gain the small honors at which he aimed; he failed to live +a life worthy of his opportunities; he failed to achieve a character +worthy of his powers. It was a great, great pity. And any one is to be +pitied, who, in thinking of it, has any other feelings than those of +compassion--compassion for the man whose life was so much less a blessing +to him than it might have been, and compassion for the country, which +after producing so rare and excellent a kind of man, lost a great part +of the good he might have done her. + +The great error of his career, as before remarked, was his turning +politician. He was too good for a politician, and not great enough for a +statesman. + +If his expedition had succeeded, it was in him, I think, to have run a +career in Spanish America similar to that of Napoleon in Europe. Like +Napoleon, he would have been one of the most amiable despots, and one of +the most destructive. Like Napoleon, he would have been sure, at last, +to have been overwhelmed in a prodigious ruin. Like Napoleon, he would +have been idolized and execrated. Like Napoleon, he would, have had his +half dozen friends to go with him to St. Helena. Like Napoleon, he would +have justified to the last, with the utmost sincerity, nearly every +action of his life. + +We live in a better day than he did. Nearly every thing is better now +in the United States than it was fifty years ago, and a much larger +proportion of the people possess the means of enjoying and improving +life. If some evils are more obvious and rampant than they were, they +are also better known, and the remedy is nearer ... + +Politics, apart from the pursuit of office, have again become real and +interesting. The issue is distinct and important enough to justify the +intense concern of a nation. To a young man coming upon the stage of +life with the opportunities of Aaron Burr, a glorious and genuine +political career is possible. The dainty keeping aloof from the +discussion of public affairs, which has been the fashion until lately, +will not again find favor with any but the very stupid, for a long +time to come. The intellect of the United States once roused to the +consideration of political questions, will doubtless be found competent +to the work demanded of it. + +The career of Aaron Burr can never be repeated in the United States. +That of itself is a proof of progress. The game of politics which he +played is left, in these better days, to far inferior men, and the moral +license which he and Hamilton permitted themselves, is not known in the +circles they frequented. But the graver errors, the radical vices, of +both men belong to human nature, and will always exist to be shunned and +battled. + + * * * * * + +From "Famous Americans." + +=_110._= HENRY CLAY'S CAREER AT THE WESTERN BAR. + +It is surprising how addicted to litigation were the earlier settlers of +the Western States. The imperfect surveys of land, the universal habit +of getting goods on credit at the store, and "difficulties" between +individuals ending in bloodshed, filled the court calendars, with land +disputes, suits for debt, and exciting murder cases, which gave to +lawyers more importance and better chances of advancement than they +possessed in the older States. Mr. Clay had two strings to his bow. +Besides being a man of red-tape and pigeon-holes, exact, methodical, and +strictly attentive to business, he had a power over a Kentucky jury +such as no other man has ever wielded. To this day nothing pleases aged +Kentuckians better than to tell stories which they heard their fathers +tell of Clay's happy repartees to opposing counsel, his ingenious +cross-questioning of witnesses, his sweeping torrents of invective, his +captivating courtesy, his melting pathos. Single gestures, attitudes, +tones, have come down to us through two or three memories, and still +please the curious guest at Kentucky firesides. But when we turn to the +cold records of this part of his life, we find little to justify his +traditional celebrity. It appears that the principal use to which his +talents were applied during the first years of his practice at the bar, +was in defending murderers. He seems to have shared the feeling which +then prevailed in the Western country, that to defend a prisoner at the +bar is a nobler thing than to assist in defending the public against his +further depredations; and he threw all his force into the defence of +some men who would have been "none the worse for a hanging." One day, in +the streets of Lexington, a drunken fellow whom he had rescued from the +murderer's doom, cried out, "Here comes Mr. Clay, who saved my life." +"Ah! my poor fellow," replied the advocate, "I fear I have saved too +many like you, who ought to be hanged.". The anecdotes printed of his +exploits in cheating the gallows of its due, are of a quality which +shows that the power of this man over a jury lay much in his manner. His +delivery, which "bears absolute sway in oratory," was bewitching and +irresistible, and gave to quite common-place wit and very questionable +sentiment, an amazing power to please and subdue. + + * * * * * + +From an Article in the Atlantic Monthly. + +=_111._= WESTERN THEATRES. + +At the West, along with much reckless and defiant unbelief in every +thing high and good, there is also a great deal of that terror-stricken +pietism which refuses to attend the theatre unless it is very bad +indeed, and is called "Museum." This limits the business of the theatre; +and as a good theatre is necessarily a very expensive institution, it +improves very slowly, although the Western people are in precisely that +state of development and culture to which the drama is best adapted and +is most beneficial. We should naturally expect to find the human mind, +in the broad, magnificent West, rising superior to the prejudices +originating in the little sects of little lands. So it will rise in due +time. So it has risen, in some degree. But mere grandeur of nature has +no educating effect upon the soul of man; else Switzerland would not +have supplied Paris with footmen, and the hackmen of Niagara would spare +the tourist. It is only a human mind that can instruct a human mind. + + * * * * * + +To witness the performance, and to observe the rapture expressed +upon the shaggy and good-humored countenances of the boatmen, was +interesting, as showing what kind of banquet will delight a human soul, +starved from its birth. It likes a comic song very much, if the song +refers to fashionable articles of ladies costume, or holds up to +ridicule members of Congress, policemen, or dandies. It is not averse +to a sentimental song, in which "Mother, dear," is frequently +apostrophized. It delights in a farce from which most of the dialogue +has been cut away, while all the action is retained,--in which people +are continually knocked down, or run against one another with great +violence. It takes much pleasure in seeing Horace Greeley play a part in +a negro farce, and become the victim of designing colored brethren. But +what joy, when the beauteous Terpsichorean nymph bounds upon the scene, +rosy with paint, glistening with spangles, robust with cotton and cork, +and bewildering with a cloud of gauzy skirts! What a vision of beauty +to a man who has seen nothing for days and nights but the hold of a +steamboat and the dull shores of the Mississippi! + + * * * * * + + + +HISTORY, GENERAL AND SPECIAL. + + +=_John Heckewelder,[33] 1743-1823._= + +From the "Narrative" of the Moravian Missions among the Indians. + +=_112._= SETTLEMENTS OF THE CHRISTIAN INDIANS. + +Both these congregations, being supplied with missionaries and +schoolmasters, were so prosperous that they became the admiration of +visitors, some of whom thought it next to a miracle that, by the light +of the gospel, a savage race should be brought to live together in peace +and harmony, and above all devote themselves to religion. The people +residing in the neighborhood of those places were also intimate with +these Indians, and both were serviceable to each other; one instance of +which is here inserted. In February of the year 1761, a white man, who +had lost a child, came to Nain weeping, and begging that the Indian +Brethren would assist him and his wife to search for his child, which +had been missing since the day before. Several of the Indian Brethren +immediately went to the house of the parents, and discovered the +footsteps of the child, and tracing the same for the distance of two +miles, found the child in the woods, wrapped up in its petticoat, and +shivering with cold. The joy of the parents was so great that they +reported the circumstance wherever they went. To some of the white +people, who had been in dread of the near settlement of these Indians, +this incident was the means of making them easy, and causing them to +rejoice in having such good neighbors. + +... The war being over, the Indians who had been engaged in it freely +confessed to their friends and relations, and to some white people they +had heretofore been acquainted with, that "the Brethren's settlements +had been as a stumbling-block to them; that had it not been for these, +they would most assuredly have laid waste the whole country from the +mountains to Philadelphia; and that many plans had been formed for +destroying these settlements." + +[Footnote 33: Prominent among the Moravian clergy for his experience of +missionary life among the American Indians, for his knowledge of the +Indian languages, and for his lifelong devotion to the missionary work.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Jeremy Belknap, 1744-1798._= (Manual, p. 490.) + +From "The History of New Hampshire." + +=_113._= THE MAST PINE. + +Another thing worthy of observation is the aged and majestic appearance +of the trees, of which the most noble is the mast pine. This tree often +grows to the height of one hundred and fifty, and sometimes two hundred +feet. It is straight as an arrow, and has no branches but very near the +top. It is from twenty to forty inches in diameter at its base, and +appears like a stately pillar, adorned with a verdant capital, in form +of a cone. Interspersed among these are the common forest trees of +various kinds. + +When a mast tree is to be felled, much preparation is necessary. So tall +a stick, without any limbs nearer the ground than eighty or a hundred +feet, is in great danger of breaking in the fall. To prevent this the +workmen have a contrivance which they call bedding the tree, which is +thus executed. They know in what direction the tree will fall; and they +cut down a number of smaller trees which grow in that direction; or if +there be none, they draw others to the spot, and place them so that the +falling tree may lodge on their branches; which breaking or yielding +under its pressure, render its fall easy and safe. A time of deep snow +is the most favorable season, as the rocks are then covered, and a +natural bed is formed to receive the tree. When fallen, it is examined, +and if to appearance it be sound, it is cut in the proportion of three +feet in length to every inch of its diameter, for a mast; but if +intended for a bow-sprit or a yard, it is cut shorter. If it be not +sound throughout, or if it break in falling, it is cut into logs for the +saw-mill. + +When a mast is to be drawn on the snow, one end is placed on a sled, +shorter, but higher than the common sort, and rests on a strong block, +which is laid across the middle of the sled. + +In descending a long and steep hill they have a contrivance to prevent +the load from making too rapid a descent. Some of the cattle are placed +behind it; a chain which is attached to their yokes is brought forward +and fastened to the hinder end of the load, and the resistance which +is made by these cattle checks the descent. This operation is called +_tailing_. The most dangerous circumstance is the passing over the +top of a sharp hill, by which means the oxen which are nearest to the +tongues are sometimes suspended, till the foremost cattle can draw the +mast so far over the hill as to give them opportunity to recover the +ground. In this case the drivers are obliged to use much judgment and +care to keep the cattle from being killed. There is no other way to +prevent this inconvenience than to level the roads. + + * * * * * + + +=_David Ramsay, 1749-1815._= (Manual, p. 491.) + +From "The History of the Revolution in South Carolina." + +=_114._= FEELING OF THE PROVINCE TOWARD GREAT BRITAIN. + +In South Carolina, an enemy to the Hanoverian succession, or to the +British constitution, was scarcely known. The inhabitants were fond +of British manners even to excess. They for the most part, sent their +children to Great Britain for education, and spoke of that country under +the endearing appellation of Home. They were enthusiasts for that sacred +plan of civil and religious happiness under which they had grown up and +flourished.... Wealth poured in upon them from a thousand channels. The +fertility of the soil generously repaid the labor of the husbandman, +making the poor to sing, and industry to smile, through every corner +of the land. None were indigent but the idle and unfortunate. Personal +independence was fully within the reach of every man who was healthy +and industrious. The inhabitants, at peace with all the world, enjoyed +domestic tranquility, and were secure in their persons and property. +They were also completely satisfied with their government, and wished +not for the smallest change in their political constitution. + +In the midst of these enjoyments, and the most sincere attachment to the +mother country, to their king and his government, the people of South +Carolina, without any original design on their part, were step by step +drawn into an extensive war, which involved them in every species of +difficulty, and finally dissevered them from the parent state. + +... Every thing in the colonies contributed to nourish a spirit of +liberty and independence. They were planted under the auspices of the +English constitution in its purity and vigor. Many of their inhabitants +had imbibed a largo portion of that spirit which brought one tyrant to +the block, and expelled another from his dominions. They were +communities of separate, independent individuals, for the most part +employed in cultivating a fruitful soil, and under no general influence +but of their own feelings and opinions; they were not led by powerful +families, or by great officers in church or state.... Every inhabitant +was, or easily might be, a freeholder. Settled on lands of his own, he +was both farmer and landlord. Having no superior to whom he was obliged +to look up, and producing all the necessaries of life from his own +grounds, he soon became independent. His mind was equally free from all +the restraints of superstition. No ecclesiastical establishment invaded +the rights of conscience, or lettered the free-born mind. At liberty to +act and think as his inclination prompted, he disdained the ideas of +dependence and subjection. + + * * * * * + + +=_Henry Lee,[34] 1736-1818._= + +From "Memoirs" of the War in the South. + +=_115._= CLARKE'S SERVICES AGAINST THE INDIANS. + +JOHN RODGERS CLARKE, colonel in the service of Virginia, against our +neighbors the Indians in the revolutionary war, was among our best +soldiers, and better acquainted with the Indian warfare than any officer +in our army. This gentleman, after one of his campaigns, met in Richmond +several of our cavalry officers, and devoted all his leisure in +ascertaining from them the various uses to which horse were applied, +as well as the manner of such application. The information he acquired +determined him to introduce this species of force against the Indians, +as that of all others the most effectual. + +By himself, by Pickens, and lately by Wayne, was the accuracy of +Clarke's opinion justified.... + +The Indians, when fighting with infantry, are very daring. This temper +of mind results from his consciousness of his superior fleetness; which, +together with his better knowledge of woods, assures to him extrication +out of difficulties, though desperate. This is extinguished when he +finds that, he is to save himself from the pursuit of horse, and with +its extinction falls that habitual boldness. + +[Footnote 34: In the revolutionary war he was distinguished as a cavalry +officer, and subsequently, in political life, as a writer and speaker.] + + * * * * * + +=_116._= THE CAREER OF CAPTAIN KIRKWOOD. + +The State of Delaware furnished one regiment only; and certainly no +regiment in the army surpassed it in soldiership. The remnant of that +corps, less thaw two companies, from the battle of Camden, was commanded +by Captain Kirkwood, who passed through the war with high reputation; +and yet, as the line of Delaware consisted of but one regiment, and +that regiment was reduced to a captain's command. Kirkwood never +could be promoted in regular routine--a very glaring defect in the +organization of the army, as it gave advantages to parts of the same +army denied to other portions of it. The sequel is singularly hard. +Kirkwood retired, upon peace, as a captain; and when the army under St. +Clair was raised to defend the west from the Indian enemy, this veteran +resumed his sword as the eldest captain in the oldest regiment. + +In the decisive defeat of the 4th of November,[35] the gallant +Kirkwood fell, bravely sustaining his point of the action. It was the +thirty-third time he had risked his life for his country; and he died as +he had lived, the brave, meritorious, unrewarded Kirkwood. + +[Footnote 35: St. Clair's defeat.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Peter S. Duponceau,[36] 1760-1844._= + +From "An Address." + +=_117._= CHARACTER OF PENN. + +WILLIAM PENN stands the first among the lawgivers whose names and deeds +are recorded in history. Shall we compare him with Lycurgus, Solon, +Romulus, those founders of military commonwealths, who organized their +citizens in deadly array against the rest of their species, taught them +to consider their fellow-men as barbarians, and themselves as alone +worthy to rule over the earth?... But see William Penn, with weaponless +hand, sitting down peaceably with his followers, in the midst of +savage nations whose only occupation was shedding the blood of their +fellow-men, disarming them by his justice, and teaching them, for the +first time, to view a stranger without distrust. See them bury their +tomahawks in his presence, so deep that man shall never be able to +find them again. See them, under the shade of the thick groves of +Coaquannock, extend the bright chain of friendship, and solemnly promise +to preserve it as long as the sun and moon shall endure. See him then, +with his companions, establishing his commonwealth on the sole basis of +religion, morality, and universal love, and adopting, as the fundamental +maxim of his government, the rule handed down to us from Heaven, "Glory +to God on high, and on earth peace and good will towards men." + +[Footnote 36: An eminent jurist and philologist, of French origin, but +for many years a citizen of Philadelphia.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Charles J. Ingersoll,[37] 1782-1862._= + +From the "Historical Sketch" of the War of 1812. + +=_118._= CALHOUN CHARACTERIZED + +John Caldwell Calhoun was the same slender, erect, and ardent logician, +politician, and sectarian, in the House of Representatives in 1814 that +he is in the Senate of 1847. Speaking with aggressive aspect, flashing +eye, rapid action and enunciation, unadorned argument, eccentricity of +judgment, unbounded love of rule, impatient, precipitate, kind temper, +excellent in colloquial attractions, caressing the young, not courting +rulers; conception, perception, and demonstration quick and clear, with +logical precision arguing paradoxes, and carrying home conviction beyond +rhetorical illustration; his own impressions so intense as to discredit, +scarcely listen to, any other suggestions; well educated and informed. + +[Footnote 37: A native of Pennsylvania; long conspicuous in the law, +literature, and political life.] + + * * * * * + +=_119._= BATTLE OF CHIPPEWA. + +In a fair national trial of the military faculties, courage, activity, +and fortitude, discipline, gunnery, and tactics, for the first time the +palm was awarded by Englishmen to Americans over Englishmen. Without +fortuitous advantage the Americans proved too much for the redoubtable +English, though superior in number, therefore universally arrogating to +themselves even with inferior numbers, a mastery but faintly questioned +by most Americana; no accident to depreciate the triumph of the younger +over the older nation; no more fortune than what favors the bravest. + +Physical and even corporeal national characteristics, did not escape +comparison in this normal contest. The American rather more active and +more demonstrative than his ancestors, many of the officers of imposing +figure, Scott and McNeil particularly, towering with gigantic stature +above the rest, stood opposed in striking contrast to the short, thick, +brawny, burly Briton, hard to overcome.... The Marquis of Tweedale, +with his sturdy, short person, and stubborn courage, represented +the British.... Even the names betokened at once consanguinity and +hostility. Scott, McNeill, and McRee, in arms against Gordon, Hay, and +Maconochie. And the harsh Scotch nomenclature, compared with the more +euphonious savage Canada, Chippewa, Niagara, which latter modern English +prosody has corrupted from the measure of Goldsmith's Traveller:-- + + "Where wild Oswego spreads her swamps around, + And Niagara stuns with thundering sound." + +... Mankind impressed by numbers and bloodshed, regard the second more +extensive battle near the falls of Niagara, on the 25th of the same +month, between the same parties with British reinforcements, known as +the battle of Bridgewater, as more important than its precursor.... The +victory of Chippewa was the resurrection or birth of American arms, +after their prostration by so long disuse, and when at length taken up +again, by such continual and deplorable failures, that the martial and +moral influence of the first decided victory opened and characterized +an epoch in the annals and intercourse of the two kindred and rival +nations, whose language is to be spoken, as their institutions are +rapidly spreading, throughout most of mankind. Fought between only some +three or four thousand men in both armies, at a place remote from +either of their countries, the battle of Chippewa may not bear vulgar +comparison with the great military engagements of modern Europe. + +... The charm of British military invincibility was as effectually +broken, by a single brigade, as that of naval supremacy was by a single +frigate, as much as if a large army or fleet had been the agent. + + * * * * * + + +=_Henry M. Brackenridge,[38] 1786-._= (Manual, p. 505.) + +From "Recollections of the West." + +=_120._= OLD ST. GENEVIEVE, IN MISSOURI. + +The house of M. Beauvais was a long, low building, with a porch or shed +in front, and another in the rear; the chimney occupied the center, +dividing the house into two parts, with each a fireplace. One of these +served for dining-room, parlor, and principal bed-chamber; the other was +the kitchen; and each had a small room taken off at the end for private +chambers or cabinets. There was no loft or garret, a pair of stairs +being a rare thing in the village. The furniture, excepting the beds and +the looking-glass, was of the most common kind.... The yard was enclosed +with cedar pickets, eight or ten inches in diameter, and six feet high, +placed upright, sharpened at the top, in the manner of a stockade fort. +In front the yard was narrow, but in the rear quite spacious, and +containing the barn and stables, the negro quarters, and all the +necessary offices of a farm-yard. Beyond this, there was a spacious +garden enclosed with pickets.... + +The pursuits of the inhabitants were chiefly agricultural, although all +were more or less engaged in traffic for peltries with the Indians, or +in working the lead mines in the interior. Peltry and lead constituted +almost the only circulating medium. All politics, or discussions of the +affairs of government were entirely unknown; the commandant took care +of all that sort of thing. But instead of them, the processions and +ceremonies of the church, and the public balls, furnished ample matter +for occupation and amusement. Their agriculture was carried on in a +field of several thousand acres, enclosed at the common expense, and +divided into lots.... Whatever they may have gained in some respects, I +question very much whether the change of government has contributed to +increase their happiness. About a quarter of a mile off, there was a +village of Kickapoo Indians, who lived on the most friendly terms with +the white people. The boys often intermingled with those of the +white village, and practised shooting with the bow and arrow--an +accomplishment which I acquired with the rest, together with a little +smattering of the Indian language, which I forgot on leaving the place. + +[Footnote 38: Distinguished in literature and as a political writer; a +native of Pennsylvania.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Gulian C. Verplanck, 1786-1870._= (Manual, p. 487.) + +From the "Literary and Historical Discourses." + +=_121._= THE SCHOOLMASTER. + +The schoolmaster's occupation is laborious and ungrateful; its rewards +are scanty and precarious. He may indeed be, and he ought to be animated +by the consciousness of doing good, that best of all consolations, that +noblest of all motives. But that too must be often clouded by doubt and +uncertainty. Obscure and inglorious as his daily occupation may appear +to learned pride or worldly ambition, yet to be truly successful and +happy he must be animated by the spirit of the same great principles +which inspired the most illustrious benefactors of mankind. If he bring +to his task high talent and rich acquirement, he must be content to look +into distant years for the proof that his labors have not been wasted, +that the good seed which he daily scatters abroad does not fall on stony +ground and wither away, or among thorns to be choked by the cares, the +delusions, or the vices of the world. He must solace his toils with +the same prophetic faith that enabled the greatest of modern +philosophers,[39] amidst the neglect or contempt of his own times, to +regard himself as sowing the seeds of truth for posterity and the care +of Heaven. He must arm himself against disappointment and mortification +with a portion of that same noble confidence which soothed the greatest +of modern poets when weighed down by care and danger, by poverty, old +age, and blindness, still + + "--In prophetic dreams he saw + The youth unborn with pious awe + Imbibe each virtue from his sacred page." + +He must know and he must love to teach his pupils not the meager +elements of knowledge, but the secret and the use of their own +intellectual strength, exciting and enabling them hereafter to raise for +themselves the veil which covers the majestic form of Truth. He must +feel deeply the reverence due to the youthful mind fraught with mighty +though undeveloped energies and affections, and mysterious and eternal +destinies. Thence he must have learned to reverence himself and his +profession, and to look upon its otherwise ill-requited toils as their +own exceeding great reward. + +If such are the difficulties and the discouragements, such the duties, +the motives, and the consolations of teachers who are worthy of that +name and trust, how imperious then the obligation upon every enlightened +citizen who knows and feels the value of such men to aid them, to cheer +them, and to honor them. + +But let us not be content with barren honor to buried merit. Let us +prove our gratitude to the dead by faithfully endeavoring to elevate the +station, to enlarge the usefulness, and to raise the character of the +schoolmaster amongst us. Thus shall we best testify our gratitude to the +teachers and guides of our own youth, thus best serve our country, +and thus most effectually diffuse over our land light, and truth, and +virtue. + +[Footnote 39: Bacon.] + + * * * * * + + +=_John W. Francis, 1789-1861._= (Manual, pp. 487, 532.) + +From his "Reminiscences." + +=_122._= PUBLIC CHANGES DURING A SINGLE LIFETIME. + +He who has passed a period of some three score years and upward, some +faithful Knickerbocker for instance, native born, and ever a resident +among us, whose tenacious memory enables him to meditate upon the +thirty thousand inhabitants at the time of his birth, with the almost +oppressive population of some seven hundred thousand which the city at +present contains; who contrasts the cheap and humble dwellings of +that earlier date, with the costly and magnificent edifices which now +beautify the metropolis; who studies the sluggish state of the mechanic +arts at the dawn of the Republic, and the mighty demonstrations of skill +which our Fulton, and our Stevens, our Douglas, our Hoe, and our Morse, +have produced; who remembers the few and humble water-craft conveyances +of days past, and now beholds the majestic leviathans of the ocean which +crowd our harbors; who contemplates the partial and trifling commercial +transactions of the Confederacy, with the countless millions of +commercial business which engross the people of the present day, in our +Union; who estimates the offspring of the press, and the achievements of +the telegraph, he who has been the spectator of all this, may be justly +said to have lived the period of many generations, and to have stored +within his reminiscences the progress of an era the most remarkable in +the history of his species. + +If he awakens his attention to a consideration of the progress of +intellectual and ethical pursuits, if he advert to the prolific +demonstrations which surround him for the advancement of knowledge, +literary and scientific, moral and religious, the indomitable spirit of +the times strikes him with more than logical conviction. The beneficence +and humanity of his countrymen may be pointed out by contemplating her +noble free schools, her vast hospitals and asylums for the alleviation +of physical distress and mental infirmities; with the reflection that +all these are the triumphs of a self-governed people, accomplished +within the limited memory of an ordinary life. Should reading enlarge +the scope of his knowledge, let him study the times of the old Dutch +Governors, when the Ogdens erected the first church in the fort of New +Amsterdam, in 1642, and then survey the vast panoramic view around him +of the two hundred and fifty and more edifices, now consecrated to the +solemnities of religious devotion. It imparts gratification to know that +the old Bible which was used in that primary church of Van Twiller is +still preserved by a descendant of the builder, a precious relic of the +property of the older period, and of the devotional impulse of those +early progenitors. To crown the whole, time in its course has recognized +the supremacy of political and religious toleration, and established +constitutional freedom on the basis of equal rights and even and exact +justice to all men. That New York has given her full measure of toil, +expenditure, and talent in furtherance of these vast results, by her +patriots and statesmen, is proclaimed in grateful accents by the myriad +voice of the nation at large. + + * * * * * + + +=_William, Meade, 1789-1862._= + +From the "Old Churches &c. of Virginia." + +=_123._= Character of the Early Virginia Clergy. + +It has been made a matter of great complaint against the Legislature of +Virginia, that it should not only have withdrawn the stipend of sixteen +thousand weight of tobacco from the clergy, but also have seized upon +the glebes. I do not mean to enter on the discussion of the legality of +that act, or of the motives of those who petitioned for it. Doubtless +there were many who sincerely thought that it was both legal and right, +and that they were doing God and religion a service by it. I hesitate +not, however, to express the opinion, in which I have been and am +sustained by many of the best friends of the Church then and ever +since, that nothing could have been more injurious to the cause of true +religion in the Episcopal Church, or to its growth in any way, than the +continuance of either stipend or glebes. Many clergymen of the most +unworthy character would have been continued among us, and such a +revival as we have seen have never taken place.... Not merely have the +pious members of the Church taken this view of the subject, since the +revival of it under other auspices, but many of those who preferred the +Church at that day, for other reasons than her evangelical doctrine and +worship, saw that It was best that she should be thrown upon her own +resources. I had a conversation with Mr. Madison, soon after he ceased +to be President of the United States, in which I became assured of this. +He himself took an active part in promoting the act for the putting down +the establishment of the Episcopal Church, while his relative was Bishop +of it, and all his family connection attached to it.... + +It may be well here to state, what will more fully appear when we come +to speak of the old glebes and churches in a subsequent number, that +the character of the laymen of Virginia for morals and religion was in +general greatly in advance of that of the clergy. The latter, for the +most part, were the refuse or more indifferent of the English, Irish, +and Scotch Episcopal churches, who could not find promotion and +employment at home. The former were natives of the soil, and descendants +of respectable ancestors, who migrated at an early period.... Some of +the vestries, as their records painfully show, did what they could to +displace unworthy ministers, though they often failed through defect of +law. In order to avoid the danger of having evil ministers fastened upon +them, as well as from the scarcity of ministers, they made much use of +lay-readers as substitutes.... The reading of the service and sermons in +private families, which contributed so much to the preservation of an +attachment to the Church in the same, was doubtless promoted by this +practice of lay-reading. Those whom Providence raised up to resuscitate +the fallen Church of Virginia can testify to the fact that the families +who descended from the above mentioned, have been their most effective +supports.... And when, in the providence of God. they are called on to +leave their ancient homes, and form new settlements in the distant South +and West, none are more active and reliable in transplanting the Church +of their Fathers. + + * * * * * + + +=_Jared Sparks, 1794-1866._= (Manual, p. 490.) + +From "The Life of General Stark." + +=_124._= THE BATTLE OF BENNINGTON. + +The German troops with their battery were advantageously posted upon a +rising ground, at a bend in the Wollamsac (a tributary of the Hoosac), +on its north bank. The ground fell off to the north and west, a +circumstance of which Stark skilfully took advantage. Peters' corps of +Tories were entrenched on the other side of the stream, in lower ground, +and nearly in front of the German Battery. The little river, that +meanders through the scene of the action, is fordable in all places. +Stark was encamped upon the same side of it as the Germans, but, owing +to its serpentine course, it crossed his line of march twice on his way +to their position. Their post was carefully reconnoitered at a mile's +distance, and the plan of attack was arranged in the following manner. +Colonel Nichols, with two hundred men, was detached to attack the rear +of the enemy's left, and Colonel Herrick, with three hundred men, to +fall upon the rear of their right, with orders to form a junction before +they made the assault. Colonels Hubbard and Stickney were also ordered +to advance with two hundred men on their right, and one hundred in +front, to divert their attention from the real point of attack. The +action commenced at three o'clock in the afternoon, on the rear of the +enemy's left, when Colonel Nichols, with great precision, carried into +effect the dispositions of the commander. His example was followed by +every other portion of the little army. General Stark himself moved +forward slowly in front, till he heard the sound of the guns from +Colonel Nichols' party, when he rushed upon the Tories, and in a few +moments the action became general. "It lasted," says Stark, in his +official report, "two hours, and was the hottest I ever saw. It was like +one continued clap of thunder." The Indians, alarmed at the prospect of +being enclosed between the parties of Nichols and Herrick, fled at the +commencement of the action, their main principle of battle array being +to contrive or to escape, an ambush, or an attack in the rear. The +Tories were soon driven over the river, and were thus thrown in +confusion on the Germans, who were forced from their breast-work. +Baum made a brave and resolute defence. The German dragoons, with the +discipline of veterans, preserved their ranks unbroken, and, after their +ammunition was expended, were led to the charge by their Colonel with +the sword; but they were overpowered and obliged to give way, leaving +their artillery and baggage on the field. + +They were well enclosed in two breast-works, which, owing to the rain +on the 15th, they had constructed at leisure. But notwithstanding +this protection, with the advantage of two pieces of cannon, arms and +ammunition in perfect order, and an auxiliary force of Indians, they +were driven from their entrenchments by a band of militia just brought +to the field, poorly armed, with few bayonets, without field-pieces, and +with little discipline. The superiority of numbers on the part of the +Americans, will, when these things are considered, hardly be thought to +abate anything from the praise due to the conduct of the commander, or +the spirit and courage of his men. + + * * * * * + +From the "Life of Count Pulaski." + +=_125._= HIS SERVICES, DEATH, AND CHARACTER. + +(The Battle of Brandywine.)--On that occasion, Count Pulaski, as well as +Lafayette, was destined to strike his first blow in defence of American +liberty. Being a volunteer, and without command, he was stationed near +General Washington till towards the close of the action, when he asked +the command of the General's body guard,--about thirty horse, +and advanced rapidly within pistol-shot of the enemy, and after +reconnoitering their movements, returned and reported that they were +endeavoring to cut off the line of retreat, and particularly the train +of baggage. He was then authorized to collect as many of the scattered +troops as came in his way, and employ them according to his discretion, +which he did in a manner so prompt and bold, as to effect an important +service in the retreat of the army; fully sustaining, by his conduct and +courage, the reputation for which the world had given him credit. Four +days after this event, he was appointed by Congress to the command of +the cavalry, with the rank of brigadier general. + +(Before Charleston in 1779.)--Scarcely waiting till the enemy had +crossed the ferry, Pulaski sallied out with his legion and a few mounted +volunteers, and made an assault upon the advanced parties. With the +design of drawing the British into an ambuscade, he stationed his +infantry on low ground behind a breast-work, and then rode forward a +mile, with his cavalry in the face of a party of light-horse, with whom +he came to close quarters, and kept up a sharp skirmish till he was +compelled to retreat by the increasing numbers of the enemy. His +coolness, courage, and disregard of personal danger, were conspicuous +throughout the rencounter, and the example of this prompt and bold +attack had great influence in raising the spirits of the people, and +inspiring the confidence of the inexperienced troops then assembled in +the city. The infantry, impatient to take part in the conflict, advanced +to higher ground in front of the breast-work and thus the scheme of an +ambuscade was defeated. + +(His death at Savannah.)--The cavalry were stationed in the rear of the +advanced columns, and in the confusion which appeared in front, and in +the obscurity caused by the smoke, Pulaski was uncertain where he ought +to act. To gain information on this point, he determined to ride forward +in the heat of the conflict, and called to Captain Bentalou to accompany +him. They had proceeded but a short distance, when they heard of the +havoc that had been produced in the swamp among the French troops. +Hoping to animate these troops by his presence, he rushed onward, and +while riding swiftly to the place where they were stationed, he received +a wound in the groin from a swivel-shot, and fell from his horse near +the abattis. Captain Bentalou was likewise wounded by a musket-ball. +Count Pulaski was left on the field till nearly all the troops had +retreated, when some of his men returned, in the face of the enemy's +guns, and took him to the camp. (His character.)--He possessed in a +remarkable degree, the power of winning and controlling men, a power so +rare that it may be considered not less the fruit of consummate art than +the gift of nature. Energetic, vigilant, untiring in the pursuit of an +object, fearless, fertile in resources, calm in danger, resolute and +persevering under discouragements, he was always prepared for events, +and capable of effecting his purposes with the best chance of +success.... He embraced our cause as his own, harmonizing, as it did +with his principles and all the noble impulses of his nature, the cause +of liberty and of human rights; he lost his life in defending it; thus +acquiring the highest of all claims to a nation's remembrance and +gratitude. + + * * * * * + + +=_William H. Prescott, 1796-1859._= (Manual, p. 494.) + +From the "History of Ferdinand and Isabella." + +=_126._= MORAL CONSEQUENCES OF THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. + +Whatever be the amount of physical good or evil immediately resulting +to Spain from her new discoveries, their moral consequences were +inestimable. The ancient limits of human thought and action were +overleaped; the veil which had covered the secrets of the deep for so +many centuries was removed; another hemisphere was thrown open; and a +boundless expansion promised to science, from the infinite varieties in +which nature was exhibited in these unexplored regions. The success of +the Spaniards kindled a generous emulation in their Portuguese rivals, +who soon after accomplished their long-sought passage into the Indian +seas, and thus completed the great circle of maritime discovery. It +would seem as if Providence had postponed this grand event, until the +possession of America, with its stores of precious metals, might supply +such materials for a commerce with the east, as should bind together +the most distant quarters of the globe. The impression made on the +enlightened minds of that day is evinced by the tone of gratitude and +exultation, in which they indulge, at being permitted to witness the +consummation of these glorious events, which their fathers had so long, +but in vain, desired to see. + +The discoveries of Columbus occurred most opportunely for the Spanish +nation, at the moment when it was released from its tumultuous struggle +in which it had been engaged for so many years with the Moslems. The +severe schooling of these wars had prepared it for entering on a bolder +theater of action, whose stirring and romantic perils raised still +higher the chivalrous spirit of the people. The operation of this spirit +was shown in the alacrity with which private adventurers embarked in +expeditions to the New World, under cover of the general license, during +the last two years of this century. Their efforts, combined with those +of Columbus, extended the range of discovery from its original limits; +twenty-four degrees of north latitude, to probably more than fifteen +south, comprehending some of the most important territories in the +western hemisphere. Before the end of 1500, the principal groups of +the West India islands had been visited, and the whole extent of +the southern continent coasted from the Bay of Honduras to Cape St. +Augustine. One adventurous mariner, indeed, named Lepe, penetrated +several degrees south of this, to a point not reached by any other +voyager for ten or twelve years after. A great part of the kingdom +of Brazil was embraced in this extent, and two successive Castilian +navigators landed and took formal possession of it for the crown of +Castile, previous to its reputed discovery by the Portuguese Cabral; +although the claims to it were relinquished by the Spanish Government, +conformably to the famous line of demarkation established by the treaty +of Tordesillas. + +While the colonial empire of Spain was thus every day enlarging, the man +to whom it was all due was never permitted to know the extent, or the +value of it. He died in the conviction in which he lived, that the land +he had reached was the long-sought Indies. But it was a country far +richer than the Indies; and had he on quitting Cuba struck into a +westerly, instead of southerly direction, it would have carried him into +the very depths of the golden regions, whose existence he had so long +and vainly predicted. As it was, he "only opened the gates," to use his +own language, for others more fortunate than himself; and, before he +quitted Hispaniola for the last time, the young adventurer arrived +there, who was destined by the conquest of Mexico to realize all the +magnificent visions, which had been derided only as visions, in the +lifetime of Columbus. + + * * * * * + +From "The History of the Conquest of Mexico." + +=_127._= PICTURE-WRITING OF THE MEXICANS. + +While these things were passing, Cortés observed one of Teuhtlile's +attendants busy with a pencil, apparently delineating some object. On +looking at his work, he found that it was a sketch, on canvas, of the +Spaniards, their costumes, arms, and, in short, different objects of +interest, giving to each its appropriate form and color. This was the +celebrated picture-writing of the Aztecs, and as Teuhtlile informed him, +this man was employed in portraying the various objects for the eye of +Montezuma, who would thus gather a more vivid notion of their appearance +than from any description by words. Cortés was pleased with the idea; +and as he knew how much the effect would be heightened by converting +still life into action, he ordered out the cavalry on the beach, the +wet sands of which afforded a firm footing for the horses. The bold +and rapid movements of the troops, as they went through their military +exercises, the apparent ease with which they managed the fiery animals +on which they were mounted, the glancing of their weapons, and the +shrill cry of the trumpet, all filled the spectators with astonishment; +but when they heard the thunders of the cannon, and witnessed the +volumes of smoke and flame issuing from these terrible engines, and the +rushing sound of the balls, as they dashed through the trees of the +neighboring forest, shivering their branches into fragments, they were +filled with consternation, from which the Aztec chief himself was +not wholly free. Nothing of all this was lost on the painters, who +faithfully recorded, after their fashion, every particular, not omitting +the ships--"the water-houses," as they called them--of the strangers, +which, with their dark hulls and snow-white sails reflected from the +water, were swinging lazily at anchor on the calm bosom of the bay. All +was depicted with a fidelity that excited in their turn the admiration +of the Spaniards, who, doubtless unprepared for this exhibition of +skill, greatly overestimated the merits of the execution. + + * * * * * + +From "The History of the Conquest of Peru." + +=_128._= RANSOM AND DOOM OF THE INCA. + +These articles consisted of goblets, ewers, salvers, vases of every +shape and size, ornaments and utensils for the temples and the royal +palaces, tiles and plates for the decoration of the public edifices, +curious imitations of different plants and animals. Among the plants, +the most beautiful was the Indian corn, in which the golden ear was +sheathed in its broad leaves of silver, from which hung a rich tassel of +threads of the same precious metal. A fountain was also much admired, +which sent up a sparkling jet of gold, while birds and animals of the +same material played in the waters at its base. The delicacy of the +workmanship of some of these, and the beauty and ingenuity of the +design, attracted the admiration of better judges than the rude +Conquerors of Peru. + +Before breaking up these specimens of Indian art, it was determined to +send a quantity, which should be deducted from the royal fifth, to the +Emperor. It would serve as a sample of the ingenuity of the natives, +and would show him the value of his conquests. A number of the most +beautiful articles was selected, to the amount of a hundred thousand +ducats, and Hernando Pizarro was appointed to be the bearer of them to +Spain. + +The doom of the Inca was proclaimed by sound of trumpet in the great +square of Caxamalca; and, two hours after sunset, the Spanish soldiery +assembled by torch-light in the _plaza_ to witness the execution of the +sentence. It was on the twenty-ninth of August, 1533. Atahuallpa was led +out chained hand and foot,--for he had been kept in irons ever since the +great excitement had prevailed in the army respecting an assault. Father +Vicente de Valverde was at his side, striving to administer consolation, +and, if possible, to persuade him at this last hour to abjure his +superstition and embrace the religion of his Conquerors. He was willing +to save the soul of his victim from the terrible expiation in the next +world, to which he had so cheerfully consigned his mortal part in this. + +During Atahuallpa's confinement the friar had repeatedly expounded to +him the Christian doctrines, and the Indian monarch discovered much +acuteness in apprehending the discourse of his teacher. But it had not +carried conviction to his mind, and though he listened with patience, +he had shown no disposition to renounce the faith of his fathers. The +Dominican made a last appeal to him in this solemn hour; and, when +Atahuallpa was bound to the stake, with the fagots that were to kindle +his funeral pile lying around him, Valverde, holding up the cross, +besought him to embrace it, and be baptized, promising that by so doing +the painful death to which he had been sentenced should be commuted +for the milder form, of the _garrote_,--a mode of punishment by +strangulation, used for criminals in Spain. + +The unhappy monarch asked if this were really so, and, on its being +confirmed by Pizarro he consented to abjure his own religion, and +receive baptism. The ceremony was performed by Father Valverde, and the +new convert received the name of Juan de Atahuallpa,--the name of Juan +being conferred in honor of John the Baptist, on whose day the event +took place. + +Atahuallpa expressed a desire that his remains might be transported +to Quito, the place of his birth, to be preserved with those of his +maternal ancestors. Then turning to Pizarro, as a last request, he +implored him to take compassion on his young children, and receive them +under his protection. Was there no other one in that dark company who +stood grimly around him, to whom he could look for the projection of his +offspring? Perhaps he thought there was no other so competent to afford +it, and that the wishes so solemnly expressed in that hour might meet +with respect even from his Conqueror. Then, recovering his stoical +bearing, which for a moment had been shaken, he submitted himself calmly +to his fate,--while the Spaniards, gathering around, muttered their +_credos_ for the salvation his soul. Thus by the death of a vile +malefactor perished the last of the Incas. + + * * * * * + + +=_George Bancroft, 1800-._= (Manual, pp. 487, 491, 531.) + +From the "History of the United States." + +=_129._= VIRGINIA AND ITS INHABITANTS IN EARLY TIMES. + +The genial climate and transparent atmosphere delighted those who had +come from the denser air of England. Every object in nature was new and +wonderful. The loud and frequent thunder-storms were phenomena that had +been rarely witnessed in the colder summers of the north; the forests, +majestic in their growth, and free from underwood, deserved admiration +for their unrivalled magnificence; the purling streams and the frequent +rivers, flowing between alluvial banks, quickened the ever-pregnant soil +into an unwearied fertility; the strangest and the most delicate flowers +grew familiarly in the fields; the woods were replenished with sweet +barks and odors; the gardens matured the fruits of Europe, of which the +growth was invigorated and the flavor improved by the activity of the +virgin mould. Especially the birds, with their gay plumage and varied +melodies, inspired delight; every traveller expressed his pleasure in +listening to the mocking-bird, which carolled a thousand several tunes, +imitating and excelling the notes of all its rivals. The humming-bird, +so brilliant in its plumage, and so delicate in its form, quick in +motion, yet not fearing the presence of man, hunting about the flowers +like the bee gathering honey, rebounding from the blossoms into which +it dips its bill, and as soon returning "to renew its addresses to its +delightful objects," was ever admired as the smallest and the most +beautiful of the feathered race. The rattlesnake, with the terrors of +its alarms and the power of its venom; the opossum, soon to become as +celebrated for the care of its offspring as the fabled pelican: the +noisy frog, booming from the shallows like the English bittern; the +flying squirrel; the myriads of pigeons, darkening the air with the +immensity of their flocks, and, as men believed, breaking with their +weight the boughs of trees on which they alighted,--were all honored +with frequent commemoration, and became the subjects of the strangest +tales. The concurrent relation of all the Indians justified the belief +that, within ten days journey towards the setting of the sun, there +was a country where gold might be washed from the sand, and where the +natives themselves had learned the use of the crucible; but definite +and accurate as were the accounts, inquiry was always baffled; and the +regions of gold remained for two centuries an undiscovered land. + +Various were the employments by which the calmness of life was relieved. +George Sandys, an idle man, who had been a great traveller, and who did +not remain in America, a poet, whose verse was tolerated by Dryden +and praised by Isaac Walton, beguiled the ennui of his seclusion by +translating the whole of Ovid's Metamorphoses. To the man of leisure the +chase furnished a perpetual resource. It was not long before the horse +was multiplied in Virginia; and to improve that noble animal was early +an object of pride, soon to be favored by legislation. Speed was +especially valued, and "the planters pace" became a proverb.... + + * * * * * + +=_130_=. CONTRAST OF ENGLISH AND FRENCH COLONIZATION IN AMERICA. + +In Asia, the victories of Olive at Plassy, of Coote at the Wandewash, +and of Watson and Pococke on the Indian seas, had given England the +undoubted ascendency in the East Indies, opening to her suddenly the +promise of untold treasures and territorial acquisitions without end. In +America, the Teutonic race, with its strong tendency to individuality +and freedom, was become the master from the Gulf of Mexico to the Poles; +and the English tongue, which but a century and a half before had for +its entire world a part only of two narrow islands on the outer verge +of Europe, was now to spread more widely than any that had ever given +expression to human thought. + +Go forth, then, language of Milton and Hampden, language of my country, +take possession of the North American continent! Gladden the waste +places with every tone that has been rightly struck on the English lyre, +with every English word that has been spoken well for liberty and for +man! Give an echo to the now silent and solitary mountains; gush out +with the fountains that as yet sing their anthems all day long without +response; fill the valleys with the voices of love in its purity, the +pledges of friendship in its faithfulness; and as the morning sun drinks +the dewdrops from the flowers all the way from the dreary Atlantic to +the Peaceful Ocean, meet him with the joyous hum of the early industry +of freemen! Utter boldly and spread widely through the world the +thoughts of the coming apostles of the people's liberty, till the sound +that cheers the desert shall thrill through the heart of humanity, and +the lips of the messenger of the people's power, as he stands in beauty +upon the mountains, shall proclaim the renovating tidings of equal +freedom for the race!... + +France, of all the states on the continent of Europe the most powerful +by territorial unity, wealth, numbers, industry, and culture, seemed +also by its place marked out for maritime ascendency. Set between many +seas, it rested upon the Mediterranean, possessed harbors on the German +Ocean, and embraced within its wide shores and jutting headlands, the +bays and open, waters of the Atlantic; its people, infolding at one +extreme the offspring of colonists from Greece, and at the other, +the hardy children of the Northmen, were called, as it were, to the +inheritance of life upon the sea. The nation, too, readily conceived or +appropriated great ideas, and delighted in bold resolves. Its travellers +had penetrated farthest into the fearful interior of unknown lands; +its missionaries won most familiarly the confidence of the aboriginal +hordes; its writers described with keener and wiser observation the +forms of nature in her wildness, and the habits and languages of savage +man; its soldiers,--and every lay Frenchman in America owed military +service,--uniting beyond all others celerity with courage, knew best how +to endure the hardships of forest life and to triumph in forest warfare. +Its ocean chivalry had given a name and a colony to Carolina, and its +merchants a people to Acadia. The French discovered the basin of the +St. Lawrence; were the first to explore and possess the banks of the +Mississippi, and planned an American empire that should unite the widest +valleys and most copious inland waters of the world. + +But new France was governed exclusively by the monarchy of its +metropolis; and was shut against the intellectual daring of its +philosophy, the liberality of its political economists, the movements of +its industrial genius, its legal skill, and its infusion of Protestant +freedom. Nothing representing the new activity of thought in modern +France, went to America. Nothing had leave to go there but what was old +and worn out. + +The colonists from England brought over the forms of the government of +the mother country, and the purpose of giving them a better development +and a fairer career in the western world. The French emigrants took with +them only what belonged to the past, and nothing that represented +modern freedom. The English emigrants retained what they called English +privileges, but left behind in the parent country English inequalities, +the monarch, and nobility, and prelacy. French America was closed +against even a gleam of intellectual independence; nor did it contain so +much as one dissenter from the Roman Church; English America had English +liberties in greater purity and with far more of the power of the people +than England. Its inhabitants were self-organized bodies of freeholders, +pressing upon the receding forests, winning their way farther and +farther forward every year, and never going back. They had schools, so +that in several of the colonies there was no one to be found beyond +childhood, who could not read and write; they had the printing press +scattering among them books, and pamphlets, and many newspapers; they +had a ministry chiefly composed of men of their own election. In private +life they were accustomed to take care of themselves; in public affairs +they had local legislatures, and municipal self-direction. And now this +continent from the Gulf of Mexico to where civilized life is stayed by +barriers of frost, was become their dwelling-place and their heritage. + + * * * * * + +From "The History of the United States." + +=_131._= DEATH OF MONTCALM. + +But already the hope of New France was gone. Born and educated in camps, +Montcalm had been carefully instructed, and was skilled in the language +of Homer as well as in the art of war. Greatly laborious, just, +disinterested, hopeful even to rashness, sagacious in council, swift in +action, his mind was a well-spring of bold designs; his career in Canada +a wonderful struggle against inexorable destiny. Sustaining hunger and +cold, vigils and incessant toil, anxious for his soldiers, unmindful +of himself, he set, even to the forest-trained red men, an example of +self-denial and endurance, and in the midst of corruption made the +public good his aim. Struck by a musket ball, as he fought opposite +Monckton, he continued in the engagement, till, in attempting to rally +a body of fugitive Canadians in a copse near St. John's gate, he was +mortally wounded. + +On hearing from the surgeon that death was certain, "I am glad of it," +he cried; "how long shall I survive?" "Ten or twelve hours, perhaps +less." "So much the better; I shall not live to see the surrender of +Quebec." To the council of war he showed that in twelve hours all the +troops near at hand might be concentrated and renew the attack before +the English were intrenched. When De Ramsay, who commanded the garrison, +asked his advice about defending the city, "To your keeping," he +replied, "I commend the honor of France. As for me, I shall pass the +night with God, and prepare myself for death," Having written a letter +recommending the French prisoners to the generosity of the English, his +last hours were given to the hope of endless life, and at five the next +morning he expired. + + * * * * * + +From "The History of the United States." + +=_132._= CHARACTER OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. + +From the fullness of his own mind, without consulting one single book, +Jefferson drafted the declaration, he submitted it separately to +Franklin and to John Adams, accepted from each of them one or two +unimportant verbal corrections, and on the twenty-eighth of June +reported it to Congress, which now on the second of July immediately +after the resolution of independence entered upon its consideration. +During the remainder of that day and the next two, the language, the +statements, and the principles of the paper were closely scanned. + + * * * * * + +This immortal state paper, which for its composer was the aurora of +enduring fame, was "the genuine effusion of the soul of the country +at that time," the revelation of its mind, when, in its youth, its +enthusiasm, its sublime confronting of danger, it rose to the highest +creative powers of which man is capable. The bill of rights which it +promulgates, is of rights that are older than human institutions, and +spring from the eternal justice that is anterior to the state. Two +political theories divided the world: one founded the commonwealth +on the reason of state, the policy of expediency, the other on the +immutable principles of morals; the new republic, as it took its place +among the powers of the world, proclaimed its faith in the truth and +reality and unchangeableness of freedom, virtue, and right. The heart of +Jefferson in writing the declaration, and of Congress in adopting it, +beat for all humanity; the assertion of right was made for the entire +world of mankind, and all coming generations, without any exception +whatever; for the proposition which admits of exceptions can never be +self-evident. As it was put forth in the name of the ascendant people +of that time, it was sure to make the circuit of the world, passing +everywhere through the despotic countries of Europe; and the astonished +nations as they read that all men are created equal, started out of +their lethargy, like those who have been exiles from childhood, when +they suddenly hear the dimly remembered accents of their mother tongue. + + * * * * * + +=_133._= EARLIER POLICY OF SPAIN IN THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. + +The King of France, whilst he declared his wish to make no conquest +whatever in the war, held out to the King of Spain, with the consent of +the United States, the acquisition of Florida; but Florida had not power +to allure Charles the Third, or his ministry, which was a truly Spanish +ministry, and wished to pursue a truly Spanish policy. There was indeed +one word which, if pronounced, would be a spell potent enough to alter +their decision; a word that calls the blood into the cheek of a Spaniard +as an insult to his pride, a brand of inferiority on his nation. That +word was Gibraltar. Meantime, the King of Spain declared that he would +not then, nor in the future, enter into the quarrel of France and +England; that he wished to close his life in tranquility, and valued +peace too highly to sacrifice it to the interests or opinions of +another. + +So the flags of France and the United States went together into the +field against Great Britain, unsupported by any other government, yet +with the good wishes of all the peoples of Europe. The benefit then +conferred on the United States was priceless. In return, the revolution +in America came opportunely for France.... For the blessing of that same +France, America brought new life and hope; she superseded scepticism by +a wise and prudent enthusiasm in action, and bade the nation that became +her ally lift up its heart from the barrenness of doubt to the highest +affirmation of God and liberty, to freedom and union with the good, the +beautiful, and the true. + + * * * * * + + +=_J.G.M. Ramsey,[40] about 1800-._= + +From "The Annals of Tennessee." + +=_134._= SKETCH OF GENERAL JOHN SEVIER. + +The Etowah campaign was the last military service rendered by Sevier, +and the only one for which he ever received compensation from the +government. For nearly twenty years he had been constantly engaged in +incessant and unremitted service. He was in thirty-five battles, some of +them hardly contested, and decisive. He was never wounded, and in all +his campaigns and battles was successful and the victor. He was careful +of the lives of his soldiery; and, although he always led them to the +victory, he lost, in all his engagements with the enemy, but fifty-six +men. The secret of his invariable success was the impetuosity and vigor +of his charge. Himself an accomplished horseman, a graceful rider, +passionately fond of a spirited charger, always well mounted, at the +head of his dragoons, he was at once in the midst of the fight. His +rapid movement, always unexpected and sudden, disconcerted the enemy, +and, at the first onset, decided the victory. He was the first to +introduce the Indian war-whoop in his battles with the savages, the +Tories, and the British. More harmless than the leaden missile, it +was not less efficient, and was always the precursor and attendant of +victory. The prisoners at King's Mountain said, "We could stand your +fighting; but your cursed hallooing confused us. We thought the +mountains had regiments, instead of companies." Sevier's enthusiasm was +contagious; he imparted it to his men. He was the idol of the soldiery; +and his orders were obeyed cheerfully, and executed with precision. In +a military service of twenty years, one instance is not known of +insubordination, on the part of the soldier, or of discipline by the +commander. + +Sevier's troops were generally his neighbors, and the members of his own +family. Often no public provision was made for their pay, equipments, or +subsistence. These were furnished by himself, being at once commander, +commissary, and paymaster. The soldiery rendezvoused at his house, which +often became a cantonment; his fields, ripe or unripe, were given up to +his horsemen; powder and lead, provisions, clothing, even all he had, +belonged to his men. + +The Etowah campaign terminated the military services of General Sevier. +Hereafter, we will have to record his not less important agency in the +civil affairs of Tennessee. + +[Footnote 40: A native of Tennessee. His Annals contain much valuable +material.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Charles Gayarré, 1805-._= (Manual, p. 490.) + +From the "History of Louisiana." + +=_135._= GENERAL JACKSON AT NEW ORLEANS. + +His very physiognomy prognosticated what soul was encased within the +spare but well-ribbed form which had that "lean and hungry look" +described by England's greatest bard as bespeaking little sleep of +nights, but much of ambition, self-reliance, and impatience of control. +His lip and eye denoted the man of unyielding temper, and his very hair, +slightly silvered, stood erect like quills round his wrinkled brow, as +if they scorned to bend. Some sneered, it is true, at what they called +a military tyro, at the impromptu general who had sprung out of the +uncouth lawyer and the unlearned judge, who in arms had only the +experience of a few months, acquired in a desultory war against wild +Indians, and who was, not only without any previous training to his new +profession, but also without the first rudiments of a liberal education, +for he did not even know the orthography of his own native language. +Such was the man who, with a handful of raw militia, was to stand in +the way of the veteran troops of England, whose boast it was to have +triumphed over one of the greatest captains known in history. But those +who entertained such distrust had hardly come in contact with General +Jackson, when they felt that they had to deal with a master-spirit. +True, he was rough hewn from the rock, but rock he was, and of that kind +of rock which Providence chooses to select as a fit material to use in +its structures of human greatness. True, he had not the education of a +lieutenant in a European army; but what lieutenant, educated or not, +who had the will and the remarkable military adaptation so evident in +General Jackson's intellectual and physical organization, ever remained +a subaltern? Much less could General Jackson fail to rise to his proper +place in a country where there was so much more elbow-room, and fewer +artificial obstacles than in less favored lands. But, whatever those +obstacles might have been, General Jackson would have overcome them all. +His will was of such an extraordinary nature that, like Christian faith, +it could almost have accomplished prodigies and removed mountains. It is +impossible to study the life of General Jackson without being convinced +that this is the most remarkable feature of his character. His will had, +as it were, the force and the fixity of fate; that will carried him +triumphantly through his military and civil career, and through the +difficulties of private life. So intense and incessantly active this +peculiar faculty was in him, that one would suppose that his mind was +nothing but will--a will so lofty that it towered into sublimity. In him +it supplied the place of genius--or, rather, it was almost genius. On +many occasions, in the course of his long, eventful life, when his +shattered constitution made his physicians despair of preserving him, he +seemed to continue to live merely because it was his will; and when his +unconquerable spirit departed from his enfeebled and worn-out body, +those who knew him well might almost have been tempted to suppose that +he had not been vanquished by death, but had at last consented to +repose. This man, when he took the command at New Orleans, had made up +his mind to beat the English; and, as that mind was so constituted that +it was not susceptible of entertaining much doubt as to the results of +any of its resolves, he went to work with an innate confidence which +transfused itself into the population he had been sent to protect. + + * * * * * + + +=_Brantz Mayer, 1809-._= (Manual, p. 490.) + +From "Mexico, Aztec," &c. + +=_136._= REKINDLING THE SACRED FIRE. + +At the end of the Aztec or Toltec cycle of fifty-two years,--for it +is not accurately ascertained to which of the tribes the astronomical +science of Tenochtitlan is to be attributed,--these primitive children +of the New World believed that the world was in danger of instant +destruction. Accordingly, its termination became one of their most +serious and awful epochs, and they anxiously awaited the moment when the +sun would be blotted out from the heavens, and the globe itself resolved +once more into chaos. As the cycle ended in the winter, the season of +the year, with its drearier sky and colder air, in the lofty regions of +the valley, added to the gloom that fell upon the hearts of the people. +On the last day of the fifty-two years, all the fires in temples and +dwellings were extinguished, and the natives devoted themselves to +fasting and prayer. They destroyed alike their valuable and worthless +wares; rent their garments, put out their lights, and hid themselves for +awhile in solitude.... + +At dark on the last dread evening,--as soon as the sun had set, as they +imagined, forever,--a sad and solemn procession of priests and people +marched forth from the city to a neighboring hill, to rekindle the "New +Fire." This mournful march was called "the procession of the gods," and +was supposed to be their final departure from their temples and altars. + +As soon as the melancholy array reached the summit of the hill, it +reposed in fearful anxiety until the Pleiades reached the zenith in the +sky, whereupon the priests immediately began the sacrifice of a human +victim, whose breast was covered with a wooden shield, which the chief +_flamen_ kindled by friction. When the sufferer received the fatal stab +from the sacrificial knife of _obsidian,_ the machine was set in motion +on his bosom until the blaze had kindled. The anxious crowd stood round +with fear and trembling. Silence reigned over nature and man. Not a word +was uttered among the countless multitude that thronged the hill-sides +and plains, whilst the priest performed his direful duty to the gods. At +length, as the fire sparks gleamed faintly from the whirling instrument, +low sobs and ejaculations were whispered among the eager masses. As the +sparks kindled into a blaze, and the blaze into a flame, and the flaming +shield and victim were cast together on a pile of combustibles which +burst at once into the brightness of a conflagration, the air was rent +with the joyous shouts of the relieved and panic-stricken Indians. Far +and wide over the dusky crowds beamed the blaze like a star of promise. +Myriads of upturned faces greeted it from hills, mountains, temples, +terraces, teocallis, house-tops, and city walls; and the prostrate +multitudes hailed the emblem of light, life, and fruition, as a blessed +omen of the restored favor of their gods, and the preservation of their +race for another cycle. At regular intervals, Indian couriers held aloft +brands of resinous wood, by which they transmitted the "New Fire" from +hand to hand, from village to village, and town to town, throughout the +Aztec empire. Light was radiated from the imperial or ecclesiastical +center of the realm. In every temple and dwelling it was rekindled from +the sacred source; and when the sun rose again on the following morning, +the solemn procession of priests, princes, and subjects, which had taken +up its march from the capital on the preceding night with solemn steps, +returned once more to the abandoned capital, and, restoring the gods to +their altars, abandoned themselves to joy and festivity, in token of +gratitude and relief from impending doom. + + * * * * * + + +=_Albert James Pickett,[41] 1858-._= (Manual, p. 490.) + +From "The History of Alabama." + +=_137._= THE INDIANS AND THE EARLY SETTLERS OF ALABAMA. + +During my youthful days, I was accustomed to be much with the Creek +Indians, hundreds of whom came almost daily to the trading-house. For +twenty years I frequently visited the Creek nation. Their green-corn +dances, ball plays, war ceremonies, and manners and customs, are all +fresh in my recollection. In my intercourse with them I was thrown into +the company of many old white men called "Indian country men," who had +for years conducted a commerce with them. Some of these men had come to +the Creek nation before the Revolutionary War, and others, being +tories, had fled to it during the war, and after it to escape from whig +persecution. They were unquestionably the shrewdest and most interesting +men with whom I ever conversed. Generally of Scotch descent, many of +them were men of some education. All of them were married to Indian +wives, and some of them had intelligent and handsome children.... I +often conversed with the chiefs while they were seated in the shades +of the spreading mulberry and walnut, upon the banks of the beautiful +Tallapoosa. As they leisurely smoked their pipes, some of them related +to me the traditions of their country. I occasionally saw Choctaw and +Cherokee traders, and learned much from them. I had no particular object +in view, at that time, except the gratification of a curiosity which +led me, for my own satisfaction alone, to learn something of the early +history of Alabama. + +[Footnote 41: A native of North Carolina, who removed in early life to +Alabama. His "History" abounds in interesting matter.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Charles Wentworth Upham, 1802_= (Manual, pp. 490, 532.) + +From the "History of Witchcraft and Salem Village." + +=_138._= DEFEAT OF THE INDIAN KING PHILIP. + +The Indians were carrying all before them. Philip was spreading +conflagration, devastation, and slaughter around the borders, and +striking sudden and deadly blows into the heart of the country. It was +evident that he was consolidating the Indian power into irresistible +strength.... From other scouting parties it became evident that this +opinion was correct, and that the Indians were collecting stores and +assembling their warriors somewhere, to fall upon the colonies at the +first opening of spring. Further information made it certain that +their place of gathering was in the Narragansett country, in the +south-westerly part of the colony of Rhode Island. There was no +alternative but, as a last effort, to strike the enemy at that point +with the utmost available force.... It was between, one and two o'clock +in the afternoon, and the short winter day was wearing away, Winslow saw +the position at a glance, and, by the promptness of his decision, +proved himself a great captain. He ordered an instant assault. +The Massachusetts troops were in the van, the Plymouth, with the +commander-in-chief, in the center, the Connecticut in the rear. The +Indians had erected a block-house near the entrance, filled with +sharpshooters, who also lined the palisades. The men rushed on, although +it was into the Jaws of death, under an unerring fire. The block-house +told them where the entrance was. The companies of Moseley and Davenport +led the way. Moseley succeeded in passing through. Davenport fell +beneath three fatal shots, just within the entrance. Isaac Johnson, +captain of the Roxbury company, was killed while on the log. But death +had no terrors to that army. The center and rear divisions pressed up to +support the front, and fill the gaps, and all equally shared the glory +of the hour. Enough survived the terrible passage to bring the Indians +to a hand-to-hand fight within the fort. After a desperate straggle of +nearly three hours, the savages were driven from their stronghold, and +with the setting of that sun their power was broken. Philip's fortunes +had received a decided overthrow, and the colonies were saved. In all +military history there is not a more daring exploit. Never, on any +field, has more heroic prowess been displayed. + + * * * * * + + +=_John Lothrop Motley, 1814-._= (Manual, p. 532.) + +From "The History of the United Netherlands." + +=_139._= CHARACTER OF ALVA. + +Ferdinando Alvarez de Toledo, Duke of Alva, was now in his sixtieth +year. He was the most successful and experienced general of Spain, or of +Europe. No man had studied more deeply, or practiced more constantly, +the military science. In the most important of all arts at that epoch he +was the most consummate artist. In the only honorable profession of the +age he was the most thorough and the most pedantic professor. Having +proved in his boyhood at Fontarabia, and in his maturity at Mühlberg, +that he could exhibit heroism and headlong courage when necessary, he +could afford to look with contempt upon the witless gibes which his +enemies had occasionally perpetrated at his expense.... "Recollect," +said he to Don John of Austria, "that the first foes with whom one has +to contend are one's own troops--with their clamors for an engagement at +this moment, and their murmurs about results at another; with their 'I +thought that the battle should be fought,' or, 'It was my opinion that +the occasion ought not to be lost.'" + +On the whole, the Duke of Alva was inferior to no general of his age. +As a disciplinarian, he was foremost in Spain, perhaps in Europe. +A spendthrift of time, he was an economist of blood; and this was, +perhaps, in the eye of humanity, his principal virtue.... Such were +his qualities as a military commander. As a statesman, he had neither +experience nor talent. As a man, his character was simple. He did not +combine a great variety of vices; but those which he had were colossal, +and he possessed no virtues. He was neither lustful nor intemperate; but +his professed eulogists admitted his enormous avarice, while the world +has agreed that such an amount of stealth and ferocity, of patient +vindictiveness and universal blood-thirstiness, were never found in a +savage beast of the forest, and but rarely in a human bosom. + + * * * * * + +From "The History of the United Netherlands." + +=_140._= SIEGE AND ABANDONMENT OF OSTEND. + +The Archduke Albert and the Infanta Isabella entered the place in +triumph, if triumph it could be called. It would be difficult to +imagine a more desolate scene. The artillery of the first years of the +seventeenth century was not the terrible enginery of destruction that +it has become in the last third of the nineteenth, but a cannonade, +continued so steadily and so long, had done its work. There were no +churches, no houses, no redoubts, no bastions, no walls, nothing but a +vague and confused mass of ruin. Spinola conducted his imperial guests +along the edge of extinct volcanoes, amid upturned cemeteries, through +quagmires, which once were moats, over huge mounds of sand, and vast +shapeless masses of bricks and masonry, which had been forts. He +endeavored to point out places where mines had been exploded, where +ravelins had been stormed, where the assailants had been successful, and +where they had been bloodily repulsed. But it was all loathsome, hideous +rubbish. There were no human habitations, no hovels, no casemates. The +inhabitants had burrowed at last in the earth, like the dumb creatures +of the swamps and forests. In every direction the dykes had burst, and +the sullen wash of the liberated waves, bearing hither and thither +the floating wreck of fascines and machinery, of planks and building +materials, sounded far and wide over what should have been dry land. The +great ship channel, with the unconquered Half-moon upon one side and +the incomplete batteries and platforms of Bucquoy on the other, still +defiantly opened its passage to the sea, and the retiring fleets of the +garrison were white in the offing. All around was the grey expanse of +stormy ocean, without a cape or a headland to break its monotony, as the +surges rolled mournfully in upon a desolation more dreary than their +own. The atmosphere was murky and surcharged with rain, for the wild, +equinoctial storm which had held Maurice spell-bound, had been raging +over land and sea for many days. At every step the unburied skulls of +brave soldiers who had died in the cause of freedom, grinned their +welcome to the conquerors. Isabella wept at the sight. She had cause to +weep. Upon that miserable sandbank more than a hundred thousand men had +laid down their lives by her decree, in order that she and her husband +might at last take possession of a most barren prize. This insignificant +fragment of a sovereignty which her wicked old father had presented to +her on his deathbed--a sovereignty which he had no more moral right or +actual power to confer than if it had been in the planet Saturn--had +at last been appropriated at the cost of all this misery. It was of no +great value, although its acquisition had caused the expenditure of at +least eight millions of florins, divided in nearly equal proportions +between the two belligerents. It was in vain that great immunities were +offered to those who would remain, or who would consent to settle in the +foul Golgotha. The original population left the place in mass. No human +creatures were left save the wife of a freebooter and her paramour, a +journeyman blacksmith. This unsavory couple, to whom entrance into the +purer atmosphere of Zeeland was denied, thenceforth shared with the +carrion crows the amenities of Ostend. + + * * * * * + +From the Preface to the "Rise of the Dutch Republic." + +=_141._= THE RISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC. + +The rise of the Dutch Republic must ever be regarded as one of the +leading events of modern times. Without the birth of this great +commonwealth, the various historical phenomena of the sixteenth and +following centuries must have either not existed, or have presented +themselves under essential modifications.... From the handbreadth of +territory called the province of Holland, rises a power which wages +eighty years' warfare with the most potent empire upon earth, and which, +during the progress of the struggle, becoming itself a mighty state, and +binding about its own slender form a zone of the richest possessions of +earth, from pole to tropic, finally dictates its decrees to the empire +of Charles. + +... To the Dutch Republic, even more than to Florence at an earlier day +is the world indebted for practical instruction in that great science of +political equilibrium which must always become more and more important +as the various states of the civilized world are pressed more closely +together, and as the struggle for pre-eminence becomes more feverish and +fatal. Courage and skill in political and military combinations enabled +William the Silent to overcome the most powerful and unscrupulous +monarch of his age. The same hereditary audacity and fertility of genius +placed the destiny of Europe in the hands of William's great-grandson, +and enabled him to mould into an impregnable barrier the various +elements of opposition to the overshadowing monarchy of Louis XIV. As +the schemes of the Inquisition and the unparalleled tyranny of Philip, in +one century led to the establishment of the Republic of the United +Provinces, so, in the next, the revocation of the Nantes Edict and the +invasion of Holland are avenged by the elevation of the Dutch Stadholder +upon the throne of the stipendiary Stuarts. + +To all who speak the English language, the history of the great agony +through which the republic of Holland was ushered into life must have +peculiar interest, for it is a portion of the records of the +Anglo-Saxon race--essentially the same whether in Friesland, England, or +Massachusetts. + +... The great Western Republic, therefore--in whose ... veins flows much of +that ancient and kindred blood received from the nation once ruling a +noble portion of its territory, and tracking its own political existence +to the same parent spring of temperate human liberty--must look with +affectionate interest upon the trials of the elder commonwealth. + +... The lessons of history and the fate of free states can never be +sufficiently pondered by those upon whom so large and heavy a +responsibility for the maintenance of rational human freedom rests. + + * * * * * + + +=_Alexander B. Meek,[42] 1814-1865._= (Manual, p. 523.) + +From "Romantic Passages in Southwestern History." + +=_142._= EXILED FRENCH OFFICERS IN ALABAMA. + +Upon the colony they bestowed the name of Marengo, which is still +preserved in the county. Other relics of their nomenclature, drawn +similarly from battles in which some of them had been distinguished, are +to be found in the villages of Linden and Arcola.... + +Who that would have looked upon Marshal Grouchy or General Lefebvre, as, +dressed in their plain, rustic habiliments,--the straw hat, the homespun +coat, the brogan shoes,--they drove the plough in the open field, or +wielded the axe in the new-ground clearing, would, if unacquainted with +their history, have dreamed that those farmer-looking men had sat in the +councils of monarchs, and had headed mighty armies in the fields of the +sternest strife the world has ever seen? "Do you know, sir," said a +citizen to a traveller, who, in 1819, was passing the road from Arcola +to Eaglesville,--"do you know, sir, who is that fine-looking man who +has just ferried you across the creek?" "No. Who is he?" was the reply. +"That," said the citizen, "is the officer who commanded Napoleon's +advanced guard when he returned from Elba." This was Colonel Raoul, now +a general in France. + +[Footnote 42: One of the few writers of Alabama. The "Romantic passages" +is a book of great interest.] + + * * * * * + +=_143._= THE YOUTH OF THE INDIAN CHIEF WEATHERFORD. + +But the mind of the young Indian, though grasping with singular +readiness the knowledge thus imparted, was subject to stronger tastes +and propensities; and he indulged in all the wild pursuits and +amusements of the youth of his nation with an alacrity and spirit which +won their approval and admiration. He became one of the most active, +athletic, and swift-footed participants in their various games and +dances, and was particularly expert and successful, as a hunter, in the +use of the rifle and the bow. He was also noted, even in his youth, for +his reckless daring as a rider, and his graceful feats of horsemanship, +which the fine stables of his father enabled him to indulge. To use the +words of an old Indian woman who knew him at this period, "The squaws +would quit hoeing corn, and smile and gaze upon him as he rode by the +corn-patch." + + * * * * * + + +=_Abel Stevens,[43] 1815-._= + +From "The History of Methodism." + +=_144._= THE EARLY METHODIST CLERGY IN AMERICA. + +They composed a class which, perhaps, will never be seen again. They +were distinguished by native mental vigor, shrewdness, extraordinary +knowledge of human nature, many of them by overwhelming natural +eloquence, the effects of which on popular assemblies are scarcely +paralleled in the history of ancient or modern oratory, and not a few by +powers of satire and wit which made the gainsayer cower before them. To +these intellectual attributes they added great excellences of the heart, +a zeal which only burned more fervently where that of ordinary men would +have grown faint, a courage that exulted in perils, a generosity which +knew no bounds, and left most of them in want in their latter days, a +forbearance and co-operation with each other which are seldom found in +large bodies, an entire devotion to one work, and, withal, a simplicity +of character which extended even to their manners and their apparel. +They were likewise characterized by rare physical abilities. They were +mostly robust. The feats of labor and endurance which they performed, +in incessantly preaching in villages and cities, among slave huts and +Indian wigwams, in journeyings seldom interrupted by stress of weather, +in fording creeks, swimming rivers, sleeping in forests,--these, with +the novel circumstances with which such a career frequently brought them +into contact, afford examples of life and character which, in the hands +of genius, might be the materials for a new department of romantic +literature. They were men who labored as if the judgment fires were +about to break out on the world, and time to end with their day. They +were precisely the men whom the moral wants of the new world at the time +demanded. + +[Footnote 43: A prominent clergyman of the Methodist church. His History +of Methodism is a work of great research and value. A native of +Pennsylvania.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Francis Parkman, 1823-._= (Manual, pp. 496, 505.) + +From "The Conspiracy of Pontiac." + +=_145._= HUNTERS AND TRAPPERS. + +These rude and hardy men, hunters and traders, scouts and guides, who +ranged the woods beyond the English borders, and formed a connecting +link between barbarism and civilization, have been touched upon already. +They were a distinct, peculiar class, marked with striking contrasts of +good and evil. Many, though by no means all, were coarse, audacious, +and unscrupulous; yet, even in the worst, one might often have found a +vigorous growth of warlike virtues, an iron endurance, an undespairing +courage, a wondrous sagacity, and singular fertility of resource. In +them was renewed, with all its ancient energy, that wild and daring +spirit, that force and hardihood of mind, which marked our barbarous +ancestors of Germany and Norway. These sons of the wilderness still +survive. We may find them to this day, not in the valley of the Ohio, +nor on the shores of the lakes, but far westward on the desert range of +the buffalo, and among the solitudes of Oregon. Even now, while I write, +some lonely trapper is climbing the perilous defiles of the Rocky +Mountains, his strong frame cased in time-worn buck-skin, his rifle +griped in his sinewy hand. Keenly he peers from side to side, lest +Blackfoot or Arapahoe should ambuscade his path. The rough earth is his +bed, a morsel of dried meat and a draught of water are his food and +drink, and death and danger his companions. No anchorite could fare +worse, no hero could dare more; yet his wild, hard life has resistless +charms; and while he can wield a rifle, he will never leave it. Go with +him to the rendezvous, and he is a stoic no more. Here, rioting among +his comrades, his native appetites break loose in mad excess, in deep +carouse, and desperate gaming. Then follow close the quarrel, the +challenge, the fight,--two rusty rifles and fifty yards of prairie. + + * * * * * + +From "The Discovery of the Great West." + +=_146._= EXPLORATION OF THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER. + +The river twisted among the lakes and marshes choked with wild rice; +and, but for their guides, they could scarcely have followed the +perplexed and narrow channel. It brought them at last to the portage; +where, after carrying their canoes a mile and a half over the prairie +and through the marsh, they launched them on the Wisconsin, bade +farewell to the waters that flowed to the St. Lawrence, and committed +themselves to the current that was to bear them they knew not +whither,--perhaps to the Gulf of Mexico, perhaps to the South Sea or +the Gulf of California. They glided calmly down the tranquil stream, by +islands choked with trees and matted with entangling grape-vines; by +forests, groves, and prairies,--the parks and pleasure-grounds of a +prodigal nature; by thickets and marshes and broad bare sand-bars; under +the shadowing trees, between whose tops looked down from afar the bold +brow of some woody bluff. At night, the bivouac,--the canoes inverted on +the bank, the flickering fire, the meal of bison-flesh or venison, the +evening pipes and slumber beneath the stars; and when in the morning +they embarked again, the mist hung on the river like a bridal veil; +then melted before the sun, till the glassy water and the languid woods +basked breathless in the sultry glare. + +On the 17th of June, they saw on their right the broad meadows, bounded +in the distance by rugged hills, where now stand the town and fort of +Prairie du Chien. Before them, a wide and rapid current coursed athwart +their way, by the foot of lofty heights wrapped thick in forests. They +had found what they sought, and "with a joy," writes Marquette, "which +I cannot express," they steered forth their canoes on the eddies of the +Mississippi. + +Turning southward, they paddled down the stream, through a solitude +unrelieved by the faintest trace of man. A large fish, apparently one +of the huge cat-fish of the Mississippi, blundered against Marquette's +canoe with a force which seems to have startled him; and once, as +they drew in their net, they caught a "spade-fish," whose eccentric +appearance greatly astonished them. At length, the buffalo began to +appear, grazing in herds on the great prairies which then bordered the +river; and Marquette describes the fierce and stupid look of the old +bulls, as they stared at the intruders through the tangled mane which +nearly blinded them. + + * * * * * + + +=_John Gilmary Shea,[44] 1824-. _= + +From "The History of Catholic Missions among the Indians." + +=_147._= DIFFICULTIES OF THE ENTERPRISE. + +The discovery of America, like every other event in the history of the +world, had, in the designs of God, the great object of the salvation of +mankind. In that event, more clearly, perhaps, than it is often given to +us here below, we can see and adore that Providence which thus gave to +millions, long sundered from the rest of man by pathless oceans, the +light of the gospel, and the proffered boon of redemption.... + +The field was one as yet unmatched for extent and difficulty. That +region now studded with cities and towns, traversed in every direction +by the panting steam-car or lightning telegraph, was then an almost +unbroken forest, save where the wide prairie rolled its billows of grass +towards the western mountains, or was lost in the sterile, salt, and +sandy plains of the southwest. No city raised to heaven spire, dome, or +minaret; no plough turned up the rich, alluvial soil; no metal dug from +the bowels of the earth had been fashioned into instruments to aid man +in the arts of peace and war.... + +The simplest arts of civilized life were unknown. In one little section +of the Gila and Rio Grande, the people spun and wove a native cotton, +manufactured a rude pottery, and lived in houses or castle-towns of +unburnt bricks. Elsewhere the canoe or cabin of bark or hides, and the +arabesque mat, denoted the highest point of social progress. + +Elsewhere the whole country was inhabited by tribes of a nomadic +character, rarely collected in villages except at particular seasons, or +for specific objects, though here and there were found more sedentary +tribes in villages of bark, encircled by walls of earth, or palisades of +wood, whose institutions, commercial spirit, and agriculture, superior +to that of the wild rovers, seemed to show the remnant of some more +civilized tribe in a state of decadence. Around each isolated tribe lay +an unbroken wilderness extending for miles on every side, where the +braves roamed, hunters alike of beasts and men. So little intercourse or +knowledge of each other existed, so desolate was the wilderness that +a vagabond tribe might wander from one extreme of the continent to +another, and language alone could tell the nation to which they +belonged. + +The whole country was thus occupied by comparatively small, but hostile +tribes, so numerous, that almost every river and every lake has handed +down the name of a distinct nation. In form, in manners, and in habits, +these tribes presented an almost uniform appearance: language formed the +great distinctive mark to the European, though the absence of a feather +or a line of paint disclosed to the native the tribe of the wanderer +whom he met. + +The country itself presented a thousand obstacles: there was danger from +flood, danger from wild beasts, danger from the roving savage, danger +from false friends, danger from the furious rapids on rivers, danger of +loss of sight, of health, of use of motion and of limbs, in the new, +strange life of an Indian wigwam.... + +Once established in a tribe, the difficulties were increased. After +months, nay, years, of teaching, the missionaries found that the fickle +savage was easily led astray; never could they form pupils to our life +and manners. The nineteenth century failed, as the seventeenth failed, +in raising up priests from among the Iroquois or the Algonquins; and at +this day a pupil of the Propaganda, who disputed in Latin on theses of +Peter Lombard, roams at the head of a half-naked band in the billowy +plains of Nebraska. + +[Footnote 44: This writer is much distinguished for his numerous works, +most of which relate to the early missions of the Roman Catholic church +in America. He is a native of New York.] + + * * * * * + +From "Introduction to Early Voyages," etc. + +=_148._= EXPLORATION OF THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER. + +Many a river lives embalmed in history and in historic verse. The +Euphrates, the Nile, the Jordan, the Tiber, and the Rhine typify the +course of empires and dynasties. Countries have been described _per +flumina_, but these streams possess renown rather from some city that +frowned on their currents, or some battle fought and won on their banks. +The great River of our West, from its immense length and the still +increasing importance of its valley, possesses a history of its own. Its +discovery by the Spanish adventurers, a Cabeza de Vaca, a De Soto, a +Tristan, who reached, crossed, or followed it, is its period of early +romance, brilliant, brief, and tragic. Its exploration by Marquette and +La Salle follows,--work of patient endurance and investigation, still +tinged with that light of heroism that hovers around all who struggle +with difficulty and adversity to attain a great and useful end. Then +come the early voyages depicting the successive stages of its banks from +a wilderness to civilization. + +The death of La Salle in Texas in his attempt to reach Illinois closes +the chapter of exploration. Iberville opens a new period by his voyage +to the mouth of the Mississippi, which crowning the previous efforts, +gave the valley of the great river to civilization, Christianity, and +progress. The river had become an object of rivalry. English, French, +and Spanish at the same moment sought to secure its mouth, but fortune +favored the bold Canadian, and the white flag reared by La Salle was +planted anew. + +... At the moment when these narratives take us to the valley of the +Mississippi, that immense territory presented a strange contrast to its +present condition. From its head waters amid the lakes of Minnesota to +its mouth; from its western springs in the heart of the Rocky mountains +to its eastern cradle in the Alleghenies, all was yet in its primeval +state. The Europeans had but one spot, Tonty's little fort; no white men +roamed it but the trader or the missionary. With a sparse and scattered +Indian population, the country teeming with buffalo, deer, and game, was +a scene of plenty. The Indian has vanished from its banks with the game +that he pursued. The valley numbers as many states now as it did white +men then; a busy, enterprising, adventurous, population, numbering its +millions, has swept away the unprogressive and unassimilating red man. +The languages of the Illinois, the Quapaw, the Tonica, the Natchez, the +Ouma, are heard no more by the banks of the great water; no calumet now +throws round the traveller its charmed power; the white banner of France +floated long to the breeze, but with the flag of England and the +standard of Spain all disappeared we may say within a century. For fifty +years one single flag met the eye, and appealed to the heart of the +inhabitants of the shores of the Mississippi.[45] Two now divide it: let +us hope that the altered flag may soon resume its original form, and +meet the heart's warm response at the month as at the source of the +Mississippi. + +[Footnote 45: In allusion to the Rebellion.] + + * * * * * + + +=_John Gorham Palfrey, 1796-._= (Manual, pp. 504, 532.) + +From the "History of New England." + +=_149._= HAPPINESS OF WINTHROP'S CLOSING YEARS. + +He was greatly privileged in living so long. Just before he died, that +ecclesiastical arrangement had been made, which he might naturally +hope would preserve the churches of New England in purity, peace, and +strength, to remote times. Religious and political dissensions, which +had disturbed and threatened the infant Church and the forming +State, appeared to be effectually composed. The tribunals, carefully +constituted for the administration of impartial and speedy justice, +understood and did their duty, and commanded respect. The education of +the generations which were to succeed had been provided for with an +enlightened care. The College had bountifully contributed its ripe +first-fruits to the public service; and the novel system of a universal +provision of the elements of knowledge at the public cost, had been +inaugurated with all circumstances of encouragement. + +A generation was coming forward which remembered nothing of what +Englishmen had suffered in New England for want of the necessaries +and comforts of life. The occupations of industry were various and +remunerative. Land was cheap, and the culture of it yielded no penurious +reward to the husbandman; while he who chose to sell his labor was at +least at liberty to place his own estimate upon it, and found it always +in demand. The woods and waters were lavish of gifts which were to be +had simply for the taking. The white wings of commerce, in their long +flight to and from the settler's home, wafted the commodities which +afford enjoyment and wealth to both sender and receiver. The numerous +handicrafts, which in its constantly increasing division of labor, a +thriving society employs, found liberal recompense; and manufactures on +a larger scale were beginning to invite accumulations of capital and +associated labor. + +The Confederacy of the Four Colonies was an humble, but a substantial, +power in the world. It was known to be such by its French, Dutch, and +savage neighbors; by the alienated communities on Narragansett Bay; and +by the rulers of the mother country. + +During Winthrop's last ten years, nowhere else in the world had +Englishmen been so happy as under the generous government which his +mind inspired and regulated. What one mind could do for a community's +well-being, his had done. The prosecution of the issues he had wrought +for was now to be committed to the wisdom and courage of a younger +generation, and to the course of events, under the continued guidance of +a propitious Providence. + + + +CHAPTER II. + + + +ESSAYISTS, MORALISTS, AND REFORMERS. + + +=_Joseph Dennie, 1768-1812._= (Manual, p. 497.) + +From "The Lay Preacher." + +=_150._= REFLECTION'S ON THE SEASONS. + +"Truly the light is sweet, and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to +behold the sun." + +The sensitive Gray, in a frank letter to his friend West, assures him +that, when the sun grows warm enough to tempt him from the fireside, he +will, like all other things, be the better for his influence; for the +sun is an old friend, and an excellent nurse, &c. This is an opinion +which will be easily entertained by every one who has been cramped by +the icy hand of Winter, and who feels the gay and renovating influence +of Spring. In those mournful months when vegetables and animals are +alike coerced by cold, man is tributary to the howling storm and the +sullen sky, and is, in the phrase of Johnson, a "slave to gloom;" but +when the earth is disencumbered of her load of snows, and warmth is +felt, and twittering swallows are heard, he is again jocund and free. +Nature renews her charter to her sons.... Hence is enjoyed, in the +highest luxury,-- + + "Day, and the sweet approach of even and morn, + And sight of vernal bloom and summer's rose, + And flocks, and herds, and human face divine." + +It is nearly impossible for me to convey to my readers an idea of the +"vernal delight" felt at this period by the Lay Preacher, far declined +in the vale of years. My spectral figure, pinched by the rude gripe +of January, becomes as thin as that "dagger of lath" employed by the +vaunting Falstaff, and my mind, affected by the universal desolation of +winter, is nearly as vacant of joy and bright ideas as the forest is of +leaves and the grove is of song. Fortunately for my happiness, this +is only periodical spleen. Though in the bitter months, surveying my +attenuated body, I exclaim with the melancholy prophet, "My leanness, my +leanness! woe is me!" and though, adverting to the state of my mind, I +behold it "all in a robe of darkest grain," yet when April and May +reign in sweet vicissitude, I give, like Horace, care to the winds, and +perceive the whole system excited by the potent stimulus of sunshine.... +I have myself in winter felt hostile to those whom I could smile upon in +May, and clasp to my bosom in June. + + * * * * * + + +=_William Gaston,[46] 1778-1844._= + +From "Essays and Addresses." + +=_151._= THE IMPORTANCE OF INTEGRITY. + +The first great maxim of human conduct--that which it is all-important +to impress on the understandings of young men, and recommend to their +hearty adoption--is, above all things, in all circumstances, and under +every emergency, to preserve a clean heart and an honest purpose.... +Without it, neither genius nor learning, neither the gifts of God, nor +human exertions, can avail aught for the accomplishment of the great +objects of human existence. Integrity is the crowning virtue,--integrity +is the pervading principle which ought to regulate, guide, control, and +vivify every impulse, device, and action. Honesty is sometimes spoken of +as a vulgar virtue; and perhaps, that honesty which barely refrains from +outraging the positive rules ordained by society for the protection +of property, and which ordinarily pays its debts and performs its +engagements, however useful and commendable a quality, is not to be +numbered among the highest efforts of human virtue. But that integrity +which, however tempting the opportunity, or however secure against +detection, no selfishness nor resentment, no lust of power, place, +favor, profit, or pleasure, can cause to swerve from the strict rule of +right, is the perfection of man's moral nature. In this sense, the poet +was right when he pronounced "an honest man's the noblest work of God." +It is almost inconceivable what an erect and independent spirit this +high endowment communicates to the man, and what a moral intrepidity +and vivifying energy it imparts to his character.... Erected on such a +basis, and built up of such materials, fame is enduring. Such is the +fame of our Washington--of the man "inflexible to ill, and obstinately +just." While, therefore, other monuments, intended to perpetuate +human greatness, are daily mouldering into dust, and belie the proud +inscriptions which they bear, the solid, granite pyramid of his glory +lasts from age to age, imperishable, seen afar off, looming high over +the vast desert, a mark, a sign, and a wonder, for the wayfarers though +this pilgrimage of life. + +[Footnote 46: A prominent lawyer and statesman of North Carolina.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Jesse Buel, 1778-1839._= (Manual, p. 504.) + +From "The Farmer's Instructor." + +=_152._= EXTENT AND DEFECTS OF AMERICAN AGRICULTURE. + +We have associated, gentlemen, to increase the pleasures and profits +of rural labor, to enlarge the sphere of useful knowledge, and, by +concentrating our energies, to give them greater effect in advancing the +public good. In no country does the agricultural class bear so great a +proportion to the whole population as in this. In England one-third of +the inhabitants only are employed in husbandry; in France, two-thirds; +in Italy, a little more than three-fourths; while in the United States +the agricultural portion probably exceeds five-sixths. And in no country +does the agricultural population exercise such a controlling political +power, contribute so much to the wealth, or tend so strongly to give an +impress to the character of a nation as in the United States. Hence it +may be truly said of us that our agriculture is our nursing mother, +which nurtures, and gives growth, and wealth, and character to our +country.... Knowing no party, and confined to no sect, its benefits and +its blessings, like dews from heaven, fall upon all. + +... Our agriculture is greatly defective. It is susceptible of much +improvement. How shall we effect this improvement? The old are _too old +to learn_, or, rather, to unlearn what have been the habits of their +lives. The young cannot learn as they ought to learn, and as the public +interests require, because they have no suitable school for their +instruction. We have no place where they can learn the _principles_ upon +which the _practice_ of agriculture is based, none where they can be +instructed in all the modern improvements of the art. + +Much injury has been done to the cause of agriculture by sanguine +speculations, which have only led to expense and disappointments; but +all works on agriculture are not of that character; nor should it be +forgotten that theory is the parent of practical knowledge, and that the +very systems which farmers themselves adopt, were originally founded +upon those theories which they so much affect to despise. Neither can +it be denied that systems grounded upon theory alone, unsupported by +experiment, are properly viewed with distrust; for the most plausible +reasoning upon the operations of nature, without accompanying proof +deduced from facts, may lead to a wrong conclusion, and it is often +difficult to separate that which is really useful, from that which is +merely visionary.... Prudence, therefore, dictates the necessity of +caution; but ignorance is opposed to every change, from the mere want of +judgment to discriminate between that which is purely speculative, and +that which rests upon a more solid foundation. + + * * * * * + + +=_Robert Walsh, 1784-1859._= (Manual, p. 504.) + +From "Didactics, Social, Literary, &c." + +=_153._= FALSE SYMPATHY WITH CRIMINALS. + +Whatever the impulse to guilt, some suppression or aberration of +the reason may ever be alleged and admitted. In this mode, however, +sentimentalists might argue or whine away the whole body of crimes and +punishments. It is the duty of every true friend of humanity and order, +to protest against perverted sensibilities or sophistical refinements, +which find warrant or apology for depraved appetites,--for the worst +distemperature of the mind, and the most fatal catastrophes,--in natural +propension, and unrestrained feeling. Spurious sympathy is a more +prolific evil than sanguinary rigor, useless and pernicious as the +latter is, in our humble opinion. Public executions do more harm than +good,--but are not worse than morbid public commiseration and entreaty +for criminals, to whom the real justice of the law has been applied, +after fair and merciful trial.... + +Many of the worst criminals, who, in different ages and countries, +have justly suffered ignominious death on the wheel, the block, or the +gallows, were men of "extraordinary character," of singular acuteness, +of the most decided spirit. To acknowledge this fact is not to applaud +their conduct, or admire their general ultimate character.... + +We have constantly remembered what we early read in the works of Mr. +Burke, that it is the propensity of degenerate minds to admire or +worship _splendid wickedness_; that, with too many persons, the ideas of +justice and morality are fairly conquered and overpowered by guilt when +it is grown gigantic, and happens to be associated with the lustre +of genius, the glare of fashion, or the robes of power. Against this +species of degeneracy or illusion it has been our uniform endeavor to +guard ourselves, and our conscientious practice to warn and exhort +others. The integrity and delicacy of the moral sense, whether in +individuals or communities, form a most important subject of the care of +all public writers and speakers, in all transactions by which, or the +history or treatment of which, the public, judgment and feelings may +be affected. Hence, when mail robbers or murderers are to be tried or +executed, we should be disposed to avoid all extraordinary bustle, or +concern, or voluminous details about their fate; we should deem it the +true policy of practical ethics to abstain from everything calculated to +produce adventitious interest or consequence for the culprits. It is not +with pleasure that we hear of the crowds that besiege the door of the +court-room, or see in the newspapers the many columns of evidence, with +an endless repetition of trifling circumstances, any more than we +can rejoice for the cause of moral and social order when convicted +highwaymen or murderers are carried to the gallows as _saints_, and hung +amidst vast assemblages, either merely indulging a callous curiosity, +or losing all the horror of their offences in emotions of compassion or +admiration, awakened by the dramatic nature of the whole scene. + + * * * * * + + +=_Thomas S. Grimke,[47] 1786-1834._= + +From "Addresses, Scientific and Literary." + +=_154._= LITERARY EXCELLENCE OF THE ENGLISH BIBLE. + +The translation of the Bible, in the reign of James I., is the most +remarkable and interesting event in the history of translations.... +The great excellence of the translation is due to six considerations. +_First_, it was made under a very solemn sense of the important duty +devolved on those who were thus selected. Hence arose that prevailing +air of dignity, gravity, simplicity, which is so conspicuous. +_Secondly_, the translators came to the task looking to the _thoughts_, +not to the _style_. Their object was not that of all other translators, +to imitate and rival the beauty of _style_. Their sole object was to +render faithfully, and in a plain, appropriate style, the _thoughts_ +of the sacred writers. Hence they became _thoroughly imbued with the +spirit_ of the original, and gave an incomparably better version of the +Hebrew and Greek Testaments than any or all of them together could have +done of any classic. Had each of them left us translations of some +classic, I hesitate not to say they would not now have been found in +any library but as mere curiosities. _Thirdly_, the number of persons +employed contributed very much to prevent any _personal_ style from +prevailing, and gave to the whole an air of plain, simple uniformity. +_Fourthly_, the era was providential in one important view. As the +translation was made before all the bitterness of sectarian spirit +distracted the English Protestant church, it was executed far less with +a view to party differences than could have been the case at any time +afterwards. _Fifthly_, fortunately the only great religious difference +that could have affected it was the dispute with the Catholic church, +and, as to that, all Protestants were agreed in England on every +important point. _Sixthly_, the English language was then at the +happiest stage of its progress, with all the strength, simplicity, and. +clearness of the elder literature, whilst, at the same time, it was free +from the cant of the age of Charles I. and Cromwell, from the vulgarity +and levity of that of Charles II., and from the artificial character of +that of Anne. + +Such a translation is an illustrious monument of the age, the nation, +the language. It is, properly speaking, less a translation than an +original, having most of the merit of the _former_ as to _style_, and +all the merit of the _latter_ as to _thought_. It is the noblest, best, +most finished classic of the English tongue. + +[Footnote 47: A native of South Carolina, distinguished in the law and in +literature.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Henry C. Carey, 1793-._= (Manual, p. 504.) + +From "Principles of Social Science." + +=_155._= AGRICULTURE AS A SCIENCE. + +That agriculture may become a science, it is indispensable that man +always repay to the great bank from which he has drawn his food, the +debt he thereby has contracted. The earth, as has been already said, +gives nothing, but is ready to lend everything; and when the debts are +punctually repaid, each successive loan is made on a larger scale; but +when the debtor fails in punctuality, his credit declines, and the loans +are gradually diminished, until at length he is turned out from house +and home. No truth in the whole range of science is more readily +susceptible of proof than that the community which limits itself to the +exportation of raw produce must end by the exportation of men, and those +men the slaves of nature, even when not actually bought and sold by +their fellow men. + +... With the growth of commerce, the necessity for moving commodities +back, and forth steadily declines, with constant improvement in the +machinery of transportation, and diminution in the risk of losses of the +kind that are covered by insurance against dangers of the sea, or those +of fire. The treasures of the earth then become developed, and stone and +iron take the place of wood in all constructions, while the exchanges +between the miner of coal and of iron--of the man who quarries the +granite, and him who raises the food--rapidly increase in quantity, and +diminish the necessity for resorting to the distant market. + + * * * * * + + +=_Edmund Ruffin, 1793-1863._= + +From "An Essay on Calcarcous Manures." + +=_156._= IMPROVEMENT OF ACID SOILS. + +Nearly all the woodland now remaining in lower Virginia, and also much +of the land which has long been arable, is rendered unproductive by +acidity; and successive generations have toiled on such land, almost +without remuneration, and without suspecting that their worst virgin +land was then richer than their manured lots appeared to be. The +cultivator of such soil, who knows not its peculiar disease, has no +other prospect than a gradual decrease of his always scanty crops. But +if the evil is once understood, and the means of its removal are within +his reach, he has reason to rejoice that his soil was so constituted as +to be preserved from the effects of the improvidence of his forefathers, +who would have worn out any land not almost indestructible. The presence +of acid, by restraining the productive powers of the soil, has, in a +great measure, saved it from exhaustion; and after a course of cropping, +which would have utterly ruined soils much better constituted, the +powers of our acid land remain not greatly impaired, though dormant, +and ready to be called into action by merely being relieved of its acid +quality. A few crops will reduce a new acid field to so low a rate of +product, that it scarcely will pay for its cultivation; but no great +change is afterwards caused, by continuing scourging tillage and +grazing, for fifty years longer. Thus our acid soils have two remarkable +and opposite qualities,--both proceeding from the same cause; they can +neither be enriched by manure, nor impoverished by cultivation, to +any great extent. Qualities so remarkable deserve all our powers of +investigation; yet their very frequency seems to have caused them to be +overlooked; and our writers on agriculture have continued to urge those +who seek improvement, to apply precepts drawn from English authors, +to soils which are totally different from all those for which their +instructions were intended. + + * * * * * + + +=_Francis Wayland, 1796-1865._= (Manual, pp. 487, 502, 504.) + +From "The Limitations of Human Responsibility." + +=_157._= SUPERIORITY OF THE MORAL SENTIMENTS. + +It is a common remark, that, whenever it has been thought necessary to +arouse the mind of man to enterprises of great pith and moment, the +appeal has always been made to his moral sentiments. Hence, among the +most ancient nations, it was the invariable custom to accompany the +declaration of war with religious ceremonies; and if, in later times, +this custom has become somewhat less usual, the change itself, in a more +remarkable manner, illustrates the tendency of our nature.... But let +victory declare for the assailed, let the invader become the invaded, +let it become necessary to stimulate men to put forth the highest effort +of human daring, and the sacred names of conscience, of duty to family, +to country, and to God, are universally invoked, and the Supreme Being +is urgently appealed to, to succor the cause of a sinking commonwealth. +It is, perhaps, worth while to remark, in passing, that this +consciousness of right is a source of power which belongs specially to +the oppressed, and which, other things being equal, will always insure +to them the victory; and, when other things are not equal, it is +frequently sufficient, of itself, to outweigh a vast preponderance of +physical force. It is, moreover, efficient in proportion to the purity of +the moral principle of a people. We hence perceive the elements of +superiority which, by the constitution of our nature, have been bestowed +upon virtue. + +Another illustration of the power of the moral principle, is seen in +the sentiments with which we contemplate the character of confessors, +martyrs, and men of every age, who have sacrificed every thing else +for the sake of adherence to righteousness. The highest glory of human +nature is to love right better than life, and to obey the dictates of +conscience at every conceivable hazard. Even falsehood, when sealed with +blood, acquires not unfrequently, for a time, an irrepressible power. +Truth, when uttered from the stake, or on the scaffold, becomes +absolutely irresistible. We admire Plato, surrounded by listening +princes, and vieing with them in oriental magnificence; but we venerate +Socrates in his dungeon, patiently suffering death for holding forth the +truth; and the dictates of our own bosoms spontaneously assign to him +the highest place among the uninspired teachers of wisdom. Or, to turn +to more awful examples, the foundations of the Christian religion were +laid in blood. The Captain of our salvation "was obedient unto death, +the death of the cross." The martyrdoms of the early age of the church +gave to the world examples of the love of right, of which it had never +before conceived even the possibility, and thus set on foot a moral +reformation, which is destined to work in the character of man a +universal transformation. + + * * * * * + + +=_Horace Mann, 1796-1859._= (Manual, p. 532.) + +From "Lectures on various Subjects." + +=_158._= THOUGHTS FOR A YOUNG MAN. + +In this country most young men are poor. Time is the rock from which +they are to hew out their fortunes; and health, enterprise, and +integrity, the instruments with which to do it. For this, diligence in +business, abstinence from pleasures, privation even, of everything that +does not endanger health, are to be joyfully welcomed and borne. When we +look around us, and see how much of the wickedness of the world +springs from poverty, it seems to sanctify all honest efforts for the +acquisition of an independence; but when an independence is acquired, +then comes the moral crisis, then comes an Ithuriel test, which shows +whether a man is higher than a common man, or lower than a common +reptile. In the duty of accumulation--and I call it a _duty_, in the most +strict and literal signification of that word--all below a competence +is most valuable, and its acquisition most laudable; but all above a +fortune is a misfortune. It is a misfortune to him who amasses it; for +it is a voluntary continuance in the harness of a beast of burden, when +the soul should enfranchise and lift itself up into a higher region of +pursuits and pleasures. It is a persistence in the work of providing +goods for the body after the body has already been provided for; and +it is a denial of the higher demands of the soul, after the time has +arrived, and the means are possessed, of fulfilling those demands.... +Because the lower service was once necessary, and has, therefore, been +performed, it is a mighty wrong, when, without being longer necessary, +it usurps the sacred rights of the higher. + + * * * * * + + +=_Orestes A. Brownson, 1800-._= (Manual, p. 480.) + +From "New Views." + +=_159._= THE DUTY OF PROGRESS. + +Progress is the end for which man was made. To this end it is his duty +to direct all his enquiries, all his systems of religion and philosophy, +all his institutions of politics and society, all the productions of his +genius and taste, in one word, all the modes of his activity. This is +his duty. Hitherto, he has performed it but blindly, without knowing, +and without admitting it. Humanity has but to-day, as it were, risen to +self-consciousness, to a perception of its own capacity, to a glimpse of +its inconceivably grand and holy destiny. Heretofore it has failed to +recognize clearly its duty. It has advanced, but not designedly, +not with foresight; it has done it instinctively, by the aid of the +invisible but safe-guiding hand of its Father. Without knowing what it +did, it has condemned progress while it was progressing. It has stoned +the prophets and reformers, even while it was itself reforming and +uttering glorious prophecies of its future condition. But the time has +now come for humanity to understand itself, to accept the law imposed +upon it for its own good, to foresee its end, and march with intention +steadily towards it. Its future religion is the religion of progress. +The true priests are those who can quicken in mankind a desire for +progress, and urge them forward in the direction of the true, the good, +the perfect. + + * * * * * + +From "The Convert." + +=_160._= POLITICS OF CATHOLIC EUROPE IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY +DESPOTIC. + +In France, Spain, Portugal, and a large part of Italy, all through the +seventeenth century, the youth were trained in the maxim, The prince is +the State, and his pleasure is law. Bossuet, in his politics, did only +faithfully express the political sentiments and convictions of his age, +shared by the great body of Catholics as well as of non-Catholics. +Rational liberty had few defenders, and they were exiled, like Fénelon, +from the court. The politics of Philip II. of Spain, of Richelieu, +Mazarin, and Louis XIV. in France, which were the politics of Catholic +Europe, hardly opposed, except by the popes, through the greater part +of the sixteenth and the whole of the seventeenth centuries, tended +directly to enslave the people, and to restrict the freedom, and +efficiency of the church. Had either Philip, or, after him, Louis, +succeeded, by linking the Catholic cause to his personal ambition, in +realizing his dream of universal monarchy, Europe would most likely have +been plunged into a political and social condition as unenviable as that +into which old Asia has been plunged for these four hundred years; and +it may well be believed that it was Providence that raised and directed +the tempest that scattered the Grand Armada, and that gave victory to +the arms of Eugene and Marlborough. + + * * * * * + + +=_Theodore Dwight Woolsey, 1801-._= + +From his "Introduction to the Study of International Law." + +=_161._= IMPORTANCE OF THE STUDY. + +From all that has been said it has become apparent that the study of +international law is important, as an index of civilization, and not to +the student of law only, but to the student of history. In our land, +especially, it is important, on more than one account, that this science +should do its share in enlightening educated minds. One reason for this +lies in the new inducements which we, as a people, have to swerve from +national rectitude. Formerly our interests threw us on the side of +unrestricted commerce, which is the side towards which justice inclines, +and we lived far within our borders with scarcely the power to injure or +be injured, except on the ocean. Now we are running into the crimes to +which strong nations are liable. Our diplomatists unblushingly moot the +question of taking foreign territory by force if it cannot be purchased; +our executive prevents piratical expeditions against the lands of +neighboring States as feebly and slowly as if it connived at them; we +pick quarrels to gain conquests; and at length, after more than half a +century of public condemnation of the slave-trade, after being the first +to brand it as piracy, we hear the revival of the trade advocated as a +right, as a necessity. Is it not desirable that the sense of justice, +which seems fading out of the national mind before views of political +expediency or destiny, should be deepened and made fast by that study +which frowns on national crimes? + +And, again, every educated person ought to become acquainted with +national law, because he is a responsible member of the body politic; +because there is danger that party views will make our doctrine in this +science fluctuating, unless it is upheld by large numbers of intelligent +persons; and because the executive, if not controlled, will be tempted +to assume the province of interpreting international law for us. As it +regards the latter point it may be said, that while Congress has power +to define offences against the laws of nations, and thus, if any public +power, to pronounce authoritatively what the law of nations is, the +executive through the Secretary of State, in practice, gives the lead in +all international questions. In this way the Monroe doctrine appeared; +in this way most other positions have been advanced; and perhaps this +could not be otherwise. But we ought to remember that the supreme +executives in Europe have amassed power by having diplomatic relations +in their hands, that thus the nation may become involved in war against +its will, and that the prevention of evils must lie, if there be any, +with the men who have been educated in the principles of international +justice. + +I close this treatise here, hoping that it may be of some use to my +native land, and to young men who may need a guide in the science of +which it treats. + + * * * * * + + +=_Taylor Lewis, 1802-.[48]_= + +From "The Six Days of Creation." + +=_162._= UNITY OF THE MOSAIC ACCOUNT. + +Another striking trait of the Mosaic cosmogony is its unbroken wholeness +or unity.... Be it invention or inspiration, it is the invention or the +inspiration of one mind. Other cosmogonies, though bearing unmistakable +evidence of their descent from the Mosaic, have had successive deposits, +in successive series, of mythological strata. This stands towering out +in lonely sublimity, like the everlasting granite of the Alps or the +Himalaya, as compared with the changing alluvium of the Nile or the +Ganges. As the serene air that ever surrounds the head of Mont Blanc +excels in purity the mists of the fen, so does the lofty theism of the +Mosaic account rise high above the nature-worship of the Egyptian and +Hesiodean theogonies. "In the beginning God made the heavens and the +earth. And the earth was waste and void, and darkness was upon the face +of the deep. And the Spirit of God brooded over the waters. And God +said, Let there be light, and it was light. And God saw the light that +it was fair, and God divided the light from the darkness. And thus there +was an evening and a morning--one day!" What is there like it, or to be +at all compared with it, in any mythology on earth? There it stands, +high above them all, and remote from them all, in its air of great +antiquity, in its unaccountableness, in its serene truthfulness, in +its unapproachable sublimity, in that impress of divine majesty and +ineffable holiness which even the unbelieving neologist has been +compelled to acknowledge, and by which every devout reader feels that +the first page in Genesis is forever distinguished from any mere human +production. + +[Footnote 48: Born In New York; a prolific writer, eminent for his +profound scholarship, his wide acquaintance with Oriental and Biblical +literature, and his originality and freedom of mind: long Professor of +Greek in Union College.] + + * * * * * + +From "State Rights." + +=_163._= CRUEL INTESTINE WARS CAUSED BY NATIONAL DIVISION. + +If it were Death alone! But "Hell follows hard after." What a heaving +Tartarus was Greece, when all hope of a true nationality was given up! +From Corcyra to Rhodes, from Byzantium to Cyrene, one bloody scene of +faction, "sedition, privy conspiracy, and rebellion." In the cities, in +the isles, in the colonies, banishments, confiscations, ostracisms, and +cruel deaths. The most ferocious parties everywhere, fomented in the +smaller States by the influence of the larger, and kept alive in the +leading cities by the continual presence of foreign emissaries. With us +it would be far more like Satan's kingdom, inasmuch as our states are +more numerous, relatively more petty, and, from the increased powers of +modern knowledge and modern invention, capable of the greater mutual +mischief. + +We are not prophesying at random. Here is our old guidebook. The road +is all mapped out, the way surveyed, by which we march to ruin. All the +dire calamities of Greece may be traced to this word autonomia.[49] + +... Greece presented the first great proof of a fact of which we are now +in danger of furnishing another and more terrible example to the world. +It is the utter impossibility of peace, in a territory made by nature a +geographical unity, inhabited by a people, or peoples, of one lineage, +one language, bound together in historical reminiscences, yet divided +into petty sovereign States too small for any respectable nationalities +themselves, and yet preventing any beneficent nationality as a whole. No +animosities have been so fierce as those existing among people thus +geographically and politically related. No wars with each other have +been so cruel; no home factions have been so incessant, so treacherous, +and so debasing. The very ties that draw them near only awaken occasions +of strife, which would not have existed between tribes wholly alien to +each other in language and religion. + +[Footnote 49: State sovereignty.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Horace Greeley,[50] 1811-1873._= + +From a "Lecture on the Emancipation of Labor." + +=_164._= THE PROBLEM OF LABOR. + +The worker of the nineteenth century stands a sad and careworn man. +Once in a while a particular flowery Fourth of July oration, political +harangue, or Thanksgiving sermon, catching him well filled with creature +comforts, and a little inclined to soar starward, will take him off his +feet, and for an hour or two he will wonder if ever human lot was so +blessed as that of the free-born American laborer. He hurrahs, and is +ready to knock any man down who will not readily and heartily agree that +this is a great country, and our industrious classes the happiest people +on earth.... The hallucination passes off, however, with the silvery +tones of the orator, and the exhilarating fumes of the liquor which +inspired it. The inhaler of the bewildering gas bends his slow steps at +length to his sorry domicile, or wakes therein on the morrow, in a sober +and practical mood. His very exaltation, now past, has rendered him more +keenly susceptible to the deficiencies and impediments which hem him +in: his house seems narrow, his food coarse, his furniture scanty, his +prospects gloomy, and those of his children more sombre, if possible; +and as he hurries off to the day's task which he has too long neglected, +and for which he has little heart, he too falls into that train of +thought which is beginning to encircle the globe, and of which the +burden may be freely rendered thus: "Why should those by whose toil all +comforts and luxuries are produced, or made available, enjoy so scanty a +share of them? Why should a man able and eager to work, ever stand idle +for want of employment in a world where so much needful work impatiently +awaits the doing? Why should a man be required to surrender something of +his independence, in accepting the employment which will enable him to +earn by honest effort the bread of his family? Why should the man who +faithfully labors for another, and receives therefor less than the +product of his labor, be currently held the obliged party, rather than +he who buys the work and makes a good bargain of it? In short, why +should Speculation and Scheming ride so jauntily in their carriages, +splashing honest Work as it trudges humbly and wearily by on foot?" +Such, as I interpret it, is the problem which occupies and puzzles the +knotted brain of Toil in our day. + +[Footnote 50: The well-known journalist of New York; conspicuous for his +many writings on social and political reform, his reminiscences, &c.; a +native of New Hampshire.] + + * * * * * + +From an Address on Success in Business. + +=_165._= THE BENEFICENCE OF LABOR-SAVING INVENTIONS. + +There is, if not an ever-increasing need, an ever-increasing +consciousness of need, of labor-saving inventions and machinery. And, if +those inventions should render labor twenty times as productive as it +is to-day, should make this a general rule, that all human labor shall +produce twenty times as much as it does to-day--there would be no glut +of products, as so many mistakenly apprehend. There would only be a +very much fuller and broader satisfaction of human needs. Our wants +are infinite. They expand and dilate on every side, according to our +means--often very much in advance of our means,--of satisfying them. If +labor shall become--as I doubt not it will become at an early day, far +more productive, far more effective, than it is now, we shall hear +nothing like a complaint that there are no more wants to be satisfied, +but the contrary. And yet, we know the fact is deplorably true, that the +time is scarcely yet remote when the laboring class, distinctively so +called, set its face resolutely against new inventions--set to work +deliberately to destroy labor-saving machinery, and so to act as more +and more to throw labor back into the barbaric period when probably +every yard of cloth cost a day's labor, as did every bushel of grain. +England herself, it is computed now does the work, by means of steam and +machinery, of eight hundred millions of men. And yet English wants are +no more satisfied to-day than they were a thousand years ago. I do not +say they are altogether unsatisfied; but I say that the consciousness of +want, the demand for products, is just as keen to-day; and I have not +a doubt that if inventions could be introduced into China whereby the +labor of her people should be rendered fifty times as effective as it is +to-day, you would find not a dearth of employment as a consequence, but +rather an increase of activity and an increased demand for labor. To-day +British capital and British talent are fairly grid-ironing the ancient +plains and slopes of Hindostan with British canals, irrigating, and +railroads. It is their _gold_ they say; but it is not British capital, +so much as British genius and British confidence, that are required. +There is wealth enough in India, more gold and silver and gems, probably +to-day than in Europe, for the precious metals always flow thither, and +they very seldom flow thence. + + * * * * * + +From "Recollections of a Busy Life." + +=_166._= LITERATURE AS A VOCATION; THE EDITOR. + +No other public teacher lives so wholly in the present, as the +Editor; and the noblest affirmations of unpopular truth,--the most +self-sacrificing defiance of a base and selfish Public Sentiment that +regards only the most sordid ends, and values every utterance solely +as it tends to preserve quiet and contentment, while the dollars fall +jingling into the merchant's drawer, the land-jobber's vault, and +the miser's bag,--can but be noted in their day, and with their day +forgotten. It is his cue to utter silken and smooth sayings,--to condemn +Vice so as not to interfere with the pleasures, or alarm the consciences +of the vicious,--to praise and champion Liberty so as not to give +annoyance or offence to Slavery, and to commend and glorify Labor +without attempting to expose or repress any of the gainful contrivances +by which Labor is plundered and degraded. Thus sidling dexterously +between somewhere and nowhere, the Able Editor of the Nineteenth Century +may glide through life respectable and in good case, and lie down to his +long rest with the non-achievements of his life emblazoned on the very +whitest marble, surmounting and glorifying his dust. + +There is a different and sterner path,--I know not whether there be +any now qualified to tread it,--I am not sure that even one has ever +followed it implicitly, in view of the certain meagerness of its +temporal rewards, and the haste wherewith any fame acquired in a sphere +so thoroughly ephemeral as the Editor's, must be shrouded by the dark +waters of oblivion. This path demands an ear ever open to the plaints of +the wronged and the suffering, though they can never repay advocacy, and +those who mainly support newspapers will be annoyed and often exposed +by it; a heart as sensitive to oppression and degradation in the next +street as if they were practised in Brazil or Japan; a pen as ready +to expose and reprove the crimes whereby wealth is amassed and luxury +enjoyed in our own country at this hour, as if they had only been +committed by Turks or Pagans in Asia, some centuries ago. Such an +Editor, could one be found or trained, need not expect to lead an easy, +indolent, or wholly joyous life,--to be blessed by Archbishops, or +followed by the approving shouts of ascendant majorities; but he might +find some recompense for their loss, in the calm verdict of an approving +conscience: and the tears of the despised and the friendless, preserved +from utter despair by his efforts and remonstrances, might freshen for a +season the daisies that bloomed above his grave. + + * * * * * + +From "The Crystal Palace and its Lessons." + +=_167._= TRANQUILITY OF RURAL LIFE. + +As for me, long tossed on the stormiest waves of doubtful conflict and +arduous endeavor, I have begun to feel, since the shades of forty years +fell upon me, the weary tempest-driven voyager's longing for land, the +wanderer's yearning for the hamlet where in childhood he nestled by +his mother's knee, and was soothed to sleep on her breast. The sober +down-hill of life dispels many illusions, while it developes or +strengthens within us the attachment, perhaps long smothered or +overlaid, for "that dear hut, our home." And so I, in the sober +afternoon of life, when its sun, if not high, is still warm, have bought +me a few acres of land in the broad, still country, and bearing thither +my household treasures, have resolved to steal from the city's labors +and anxieties at least one day in each week, wherein to revive as a +farmer, the memories of my childhood's humble home. And already I +realize that the experiment cannot cost so much as it is worth. Already +I find in that day's quiet, an antidote and a solace for the feverish, +festering cares of the weeks which environ it. Already, my brook murmurs +a soothing even-song to my burning, throbbing brain; and my trees, +gently stirred by the fresh breezes, whisper to my spirit something of +their own quiet strength and patient trust in God. And thus do I faintly +realize, though but for a brief and flitting day, the serene joy which +shall irradiate the Farmer's vocation, when a fuller and truer education +shall have refined and chastened his animal cravings, and when Science +shall have endowed him with her treasures, redeeming Labor from +drudgery, while quadrupling its efficiency, and crowning with beauty and +plenty our bounteous, beneficent Earth. + + * * * * * + + +=_Theodore Parker_,= about =_1812-1860_=. (Manual, p. 531.) + +From "Lessons from the World of Nature," &c. + +=_168._= WINTER AND SPRING. + +In the hard, cold winter of our northern lands, how do we feel a longing +for the presence of life! Then we love to look on a pine or fir tree, +which seems the only living thing in the woods, surrounded by dead oaks, +birches, maples, looking like the gravestones of buried vegetation: +that seems warm and living then; and at Christmas, men bring it into +meetinghouses and parlors, and set it up, full of life, and laden with +kindly gifts for the little folk. Then even the unattractive crow seems +half sacred, through the winter bearing messages of promise from the +perished autumn to the advancing spring--this dark forerunner of the +tuneful tribes which are to come. We feel a longing for fresh, green +nature, and so in the shelter of our houses keep some little Aaron's +rod, budding alike with promise and memory; or in some hyacinth or +Dutchman's tulip we keep a prophecy of flowers, and start off some +little John to run before, and with his half-gospel tell of some great +Emmanuel, and signify to men that the kingdom of heavenly beauty is near +at hand. Now that forerunner disappears, for the desire of all nations +has truly come; the green grass is creeping everywhere, and it is +spangled with many flowers that came unasked.... + +What if there was a spring time of blossoming but once in a hundred +years! How would men look forward to it, and old men, who had beheld its +wonders, tell the story to their children, how once all the homely trees +became beautiful, and earth was covered with freshness and new growth! +How would young men hope to become old, that they might see so glad a +sight! And when beheld, the aged man would say, "Lord, now lettest thou +thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation." + + * * * * * + +From an "Installation Sermon," January 4th, 1846. + +=_169._= THE TRUE IDEA OF A CHRISTIAN CHURCH. + +The saints of olden time perished at the stake; they hung on gibbets; +they agonized upon the rack; they died under the steel of the tormentor. +It was the heroism of our fathers' day that swam the unknown seas; froze +in the woods; starved with want and cold; fought battles with the red +right hand. It is the sainthood and heroism of our day that toils for +the ignorant, the poor, the weak, the oppressed, the wicked. Yes, it is +our saints and heroes who fight fighting; who contend for the slave, and +his master too, for the drunkard, the criminal; yes, for the wicked or +the weak in all their forms.... But the saints and the heroes of this +day, who draw no sword, whose right hand is never bloody, who burn in no +fires of wood or sulphur, nor languish briefly on the hasty cross; the +saints and heroes who, in a worldly world, dare to be men; in an age of +conformity and selfishness, speak for Truth and Man, living for noble +aims, men who will swear to no lies howsoever popular; who will honor +no sins, though never so profitable, respectable, and ancient; men who +count Christ not their master, but teacher, friend, brother, and strive +like him to practice all they pray; to incarnate and make real the Word +of God, these men I honor far more than the saints of old.... Racks and +fagots soon waft the soul to God, stern messengers, but swift. A boy +could bear that passage,--the martyrdom of death. But the temptation of +a long life of neglect, and scorn, and obloquy, and shame, and want, and +desertion by false friends; to live blameless though blamed, cut off +from human sympathy, that is the martyrdom of to-day. I shed no tears +for such martyrs. I shout when I see one; I take courage and thank God +for the real saints, prophets and heroes of to-day.... Yea, though now +men would steal the rusty sword from underneath the bones of a saint or +hero long deceased, to smite off therewith the head of a new prophet, +that ancient hero's son; though they would gladly crush the heart out of +him with the tombstones they piled up for great men, dead and honored +now; yet in some future day, that mob penitent, baptized with a new +spirit, like drunken men returned to sanity once more, shall search +through all this land for marble white enough to build a monument to +that prophet whom their fathers slew; they shall seek through all the +world for gold of fineness fit to chronicle such names. I cannot wait; +but I will honor such men now, not adjourn the warning of their voice, +and the glory of their example, till another age! The church may cast +out such men; burn them with the torments of an age too refined in its +cruelty to use coarse fagots and the vulgar axe! It is no loss to these +men; but the ruin of the church. I say the Christian church of the +nineteenth century must honor such men, if it would do a church's work; +must take pains to make such men as these, or it is a dead church, with +no claim on us, except that we bury it. A true church will always be +the church of martyrs. The ancients commenced every great work with a +victim! We do not call it so; but the sacrifice is demanded, got ready, +and offered by unconscious priests long ere the enterprise succeeds. Did +not Christianity begin with a martyrdom? + + * * * * * + +From "Historic Americans." + +=_170._= CHARACTER OF FRANKLIN. + +His was the morality of a strong, experienced person, who had seen the +folly of wise men, the meanness of proud men, the baseness of honorable +men, and the littleness of great men, and made liberal allowances for +the failures of all men. If the final end to be reached were just, he +did not always inquire about the provisional means which led thither. He +knew that the right line is the shortest distance between two points, in +morals as in mathematics, but yet did not quarrel with such as attained +the point by a crooked line. Such is the habit of politicians, +diplomatists, statesmen, who look on all men as a commander looks on his +soldiers, and does not ask them to join the church or keep their hands +clean, but to stand to their guns and win the battle. + +Thus, in the legislature of Pennsylvania, Franklin found great +difficulty in carrying on the necessary measures for military defence, +because a majority of the Assembly were Quakers, who, though friendly +to the success of the revolution founded contrary to their principles, +refused to vote the supplies of war. So he caused them to vote +appropriations to purchase bread, flour, wheat, _or other grain_. The +Government said, "I shall take the money, for I understand very well +their meaning,--other grain is gunpowder." He afterwards moved the +purchase of a fire-engine, saying to his friend, "Nominate me on the +committee, and I will nominate you; we will buy a great gun, which is +certainly a fire engine; the Quakers can have no objection to that." + +Such was the course of policy that Franklin took, as I think, to excess; +but yet I believe that no statesman of that whole century did so much to +embody the eternal rules of right in the customs of the people, and to +make the constitution of the universe the common law of all mankind; and +I cannot bestow higher praise than that, on any man whose name I can +recall. He mitigated the ferocities of war. He built new hospitals, and +improved old ones. He first introduced this humane principle into the +Law of Nations, that in time of war, private property on land shall +be unmolested, and peaceful commerce continued, and captive soldiers +treated as well as the soldiers of the captors. Generous during his +life-time, his dead hand still gathers and distributes blessings to the +mechanics of Boston, and their children. True is it that + + "Him only pleasure leads and peace attends, + Whose means are pure and spotless as his ends." + +But it is a great thing in this stage of the world to find a man whose +_ends_ are pure and spotless. Let us thank him for that. + + * * * * * + +From "Historic Americans." + +=_171._= CHARACTER OF THOMAS JEFFERSON. + +Of all those who controlled the helm of affairs during the time of the +Revolution, and while the Constitution and the forms of our National and +State Institutions were carefully organized, there is none who has been +more generally popular, more commonly beloved, more usually believed to +be necessary to the Legislation and Administration of his country, than +Thomas Jefferson. It may not be said of him that of all those famous men +he could least have been spared; for in the rare and great qualities for +patiently and wisely conducting the vast affairs of State and Nation in +pressing emergencies, he seems to have been wanting. But his grand merit +was this--that while his powerful opponents favored a strong government, +and believed it necessary thereby to repress what they called the +lower classes, he, Jefferson, believed in Humanity; believed in a true +Democracy. He respected labor and education, and upheld the right to +education of all men. These were the Ideas in which he was far in +advance of all the considerable men, whether of his State or of his +Nation--ideas which he illustrated through long years of his life and +conduct. The great debt that the Nation owes to him is this--that he so +ably and consistently advocated these needful opinions, that he made +himself the head and the hand of the great party that carried +these ideas into power, that put an end to all possibility of +class-government, made naturalization easy, extended the suffrage and +applied it to judicial office, opened a still wider and better education +to all, and quietly inaugurated reforms, yet incomplete, of which we +have the benefit to this day, and which, but for him, we might not have +won against the party of Strong Government, except by a difficult and +painful Revolution. + + * * * * * + + +=_Wendell Phillips,[51] 1811-._= + +From "A Lecture delivered in December, 1861." + +=_172._= THE WAR FOR THE UNION. + +I would have government announce to the world that we understand the +evil which has troubled our peace for seventy years, thwarting the +natural tendency of our institutions, sending ruin along our wharves +and through our workshops every ten years, poisoning the national +conscience. We know well its character. But democracy, unlike other +governments, is strong enough to let evils work out their own +death--strong enough to face them when they reveal their proportions. It +was in this sublime consciousness of strength, not of weakness, that our +fathers submitted to the well-known evil of slavery, and tolerated it +until the viper we thought we could safely tread on, at the touch of +disappointment, starts up a fiend whose stature reaches the sky. But +our cheeks do not blanch. Democracy accepts the struggle. After this +forbearance of three generations, confident that she has yet power to +execute her will, she sends her proclamation, down to the Gulf--freedom +to every man beneath the stars, and death to every institution that +disturbs our peace, or threatens the future of the republic. + +[Footnote 51: A native of Massachusetts: a vigorous thinker and speaker +on the great moral and political topics of the day, and the most +eloquent of the Anti-Slavery leaders.] + + * * * * * + +From His "Speeches, Lectures." &c. + +=_173._= CHARACTER OF TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE. + +Above the lust of gold, pure in private life, generous in the use of his +power, it was against such a man that Napoleon sent his army, giving to +General Leclerc,--the husband of his beautiful sister Pauline,--thirty +thousand of his best troops, with orders to re-introduce slavery. Among +these soldiers came all of Toussaint's old mulatto rivals and foes. + + * * * * * + +Mounting his horse, and riding to the eastern end of the island, Samana, +he looked out on a sight such as no native had ever seen before. Sixty +ships of the line, crowded by the best soldiers of Europe, rounded the +point. They were soldiers who had never yet met an equal, whose tread, +like Caesar's, had shaken Europe,--soldiers who had scaled the Pyramids, +and planted the French banners on the walls of Rome. He looked a moment, +counted the flotilla, let the reins fall on the neck of his horse, and, +turning to Christophe, exclaimed: "All France is come to Hayti; they can +only come to make us slaves; and we are lost." He then recognized the +only mistake of his life,--his confidence in Bonaparte, which had led +him to disband his army. Returning to the hills, he issued the only +proclamation which bears his name and breathes vengeance: "My children, +France comes to make us slaves. God gave us liberty; France has no right +to take it away. Burn the cities, destroy the harvests, tear up the +roads with cannon, poison the wells, show the white man the hell he +comes to make"; and he was obeyed. When the great William of Orange saw +Louis XIV. cover Holland with troops, he said, "Break down the dykes, +give Holland back to ocean"; and Europe said, "Sublime!" When Alexander +saw the armies of France descend upon Russia, he said: "Burn Moscow, +starve back the invaders"; and Europe said, "Sublime!" This black saw +all Europe marshalled to crush him, and gave to his people the same +heroic example of defiance. + + * * * * * + + +=_Thomas Starr King, 1824-1864._= (Manual, p. 532.) + +From "Patriotism and other Papers." + +=_174._= GREAT PRINCIPLES AND SMALL DUTIES. + +If we go to Nature for our morals, we shall learn the necessity of +perfection in the smallest act. Infinite skill is not exhausted nor +concentrated in the structure of a firmament, in drawing the orbit of a +planet, in laying the strata of the earth, in rearing the mountain cone. +The care for the bursting flower is as wise as the forces displayed in +the rolling star; the smallest leaf that falls and dies unnoticed in the +forest is wrought with a beauty as exquisite as the skill displayed in +the sturdy oak. All the wisdom of Nature is compressed and revealed +in the sting of the bee; and the pride of human art is mocked by the +subtile mechanism and cunning structure of a fly's foot and wing. +However minute the task, it reveals the polish of perfection. Omnipotent +skill is stamped on the infinitely small, as on the infinitely great. +It is a moral stenography like this which we need in daily life.... +The lesson of Christianity, then, urged and enforced by Nature, is +the inestimable worth of common duties, as manifesting the greatest +principles; it bids us attain perfection, not by striving to do dazzling +deeds, but by making our experience divine; it tells us that the +Christian hero will ennoble the humblest field of labor; that nothing is +mean which can be performed as duty; but that religious virtue, like the +touch of Midas, converts the humblest call of conscience into spiritual +gold. + +The Greek philosopher, Plato, has left an instructive and beautiful +poetic picture of the judgment of souls, when they had been collected +from the regions of temporary bliss and pain, and suffered once more to +return to the duties and pleasures of earthly life. The spirits advanced +by lot, to make their choice of the condition and form under which they +should re-enter the world. The dazzling and showy fortunes, the lives of +kings and warriors and statesmen were soon exhausted; and the spirit of +Ulysses, who had been the wisest prince among all the Greeks, came last +to choose. He advanced with sorrow, fearing that his favorite condition +had been selected by some more fortunate soul who had gone before him. +But, to his surprise and pleasure, Ulysses found that the only life +which had not been chosen was the lot of an obscure and private man, +with its humble cares and quiet joys; the lot which he, the wisest, +would have selected, had his turn come first; the life for which he had +longed, since he had felt the folly and meanness of station, wealth, and +power.... + + + + +CHAPTER III. + + + +GENERAL AND POLITE LITERATURE. + + +=_William Wirt, 1772-1834._= (Manual, pp. 487, 490.) + +From the "Life of Patrick Henry." + +=_175._= HENRY'S EXAMPLE NO ARGUMENT FOR INDOLENCE. + +I cannot learn that he gave in his youth any evidence of that precocity +which sometimes distinguishes uncommon genius. His companions recollect +no instance of premature wit, no striking sentiment, no flash of fancy, +no remarkable beauty or strength of expression, and no indication +however slight, either of that impassioned love of liberty, or of that +adventurous daring and intrepidity, which marked so strongly his future +character. So far was he indeed from exhibiting any one prognostic of +this greatness, that every omen foretold a life at best, of mediocrity, +if not of insignificance. His person is represented as having been +coarse, his manners uncommonly awkward, his dress slovenly, his +conversation very plain, his aversion to study invincible, and his +faculties almost entirely benumbed by indolence. No persuasion could +bring him either to read or to work. On the contrary, he ran wild in the +forest like one of the _Aborigines_ of the country, and divided his life +between the dissipation and uproar of the chase, and the languor of +inaction. + +His propensity to observe and comment upon the human character, was, +so far as I can learn, the only circumstance which distinguished him +advantageously from his youthful companions. This propensity seems to +have been born with him, and to have exerted itself instinctively, the +moment that a new subject was presented to his view. Its action was +incessant, and it became at length almost the only intellectual exercise +in which he seemed to take delight. To this cause, may be traced that +consummate knowledge of the human heart which he finally attained, and +which enabled him when he came upon the public stage, to touch the +springs of passion with a master hand, and to control the resolutions +and decisions of his hearers with a power almost more than mortal. + +From what has been already stated, it will be seen how little education +had to do with the formation of this great man's mind. He was indeed a +mere child of nature, and nature seems to have been too proud and too +jealous of her work, to permit it to be touched by the hand of art. She +gave him Shakespeare's genius, and bade him, like Shakespeare, to depend +on that alone. Let not the youthful reader, however, deduce from the +example of Mr. Henry, an argument in favor of indolence, and the +contempt of study. Let him remember that the powers which surmounted the +disadvantage of those early habits, were such as very rarely appear upon +this earth. Let him remember, too, how long the genius even of Mr. Henry +was kept down, and hidden from the public view, by the sorcery of those +pernicious habits; through what years of poverty and wretchedness they +doomed him to struggle; and let him remember, that at length, when in +the zenith of his glory. Mr. Henry himself, had frequent occasions to +deplore the consequences of his early neglect of literature, and to +bewail the ghosts of his departed hours. + + * * * * * + +From "Eulogium on Adams and Jefferson." + +=_176._= JEFFERSON'S SEAT AT MONTICELLO. + +Approaching the house on the east, the visitor instinctively paused, to +cast around one thrilling glance at this magnificent panorama, and then +passed to the vestibule, where, if he had not been previously informed, +he would immediately perceive that he was entering the house of no +common man. In the spacious and lofty hall which opens before him, he +marks no tawdry and unmeaning ornaments, but before, on the right, on +the left, all around, the eye is struck and gratified with objects of +science and taste, so classed and arranged as to produce their finest +effect. On one side, specimens of sculpture set out in such order as to +exhibit ... the historical progress of that art, from the first rude +attempts of the aborigines of our country up to that exquisite and +finished bust of the great patriot himself, from the master-hand +of Ceracchi. On the other side, the visitor sees displayed a vast +collection of specimens of Indian art--their paintings, weapons, +ornaments, and manufactures; on another, an array of the fossil +productions of our country, mineral and animal, the polished remains of +those colossal monsters that once trod our forests, and are no more; and +a variegated display of the branching honors of those "monarchs of the +waste," that still people the wilds of the American continent. + +From this hall he was ushered into a noble saloon, from which the +glorious landscape of the west again bursts upon his view, and which +within is hung thick around with the finest productions of the +pencil--historical paintings of the most striking subjects from all +countries and all ages, the portraits of distinguished men and patriots +both of Europe and America, and medallions and engravings in endless +profusion. + +While the visitor was yet lost in the contemplation of these treasures +of the arts and sciences, he was startled by the approach of a strong +and sprightly step; and, turning with instinctive reverence to the door +of entrance, he was met by the tall, and animated, and stately figure +of the patriot himself, his countenance beaming with intelligence and +benignity, and his outstretched hand, with its strong and cordial +pressure, confirming the courteous welcome of his lips; and then came +that charm of manner and conversation that passes all description--so +cheerful, so unassuming, so free, and easy, and frank, and kind, and +gay, that even the young, and overawed, and embarrassed visitor at once +forgot his fears, and felt himself by the side of an old and familiar +friend. + + * * * * * + + +=_Timothy Flint, 1780-1840._= (Manual, p. 490.) + +From "Recollections of the Mississippi Valley." + +=_177._= THE WESTERN BOATMAN. + +Three is no wonder that the way of life which the boatman, lead, in turn +extremely indolent and extremely laborious, for days together requiring +little or no effort, and attended with no danger, and then on a sudden +laborious and hazardous beyond the Atlantic navigation, generally +plentiful as it regards food, and always so as it regards whiskey, +should always have seductions that prove irresistible to the young +people that live near the banks of the river. The boats float by their +dwellings on beautiful spring mornings, when the verdant forest, the +mild and delicious temperature of the air, the delightful azure of the +sky of this country, the fine bottom on the one hand, and the romantic +bluff on the other, the broad, and smooth stream rolling calmly down +through the forest, and floating the boat gently forward,--all these +circumstances harmonize in the excited youthful imagination. The boatmen +are dancing to the violin on the deck of their boat. They scatter their +wit among the girls on the shore, who come down to the water's edge to +see the pageant pass. The boat glides on until it disappears behind a +point of wood; at this moment, perhaps, the bugle, with which all the +boats are provided, strikes up its note in the distance, over the water. +These scenes, and these notes, echoing from the bluffs of the beautiful +Ohio, have a charm for the imagination, which, although I have heard a +thousand times repeated, and at all hours, and in all positions, is even +to me always new, and always delightful. No wonder that to the young, +who are reared in these remote regions, with that restless curiosity +which is fostered by solitude and silence, who witness scenes like these +so frequently,--no wonder that the severe and unremitting labors of +agriculture, performed directly in the view of such scenes, should +become tasteless and irksome. + + * * * * * + + +=_Washington Irving, 1783-1839._= (Manual, pp. 478, 498.) + +From "Knickerbocker's History of New York." + +=_178._= FROM "TITLE AND TABLE OF CONTENTS." + +A history of New York, from the beginning of the world to the end of the +Dutch dynasty,... being the only authentic history of the times that +ever hath been or ever will be published, by Diedrick Knickerbocker.... +Book I., chap. i. Description of the World.... Book II., chap. i.... +Also of Master Hendrick Hudson, his discovery of a strange country.... +Chap. vii. How the people of Pavonia migrated from Communipaw to the +Island of Manhattan.... Chap. ix. How the city of New Amsterdam waxed +great under the protection of St. Nicholas, and the absence of laws and +statutes. Book III., chap. iii. How the town of New Amsterdam arose out +of mud, and came to be marvellously polished and polite, together with +a picture of the manners of our great-great-grandfathers.... Book IV., +chap. vi. Projects of William the Testy for increasing the currency; he +is outwitted by the Yankees. The great Oyster War.... Book V., chap. +viii. How the Yankee crusade against the New Netherlands was baffled by +the sudden outbreak of witchcraft among the people of the East ... Book +VII., chap. ii. How Peter Stuyvesant labored to civilize the community. +How he was a great promoter of holydays. How he instituted kissing on +New Year's Day.... Chap. iii. How troubles thicken on the province. How +it is threatened by the Helderbergers,--the Merrylanders, and the Giants +of the Susquehanna. + + * * * * * + +=_179._= THE ARMY AT NEW AMSTERDAM. + +First of all came the Van Bummels, who inhabit the pleasant borders +of the Bronx. These were short, fat men, wearing exceeding large +trunk-breeches, and are renowned for feats of the trencher; they were +the first inventors of suppawn, or mush and milk.... Lastly came the +Knickerbockers, of the great town of Schahticoke, where the folks lay +stones upon the houses in windy weather, lest they should be blown away. +These derive their name, as some say, from _Knicker_, to shake, and +_Beker_, a goblet, indicating thereby that they were sturdy tosspots of +yore; but in truth, it was derived from _Knicker_, to nod, and _Bocken_, +books, plainly meaning that they were great nodders or dozers over +books; from them did descend the writer of this History. + + * * * * * + +From the "Tales of a Traveller." + +=_180._= A MOTHER'S MEMORY. + +A part of the church-yard is shaded by large trees. Under one of them +my mother lay buried. You have no doubt thought me a light, heartless +being. I thought myself so; but there are moments of adversity which let +us into some feelings of our nature to which we might otherwise remain +perpetual strangers. + +I sought my mother's grave: the weeds were already matted over it, and +the tombstone was half hid among nettles. I cleared them away, and they +stung my hands; but I was heedless of the pain, for my heart ached too +severely. I sat down on the grave, and read, over and over again, the +epitaph on the stone. + +It was simple,--but it was true. I had written it myself, I had tried +to write a poetical epitaph, but in vain; my feelings refused to utter +themselves in rhyme. My heart had gradually been filling during my +lonely wanderings; it was now charged to the brim, and overflowed, I +sunk upon the grave, and buried my face in the tall grass, and wept like +a child. Yes, I wept in manhood upon the grave, as I had in infancy upon +the bosom, of my mother. Alas! how little do we appreciate a mother's +tenderness while living! how heedless are we in youth of all her +anxieties and kindness! But when she is dead and gone; when the cares +and coldness of the world come withering to our hearts; when we find how +hard it is to find true sympathy;--how few love us for ourselves; how +few will befriend us in our misfortunes--then it is that we think of +the mother we have lost. It is true I had always loved my mother, even +in my most heedless days; but I felt how inconsiderate and ineffectual +had been my love. My heart melted as I retraced the days of infancy, +when I was led by a mother's hand, and rocked to sleep in a mother's +arms, and was without care or sorrow. "O my mother!" exclaimed I, +burying my face again in the grass of the grave, "O that I were once +more by your side; sleeping never to wake again on the cares and +troubles of this world." + +I am not naturally of a morbid temperament, and the violence of my +emotion gradually exhausted itself. It was a hearty, honest, natural +discharge of grief which had been slowly accumulating, and gave me +wonderful relief. I rose from the grave as if I had been offering up a +sacrifice, and I felt as if that sacrifice had been accepted. + +I sat down again on the grass, and plucked one by one the weeds from her +grave: the tears trickled more slowly down my cheeks, and ceased to be +bitter. It was a comfort to think that she had died before sorrow +and poverty came upon her child, and all his great expectations were +blasted. + +I leaned my cheek upon my hand, and looked upon the landscape. Its quiet +beauty soothed me. The whistle of a peasant from an adjoining field came +cheerily to my ear. I seemed to respire hope and comfort with the free +air that whispered through the leaves, and played lightly with my hair, +and dried the tears upon my cheek. A lark, rising from the field before +me, and leaving as it were a stream of song behind him as he rose, +lifted my fancy with him. He hovered in the air just above the place +where the towers of Warwick castle marked the horizon, and seemed as +if fluttering with delight at his own melody. "Surely," thought I, "if +there were such a thing as a transmigration of souls, this might be +taken for some poet let loose from earth, but still revelling in song, +and carolling about fair fields and lordly towers." + + * * * * * + +From "The Life and Voyages of Columbus." + +=_181._= COLUMBUS A PRISONER. + +The arrival of Columbus at Cadiz, a prisoner, and in chains, produced +almost as great a sensation as his triumphant return from his first +voyage. It was one of those striking and obvious facts, which speak to +the feelings of the multitude, and preclude the necessity of reflection. +No one stopped to inquire into the case. It was sufficient to be +told that Columbus was brought home in irons from the world he had +discovered. A general burst of indignation arose in Cadiz, and its +neighboring city, Seville, which was immediately echoed throughout all +Spain.... However Ferdinand might have secretly felt disposed towards +Columbus, the momentary tide of public feeling was not to be resisted. +He joined with his generous queen in her reprobation of the treatment of +the admiral, and both sovereigns hastened to give evidence to the world, +that his imprisonment had been without their authority, and contrary to +their wishes. + + * * * * * + +=_182._= HIS ARRIVAL AT COURT. + +He appeared at court in Granada, on the 17th of December, not as a man +ruined and disgraced, but richly dressed, and attended by an honorable +retinue. He was received by their majesties with unqualified favor and +distinction. When the queen beheld this venerable man approach, and +thought on all that he had deserved, and all that he had suffered, +she was moved to tears. Columbus had borne up firmly against the rude +conflicts of the world; he had endured with lofty scorn the injuries and +insults of ignoble men; but he possessed strong and quick sensibility. +When he found himself thus kindly received by his sovereigns, and beheld +tears in the benign eyes of Isabella, his long-suppressed feelings burst +forth. He threw himself upon his knees, and for some time could not +utter a word for the violence of his tears and sobbings. + + * * * * * + +From Wolfert's Roost. + +=_183._= "A TIME OF UNEXAMPLED PROSPERITY." + +Every now and then the world is visited by one of these delusive +seasons, when "the credit system," as it is called, expands to full +luxuriance; every body trusts every body; a bad debt is a thing unheard +of; the broad way to certain and sudden wealth lies plain and open, and +men are tempted to dash forward boldly, from the facility of borrowing. + +Promissory notes, interchanged between scheming individuals, are +liberally discounted at the banks, which become so many mints to coin +words into cash; and as the supply of words is inexhaustible, it may +readily be supposed what a vast amount of promissory capital is soon +in circulation. Every one now talks in thousands; nothing is heard +but gigantic operations in trade, great purchases and sales of real +property, and immense sums made at every transfer. All, to be sure, +as yet exists in promise; but the believer in promises calculates the +aggregate as solid capital, and falls back in amazement at the amount of +public wealth, "the unexampled state of public prosperity!" + +Now is the time for speculative and dreaming or designing men. They +relate their dreams and projects to the ignorant and credulous, dazzle +them with golden visions, and set them maddening after shadows. The +example of one stimulates another; speculation rises on speculation; +bubble rises on bubble; every one helps with his breath to swell the +windy superstructure, and admires and wonders at the magnitude of the +inflation he has contributed to produce. + +Speculation is the romance of trade, and casts contempt upon all its +sober realities. It renders the stock-jobber a magician, and the +exchange a region of enchantment. It elevates the merchant into a kind +of Knight-errant, or rather a commercial Quixote. The slow but sure +gains of snug percentage become despicable in his eyes: no "operation" +is thought worthy of attention, that does not double or treble the +investment. No business is worth following, that does not promise an +immediate fortune. As he sits musing over his ledger, with pen behind +his ear, he is like La Mancha's hero in his study, dreaming over his +books of chivalry. His dusty counting-house fades before his eyes, or +changes into a Spanish mine; he gropes after diamonds, or dives after +pearls. The subterranean garden of Aladdin is nothing to the realms of +wealth that break upon his imagination. + +When a man of business, therefore, hears on every side rumors of +fortunes suddenly acquired; when he finds banks liberal, and brokers +busy; when he sees adventurers flush of paper capital, and full of +scheme and enterprise; when he perceives a greater disposition to buy +than to sell; when trade overflows its accustomed channels, and deluges +the country; when he hears of new regions of commercial adventure, of +distant marts and distant mines, swallowing merchandise and disgorging +gold; when he finds joint stock companies of all kinds forming; +railroads, canals, and locomotive engines, springing up on every side; +when idlers suddenly become men of business, and dash into the game +of commerce as they would into the hazards of the faro table; when he +beholds the streets glittering with new equipages, palaces conjured up +by the magic of speculation; tradesmen flushed with sudden success, and +vying with each other in ostentatious expense; in a word, when he hears +the whole community joining in the theme of "unexampled prosperity." +let him look upon the whole as a "weather breeder," and prepare for the +impending storm. + + * * * * * + +From The Life of Washington. + +=_184._= DEATH AND BURIAL OF BRADDOCK. + +The proud spirit of Braddock was broken by his defeat. He remained +silent the first evening after the battle, only ejaculating at night, +"Who would have thought it!" He was equally silent the following day; +yet hope still seemed to linger in his breast, from another ejaculation: +"We shall better know how to deal with them another time!" + +He was grateful for the attentions paid to him by Captain Stewart and +Washington, and more than once, it is said, expressed his admiration of +the gallantry displayed by the Virginians in the action. It is said, +moreover, that in his last moments, he apologized to Washington for the +petulance with which he had rejected his advice, and bequeathed to him +his favorite charger and his faithful servant, Bishop, who had helped to +convey him from the field. + +Some of these facts, it is true, rest on tradition, yet we are willing +to believe them, as they impart a gleam of just and generous feeling +to his closing scene. He died on the night of the 13th, at the Great +Meadows, the place of Washington's discomfiture in the preceding year. +His obsequies were performed before break of day. The chaplain having +been wounded, Washington read the funeral service. All was done in +sadness, and without parade, so as not to attract the attention of +lurking savages, who might discover and outrage his grave. It is +doubtful even whether a volley was fired over it, that last military +honor which he had recently paid to the remains of an Indian warrior. +The place of his sepulture, however, is still known, and pointed out. + +Reproach spared him not, even when in his grave. The failure of the +expedition was attributed both in England and America, to his obstinacy, +his technical pedantry, and his military conceit. He had been +continually warned to be on his guard against ambush and surprise, but +without avail. Had he taken the advice urged on him by Washington and +others, to employ scouting parties of Indians and rangers, he would +never have been so signally surprised and defeated. + +Still his dauntless conduct on the field of battle shows him to have +been a man of fearless spirit; and he was universally allowed to be an +accomplished disciplinarian. His melancholy end, too, disarms censure +of its asperity. Whatever may have been his faults and errors, he in a +manner expiated them by the hardest lot that can befall a brave soldier, +ambitious of renown--an unhonored grave in a strange land: a memory +clouded by misfortune, and a name for ever coupled with defeat. + + * * * * * + +=_185._= BARON STEUBEN IN THE REVOLUTIONARY ARMY. + +The committee having made their report, the baron's proffered services +were accepted with a vote of thanks for his disinterestedness, and he +was ordered to join the army of Valley Forge. That army, in its ragged +condition and squalid quarters, presented a sorry aspect to a strict +disciplinarian from Germany, accustomed to the order and appointments +of European camps; and the baron often declared, that under such +circumstances no army in Europe could be kept together for a single +month. The liberal mind of Steuben, however, made every allowance; and +Washington soon found in him a consummate soldier, free from pedantry or +pretension. + + * * * * * + +For a time, there was nothing but drills throughout the camp, then +gradually came evolutions of every kind. The officers were schooled as +well as the men. The troops, says a person who was present in the camp, +were paraded in a single line with shouldered arms; every officer in his +place. The baron passed in front, then took the musket of each soldier +in hand, to see whether it was clean and well polished, and examined +whether the men's accoutrements were in good order. + +He was sadly worried for a time with the militia; especially when any +manoeuvre was to be performed. The men blundered in their exercise; the +baron blundered in his English; his French and German were of no avail; +he lost his temper, which was rather warm; swore in all three languages +at once, which made the matter worse, and at length called his aide +to his assistance, to help him curse the blockheads as it was +pretended--but no doubt to explain the manoeuvre. + +Still the grand marshal of the court of Hohenzollern mingled with the +veteran soldier of Frederick, and tempered his occasional bursts of +impatience; and he had a kind generous heart, that soon made him a +favorite with the men. His discipline extended to their comforts. He +inquired into their treatment by the officers. He examined into the +doctor's reports; visited the sick; and saw that they were well lodged +and attended. + +He was an example, too, of the regularity and system he exacted. One of +the most alert and indefatigable men in the camp; up at day-break if not +before, whenever there were to be any important manoeuvres, he took his +cup of coffee and smoked his pipe while his servant dressed his hair, +and by sunrise he was in the saddle, equipped at all points, with the +star of his order of knighthood glittering on his breast, and was off to +the parade, alone, if his suite were not ready to attend him. + +The strong good sense of the baron was evinced in the manner in which he +adapted his tactics to the nature of the army and the situation of the +country, instead of adhering with bigotry to the systems of Europe. His +instructions were appreciated by all. The officers received them gladly +and conformed to them. The men soon became active and adroit. The army +gradually acquired a proper organization, and began to operate, like +a great machine; and Washington found in the baron an intelligent, +disinterested, truthful coadjutor, well worthy of the badge he wore of +the Order of _Fidelity_. + + * * * * * + + +=_Richard Henry Wilde, 1789-1847._= (Manual, pp. 501, 521.) + +From "Conjectures concerning Torquato Tasso." + +=_186._= INTEREST OF TASSO'S LIFE. + +There is scarcely any poet whose life excites a more profound and +melancholy interest than that of Torquato Tasso. + +His short and brilliant career of glory captivates the imagination, +while the heart is deeply affected by his subsequent misfortunes. +Greater fame and greater misery have seldom been the lot of man, and a +few brief years sufficed for each extreme. + +An exile even in his boyhood, the proscription and confiscation suffered +by his father deprived him of home and patrimony. Honor and love, and +the favor of princes, and enthusiastic praise, dazzled his youth. Envy, +malice, and treachery, tedious imprisonment and imputed madness, insult, +poverty, and persecution, clouded his manhood. The evening of his days +was saddened by a troubled spirit, want, sickness, bitter memories, and +deluded hopes; and when at length a transient gleam of sunshine fell +upon his prospects, death substituted the immortal for the laurel crown. + +Mystery adds its fascination to his story. The causes of his +imprisonment are hidden in obscurity; it is still disputed whether he +was insane or not. + +Few points of literary history, therefore, are more interesting, or more +obscure, than the love, the madness, and the imprisonment of Tasso. + + * * * * * + + +=_George Ticknor, 1791-1871._= (Manual, p. 502.) + +From "The History of Spanish Literature." + +=_187._= DESIGN OF CERVANTES IN WRITING DON QUIXOTE. + +His purpose in writing the Don Quixote has sometimes been enlarged by +the ingenuity of a refined criticism, until it has been made to embrace +the whole of the endless contrast between the poetical and the prosaic +in our natures,--between heroism and generosity on one side, as if they +were mere illusions, and a cold selfishness on the other, as if it were +the truth and reality of life. But this is a metaphysical conclusion +drawn from views of the work at once imperfect and exaggerated; a +conclusion contrary to the spirit of the age, which was not given to a +satire so philosophical and generalizing, and contrary to the character +of Cervantes himself, as we follow it from the time when he first became +a soldier, through all his trials in Algiers, and down to the moment +when his warm and trusting heart dictated the Dedication of "Persiles +and Sigismunda" to the Count de Lemos. His whole spirit, indeed, seems +rather to have been filled with a cheerful confidence in human virtue, +and his whole bearing in life seems to have been a contradiction to that +discouraging and saddening scorn for whatever is elevated and generous, +which such an interpretation of the Don Quixote necessarily implies. + + * * * * * + +At the very beginning of the work, he announces it to be his sole +purpose to break down the vogue and authority of books of chivalry, and +at the end of the whole he declares anew in his own person, that "he +had no other desire than to render abhorred of men the false and absurd +stories contained in books of chivalry;" exulting in his success as an +achievement of no small moment. And such, in fact, it was, for we have +abundant proof that the fanaticism for these romances was so great in +Spain, during the sixteenth century, as to have become matter of alarm +to the more judicious.... + +To destroy a passion that had struck its roots so deeply in the +character of all classes of men, to break up the only reading which +at that time could be considered widely popular and fashionable, was +certainly a bold undertaking, and one that marks anything rather than +a scornful or broken spirit, or a want of faith in what is most to +be valued in our common nature. The great wonder is, that Cervantes +succeeded. But that he did there is no question. No book of chivalry was +written after the appearance of Don Quixote, in 1605; and from the same +date, even those already enjoying the greatest favor ceased, with one or +two unimportant exceptions, to be reprinted; so that, from that time to +the present, they have been constantly disappearing, until they are now +among the rarest of literary curiosities--a solitary instance of the +power of genius to destroy, by a single well-timed blow, an entire +department, and that, too, a flourishing and favored one, in the +literature of a great and proud nation. + +The general plan Cervantes adopted to accomplish this object, without, +perhaps, foreseeing its whole course, and still less all its results, +was simple as well as original. In 1605 he published the first part of +Don Quixote, in which a country gentleman of La Mancha, full of genuine +Castilian honor and enthusiasm, gentle and dignified in his character, +trusted by his friends, and loved by his dependants--is represented as +so completely crazed by long reading the most famous books of chivalry, +that he believes them to be true, and feels himself called on to become +the impossible knight-errant they describe,--nay, actually goes forth, +into the world to defend, the oppressed and avenge the injured, like the +heroes of his romances. + + * * * * * + + +=_James Hall, 1793-1868._= (Manual, p. 510.) + +From "Statistics of the West." + +=_188._= DESCRIPTION OF A PRAIRIE. + +Imagine a stream of a mile in width, whose waters are as transparent as +those of the mountain spring, flowing over beds of rock or gravel. Fancy +the prairie commencing at the water's edge--a natural meadow covered +with grass and flowers, rising, with a gentle slope, for miles, so that +in the vast panorama thousands of acres are exposed to the eye. The +prospect is bounded by a range of low hills, which sometimes approach +the river, and again recede, and whose summits, which are seen gently +waving along the horizon, form the level of the adjacent country.... The +timber is scattered in groves and strips, the whole country being one +vast illimitable prairie, ornamented by small collections of trees.... +But more often we see the single tree, without a companion near, or +the little clump, composed of a few dozen oaks or elms; and not +unfrequently, hundreds of acres embellished with a kind of open +woodland, and exhibiting the appearance of a splendid park, decorated +with skill and care by the hand of taste. Here we behold the beautiful +lawn enriched with flowers, and studded with trees, which are so +dispersed about as not to intercept the prospect, standing singly, so as +not to shade the ground, and occasionally collected in clusters, while +now and then the shade deepens into the gloom of the forest, or opens +into long vistas and spacious plains, destitute of tree or shrub. + +When the eye roves off from the green plain, to the groves, or points of +timber, these also are found ... robed in the most attractive hues. +The rich undergrowth is in full bloom. The red-bud, the dog-wood, the +crab-apple, the wild plum, the cherry, the wild rose, are abundant in +all the rich lands; and the grape-vine, though its blossom is unseen, +fills the air with fragrance. The variety of the wild fruit and +flowering shrubs is so great, and such the profusion of the blossoms +with which they are bowed down, that the eye is regaled almost to +satiety. + +The gayety of the prairie, its embellishments, and the absence of the +gloom and savage wildness of the forest, all contribute to dispel the +feeling of lonesomeness which usually creeps over the mind of the +solitary traveler in the wilderness. Though he may not see a house nor +a human being, and is conscious that he is far from the habitations of +men, he can scarcely divest himself of the idea that he is traveling +through scenes embellished by the hand of art. The flowers so fragile, +so delicate, and so ornamental, seem to have been tastefully disposed +to adorn the scene. The groves and clumps of trees appear to have been +scattered over the lawn to beautify the landscape; and it is not easy to +avoid that illusion of the fancy which persuades the beholder, that such +scenery has been created to gratify the refined taste of civilized man. + + * * * * * + + +=_Henry R. Schoolcraft, 1793-1864._= (Manual, p. 504.) + +From "Oneota." + +=_189._= THE CHIPPEWA INDIAN. + +Of all the existing branches of the Algonquin stock in America, this +extensive and populous tribe appears to have the strongest claims to +intellectual distinction, on the score of their traditions, so far at +least, as the present state of our inquiries extends. They possess +in their curious fictitious legends and lodge-tales, a varied and +exhaustless fund of tradition, which is repeated from generation to +generation. These legends hold, among the wild men of the north, the +relative rank of story-books; and are intended both to amuse and +instruct. This people possess also the art of picture writing in a +degree which denotes that they have been, either more careful, or more +fortunate, in the preservation of this very ancient art of the +human race. Warriors, and the bravest of warriors, they are yet an +intellectual people. + +... They believe that the great Spirit created material matter, and that +He made the earth and heavens, by the power of His will.... He made one +great and master-spirit of evil, to whom He also gave assimilated and +subordinate evil spirits having something of his own nature, to execute +his will. Two antagonist powers, they believe, were thus placed in the +world, who are continually striving for the mastery, and who have power +to affect the lives and fortunes of men. This constitutes the +ground-work of their religion, sacrifices, and worship. + +They believe that animals were created before men, and that they +originally had rule on the earth. By the power of necromancy, some of +these animals were transformed to men, who, as soon as they assumed this +new form, began to hunt the animals, and make war against them. It is +expected that these animals will resume their human shapes, in a future +state, and hence their hunters feign some clumsy excuses for their +present policy of killing them. They believe that all animals, and +birds, and reptiles, and even insects, possess reasoning faculties, +and have souls. It is in these opinions, that we detect the ancient, +doctrine of transmigration. + +One of the most curious opinions of this people is their belief in the +mysterious and sacred character of fire. They obtain sacred fire, for +all national and ecclesiastical purposes, from the flint. Their national +pipes are lighted with this fire. It is symbolical of purity. Their +notions of the boundary between life and death, which is also +symbolically the limit of the material verge between this and a future +state, are revealed in connection with the exhibition of flames of fire. +They also make sacrifices by fire of some part of the first fruits of +the chase. These traits are to be viewed, perhaps, in relation to their +ancient worship of the sun, above noticed, of which the traditions and +belief are still generally preserved. The existence of the numerous +classes of jossakeeds, or mutterers (the word is from the utterance of +sounds low on the earth), is a trait that will remind the reader of a +similar class of men in early ages in the eastern hemisphere. These +persons constitute, indeed, the Magi of our western forests. + + * * * * * + + +=_Edward Everett, 1794-1865._= (Manual, pp. 487, 531.) + +From "Orations and Speeches." + +=_190._= ASTRONOMY, FOR ALL TIME. + +There is much by day to engage the attention of the observatory; the +sun, his apparent motions, his dimensions, the spots on his disk (to +us the faint indications of movements of unimagined grandeur in his +luminous atmosphere), a solar eclipse, a transit of the interior +planets, the mysteries of the spectrum--all phenomena of vast importance +and interest. But night is the astronomer's accepted time: he goes to +his delightful labors when the busy world goes to its rest. A dark pall +spreads over the resorts of active life; terrestrial objects, hill and +valley, and rock and stream, and the abodes of men, disappear; but the +curtain is drawn up which concealed the heavenly hosts. There they shine +and there they move, as they moved and shone to the eyes of Newton and +Galileo, of Kepler and Copernicus, of Ptolemy and Hipparchus; yea, as +they moved and shone when the morning stars sang together, and all the +sons of God shouted for joy. All has changed on earth; but the glorious +heavens remain unchanged. The plough has passed over the remains of +mighty cities, the homes of powerful nations are desolate, the languages +they spoke are forgotten; but the stars that shone for them are shining +for us; the same eclipses run their steady cycle; the same equinoxes +call out the flowers of spring, and send the husbandman to the harvest; +the sun pauses at either tropic, as he did when his course began; and +sun and moon, and planet and satellite, and star, and constellation, and +galaxy, still bear witness to the power, the wisdom, and the love of Him +who placed them in the heavens, and upholds them there. + + * * * * * + +=_191._= DESCRIPTION OF THE SUNRISE. + +Much, however, as we are indebted to our observatories for elevating our +conceptions of the heavenly bodies, they present even to the unaided +sight, scenes of glory which, words are too feeble to describe. I had +occasion, a few weeks since, to take the early train from Providence +to Boston; and for this purpose rose at two o'clock in the morning. +Everything around was wrapt in darkness and hushed in silence, broken +only by what seemed at that hour the unearthly clank and rush of the +train. It was a mild, serene, midsummer's night,--the sky was without a +cloud,--the winds were whist. The moon, then in the last quarter, had +just risen, and the stars shone with a spectral lustre, but little +affected by her presence. Jupiter, two hours high, was the herald of the +day; the Pleiades, just above the horizon, shed their sweet influence +in the east; Lyra sparkled near the zenith; Andromeda veiled her +newly-discovered glories from the naked eye, in the south; the steady +pointers, far beneath the pole, looked meekly up from the depths of the +north, to their sovereign. + +Such was the glorious spectacle as I entered the train. As we proceeded, +the timid approach of twilight became more perceptible; the intense blue +of the sky began to soften; the smaller stars, like little children, +went first to rest; the sister beams of the Pleiades soon melted +together; but the bright constellations of the west and north remained +unchanged. Steadily the wondrous transfiguration went on. Hands of +angels, hidden from mortal eyes, shifted the scenery of the heavens; the +glories of night dissolved into the glories of the dawn. The blue sky +now turned more softly gray; the great watch-stars shut up their holy +eyes; the east began to kindle. Faint streaks of purple soon blushed +along the sky; the whole celestial concave was filled with the inflowing +tides of the morning light, which came pouring down from above in one +great ocean of radiance; till at length, as we reached the Blue Hills, a +flash of purple fire blazed out from above the horizon, and turned the +dewy tear-drops of flower and leaf, into rubies and diamonds. In a few +seconds, the everlasting gates of the morning were thrown wide open, +and the lord of day, arrayed in glories too severe for the gaze of man, +began his state. + +I do not wonder at the superstition of the ancient Magians, who, in the +morning of the world, went up to the hill-tops of Central Asia, and +ignorant of the true God, adored the most glorious work of His hand. But +I am filled with amazement when I am told that in this enlightened age, +and in the heart of the Christian world, there are persons who can +witness this daily manifestation of the power and wisdom of the Creator, +and yet say in their hearts, "there is no God." + + * * * * * + +From a Discourse on the Discover and Colonization of America. + +=_192._= THE CELTIC IMMIGRATION. + +This great Celtic race is one of the most remarkable that has appeared +in history. Whether it belongs to that extensive Indo-European family of +nations, which, in ages before the dawn of history, took up a line of +march in two columns from Lower India, and moving westward by both a +northern and a southward route, finally diffused itself over Western +Asia, Northern Africa, and the greater part of Europe; or whether, as +others suppose, the Celtic race belongs to a still older stock, and was +itself driven down upon the south and into the west of Europe by the +overwhelming force of the Indo-Europeans, is a question which we have +no time at present to discuss. However it may be decided, it would seem +that for the first time, as far as we are acquainted with the fortunes +of this interesting race, they have found themselves in a really +prosperous condition, in this country. Driven from the soil in the west +of Europe, to which their forefathers clang for two thousand years, they +have at length, and for the first time in their entire history, found +a real home in a land of strangers. Having been told, in the frightful +language of political economy, that at the daily table which Nature +spreads for the human family there is no cover laid for them in Ireland, +they have crossed the ocean to find occupation, shelter, and bread, on a +foreign but friendly soil. + +This "Celtic Exodus," as it has been aptly called, is to all the parties +immediately connected with it one of the most important events of the +day. To the emigrants themselves it may be regarded as a passing from +death to life. It will benefit Ireland by reducing a surplus population, +and restoring a sounder and juster relation of capital and labor. It +will benefit the laboring classes in England, where wages have been kept +down to the starvation-point by the struggle between native population +and the inhabitants of the sister island, for that employment and food, +of which there is not enough for both. This benefit will extend from +England to ourselves, and will lessen the pressure of that competition +which our labor is obliged to sustain, with the ill-paid labor of +Europe. In addition to all this, the constant influx into America of +stout and efficient hands supplies the greatest want in a new country, +which is that of labor, gives value to land, and facilitates the +execution of every species of private enterprise and public work. + +I am not insensible to the temporary inconveniences which are to be set +off against these advantages, on both sides of the water. Much suffering +attends the emigrant, there, on his passage, and after his arrival. It +is possible that the value of our native labor may have been depressed +by too sudden and extensive a supply from abroad; and it is certain that +our asylums and alms-houses are crowded with foreign inmates, and the +resources of public and private benevolence have been heavily drawn +upon. These are considerable evils, but they have perhaps been +exaggerated. + + * * * * * + + +=_Hugh S. Legaré, 1797-1843._= (Manual, p. 487.) + +From his "Collected Writings." + +=_193._= THE STUDY OF THE ANCIENT CLASSICS. + +Not to have the curiosity to study the learned languages is not to have +any vocation at all for literature: it is to be destitute of liberal +curiosity and of enthusiasm; to mistake a self-sufficient and +superficial dogmatism for philosophy, and that complacent indolence +which is the bane of all improvement, for a proof of the highest degree +of it.... + +All that we ask, then, is, that a boy should be thoroughly taught the +ancient languages from his eighth to his sixteenth year, or thereabouts, +in which time he will have his taste formed, his love of letters +completely, perhaps enthusiastically, awakened, his knowledge of the +principles of universal grammar perfected, his memory stored with the +history, the geography, and the chronology of all antiquity, and with +a vast fund of miscellaneous literature besides, and his imagination +kindled with the most beautiful and glowing passages of Greek and Roman +poetry and eloquence; all the rules of criticism familiar to him--the +sayings of sages and the achievements of heroes indelibly impressed upon +his heart. He will have his curiosity fired for further acquisition, +and find himself in possession of the golden keys which open all the +recesses where the stores of knowledge have ever been laid up by +civilized man. The consciousness of strength will give him confidence, +and he will go to the rich treasures themselves, and take what he wants, +instead of picking up eleemosynary scraps from those whom, in spite of +himself, he will regard as his betters in literature. He will be let +into that great communion of scholars throughout all ages and all +nations,--like that more awful communion of saints in the holy church +universal,--and feel a sympathy with departed genius, and with the +enlightened and the gifted minds of other countries, as they appear +before him, in the transports of a sort of vision beatific, bowing down +at the same shrines, and flowing with the same holy love of whatever is +most pure, and fair, and exalted, and divine in human nature. + + * * * * * + +From a Review of Kent's Commentaries. + +=_194._= DISADVANTAGES OF COLONIAL LIFE. + +It is our misfortune, in one sense, to have succeeded, at the very +outset of our career, to an over-grown inheritance in the literature of +the mother country, and to have stood for a century in that political +and social relation towards her, which was of all others most +unfavorable to any originality in genius and opinions. Our good +fathers piously spoke of England as their _home_. The inferiority--the +discouraging and degrading inferiority--implied in a state of colonial +dependence, chilled the enthusiasm of talent, and repressed the +aspirations of ambition. Our youth were trained in English schools to +classical learning and good manners; but no scholarship--great as we +believe its efficacy to be--can either inspire or supply, the daring +originality and noble pride of genius, to which, by some mysterious +law of nature, the love of country and a national spirit seem to +be absolutely necessary. We imported our opinions ready-made--"by +balefuls," if it so pleases the Rev. Sidney Smith. We were taught +to read by English school-masters--and to reason by English +authors--English clergymen filled our pulpits, English lawyers our +courts--and above all things, we deferred to and dreaded the dictatorial +authority and withering contempt of English criticism. It is difficult +to imagine a state of things more fatal to intellectual dignity +and enterprise, and the consequences were such as might have been +anticipated. What is still more lamentable, although the cause has in a +good measure ceased, the effect continues, nor do we see any remedy for +the evil until our youth shall be taught to go up to the same original +and ever-living fountains of all literature, at which the Miltons, and +the Barrows, and the Drydens drank in so much of their enthusiasm and +inspiration, and to cast off entirely that slavish dependence upon the +opinions of others which they must feel, who take their knowledge of +what it is either their duty, their interest, or their ambition to +learn, at second hand. + + * * * * * + + +=_Francis L. Hawks, 1798-1866._= (Manual, p. 480.) + +From "Narrative of the United States Expedition to Japan." + +=_195._= JAPAN INTERESTING IN MANY ASPECTS. + +Viewed in any of its aspects, the empire of Japan has long presented to +the thoughtful mind an object of uncommon interest. And this interest +has been greatly increased by the mystery with which, for the last two +centuries, an exclusive policy has sought to surround the institutions +of this remarkable country.... + +The political inquirer, for instance, has wished to study in detail +the form of government, the administration of laws, and the domestic +institutions, under which a nation systematically prohibiting +intercourse with the rest of the world has attained to a state of +civilization, refinement, and intelligence, the mere glimpses of which +so strongly invite further investigation. + +The student of physical geography, aware how much national +characteristics are formed or modified by peculiarities of physical +structure in every country, would fain know more of the lands and the +seas, the mountains and the rivers, the forests and the fields, which +fall within the limits of this almost _terra incognita_. + +... The man of commerce asks to be told of its products and its trade, +its skill in manufactures, the commodities it needs, and the returns it +can supply. + +The scholar asks to be introduced to its literature, that he may +contemplate in historians, poets, and dramatists (for Japan has them +all), a picture of the national mind. + +The Christian desires to know the varied phases of their superstition +and idolatry, and longs for the dawn of that day when a purer faith +and more enlightened worship shall bring them within the circle of +Christendom. + +Amid such a diversity of pursuits as we have enumerated, a common +interest unites all in a common sympathy; and hence the divine and the +philosopher, the navigator and the naturalist, the man of business and +the man of letters, have alike joined in a desire for the thorough +exploration of a field at once so extensive and so inviting. + + * * * * * + + +=_George P. Marsh, 1801-._= (Manual, p. 532.) + +From "Lectures on the English Language." + +=_196._= METHOD OF LEARNING ENGLISH. + +The groundwork of English, indeed, can be, and best is, learned at the +domestic fireside--a school for which there is no adequate substitute; +but the knowledge there acquired is not, as in homogeneous languages, a +root, out of which will spontaneously grow the flowers and the fruits +which adorn and enrich the speech of man. English has been so much +affected by extraneous, alien, and discordant influences, so much +mixed with foreign ingredients, so much overloaded with adventitious +appendages, that it is to most of those who speak it, in a considerable +degree, a conventional and arbitrary symbolism. The Anglo-Saxon tongue +has a craving appetite, and is as rapacious of words, and as tolerant of +forms, as are its children, of territory and of religions. But in spite +of its power of assimilation, there is much of the speech of England +which has never become connatural to the Anglican people; and its +grammar has passively suffered the introduction of many syntactical +combinations, which are not merely irregular, but repugnant. I shall not +here inquire whether this condition of English is an evil. There are +many cases where a complex and cunningly-devised machine, dexterously +guided, can do that which the congenital hand fails to accomplish; but +the computing, of our losses and gains, the striking of our linguistic +balance, belongs elsewhere. Suffice it to say, that English is not a +language which teaches itself by mere unreflecting usage. It can only be +mastered, in all its wealth, in all its power, by conscious, persistent +labor; and therefore, when all the world is awaking to the value of +general philological science, it would ill become us to be slow in +recognizing the special importance of the study of our own tongue. + + * * * * * + +From "Man and Nature." + +=_197._= THE EVERGREENS OF SOUTHERN EUROPE. + +The multitude of species, intermixed as they are in their spontaneous +growth, gives the American forest landscape a variety of aspect not +often seen in the woods of Europe; and the gorgeous tints which nature +repeats from the dying dolphin to paint the falling leaf of the American +maples, oaks, and ash trees, clothe the hill-sides and fringe the +watercourses with a rainbow splendor of foliage, unsurpassed by the +brightest groupings of the tropical flora. It must be admitted, however, +that both the northern and the southern declivities of the Alps exhibit +a nearer approximation to this rich and multifarious coloring of +autumnal vegetation than most American travellers in Europe are willing +to allow; and, besides, the small deciduous shrubs, which often carpet +the forest glades of these mountains, are dyed with a ruddy and orange +glow, which, in the distant landscape, is no mean substitute for the +scarlet and crimson and gold and amber of the trans-atlantic woodland. + +No American evergreen known to me resembles the umbrella pine +sufficiently to be a fair object of comparison with it. A cedar, very +common above the Highlands on the Hudson, is extremely like the cypress, +straight, slender, with erect, compressed ramification, and feathered to +the ground, but its foliage is neither so dark nor so dense, the tree +does not attain the majestic height of the cypress, nor has it the lithe +flexibility of that tree. In mere shape, the Lombardy poplar nearly +resembles this latter, but it is almost a profanation to compare the +two, especially when they are agitated by the wind; for under such +circumstances, the one is the most majestic, the other the most +ungraceful, or--if I may apply such an expression to any thing but human +affectation of movement--the most awkward of trees. The poplar trembles +before the blast, flutters, struggles wildly, dishevels its foliage, +gropes around with its feeblest branches, and hisses as in impotent +passion. The cypress gathers its limbs still more closely to its stem, +bows a gracious salute rather than an humble obeisance to the tempest, +bends to the winds with an elasticity that assures you of its prompt +return to its regal attitude, and sends from its thick leaflets a murmur +like the roar of the far-off ocean. + + * * * * * + + +=_George H. Calvert, 1803-._= (Manual pp. 503, 505.) + +From "First Years in Europe." + +=_198._= ESTIMATE OF COLERIDGE. + +That Coleridge with his mental pockets full of gold, and with a mine in +fee wherefrom he not only replenished his daily purse but enriched his +neighbors, should now and then borrow a guinea, is a fact at which we +should rather smile than frown, or, more fitly, pass by without special +sensation, seeing what has been the practice of the highest,--a practice +which may with full ethical assent be regarded as a privilege inherent +in their supremacy, the free use of all knowledge collected and +experience acquired, no matter when, where, or by whom, being a natural +right of him _who has the genius to turn it to best account_. That in +certain cases where acknowledgment was due it was not made, we may +ascribe to opinion; or to defects which broke the complete rotundity of +such a circle of endowments that without this breach they would have +swollen their possessor to almost preterhuman proportions, empowering +him to "bestride the narrow world like a Colossus." + +Let the truth be spoken of all men. Let no man's greatness be a bar +to full utterance; but let temperance and charity--duties peculiarly +imperative when uttering derogatory truth--be especially observed +towards a resplendent suffering brother like Coleridge, suffering from +his own weakness, but on that very account entitled to a tenderer +consideration from those who are themselves endowed to feel and claim +something more than common human affinity with a nature so large and so +susceptive. Could but a tithe of the fresh insights he has given us be +allowed as an offset against his short-comings, never, from any scholar +of sound sensibilities, would a whisper be heard against his name. Under +the coarse, rusty, one-pronged spur of sectarian or political rancor, +or from the knawing consciousness of sterile inferiority to a creative +mind, plenty of people are ready and eager to try, with their net-work +of flimsy phrases, to cramp the play of a giant's limbs, or, with the +slow slimy poison of envy and malice, to spot and deform his beauty and +his symmetry. To such, to the half-eyed and the half-souled, to the +prosaic and the unsympathetic, be left all harsh condemnation of +Coleridge. + +For the living, not for the dead, are these inadequate words spoken. The +writings of Coleridge--in tone high, refined, noble; in expression rich, +choice, copious; in spirit as pure as the sun's light; intellectually +of rare breadth and mellowness and brilliancy--are a healthful power in +literature, their influence solely for good, warming, strengthening, +elevating. As for Coleridge himself, his is an immortal name; and as +he walks through the ages his robes adjusting themselves with varying +grace, in harmony with the mutations of opinion, his inward life will be +ever fresh to his fellow-men, while his detractors will be shaken from +him as _gryllidoe_ from the tunic of the superb Diana. + + * * * * * + + +=_Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803-_= (Manual pp. 478, 503, 531.) + +From "Essays," Second Series. + +=_199._= INFLUENCE OF NATURE. + +There are days which occur in this climate, at almost any season of +the year, wherein the world reaches its perfection; when the air, the +heavenly bodies, and the earth, make a harmony, as if Nature would +indulge her offspring; when, in these bleak upper sides of the planet, +nothing is to desire that we have heard of the happiest latitudes, and +we bask in the shining hours of Florida and Cuba; when everything that +has life gives sign of satisfaction, and the cattle that lie on the +ground seem to have great and tranquil thoughts. These halcyons may be +looked for with a little more assurance in that pure October weather +which we distinguish by the name of Indian summer. The day, immeasurably +long, sleeps over the broad hills, and warm, wide fields. To have lived +through all its sunny hours seems longevity enough. The solitary places +do not seem quite lonely. At the gates of the forest, the surprised man +of the world is forced to leave his city estimates of great and small, +wise and foolish. The knapsack of custom falls off his back with the +first step he makes into these precincts. Here is sanctity which shames +our religions, and reality which discredits our heroes. + + * * * * * + +From "Society and Solitude." + +=_200._= THE POWER OF CHILDHOOD. + +The perfection of the providence for childhood is easily acknowledged. +The care which covers the seed of the tree under tough husks and, stony +cases, provides, for the human plant, the mother's breast and the +father's house. The size of the nestler is comic, and its tiny +beseeching weakness is compensated perfectly by the happy patronizing +look of the mother, who is a sort of high reposing Providence toward it. +Welcome to the parents the puny straggler, strong in his weakness, his +little arms more irresistible than the soldier's, his lips touched with +persuasion which Chatham and Pericles in manhood had not. His unaffected +lamentations when he lifts up his voice on high, or, more beautiful, the +sobbing child,--the face all liquid grief, as he tries to swallow his +vexation,--soften all hearts to pity, and to mirthful and clamorous +compassion. The small despot asks so little that all reason and all +nature are on his side. His ignorance is more charming than all +knowledge, and his little sins more bewitching than any virtue. His +flesh is angels' flesh, all alive. "Infancy," said Coleridge, "presents +body and spirit in unity: the body is all animated." All day, between +his three or four sleeps, he coos like a pigeon-house, sputters, and +spurs, and puts on his faces of importance; and when he fasts, the +little Pharisee fails not to sound his trumpet before him. By lamp-light +he delights in shadows on the wall; by daylight, in yellow and scarlet. +Carry him out of doors,--he is overpowered by the light and the extent +of natural objects, and is silent. Then presently begins his use of his +fingers, and he studies power, the lesson of his race. First it appears +in no great harm, in architectural tastes. Out of blocks, thread-spools, +cards, and checkers, he will build his pyramid with the gravity of +Palladio. With an acoustic apparatus of whistle and rattle, he explores +the laws of sound. But chiefly, like his senior countrymen, the young +American studies new and speedier modes of transportation. Mistrusting +the cunning of his small legs, he wishes to ride on the necks and +shoulders of all flesh. The small enchanter nothing can withstand, no +seniority of age, no gravity of character; uncles, aunts, grandsires, +grandams, fall an easy prey: he conforms to nobody, all conform to +him; all caper and make mouths, and babble, and chirrup to him. On the +strongest shoulders he rides, and pulls the hair of laurelled heads. + + * * * * * + +=_201._= MAN MUST WORK IN HARMONY WITH PRINCIPLES. + +Civilization depends on morality. Everything good in man leans on what +is higher. This rule holds in small as in great. Thus, all our strength +and success in the work of our hands depend on our borrowing the aid of +the elements. You have seen a carpenter on a ladder with a broad-axe, +chopping upward chips from a beam. How awkward! At what disadvantage he +works! But see him on the ground, dressing his timber under him. Now, +not his feeble muscles, but the force of gravity brings down the axe; +that is to say, the planet itself splits his stick. The farmer had much +ill-temper, laziness, and shirking, to endure from his hand-sawyers +until one day he bethought him to put his saw-mill on the edge of a +waterfall; and the river never tires of turning his wheel; the river is +good-natured, and never hints an objection. + +We had letters to send: couriers could not go fast enough, nor far +enough; broke their wagons, foundered their horses, bad roads in spring, +snow-drifts in winter, heat in summer, could not get the horses out of a +walk. But we found out that the air and earth were full of electricity; +and always going our way,--just the way we wanted to send. _Would he +take a message?_ Just as lief as not; had nothing else to do; +would carry it in no time. Only one doubt occurred, one staggering +objection,--he had no carpet bag, no visible pockets, no hands, not so +much as a mouth, to carry a letter. But, after much thought and many +experiments, we managed to meet the conditions, and to fold up the +letter in such invisible compact form as he could carry in those +invisible pockets of his, never wrought by needle and thread,--and it +went like a charm. + +I admire still more than the saw-mill the skill which, on the sea-shore, +makes the tides drive the wheels and grind corn, and which thus engages +the assistance of the moon like a hired hand, to grind, and wind, and +pump, and saw, and split stone, and roll iron. + +Now that is the wisdom of a man, in every instance of his labor, +to hitch his wagon to a star, and see his chore done by the gods +themselves. That is the way we are strong, by borrowing the might of the +elements. The forces of steam, gravity, galvanism, light, magnets, wind, +fire, serve us day by day, and cost us nothing. + +Our astronomy is full of examples of calling in the aid of these +magnificent helpers. Thus, on a planet so small as ours, the want of +an adequate base for astronomical measurements is early felt, as, for +example, in detecting the parallax of a star. But the astronomer, having +by an observation fixed the place of a star, by so simple an expedient +as waiting six months, and then repeating his observation, contrived +to put the diameter of the earth's orbit, say two hundred millions of +miles, between his first observation and his second, and this line +afforded him a respectable base for his triangle. + +All our arts aim to win this vantage. We cannot bring the heavenly +powers to us, but, if we will only choose our jobs in directions in +which they travel, they will undertake them with the greatest pleasure. +It is a peremptory rule with them, that _they never go out of their +road_. We are dapper little busybodies, and run this way and that +way superserviceably; but they swerve never from their foreordained +paths,--neither the sun, nor the moon, nor a bubble of air, nor a mote +of dust. + +And as our handiworks borrow the elements, so all our social and +political action leans on principles. To accomplish anything excellent, +the will must work for catholic and universal ends. A puny creature +walled in on every side, as Daniel wrote,-- + + "Unless above himself he can, + Erect himself, how poor a thing is man!" + +but when his will leans on a principle, when, he is the vehicle of +ideas, he borrows their omnipotence. Gibraltar may be strong, but ideas +are impregnable, and bestow on the hero their invincibility. "It was +a great instruction," said a saint in Cromwell's war, "that the best +courages are but beams of the Almighty." Hitch your wagon to a star. Let +us not fag in paltry works which serve our pot and bag alone. Let us not +lie and steal. No god will help. We shall find all their teams going the +other way. Charles's Wain, Great Bear, Orion, Leo, Hercules: every god +will leave us. Work rather for those interests which the divinities +honor and promote,--justice, love, freedom, knowledge, utility. + + * * * * * + +=_202._= RULES FOR READING. + +Be sure, then, to read no mean books. Shun the spawn of the press on the +gossip of the hour. Do not read what you shall learn without asking, in +the street and the train. Dr. Johnson said, "he always went into stately +shops;" and good travelers stop at the best hotels; for, though they +cost more, they do not cost much more, and there is the good company and +the best information. In like manner, the scholar knows that the famed +books contain, first and last, the best thoughts and facts. Now and +then, by rarest luck, in some foolish grub street is the gem we want. +But in the best circles is the best information. If you should transfer +the amount of your reading day by day from the newspaper to the standard +authors.--But who dare speak of such a thing. + +The three practical rules, then, which I have to offer, are: 1st. Never +read any book that is not a year old. 2d. Never read any but famed +books. 3d. Never read any but what you like; or, in Shakespeare's +phrase, + + "No profit goes where is no pleasure ta'en: + In brief, sir, study what you most affect." + +Montaigne says, "Books are a languid pleasure;" but I find certain books +vital and spermatic, not leaving the reader what he was: he shuts the +book a richer man. I would never willingly read any others than such. + + * * * * * + + +=_John Russell Bartlett, 1805-._= + +From the "Personal Narrative of Explorations," &c. + +=_203._= LYNCH LAW AT EL PASO. + +On the present occasion, circumstances rendered it necessary for safety, +as well as for the purpose of warning the desperate gang who were now +about to have their deserts, that all should be doubly armed. In the +court-room, therefore, where one of the most solemn scenes of human +experience was enacting, all were armed save the prisoners. There sat +the judge, with a pistol lying on the table before him; the clerks and +attorneys wore revolvers at their sides; and the jurors were either +armed with similar weapons, or carried with them the unerring rifle. The +members of the commission and citizens, who were either guarding the +prisoners or protecting the court, carried by their sides a revolver, a +rifle, or a fowling-piece, thus presenting a scene more characteristic +of feudal times than of the nineteenth century. The fair but sun-burnt +complexion of the American portion of the jury, with their weapons +resting against their shoulders, and pipes in their mouths, presented a +striking contrast to the swarthy features of the Mexicans, muffled in +checkered _serapes_, holding their broad-brimmed glazed hats in their +hands, and delicate cigarritos in their lips. The reckless, unconcerned +appearance of the prisoners, whose unshaven faces and dishevelled hair +gave them the appearance of Italian bandits rather than of Americans or +Englishmen, the grave and determined bearing of the bench; the varied +costume and expression of the spectators and members of the Commission, +clad in serapes, blankets, or overcoats, with their different weapons, +and generally with long beards, made altogether one of the most +remarkable groups which ever graced a court-room.... + +The evidence being closed, a few remarks were now made by the +prosecuting attorney, followed by the charge of the judge, when the case +was given to the jury. In a short time they returned into court with a +verdict of guilty, against William Craig, Marcus Butler, and John Wade; +upon whom the judge then pronounced sentence of death. + +The prisoners were now escorted to the little plaza or open square in +front of the village church, where the priest met them, to give such +consolation as his holy office would afford. But their conduct, +notwithstanding the desire on the part of all to afford them every +comfort their position was susceptible of, continued reckless and +indifferent, even to the last moment. Butler alone was affected. He wept +bitterly, and excited much sympathy by his youthful appearance, being +but 21 years of age. His companions begged him "not to cry, as he could +die but once." + +The sun was setting when they arrived at the place of execution. The +assembled spectators formed a guard around a small alamo, or poplar +tree, which had been selected for the gallows. It was fast growing +dark, and the busy movements of a large number of the associates of the +condemned, dividing and collecting again in small bodies at different +points around and outside of the party, and then approaching nearer +to the centre, proved that an attack was meditated, if the slightest +opportunity should be given. But the sentence of the law was carried +into effect. + + * * * * * + + +=_Nathaniel Parker Willis, 1807-1867._= (Manual, pp. 504, 519.) + +From "Pencillings by the Way." + +=_204._= THE AMERICAN ABROAD. + +It is a queer feeling to find oneself a _foreigner_. One can not realize +long at a time how his face or his manners should have become peculiar; +and after looking at a print for five minutes in a shop-window, or +dipping into an English book, or in any manner throwing off the mental +habit of the instant, the curious gaze of the passer-by, or the accent +of a strange language, strikes one very singularly. Paris is full of +foreigners of all nations, and of course physiognomies of all characters +may be met everywhere; but, differing as the European nations do +decidedly from each other, they differ still more from the American. Our +countrymen, as a class, are distinguishable wherever they are met; not +as Americans however, for of the habits and manners of Our country, +people know nothing this side the water. But there is something in an +American face, of which I never was aware till I met them in Europe, +that is altogether peculiar. The French take the Americans to be +English; but an Englishman, while he presumes him his countryman, shows +a curiosity to know who he is, which is very foreign to his usual +indifference. As far as I can analyze it, it is the independent, +self-possessed bearing of a man unused to look up to any one as his +superior in rank, united to the inquisitive, sensitive, communicative +expression which is the index to our national character. The first is +seldom possessed in England but by a man of decided rank, and the latter +is never possessed by an Englishman at all. The two are united in no +other nation. Nothing is easier than to tell the rank of an Englishman, +and nothing puzzles an European more than to know how to rate the +pretensions of an American.... + + * * * * * + +From "Ephemera." + +=_205._= CHARACTER AND WRITINGS OF JAMES HILLHOUSE. + +Like the public feeling, the condition and powers of criticism toward +an author's fame, are essentially changed by his death. His personal +character, and the events of his life--the foreground, so to speak, in +the picture of his mind, are, till this event, wanting to the critical +perspective; and when the hand to correct is cold, and the ear to be +caressed and wounded is sealed, some of the uses of censure, and all +reserve in comparison and final estimate, are done away. + + * * * * * + +Such men as Hillhouse are not common, even in these days of universal +authorship. In accomplishment of mind and person, he was probably second +to no man. His poems show the first. They are fully conceived, nicely +balanced, exquisitely finished--works for the highest taste to relish, +and for the severest student in dramatic style to erect into a model. +Hadad was published in 1825, during my second year in college, and to +me it was the opening of a new heaven of imagination. The leading +characters possessed me for months, and the bright, clear, harmonious +language was, for a long time, constantly in my ears. The author was +pointed out to me, soon after, and for once, I saw a poet whose mind was +well imaged in his person. In no part of the world have I seen a man of +more distinguished mien, or of a more inborn dignity and elegance of +address. His person was very finely proportioned, his carriage chivalric +and high-bred, and his countenance purely and brightly intellectual. +Add to this a sweet voice, a stamp of high courtesy on everything he +uttered, and singular simplicity and taste in dress, and you have the +portrait of one who, in other days, would have been the mirror of +chivalry, and the flower of nobles and troubadours. Hillhouse was no +less distinguished in oratory. + +... Hillhouse had fallen upon days of thrift, and many years of his life +which he should have passed either in his study, or in the councils of +the nation, were enslaved to the drudgery of business. His constitution +seemed to promise him a vigorous manhood, however, and an old age of +undiminished fire, and when he left his mercantile pursuits, and retired +to the beautiful and poetic home of "Sachem's Wood," his friends looked +upon it as the commencement of a ripe and long enduring career +of literature. In harmony with such a life were all his +surroundings--scenery, society, domestic refinement, and +companionship--and never looked promise fairer for the realization of a +dream of glory. That he had laid out something of such a field in the +future, I chance to know, for, though my acquaintance with him was +slight, he confided to me in a casual conversation, the plan of a series +of dramas, different from all he had attempted, upon which he designed +to work with the first mood and leisure he could command. And with his +scholarship; knowledge of life, taste, and genius, what might not have +been expected from its fulfilment? But his hand is cold, and his lips +still, and his light, just rising to its meridian, is lost now to the +world. Love and honor to the memory of such a man. + + * * * * * + + +=_Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1807-. _= (Manual, pp. 503, 505.) + +From "Hyperion." + +=_206._= THE INTERRUPTED LEGEND. + +One by one the objects of our affection depart from us. But our +affections remain, and like vines stretch forth their broken, wounded +tendrils for support. The bleeding heart needs a balm to heal it; and +there is none but the love of its kind,--none but the affection of a +human heart. Thus the wounded, broken affections of Flemming began to +lift themselves from the dust and cling around this new object. Days +and weeks passed; and, like the Student Crisostomo, he ceased to love, +because he began to adore. And with this adoration mingled the prayer, +that, in that hour when the world is still, and the voices that praise +are mute, and reflection cometh like twilight, and the maiden, in her +day dreams, counted the number of her friends, some voice in the sacred +silence of her thoughts might whisper his name. + +They were sitting together one morning, on the green, flowery meadow, +under the ruins of Burg Unspunnen. She was sketching the ruins. The +birds were singing, one and all, as if there were no aching hearts, no +sin nor sorrow, in the world. So motionless was the bright air, that the +shadow of the trees lay engraven on the grass. The distant snow-peaks +sparkled in the sun, and nothing frowned, save the square tower of the +old ruin above them. + +"What a pity it is," said the lady, as she stopped to rest her weary +fingers, "what a pity it is, that there is no old tradition connected +with this ruin!" + +"I will make you one, if you wish," said Flemming. + +"Can you make old traditions?" + +"O, yes! I made three, the other day, about the Rhine, and one very old +one about the Black Forest. A lady with dishevelled hair; a robber with +a horrible slouched hat; and a night storm among the roaring pines." + +"Delightful! Do make one for me." + +"With the greatest pleasure. Where will you have the scene? Here, or in +the Black Forest." + +"In the Black Forest, by all means! Begin." + +"I will unite this ruin and the forest together. But first promise not +to interrupt me. If you snap the golden threads of thought, they will +float away on the air like the film of the gossamer, and I shall never +be able to recover them." + +"I promise." "Listen, then, to the Tradition of 'THE FOUNTAIN OF +OBLIVION.'" + +"Begin." + +Flemming was reclining on the flowery turf, at the lady's feet, looking +up with dreamy eyes into her sweet face, and then into the leaves of the +linden-trees overhead. + +"Gentle Lady! Dost thou remember the linden trees of Bülach,--those +tall and stately trees, with velvet down upon their shining leaves, and +rustic benches underneath their overhanging eaves? A leafy dwelling, fit +to be the home of elf or fairy, where first I told my love to thee, +thou cold and stately Hermione! A little peasant girl stood near, +and listened all the while, with eyes of wonder and delight, and an +unconscious smile, to hear the stranger still speak on in accents deep +yet mild,--none else was with us in that hour, save God and that little +child!" + +"Why, it is in rhyme!" + +"No, no! the rhyme is only in your imagination. You promised not to +interrupt me, and you have already snapped asunder the gossamer threads +of as sweet a dream as was ever spun from a poet's brain." + +"It certainly did rhyme!" + + * * * * * + + +=_Henry Reed, 1808-1854._= (Manual, p. 501.) + +From "Lectures on English History." + +=_207._= LEGENDARY PERIOD OF BRITISH HISTORY. + +It would be a weary, and probably vain inquiry to consider minutely the +claims which such historical materials have on our belief; and so little +is there attractive in the legends of British history, that I need +not attempt to dwell upon any of the alleged facts. But I wish before +passing from this part of my subject, briefly to examine the curious +tenacity with which the belief in this legendary literature was once +held, and to show that it was not relinquished until a more critical +standard of historic belief was adopted, and scientific investigation +took the place of uninquiring and passive credulity. It has been said +that no man, before the sixteenth century, presumed to doubt that the +Britons were descended from Brutus the Trojan; and it is equally certain +that no modern writer could presume confidently to assert it. + +... It is most difficult for us, in these later days of higher standards +of historic credibility, to form anything like an adequate conception, +of the entire and unquestioning confidence which was felt for the story +of British origin, and the race of ancient British kings. Of this +feeling there is a curious proof in a transaction in the reign of Edward +I., when the sovereignty of Scotland was claimed by the English monarch. +The Scots sought the interposition and protection of the pope, alleging +that the Scottish realm belonged of right to the see of Rome. Boniface +VIII., a pontiff not backward in asserting the claims of the papacy, +did interpose to check the English conquest, and was answered by an +elaborate and respectful epistle from Edward, in which the English claim +is most carefully and confidently derived from the conquest of the whole +country by the Trojans in the times of Eli and Samuel--assuredly a +very respectable antiquity of some two thousand four hundred years. +No Philadelphia estate could be more methodically traced back to the +proprietary title of William Penn, than was this claim to Scotland up to +Brutus, the exile from Troy.... Now, all this is set forth with the most +imperturbable seriousness, and with an air of complete assurance of the +truth. It appears, too, to have fully answered the purpose intended; +and the Scots, finding that the papal antiquity was but a poor defence +against such claims, and as if determined not to be outdone by the +Southron, replied in a document asserting their independence by virtue +of descent from Scota, one of the daughters of Pharaoh. The pope seems +to have been silenced in a conflict of ancestral authority, in which the +succession of St. Peter seemed quite a modern affair, when overshadowed, +by such Trojan and Egyptian antiquity. + + * * * * * + + +=_Caroline M. Kirkland, 1808-1864._= (Manual, p. 484.) + +From "Forest Life." + +=_208._= THE FELLING OF A GREAT TREE. + +One darling tree,--a giant oak which looked as if half a dozen Calibans +might have been pegged in its knotty entrails--this one tree, the +grandfather of the forest, we thought we had saved. It stood a little +apart,--it shadowed no man's land,--it shut the broiling sun from +nobody's windows, so we hoped it might be allowed to die a natural +death. But one unlucky day, a family fresh from "the 'hio" removed into +a house which stood at no great distance from this relic of primeval +grandeur. These people were but little indebted to fortune, and the size +of their potato-patch did not exactly correspond with the number of +rosy-cheeks within doors. So the loan of a piece of ground was a small +thing to ask or to grant. Upon this piece of lent land stood our +favorite oak. The potatoes were scarcely peeping green above the soil, +when we observed that the great boughs which we looked at admiringly a +dozen times a day, as they towered far above the puny race around them, +remained distinct in their outline, instead of exhibiting the heavy +masses of foliage which had usually clothed them before the summer +heat began. Upon nearer inspection it was found that our neighbor had +commenced his plantation by the operation of girdling the tree, for +which favor he expected our thanks, observing pithily that "nothing +wouldn't never grow under sich a great mountain as that!" It is well +that "Goth" and "Vandal" are not actionable. + +Yet the felling of a great tree has something of the sublime in it. When +the axe first falls on the trunk of a stately oak, laden with the green +wealth of a century, or a pine whose aspiring peak might look down on a +moderate church steeple, the contrast between the puny instrument and +the gigantic result to be accomplished approaches the ridiculous. But as +"the eagle towering in his pride of place was, by a mousing owl, hawked +at and killed," so the leaf-crowned monarch of the wood has no small +reason to quiver at the sight of a long-armed Yankee approaching his +deep-rooted trunk with an awkward axe. One blow seems to accomplish +nothing: not even a chip falls. But with another stroke comes a broad +slice of the bark, leaving an ominous, gaping wound. Another pair of +blows extends the gash, and when twenty such have fallen, behold a +girdled tree. This would suffice to kill, and a melancholy death it is; +but to fell is quite another thing.... Two deep incisions are made, +yet the towering crown sits firm as ever. And now the destroyer +pauses,--fetches breath,--wipes his beaded brow, takes a wary view +of the bearings of the tree,--and then with a slow and watchful care +recommences his work. The strokes fall doubtingly, and many a cautious +glance is cast upward, for the whole immense mass now trembles, as if +instinct with life, and conscious of approaching ruin. Another blow! it +waves,--a groaning sound is heard--... yet another stroke is necessary. +It is given with desperate force, and the tall peak leaves its place +with an easy sailing motion accelerated every instant, till it crashes +prone on the earth, sending far and wide its scattered branches, and +letting in the sunlight upon the cool, damp, mossy earth, for the first +time perhaps in half a century. + + * * * * * + +From "Western Clearings." + +=_209._= THE BEE TREE. + +One of the greatest temptations to our friend Silas, and to most of his +class, is a bee hunt. Neither deer, nor 'coons, nor prairie hens, nor +even bears, prove half as powerful enemies to anything like regular +business, as do these little thrifty vagrants of the forest. The +slightest hint of a bee tree will entice Silas Ashburn and his sons from +the most profitable job of the season, even though the defection is sure +to result in entire loss of the offered advantage; and if the hunt prove +successful, the luscious spoil is generally too tempting to allow of +any care for the future, so long as the "sweet'nin" can be persuaded to +last. "It costs nothing," will poor Mrs. Ashburn observe; "let 'em enjoy +it. It isn't often we have such good luck." + + * * * * * + + +=_Margaret Fuller Ossoli, 1810-1850._= (Manual, p. 502.) + +From "At Home and Abroad." + +=_210._= CHARACTER OF CARLYLE. + +Accustomed to the infinite wit and exhuberant richness of his writings, +his talk is still an amazement and a splendor scarcely to be faced with +steady eyes. He does not converse,--only harangues. It is the usual +misfortune of such marked men (happily not one invariable or inevitable) +that they cannot allow other minds room to breathe and show themselves +in their atmosphere, and thus miss the refreshment and instruction which +the greatest never cease to need from the experience of the humblest. +Carlyle allows no one a chance, but bears down all opposition, not only +by his wit and onset of words, resistless in their sharpness as so many +bayonets, but by actual physical superiority, raising his voice and +rushing on his opponent with a torrent of sound. This is not the least +from unwillingness to allow freedom to others; on the contrary, no +man would more enjoy a manly resistance to his thought; but it is the +impulse of a mind accustomed to follow out its own impulse as the hawk +its prey, and which knows not how to stop in the chase. Carlyle, indeed, +is arrogant and overbearing, but in his arrogance there is no littleness +or self-love: it is the heroic arrogance of some old Scandinavian +conqueror,--it is his nature, and the untamable impulse that has given +him power to crush the dragons. You do not love him, perhaps, nor +revere, and perhaps, also, he would only laugh at you if you did; but +you like him heartily, and like to see him the powerful smith, the +Siegfried, melting all the old iron, in his furnace till it glows to a +sunset red, and burns you if you senselessly go too near. He seemed to +me quite isolated, lonely as the desert; yet never was man more fitted +to prize a man, could he find one to match his mood. He finds such, but +only in the past. He sings rather than talks. He pours upon you a kind +of satirical, heretical, critical poem, with regular cadences, and +generally catching up near the beginning some singular epithet, which +serves as a _refrain_ when his song is full, or with which as with a +knitting-needle he catches up the stitches, if he has chanced now and +then to let fall a row. For the higher kinds of poetry he has no sense, +and his talk on that subject is delightfully and gorgeously absurd; he +sometimes stops a minute to laugh at it himself, then begins anew with +fresh vigor; for all the spirits he is driving before him seem to him as +Fata Morgana; ugly masks in fact, if he can but make them turn about, +but he laughs that they seem to others such dainty Ariels. He puts out +his chin sometimes till it looks like the beak of a bird, and his eyes +flash bright instinctive meanings like Jove's bird; yet he is not calm +and grand enough for the eagle: he is more like the falcon, and yet not +of gentle blood enough for that either. He is not exactly like anything +but himself, and therefore you cannot see him without the most hearty +refreshment and goodwill, for he is original, rich, and strong enough to +afford a thousand faults; one expects some wild land in a rich kingdom. +His talk, like his books, is full of pictures, his critical strokes +masterly; allow for his point of view, and his survey is admirable. He +is a large subject; I cannot speak more nor wiselier of him now, nor +needs it; his works are true, to blame and praise him, the Siegfried of +England, great and powerful, if not quite invulnerable, and of a might +rather to destroy evil than legislate for good. At all events, he seems +to be what Destiny intended, and represents fully a certain side; so we +make no remonstrance as to his being and proceeding for himself, though +we sometimes must for us. + + * * * * * + + +=_Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1809-._= (Manual, p. 520.) + +From "The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table." + +=_211._= CONSEQUENCES OF EXPOSING AN OLD ERROR. + +Did you never, in walking in the fields, come across a large flat stone +which had lain, nobody knows how long, just where you found it, with the +grass forming a little hedge, as it were, all round it, close to its +edges,--and have you not, in obedience to a kind of feeling that told +you it had been lying there long enough, insinuated your stick, or your +foot, or your fingers, under its edge, and turned it over as a housewife +turns a cake, when she says to herself, "It's done brown enough by this +time?" What an odd revelation, and what an unforeseen and unpleasant +surprise to a small community, the very existence of which you had not +suspected, until the sudden dismay and scattering among its members +produced by your turning the old stone over! Blades of grass flattened +down, colorless, matted together, as if they had been bleached and +ironed; hideous crawling creatures, some of them coleopterous or +horny-shelled,--turtle-bugs one wants to call them; some of them softer +but cunningly spread out and compressed like Lepine watches; (Nature +never loses a crack or a crevice, mind you, or a joint in a tavern +bedstead, but she always has one of her flat pattern live timekeepers +to slide into it;) black, glossy crickets, with their long filaments +sticking out like the whips of four-horse stage-coaches; motionless, +slug-like creatures, young larvae, perhaps more horrible in their pulpy +stillness than even in the infernal wriggle of maturity. But no sooner +is the stone turned and the wholesome light of day let upon this +compressed and blinded community of creeping things, than all of them +which enjoy the luxury of legs--and some of them have a good many--rush +round wildly, butting each other and everything in their way, and end in +a general stampede for underground retreats from the region poisoned by +sunshine. _Next year_ you will find the grass growing tall and green +where the stone lay; the ground-bird builds her nest where the beetle +had his hole; the dandelion and the buttercup are growing there, and the +broad fans of insect-angels open and shut over their golden disks, as +the rhythmic waves of blissful consciousness pulsate through their +glorified being. + +--The young fellow whom they call John saw fit to say, in his very +familiar way,--at which I do not choose to take offence, but which I +sometimes think it necessary to repress,--that I was coming it rather +strong on the butterflies. + +No, I replied; there is meaning in each of those images, the butterfly +as well as the others. The stone is ancient error. The grass is human +nature borne down and bleached of all its color by it. The shapes which +are found beneath are the crafty beings that thrive in darkness, and the +weaker organisms kept helpless by it. He who turns the stone over is +whosoever puts the staff of truth to the old lying incubus, no matter +whether he do it with a serious face or a laughing one. The next year +stands for the coming time. Then shall the nature which had lain +blanched and broken, rise in its full stature and native hues, in the +sunshine. Then shall God's minstrels build their nests in the hearts of +a new-born humanity. Then shall beauty--Divinity taking outlines and +color--light upon the souls of men as the butterfly, image of the +beautified spirit rising from the dust, soars from the shell that held +a poor grub, which would never have found wings, had not the stone been +lifted. + +You never need think you can turn over any old falsehood without a +terrible squirming and scattering of the horrid little population that +dwells under it. + + * * * * * + +=_212._= PLEASURES OF BOATING. + +I dare not publicly name the rare joys, the infinite delights, that +intoxicate me on some sweet June morning, when the river and bay are +smooth as a sheet of beryl-green silk, and I run along ripping it up +with my knife-edged shell of a boat, the rent closing after me like +those wounds of angels which Milton tells of, but the seam still shining +for many a long road behind me. To lie still, over the Flats, where the +waters are shallow, and see the crabs crawling and the sculpins gliding +busily and silently beneath the boat,--to rustle in through the long +harsh grass that leads up some tranquil creek,--to take shelter from the +sunbeams under one of the thousand-footed bridges, and look down its +interminable colonnades, crusted with green and oozy growths, studded +with minute barnacles, and belted with rings of dark muscles, while +overhead, streams and thunders that other river, whose every wave is +a human soul flowing to eternity as the river below flows to the +ocean,--lying there moored unseen, in loneliness so profound that +the columns of Tadmoor in the Desert could not seem more remote from +life,--the cool breeze on one's forehead, the stream whispering against +the half-sunken pillars,--why should I tell of these things, that I +should live to see my beloved haunts invaded and the waves blackened +with boats as with a swarm of water-beetles? What a city of idiots +we must be, not to have covered this glorious bay with gondolas and +wherries, as we have just learned to cover the ice in winter with +skaters! + + * * * * * + +From "The Guardian Angel." + +=_213._= THE UNSPOKEN DECLARATION. + +Myrtle had, perhaps, never so seriously inclined her ear to the honeyed +accents of the young pleader. He flattered her with so much tact, +that she thought she heard an unconscious echo through his lips of an +admiration which he only shared with all around him. But in him he made +it seem discriminating, deliberate, not blind, but very real. This it +evidently was which had led him to trust her with his ambitions and his +plans,--they might be delusions, but he could never keep them from her, +and she was the one woman in the world to whom he thought he could +safely give his confidence. + +The dread moment was close at had. Myrtle was listening with an +instinctive premonition of what was coming,--ten thousand mothers and +grandmothers, and great-grandmothers, and so on, had passed through it +all in preceding generations, until time readied backwards to the sturdy +savage who asked no questions of any kind, but knocked down the primeval +great-grandmother of all, and carried her off to his hole in the rock, +or into the tree where he had made his nest. Why should not the coming +question announce itself by stirring in the pulses, and thrilling in the +nerves, of the descendant of all these grandmothers? + +She was leaning imperceptibly towards him, drawn by the mere blind +elemental force, as the plummet was attracted to the side of +Schehallien. Her lips were parted, and she breathed a little faster than +so healthy a girl ought to breathe in a state of repose. The steady +nerves of William Murray Bradshaw felt unwonted thrills and tremors +tingling through them, as he came nearer and nearer the few simple words +with which he was to make Myrtle Hazard the mistress of his destiny. His +tones were becoming lower and more serious; there were slight breaks +once or twice in the conversation; Myrtle had cast down her eyes. + +"There is but one word more to add," he murmured softly, as he bent +towards her-- + +A grave voice interrupted him. "Excuse me, Mr. Bradshaw," said Master +Byles Gridley, "I wish to present a young gentleman to my friend here. I +promised to show him the most charming young person I have the honor to +be acquainted with, and I must redeem my pledge. Miss Hazard, I have +the pleasure of introducing to your acquaintance my distinguished young +friend, Mr. Clement Lindsay." + + * * * * * + +From "Currents and Counter Currents." + +=_214._= MECHANISM OF VITAL ACTION. + +But if the student of nature and the student of divinity can once agree +that all the forces of the universe, as well as all its power, +are immediately dependent upon its Creator,--that He is not only +omni_potent_ but omni_movent_,--we have no longer any fear of nebular +theories, or doctrines of equivocal generation, or of progressive +development.... + +We begin then by examining the general rules which the Creator seems +to have prescribed to His own operations. We ask, in the first place, +whether He is wont, so far as we know, to employ a great multitude +of materials, patterns, and forces, or whether He has seen fit to +accomplish many different ends by the employment of a few of these only. + +In all our studies of external nature, the tendency of increasing +knowledge has uniformly been to show that the rules of creation are +simplicity of material, economy of inventive effort, and thrift in the +expenditure of force. All the endless forms in which matter presents +itself to us, are resolved by chemistry into some three-score supposed +simple substances, some of these perhaps being only modifications of the +same element. The shapes of beasts and birds, of reptiles and fishes, +vary in every conceivable degree; yet a single vertebra is the pattern +and representation of the framework of them all, from eels to elephants. +The identity reaches still further,--across a mighty gulf of being,--but +bridges it over with a line of logic as straight as a sunbeam, and as +indestructible as the scymitar-edge that spanned the chasm, in the fable +of the Indian Hades. Strange as it may sound, the tail which the serpent +trails after him in the dust, and the head of Plato, were struck in the +die of the same primitive conception, and differ only in their special +adaptation to particular ends. Again, the study of the movements of the +universe has led us, from their complex phenomena, to the few simple +forces from which they flow. The falling apple and the rolling planet +are shown to obey the same tendency. The stick of sealing-wax which +draws a feather to it, is animated by the same impulse that convulses +the stormy heavens. These generalizations have simplified our view of +the grandest material operations, yet we do not feel that creative power +and wisdom have been shorn of any single ray, by the demonstrations of +Newton, or of Franklin. On the contrary, the larger the collection of +seemingly heterogeneous facts we can bring under the rule of a single +formula, the nearer we feel that we have reached towards the source +of knowledge, and the more perfectly we trace the little arc of +the immeasurable circle which comes within the range of our hasty +observations, at first like the broken fragments of a many-sided +polygon, but at last as a simple curve which encloses all we know, or +can know, of nature. To our own intellectual wealth, the gain is like +that of the over-burdened traveller, who should exchange hundred-weights +of iron for ounces of gold. Evanescent, formless, unstable, impalpable, +a fog of uncondensed experiences hovers over our consciousness like an +atmosphere of uncombined gases. One spark of genius shoots through +it, and its elements rush together and glitter before us in a single +translucent drop. It would hardly be extravagant to call Science the art +of packing knowledge. + + * * * * * + + +=_John William Draper,[52] 1810-._= + +From the "Human Physiology." + +=_215._= TRUTHS IN THE ANCIENT PHILOSOPHIES. + +It is not my intention to enter on an examination, or even enumeration, +of ancient philosophical opinions, nor to show that many of the +doctrines which have been brought forward within the last three +centuries existed in embryo in those times. It may, however, be observed +that, in the midst of much error, there were those who held just views +of the various problems of theology, law, politics, philosophy, and +particularly of the fundamental doctrines of natural science, the +constitution of the solar system, the geological history of the earth, +the nature of chemical forces, the physiological relations of animals +and plants. + +It is supposed by many, whose attention has been casually drawn to the +philosophical opinions of antiquity, that the doctrines which we still +retain as true came to the knowledge of the old philosophers, not so +much by processes of legitimate investigation as by mere guessing or +crude speculation, for which there was an equal chance whether they were +right or wrong; but a closer examination will show that many of them +must have depended on results previously determined or observed by the +Africans or Asiatics, and thus they seem to indicate that the human mind +has undergone in twenty centuries but little change in its manner of +action, and that, commencing with the same data, it always comes to the +same conclusions. Nor is this at all dependent on any inherent logic +of truth. Very many of the errors of antiquity have re-appeared in our +times. If the Greek schools were infected with materialism, pantheism, +and atheism, the later progress of philosophy has shown the same +characters. To a certain extent, such doctrines will receive an +impression from the prevailing creeds, but the arguments which have been +appealed to in their favor have always been the same. The distinction +between these heresies in ancient and modern times lies chiefly in the +grosser characters which they formerly assumed, arising partly from +the reflected influence of the existing mythology, and partly from the +imperfections of exact knowledge. Even the errors of early antiquity are +venerable. We must judge our predecessors by the rules by which we +hope posterity will judge us, making a generous allowance for the +imperfections of reason, the infirmities of character, and especially +for the prejudices of the times. To have devoutly believed in the +existence of a human soul, to have looked forward to its continuing +after the death of the body, to have expected a future state of rewards +and punishments, and to have drawn therefrom, as a philosophical +conclusion, the necessity of leading a virtuous life--these, though +they may be enveloped in a cloud of errors, are noble results of the +intellect of man. + +[Footnote 52: Distinguished as an author in chemistry +and physiology, and as a philosophical historian: a native of England, +but long a professor in New York University.] + + * * * * * + +From "Thoughts on the Future Civil Policy of America." + +=_216._= PROSPECTIVE INFLUENCES OF THE REPUBLIC. + +Now, when, we consider the position of the American continent,--its +Atlantic front looking upon Europe, its Pacific front looking upon +Asia,--when we reflect how much Nature has done for it in the wonderful +river system she has bestowed, and how varied are the mineral and +agricultural products it yields, it would seem as if we should be +constrained by circumstances to carry out spontaneously in practical +life the abstract suggestions of policy.... Great undertakings, such +as the construction of the Pacific Railroad, pressed into existence by +commercial motives and fostered for military reasons, will indirectly +accomplish political objects not yielding in importance to those that +are obvious and avowed. + +A few years more, and the influence of the great republic will +resistlessly extend in a direction that will lead to surprising +results.... The stream of Chinese emigration already setting into +California is but the precursor of the flood that is to come. Here are +the fields, there are the men. The dominant power on the Pacific Ocean +must necessarily exert a controlling influence in the affairs of Asia. + +The Roman empire is regarded, perhaps not unjustly, as the most imposing +of all human political creations. Italy extended her rule across the +eastern and western basins of the Mediterranean Sea, from the confines +of Parthia to Spain. A similar central, but far grander, position is +occupied by the American continent. The partitions of an interior and +narrow sea are replaced by the two great oceans. But, since history ever +repeats itself, the maxims that guided the policy of Rome in her advance +to sovereignty are not without application here. Her mistakes may be +monitions to us. + +A great, a homogeneous, and yet an active people, having strength and +security in its political institutions, may look forward to a career of +glory. It may, without offense, seek to render its life memorable in the +annals of the human race. + + * * * * * + + +=_James Russell Lowell, 1810-._= (Manual, pp. 503, 520.) + +From "Among my Books." + +=_217._= NEW ENGLAND TWO CENTURIES AGO. + +I have little sympathy with declaimers about the Pilgrim Fathers, who +look upon them all as men of grand conceptions and superhuman foresight. +An entire ship's company of Columbuses is what the world never saw. It +is not wise to form any theory and fit our facts to it, as a man in a +hurry is apt to cram his traveling-bag, with a total disregard of shape +or texture. But perhaps it may be found that the facts will only fit +comfortably together on a single plan, namely, that the fathers did have +a conception (which those will call grand who regard simplicity as a +necessary element of grandeur) of founding here a commonwealth on +those two eternal bases of Faith and Work; that they had, indeed, no +revolutionary ideas of universal liberty; but yet, what answered the +purpose quite as well, an abiding faith in the brotherhood of man and +the fatherhood of God; and that they did not so much propose to make all +things new, as to develop the latent possibilities of English law and +English character by clearing away the fences by which the abuse of +the one was gradually discommoning the other from the broad fields of +natural right. They were not in advance of their age, as it is called, +for no one who is so can ever work profitably in it; but they were alive +to the highest and most earnest thinking of their time. + + * * * * * + +=_218._= From an "Essay on Dryden." + +I do not think he added a single word to the language, unless, as +I suspect, he first used magnetism in its present sense of moral +attraction. What he did in his best writing was, to use the English as +if it were a spoken, and not merely an inkhorn language; as if it were +his own to do what he pleased with it, as if it need not be ashamed of +itself. In this respect, his service to our prose was greater than +any other man has ever rendered. He says he formed his style upon +Tillotson's (Bossuet on the other hand, formed _his_ upon Corneille's); +but I rather think he got it at Will's, for its greatest charm is, that +it has the various freedom of talk. In verse, he has a pomp which, +excellent in itself, became pompousness in his imitators. But he had +nothing of Milton's ear for various rhythm and interwoven harmony. He +knew how to give new modulation, sweetness, and force to the pentameter; +but in what used to be called pindarics, I am heretic enough to think +he generally failed. + + * * * * * + +From "My Study Windows." + +=_219._= LOVE OF BIRDS AND SQUIRRELS. + +Wilson's thrush comes every year to remind me of that most poetic of +ornithologists. He flits before me through the pine-walk like the very +genius of solitude. A pair of pewees have built immemorially on a +jutting brick in the arched entrance to the ice-house. Always on the +same brick, and never more than a single pair, though two broods of five +each are raised there every summer. How do they settle their claim to +the homestead? By what right of primogeniture? Once, the children of a +man employed about the place oölogized the nest, and the pewees left us +for a year or two. I felt towards those boys as the messmates of the +Ancient Mariner did towards him after he had shot the albatross. But the +pewees came back at last, and one of them is now on his wonted perch, so +near my window that I can hear the click of his bill as he snaps a fly +on the wing.... The pewee is the first bird to pipe up in the morning; +and, during the early summer he preludes his matutinal ejaculation of +_pewee_ with a slender whistle, unheard at any other time. He saddens +with the season, and, as summer declines, he changes his note to _eheu, +pewee_! I as if in lamentation. Had he been an Italian bird, Ovid would +have had a plaintive tale to tell about him. He is so familiar as often +to pursue a fly through the open window into my library. + +There is something inexpressibly dear to me in these old friendships of +a lifetime. There is scarce a tree of mine but has had, at some time or +other, a happy homestead among its boughs, to which I cannot say, + + "Many light hearts and wings, + Which now be dead, lodged in thy living bowers." + +My walk under the pines would lose half its summer charm were I to miss +that shy anchorite, the Wilson's thrush, nor hear in haying time +the metallic ring of his song, that justifies his rustic name of +_scythe-whet_. I protect my game as jealously as an English squire. If +anybody had oölogized a certain cuckoo's nest I know of (I have a pair +in my garden every year), it would have left me a sore place in my mind +for weeks. I love to bring these aborigines back to the mansuetude they +showed to the early voyagers, and before (forgive the involuntary pun), +they had grown accustomed to man and knew his savage ways. And they +repay your kindness with a sweet familiarity too delicate ever to breed +contempt. I have made a Penn-treaty with them, preferring that to the +Puritan way with the native, which converted them to a little Hebraism +and a great deal of Medford rum. If they will not come near enough to me +(as most of them will), I bring them close with an opera-glass,--a much +better weapon than a gun. I would not, if I could, convert them from +their pretty pagan ways. The only one I sometimes have savage doubts +about, is the red squirrel. I _think_ he oölogizes; I _know_ he eats +cherries, (we counted five of them at one time in a single tree, the +stones pattering down like the sparse hail that preludes a storm), and +that he knaws off the small end of pears to get at the seeds. He steals +the corn from under the noses of my poultry. But what would you have? He +will come down upon the limb of the tree I am lying under, till he is +within a yard of me. He and his mate will scurry up and down the great +black-walnut for my diversion, chattering like monkeys. Can I sign his +death-warrant who has tolerated me about his grounds so long? Not I. Let +them steal, and welcome, I am sure I should, had I the same bringing up +and the same temptation. As for the birds, I do not believe there is one +of them but does more good than harm; and of how many featherless bipeds +can this be said. + + * * * * * + +=_220._= CHAUCER'S LOVE OF NATURE. + +He was the first great poet who really loved outward nature as the +source of conscious pleasurable emotion. The Troubadour hailed the +return of spring, but with him it was a piece of empty ritualism. +Chaucer took a true delight in the new green of the leaves, and the +return of singing birds--a delight as simple as that of Robin Hood:-- + + "In summer when the shaws be sheen, + And leaves be large and long, + It is full merry in fair forest + To hear the small birds' song." + +He has never so much as heard of the burthen and the mystery of all +this unintelligible world. His flowers and trees and birds have never +bothered themselves with Spinoza. He himself sings more like a bird than +any other poet, because it never occurred to him, as to Goethe, that he +ought to do so. He pours himself out in sincere joy and thankfulness. +When we compare Spenser's imitations of him with the original passages, +we feel that the delight of the later poet was more in the expression +than in the thing itself. Nature, with him, is only to be transfigured +by art. We walk among Chaucer's sights and sounds; we listen to +Spenser's musical reproduction of them. In the same way the pleasure +which Chaucer takes in telling his stories, has, in itself, the effect +of consummate skill, and makes us follow all the windings of his fancy +with sympathetic interest. His best tales run on like one of our inland +rivers, sometimes hastening a little and turning upon themselves in +eddies, that dimple without retarding the current, sometimes loitering +smoothly, while here and there a quiet thought, a tender feeling, a +pleasant image, a golden-hearted verse, opens quietly as a water-lily to +float on the surface without breaking it into ripple.... Chaucer never +shows any signs of effort, and it is a main proof of his excellence that +he can be so inadequately sampled by detached passages, by single lines +taken away from the connection in which they contribute to the general +effect. He has that continuity of thought, that evenly prolonged power, +and that delightful equanimity, which characterize the higher orders of +mind. There is something in him of the disinterestedness that made the +Greeks masters in art. His phrase is never importunate. His simplicity +is that of elegance, not of poverty. The quiet unconcern with which he +says his best things is peculiar to him among English poets, though +Goldsmith, Addison, and Thackeray, have approached it in prose. He +prattles inadvertently away, and all the while, like the princess in the +story, lets fall a pearl at every other word. It is such a piece of +good luck to be natural. It is the good gift which the fairy god-mother +brings to her prime favorites in the cradle. If not genius, it is alone +what makes genius amiable in the arts. If a man have it not he will +never find it; for when it is sought it is gone. + + * * * * * + + +=_Edgar Allen Poe, 1811-1849._= (Manual, p. 510.) + +From "The Masque of the Red Death." + +=_221._= CHIMING OF THE CLOCK. + +... The seventh apartment was closely shrouded in black velvet +tapestries that hung all over the ceiling and down the walls, falling in +heavy folds upon a carpet of the same material and hue. But in this +chamber only, the color of the windows failed to correspond with the +decorations. The panes here were scarlet--a deep blood color. Now in no +one of the seven apartments was there any lamp or candelabrum, amid the +profusion of golden ornaments that lay scattered to and fro, or depended +from the roof. There was no light of any kind emanating from lamp or +candle within the suite of chambers. But in the corridors that followed +the suite, there stood, opposite to each window, a heavy tripod, bearing +a brazier of fire, that projected its rays through the tinted glass and +so glaringly illumined the room. And thus were produced a multitude of +gaudy and fantastic appearances. But in the western or black chamber, +the effect of the fire-light that streamed upon the dark hangings +through the blood-tinted panes, was ghastly in the extreme, and produced +so wild a look upon the countenances of those who entered, that there +were few of the company bold enough to set foot within its precincts at +all. + +It was in this apartment, also, that there stood against the western +wall, a gigantic clock of ebony. Its pendulum swung to and fro with a +dull, heavy, monotonous clang; and when the minute-hand made the circuit +of the face, and the hour was to be stricken, there came from the brazen +lungs of the clock a sound which was clear and loud and deep, and +exceedingly musical, but of so peculiar a note and emphasis that, at +each lapse of an hour, the musicians of the orchestra were constrained +to pause, momentarily, in their performance, to hearken to the sound; +and thus the waltzers perforce ceased their evolutions; and there was a +brief disconcert of the whole gay company; and, while the chimes of the +clock yet rang, it was observed that the giddiest grew pale, and the +more aged and sedate passed their hands over their brows, as if in +confused revery or meditation. But when the echoes had fully ceased, a +light laughter at once pervaded the assembly; the musicians looked at +each other and smiled, as if at their own nervousness and folly, and +made whispering vows, each to the other, that the next chiming of the +clock should produce in them no similar emotion; and then, after the +lapse of sixty minutes, (which embrace three thousand and six hundred +seconds of the Time that flies,) there came yet another chiming of +the clock, and then were the same disconcert and tremulousness and +meditation as before. + + * * * * * + +From his "Essays." + +=_222._= The Philosophy of Composition. + +There is a radical error, I think, in the usual mode of constructing +a story. Either history affords a thesis--or one is suggested by an +incident of the day--or, at best, the author sets himself to work in +the combination of striking events to form merely the basis of his +narrative--designing, generally, to fill in with description, dialogue, +or autorial comment, whatever crevices of fact, or action, may, from +page to page, render themselves apparent. + +I prefer commencing with the consideration of an _effect_, keeping +originality _always_ in view--for he is false to himself who ventures to +dispense with so obvious and so easily attainable a source of interest. +I say to myself, in the first place, "Of the innumerable effects, or +impressions, of which the heart, the intellect, or (more generally) +the soul, is susceptible, what one shall I, on the present occasion, +select?" Having chosen a novel, first, and secondly a vivid, effect, I +consider whether it can be best wrought by incident or tone, whether by +ordinary incidents and peculiar tone, or the converse, or by peculiarity +both of incident and tone--afterward looking about me (or rather within) +for such combinations of event, or tone, as shall best aid me in the +construction of the effect. + +I have often thought how interesting a magazine paper might be written +by any author who would--that is to say, who could--detail, step by +step, the process by which any one of his compositions attained its +ultimate point of completion. Why such a paper has never been given to +the world, I am much at a loss to say--but, perhaps, the autorial vanity +has had more to do with the omission than any one other cause. Most +writers, poets in especial, prefer having it understood that they +compose by a species of fine frenzy, an ecstatic intuition, and would +positively shudder at letting the public take a peep behind the scenes, +at the elaborate and vacillating crudities of thought--at the true +purposes seized only at the last moment--at the innumerable glimpses of +idea that arrived not at the maturity of full view--at the fully matured +fancies discarded in despair as unmanageable--at the cautious selections +and rejections--at the painful erasures and interpolations--in a +word, at the wheels and pinions, the tackle for scene-shifting--the +step-ladders and demon-traps--the cock's feathers, the red paint and +the black patches, which, in ninety-nine cases out of the hundred, +constituted the properties of the literary _histrio_. + +I am aware, on the other hand, that the case is by no means common in +which an author is at all in condition to retrace the steps by which his +conclusions have been attained. In general, suggestions having arisen +pell-mell, are pursued and forgotten in a similar manner. + + * * * * * + + +=_Henry T. Tuckerman, 1813-._= + +From "New England Philosophy," an Essay from "The Optimist." + +=_223._= THE HEART SUPERIOR TO THE INTELLECT. + +Constant supplies of knowledge to the intellect, and the exclusive +cultivation of reason, may, indeed, make a pedant and a logician; but +the probability is, these benefits--if such they are--will be gained at +the expense of the soul. Sentiment, in its broadest acceptation, is as +essential to the true enjoyment and grace of life as mind. Technical +information, and that quickness of apprehension which New Englanders +call smartness, are not so valuable to a human being as sensibility to +the beautiful, and a spontaneous appreciation of the divine influences +which fill the realms of vision and of sound, and the world of action +and, feeling. The tastes, affections, and sentiments are more absolutely +the man than his talents or acquirements. And yet it is by, and through, +the latter that we are apt to estimate character, of which they are +at best but fragmentary evidences. It is remarkable that in the New +Testament, allusions to the intellect are so rare, while the "heart" and +the "spirit we are of" are ever appealed to.... + +To what end are society, popular education, churches, and all the +machinery of culture, if no living truth is elicited which fertilizes, +as well as enlightens. Shakespeare undoubtedly owed his marvelous +insight into the human soul, to his profound sympathy with man. He might +have conned whole libraries on the philosophy of the passions, he might +have coldly observed facts for years, and never have conceived of +jealousy like Othello's,--the remorse of Macbeth, or love like that of +Juliet.... + +Sometimes, in musing upon genius in its simpler manifestations, it seems +as if the great art of human culture consisted chiefly in preserving the +glow and freshness of the heart. It is certain that, in proportion as +its merely mental strength and attainment take the place of natural +sentiment, in proportion as we acquire the habit of receiving all +impressions through the reason, the teachings of Nature grow indistinct +and cold.... It is when we are overcome, and the pride of intellect +vanquished before the truth of nature, when instead of coming to a +logical decision we are led to bow in profound reverence before the +mysteries of life, when we are led back to childhood, or up to God, by +some powerful revelation of the sage or minstrel, it is then our natures +grow. To this end is all art. Exquisite vocalism, beautiful statuary, +and painting, and all true literature, have not for their great object +to employ the ingenuity of prying critics, or furnish the world with a +set of new ideas, but to move the whole nature by the perfection and +truthfulness of their appeal. There is a certain atmosphere exhaled from +the inspired page of genius, which gives vitality to the sentiments, and +through these, quickens the mental powers. And this is the chief good of +books. + + * * * * * + + +=_H.N. Hudson, 1814-._= (Manual, pp. 480, 501.) + +From "Preface to the Works of Shakespeare." + +=_224._= Shakespeare's Works Instructive. + +It is true, he often lays on us burdens of passion that would not be +borne in any other writer. But whether he wrings the heart with pity, or +freezes the blood with terror, or fires the soul with indignation, the +genial reader still rises from his pages refreshed. The reason of which +is, instruction keeps pace with excitement: he strengthens the mind +in proportion as he loads it. He has been called the great master of +passion: doubtless he is so; yet he makes us think as intensely as he +requires us to feel; while opening the deepest fountains of the heart, +he at the same time unfolds the highest energies of the head. Nay, with +such consummate art does he manage the fiercest tempests of our being, +that in a healthy mind the witnessing of them is always attended with +an overbalance of pleasure. With the very whirlwinds of passion he so +blends the softening and alleviating influences of poetry, that they +relish of nothing but sweetness and health.... He is not wont to exhibit +either utterly worthless or utterly faultless monsters; persons too +good, or too bad, to exist; too high to be loved, or too low to be +pitied; even his worst characters (unless we should except Goneril and +Regan, and even their blood is red like ours) have some slight fragrance +of humanity about them, some indefinable touches, which redeem them from +utter hatred and execration, and keep them within the pale of human +sympathy, or at least of human pity. + + * * * * * + + +=_Mary Henderson Eastman,[53]_= about =_1815-._= + +From "The American Aboriginal Port Folio." + +=_225._= Lake Itasca, the Source of the Mississippi. + +There it lay--the beautiful lake--swaying its folds of crystal water +between the hills that guarded it from its birth. There it lay, placid +as a sleeping child, the tall pines on the surrounding summits standing +like so many motionless and watchful sentinels for its protection. + +There was the sequestered birthplace of that mighty mass of waters, +that, leaving the wilderness of beauty where they lived undisturbed and +unknown, wound their way through many a desolate prairie, and fiercely +lashed the time-worn bluffs, whose sides were as walls to the great +city, where lived and died the toiling multitude. The lake was as some +fair and pure, maiden, in early youth, so beautiful, so full of repose +and truth, that it was impossible to look and not to love.... There was +but one landing to the lake, our travellers found. It was on a small +island, that they called Schoolcraft's Island. On a tall spruce tree +they raised the American flag. There was enough in the novelty of the +scenery, and of the event, to interest the white men of the party. There +was a solemnity mingled with their pleased emotions; for who had made +this grand picture, stretching out in its beauty and majesty before +them? What were they, in comparison with the great and good Being upon +whose works they were gazing? + +[Footnote 53: This lady--a native of Virginia--has written several +interesting books, chiefly relating to Indian tradition.] + + * * * * * + +=_226._= A PLEA FOR THE INDIANS. + +The light of the great council-fire--its blaze once illumined the entire +country we now call our own--is faintly gleaming out its unsteady and +dying rays. Our fathers were guests, and warmed themselves by its +hospitable rays; now we are lords, and rule with an iron hand over those +who received kindly, and entertained generously, the wanderer who came +from afar to worship his God according to his own will. The very hearth +where moulder the ashes of this once never-ceasing fire, is becoming +desolate, the decaying embers sometimes starting into a brief +brilliancy, and then fading into a gloom more sad, more silent, than +ever. Soon will be scattered, as by the winds of heaven, the last ashes +that remain. Think of it, O legislator! as thou standest in the Capitol, +the great council-hall of thy country; plead for them, "upon whose +pathway death's dark shadow falls." + + * * * * * + + +=_Mary E. Moragne,[54] 1815-._= + +From "The Huguenot Town." + +=_227._= RUINS OF THE OLD FRENCH SETTLEMENT. + +An ignorance of the common methods of agriculture practised here, as +well as strong prejudices in favor of their former habits of living, +prevented them from seizing with avidity on large bodies of land, by +individual possession; but the site of a town being selected, a lot of +four acres was apportioned to every citizen. In a short time a hundred +houses had risen, in a regularly compact body, in the square of which +stood a building superior in size and construction to the rest.... + +... The town was soon busy with the industry of its tradesmen; silk and +flax were manufactured, whilst the cultivators of the soil were taxed +with the supply of corn and wine. The hum of cheerful voices arose +during the week, mingled with the interdicted songs of praise; and on +the Sabbath the quiet worshippers assembled in their rustic church, +listened with fervent response to that faithful pastor, who had been +their spiritual leader through perils by sea and land, and who now +directed their free, unrestrained devotion to the Lord of the forest. + +... The woods still wave on in melancholy grandeur, with the added glory +of near a hundred years; but they who once lived and worshipped beneath +them--where are they? Shades of my ancestors,--where? No crumbling +wreck, no mossy ruin, points the antiquarian research to the place of +their sojourn, or to their last resting-places! The traces of a narrow +trench, surrounding a square plat of ground, now covered with the +interlacing arms of hawthorn and wild honey-suckle, arrest the attention +as we are proceeding along a strongly beaten track in the deep woods, +and we are assured that this is the site of the "old French town" which +has given its name to the portion of country around. + +[Footnote 54: One of the best female writers of South Carolina, who has +of late years laid aside her pen.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Richard H. Dana, Jr., 1815-._= (Manual, p. 504.) + +From "Two years before the Mast." + +=_228._= LOSS OF A MAN AT SEA. + + +Death is at all tunes solemn, but never so much so as at sea. A man dies +on shore; his body remains with his friends, and "the mourners go about +the streets;" but when a man falls overboard at sea and is lost, there +is a suddenness in the event, and a difficulty in realizing it, which +give to it an air of awful mystery. A man dies on shore--you follow his +body to the grave, and a stone marks the spot. You are often prepared +for the event. There is always something which helps you to realize it +when it happens, and to recall it when it has passed. A man is shot down +by your side in battle, and the mangled body remains an object, and a +real evidence; but at sea, the man is near you--at your side--you hear +his voice, and in an instant he is gone, and nothing but a vacancy shows +his loss. Then too, at sea--to use a homely but expressive phrase--you +miss a man so much. A dozen men are shut up together in a little bark, +upon the wide, wide sea, and for months and months see no forms and hear +no voices but their own, and one is taken suddenly from among them, and +they miss him at every turn. It is like losing a limb. There are no new +faces or new scenes to fill up the gap. There is always an empty berth +in the forecastle, and one man wanting when the small night watch is +mustered. There is one less to take the wheel, and one less to lay out +with you upon the yard. You miss his form, and the sound of his voice, +for habit had made them almost necessary to you, and each of your senses +feels the loss. + +All these things make such a death peculiarly solemn, and the effect of +it remains upon the crew for some time. There is more kindness shown by +the officers to the crew, and by the crew to one another. There is more +quietness and seriousness. The oath and the loud laugh are gone. The +officers are more watchful, and the crew go more carefully aloft. The +lost man is seldom mentioned, or is dismissed with a sailor's rude +eulogy, "Well, poor George is gone. His cruise is up soon. He knew his +work, and did his duty, and was a good shipmate." Then usually follows +some allusion to another world, for sailors are almost all believers; +but their notions and opinions are unfixed, and at loose ends. They +say,--"God won't be hard upon the poor fellow," and seldom get beyond +the common phrase which seems to imply that their sufferings and hard +treatment here, will excuse them hereafter. _To work hard, live hard, +die hard, and go to hell after all_, would be hard indeed. + +Yet a sailor's life is at best but a mixture of a little good with much +evil, and a little pleasure with much pain. The beautiful is linked with +the revolting, the sublime with the common-place, and the solemn with +the ludicrous. + +We had hardly returned on board with our sad report, before an auction +was held of the poor man's clothes. The captain had first, however, +called all hands aft, and asked them if they were satisfied that +everything had been done to save the man, and if they thought there was +any use in remaining there longer. The crew all said that it was in +vain, for the man did not know how to swim, and was very heavily +dressed. So we then filled away and kept her off to her course. + + * * * * * + + +=_Evert A. Duyckinck, 1816--._= (Manual, p. 502.) + +Essay from "Arcturus." + +=_229._= NEWSPAPERS. + +No one, it has been said, ever takes up a newspaper without interest, or +lays it down without regret. There is a deeper truth in this observation +than at first thought strikes the mind; it is not the casual +disappointment at the loss of fine writing, or the absence of particular +topics of news, or the variety of subjects that dispel all deep-settled +reflection; but a newspaper is in some measure a picture of human life, +and we can no more read its various paragraphs with pleasure, than +we can look back upon the events of any single day with, unmingled +satisfaction.... A man may learn, sitting by his fireside, more than +an angel would desire to know of human life, by reading well a single +newspaper. It is an instrument of many tones, running through the whole +scale of humanity; from the lightest gayety to the gravest sadness; from +the large interests of nations to the humblest affairs of the smallest +individual. On its single page we read of Births, Marriages, and Deaths; +the daily, almost hourly, register of royalty, how it eat, walked, and +laughed; and the single incident the world deems worth recording of the +life of poverty--how it died. It is a picture of motley human life; +a poet's thought, or an orator's eloquence in one column, and the +condemnation of a pickpocket in another.... + +Doubtless it was a very satisfactory thing for a Roman poet, when the +wind was quiet, to get an audience about him, under a portico, and +unwind his well-written scroll for an hour or two; but there must have +been a vast deal of secret machinery, and influence, and agitation, +to keep up his name with the people. The followers of Pythagoras, in +another country, we know, said he had a golden leg, and this satisfied +the people that his philosophy was divine. Truly were they the dark ages +before the invention of newspapers. Besides, what became of literature +when the poet's voice in the public bath, or library, where he recited, +was drowned by the din of arms?... + +What would we not give for a newspaper of the days of Homer, with +personal recollections of the contractors and commanders in the siege of +Troy; a reminiscence of Helen; the unedited fragments of Nestor; or a +traditional saying of Ulysses, who may be supposed too wise to have +published? What such a passage of literature would be to us, the journal +of to-day may be to some long distant age, when it is disentombed from +the crumbling corner-stone of some Astor House, Exchange, or Trinity +Church, on the deserted shore of an island, once New York. What +matters of curiosity would be poured fourth for the attention of the +inquisitive; how many learned theories which had sprung up in the +interim, put to rest; what anxiety moralists would be under to know the +number of churches, the bookseller's advertisements, and the convictions +at the Sessions! Some might be supposed to sigh over our lack of +improvement, the infant state of the arts, and our ineffectual attempts +at electro-magnetism, while others would dwell upon the old times when +Broadway was gayer with life, and the world got along better, than it +has ever done since. + + * * * * * + + +=_Horace Binney Wallace,[55] 1817-1852._= + +From "Art, Scenery, and Philosophy in Europe." + +=_230._= ART AN EMANATION OF RELIGIOUS AFFECTION. + +The spirit, conscious of an emotion of reverence for some unseen subject +of its own apprehension, desires to substantiate and fix its deity, and +to bring the senses into the same adoring attitude; and this can be done +only by setting before them a material representation of the divine. +This is illustrated in the universal and inveterate tendency of early +nations to idolatry.... + +How and why was it that the sculpture of the Greeks attained a character +so exalted that it shines on through our time, with a beam of glory +peculiar and inextinguishable? When we enter the chambers of the +Vatican, we are presently struck with the mystic influence that rays +from those silent forms that stand ranged along the walls. Like the +moral prestige that might encircle the vital presence of divine beings, +we behold divinities represented in human shapes idealized into a +significance altogether irresistible. What constitutes that idealizing +modification we know not; but we feel that it imparts to the figures +an interest and impressiveness which natural forms possess not. These +sculptured images seem directly to address the imagination. They do not +suffer the cold and critical survey of the eye, but awaken an instant +and vivid mental consideration. + +... It has sometimes been suggested that the superiority of the Greeks +in delineating the figure, arose from the familiarity with it which they +acquired from their frequent opportunities of viewing it nude,--on +account of their usages, costumes, climate, &c. This is too superficial +an account of that vital faculty of skill and knowledge upon this +subject, which was a part of the inherent capacity of the Greek.... The +outflow and characteristic exercise of Grecian inspiration in sculpture, +was in the representation of their mythology, which included heroes, or +deified men, as well as gods of the first rank. Later, it extended to +winners at the public games, athletes, runners, boxers;--but this class +of persons partook, in the national feeling, of a heroic or half-divine +superiority. A particular type of form, highly ideal, became appropriate +to them, as to the heroes, and to each of the gods. It may be added, +that a capacity thus derived from religious impressibility, extended to +a great number of natural forms, which were to the Greeks measurably +objects of a divine regard. Many animals as connected with the gods, or +with sacrifices, were sacred beings to them, and became subjects of +their surpassing gift in sculpture. In general, nature,--the visible, +the sensible, the actual, was to the Hellenic soul, Religion; as inward +and reflective emotions were and are, to the modern European. + +[Footnote 55: A young writer of great cultivation and of uncommon +promise. His premature death occurred while on a tour in Europe. A +native of Philadelphia.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Henry David Thoreau, 1817-1862._= (Manual, p. 532.) + +From "Autumnal Tints." + +=_231._= DESCRIPTION OF "POKE" OR GARGET, (_Phytolacca Decandra_.) + +Some which stand under our cliffs quite dazzle me with their purple +stems now, and early in September. They are as interesting to me as most +flowers, and one of the most important fruits of our autumn. Every part +is flower, (or fruit,) such is its superfluity of color,--stem, +branch, peduncle, pedicel, petiole, and even the at length yellowish +purple-veined leaves. Its cylindrical racemes of berries of various +hues, from green to dark purple, six or seven inches long, are +gracefully drooping on all sides, offering repasts to the birds; and +even the sepals from which the birds have picked the berries are a +brilliant lake-red, with crimson, flame-like reflections, equal to +anything of the kind,--all on fire with ripeness. Hence the _lacca_, +from lac, lake. There are at the same time flower-buds, flowers, green +berries, dark purple or ripe ones, and these flower-like sepals, all on +the same plant. + +We love to see any redness in the vegetation of the temperate zone. It +is the color of colors. This plant speaks to our blood. It asks a bright +sun on it to make it show to best advantage, and it must be seen at +this season of the year. On warm hill-sides its stems are ripe by the +twenty-third of August. At that date I walked through a beautiful grove +of them, six or seven feet high, on the side of one of our cliffs, where +they ripen early. Quite to the ground they were a deep brilliant purple +with a bloom, contrasting with the still clear green leaves. It appears +a rare triumph of Nature to have produced and perfected such a plant, as +if this were enough for a summer. What a perfect maturity it arrives +at! It is the emblem of a successful life concluded by a death not +premature, which is an ornament to Nature. What if we were to mature as +perfectly, root and branch, glowing in the midst of our decay, like the +Poke! I confess that it excites me to behold them. I cut one for a cane, +for I would fain handle and lean on it. I love to press the berries +between my fingers, and see their juice staining my hand. To walk amid +these upright, branching casks of purple wine, which retain and diffuse +a sunset glow, tasting each one with your eye, instead of counting the +pipes on a London dock,--what a privilege! For Nature's vintage is not +confined to the vine. Our poets have sung of wine, the product of a +foreign plant which commonly they never saw, as if our own plants had +no juice in them more than the singers. Indeed, this has been called by +some the American grape, and though a native of America, its juices are +used in some foreign countries to improve the color of the wine; so that +the poetaster maybe celebrating the virtues of the Poke without knowing +it. Here are berries enough to paint afresh the western sky, and play +the bacchanal with, if you will. And what flutes its ensanguined stems +would make, to be used in such a dance! It is truly a royal plant. I +could spend the evening of the year musing amid the Poke-stems. And +perchance amid these groves might arise at last a new school of +philosophy or poetry. + + * * * * * + +From "Walden, or Life in the Woods." + +=_232._= WALDEN POND. + +The greatest depth was exactly one hundred and two feet, to which may +be added the five feet which it has risen since, making one hundred and +seven. This is a remarkable depth for so small an area; yet not an inch +of it can be spared by the imagination. What if all ponds were shallow? +Would it not react on the minds of men? I am thankful that this pond was +made deep and pure for a symbol. While men believe in the infinite, some +ponds will be thought to be bottomless. + + * * * * * + +From "Life without Principle." + +=_233._= WANTS OF THE AGE. + +I saw, the other day, a vessel which had been wrecked, and many lives +lost, and her cargo of rags, juniper-berries, and bitter almonds, was +strewn along the shore. It seemed hardly worth the while to tempt the +dangers of the sea between Leghorn and New York, for the sake of a cargo +of juniper-berries and bitter almonds. America sending to the Old World +for her bitters! Is not the sea-brine,--is not shipwreck, bitter enough, +to make the cup of life go down here? Yet such, to a great extent, is +our boasted commerce; and there are those who style themselves statesmen +and philosophers who are so blind as to think that progress and +civilization depend on precisely this kind of interchange and +activity,--the activity of flies about a molasses-hogshead. Very well, +observes one, if men were oysters. And very well, answer I, if men were +mosquitoes. + +Lieutenant Herndon, whom our Government sent to explore the Amazon, +and, it is said, to extend the area of Slavery, observed that there was +wanting there "an industrious and active population, who know what the +comforts of life are, and who have artificial wants to draw out the +great resources of the country." But what are the "artificial wants" to +be encouraged? Not the love of luxuries, like the tobacco and slaves +of, I believe, his native Virginia, nor the ice and granite and other +material wealth of our native New England; nor are "the great resources +of a country" that fertility or barrenness of soil which produces these. +The chief want, in every State that I have been into, was a high and +earnest purpose in its inhabitants. This alone draws out "the great +resources" of Nature and at last taxes her beyond her resources; for man +naturally dies out of her. When we want culture more than potatoes, and +illumination more than sugar-plums, then the great resources of a world +are taxed and drawn out, and the result, or staple production, is, not +slaves, nor operatives, but men,--those rare fruits called heroes, +saints, poets, philosophers, and redeemers. + + * * * * * + + +=_Elisabeth F. Ellett, 1818-._= (Manual, pp. 484, 490.) + +From "Pioneer Women of the West" + +=_234._= ESCAPE OF MARY BLEDSOE FROM THE INDIANS. + +It was not consistent with Spencer's chivalrous character to attempt to +save himself by leaving his companion to the mercy of the foe. Bidding +her retreat as fast as possible, and encouraging her to keep her seat +firmly, he protected her by following more slowly in her rear, with his +trusty rifle in his hand. When the Indians in pursuit came too near, +he would raise his weapon as if to fire; and as he was known to be an +excellent marksman, the savages were not willing to encounter him, but +hastened to the shelter of trees, while he continued his retreat. In +this manner he kept them at bay for some miles, not firing a single +shot--for he knew that his threatening had more effect--until Mrs. +Bledsoe reached a station. Her life and his own, were, on this occasion, +saved by his prudence and presence of mind; for both would have been +lost had he yielded to the temptation to fire.... + +Bereaved of her husband, sons, and brother-in-law, by the murderous +savages, Mrs. Bledsoe was obliged to undertake not only the charge of +her husband's estate, but the care of the children, and their education +and settlement in life. These duties were discharged with unwavering +energy and Christian patience.... The record of her worth, and of what +she did and suffered, may win little attention from the careless many, +who regard not the memory of our "pilgrim mothers;" but the recollection +of her gentle virtues has not yet faded from the hearts of her +descendants, and those to whom they tell the story of her life will +acknowledge her the worthy companion of those noble men to whom belongs +the praise of having originated a new colony, and built up a goodly +state in the bosom of the forest. Their patriotic labors, their +struggles with the surrounding savages, their efforts in the maintenance +of the community they had founded,--sealed, as they finally were, with +their own blood, and the blood of their sons and relatives,--will never +be forgotten while the apprehension of what is noble, generous, and +good, survives in the hearts of their countrymen. + + * * * * * + + +=_James Jackson Jarves, 1818-._= (Manual, p. 531.) + +From "Art Hints." + +=_235._= THE ART IDEA. + +The first duty of art, as we have already intimated, is to make our +public buildings and places, as instructive and enjoyable as possible. +They should be pleasurable, full of attractive beauty and eloquent +teachings. Picturesque groupings of natural objects, architectural +surprises, sermons from the sculptor's chisel and the painter's palette, +the ravishment of the soul by its superior senses, the refinement of +mind and body by the sympathetic power of beauty,--these are a +portion of the means which a due estimation of art, as an element of +civilization, inspires the ruling will to provide freely for all. If art +be kept a rare and tabooed thing, a specialty for the rich and powerful, +it excites in the vulgar mind, envy and hate; but proffer it freely to +the public, and the public soon learns to delight in and protect it as +its rightful inheritance. It also tends to develop a brotherhood of +thought and feeling. During the civil strifes of Italy, art flourished +and was respected. Indeed, to some extent, it operated as a sort of +peace society, and was held sacred when nothing else was. Even rude +soldiers, amid the perils and necessities of sieges, turned aside +destruction from the walls that sheltered it. The history of art is full +of records of its power to soften and elevate the human heart. As soon +would man, were it possible, mar one of God's sunsets, as cease to +respect what genius has confided to his care, when once his mind has +been awakened to its meaning. + +The desire for art being awakened, museums to illustrate its technical +and historical progress, and galleries to exhibit its master-works, +become indispensable. In the light of education, appropriations for such +purposes are as much a duty of the government as for any other purpose +connected with the true welfare of the people; for its responsibilities +extend over the entire social system. + + * * * * * + + +=_Edwin P. Whipple, 1819-._= (Manual, p. 501.) + +From "Literature and Life." + +=_236._= WIT AND HUMOR IN LITERATURE. + +Every student of English theological literature knows that much of its +best portions gleams with wit. Five of the greatest humorists that ever +made the world ring with laughter were priests,--Rabelais, Scarron, +Swift, Sterne, and Sydney Smith. The prose works of Milton are radiant +with satire of the sharpest kind. Sydney Smith, one of the most +benevolent, intelligent and influential Englishmen of the nineteenth +century, a man of the most accurate insight and extensive information, +embodied the large stores of his practical wisdom in almost every form +of the ludicrous. Many of the most important reforms in England are +directly traceable to him. He really laughed his countrymen out of some +of their most cherished stupidities of legislation. + +And now let us be just to Mirth. Let us be thankful that we have in Wit +a power before which the pride of wealth and the insolence of office are +abased; which can transfix bigotry and tyranny with arrows of lightning; +which can strike its object over thousands of miles of space, across +thousands of years of time; and which, through its sway over an +universal weakness of man, is an everlasting instrument to make the bad +tremble and the foolish wince. Let us be grateful for the social and +humanizing influences of Mirth. Amid the sorrow, disappointment, agony, +and anguish of the world,--over dark thoughts and tempestuous passions, +the gloomy exaggerations of self-will, the enfeebling illusions of +melancholy,--Wit and Humor, light and lightning, shed their soft +radiance, or dart their electric flash. See how life is warmed and +illumined by Mirth! See how the beings of the mind, with which it has +peopled our imaginations, wrestle with the ills of existence,--feeling +their way into the harshest or saddest meditations, with looks that defy +calamity; relaxing muscles made rigid with pain; hovering o'er the couch +of sickness, with sunshine and laughter in their beneficent faces; +softening the austerity of thoughts whose awful shadows dim and +darken the brain,--loosening the gripe of Misery as it tugs at the +heart-strings! Let us court the society of these gamesome, and genial, +and sportive, and sparkling beings,--whom Genius has left to us as a +priceless bequest; push them not from the daily walks of the world's +life: let them scatter some humanities in the sullen marts of business; +let them glide in through the open doors of the heart; let their glee +lighten up the feast, and gladden the fireside of home: + + "That the night may be filled with music, + And the cares that infest the day + May fold their tents, like the Arabs, + And as silently steal away." + + * * * * * + + +=_Jane T.L. Worthington,-1847._= (Manual, p. 524.) + +From "Love Sketches." + +=_237._= THE SISTERS. + +The sisters were together, together for the last time in the happy home +of their childhood. The window before them was thrown open, and the +shadows of evening were slowly passing from each familiar outline on +which the gazers looked. They were both young and fair; and one, the +elder, wore that pale wreath the maiden wears but once. The accustomed +smile had forsaken her lip now, and the orange-flowers were scarcely +whiter than the cheek they shaded. The sister's hands were clasped in +each other, and they sat silently watching the gradual brightening of +the crescent moon, and the coming forth, one by one, of the stars. Not a +cloud was floating in the quiet sky; the light wind hardly stirred the +young leaves, and the air was fraught with the fragrance of early spring +flowers. It was the hour when reverie is deepest, and fantasies have the +earnestness of truth, when memory is melancholy in its vividness, and we +feel, "almost like a reality," the presence of those who may bless our +pathway no more. The loved, the lost-- + + "So many, yet how few!"-- + +gather around us, not as they are, chastened and troubled by battling +with trials and disappointments, but as they used to be, in the glow of +unwearied expectation. Old fears flit before us altered into pleasures, +and old hopes return bathed in tears. + + * * * * * + + +=_Alice Cary, 1820-1871._= (Manual, p. 484.) + +From "Clovernook." + +=_238._= THE END OF THE HISTORY. + +And so with the various seasons of the year. May, with her green lap +full of sprouting leaves and bright blossoms, her song-birds making the +orchards and meadows vocal, and rippling streams and cultivated gardens; +June, with full-blown roses and humming-bees, plenteous meadows and wide +cornfields, with embattled lines rising thick and green; August, with +reddened orchards and heavy-headed harvests of grain, October, with +yellow leaves and swart shadows; December, palaced in snow, and idly +whistling through his numb fingers;-all have their various charm; and in +the rose-bowers of summer, and as we spread our hands before the torches +of winter, we say joyfully, "Thou hast made all things beautiful in +their time." We sit around the fireside, and the angel feared and +dreaded by us all comes in, and one is taken from our midst. Hands that +have caressed us, locks that have fallen over us like a bath of beauty, +are hidden beneath shroud-folds. We see the steep edges of the grave, +and hear the heavy rumble of the clods; and, in the burst of passionate +grief, it seems that we can never still the crying of our hearts. But +the days rise and set, dimly at first, and seasons come and go, and, +by little and little, the weight rises from the heart, and the shadows +drift from before the eyes, till we feel again the spirit of gladness, +and see again the old beauty of the world. + + * * * * * + + +=_Donald G. Mitchell, 1822-._= (Manual, pp. 504, 531.) + +From "Wayside Hints." + +=_239._= A TALK ABOUT PORCHES. + +A country house without a porch is like a man without an eyebrow; it +gives expression, and gives expression where you most want it. The least +office of a porch is that of affording protection against the rain-beat +and the sun-beat. It is an interpreter of character; it humanizes bald +walls and windows; it emphasizes architectural tone; it gives hint of +hospitality; it is a hand stretched out (figuratively and lumberingly, +often) from the world within to the world without. + +At a church door even, a porch seems to me to be a blessed thing, and +a most worthy and patent demonstration of the overflowing Christian +charity, and of the wish to give shelter. Of all the images of wayside +country churches which keep in my mind, those hang most persistently +and agreeably, which show their jutting, defensive rooflets to keep the +brunt of the storm from the church-goer while he yet fingers at the +latch of entrance. + +I doubt if there be not something beguiling in a porch over the door of +a country shop--something that relieves the odium of bargaining, and +imbues even the small grocer with a flavor of cheap hospitalities. The +verandas (which is but a long translation of porch) that stretch along +the great river front of the Bellevue Hospital diffuse somehow a +gladsome cheer over that prodigious caravansery of the sick; and I never +see the poor creatures in their bandaged heads and their flannel +gowns, enjoying their convalescence in the sunshine of those exterior +corridors, but I reckon the old corridors for as much as the young +doctors, in bringing them from convalescence into strength, and a new +fight with the bedevilments of the world. + +What shall we say, too, of inn porches? Does anybody doubt their +fitness? Is there any question of the fact--with any person of +reasonably imaginative mood--that Falstaff and Nym and Bardolph, and the +rest, once lolled upon the benches of the porch that overhung the door +of the Boar's Head Tavern, Eastcheap? Any question about a porch, and a +generous one, at the Tabard, Southwark--presided over by that wonderful +host who so quickened the story-telling humors of the Canterbury +pilgrims of Master Chaucer? + +Then again, in our time, if one were to peel away the verandas and the +exterior corridors from our vast watering-place hostelries, what an arid +baldness of wall and of character would be left! All sentiment, all +glowing memories, all the music of girlish footfalls, all echoes of +laughter and banter and rollicking mirth, and tenderly uttered vows +would be gone. + +King David when he gave out to his son Solomon the designs for the +building of the Temple, included among the very first of them, (1 Chron. +XXVIII. 11) the "pattern of a porch." It is not, however, of porches +of shittim-wood and of gold, that I mean to talk just now--nor even of +those elaborate architectural features which will belong of necessity +to the entrance-way of every complete study of a country house. I plead +only for some little mantling hood about every exterior door-way, +however humble. + +There are hundreds of naked, vulgar-looking dwellings, scattered up and +down our country highroads, which only need a little deft and adroit +adaptation of the hospitable feature which I have made the subject of +this paper, to assume an air of modest grace, in place of the present +indecorous exposure of a wanton. + + * * * * * + + +=_Richard Grant White,[56] 1822-._= + +From "Memoirs of the Life of William Shakespeare." + +=_240._= THE CHARACTER OF SHAKESPEARE'S STYLE. + +Writing for the general public, he used such language as would convey +his meaning to his auditors,--the common phraseology of his period. +But what a language was that! In its capacity for the varied and exact +expression of all moods of mind, all forms of thought, all kinds of +emotion, a tongue unequaled by any other known to literature! A language +of exhaustless variety; strong without ruggedness, and flexible without +effeminacy. A manly tongue; yet bending itself gracefully and lovingly +to the tenderest and the daintiest needs of woman, and capable of giving +utterance to the most awful and impressive thoughts, in homely words +that come from the lips, and go to the heart, of childhood. It would +seem as if this language had been preparing itself for centuries to be +the fit medium of utterance for the world's greatest poet. Hardly more +than a generation had passed since the English tongue had reached its +perfect maturity; just time enough to have it well worked into the +unconscious usage of the people, when Shakespeare appeared, to lay upon +it a burden of thought which would test its extremest capability. He +found it fully formed and developed, but not yet uniformed and cramped +and disciplined by the lexicographers and rhetoricians,--those martinets +of language, who seem to have lost for us in force and flexibility as +much as they have gained for us in precision. The phraseology of that +day was notably large and simple among ordinary writers and speakers. +Among the college-bred writers and their imitators, there was too +great a fondness for little conceits; but even with them this was an +extraneous blemish, like that sometimes found in the ornament upon a +noble building. Shakespeare seized this instrument to whose tones all +ears were open, and with the touch of a master he brought out all its +harmonies. It lay ready to any hand; but his was the first to use it +with absolute control; and among all its successors, great as some +are, he has had, even in this single respect, no rival. No unimportant +condition of his supreme mastery over expression was his entire freedom +from restraint--it may almost be said from consciousness--in the choice +of language. He was no precisian, no etymologist, no purist. He was not +purposely writing literature. The only criticism that he feared was that +of his audience, which represented the English people of all grades +above the peasantry. These he wished should not find his writing +incomprehensible or dull: no more. If we except the translators of the +Bible, Shakespeare wrote the best English that has yet been written. + +[Footnote 56: A native of New York City; distinguished as a student and +editor of Shakespeare, and more recently for his critical articles on +the English language and grammar.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Thomas Wentworth Higginson, 1823-._= (Manual, p. 531). + +From "Atlantic Essays." + +=_241._= ELEGANCE OF FRENCH STYLE. + +In France alone among living nations is literature habitually pursued +as an art; and in consequence of this, despite the seeds of decay which +imperialism sowed, French prose-writing has no rival in contemporary +literature. We cannot fully recognize this fact through translations, +because only the most sensational French books appear to be translated. +But as French painters and actors now habitually surpass all others even +in what are claimed as the English qualities,--simplicity and truth,--so +do French prose-writers excel. To be set against the brutality of +Carlyle and the shrill screams of Ruskin, there is to be seen across +the Channel the extraordinary fact of an actual organization of good +writers, the French Academy, whose influence all nations feel. Under +their authority we see introduced into literary work an habitual +grace and perfection, a clearness and directness, a light and pliable +strength, and a fine shading of expression, such as no other tongue can +even define. We see the same high standard in their criticism, in their +works of research, in the Revue des Deux Mondes, and in short throughout +literature. What is there in any other language, for instance, to be +compared with the voluminous writings of Sainte-Beuve, ranging over all +history and literature, and carrying into all, that incomparable style, +so delicate, so brilliant, so equable, so strong,--touching all themes, +not with the blacksmith's hand of iron, but with the surgeon's hand of +steel. + +In the average type of French novels, one feels the superiority to +the English in quiet power, in the absence of the sensational and +exaggerated, and in keeping close to the level of real human life. They +rely for success upon perfection of style, and the most subtle analysis +of human character; and therefore they are often painful,--just as +Thackeray is painful,--because they look at artificial society, and +paint what they see. Thus they dwell often on unhappy marriages, because +such things grow naturally from the false social system in France. On +the other hand, in France there is very little house-breaking, and +bigamy is almost impossible, so that we hear delightfully little about +them: whereas, if you subtract these from the current English novels, +what is there left? + + * * * * * + + +=_Charles Godfrey Leland,[57] 1824._= + +From "Meister Karl's Sketch-book." + +=_242._= ASPECT OF NUREMBERG. + +There is a picturesque disorder--a lyrical confusion about the entire +place, which is perfectly irresistible. Turrets shoot up in all sorts of +ways, on all sorts of occasions, upon all sorts of houses; and little +boxes, with delicate Gothic windows, cling to their sides and to one +another, like barnacles to a ship; while the houses themselves are +turned round and about in so many positions that you wonder that a few +are not upside down or lying on their sides by way of completing the +original arrangement of no arrangement at all. It always seemed to me as +if the buildings in Nuremberg had, like the furniture in Irving's tale, +been indulging over night in a very irregular dance, and suddenly +stopped in the most complicated part of a confusion worse confounded. +Galleries, quaint staircases, and towers with projecting upper stories, +as well as eccentric chimneys, demented door-ways, insane weather-vanes, +and highly original steeples, form the most common-place materials in +building; and it has more than once occurred to me that the architects +of this city, even at the present day, must have imbibed their +principles; not from the lecture-room, but from the most remarkable +inspirations of some romantic scene-painter. During the last two +centuries men appear to have striven, with a most uncommendable zeal, +all over Christendom, to root out and extirpate every trace of the +Gothic. In Nuremberg alone they have religiously preserved what little +they originally had in domestic architecture, and added to it.... + +Nuremberg, like Avignon, is one of the very few cities which have +retained in an almost perfect state, the feudal walls and turrets with +which they were invested by the middle ages. At regular intervals along +these walls occur little towers, for their defence, reminding one of +beads strung on a rosary; the great watch-tower at the gate, with its +projecting machicolation, forming the pendent cross,--the whole serving +to guard the town within from the dangers of war, even as the rosary +protects the city of Mansoul from the attacks of Sin and Death--though, +sooth to say, since the invention of gunpowder and the Reformation, both +the one and the other appear to have lost much of their former efficacy. +Directly through the center of the town runs a small stream called the +Pegnitz, "dividing the town into two nearly equal halves, named after +the two great churches situated within them; the northern being termed +St. Sebald's, and the southern, St. Lawrence side." + +In the northern part of the division of St. Sebaldus rises a high hill, +formed, at the summit, of vast rocks, on which is situated the ancient +Reicheveste, or Imperial Castle, whose origin is fairly lost in the dark +old days of Heathenesse. From it the traveller can obtain an admirable +view of the romantic town below. In regarding it, I was irresistibly +reminded of the remarkable resemblance existing between most of its +buildings and the children's toys manufactured by the ingenious artisans +of Nuremberg and its vicinity. + +[Footnote 57: A native of Philadelphia, who has resided much abroad, and +pursued a varied literary career; he possesses a familiarity with the +German language and character, which he has turned to good account in +the comic ballads by Hans Breitman.] + + * * * * * + + +=_George William Curtis, 1824-._= (Manual, p. 504.) + +From "Nile Notes of a Howadji." + +=_243._= UNDER THE PALMS. + +Thenceforward, in the land of Egypt, palms are perpetual. They are the +only foliage of the Nile; for we will not harm the modesty of a few +mimosas and sycamores, by foolish claims. They are the shade of the mud +villages, marking their site in the landscape, so that the groups of +palms are the number of villages. They fringe the shore and the horizon. +The sun sets golden behind them, and birds sit swinging upon their +boughs and float gloriously among their trunks; on the ground beneath +are flowers; the sugar-cane is not harmed by the ghostly shade, nor the +tobacco, and the yellow flowers of the cotton-plant star its dusk at +evening. The children play under them; the old men crone and smoke; the +surly bison and the conceited camels repose. The old Bible-pictures +are ceaselessly painted, but with softer, clearer colors, than in the +venerable book. + +... But the eye never wearies of palms, more than the ear of +singing-birds. Solitary they stand upon the sand, or upon the level, +fertile land in groups, with a grace and dignity that no tree surpasses. +Very soon the eye beholds in their forms the original type of the +columns which it will afterwards admire in the temples. Almost the first +palm is architecturally suggestive, even in those western gardens--but +to artists living among them and seeing only them! men's hands are not +delicate in the early ages, and the fountain fairness of the palms is +not very flowingly fashioned in the capitals; but in the flowery +perfection of the Parthenon the palm triumphs. The forms of those +columns came from Egypt, and that which was the suspicion of the earlier +workers, was the success of more delicate designing. So is the palm +inwound with our art, and poetry, and religion, and of all trees would +the Howadji be a palm, wide-waving peace and plenty, and feeling his kin +to the Parthenon and Raphael's pictures. + +But nature is absolute taste, and has no pure ornament, so that the +palm is no less useful than beautiful. The family is infinite, and ill +understood. The cocoa-nut, date, and sago, are all palms. Ropes and +sponges are wrought of their tough interior fibre. The various fruits +are nutritious; the wood, the roots, and the leaves, are all consumed. +It is one of nature's great gifts to her spoiled sun-darlings. Whoso is +born of the sun is made free of the world. Like the poet Thompson, he +may put his hands in his pockets and eat apples at leisure. + + * * * * * + + +=_John L. McConnell, 1826-._= (Manual, p. 510.) + +From "Western Characters." + +=_244._= THE EARLY WESTERN POLITICIAN. + +He was tall, gaunt, angular, swarthy, active, and athletic. His hair was +invariably black as the wing of the raven. Even in that small portion +which the cap of raccoon-skin left exposed to the action of sun and +rain, the gray was but thinly scattered, imparting to the monotonous +darkness only a more iron character.... A stoop in the shoulders +indicated that, in times past, he had been in the habit of carrying a +heavy rifle, and of closely examining the ground over which he walked; +but what the chest thus lost in depth it gained in breadth. His lungs +had ample space in which to play. There was nothing pulmonary even in +the drooping shoulders.... + +From shoulders thus bowed hung long, muscular arms, sometimes, perhaps, +dangling a little ungracefully, but always under the command of their +owner, and ready for any effort, however violent. These were terminated +by broad, bony hands, which looked like grapnels; their grasp, indeed, +bore no faint resemblance to the hold of those symmetrical instruments. +Large feet, whose toes were usually turned in, like those of the Indian, +were wielded by limbs whose vigor and activity were in keeping with the +figure they supported. Imagine, with these peculiarities, a free, bold, +rather swaggering gait, a swarthy complexion, and comformable features +and tones of voice, and, excepting his costume, you have before your +fancy a complete picture of the early western politician. + + * * * * * + + +=_Sarah J. Lippincott,[58]_= about =_1833-_=. (Manual p. 484.) + +From "Records of Five Years." + +=_245._= DEATH IN TOWN AND COUNTRY. + +Up the long ascent it moved,--that shadow of our mortal sorrow and +perishable earthly estate, that shadow of the dead man's hearse, along +the way his feet had often trod, past the spring over whose brink he +may have often bent with thirsting lip, past lovely green glades, mossy +banks, and fairy forests of waving ferns, on which his eye had often +dwelt with a vague and soft delight; and so passed out of our view. But +its memory went not out of our hearts that day. + +In this pure, healthful region, where nature seems so unworn, so +youthful and vigorous, where dwell simplicity, humble comfort, and quiet +happiness, death has startled us as something strange and unnatural.... + +How different is it in the city!... There, on many a corner, one +is confronted with the black, significant sign of the undertaker's +"dreadful trade," or comes upon some marble-yard, filled with a ghastly +assemblage of anticipatory gravestones and monuments; graceful broken +columns, which are to typify the lovely incompleteness of some young +life now full of beauty and promise; melancholy, drooping figures, types +of grief forever inconsolable, destined, perhaps, to stand proxy for +mourning young widows now happy wives; sculptured lambs, patiently +waiting to take their places above the graves of little children whom +yet smiling mothers nightly lay to sleep in soft cribs, without the +thought of a deeper dark and silence of a night not far away, or of the +dreary beds soon to be prepared for their darlings "i' the earth." + +[Footnote 58: Originally and very favorably known by the assumed name of +"Grace Greenwood."] + + * * * * * + + +=_Francis Bret Harte,[59] 1837-._= + +From "The Luck of Roaring Camp," &c. + +=_246._= BIRTH OF A CHILD IN A MINER'S CAMP. + +... The camp lay in a triangular valley, between two hills and a river. +The only outlet was a steep trail over the summit of a hill that faced +the cabin, now illuminated by the rising moon. The suffering woman might +have seen it from the rude bunk whereon she lay,--seen it winding like a +silver thread until it was lost in the stars above. + +A fire of withered pine-boughs added sociability to the gathering. By +degrees the natural levity of Roaring Camp returned. Bets were freely +offered and taken regarding the result. Three to five that "Sal would +get through with it," even, that the child would survive; side bets as +to the sex and complexion of the coming stranger.... + +In the midst of an excited discussion an exclamation came from those +nearest the door, and the camp stopped to listen. Above the swaying and +moaning of the pines, the swift rush of the river, and the crackling of +the fire, rose a sharp, querulous cry. The pines stopped moaning, the +river ceased to rush, and the fire to crackle. It seemed as if Nature +had stopped to listen too. + +The camp rose to its feet as one man! It was proposed to explode a +barrel of gunpowder; but, in consideration of the situation of the +mother, better counsels prevailed, and only a few revolvers were +discharged; for, whether owing to the rude surgery of the camp, or some +other reason, Cherokee Sal was sinking fast. Within an hour she had +climbed, as it were, the rugged road that led to the stars, and so passed +out of Roaring Camp, its sin and shame, forever.... + +I do not think that the announcement disturbed them much, except in +speculation as to the fate of the child, "Can he live now?" was asked of +Stumpy. The answer was doubtful. The only other being of Cherokee Sal's +sex and maternal condition in the settlement, was an ass. There was some +conjecture as to fitness, but the experiment was tried. It was less +problematical than the ancient treatment of Romulus and Remus, and +apparently as successful. + +Strange to say, the child thrived. Perhaps the invigorating climate of +the mountain camp was compensation for maternal deficiencies. Nature +took the foundling to her broader breast. In that rare atmosphere of the +Sierra foot-hills--that air pungent with balsamic odor, that ethereal +cordial at once bracing and exhilarating--he may have found food and +nourishment, or a subtle chemistry that transmuted asses' milk to lime +and phosphorus. Stumpy inclined to the belief that it was the latter +and good nursing, "Me and that ass," he would say, "has been father and +mother to him! Don't you," he would add, apostrophizing the helpless +bundle before him, "never go back on us." + +[Footnote 59: Prominent among the more recent American writers; a native +of New York, but long resident in California; noted for his vivid +portraiture of the early life, and remarkable scenery of that State, in +a style uncommonly suggestive.] + + * * * * * + + +=_William Dean Howells, 1837-._= (Manual, p. 531.) + +From "Venetian Life." + +=_247._= SNOW IN VENICE. + +... The lofty crest of the bell-tower was hidden in the folds of falling +snow, and I could no longer see the golden angel upon its summit. But +looked at across the Piazza, the beautiful outline of St. Mark's Church +was perfectly penciled in the air, and the shifting threads of the +snow-fall were woven into a spell of novel enchantment around a +structure that always seemed to me too exquisite in its fantastic +loveliness to be anything but the creation of magic. The tender snow had +compassionated the beautiful edifice for all the wrongs of time, and so +hid the stains and ugliness of decay that it looked as if just from the +hands of the builder--or, better said, just from the brain of the +architect. There was marvellous freshness in the colors of the mosaics +in the great arches of the facade; and all that glorious harmony into +which the temple rises, of marble scrolls and leafy exuberance airily +supporting the statues of the saints, was a hundred times etherialized +by the purity and whiteness of the drifting flakes. The snow lay lightly +on the golden globes that tremble like peacock-crests above the vast +domes, and plumed them with softest white; it robed the saints in +ermine; and it danced over all its work as if exulting in its beauty.... + +Through the wavering snow-fall, the Saint Theodore upon one of the +granite pillars of the Piazzetta did not show so grim as his wont is, +and the winged lion on the other might have been a winged lamb, so mild +and gentle he looked by the tender light of the storm. The towers of the +island churches loomed faint and far away in the dimness; the sailors in +the rigging of the ships that lay in the Basin, wrought like phantoms +among the shrouds; the gondolas stole in and out of the opaque distance, +more noiselessly and dreamily than ever; and a silence almost palpable, +lay upon the mutest city in the world. + + * * * * * + + +=_Mary Abigail Dodge,[60] 1838-._= + +From "Wool Gathering." + +=_248._= SCENERY OF THE UPPER MISSISSIPPI. + +Up the broad, cold, steel-blue river we wind steadily to its Northern +home. No flutter of its orange groves, no fragrance of its Southern +roses, no echo of its summer lands, can penetrate these distances. Only +prophecies of the sturdy North are here,--the glitter of the Polar sea, +the majesty of Arctic solitudes. The imagination is touched. The eye +looks out upon a hemisphere. Vast spaces, lost ages, the unsealed +mysteries of cold and darkness and eternal silence, sweep around the +central thought, and people the wilderness with their solemn symbolism, +Prettiness of gentle slope, wealth, and splendor of hue, are not +wanting, but they shine with veiled light. Mountains come down to meet +the Great River. The mists of the night lift slowly away, and we are +brought suddenly into the presence-chamber. One by one they stand out in +all their rugged might, only softened here and there by fleecy clouds +still clinging to their sides, and shining pink in the ruddy dawn. Bold +bluffs that have come hundreds of miles from their inland home guard the +river. They rise on both sides, fronting us, bare and black, layer of +solid rock piled on solid rock, defiant fortifications of some giant +race, crowned here and there with frowning tower; here and there +overborne and overgrown with wild-wood beauty, vine and moss and +manifold leafage, gorgeous now with the glory of the vanishing summer. +It is as if the everlasting hills had parted to give the Great River +entrance to the hidden places of the world. And then the bold bluffs +break into sharp cones, lonely mountains rising head and shoulders above +their brethren, and keeping watch over the whole country; groups of +mountains standing sentinels on the shores, almost leaning over the +river, and hushing us to breathless silence as we sail through their +awful shadow. And then the earth smiles again, the beetling cliffs +recede into distances, and we glide through a pleasant valley. Green +levels stretch away to the foot of the far cliffs, level with the +river's blue, and as smooth,--sheltered and fertile, and fit for future +homes. Nay, already the pioneer has found them, and many a hut and +cottage and huddle of houses show whence art and science and all the +amenities of human life, shall one day radiate. And even as we greet +them we have left them, and the heights clasp us again, the hills +overshadow us, the solitude closes around us. + +[Footnote 60: Born in Massachusetts, author of numerous magazine articles +of merit and earnestness, afterwards republished as books; known to her +readers as Gail Hamilton.] + + * * * * * + + + +LATER MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS. + + +=_George Washington[61], 1732-1799._= + +From a Letter to Sir John Sinclair. + +=_249._= NATURAL ADVANTAGES OF VIRGINIA. + +The United States, as you well know, are very extensive, more than +fifteen hundred miles between the northeastern and southwestern +extremities; all parts of which, from the seaboard to the Appalachian +Mountains, which divide the eastern from the western waters, are +entirely settled; though not as compactly as they are susceptible of; +and settlements are progressing rapidly beyond them. + +Within so great a space, you are not to be told, that there is a great +variety of climates, and you will readily suppose, too, that there +are all sorts of land, differently improved, and of various prices, +according to the quality of the soil, its contiguity to, or remoteness +from, navigation, the nature of the improvements, and other local +circumstances.... + +Notwithstanding these abstracts, and although I may incur the charge of +partiality in hazarding such an opinion at this time, I do not hesitate +to pronounce, that the lands on the waters of the Potomac will in a few +years be in greater demand and in higher estimation, than in any other +part of the United States. But, as I ought not to advance this doctrine +without assigning reasons for it, I will request you to examine a +general map of the United States; and the following facts will strike +you at first view; that they lie in the most temperate latitude of +the United States, that the main river runs in a direct course to the +expanded parts of the western country, and approximates nearer to the +principal branches of the Ohio, than any other eastern water, and of +course must become a great, if not (under all circumstances), the best +highway into that region; that the upper seaport of the Potomac is +considerably nearer to a large portion of Pennsylvania, than that +portion is to Philadelphia, besides accommodating the settlers thereof +with inland navigation for more than two hundred miles; that the amazing +extent of tide navigation, afforded by the bay and rivers of the +Chesapeake, has scarcely a parallel. + +When to these it is added, that a site at the junction of the inland and +tide navigations of that river is chosen for the permanent seat of the +general government, and is in rapid preparation for its reception; +that the inland navigation is nearly completed, to the extent above +mentioned; that its lateral branches are capable of great improvement +at a small expense, through the most fertile parts of Virginia in +a southerly direction, and crossing Maryland and extending into +Pennsylvania in a northerly one, through which, independently of what +may come from the western country, an immensity of produce will be +water-borne, thereby making the Federal City the great emporium of the +United States; I say, when these things are taken into consideration, I +am under no apprehension of having the opinion I have given, relative to +the value of land on the Potomac, controverted by impartial men. + +[Footnote 61: Washington's correspondence was voluminous, and on the +subjects relating to climate, agriculture, and internal improvements, +he wrote with interest and ability. The letter to Sinclair is +characteristic.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Matthew F. Maury,[62] 1806-1873._= + +From "The Physical Geography of the Sea." + +=_250._= THE MARINER'S GUIDE ACROSS THE DEEP. + +So to shape the course on voyages as to make the most of the winds and +currents at sea, is the perfection of the navigator's art. How the winds +blow, and the currents flow, along this route or that, is no longer +matter of opinion or subject of speculation, but it is a matter of +certainty determined by actual observation.... The winds and the weather +daily encountered by hundreds who have sailed on the same voyage before +him, and "the distance made good" by each one from day to day, have been +tabulated in a work called Sailing Directions, and they are so arranged +that he may daily see how much he is ahead of time, or how far he is +behind time; nay, his path has been literally blazed through the winds +for him on the sea; mile-posts have been set up on the waves, and +finger-boards planted, and time-tables furnished for the trackless +waste, by which the ship-master, on his first voyage to any port, may +know as well as the most experienced trader whether he be in the right +road or no. + +... The route that affords the bravest winds, the fairest sweep, and the +fastest running to be found among ships, is the route to and from +Australia. But the route which most tries a ship's prowess is the +outward-bound voyage to California. The voyage to Australia and back, +carries the clipper ship along a route which, for more than three +hundred degrees of longitude, runs with the "brave west winds" of the +southern hemisphere. With these winds alone, and with their bounding +seas which follow fast, the modern clipper, without auxiliary power, has +accomplished a greater distance in a day than any sea-steamer has ever +been known to reach. With these fine winds and heaving seas, those ships +have performed their voyages of circumnavigation in sixty days. + +[Footnote 62: Formerly an officer of the navy, eminent for his scientific +researches and writings on maritime subjects; a native of Virginia.] + + * * * * * + +=_251._= THE GULF STREAM. + +As a rule, the hottest water of the Gulf Stream is at, or near, the +surface; and as the deep-sea thermometer is sent down, it shows that +these waters, though still far warmer than the waters on either side +at corresponding depths, gradually become less and less warm until the +bottom of the current is reached. There is reason to believe that the +warm waters of the Gulf Stream are nowhere permitted, in the oceanic +economy, to touch the bottom of the sea. There is everywhere a cushion +of cool water, between them and the solid parts of the earth's crust. +This arrangement is suggestive, and strikingly beautiful. One of the +benign offices of the Gulf Stream is to convey heat from the Gulf of +Mexico, where otherwise it would become excessive, and to dispense it in +regions beyond the Atlantic, or the amelioration of the climates of the +British Islands and of all Western Europe. Now cold water is one of the +best non-conductors of heat, and if the warm water of the Gulf Stream +was sent across the Atlantic in contact with the solid crust of the +earth,--comparatively a good conductor of heat,--instead of being sent +across, as it is, in contact with a cold non-conducting cushion of cool +water to fend it from the bottom, much of its heat would be lost in the +first part of the way, and the soft climates of both France and England +would be, as that of Labrador, severe In the extreme, icebound, and +bitterly cold. + + * * * * * + + +=_Ormsby M. Mitchell,[63] 1810-1862._= + +=_252._= THE GREAT UNFINISHED PROBLEMS OF THE UNIVERSE. + +I do not pretend to indorse the theory of Mädler with reference to his +central sun. If I did indorse it, it would amount simply to nothing at +all, for he needs no indorsement of mine. But it is one of the great +unfinished problems of the universe, which remains yet to be solved. +Future generations yet are to take it up. Materials for its solution are +to accumulate from generation to generation, and possibly from century +to century. Nay, I know not but thousands of years will roll away before +the slow movements of these far distant orbs shall so accumulate as to +give us the data whereby the resolution may be absolutely accomplished. +But shall we fail to work because the end is far off? Had the old +astronomer that once stood upon the watch-tower in Babylon, and there +marked the coming of the dreaded eclipse, said. "I care not for this; +this is the business of posterity; let posterity take care of itself; I +will make no record"--and had, in succeeding ages, the sentinel in the +watch-tower of the skies said, "I will retire from my post; I have no +concern with these matters, which can do me no good; it is nothing +that I can do for the age in which I live,"--where should we have been +to-night? Shall we not do, for those who are to follow us, what has +been done for us by our predecessors? Let us not shrink from the +responsibility which comes down upon the age in which we live. The great +and mighty problem of the universe has been given to the whole human +family for its solution. Not by any clime, not by any age, not by any +nation, not by any individual man or mind, however great or grand, has +this wondrous solution been accomplished; but it is the problem of +humanity, and it will last as long as humanity shall inhabit the globe +on which we live and move. + + * * * * * + +No, here is the temple of our Divinity. Around us and above us rise sun +and system, cluster and universe. And I doubt not that in every region +of this vast empire of God, hymns of praise and anthems of glory are +rising and reverberating from sun to sun, and from, system to system, +heard by Omnipotence alone, across immensity, and through eternity. + +[Footnote 63: An astronomer, and a favorite lecturer on the science; a +native of Kentucky.] + + * * * * * + + + +WRITERS ON NATURAL HISTORY, SCENERY, &c. + + +=_William Bartram, 1739-1813._= (Manual, p. 490.) + +From the "Travels through the Carolinas," &c. + +=_253._= SCENES ON THE UPPER OCONEE. + +At this rural retirement were assembled a charming circle of mountain +vegetable beauties.... Some of these roving beauties stroll over the +mossy, shelving, humid rocks, or from off the expansive wavy boughs of +trees, bending over the floods, salute their delusive shade, playing on +the surface; some plunge their perfumed heads and bathe their flexile +limbs in the silver stream; whilst others by the mountain breezes +are tossed about, their blooming tuffts bespangled with pearly and +crystalline dew-drops collected from the falling mists, glistening in +the rainbow arch. Having collected some valuable specimens at this +friendly retreat, I continued my lonesome pilgrimage. My road for a +considerable time led me winding and turning about the steep rocky +hills: the descent of some of which was very rough and troublesome, by +means of fragments of rocks, slippery clay and talc: but after this I +entered a spacious forest, the land having gradually acquired a more +level surface: a pretty grassy vale appears on my right, through which +my wandering path led me, close by the banks of a delightful creek, +which sometimes falling over steps of rocks, glides gently with +serpentine meanders through the meadows. + +After crossing this delightful brook and mead, the land rises again with +sublime magnificence, and I am led over hills and vales, groves and +high forests, vocal with the melody of the feathered songsters; the +snow-white cascades glittering on the sides of the distant hills. + +It was now afternoon; I approached a charming vale, amidst sublimely +high forests, awful shades! Darkness gathers around; far distant thunder +rolls over the trembling hills: the black clouds with august majesty +and power move slowly forwards, shading regions of towering hills, and +threatening all the destruction of a thunder-storm: all around is now +still as death, not a whisper is heard, but a total inactivity and +silence seem to pervade the earth; the birds afraid to utter a chirrup, +in low tremulous voices take leave of each other, seeking covert and +safety: every insect is silenced, and nothing heard but the roaring of +the approaching hurricane. The mighty cloud now expands its sable wings, +extending from north to south, and is driven irresistibly on by the +tumultuous winds, spreading its livid wings around the gloomy concave, +armed with terrors of thunder and fiery shafts of lightning. Now the +lofty forests bend low beneath its fury; their limbs and wavy boughs are +tossed about and catch hold of each other; the mountains tremble +and seem to reel about, and the ancient hills to be shaken to their +foundations: the furious storm sweeps along, smoking through the vale +and over the resounding hills: the face of the earth is obscured by the +deluge descending from the firmament, and I am deafened by the din of +the thunder. The tempestuous scene damps my spirits, and my horse sinks +under me at the tremendous peals, as I hasten on for the plain. + + * * * * * + +From his "Travels in the Carolinas, Florida," &c. + +=_254._= THE WOOD PELICAN OF FLORIDA. + +This solitary bird does not associate in flocks, but is generally seen +alone, commonly near the banks of great rivers, in vast marshes or +meadows, especially such as are caused by inundations, and also in the +vast deserted rice plantations: he stands alone on the topmost limb +of tall dead cypress trees, his neck contracted or drawn in upon his +shoulders, and beak resting like a long scythe upon his breast: in +this pensive posture and solitary situation, it looks extremely grave, +sorrowful, and melancholy, as if in the deepest thought. + + * * * * * + + +=_Alexander Wilson, 1766-1813._= (Manual, p. 504.) + +From the "American Ornithology." + +=_255._= NEST OF THE RED-HEADED WOODPECKER. + +Notwithstanding the care which this bird, in common with the rest of its +genus, takes to place its young beyond the reach of enemies, within +the hollows of trees, yet there is one deadly foe, against whose +depredations neither the height of the tree nor the depth of the cavity +is the least security. This is the blade snake, who frequently glides +up the trunk of the tree, and, like a skulking savage, enters the +woodpecker's peaceful apartment, devours the eggs or helpless young, in +spite of the cries and flutterings of the parents, and if the place be +large enough, coils himself up in the spot they occupied, where he will +sometimes remain for several days. The eager school-boy, after hazarding +his neck to reach the woodpecker's hole, at the triumphant moment when +he thinks the nestlings his own, and strips his arm, launching it down +into the cavity, and grasping what he conceives to be the callow young, +starts with horror at the sight of a hideous snake, and almost drops +from his giddy pinnacle, retreating down the tree with terror and +precipitation. Several adventures of this kind have come to my +knowledge; and one of them was attended with serious consequences, where +both snake and boy fell to the ground, and a broken thigh, and long +confinement, cured the adventurer completely of his ambition for robbing +woodpeckers' nests. + + * * * * * + +=_256._= THE WHITE-HEADED, OR BALD, EAGLE. + +Elevated on the high dead limb of some gigantic tree that commands +a wide view of the neighboring shore and ocean, he seems calmly to +contemplate the motions of the various feathered tribes that pursue +their busy avocations below,--the snow-white Gulls slowly winnowing +the air; the busy _Tringoe_ coursing along the sands; trains of Ducks +streaming over the surface; silent and watchful Cranes, intent and +wading; clamorous crows; and all the winged multitudes that subsist by +the bounty of this vast liquid magazine of nature. High over all these +hovers one, whose action instantly arrests his whole attention. By his +wide curvature of wing, and sudden suspension in air, he knows him to be +the Fish Hawk, settling over some devoted victim of the deep. His eye +kindles at the sight, and balancing himself with half-opened wings, on +the branch, he watches the result. Down, rapid as an arrow from heaven, +descends the distant object of his attention, the roar of its wings +reaching the ear as it disappears in the deep, making the surges foam +around. At this moment, the eager looks of the Eagle are all ardor; and +levelling his neck for flight, he sees the Fish Hawk once more emerge, +struggling with his prey, and mounting in the air with screams of +exultation. These are the signal for our hero, who launching into the +air, instantly gives chase, and soon gains on the Fish Hawk; each exerts +his utmost to mount above the other, displaying in these rencontres +the most elegant and sublime aerial evolutions. The unincumbered Eagle +rapidly advances, and is just on the point of reaching his opponent, +when, with a sudden scream, probably of despair and honest execration, +the latter drops his fish; the Eagle poising himself for a moment, as if +to take a more certain aim, descends like a whirlwind, snatches it in +his grasp ere it reaches the water, and bears his ill-gotten booty +silently away to the woods. + + * * * * * + + +=_Stephen Elliott,[64] 1771-1830._= + +From "Views of Nature." + +=_257._= COMPLETENESS AND VARIETY OF NATURE. + +What is there that will not be included in the history of nature? The +earth on which we tread, the air we breathe, the waters around the +earth, the material forms that inhabit its surface, the mind of man, +with all its magical illusions and all its inherent energy, the planets +that move around our system, the firmament of heaven--the smallest of +the invisible atoms which float around our globe, and the most majestic +of the orbs that roll through the immeasurable fields of space--all +are parts of one system, productions of one power, creations of one +intellect, the offspring of Him, by whom all that is inert and inorganic +in creation was formed, and from whom all that have life derive their +being. + +Of this immense system,--all that we can examine,--this little globe +that we inherit, is full of animation, and crowded with forms, +organized, glowing with life, and generally sentient. No space is +unoccupied; the exposed surface of the rock is incrusted with living +substances; plants occupy the bark, and decaying limbs, of other plants; +animals live on the surface, and in the bodies, of other animals: +inhabitants are fashioned and adapted to equatorial heats, and polar +ice;--air, earth, and ocean teem with life;--and if to other worlds the +same proportion of life and of enjoyment has been distributed which has +been allotted to ours, if creative benevolence has equally filled every +other planet of every other system, nay, even the suns themselves, with +beings, organized, animated, and intelligent, how countless must be +the generations of the living! What voices which we cannot hear, what +languages that we cannot understand, what multitudes that we cannot see, +may, as they roll along the stream of time, be employed hourly, daily, +and forever, in choral songs of praise, hymning their great Creator! + +And when, in this almost prodigal waste of life, we perceive that every +being, from the puny insect which flutters in the evening ray; from the +lichen which we can scarcely distinguish on the mouldering rock; +from the fungus that springs up and re-animates the mass of dead and +decomposing substances; that every living form possesses a structure as +perfect in its sphere, an organization sometimes as complex, always as +truly and completely adapted to its purposes and modes of existence +as that of the most perfect animal; when we discover them all to be +governed by laws as definite, as immutable, as those which regulate the +planetary movements, great must be our admiration of the wisdom which +has arrayed, and the power which has perfected this stupendous fabric. + +Nor does creation here cease. There are beyond the limits of our system, +beyond the visible forms of matter, other principles, other powers, +higher orders of beings, an immaterial world which we cannot yet know; +other modes of existence which we cannot comprehend; yet however +inscrutable to us, this spiritual world must be guided by its own +unerring laws, and the harmonious order which reigns in all we can see +and understand, ascending through the series of immortal and invisible +existence, must govern even the powers and dominions, the seraphim and +cherubim, that surround the throne of God himself. + +[Footnote 64: Distinguished as a writer and scholar, and especially for +his work on the Botany of South Carolina and Georgia; a native of South +Carolina.] + + * * * * * + + +=_John James Audubon, 1776-1851._= (Manual, p. 504.) + +From the "Ornithological Biography." + +=_258._= THE PASSENGER PIGEON. + +I cannot describe to you the extreme beauty of their aerial evolutions, +when a hawk chanced to press upon the rear of a flock. At once, like a +torrent, and with a noise like thunder, they rushed into a compact mass, +pressing upon each other towards the centre. In these almost solid +masses, they darted forward in undulating and angular lines, descended +and swept close over the earth with inconceivable velocity, mounted +perpendicularly so as to resemble a vast column, and when high, were +seen wheeling and twisting within their continued lines, which then +resembled the coils of a gigantic serpent. + +It is extremely interesting to see flock after flock performing exactly +the same evolutions which had been traced as it were, in the air, by a +preceding flock. Thus should a hawk have charged on a group at a certain +spot, the angles, curves, and undulations that have been described by +the birds, in their efforts to escape from the dreaded talons of the +plunderer, are undeviatingly followed by the next group that comes up. +Should the by-stander happen to witness one of these affrays, and, +struck with the rapidity and elegance of the motions exhibited, feel +desirous of seeing them repeated, his wishes will be gratified, if he +only remain in the place until the next group comes up. + +As soon as the pigeons discover a sufficiency of food to entice them to +alight, they fly around in circles, reviewing the country below. During +their evolutions, on such occasions, the dense mass which they form, +exhibits a beautiful appearance, as it changes its direction, now +displaying a glistening sheet of azure, when the backs of the birds come +simultaneously into view, and anon, suddenly presenting a mass of rich +purple. They then pass lower, over the woods, and for a moment are lost +among the foliage, but again emerge, and are seen gliding aloft. They +now alight, but the next moment, as if suddenly alarmed, they take to +wing, producing by the flapping of their wings a noise like the roar of +distant thunder, and sweep through the forests to see if danger is near. +Hunger, however, soon brings them to the ground. When alighted, they +are seen industriously throwing up the withered leaves in quest of the +falling mast. The rear ranks are continually rising, passing over the +main body, and alighting in front, in such rapid succession, that the +whole flock seems still on wing. The quantity of ground thus swept is +astonishing, and so completely has it been cleared, that the gleaner who +might follow in their rear, would find his labor completely lost. + + * * * * * + +=_259._= EMIGRANTS REMOVING WESTWARD. + +I think I see them at this moment harnessing their horses and attaching +them to their wagons, which are already filled with bedding, +provisions, and the younger children; while on the outside are fastened +spinning-wheels and looms, and a bucket filled with tar and tallow +swings between the hind wheels. Several axes are secured to the bolster, +and the feeding-trough of the horses contains pots, kettles, and pans. +The servant, now become a driver, rides the near saddled horse; the wife +is mounted on another; the worthy husband shoulders his gun; and his +sons, clad in plain, substantial homespun, drive the cattle ahead, and +lead the procession, followed by the hounds and other dogs. + + * * * * * + +=_260._= INTEREST OF EXPLORATION IN THE REMOTE WEST. + +How delightful, I have often exclaimed, must have been the feelings of +those enthusiastic naturalists, my friends Nuttall and Townsend, while +traversing the ridges of the Rocky Mountains! How grand and impressive +the scenery presented to their admiring gaze, when from an elevated +station they saw the mountain torrent hurling its foamy waters over the +black crags of the rugged ravine, while on wide-spread wings the Great +Vulture sailed overhead watching the departure of the travellers, that +he might feast on the Salmon which in striving to ascend the cataract +had been thrown on the stony beach! Now the weary travellers are resting +on the bank of a brawling brook, along which they are delighted to see +the lively Dipper frisking wren-like from stone to stone. On the stunted +bushes above them some curious Jays are chattering, and as my friends +are looking upon the gay and restless birds, they are involuntarily led +to extend their gaze to the green slope beneath the more distant +crags, where they spy a mountain sheep, watching the movements of the +travellers as well as those of yon wolves stealing silently toward the +fleet-footed animal. Again the pilgrims are in motion; they wind their +pathless way round rocks and fissures; they have reached the greatest +height of the sterile platform; and as they gaze on the valleys whose +waters hasten to join the Pacific Ocean, and bid adieu, perhaps for the +last time, to the dear friends they have left in the distant east, how +intense must be their feelings, as thoughts of the past and the +future blend themselves in their anxious minds! But now I see them, +brother-like, with lighter steps, descending toward the head waters +of the famed Oregon. They have reached the great stream, and seating +themselves in a canoe, shoot adown the current, gazing on the beautiful +shrubs and flowers that ornament the banks, and the majestic trees that +cover the sides of the valley, all new to them, and presenting a wide +field of discovery. The melodies of unknown songsters enliven their +spirits, and glimpses of gaudily plumed birds excite their desire to +search those beautiful thickets; but time is urgent, and onward they +must speed. A deer crosses the stream, they pursue and capture it; +and it being now evening, they land and soon form a camp, carefully +concealed from the prying eyes of the lurking savage. The night is past, +the dawn smiles upon the refreshed travellers, who launch their frail +bark; and, as they slowly float on the stream, both listen attentively +to the notes of the Red-and-White-winged Troopial, and wonder how +similar they are to those of the "Red-winged Starling;" they think of +the affinities of species, and especially of those of the lively birds +composing this beautiful group. + + * * * * * + + +=_Daniel Drake,[65] 1785-1852._= + +From a "Picture of Cincinnati, &c." + +=_261._= OBJECTS OF THE WESTERN MOUND-BUILDERS. + +No objects in the State of Ohio seem to have more forcibly arrested the +attention of travellers, nor employed a greater number of pens, than +its antiquities. It is to be regretted, however, that so hastily and +superficially have they been examined by strangers, and so generally +neglected by ourselves, that the materials for a full description have +not yet been collected.... + +The forests over these remains exhibit no appearances of more recent +growth than in other parts. Trees, several hundred years old, are in +many places seen growing out of the ruins of others, which appear to +have been of equal size.... + +Those at Cincinnati, for example, exhibit so few of the characters of a +defensive work, that General Wayne, upon attentively surveying them in +1794, was of opinion that they were not designed for that purpose. It +was from the examination of valley-works only, that Bishop Madison was +led to deny that the remains of the western country were ever intended +for defence, and to conclude that they were enclosures for permanent +residence. It would be precipitate to assert that the relics found in +the valleys were for this purpose, and those of the uplands for defence. +But while it is certain that the latter were military posts, it seems +highly probable that the former were for ordinary abode in times of +peace. They were towns and the seats of chiefs, whose perishable parts +have crumbled into earth, and disappeared with the generations which +formed them. Many of them might have been calculated for defence, as +well as for habitations; but the latter must have been the chief purpose +for which they were erected. On the contrary, the hill-constructions, +which are generally in the strongest military positions of the country, +were designed solely for defence, in open and vigorous war. + +[Footnote 65: A native of New Jersey, who was taken when very young, +to the West, where he became distinguished as a medical professor and +practitioner. His recollections and sketches are very valuable.] + + * * * * * + + +=_John Bachman,[66] 1790-1873._= + +From "The Quadrupeds of North America." + +=_262._= THE OPOSSUM. + +We can imagine to ourselves the surprise with which the opossum was +regarded by Europeans, when they first saw it. Scarcely anything was +known of the marsupial animals, as New Holland had not as yet opened its +unrivalled stores of singularities to astonish the world. Here was a +strange animal, with the head and ears of the pig, sometimes hanging on +the limb of a tree, and occasionally swinging like the monkey by the +tail. Around that prehensile appendage a dozen sharp-nosed, sleek-headed +young had entwined their own tails, and were sitting on the mother's +back. The astonished traveller approaches this extraordinary compound of +an animal, and touches it cautiously with a stick. Instantly it seems +to be struck with some mortal disease: its eyes close, it falls to the +ground, ceases to move, and appears to be dead. He turns it on its back, +and perceives on its stomach a strange, apparently artificial opening. +He puts his fingers into the extraordinary pocket, and lo, another brood +of a dozen or more young, scarcely larger than a pea, are hanging +in clusters on the teats. In pulling the creature about, in great +amazement, he suddenly receives a gripe on the hand; the twinkling of +the half-closed eye, and the breathing of the creature, evince that it +is not dead: and he adds a new term to the vocabulary of his language, +that of "playing possum." + +... When the young are four weeks old, they begin from time to time to +relax their hold on the teats, and may now be seen with their heads +occasionally out of the pouch. A week later, and they venture to steal +occasionally from their snug retreat in the pouch, and are often seen on +the mother's back, securing themselves by entwining their tails around +hers. In this situation she moves from place to place in search of food, +carrying her whole family along with her, to which she is much attached, +and in whose defence she exhibits a considerable degree of courage, +growling at any intruder, and ready to use her teeth with great severity +on man or dog. In travelling, it is amusing to see this large family +moving about. Some of the young, nearly the size of rats, have their +tails entwined around the legs of the mother, and some around her +neck,--thus they are dragged along. They have a mild and innocent look, +and are sleek, and in fine condition, and this is the only age in which +the word pretty can be applied to the Opossum. At this period, the +mother in giving sustenance to so large a family, becomes thin, and is +reduced to one-half of her previous weight. The whole family of young +remain with her about two months, and continue in the vicinity till +autumn. In the meantime, a second, and often a third brood, is produced, +and thus two or more broods of different ages may be seen, sometimes +with the mother, and at other times not far off. + +... Hunting the Opossum is a very favorite amusement among domestics and +field laborers on our Southern plantations, of lads broke loose from +school in the holidays, and even of gentlemen, who are sometimes more +fond of this sport than of the less profitable and more dangerous and +fatiguing one of hunting the gray fox by moonlight. Although we have +never participated in an Opossum hunt, yet we have observed that it +afforded much amusement to the sable group that in the majority of +instances make up the hunting party, and we have on two or three +occasions been the silent and gratified observers of the preparations +that were going on, the anticipations indulged in, and the excitement +apparent around us. + +[Footnote 66: A clergyman of the Lutheran church, for many years a +citizen of Charleston, South Carolina, out originally from New York; +eminent for his attainments and writings in natural history and +science.] + + * * * * * + + +=_J. A. Lapham.[67]_= + +From "Wisconsin, its Geography," &c. + +=_263._= THE SMALLER LAKES. + +BESIDES these immense lakes, Wisconsin abounds in those of smaller size, +scattered profusely over her whole surface. They are from one to twenty +or thirty miles in extent. Many of them are the most beautiful that +can be imagined--the water deep, and of crystal purity and clearness, +surrounded by sloping hills and promontories, covered with scattered +groves and clumps of trees. Some are of a more picturesque kind, being +more rugged in their appearance, with steep, rocky bluffs, crowned +with cedar, hemlock, spruce, and other evergreen trees of a similar +character. Perhaps a small rocky island will vary the scene, covered +with a conical mass of vegetation, the low shrubs and bushes being +arranged around the margin, and the tall trees in the centre. These +lakes usually abound in fish of various kinds, affording food for the +pioneer settler; and among the pebbles on their shores may occasionally +be found fine specimens of agate, carnelian, and other precious stones. +In the bays, where the water is shallow, and but little affected by the +winds, the wild rice grows in abundance, affording subsistence for the +Indian, and attracting innumerable water-birds to these lakes. + +[Footnote 67: The age of this meritorious and industrious writer we have +not been able to learn. The second edition of his book on Wisconsin +appeared in 1846.] + + * * * * * + +=_264._= ANCIENT EARTHWORKS. + +There is a class of ancient earthworks in Wisconsin, not before found +in any other country.... Some have a resemblance to the buffalo, the +eagle, or crane, or to the turtle or lizard. One, representing the human +form, near the Blue Mounds, is, according to R.C. Taylor, Esq., +one hundred and twenty feet in length: it lies in an east and west +direction, the head towards the west, with the arms and legs extended. +The body or trunk is thirty feet in breadth, the head twenty-five, and +its elevation above the general surface of the prairie is about six +feet. Its conformation is so distinct, that there can be no possibility +of mistake in assigning it to the human figure. + + * * * * * + + +=_Charles Wilkins Webber, 1819-1856._= (Manual, p. 505.) + +From "Wild Scenes and Song-birds." + +=_265._= THE MOCKING-BIRD. + +THE next spring a new melody filled the air. A melody such as I had +never heard before burst in clear and overwhelming raptures from +the meadows where I had first seen the graceful stranger with the +white-barred wings, last year.... I saw it now leaping up from its +favorite perch on a tree-top much in the manner I had observed before, +but now it was in a different mood and seemed to mount thus spirit-like +upon the wilder ecstasies, and floating fall upon the subsiding cadence, +of that passionate song it poured into the listening ear of love, for I +could see his mate, with fainter bars across her wings, where she sat +upon a thornbush near, and listened. When this magnificent creature +commenced to sing, the very air was burdened with a thousand different +notes; but his voice rose clear and melodiously loud above them all. +As I listened, one song after another ceased suddenly, until, in a few +minutes, and before I could realize that it was so, I found myself +hearkening to that solitary voice. This is a positive fact. I looked +around me in astonishment. What! Are they awed? But his song only now +grew more exulting, and, as if feeling his triumph, he bounded yet +higher, with each new gush, and in swift and quivering raptures dived, +skimmed, and floated round--round--then rose to fall again more boldly +on the billowy storm of sound. + +... This curious phenomenon I have witnessed many times since. Even in +the morning choir, when every little throat seems strained in emulation, +if the mocking-bird breathes forth in one of its mad, bewildered, and +bewildering extravaganzas, the other birds pause almost invariably, and +remain silent until his song is done. This, I assure you, is no figment +of the imagination, or illusion of an excited fancy; it is just as +substantial a fact as any other one in natural history. Whether the +other birds stop from envy, as has been said, or from awe, cannot be so +well ascertained, but I believe it is from the sentiment of awe, for as +I certainly have felt it myself in listening to the mocking-bird, I do +not know why these inferior creatures should not also. + + * * * * * + + +=_Charles Lanman, 1819-._= (Manual, p. 505.) + +From "Haw-ho-noo." + +=_266._= MAPLE-SUGAR-MAKING AMONG THE INDIANS. + +It is in the month of April, and the hunting season is at an end. +Albeit, the ground is covered with snow, the noonday sun has become +quite powerful; and the annual offering has been made to the Great +Spirit, by the medicine-men, of the first product of one of the earliest +trees in the district. This being the preparatory signal for extensive +business, the women of the encampment proceed to make a large number of +wooden troughs (to receive the liquid treasure), and after these are +finished, the various trees in the neighborhood are tapped, and the +juice begins to run. In the mean time the men of the party have built +the necessary fires, and suspended over them their earthen, brass, or +iron kettles. The sap is now flowing in copious streams, and from one +end of the camp to the other is at once presented an animated and +romantic scene, which continues day and night, until the end of +the sugar season. The principal employment to which the men devote +themselves, is that of lounging about the encampment, shooting at marks, +and playing the moccasin game; while the main part of the labor is +performed by the women, who not only attend to the kettles, but employ +all their leisure time in making the beautiful birchen mocucks, for the +preservation and transportation of the sugar when made; the sap being +brought from the troughs to the kettles, by the boys and girls. Less +attention than usual is paid by the Indians at such times to their +meals; and unless game is very easily obtained, they are quite content +to depend upon the sugar alone. + +It was now about the middle of June, and some fifty birchen canoes have +just been launched upon the waters of Green Bay. They are occupied by +our Ottawa sugar-makers, who have started upon a pilgrimage to Mackinaw. +The distance is near two hundred miles, and as the canoes are heavily +laden not only with mocucks of sugar, but with furs collected by the +hunters during the past winter, and the Indians are travelling at their +leisure, the party will probably reach their desired haven in the course +of ten days. Well content with their accumulated treasures, both the +women and the men are in a particularly happy mood, and many a wild song +is heard to echo over the placid lake. As the evening approaches, day +after day they seek out some convenient landing place, and, pitching the +wigwams on the beach, spend a goodly portion of the night carousing and +telling stories around their camp fires, resuming their voyage after a +morning sleep, long alter the sun has risen above the blue waters of +the east. Another sunset hour, and the cavalcade of canoes is quietly +gliding into the crescent bay of Mackinaw, and, reaching a beautiful +beach at the foot of a lofty bluff, the Indians again draw up their +canoes,--again erect their wigwams. And, as the Indian traders have +assembled on the spot, the more improvident of the party immediately +proceed to exhibit their sugar and furs, which are usually disposed of +for flour and pork, blankets and knives, guns, ammunition, and a great +variety of trinkets, long before the hour of midnight. + + * * * * * + + +=_Ephraim C. Squier, 1821-._= (Manual, p. 504.) + +From "Aboriginal Monuments of the West." + +=_267._= INDIAN POTTERY. + +The site of every Indian town throughout the west is marked by the +fragments of pottery scattered around it; and the cemeteries of the +various tribes abound with rude vessels of clay, piously deposited with +the dead. Previous to the discovery, the art of the potter was much more +important, and its practice more general than it afterwards became, upon +the introduction of metallic vessels. The mode of preparing and moulding +the materials is minutely described by the early observers, and seems to +have been common to all the tribes, and not to have varied materially +from that day to this. The work devolved almost exclusively upon the +women, who kneaded the clay and formed the vessels. Experience seems to +have suggested the means of so tempering the material as to resist +the action of fire; accordingly we find pounded shells, quartz, and +sometimes simple coarse sand from the streams mixed with the clay. +None of the pottery of the present races, found in the Ohio valley, +is destitute of this feature; and it is not uncommon, in certain +localities, where from the abundance of fragments, and from other +circumstances, it is supposed the manufacture was specially carried on, +to find quantities of the decayed shells of the fresh water molluscs, +intermixed with the earth, probably brought to the spot to be used in +the process. Amongst the Indians along the Gulf, a greater degree +of skill was displayed than with those on the upper waters of the +Mississippi, and on the lakes. Their vessels were generally larger and +more symmetrical, and of a superior finish. They moulded them over +gourds and models, and baked them in ovens. In the construction of those +of large size, it was customary to model them in baskets of willow or +splints, which, at the proper period, were burned off, leaving the +vessel perfect in form, and retaining the somewhat ornamental markings +of their moulds. Some of those found on the Ohio seem to have been +modelled in bags or nettings of coarse thread or twisted bark. These +practices are still retained by some of the remote western tribes. + + * * * * * + + +=_Benjamin Silliman, 1779-1864._= (Manual, p. 505.) + +From "A Tour to Canada." + +=_268._= THE FALLS OF MONTMORENCI. + +... The Montmorenci, after a gentle previous declivity, which, greatly +increases its velocity, takes its stupendous leap of two hundred and +forty feet, into a chasm among the rocks, where it boils and foams in a +natural rocky basin, from which, after its force is in some measure +exhausted in its own whirlpools and eddies, it flows away in a gentle +stream towards the St. Lawrence. The fall is nearly perpendicular, and +appears not to deviate more than three or four degrees from it. This +deviation is caused by the ledges of rock below, and is just sufficient +to break the water completely into foam and spray. + +The effect on the beholder is most delightful. The river, at some +distance, seems suspended in a sheet of billowy foam, and contrasted +as it is, with the black frowning abyss into which it falls, it is an +object of the highest interest. As we approached nearer to its foot, the +impressions of grandeur and sublimity were, in the most perfect manner +imaginable, blended with those of extreme beauty. + +This river is of so considerable a magnitude, that, precipitated as it +is from this amazing height, the thundering noise, and mighty rush +of waters, and the never-ceasing wind and rain produced by the fall, +powerfully arrest the attention: the spectator stands in profound awe, +mingled with delight, especially when he contrasts the magnitude of +the fall, with that of a villa, on the edge of the dark precipices +of frowning rock which form the western bank, and with the casual +spectators looking down from the same elevation. + +The sheet of foam which breaks over the ridge, is more and more divided +as it is dashed against the successive layers of rocks, which it +almost completely veils from view; the spray becomes very delicate and +abundant, from top to bottom, hanging over, and revolving around the +torrent, till it becomes lighter and more evanescent than the whitest +fleecy clouds of summer, than the finest attenuated web, than the +lightest gossamer, constituting the most airy and sumptuous drapery that +can be imagined. Yet, like the drapery of some of the Grecian statues, +which, while it veils, exhibits more forcibly the form beneath, this +does not hide, but exalts the effect produced by this noble cataract. + +The rainbow we saw in great perfection; bow within bow, and (what I +never saw elsewhere so perfectly), as I advanced into the spray, the +bow became complete, myself being a part of its circumference, and its +transcendent glories moving with every change of position. + +This beautiful and splendid sight was to be enjoyed only by advancing +quite into the shower of spray; as if, in the language of ancient +poetry, and fable, the genii of the place, pleased with the beholder's +near approach to the seat of their empire, decked the devotee with the +appropriate robes of the cataract, the vestal veil of fleecy spray, and +the heavenly splendors of the bow. + + * * * * * + + +=_John L. Stephens, 1808-1852._= (Manual, p. 504.) + +From the "Travels in Central America." + +=_269._= DISCOVERY OF A RUINED CITY IN THE WOODS + +The sight of this unexpected monument put at rest, at once and forever, +in our minds, all uncertainty in regard to the character of American +antiquities, and gave as the assurance that the objects we were in +search of were interesting, not only as the remains of an unknown +people, but as works of art, proving, like newly-discovered historical +records, that the people who once occupied the continent of America were +not savages. With an interest perhaps stronger than we had ever felt +in wandering among the ruins of Egypt, we followed our guide, who, +sometimes missing his way, with a constant and vigorous use of his +machete, conducted us through the thick forest, among half-buried +fragments, to fourteen monuments of the same character and appearance, +some with more elegant designs, and some in workmanship equal to the +finest monuments of the Egyptians; one displaced from its pedestal by +enormous roots; another locked in the close embrace of branches of +trees, and almost lifted out of the earth; another hurled to the ground, +and bound down by huge vines and creepers; and one standing, with its +altar before it, in a grove of trees which grew around it, seemingly to +shade and shroud it as a sacred thing; in the solemn stillness of the +woods it seemed a divinity mourning over a fallen people. The only +sounds that disturbed the quiet of this buried city, were the noise of +monkeys moving among the tops of the trees, and the cracking of dry +branches broken by their weight. They moved over our heads in long and +swift processions, forty or fifty at a time; some, with little ones +wound in their long arms, walking out to the end of boughs, and holding +on with their hind feet, or a curl of the tail, sprang to a branch of +the next tree, and with a noise like a current of wind, passed on into +the depths of the forest. It was the first time we had seen these +mockeries of humanity, and with the strange monuments around us, they +seemed like wandering spirits of the departed race, guarding the ruins +of their former habitations. + +... We sat down on the very edge of the wall, and strove in vain to +penetrate the mystery by which we were surrounded. Who were the people +that built this city? In the ruined cities of Egypt,--even in the long +lost Petra, the stranger knows the story of the people whose vestiges +are around him. America, say historians, was peopled by savages; but +savages never reared these structures, savages never carved these +stones. + + * * * * * + + +=_John Charles Fremont, 1813-._= (Manual, p. 505.) + +From "Report of an Exploring Expedition." + +=_270._= ASCENT OF A PEAK OF THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS. + +We continued climbing, and in a short time reached the crest. I sprang +upon the summit, and another step would have precipitated me into an +immense snow field five hundred feet below. To the edge of this field +was a sheer icy precipice; and then, with a gradual fall, the field +sloped off for about a mile, until it struck the foot of another lower +ridge. I stood on a narrow crest, about three feet in width, with an +inclination of about 20° N., 51° E. As soon as I had gratified the first +feelings of curiosity, I descended, and each man ascended in his +turn; for I would only allow one at a time to mount the unstable and +precarious slab, which it seemed a breath would hurl into the abyss +below. We mounted the barometer in the snow of the summit, and fixing a +ramrod in a crevice, unfurled the national flag to wave in the breeze, +where never flag waved before. During our morning's ascent, we had met +no sign of animal life, except the small sparrow-like bird already +mentioned. A stillness the most profound, and a terrible solitude forced +themselves constantly on the mind, as the great features of the place. +Here, on the summit, where the stillness was absolute, unbroken by any +sound, and the solitude complete, we thought ourselves beyond the region +of animated life; but while we were sitting on the rock, a solitary bee +(_bromus_, the bumble bee) came winging his flight from the eastern +valley, and lit on the knee of one of the men. + + * * * * * + +=_271._= THE COLUMBIA RIVER, OREGON. + +The Columbia is the only river which traverses the whole breadth of the +country, breaking through all the ranges, and entering the sea. Drawing +its waters from a section of ten degrees of latitude in the Rocky +Mountains, which are collected into one stream by three main forks +(Lewis', Clark's, and the North Fork) near the center of the Oregon +valley, this great river thence proceeds by a single channel to the sea, +while its three forks lead each to a pass in the mountains which opens +the way into the interior of the continent. This fact in relation to the +rivers of this region, gives an immense value to the Columbia. Its mouth +is the only inlet and outlet, to and from the sea; its three forks +lead to the passes in the mountains; it is therefore the only line of +communication between the Pacific and the interior of North America; and +all operations of war or commerce, of national or social intercourse, +must be conducted upon it. This gives it a value beyond estimation, +and would involve irreparable injury if lost. In this unity and +concentration of its waters, the Pacific side of our continent differs +entirely from the Atlantic side, where the waters of the Alleghany +mountains are dispersed into many rivers, having their different +entrances into the sea, and opening many lines of communication with the +interior. + + * * * * * + +=_Elisha Kent Kane,[68] 1822-1857._= + +From "Arctic Explorations." + +=_272._= THE DISCOVERY OF AN OPEN SEA. + +As Morton, leaving Hans and his dogs, passed between Sir John Franklin +Island and the narrow beach-line, the coast became more wall-like, and +dark masses of porphyritic rock abutted into the sea. With growing +difficulty, he managed to climb from rock to rock, in hopes of doubling +the promontory and sighting the coasts beyond, but the water kept +encroaching more and more on his track. + +It must have been an imposing sight, as he stood at this termination of +his journey, looking out upon the great waste of waters before him. Not +a "speck of ice," to use his own words, could be seen. There, from a +height of four hundred and eighty feet, which commanded a horizon of +almost forty miles, his ears were gladdened with the novel music of +dashing waves; and a surf, breaking in among the rocks at his feet, +stayed his farther progress. + +Beyond this cape all is surmise. The high ridges to the north-west +dwindled off into low blue knobs, which blended finally with the air. +Morton called the cape, which baffled his labors, after his commander; +but I have given it the more enduring name of Cape Constitution. + +... I am reluctant to close my notice of this discovery of an open sea +without adding that the details of Mr. Morton's narrative harmonized +with the observations of all our party. I do not propose to discuss here +the causes or conditions of this phenomenon. How far it may +extend--whether it exist simply as a feature of the immediate region, or +as part of a great and unexplored area communicating with the Polar +basin, and what may be the argument in favor of one or the other +hypothesis, or the explanation which reconciles it with established +laws--may be questions for men skilled in scientific deductions. Mine +has been the more humble duty of recording what we saw. Coming as it +did, a mysterious fluidity in the midst of vast plains of solid ice, it +was well calculated to arouse emotions of the highest order; and I do +not believe there was a man among us who did not long for the means of +embarking upon its bright and lonely waters. + +[Footnote 68: A traveller, explorer, and writer of high merit; a native +of Philadelphia, and a Surgeon in the Navy. His early death was much +deplored.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Bayard Taylor, 1825-._= (Manual, pp. 505, 523, 531.) + +From "Eldorado." + +=_273._= MONTEREY, CALIFORNIA. + +No one can be in Monterey a single night, without being startled and +awed by the deep, solemn crashes of the surf, as it breaks along the +shore. There is no continuous roar of the plunging waves, as we hear on +the Atlantic seaboard; the slow, regular swells--quiet pulsations of +the great Pacific's heart--roll inward in unbroken lines, and fall with +single grand crashes, with intervals of dead silence between. They may +be heard through the day, if one listens, like a solemn undertone to all +the shallow noises of the town; but at midnight, when all else is +still, those successive shocks fall upon the ear with a sensation of +inexpressible solemnity. All the air, from the pine forests to the sea, +is filled with a light tremor, and the intermitting beats of sound are +strong enough to jar a delicate ear. Their constant repetition at last +produces a feeling something like terror. A spirit worn and weakened by +some scathing sorrow could scarcely bear the reverberation. + + * * * * * + +=_274._= APPROACH TO SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA. + +Sunset came on as we approached the strait opening from Pablo Bay into +the Bay of San Francisco. The cloudless sky became gradually suffused +with a soft rose-tint, which covered its whole surface, painting alike +the glassy sheet of the bay, and glowing most vividly on the mountains +to the eastward. The color deepened every moment, and the peaks of the +Coast Range burned with a rich vermilion light, like that of a live +coal. This faded gradually into as glowing a purple, and at last into a +blue as intense as that of the sea at noon-day. The first effect of the +light was most wonderful; the mountains stretched around the horizon +like a belt of varying fire and amethyst, between the two roseate deeps +of air and water; the shores were transmuted into solid, the air into +fluid gems. Could the pencil faithfully represent this magnificent +transfiguration of Nature, it would appear utterly unreal and impossible +to eyes which never beheld the reality.... It lingered, and lingered, +changing almost imperceptibly and with so beautiful a decay, that one +lost himself in the enjoyment of each successive charm, without regret +for those which were over. The dark blue of the mountains deepened into +their night-garb of dusky shadow without any interfusion of dead, ashy +color, and the heaven overhead was spangled with all its stars long +before the brilliant arch of orange in the west had sunk below the +horizon. I have seen the dazzling sunsets of the Mediterranean flush +the beauty of its shores, and the mellow skies which Claude used to +contemplate from the Pincian Hill; but lovely as they are in my memory, +they seem cold and pale when I think of the splendor of such a scene, on +the Bay of San Francisco. + + * * * * * + +The Little Land of Appenzell. + +=_275._= SWISS SCENERY,--A BATTLEFIELD; PICTURESQUE DWELLINGS. + +On the right lay the land of Appenzell,--not a table-land, but a region +of mountain, ridge, and summit, of valley and deep, dark gorge, green as +emerald, up to the line of snow, and so thickly studded with dwellings, +grouped or isolated, that there seemed to be one scattered village as +far as the eye could reach. To the south, over forests of fir, the +Sentis lifted his huge towers of rock, crowned with white, wintry +pyramids. + +Here, where we are, said the postillion, "was the first battle; but +there was another, two years afterwards, over there, the other side of +Trogen, where the road goes down to the Rhine. Stoss is the place, and +there's a chapel built on the very spot. Duke Frederick of Austria came +to help the Abbott Runo, and the Appenzellers were only one to ten +against them. It was a great fight, they say, and the women helped,--not +with pikes and guns, but in this way: they put on white shirts, and came +out of the woods, above where the lighting was going on. Now when the +Austrians and the Abbot's people saw them, they thought there were +spirits helping the Appenzellers, (the women were all white you see, +and too far off to show plainly,) and so they gave up the fight, after +losing nine hundred knights and troopers. After that, it was ordered, +that the women should go first to the sacrament, so that no man might +forget the help they gave in that battle. And the people go every year +to the chapel, on the same day when it took place." + +If one could only transport--a few of these houses to the United +States! Our country architecture is not only hideous, but frequently +unpractical, being at worst, shanties, and at best, city residences set +in the fields. An Appenzell farmer lives in a house from forty to sixty +feet square, and rarely less than four stories in height. The two upper +stories, however, are narrowed by the high, steep roof, so that the true +front of the house is one of the gables. The roof projects at least four +feet on all sides, giving shelter to balconies of carved wood, which +cross the front under each row of windows. The outer walls are covered +with upright, overlapping shingles, not more than two or three inches +broad, and rounded at the ends, suggesting the scale armor of ancient +times. This covering secures the greatest warmth; and when the shingles +have acquired from age that rich burnt-sienna tint--which no paint could +exactly imitate, the effect is exceedingly beautiful. The lowest story +is generally of stone, plastered and whitewashed. The stories are low, +(seven to eight feet) but the windows are placed side by side, and each +room is thoroughly lighted. Such a house is very warm, very durable, +and, without any apparent expenditure of ornament, is externally so +picturesque that no ornament could improve it.... + +The view of a broad Alpine landscape dotted all over with such beautiful +homes, from the little shelf of green hanging on the sides of a rocky +gorge, and the strips of sunny pasture between the ascending forests, to +the very summits of the lower heights and the saddles between them, was +something quite new in my experience. + + * * * * * + + + +NOVELISTS AND WRITERS OF FICTION. + + +=_Charles Brockden Brown, 1771-1810._= (Manual, pp. 478, 505.) + +From "Ormond." + +=_276._= THE YELLOW FEVER IN PHILADELPHIA. + +As she approached the house to which she was going, her reluctance to +proceed increased. Frequently she paused to recollect the motives that +had prescribed this task, and to re-enforce her purposes. At length she +arrived at the house. Now, for the first time, her attention was excited +by the silence and desolation that surrounded her. This evidence of fear +and of danger struck upon her heart. All appeared to have fled from the +presence of this unseen and terrible foe. The temerity of adventuring +thus into the jaws of the pest, now appeared to her in glaring colors. + +... She cast her eye towards the house opposite to where she now stood. +Her heart drooped on perceiving proofs that the dwelling was still +inhabited. The door was open, and the windows in the second and third +story were raised. Near the entrance, in the street, stood a cart. The +horse attached to it, in his form, and furniture, and attitude, was an +emblem of torpor and decay. His gaunt sides, motionless limbs, his gummy +and dead eyes, and his head hanging to the ground, were in unison with +the craziness of the vehicle to which he belonged, and the paltry and +bedusted harness which covered him. No attendant nor any human face was +visible. The stillness, though at an hour customarily busy, was +uninterrupted, except by the sound of wheels moving at an almost +indistinguishable distance. + +She paused for a moment to contemplate this unwonted spectacle. Her +trepidations were mingled with emotions not unakin to sublimity; but the +consciousness of danger speedily prevailed, and she hastened to acquit +herself of her engagement. She approached the door for this purpose, but +before she could draw the bell, her motions were arrested by sounds +from within. The staircase was opposite the door. Two persons were now +discovered descending the stair. They lifted between them a heavy mass, +which was presently discerned to be a coffin. Shocked by this discovery, +and trembling, she withdrew from the entrance. + + * * * * * + + +=_Washington Allston, 1779-1843._= (Manual, pp. 504, 510.) + +From "Monaldi." + +=_277._= IMPERSONATION OF THE POWER OF EVIL. + +The light (which descended from above) was so powerful, that for nearly +a minute I could distinguish nothing, and I rested on a form attached +to the wainscoting. I then put up my hand to shade my eyes, when--the +fearful vision is even now before me--I seemed to be standing before +an abyss in space, boundless and black. In the midst of this permeable +pitch stood a colossal mass of gold, in shape like an altar, and girdled +about by a huge serpent, gorgeous and terrible; his body flecked with +diamonds, and his head, an enormous carbuncle, floating like a meteor +on the air above. Such was the Throne. But no words can describe +the gigantic Being that sat thereon--the grace, the majesty, its +transcendent form--and yet I shuddered as I looked, for its superhuman +countenance seemed, as it were, to radiate falsehood; every feature was +in contradiction--the eye, the mouth, even to the nostril--whilst the +expression of the whole was of that unnatural softness which can only be +conceived of malignant blandishment. It was the appalling beauty of the +King of Hell. The frightful discord vibrated through my whole frame, and +I turned for relief to the figure below.... But I had turned from the +first, only to witness in the second object, its withering fascination. +I beheld the mortal conflict between the conscience and the will--the +visible struggle of a soul in the toils of sin. + + * * * * * + +From his "Letters." + +=_278._= ON A PICTURE BY CARRACCI. + +The subject was the body of the virgin borne for interment by four +apostles. The figures are colossal; the tone dark, and of tremendous +color. It seemed, as I looked at it, as if the ground shook at their +tread, and the air was darkened by their grief. + + * * * * * + +=_279._= ORIGINALITY OF MIND. + +An original mind is rarely understood until it has been _reflected_ from +some half dozen congenial with it; so averse are men to admitting the +true in an unusual form; whilst any novelty, however fantastic, however +false, is greedily swallowed. + + * * * * * + + +=_James K. Paulding, 1779-1860._= (Manual, p. 510.) + +From "Letters from the South." + +=_280._= CHARACTER OF THE DUTCH AND GERMAN SETTLERS. + +In almost every part of the United States where I have chanced to be, +except among the Dutch, the Germans, and the Quakers, people seem to +build everything extempore and pro tempore, as if they looked forward +to a speedy removal or did not expect to want it long. Nowhere else, it +seems to me, do people work more for the present, less for the future, +or live so commonly up to the extent of their means. If we build houses, +they are generally of wood, and hardly calculated to outlast the +builder. If we plant trees, they are generally Lombardy poplars, that +spring up of a sudden, give no more shade than a broom stuck on end, and +grow old with their planters. Still, however, I believe all this has +a salutary and quickening influence on the character of the people, +because it offers another spur to activity, stimulating it not only +by the hope of gain, but the necessity of exertion to remedy passing +inconveniences. Thus the young heir, instead of stepping into the +possession of a house completely finished, and replete with every +convenience--an estate requiring no labor or exertion to repair its +dilapidations, finds it absolutely necessary to bestir himself to +complete what his ancestor had only begun, and thus is relieved from the +tedium and temptations of idleness. + +But you can always tell when you get among the Dutch and the Quakers, +for there you perceive that something has been done for posterity. Their +houses are of stone, and built for duration, not for show. If a German +builds a house, its walls are twice as thick as others--if he puts down +a gate-post, it is sure to be nearly as thick as it is long. Every +thing about him, animate and inanimate, partakes of this character of +solidity. His wife even is a jolly, portly dame, his children +chubby rogues, with legs shaped like little old-fashioned mahogany +bannisters--his barns as big as fortresses--his horses like +mammoths--his cattle enormous--and his breeches surprisingly redundant in +linseywoolsey. It matters not to him, whether the form of sideboards or +bureaus changes, or whether other people wear tight breeches or cossack +pantaloons in the shape of meal-bags. Let fashion change as it may, +his low, round-crowned, broad-brimmed hat, keeps its ground, his +galligaskins support the same liberal dimensions, and his old oaken +chest and clothes-press of curled maple, with the Anno Domini of their +construction upon them, together with the dresser glistening with +pewter-plates, still stand their ground, while the baseless fabrics +of fashion fade away, without leaving a wreck behind. Ceaseless and +unwearied industry is his delight, and enterprise and speculation his +abhorrence. Riches do not corrupt, nor poverty depress him; for his +mind is a sort of Pacific ocean, such as the first navigators described +it--unmoved by tempests, and only intolerable from its dead and tedious +calms. Thus he moves on, and when he dies his son moves on in the +same pace, till generations have passed away, without one of the name +becoming distinguished by his exploits or his crimes. These are useful +citizens, for they bless a country with useful works, and add to its +riches. But still, though industry, prudence, and economy are useful +habits, they are selfish after all, and can hardly aspire to the dignity +of virtues, except as they are preservatives against active vices. + + * * * * * + +From "Westward Ho." + +=_281._= ABORTIVE TOWNS. + +Zeno Paddock and his wife Mrs. Judith, departed from the village, never +to return. Such was the reputation of the proprietor of the Western Sun, +that a distinguished speculator, who was going to found a great city +at the junction of Big Dry, and Little Dry, Rivers, made him the most +advantageous offers to come and establish himself there, and puff the +embryo bantling into existence as fast as possible. He offered him a +whole square next to that where the college, the courthouse, the +church, the library, the athenaeum, and all the public buildings were +situated.... Truth obliges us to say, that on his arrival at the city of +New Pekin, as it was called, he found it covered with a forest of trees, +each of which would take a man half a day to walk round; and that on +discovering the square in which all the public buildings were situated, +he found, to his no small astonishment, on the very spot where the +court-house stood on the map, a flock of wild turkeys gobbling like so +many lawyers, and two or three white-headed owls sitting on the high +trees listening with most commendable gravity.... Zeno set himself down, +began to print his paper in a great hollow sycamore, and to live on +anticipation, as many great speculators had done before him. + + * * * * * + + +=_James Fenimore Cooper, 1789-1851._= (Manual, pp. 478, 495, 506.) + +From "The Pioneers." + +=_282._= THE SHOOTING MATCH. + +In the mean while, as Billy Kirby was preparing himself for another +shot, Natty left the goal, with an extremely dissatisfied manner, +muttering to himself, and speaking aloud.-- + +"There hasn't been such a thing as a good flint sold at the foot of +the lake, since the time when the Indian traders used to come into the +country;--and if a body should go into the flats along the streams in +the hills, to hunt, for such a thing, it's ten to one but they will be +all covered up with the plough. Heigho! its seems to me, that just as +the game grows scarce, and a body wants the best of ammunition, to get +a livelihood, everything that's bad falls on him, like a judgment. But +I'll change the stone, for Billy Kirby hasn't the eye for such a mark, I +know." + +The wood-chopper seemed now entirely sensible that his reputation in +a great measure depended on his care; nor did he neglect any means to +ensure his success. He drew up his rifle, and renewed his aim, again and +again, still appearing reluctant to fire. No sound was heard from even +Brom, during these portentous movements, until Kirby discharged his +piece, with the same want of success as before. Then, indeed, the shouts +of the negro rung through the bushes, and sounded among the trees of the +neighboring forest, like the outcries of a tribe of Indians. He laughed, +rolling his head, first on one side, then on the other, until nature +seemed exhausted with mirth. He danced, until his legs were wearied with +motion, in the snow; and in short, he exhibited all that violence of joy +that characterizes the mirth of a thoughtless negro. + +The wood-chopper had exerted his art, and felt a proportionate degree +of disappointment at his failure. He first examined the bird with the +utmost attention, and more than once suggested that he had touched its +feathers, but the voice of the multitude was against him, for it felt +disposed to listen to the often-repeated cries of the black, to "gib a +nigger fair play." + +Finding it impossible to make out a title to the bird, Kirby turned +fiercely to the black, and said-- + +"Shut your oven, you crow! Where is the man that can hit a turkey's head +at a hundred yards? I was a fool for trying. You needn't make an uproar +like a falling pine-tree about it. Show me the man who can do it." + +"Look this a-way, Billy Kirby," said Leather-Stocking, "and let them +clear the mark, and I'll show you a man who's made better shots afore +now, and that when he's been hard pressed by the savages and wild +beasts." + + * * * * * + +Although Natty Bumppo[69] had certainly made hundreds of more momentous +shots, at his enemies or his game, yet he never exerted himself more to +excel. He raised his piece three several times; once to get his range; +once to calculate his distance; and once because the bird, alarmed by +the deathlike stillness that prevailed, turned its head quickly to +examine its foes. But the fourth time he fired. The smoke, the report, +and the momentary shock, prevented most of the spectators from instantly +knowing the result; but Elizabeth, when she saw her champion drop the +end of his rifle in the snow, and open his mouth in one of its silent +laughs, and then proceed very coolly to recharge his piece, knew that he +had been successful. The boys rushed to the mark, and lifted the turkey +on high, lifeless, and with nothing but the remnant of a head. + +"Bring in the critter," said Leather-Stocking, "and put it at the +feet of the lady. I was her deputy in the matter, and the bird is +her property." ... Elizabeth handed the black a piece of silver as a +remuneration for his loss, which had some effect in again unbending his +muscles, and then expressed to her companion her readiness to return +homeward. + +[Footnote 69: Another name of Leather-Stocking.] + + * * * * * + +From "The Pilot." + +=_283._= LONG TOM COFFIN. + +The seaman who was addressed by this dire appellation arose slowly from +the place where he was stationed as cockswain of the boat, and seemed to +ascend high in air by the gradual evolution of numberless folds in his +body. When erect, he stood nearly six feet and as many inches in his +shoes, though, when elevated in his most perpendicular attitude, there +was a forward inclination about his head and shoulders, that appeared to +be the consequence of habitual confinement in limited lodgings.... One +of his hands grasped, with a sort of instinct, the staff of a bright +harpoon, the lower end of which he placed firmly on the rock, as, in +obedience to the order of his commander, he left the place, where, +considering his vast dimensions, he had been established in an +incredibly small space. + +... The hardy old seaman, thus addressed, turned his grave visage on his +commander, and replied with a becoming gravity,-- + +"Give me a plenty of sea-room, and good canvas, where there is no +occasion for pilots at all, sir. For my part, I was born on board a +chebacco-man, and never could see the use of more land than now and then +a small island, to raise a few vegetables, and to dry your fish--I'm +sure the sight of it always makes me feel uncomfortable, unless we have +the wind dead off shore." + +... "I am more than half of your mind, that an island now and then is +all the terra firma that a seaman needs." + +"It's reason and philosophy, sir," returned the sedate cock-swain; "and +what land there is, should always be a soft mud, or a sandy ooze, in +order that an anchor might hold, and to make soundings sartin. I have +lost many a deep-sea, besides hand-leads by the dozens, on rocky +bottoms; but give me the roadstead where a lead comes up light, and an +anchor heavy. There's a boat pulling athwart our fore-foot, Captain +Barnstable; shall I run her aboard, or give her a berth, sir." + + * * * * * + +From "The Prairie." + +=284.= DEATH OF THE AGED TRAPPER, IN THE PAWNEE VILLAGE. + +The trapper had remained nearly motionless for an hour. His eyes alone +had occasionally opened and shut. When opened, his gaze seemed fastened +on the clouds which hung around the western horizon, reflecting the +bright colors, and giving form and loveliness to the glorious tints +of an American sunset. The hour, the calm beauty of the season, the +occasion, all conspired to fill the spectators with solemn awe. +Suddenly, while musing on the remarkable position in which he was +placed, Middleton felt the hand which he held grasp his own with +incredible power, and the old man, supported on either side by his +friends, rose upright to his feet. For a moment he looked about him, as +if to invite all in presence to listen (the lingering remnant of human +frailty), and then, with a fine military elevation of the head, and with +a voice that might be heard in every part of that numerous assembly, he +pronounced the word "Here!" + +A movement so entirely unexpected, and the air of grandeur and humility +which were so remarkably united in the mien of the trapper, together +with the clear and uncommon force of his utterance, produced a short +period of confusion in the faculties of all present. When Middleton and +Hard-Heart, each of whom had involuntarily extended a hand to support +the form of the old man, turned to him again, they found that the +subject of their interest was removed forever beyond the necessity of +their care. + + * * * * * + +From "The Red Rover." + +=_285._= ESCAPE FROM THE WRECK. + +... The boat was soon cleared of what, under their circumstances, was +literally lumber; leaving, however, far more than enough to meet all +their wants, and not a few of their comforts, in the event that the +elements should accord the permission to use them. + +Then, and not till then, did Wilder relax in his exertions. He had +arranged his sails ready to be hoisted in an instant; he had carefully +examined that no straggling rope connected the boat to the wreck, to +draw them under with the foundering mass; and he had assured himself +that food, water, compass, and the imperfect instruments that were there +then in use to ascertain the position of a ship, were all perfectly +disposed of in their several places, and ready to his hand. When all was +in this state of preparation, he disposed of himself in the stern of the +boat, and endeavored by the composure of his manner, to inspire his less +resolute companions with a portion of his own firmness. + +The bright sunshine was sleeping in a thousand places on every side of +the silent and deserted wreck. The sea had subsided to such a state of +utter rest that it was only at long intervals that the huge and helpless +mass, on which the ark of the expectants lay, was lifted from its dull +quietude, to roll heavily, for a moment in the washing waters, and +then to settle lower into the greedy and absorbing element. Still the +disappearance of the hull was slow, and even tedious, to those who +looked forward with such impatience to its total immersion, as to the +crisis of their own fortunes. + + * * * * * + +Then came the moon, with its mild and deceptive light, to throw the +delusion of its glow on the varying but ever frightful scene. + +"See," said Wilder, as the luminary lifted its pale and melancholy orb +out of the bed of the ocean; "we shall have light for our hazardous +launch!" + +"Is it at hand?" demanded Mrs. Wyllis, with all the resolution of manner +she could assume in so trying a situation. + +"It is--the ship has already brought her scuppers to the water. +Sometimes a vessel will float until saturated with the brine. If ours +sink at all, it will be soon." "If at all! Is there then hope that she +can float?" + +"None!" said Wilder, pausing to listen to the hollow and threatening +sounds which issued from the depths of the vessel, as the water broke +through her divisions, in passing from side to side, and which sounded +like the groaning of some heavy monster in the last agony of nature. +"None; she is already losing her level!" + +His companions saw the change; but not for the empire of the world, +could either of them have uttered a syllable. Another low, threatening, +rumbling sound was heard, and then the pent air beneath blew up the +forward part of the deck, with an explosion like that of a gun. + +"Now grasp the ropes I have given you" cried Wilder, breathless with his +eagerness to speak. + +His words were smothered by the rushing and gurgling of waters. The +vessel made a plunge like a dying whale; and raising its stern high into +the air, glided into the depths of the sea, like the leviathan seeking +his secret places. The motionless boat was lifted with the ship, until +it stood in an attitude fearfully approaching to the perpendicular. As +the wreck descended, the bows of the launch met the element, burying +themselves nearly to filling; but buoyant and light, it rose again, and, +struck powerfully on the stern by the settling mass, the little ark shot +ahead, as though it had been driven by the hand of man. Still, as the +water rushed into the vortex, every thing within its influence yielded +to the suction; and at the next instant, the launch was seen darting +down the declivity, as if eager to follow the vast machine, of which it +had so long formed a dependant, through the same gaping whirlpool, to +the bottom. Then it rose, rocking to the surface, and for a moment, was +tossed and whirled like a bubble circling in the eddies of a pool. After +which, the ocean moaned, and slept again; the moon-beams playing across +its treacherous bosom, sweetly and calm, as the rays are seen to quiver +on a lake that is embedded in sheltering mountains. + + * * * * * + +From "The History of the United States Navy." + +=_286._= NAVAL RESULTS OF THE WAR OF 1812. + +Thus terminated the war of 1812, so far as it was connected with the +American marine. The navy came out of this struggle with a vast increase +of reputation. The brilliant style in which the ships had been carried +into action, the steadiness and rapidity with which they had been +handled, and the fatal accuracy of their fire, on nearly every occasion, +produced a new era in naval warfare. Most of the frigate actions had +been as soon decided as circumstances would at all allow, and in no +instance was it found necessary to keep up the fire of a sloop-of-war an +hour, when singly engaged. Most of the combats of the latter, indeed, +were decided in about half that time. The execution done in these short +conflicts was often equal to that made by the largest vessels of +Europe in general actions, and, in some of them, the slain and wounded +comprised a very large proportion of the crews. + +It is not easy to say in which nation this unlooked-for result created +the most surprise, America or England. In the first it produced a +confidence in itself that had been greatly wanted, but which, in the +end, perhaps, degenerated to a feeling of self-esteem and security that +were not without danger, or entirely without exaggeration.... The ablest +and bravest captains of the English fleet were ready to admit that a new +power was about to appear on the ocean, and that it was not improbable +the battle for the mastery of the seas would have to be fought over +again. + +That the tone and discipline of the service were high, is true; but it +must be ascribed to moral, and not to physical, causes, to that aptitude +in the American character for the sea which has been so constantly +manifested, from the day the first pinnace sailed along the coast, on +the trading voyages of the seventeenth century, down to the present +moment. + +Many false modes of accounting for the novel character that had been +given to naval battles were resorted to, and among other reasons, it was +affirmed that the American vessels of war sailed with crews of picked +seamen. That a nation which practiced impressment should imagine that +another in which enlistments were voluntary, could possess an advantage +of this nature, infers a strong disposition to listen to any means but +the right one to account for an unpleasant truth. It is not known that a +single vessel left the country, the case of the Constitution on her two +last cruises excepted, with a crew that could he deemed extraordinary +in this respect. No American man-of-war ever sailed with a complement +composed of nothing but able seamen; and some of the hardest fought +battles that occurred during this war, were fought by ships' companies +that were materially worse than common. The people that manned the +vessels on Lake Champlain, in particular, were of a quality much +inferior to those usually found in ships of war. Neither were the +officers, in general, old or very experienced. The navy itself dated but +fourteen years back, when the war commenced; and some of the commanders +began their professional careers several years after the first +appointments had been made. Perhaps one half of the lieutenants in the +service at the peace of 1815, had first gone on board ship within six +years from the declaration of the war, and very many of them within +three or four. So far from the midshipmen having been masters and mates +of merchantmen, as was reported at the time, they were generally youths +that first went from the ease and comforts of the paternal home, when +they appeared on the quarter-deck of a man-of-war. + + * * * * * + + +=_Catharine M. Sedgwick, 1789-1867._= (Manual, p. 484.) + +From "Hope Leslie." + +=_287._= THE MINISTER CONDEMNING VAIN APPAREL. + +Mr. Cotton, the regular pastor, rose to remind his brethren of the +decree "that private members should be very sparing in their questions +and observations after public sermons," and to say that he should +postpone any further discussion of the precious points before them, as +it was now near nine o'clock, after which it was not suitable for any +Christian family to be unnecessarily abroad. + +Hope now, and many others, instinctively rose, in anticipation of the +dismissing benediction; but Mr. Cotton waved his hand for them to sit +down till he could communicate to the congregation the decision to +which the ruling elders and himself had come on the subject of the last +Sabbath sermon. "He would not repeat what he had before said upon that +lust of costly apparel which was fast gaining ground, and had already, +as was well known, crept into godly families. He was pleased that there +were among them gracious women, ready to turn at a rebuke, as was +manifested in many veils being left at home that were floating over the +congregation like so many butterflies' wings in the morning. Economy," +he justly observed, "was, as well as simplicity, a Christian grace; and, +therefore, the rulers had determined that those persons who had run into +the excess of immoderate veils and sleeves, embroidered caps, and gold +and silver lace, should be permitted to wear them out, but new ones +should be forfeited." + +This sumptuary regulation announced, the meeting was dismissed. + +Madame Winthrop whispered to Everell that she was going, with his +father, to look in upon a sick neighbor, and would thank him to see her +niece home. Everell stole a glance at Hope, and dutifully offered his +arm to Miss Downing. + +Hope, intent only on one object, was hurrying out of the pew, intending, +in the jostling of the crowd, to escape alone; but she was arrested by +Madame Winthrop's saying, "Miss Leslie, Sir Philip offers you his arm;" +and at the same moment, her aunt stooped forward to beg her to wait a +moment, till she could send a message to Deacon Knowles' wife, that she +might wear her new gown with the Turkish sleeves, the next day.... "It +is but doing as a body would be done by, to let Mistress Knowles know +she may come out in her new gown to-morrow." + + * * * * * + +From "The Linwoods." + +=_288._= KOSCIUSKO'S GARDEN AT WEST POINT. + +The harmonies of Nature's orchestra were the only and the fitting sounds +in this seclusion; the early wooing of the birds; the water from the +fountains of the heights, that, filtering through the rocks, dropped +from ledge to ledge with the regularity of a water-clock; the ripple of +the waves, as they broke upon the rocky points of the shore, or softly +kissed its pebbly margin; and the voice of the tiny stream, that, +gliding down a dark, deep, and almost hidden channel in the rocks, +disappeared and welled up again in the center of the turfy slope, stole +over it, and trickled down the lower ledge of granite to the river. +Tradition has named this little, green shelf on the rocks, "Kosciusko's +Garden;" but, as no traces have been discovered of any other than +Nature's plantings, it was probably merely his favorite retreat, and, as +such, is a monument of his taste and love of nature. + + * * * * * + + +=_John Neal, 1793-._= (Manual, p. 510.) + +From "Randolph." + +=_289._= THE NATURE OF TRUE POETRY. + +Poetry is the naked expression of power and eloquence; but, for many +hundred years, poetry has been confounded with false music, measure, +and cadence, the soul with the body, the thought with the language, the +manner of speaking with the mode of thinking.... What I call poetry, +has nothing to do with art or learning. It is a natural music, the +music of woods and waters, not that of the orchestra.... Poetry is +a religion, as well as a music. Nay, it is eloquence. It is whatever +affects, touches, or disturbs the animal or moral sense of man. I care +not how poetry may be expressed, nor in what language; it is still +poetry; as the melody of the waters, wherever they may run, in the +desert or the wilderness, among the rocks or the grass, will always be +melody.... It is not the composition of a master, the language of art, +painfully and entirely exact, but is the wild, capricious melody of +nature, pathetic or brilliant, like the roundelay of innumerable birds +whistling all about you, in the wind and water, sky and air, or the +coquetting of a river breeze over the fine string's of an Aeolian harp, +concealed among green, leaves and apple blossoms. + + * * * * * + + +=_John Pendleton Kennedy, 1795-1870._= (Manual, pp. 490, 510.) + +From "Swallow Barn." + +=_290._= THE MANSION AND THE BARN. + + +Swallow Barn is an aristocratical old edifice, which sits, like a +brooding hen, on the southern bank of the James River. It looks down +upon a shady pocket, or nook, formed by an indentation of the shore, +from a gentle acclivity, thinly sprinkled with oaks, whose magnificent +branches afford habitation to sundry friendly colonies of squirrels and +woodpeckers. + +This time-honored mansion was the residence of the family of Hazards.... + +The main building is more than a century old. It is built with thick +brick walls, but one story in height, and surmounted by a double-faced +or hipped roof, which gives the idea of a ship, bottom upwards. Later +buildings have been added to this, as the wants or ambition of the +family have expanded. These are all constructed of wood, and seem +to have been built in defiance of all laws of congruity, just as +convenience required.... + +... Beyond the bridge, at some distance, stands a prominent object in +the perspective of this picture,--the most venerable appendage to the +establishment,--a huge barn, with an immense roof hanging almost to the +ground, and thatched a foot thick with sun-burnt straw, which reaches +below the eaves in ragged flakes. It has a singularly drowsy and +decrepit aspect. + + * * * * * + +=_291._= A DISAPPOINTED POLITICIAN. + + +"Things are getting worse and worse," replied the other. "I can see how +it's going. Here, the first thing General Jackson did, when he came in, +he wanted to have the president elected for six years; and, by and by, +they will want him for ten; and now they want to cut up our orchards and +meadows, whether or no. That's just the way Bonaparte went on. What's +the use of states, if they are all to be cut up with canals, and +railroads, and tariffs? No, no, gentlemen; you may depend Old Virginny's +not going to let Congress carry on in her day." + +"How can they help it?" asked Sandy. + +"We haven't _fout_ and bled," rejoined the other, taking out of his +pocket a large piece of tobacco, and cutting off a quid, as he spoke in +a somewhat subdued tone,--"we haven't _fout_ and bled for our liberties +to have our posterity and their land circumcised after this rate, to +suit the figaries of Congress. So let them try it when they will." + +"Mr. Ned Hazard, what do you call state rights?" demanded Sandy. + +"It's a sort of a law," said the other speaker, taking the answer to +himself, "against cotton and wool." + + * * * * * + +From his "Life of William Wirt." + +=_292._= WIRT'S STYLE OF ORATORY. + + +He became, in the maturity of his career, one of the most philosophic +and accomplished lawyers of his time. In earlier life, he was remarked +for a florid imagination, and a power of vivid declamation,--faculties +which are but too apt to seduce their possessor to waste his strength +in that flimsier eloquence, which more captivates the crowd without +the bar, than the Judge upon the bench, and whose fatal facility often +ensnares ambitious youth capable of better things, by its cheap applause +and temptation to that indolence which may be indulged without loss of +popularity. The public seem to have ascribed to Mr. Wirt some such, +reputation as this, when he first attracted notice. He came upon the +broader theater of his fame under this disadvantage. He was aware of +it himself, and labored with matchless perseverance to disabuse the +tribunals, with which he was familiar, of this disparaging opinion. How +he succeeded, his compeers at the bar have often testified. None amongst +them ever brought to the judgment-seat a more complete preparation for +trial--none ever more thoroughly argued a case through minute analysis +and nice discrimination of principles. In logical precision of mind, +clearness of statement, full investigation of complicated points, and +close comparison of precedents, he had no superior at the bar of the +Supreme Court. He often relieved the tedium of argument with playful +sallies of wit and humor. He had a prompt and effective talent for +this exercise, to which his extensive and various reading administered +abundant resource; and he indulged it not less to the gratification of +his auditory than to the aid of his cause. In such tactics, Mr. Wirt was +well versed. In sarcasm and invective he was often exceedingly strong, +and denounced with a power that made transgressors tremble; but the bent +of his nature being kindly and tolerant of error, he took more pleasure +in exciting the laugh, than in conjuring the spirit of censure or +rebuke. + +His manner in speaking was singularly attractive. His manly form, +his intellectual countenance and musical voice, set off by a rare +gracefulness of gesture, won, in advance, the favor of his auditory. He +was calm, deliberate, and distinct in his enunciation, not often rising +into any high exhibition of passion, and never sinking into tameness. +His key was that of earnest and animated argument, frequently alternated +with that of a playful and sprightly humor. His language was neat, well +chosen, and uttered without impediment or slovenly repetition. The tones +of his voice played, with a natural skill, through the various cadences +most appropriate to express the flitting emotions of his mind, and the +changes of his thought. To these external properties of his elocution, +we may ascribe the pleasure which persons of all conditions found in +listening to him. Women often crowded the court-rooms to hear him, and +as often astonished him, not only by the patience, but the visible +enjoyment with which they were wont to sit out his argument to the +end,--even when the topic was too dry to interest them, or too abstruse +for them to understand his discourse.... His oratory was not of +that strong, bold, and impetuous nature which is often the chief +characteristic of the highest eloquence, and which is said to sway the +Senate with absolute dominion, and to imprison or set free the storm of +human passion, in the multitude, according to the speaker's will. It was +smooth, polished, scholar-like, sparkling with pleasant fancies, +and beguiling the listener by its varied graces, out of all note or +consciousness of time. + + * * * * * + + +=_William Ware, 1797-1852._= (Manual, p. 510.) + +From "Aurelian, or Rome in the Third Century." + +=_293._= THE CHRISTIAN MARTYR. + +When now he had stood there not many minutes, one of the doors of the +vivaria was suddenly thrown back, and bounding forth with a roar that +seemed to shake the walls of the theatre, a lion of huge dimensions +leaped upon the arena. Majesty and power were inscribed upon his lordly +limbs; and, as he stood there where he had first sprung, and looked +round upon the multitude, how did his gentle eye and noble carriage, +with which no one for a moment could associate meanness, or cruelty, +or revenge, cast shame upon the human monsters assembled to behold a +solitary, unarmed man torn limb from limb! When he had in this way +looked upon that cloud of faces, he then turned, and moved round the +arena through its whole circumference, still looking upwards upon those +who filled the seats, not till he had come again to the point from which +he started so much as noticing him who stood his victim in the midst. +Then, as if apparently for the first time becoming conscious of his +presence, he caught the form of Probus, and, moving slowly towards him, +looked steadfastly upon him, receiving in return the settled gaze of the +Christian. Standing there still a while, each looking upon the other, he +then walked round him, then approached nearer, making suddenly, and for +a moment, those motions which indicated the roused appetite; but, as +it were, in the spirit of self-rebuke, he immediately retreated a few +paces, and lay down in the sand, stretching out his head towards Probus, +and closing his eyes, as if for sleep. + + * * * * * + + +=_Lydia Maria Child, 1802-._= (Manual, p. 434.) + +From "Autumnal Leaves." + +=_294._= ILL TEMPER CONTAGIOUS. + +It is curious to observe how a man's spiritual state reflects itself in +the people and animals around him; nay, in the very garments, trees, and +stones. + +Reuben Black was an infestation in the neighborhood where he resided. +The very sight of him produced effects similar to the Hindoo magical +tune called Raug, which is said to bring on clouds, storms, and +earthquakes. His wife seemed lean, sharp, and uncomfortable. The heads +of his boys had a bristling aspect, as if each individual hair stood on +end with perpetual fear. The cows poked out their horns horizontally, as +soon as he opened the barn-yard gate. The dog dropped his tail between +his legs, and eyed him askance, to see what humor he was in. The cat +looked wild and scraggy, and had been known to rush straight up the +chimney when he moved towards her. Fanny Kemble's expressive description +of the Pennsylvania stage-horses was exactly suited to Reuben's poor +old nag. "His hide resembled an old hair-trunk." Continual whipping and +kicking had made him such a stoic, that no amount of blows could quicken +his pace, and no chirruping could change the dejected drooping of his +head. All his natural language said, as plainly as a horse _could_ +say it, that he was a most unhappy beast. Even the trees on Reuben's +premises had a gnarled and knotted appearance. The bark wept little +sickly tears of gum, and the branches grew awry, as if they felt the +continual discord, and made sorry faces at each other behind their +owner's back. His fields were red with sorrel, or run over with mullein. +Every thing seemed as hard and arid as his own visage. Every day, he +cursed the town and the neighborhood, because they poisoned his dogs, +and stoned his hens, and shot his cats. Continual law-suits involved him +in so much expense, that he had neither time nor money to spend on the +improvement of his farm. + +Against Joe Smith, a poor laborer in the neighborhood, he had brought +three suits in succession. Joe said he had returned a spade he borrowed, +and Reuben swore he had not. He sued Joe, and recovered damages, for +which he ordered the sheriff to seize his pig. Joe, in his wrath, called +him an old swindler, and a curse to the neighborhood. These remarks were +soon repeated to Reuben. He brought an action for slander, and recovered +twenty-five cents. Provoked at the laugh this occasioned, he watched for +Joe to pass by, and set his big dog upon him, screaming furiously, "Call +me an old swindler again, will you." An evil spirit is more contagious +than the plague. Joe went home and scolded his wife, and boxed little +Joe's ears, and kicked the cat; and not one of them knew what it was +all for. A fortnight after, Reuben's big dog was found dead by poison. +Whereupon he brought another action against Joe Smith, and not being +able to prove him guilty of the charge of dog-murder, he took his +revenge by poisoning a pet lamb belonging to Mrs. Smith. Thus the bad +game went on, with mutual worriment and loss. Joe's temper grew more +and more vindictive, and the love of talking over his troubles at the +grog-shop increased on him. Poor Mrs. Smith cried, and said it was all +owing to Reuben Black; for a better hearted man never lived than her +Joe, when she first married him. + + * * * * * + + +=_Robert M. Bird, 1803-1854._= (Manual, p. 510.) + +From "Nick of the Woods: a Tale of Kentucky." + +=_295._= THE QUAKER HUNTSMAN. + +"I have a thing to say to thee, which it concerns thee and the fair +maid, thee cousin, to know. There was a will, friend, a true and lawful +last will and testament of thee deceased uncle, in which theeself and +thee cousin was made the sole heirs of the same. Truly, friend, I did +take it from the breast of the villain that plotted thee ruin; but, +truly, it was taken from me again, I know not how." + +"I have it safe," said Roland, displaying it, for a moment, with great +satisfaction, to Nathan's eyes. "It makes me master of wealth, which +you, Nathan, shall be the first to share. You must leave this wild life +of the border, go with me to Virginia--" + +"I, friend!" exclaimed Nathan, with a melancholy shake of the head; +"thee would not have me back in the Settlements, to scandalize them that +is of my faith? No, friend; my lot is cast in the woods, and thee must +not ask me again to leave them. And, friend, thee must not think I have +served thee for the lucre of money or gain; for truly these things are +now to me as nothing. The meat that feeds me, the skins that cover, the +leaves that make my bed, are all in the forest around me, to be mine +when I want them; and what more can I desire? Yet, friend, if thee +thinks theeself obliged by whatever I have done for thee, I would ask of +thee one favor that thee can grant." + +"A hundred!" said the Virginian, warmly. + +"Nay, friend," muttered Nathan, with both a warning and beseeching +look, "all that I ask is, that thee shall say nothing of me that should +scandalize and disparage the faith to which I was born." + +"I understand you," said Roland, "and will remember your wish.... Come +with us, Nathan; come with us." + +But Nathan, ashamed of the weakness which he could not resist, had +turned away to conceal his emotion, and, stalking silently off, with the +ever-faithful Peter at his heels, was soon hidden from their eyes. + + * * * * * + + +=_Nathaniel Hawthorne,_= about =_1805-1864._= (Manual, pp. 505, 508.) + +From the "Twice-Told Tales." + +=_296._= PORTRAIT OF EDWARD RANDOLPH. + +Within the antique frame which so recently had enclosed a sable waste of +canvas, now appeared a visible picture--still dark, indeed, in its hues +and shadings, but thrown forward in strong relief.... The whole portrait +started so distinctly out of the background, that it had the effect of +a person looking down from the wall at the astonished and awe-stricken +spectators. The expression of the face, if any words can convey an idea +of it, was that of a wretch detected in some hideous guilt, and exposed +to the bitter hatred, and laughter, and withering scorn of a vast, +surrounding multitude. There was the struggle of defiance, beaten down +and overwhelmed by the crushing weight of ignominy. The torture of the +soul had come forth upon the countenance. It seemed as if the picture, +while hidden behind the cloud of immemorial years, had been all the time +acquiring an intenser depth and darkness of expression, till now it +gloomed forth again, and threw its evil omen over the present hour. +Such, if the wild legend may be credited, was the portrait of Edward +Randolph, as he appeared when a people's curse had wrought its influence +upon his nature. + + * * * * * + +=_297._= DESCRIPTION OF AN OLD SAILOR. + +Many such a day did I sit snugly in Mr. Bartlett's store, attentive +to the yarns of Uncle Parker--uncle to the whole village by right of +seniority, but of southern blood, with no kindred in New England. His +figure is before me now, enthroned upon a mackerel barrel--a lean, old +man, of great height, but bent with years, and twisted into an uncouth, +shape by seven broken limbs; furrowed, also, and weather-worn, as if +every gale, for the better part of a century, had caught him somewhere +on the sea. He looked like a harbinger of tempest, a shipmate of the +Flying Dutchman.... One of Uncle Parker's eyes had been blown out with +gunpowder, and the other did but glimmer in its socket. Turning it +upward as he spoke, it was his delight to tell of cruises against the +French, and battles with his own ship-mates, when he and an antagonist +used to be seated astride of a sailor's chest, each fastened down, by a +spike-nail through his trousers, and there to fight it out. + + * * * * * + +From the "Blithedale Romance." + +=_298._= A PICTURE OF GIRLHOOD. + +Priscilla had now grown to be a very pretty girl, and still kept budding +and blossoming, and daily putting on some new charm, which you no sooner +became sensible of than you thought it worth all she had previously +possessed. So unformed, vague, and without substance, as she had come to +us, it seemed as if we could see Nature shaping out a woman before our +very eyes, and yet had only a more reverential sense of the mystery of a +woman's soul and frame. Yesterday, her cheek was pale,--to-day it had +a bloom. Priscilla's smile, like a baby's first one, was a wondrous +novelty. Her imperfections and short-comings affected me with a kind of +playful pathos, which was as absolutely bewitching a sensation as ever I +experienced. After she had been a month or two at Blithedale, her animal +spirits waxed high, and kept her pretty constantly in a state of bubble +and ferment, impelling her to far more bodily activity than she had yet +strength to endure. She was very fond of playing with the other girls +out of doors. There is hardly another sight in the world so pretty as +that of a company of young girls, almost women grown, at play, and so +giving themselves up to their airy impulse that their tiptoes barely +touch the ground. + +Girls are incomparably wilder and more effervescent than boys, more +untamable, and regardless of rule and limit, with an ever-shifting +variety, breaking continually into new modes of fun, yet with a +harmonious propriety through all. Their steps, their voices, appear free +as the wind, but keep consonance with a strain of music inaudible to us. +Young men and boys, on the other hand, play according to recognized law, +old, traditionary games, permitting no caprioles of fancy, but with +scope enough for the outbreak of savage instincts.... + +Especially it is delightful to see a vigorous young girl run a race, +with her head thrown back, her limbs moving more friskily than +they need, and an air between that of a bird and a young colt. But +Priscilla's peculiar, charm, in a foot-race, was the weakness and +irregularity with which she ran.... + +When she had come to be quite at home among us, I used to fancy that +Priscilla played more pranks, and perpetrated more mischief, than any +other girl in the community. For example, I once heard Silas Foster, +in a very gruff voice, threatening to rivet three horse-shoes round +Priscilla's neck, and chain her to a post, because she, with some other +young people, had clambered upon a load of hay, and caused it to slide +off the cart. How she made her peace I never knew; but very soon +afterwards I saw old Silas, with his brawny hands round Priscilla's +waist, swinging her to and fro, and finally depositing her on one of the +oxen, to take her first lessons in riding. She met with terrible mishaps +in her efforts to milk a cow; she let the poultry into the garden; she +generally spoilt whatever part of the dinner she took in charge; +she broke crockery; she dropped our biggest pitcher into the well; +and--except with her needle and those little wooden instruments for +purse-making--was as unserviceable a member of society as any young +lady in the land. There was no other sort of efficiency about her. Yet +everybody was kind to Priscilla; everybody loved her and laughed at her +to her face, and did not laugh behind her back; everybody would have +given her half of his last crust, or the bigger share of his plum-cake. +These were pretty certain indications that we were all conscious of a +pleasant weakness in the girl, and considered her not quite able to look +after her own interests, or fight her battle with the world. + + * * * * * + +From "The Marble Faun." + +=_299._= SCULPTURE: ART AND ARTISTS. + +A sculptor, indeed, to meet the demands which our preconceptions make +upon him, should be even more indispensably a poet than those who deal +in measured verse and rhyme. His material, or instrument, which serves +him in the stead of shifting and transitory language, is a pure, white, +undecaying substance. It insures immortality to whatever is wrought in +it, and therefore makes it a religious obligation to commit no idea +to its mighty guardianship, save such as may repay the marble for +its faithful care, its incorruptible fidelity, by warming it with an +etherial life. Under this aspect, marble assumes a sacred character; and +no man should dare to touch it unless he feels within himself a certain +consecration and a priesthood, the only evidence of which, for the +public eye, will be the high treatment of heroic subjects, or the +delicate evolution of spiritual, through material beauty.... + +No ideas such as the foregoing--no misgivings suggested by +them--probably troubled the self complacency of most of these clever +sculptors. Marble, in their view, had no such sanctity as we impute to +it.... + +Yet we love the artists, in every kind; even these, whose merits we are +not quite able to appreciate. Sculptors, painters, crayon sketchers, or +whatever branch of aesthetics they adopted, were certainly pleasanter +people, as we saw them that evening, than the average whom we meet +in ordinary society. They were not wholly confined within the sordid +compass of practical life; they had a pursuit which, if followed +faithfully out, would lead them to the beautiful, and always had a +tendency thitherward, even if they lingered to gather up golden drops +by the wayside. Their actual business (though they talked about it very +much as other men talk of cotton, politics, flour barrels, and sugar) +necessarily illuminated their conversation with something akin to the +ideal.... + +As interesting as any of these relics was a large portfolio of old +drawings, some of which, in the opinion of their possessor, bore +evidence on their faces of the touch of master-hands. + +... According to the judgment of several connoisseurs, Raphael's own +hand had communicated its magnetism to one of these sketches; and if +genuine, it was evidently his first conception of a favorite Madonna, +now hanging in the private apartment of the Grand Duke, at Florence.... +There were at least half a dozen others, to which the owner assigned as +high an origin. It was delightful to believe in their authenticity, at +all events; for these things make the spectator, more vividly sensible +of a great painter's power, than the final glow and perfected art of the +most consummate picture that may have been elaborated from them. There +is an effluence of divinity in the first sketch; and there, if any +where, you find the pure light of inspiration, which the subsequent toil +of the artist serves to bring out in stronger lustre, indeed, but +likewise adulterates it with what belongs to an inferior mood. The aroma +and fragrance of new thought were perceptible in these designs, after +three centuries of wear and tear. The charm lay partly in their very +imperfection; for this is suggestive, and sets the imagination at work; +whereas, the finished picture, if a good one, leaves the spectator +nothing to do, and if bad, confuses, stupefies, disenchants, and +disheartens him. + + * * * * * + +From the "English Note Books." + +=_300._= RUINS OF FURNESS ABBEY. + +The most interesting part is that which was formerly the church, and +which, though now roofless, is still surrounded by walls, and retains +the remnants of the pillars that formerly supported the intermingling +curves of the arches. The floor is all overgrown with grass strewn with +fragments and capitals of pillars. It was a great and stately edifice, +the length of the nave and choir having been nearly three hundred feet, +and that of the transept more than half as much. The pillars along the +nave were alternately, a round solid one, and a clustered one. Now, what +remains of some of them is even with the ground: others present a stump +just high enough to form a seat; and others are perhaps a man's height +from the ground; and all are mossy, and with grass and weeds rooted into +their chinks, and here and there a tuft of flowers giving its tender +little beauty to their decay. The material of the edifice is a soft red +stone, and it is now extensively overgrown with a lichen of a very light +gray hue, which at a little distance makes the walls look as if they +had long ago been whitewashed and now had partially returned to their +original color. The arches of the nave and transept were noble and +immense; there were four of them together, supporting a tower which has +long since disappeared,--arches loftier than I ever conceived to have +been made by man. Very possibly, in some cathedral that I have seen, +or am yet to see, there may be arches as stately as these, but I doubt +whether they can ever show to such advantage in a perfect edifice as +they do in this ruin,--most of them broken, only one, as far as I +recollect, still completing its sweep. In this state they suggest a +greater majesty and beauty than any finished human work can show; the +crumbling traces of the half-obliterated design producing somewhat of +the effect of the first idea of any thing admirable, when it dawns upon +the mind of an artist or a poet,--an idea which, do what he may, he is +sure to fall short of in his attempt to embody it.... + +Conceive all these shattered walls, with here and there an arched +door, or the great arched vacancy of a window; these broken stones and +monuments scattered about; these rows of pillars up and down the nave, +these arches, through which a giant might have stepped, and not +needed to bow his head, unless in reverence to the sanctity of the +place,--conceive it all, with such verdure and embroidery of flowers as +the gentle, kindly moisture of the English climate procreates on all old +things, making them more beautiful than new, conceive it with the grass +for sole pavement of the long and spacious aisle, and the sky above for +the only roof. The sky, to be sure, is more majestic than the tallest +of those arches; and yet these latter, perhaps, make the stronger +impression of sublimity, because they translate the sweep of the sky to +our finite comprehension. It was a most beautiful, warm, sunny day, and +the ruins had all the pictorial advantage of bright light, and deep +shadows. I must not forget that birds flew in and out among the +recesses, and chirped and warbled, and made themselves at home there. +Doubtless, the birds of the present generation are the posterity of +those who first settled in the ruins, after the Reformation; and perhaps +the old monks of a still earlier day may have watched them building +about the abbey, before it was a ruin at all. + + * * * * * + +From the "American Note Books." + +=_301._= SCENERY OF THE MERRIMAC. + +I never could have conceived that there was so beautiful a river-scene +in Concord as this of the North Branch. The stream flows through the +midmost privacy and deepest heart of a wood, which, as if but half +satisfied with its presence, calm, gentle and unobtrusive as it is, +seems to crowd upon it, and barely to allow it passage, for the trees +are rooted on the very verge of the water, and dip their pendent +branches into it. On one side there is a high bank forming the side of a +hill, the Indian name of which I have forgotten, though Mr. Thoreau told +it to me; and here in some instances the trees stand leaning over the +river, stretching out their arms as if about to plunge in headlong. On +the other side, the bank is almost on a level with the water, and there +the quiet congregation of trees stood with feet in the flood, and +fringed with foliage down to its very surface. Vines here and there +twine themselves about bushes or aspens or alder-trees, and hang their +clusters, though scanty and infrequent this season, so that I can reach +them from my boat, I scarcely remember a scene of more complete and +lovely seclusion than the passage of the river through this wood. Even +an Indian canoe in olden times, could not have floated onward in deeper +solitude than my boat. I have never elsewhere had such an opportunity to +observe how much more beautiful reflection is than what we call reality. +The sky and the clustering foliage on either hand, and the effect of +sunlight as it found its way through the shade, giving lightsome hues in +contrast with the quiet depth of the prevailing tints, all these +seemed unsurpassably beautiful when beheld in upper air. But on gazing +downward, there they were, the same even to the minutest particular, yet +arrayed in ideal beauty which satisfied the spirit incomparably more +than the actual scene. I am half convinced that the reflection is indeed +the reality, the real thing which Nature imperfectly images to our +grosser sense. At any rate the disembodied shadow is nearest to the +soul. + + * * * * * + +From the "French and Italian Note Books." + +=_302._= A DUNGEON OF ANCIENT ROME. + +We were now in the deepest and ugliest part of the old Mamertine Prison, +one of the few remains of the kingly period of Rome, and which served +the Romans as a state prison for hundreds of years before the Christian +era. A multitude of criminals or innocent persons, no doubt, have +languished here in misery, and perished in darkness. Here Jugurtha +starved; here Catiline's adherents were strangled; and methinks, there +can not be in the world another such an evil den, so haunted with black +memories and indistinct surmises of guilt and suffering. In old Rome, I +suppose, the citizens never spoke of this dungeon above their breath. +It looks just as bad as it is; round, only seven paces across, yet so +obscure that our tapers could not illuminate it from side to side,--the +stones of which it is constructed being as black as midnight. The +custode showed us a stone post at the side of the cell, with the hole in +the top of it, into which, he said, St. Peter's chain had been fastened; +and he uncovered a spring of water, in the middle of the stone floor, +which he told us had miraculously gushed up to enable the Saint to +baptize his jailor. The miracle was perhaps the more easily wrought, +inasmuch as Jugurtha had found the floor of the dungeon oozy with wet. +However, it is best to be as simple and childlike as we can in these +matters; and whether St. Peter stamped his visage into the stone, and +wrought this other miracle or no, and whether or no he ever was in the +prison at all, still the belief of a thousand years and more, gives a +sort of reality and substance to such traditions. The custode dipped an +iron ladle into the miraculous water, and we each of us drank a sip; +and, what is very, remarkable, to me it seemed hard water and almost +brackish, while many persons think it the sweetest in Rome. I suspect +that St. Peter still dabbles in this water, and tempers its qualities +according to the faith of those who drink it. + + * * * * * + + +=_William Gilmore Simms, 1806-1870._= (Manual, pp. 490, 510.) + +From "Eutaw, a Sequel to The Foragers." + +=_303._= THE BATTLE OF EUTAW. + +Up to this moment nothing had seemed more certain than the victory of +the Americans. The consternation in the British camp was complete. +Everything was given up for lost by a considerable portion of the army. +The commissaries destroyed their stores, the loyalists and American +deserters, dreading the rope, seizing every horse which they could +command, fled incontinently for Charleston, whither they carried such +an alarm that the stores along the road were destroyed, and the trees +felled across it for the obstruction of the victorious Americans, who +were supposed to be pressing down upon the city with all their might. + +Equally deceived were the conquerors. Flushed with success, the infantry +scattered themselves about the British camp, which, as all the tents had +been left standing, presented a thousand objects to tempt the appetites +of a half-starved and half-naked soldiery. Insubordination followed +disorder.... + +No more could be done. The laurels won in the first act of this exciting +drama, were all withered in the second. Both parties claimed a victory. +It belonged to neither. The British were beaten from the field at the +point of the bayonet, sought shelter in a fortress, and repulsed their +assailants from that fortress. It is to the shame and discredit of the +Americans that they were repulsed. The victory was in their hands. + + * * * * * + +From the "Life of Francis Marion." + +=_304._= CHARACTER AND SERVICES OF GENERAL MARION. + +No commander had ever been more solicitous of the safety and comfort of +his men. It was this which had rendered him so sure of their fidelity, +which had enabled him to extract from them such admirable service. This +simple entreaty stayed their quarrels; ... No duel took place among his +officers during the whole of his command. + +The province which was assigned to his control by Governor Rutledge, was +the constant theatre of war. He was required to cover an immense extent +of country. With a force constantly unequal and constantly fluctuating, +he contrived to supply its deficiencies by the resources of his own +vigilance and skill. His personal bravery was frequently shown, and the +fact that he himself conducted an enterprise, was enough to convince his +men that they were certain to be led to victory.... He had no lives to +waste, and the game he played was that which enabled him to secure the +greatest results, with the smallest amount of hazard. Yet, when the +occasion seemed to require it, he could advance and strike with an +audacity, which in the ordinary relations of the leader with the +soldier, might well be thought inexcusable rashness.... The reader will +perceive a singular discrepancy between the actual events detailed in +the life of every popular hero, and the peculiar fame which he holds in +the minds of his countrymen. Thus, while Marion is every where regarded +as the peculiar representative in the southern States, of the genius of +partizan warfare, we are surprised, when we would trace, in the pages of +the annalist, the sources of this fame, to find the details so meagre +and so unsatisfactory. Tradition mumbles over his broken memories, which +we vainly strive to pluck from his lips, and bind together in coherent +and satisfactory records. The spirited surprise, the happy ambush, the +daring onslaught, the fortunate escape,--these, as they involve no +monstrous slaughter,--no murderous strife of masses,--no rending of +walled towns and sack of cities, the ordinary historian disdains. The +military reputation of Marion consists in the frequent performance of +deeds, unexpectedly, with inferior means, by which the enemy was annoyed +and dispirited, and the hearts and courage of his countrymen warmed into +corresponding exertions with his own. To him we owe that the fires of +patriotism were never extinguished, even in the most disastrous hours, +in the low country of South Carolina. He made our swamps and forests +sacred, as well because of the refuge which they gave to the fugitive +patriot, as for the frequent sacrifices which they enabled him to make, +on the altars of liberty and a befitting vengeance.... It is enough +that his fame has entered largely into that of his country, forming a +valuable portion of its national stock of character. His memory is in +the very hearts of our people. + + * * * * * + + +=_Harriet Beecher Stowe, 1812-._= (Manual, p. 484.) + +From "Uncle Tom's Cabin." + +=_305._= MEMORIALS OF A DEAD CHILD. + +At the door, however, he stopped a moment, and then coming back, he +said, with some hesitation,-- + +"Mary, I don't know how you'd feel about it, but there's that drawer +full of things-of-of-poor little Henry's." So saying, he turned quickly +on his heel, and shut the door after him. + +His wife opened the little bedroom door adjoining her room, and taking +the candle, set it down on the top of a bureau there; then from a small +recess she took a key, and put it thoughtfully in the lock of a drawer, +and made a sudden pause, while two boys, who, boy-like, had followed +close on her heels, stood looking, with silent, significant glances, at +their mother. And O, mother that reads this, has there never been in +your house a drawer, or a closet, the opening of which has been to you +like the opening again of a little grave? Ah! happy mother that you are, +if it has not been so. + +Mrs. Bird slowly opened the drawer. There were little coats, of many a +form and pattern, piles of aprons, and rows of small stockings; and even +a pair of little shoes, worn and rubbed at the toes, were peeping +from the folds of a paper. There was a toy horse and wagon, a top, a +ball,--memorials gathered with many a tear and many a heart-break! She +sat down by the drawer, and leaning her head on her hands over it, wept +till the tears fell through her fingers into the drawer; then, suddenly +raising her head, she began, with nervous haste, selecting the plainest +and most substantial articles, and gathering them into a bundle. + +"Mamma," said one of the boys, gently touching her arm, "are you going +to give away those things?" + +"My dear boys," she said, softly and earnestly, "if our dear loving +little Henry looks down from heaven, he would be glad to have us do +this. I could not find it in my heart to give them away to any common +person--to anybody that was happy; but I give them to a mother more +heart-broken and sorrowful than I am; and I hope God will send his +blessing with, them!" + + * * * * * + +From "Old-Town Folks." + +=_306._= THE OLD MEETING HOUSE. + +Going to meeting, in that state of society into which I was born, was as +necessary and inevitable a consequence of waking up on Sunday morning, +as eating one's breakfast. Nobody thought of staying away,--and, for +that matter, nobody wanted to stay away. Our weekly life was simple, +monotonous, and laborious; and the chance of seeing the whole +neighborhood together in their best clothes on Sunday, was a thing +which, in the dearth of all other sources of amusement, appealed to the +idlest and most unspiritual of loafers. They who did not care for the +sermon or the prayers, wanted to see Major Broad's scarlet coat and +laced ruffles, and his wife's brocade dress, and the new bonnet which +Lady Lothrop had just had sent up from Boston. Whoever had not seen +these would be out of society for a week to come, and not be able to +converse understandingly on the topics of the day. + +The meeting on Sunday united in those days, as nearly as possible, the +whole population of a town,--men, women, and children. There was then +in a village but one fold and one shepherd, and long habit had made the +tendency to this one central point so much a necessity to every one, +that to stay away from "meetin," for any reason whatever, was always a +secret source of uneasiness. I remember in my early days, sometimes when +I had been left at home by reason of some of the transient ailments of +childhood, how ghostly and supernatural the stillness of the whole house +and village outside the meeting-house used to appear to me, how loudly +the clock ticked and the flies buzzed down the window-pane, and how I +listened in the breathless stillness to the distant psalm-singing, the +solemn tones of the long prayer, and then to the monotone of the sermon, +and then again to the closing echoes of the last hymn, and thought +sadly, what if some day I should be left out, when all my relations and +friends had gone to meeting in the New Jerusalem, and hear afar the +music from the crystal walls. + +The arrangement of our house of worship in Oldtown was somewhat +peculiar, owing to the fact of its having originally been built as a +missionary church for the Indians. The central portion of the house, +usually appropriated to the best pews, was in ours devoted to them; and +here were arranged benches of the simplest and most primitive form; on +which were collected every Sunday, the thin and wasted remnants of +what once was a numerous and powerful tribe. There were four or five +respectable Indian families, who owned comfortable farms in the +neighborhood, and came to meeting in their farm-wagons, like any of +their white neighbors. + +... Besides our Indian population, we had also a few negroes, and a side +gallery was appropriated to them. One of them was that of Aunt Nancy +Prime, famous for making election-cake and ginger-pop, and who was sent +for at all the great houses on occasions of high festivity, as learned +in all mysteries relating to the confection of cakes and pies. A tight, +trig, bustling body she, black and polished as ebony, smooth-spoken +and respectful, and quite a favorite with everybody. Nancy had treated +herself to an expensive luxury in the shape of a husband,--an idle, +worthless mulatto man, who was owned as a slave in Boston. Nancy bought +him, by intense labors in spinning flax, but found him an undesirable +acquisition, and was often heard to declare, in the bitterness of her +soul, when her husband returned from his drinking bouts, that she should +never buy another nigger, she knew. Prominent there was the stately form +of old Boston Foodah, an African Prince, who had been stolen from the +coast of Guinea in early youth, and sold in Boston at some period of +antiquity whereto the memory of man runneth not. + + * * * * * + + +=_Maria J. McIntosh, 1815-._= (Manual, p. 484.) + +From "Two Pictures." + +=_307._= DEBATE BETWEEN WEBSTER AND HAYNE. + +... Webster, Clay, Calhoun--the triumvirate to which, it is to be +feared, we shall long have to look back as to our last, were still +living; and as Augusta Moray gazed on the dark, melancholy eyes of the +first, shadowed by that wonderful brow, or looked into the face of the +second, where if prescient thought sometimes rose as a flitting cloud, +it was chased away before the glow of the warm heart and the quick +kindling fancy, or turned to the sharp angular lines and firmly +compressed lips that marked the iron strength of the third, she felt +that she stood in the midst of her dream fulfilment. The session was one +of peculiar interest. Great questions agitated the public mind, and were +treated greatly. Two great parties, springing from the very foundations +of our civil polity, strove for supremacy in our legislative halls. The +one, looking into the depths of our colonial history, took its stand on +the unquestionable truth, that each state of the Union was sovereign +over herself, from which was drawn the corollary, that she was as free +to leave as she had been to enter the Union. The other contended that +the present constitution of these United States defined the boundary of +the powers of each state, as well as of the great whole into which they +had been voluntarily fused; that to look behind that, was such a resort +to first principles or natural rights, as is involved in revolution, and +must be decided as revolution ever is, by the relative strength of the +ruling and the revolting forces. + +On neither side was there any trickery, any bullying, any flimsy display +of rhetorical power. All was grand as the subject for which they +contended, solemn as the doom to which they seemed, approaching. In the +chief magistrate of that time all saw the unflinching executor of the +nation's will--a man whose words were the sure prefigurements of his +deeds. Their verdict must be carefully weighed, for it would be surely +executed. In stern silence each sat to hear, to deliberate, to judge. +The sharp logic and fiery vehemence of Hayne called up no angry flash, +roused no personal vindictiveness; and the deep tones of Webster found +as ready an entrance to southern as to northern hearts, while in those +powerful, words which seemed the fit weapons of a nation's champion, his +mighty mind swept away all that opposed it, save that principle which +lay imbedded in the very deepest stratum of the life of his opponents, +and which could not be torn away from them till feeling and life were +extinct. + +It was in the capital, and in the presence of these great men, that +Augusta liked best to find herself. We are afraid she did not always +listen when men of more ordinary power occupied the floor,--the gallery +was an excellent dreaming place at such times. + + * * * * * + + +=_Catharine Anne Warfield,[70] 1817-._= + +From "The Romance of Beauseincourt." + +=_308._= VIEW OF THE SKY BY NIGHT. + +I had derived great and constant pleasure from the undisturbed +possession of this place of promenade during my whole sojourn.... Often, +when my mind had been distracted with anxious cares, I had literally +waited down its excitement and anguish in my fierce and rapid movements +to and fro, over its smooth painted floor, the daily care of Sylphy, who +might be heard in the hot season busily employed in refreshing it with +mop and broom and water during the first hours of the morning, the +pleasant, dewy freshness of which operation might be felt gratefully in +the atmosphere of our heated chamber. + +The long gallery was very solitary, of course, at an hour like this, and +it was with a feeling of calm relief that I paced its lonely length, +stopping at intervals to look out upon the night; one of cloudy +sultriness, occasionally relieved by gusts of warm, damp wind, that bore +the distant odors of swamp and forest on its wings, and promised speedy +rain. Here and there in the dappled heavens were liquid purple spaces, +like the open sea described by Arctic voyagers, around which hung masses +of silvery clouds, projecting like ice cliffs; and into these patches of +sky the large yellow moon would now and then sail majestically, suddenly +emerging, like a ship from a fog, from the fleecy screen that veiled her +light, to cross these spaces, and plunge into mist and shadow again. + +There was something in the whole effect calculated to absorb the mind of +an absent dreamer, intent on the future, and for the first time for many +weeks putting aside all foreign considerations, in favor of self too +long merged in others and neglected. + +[Footnote 70: One of our most accomplished female writers; a native of +Mississippi, but long resident in Kentucky.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Herman Melville, 1819-._= (Manual, p. 505.) + +From "Moby Dick." + +=_309._= SPERM WHALE FISHING. + +It was a sight full of quick wonder and awe! The vast swells of the +omnipotent sea; the surging, hollow roar they made as they rolled along +the eight gunwales, like gigantic bowls in a boundless bowling-green; +the brief suspended agony of the boat, as it would tip for an instant on +the knife-like edge of the sharper waves, that almost seemed threatening +to cut it in two; the sudden profound dip into the watery glens and +hollows; the keen spurrings and goadings to gain the top of the opposite +hill; the headlong, sled-like slide down its other side; all these, with +the cries of the headsmen and harpooners, and the shuddering gasps of +the oarsmen, with the wondrous sight of the ivory Pequod bearing down +upon her boats, with outstretched sails, like a wild hen after her +screaming brood; all this was thrilling. Not the raw recruit, marching +from the bosom of his wife into the fever heat of his first battle; not +the dead man's ghost, encountering the first unknown phantom in the +other world; neither of these can feel stranger and stronger emotions +than that man does, who for the first time finds himself pulling into +the charmed, churned circle of the hunted sperm whale. + +Soon we were running through a suffusing wide veil of mist; neither ship +nor boat to be seen. + +"Give way, men," whispered Starbuck, drawing still further aft the sheet +of his sail; "there is time to kill a fish yet before the squall comes. +There's white water again! close to! Spring!" Though not one of the +oarsmen was then facing the life and death peril so close to them ahead, +yet with their eyes on the intense countenance of the mate in the stern +of the boat, they knew that the imminent instant had come; they heard, +too, an enormous wallowing sound as of fifty elephants stirring in their +litter. Meanwhile the boat was still booming through the mist, the +waves curling and hissing around us like the erected crests of enraged +serpents. + +"That's his hump. _There, there_, give it to him!" whispered Starbuck. + +A short rushing sound leaped out of the boat; it was the darted iron of +Queequeg. Then all in one welded commotion, came an invisible push from +astern, while forward the boat seemed striking on a ledge; the sail +collapsed and exploded; a gush of scalding vapor shot up near by; +something rolled and tumbled like an earthquake beneath us. The whole +crew were half suffocated as they were tossed helter-skelter into the +white curdling cream of the squall. Squall, whale, and harpoon had all +blended together and the whale, merely grazed by the iron, escaped. + +Though completely swamped, the boat was nearly unharmed. Swimming round +it we picked up the floating oars, and lashing them across the gunwale, +tumbled back to our places. There we sat up to our knees in the sea, the +water covering every rib and plank, so that to our downward gazing eyes, +the suspended craft seemed a coral boat grown up to us from the bottom +of the ocean. + + * * * * * + + +=_Josiah Gilbert Holland, 1819-._= + +From The Bay Path. + +=_310._= THE WEDDING-PRESENT. + +John Woodcock was the first to break the silence. Rising from his seat, +and making his way out of the crowd around him, he crossed the room to +where his daughter was standing absorbed in, and half bewildered by the +scene, and whispering a few words in her ear, took her by the hand, and +led her before the married pair. Mary extended her hand to him instantly +and cordially, and exclaimed, "I knew that you would come to me and +congratulate me." + +"That wan't my arrant any way," said Woodcock bluntly, "and I shouldn't +begin with you if it was." + +"Why John! I am astonished!" exclaimed the bride; "I thought you was one +of the best friends I had in the world." + +But Mary was somewhat affected with Woodcock's seriousness, and, with no +reply to Holyoke, beyond a smile, she asked Woodcock's reasons for the +statement he had made. + +"I didn't come up here to talk about this, and p'raps it ain't the right +time to do it, but there's no use backin' down when you begin. I've got +a consait that men and women ain't built out of the same kind of timber. +Look at my hand--a great pile o' bones covered with brown luther, with +the hair on,--and then look at yourn. White oak ain't bass, is it? Every +man's hand ain't so black as mine, and every woman's ain't so white as +yourn, but there's always difference enough to show, and there's just as +much odds in their doin's and dispositions as there is in their hands. I +know what women be. I've wintered and summered with 'em, and take 'em by +and large, they're better'n men. Now and then a feller gets hitched to a +hedgehog, but most of 'em get a woman that's too good for 'em. They're +gentle and kind, and runnin' over with good feelin's, and will stick to +a fellow a mighty sight longer'n he'll stick to himself. My woman's dead +and gone, but if there wan't any women in the world, and I owned it, I'd +sell out for three shillin's, and throw in stars enough to make it an +object for somebody to take it off my hands. + +"Some time ago," resumed Woodcock. "I heerd the little ones and some of +the old ones tellin' what they was goin' to give Mary Pynchon when she +got married; and it set me to thinkin' what I could give her, for I +knew if anybody ought to give her anything, it was me. But I hadn't any +money, and I couldn't send to the Bay for anything, and I shouldn't 'a +known what to get if I could, I might have shot a buck, but I couldn't +'a brought it to the weddin', and it didn't seem exactly ship-shape to +give her anything she could eat up and forget. So I thought I'd give her +a keepsake my wife left me when she died. It's all I've got of any vally +to me, and it's somethin' that'll grow better every day it is kep', if +you'll take care of it. I don't know what'll come of me, and I want to +leave it in good hands." + +The bride began to grow curious, and despite their late repulse the +group began to collect again. + +"It's a queer thing for a present, perhaps, (and Woodcock's lip began to +quiver and his eye to moisten,) but I hope it'll do you some service. +'Taint anything't you can wear in your hair, or throw over your +shoulders. It's--it's--" + +"It's what?" inquired Mary, with an encouraging smile. + +Woodcock took hold of the hand of his child, and placing it in that of +the questioner, burst out with, "God knows that's the handle to it," and +retreated to the window, where he spent several minutes looking out into +the night, and endeavoring to repress the spasms of a choking throat. +Neither Mary Holyoke nor her husband could disguise their emotions, as +they saw before them the living testimonial of Woodcock's gratitude and +trust. Mary stooped and kissed the gift-child, who clung to her as +if, contrary to her father's statement, she was an article of wearing +apparel. + + * * * * * + + +=_John Esten Cooke,[71] 1830-._= + +From "Estcourt, or the Memoirs of a Virginia Gentleman." + +=_311._= THE PORTRAIT. + +"I see you are prepared now," said the painter; "the thought I +endeavored to suggest has entered your mind, for I read the expression +in your face like an open book. Well, see if I have deceived you--look!" + +And as he spoke, the painter removed a green curtain from the frame of a +picture, so arranged that the full light of the middle window fell upon +it. + +Estcourt almost cried out with astonishment. Here, before him, as +though ready to start from the canvas, was the woman who had been, his +fate--who had died long years before; there in the full blaze of light, +he saw her who had thrown the shadow upon his existence, which still +clouded it, fresh, softly smiling, alive almost on the speaking and +eloquent canvas. The blue eyes beamed with a tender and subdued +sweetness, the delicate forehead, with its soft brown curls, rose airily +above the perfectly arched brows, the innocent lips were half parted, +and the portrait seemed almost ready to move from its frame, and +descend, a living woman, into the apartment. + +[Footnote 71: Conspicuous among the younger writers of Virginia, of which +State he is a native; author of many novels.] + + * * * * * + +=_312._= ASPECTS OF SUMMER. + +The glory of the summer deepened and grew more intense, the foliage +assumed a darker tint of emerald, the sky glowed with a more dazzling +blue, and the songs of the busy harvesters came sad and slow, like the +long, melancholy swell of pensive sighs across the hills and fields, +dying away finally into the "harvest home," which told that the golden +grain would wave no more in the wind until another year. The "harvest +moon" looked down on bare fields now, and June was dead. At last came +August, the month of great white clouds and imperial sunsets, the +crowning hours of the rich summer, soon to fade away into the yellow +autumn, the month of reveries and dreams on the banks of shadowy +streams, or beneath, the old majestic trees of silent forests. + + * * * * * + + +=_Sarah A. Dorsey,[72] about 1835-._= + +From "Lucia Dare." + +=_313._= SCENERY AND SOCIETY AT NATCHEZ, MISSISSIPPI. + +The village of Natchez, under the hill, was clustered close to the +water's edge; the bluffs rose precipitously, garnished with pine trees, +and locusts, and tufted grasses; the vista here terminated in Brown's +beautiful gardens, gay with flower-beds and closely-clipped hedges. Far +away over the river stretched the broad emerald plain of Louisiana, +level with the stream, extending for many, many miles, its champaign +checkered with groups of white plantation-houses, spotted with groves of +trees, rich in autumnal beauty, glowing with crimson, gold, and green, +softened by veils of long, gray moss. This plain was dotted with lovely +lakes, whose waters shone in the slanting rays of the declining sun.... +The sun went down quickly, as he does at sea, a round, red fire-ball, +while light, splendid clouds of purple, pink, lilac, and gray, on the +blue, blue heavens, refracted the ascending, slender, quivering rays of +the disappearing orb, the type of Deity in all natural religions, the +Totem of the Natchez Indians. Beloved city--bright "city of the Sun"! +How often have I paced with restless child's feet, the road that Lucian +was now traveling over, and listened, as he did, but more lingeringly, +to the sounds of gentle human life, stirring within thy peaceful homes! +How often have I thanked God for my beautiful childhood's home--for my +precious Southern Land--for its sunshine, its verdure, its forests, +its flowers, its perfume; but oh! above all, for the loving, refined, +intelligent, gentle race of people it was my great, my priceless +privilege, to be born amongst--a people worthy to live with, yes, +_worthy to die for_! The stern besom of war has wept over you, beloved +Natchez--your fairest homes have been desolated, your lovely gardens are +now only remembrances--your family circles are broken up--your bravest +sons are sleeping in the dust of death, or weeping tears of bitterness +in exile--your daughters, bowed down with penury and grief, are mourning +beside their darkened firesides--your joyous households transferred to +other and kindlier lands. The forms of my kindred faded into phantoms of +the past--strangers sit now in the place that once was mine; but yet, +thou art lovely, still beloved in thy ruin, in thy desolation--city of +my heart--city of my love--city of my childish joy! Oh! city of my dead! + +[Footnote 72: Prominent among the living authors of Louisiana.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Anne Moncure Crane.[73]_= + +From "Opportunity;" a Novel. + +=_314._= IMPRESSION OF A SEA SCENE. + +The tide had been out, but it was now rising; and they stood silently +watching the long, low waves dissolve in foam, whose white edges each +time crept nearer and nearer their feet. No one was conscious of the +duration of the silence. The sea's monotony of motion and sound seemed +to fill the void, and lull them to quietude. But beautiful as was the +scene that lay before her, Harvey gradually forgot it ... + +The two women had been nearly facing each other; and in a moment or two +Harvey put his hand upon Rose's shoulder, and with the other, motioned +her to look out upon the sea at her side. As she obeyed, her faint, +inarticulate expression of surprise and pleasure made both men follow +her example. It was only a coasting vessel, which had come rather close +to the shore, and was sailing swiftly by, before the freshening breeze; +but Its broad, white sails, with the moonlight upon them, and its +gliding, soundless motion, gave it an unearthly effect, as of a phantom +of light floating between the dark sea and sky, or a great white-winged +spirit sweeping past. When it had vanished into the distance and +darkness, Rose turned, and looked up at Harvey with mute but half-parted +lips, with eyes dilating with light, only this for a moment, but Miss +Barney knew she had accomplished her wish. + +The others also did not speak. But Grahame made an involuntary angry +movement of his foot upon the sand. + +[Footnote 73: A young authoress of Maryland: has written two novels of +unusual promise.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Mary Clemmer Ames,[74] about 1837-._= + +From "A Woman's Right." + +=_315._= A RAILWAY DEPOT IN THE COUNTRY. + +... Yet this depot was the centre of attraction for miles around. It was +the grand hall of re-union for all the people of the scattered town, +not second in importance even to the meeting-house. Here, twice a day, +stopped the great Western and Eastern trains, the two fiery arteries +through which flowed all the tumultuous life of the vast outer world +that had ever come to this secluded hamlet. Its primitive inhabitants +in their isolated farm-houses, under the hills and on the stony +mountain-moors, could never have realized the existence of another world +than the green, grand world of nature around them and above them, and +would have been as oblivious of the great god "News" as the denizens of +Greenland, if it had not been for the daily visits of this Cyclops with +the burning eye. Now twice a day, the shriek of his diabolical whistle +pierced the umbrageous woods and hilly gorges for miles away, and its +cry to many a solitary household was the epoch of the day. Hearing it, +John mounted his nag and scampered away to the station for the Boston +journals of yesterday. Seth harnessed Peggy, and drove off in the buggy +in all possible haste, to see if the mail had brought a letter from Amzi +who was in New York, or from Nimrod who had gone to work in "Bosting," +or if the train had brought Sally and her children from the city, who +were expected home on a visit. Here, under pretext of waiting for the +cars, congregated the drones and supernumeraries of the different +neighborhoods, lounging on the steps, hacking the benches with their +jack-knives for hours together, while they discussed politics, and +talked over their own and their neighbors' affairs. + +A walk to the station on a summer evening, was more to the boys and +girls of this rural region, than a Broadway promenade to a metropolitan +belle. Their day's task done, here they met in pairs, comparing finery +and indulging in flirtations, with an impunity which would not have been +tolerated by their elders at the Sunday recess in the meeting-house. +Then, besides, it was such an exciting sight to see the cars come in, +to see the long rows of strange faces, and to catch glimpses of the new +fashions at their open windows. Besides, at rare intervals, a real city +lady would actually alight at the rustic station of Hilltop, followed +by an avalanche of trunks, "larger than hen-houses," the girls would +afterwards affirm to their astonished mothers, when it was discovered +that the city-lady, in her languishing necessity for country-air, had +really condescended to come in search of a remote country-cousin. +Besides the fine lady, sometimes small companies of dashing young +gentlemen, with fishing-rods and retinues of long-eared dogs, or a +long-haired artist with a portfolio under his arm, all lured by the +mountains and woods and streams, to seek pleasure in far different ways, +would alight at the station, and ask of some staring rustic where they +could find the hotel. + +[Footnote 74: An active writer, chiefly known as a newspaper +correspondent from Washington; a native of Vermont, has published a +novel of much descriptive vigor.] + + + + +CHAPTER IV + + + +POETS. + + +=_Francis Hopkinson,[75] 1737-1791._= + +From "The Battle of the Kegs.[76]" + +=_316._= + + Gallants, attend, and hear a friend + Trill forth harmonious ditty; + Strange things I'll tell, which late befell + In Philadelphia city. + + 'Twas early day, as poets say, + Just when the sun was rising, + A soldier stood on a log of wood, + And saw a thing surprising. + + As in amaze he stood to gaze,-- + The truth can't be denied, sir,-- + He spied a score of kegs, or more, + Come floating down the tide, sir. + + A sailor, too, in jerkin blue, + This strange appearance viewing, + First rubbed his eyes, in great surprise, + Then said some mischief's brewing. + + * * * * * + + Some fire cried, which some denied, + But said the earth had quakéd; + And girls and boys, with hideous noise, + Ran through the streets half naked. + + * * * * * + + The royal band now ready stand, + All ranged in dread array, sir, + With stomach stout, to see it out, + And make a bloody day, sir. + + The cannons roar from shore to shore; + The small arms make a rattle; + Since wars began, I'm sure no man + E'er saw so strange a battle. + + A hundred men, with each a pen, + Or more,--upon my word, sir, + It is most true,--would be too few + Their valor to record, sir. + +[Footnote 75: A prominent author of the revolutionary era.] + +[Footnote 76: In the revolutionary war, while the British held +Philadelphia, some floating torpedoes were one day sent down the river +to destroy their vessels, and this novel mode of attack caused the alarm +described by the poet.] + + * * * * * + + +=_John Trumbull, 1750-1831._= (Manual, pp. 490, 512.) + +From "McFingal." + +=_317._= + + Though this, not all his time was lost on, + He fortified the town of Boston, + Built breastworks that might lend assistance + To keep the patriots at a distance; + For, howsoe'er the rogues might scoff, + He liked them best the farthest off; + Works of important use to aid + His courage when he felt afraid. + + * * * * * + + For Providence, disposed to tease us, + Can use what instruments it pleases; + To pay a tax, at Peter's wish, + His chief cashier was once a fish. + + * * * * * + + An English bishop's cur of late + Disclosed rebellions 'gainst the State; + So frogs croaked Pharaoh to repentance, + And lice delayed the fatal sentence: + And Heaven can rain you at pleasure, + By Gage, as soon as by a Caesar. + Yet did our hero in these days + Pick up some laurel-wreaths of praise; + And as the statuary of Seville + Made his cracked saint an excellent devil. + So, though our war small triumph brings, + We gained great fame in other things. + Did not our troops show great discerning, + And skill, your various arts in learning? + Outwent they not each native noodle + By far, in playing Yankee-doodle? + Which, as 'twas your New England tune, + 'Twas marvellous they took so soon. + And ere the year was fully through, + Did they not learn to foot it too, + And such a dance as ne'er was known + For twenty miles on end lead down? + Did they not lay their heads together, + And gain your art to tar and feather, + When Colonel Nesbitt, thro' the town, + In triumph bore the country-clown? + Oh! what a glorious work to sing + The veteran troops of Britain's king, + Adventuring for th'heroic laurel + With bag of feathers and tar-barrel! + To paint the cart where culprits ride, + And Nesbitt marching at its side. + Great executioner and proud, + Like hangman high, on Holborn road; + And o'er the slow-drawn rumbling car, + The waving ensigns of the war! + + * * * * * + + +=_Philip Freneau, 1752-1832._= (Manual, pp. 486, 511.) + +From "An Indian Burying-ground." + +=_318._= + + In spite of all the learned have said, + I still my old opinion keep; + The posture that we give the dead, + Points out the soul's eternal sleep. + + Not so the ancients of these lands;-- + The Indian, when from life released, + Again is seated with his friends, + And shares again the joyous feast. + + His imaged birds, and painted bowl, + And venison, for a journey dressed, + Bespeak the nature of the soul,-- + Activity, that wants no rest. + + His bow, for action ready bent, + And arrows, with a head of bone, + Can only mean that life is spent, + And not the finer essence gone. + + * * * * * + + Here still a lofty rock remains, + On which the curious eye may trace, + Now wasted half by wearing rains, + The fancies of a ruder race. + + * * * * * + + By midnight moons, o'er moistening dews, + In vestments for the chase arrayed. + The hunter still the deer pursues, + The hunter and the deer--a shade. + + * * * * * + +=_David Humphreys, 1783-1818._= (Manual, p. 512.) + +From "The Happiness of America." + +=_319._= RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. + + I too, perhaps, should Heaven prolong my date, + The oft-repeated tale shall oft relate; + Shall tell the feelings in the first alarms, + Of some bold enterprise the unequalled charms; + Shall tell from whom I learnt the martial art, + With what high chiefs I played my early part-- + With Parsons first-- + + * * * * * + Death-daring Putnam--then immortal Greene-- + Then how great Washington my youth approved, + In rank preferred, and as a parent loved. + With him what hours on warlike plains I spent, + Beneath the shadow of th' imperial tent; + With him how oft I went the nightly round + Through moving hosts, or slept on tented ground; + From him how oft--(nor far below the first, + In high behests and confidential trust)-- + From him how oft I bore the dread commands, + Which destined for the fight the eager bands; + With him how oft I passed the eventful day, + Bode by his side, as down the long array + His awful voice the columns taught to form, + To point the thunders and direct the storm. + But, thanks to Heaven! those days of blood are o'er; + The trumpet's clangor, the loud cannon's roar. + + * * * * * + + No more this hand, since happier days succeed, + Waves the bright blade, or reins the fiery steed. + No more for martial fame this bosom burns; + Now white-robed Peace to bless a world returns; + Now fostering Freedom all her bliss bestows, + Unnumbered blessings for unnumbered woes. + + * * * * * + + +=_Samuel J. Smith,[77] 1771-1835._= + +=_320._= PEACE, BE STILL. + + When, on his mission from his home in heaven, + In the frail bark the Saviour deigned to sleep, + The tempest rose--with headlong fury driven, + The wave-tossed vessel whirled along the deep: + Wild shrieked the storm amid the parting shrouds, + And the vexed billows dashed the darkening clouds. + + Ah! then how futile human skill and power,-- + "Save us! we perish in the o'erwhelming wave!" + They cried, and found in that tremendous hour, + "An eye to pity, and an arm to save." + He spoke, and lo! obedient to His will, + The raging waters, and the winds were still. + + And thou, poor trembler on life's stormy sea, + Where dark the waves of sin and sorrow roll, + To Him for refuge from the tempest flee,-- + To Him, confiding, trust the sinking soul; + For O, He came to calm the tempest-tossed, + To seek the wandering, and to save the lost. + + For thee, and such as thee, impelled by love, + He left the mansions of the blessed on high; + Mid sin, and pain, and grief, and fear, to move, + With lingering anguish, and with shame to die. + The debt to Justice, boundless Mercy paid, + For hopeless guilt, complete atonement made. + + O, in return for such surpassing grace, + Poor, blind, and naked, what canst thou impart? + Canst thou no offering on his altar place? + Yes, lowly mourner; give him all thy heart: + That simple offering he will not disown,-- + That living incense may approach his throne. + +[Footnote 77: A gentleman of fortune and literary culture; a life-long +resident in the country, in his native State, New Jersey.] + + * * * * * + + +=_William Clifton, 1772-1790._= (Manual, p. 512.) + +From lines "To Fancy." + +=_321._= PLEASURES OF IMAGINATION. + + Is my lonely pittance past? + Fleeting good too light to last? + Lifts my friend the latch no more? + Fancy, thou canst all restore; + Thou canst, with thy airy shell, + To a palace raise my cell. + + * * * * * + + With thee to guide my steps, I'll creep + In some old haunted nook to sleep, + Lulled by the dreary night-bird's scream, + That flits along the wizard stream, + And there, till morning 'gins appear, + The tales of troubled spirits hear. + + Sweet's the dawn's ambiguous light, + Quiet pause 'tween day and night, + When afar the mellow horn + Chides the tardy gaited morn, + And asleep is yet the gale + On sea-beat mount, and rivered vale. + But the morn, though sweet and fair; + Sweeter is when thou art there; + Hymning stars successive fade, + Fairies hurtle through the shade, + Lovelorn flowers I weeping see, + If the scene is touched by thee. + + * * * * * + Thus through life with thee I'll glide, + Happy still what'er betide, + And while plodding sots complain + Of ceaseless toil and slender gain, + Every passing hour shall be + Worth a golden age to me. + + * * * * * + +=_Robert Treat Paine, 1773-1811._= (Manual, p. 512.) + +From "The Ruling Passion." + +=_322._= THE MISER. + + Next comes the miser; palsied, jealous, lean, + He looks the very skeleton of Spleen! + 'Mid forests drear, he haunts, in spectred gloom, + Some desert abbey or some druid's tomb; + Where hearsed in earth, his occult riches lay, + Fleeced from the world, and buried from the day. + With crutch in hand, he points his mineral rod, + Limps to the spot, and turns the well-known sod. + While there, involved in night, he counts his store + By the soft tinklings of the golden ore, + He shakes with terror lest the moon should spy, + And the breeze whisper, where his treasures lie. + + This wretch, who, dying, would not take one pill, + If, living, he must pay a doctor's bill, + Still clings to life, of every joy bereft; + His God is gold, and his religion theft! + And, as of yore, when modern vice was strange, + Could leathern money current pass on 'change, + His reptile soul, whose reasoning powers are pent + Within the logic bounds of cent per cent, + Would sooner coin his ears than stocks should fall, + And cheat the pillory, than not cheat at all! + + * * * * * + + +=_John Blair Linn,[78] 1777-1804._= + +From "The Powers of Genius." + +=_323._= WRETCHEDNESS OF SAVAGE LIFE. + + The human fabric early from its birth, + Feels some fond influence from its parent earth; + In different regions different forms we trace, + Here dwells a feeble, there an iron race; + Here genius lives, and wakeful fancies play, + Here noiseless stupor sleeps its life away. + * * * * * + Chill through his trackless pines the hunter passed, + His yell arose upon the howling blast; + Before him fled, with all the speed of fear, + His wealth--and victim, yonder helpless deer. + Saw you the savage man, how fell and wild, + With what grim pleasure, as he passed, he smiled? + Unhappy man! a wretched wigwam's shed + Is his poor shelter, some dry skins his bed; + Sometimes alone upon the woodless height + He strikes his fire, and spends his watchful night; + His dog with howling bays the moon's red beam, + And starts the wild deer in his nightly dream. + Poor savage man! for him no yellow grain + Waves its bright billows o'er the fruitful plain; + For him no harvest yields its full supply, + When winter hurls his tempest through the sky. + No joys he knows but those which spring from strife, + Unknown to him the charms of social life. + Rage, malice, envy, all his thoughts control, + And every dreadful passion burns his soul. + Should culture meliorate his darksome home, + And cheer those wilds where he is wont to roam; + * * * * * + Should fields of tillage yield their rich increase, + And through his wastes walk forth the arts of peace, + His sullen soul would feel a genial glow, + Joy would break in upon the night of woe; + Knowledge would spread her mild, reviving ray, + And on his wigwam rise the dawn of day. + +[Footnote 78: A Presbyterian clergyman, who died prematurely; an +associate and connection of Charles Brockden Brown. Has left several +poems of merit. A native of Pennsylvania.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Francis S. Key, 1779-1843._= (Manual, p. 523.) + +=_324._= THE STAR-SPANGLED BANNER. + + O say, can you see, by the dawn's early light, + What so proudly we hailed, at the twilight's last gleaming? + Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the perilous fight, + O'er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming; + And the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air, + Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there: + + On that shore, dimly seen through the mist of the deep, + Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes, + What is that which the breeze, o'er the towering steep, + As it fitfully blows, now conceals, now discloses? + Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam, + In full glory reflected now shines in the stream: + 'Tis the Star-Spangled Banner; O, long may it wave + O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave! + + And where are the foes who so vauntingly swore + That the havoc of war, and the battle's confusion, + A home and a country should leave us no more? + Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps' pollution. + No refuge could save the hireling and slave + From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave; + And the Star-Spangled Banner in triumph doth wave + O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave! + + O thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand + Between their loved homes and the war's desolation; + Blest with victory and peace, may the heav'n-rescued land + Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation! + Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just; + And this be our motto, "In God is our trust;" + And the Star-Spangled Banner in triumph shall wave + O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave! + + * * * * * + + +=_Washington Alston, 1779-1843._= (Manual, pp. 504. 510.) + +From the "Sylphs of the Seasons." + +=_325._= + + Methought, within a desert cave, + Cold, dark, and solemn as the grave, + I suddenly awoke. + It seemed of sable night the cell + Where, save when from the ceiling fell + An oozing drop, her silent spell + No sound had ever broke. + + There motionless I stood alone, + Like some strange monument of stone + Upon a barren wild; + Or like (so solid and profound + The darkness seemed that walled me round) + A man that's buried under ground, + Where pyramids are piled. + + * * * * * + + Then spake the Sylph of Spring serene, + "'Tis I thy joyous heart, I ween. + With sympathy shall move: + For I with living melody + Of birds in choral symphony, + First waked thy soul to poesy, + To piety and love. + + "When thou, at call of vernal breeze, + And beckoning bough of budding trees, + Hast left thy sullen fire; + And stretched thee in some mossy dell, + And heard the browsing wether's bell, + Blithe echoes rousing from their cell + To swell the tinkling choir: + + "Or lured by some fresh-scented gale + That wooed the moored fisher's sail + To tempt the mighty main, + Hast watched the dim, receding shore, + Now faintly seen the ocean o'er, + Like hanging cloud, and now no more + To bound the sapphire plain. + + "Then, wrapped in night, the scudding bark, + (That seemed, self-poised amid the dark, + Through upper air to leap,) + Beheld, from thy most fearful height, + The rapid dolphin's azure light + Cleave, like a living meteor bright, + The darkness of the deep." + + * * * * * + + +=_John Pierpont, 1785-1866._= (Manual, p. 513.) + +=_326._= A TEMPERANCE SONG. + + In Eden's green retreats, + A water-brook--that played + Between soft, mossy seats, + Beneath a plane tree's shade, + Whose rustling leaves + Danced o'er its brink-- + Was Adam's drink, + And also Eve's. + + * * * * * + + And, when the man of God + From Egypt led his flock, + They thirsted, and his rod + Smote the Arabian rock, + And forth a rill + Of water gushed, + And on they rushed, + And drank their fill. + + Had Moses built a still, + And dealt out to that host + To every man his gill, + And pledged him in a toast, + Would cooler brains, + Or stronger hands, + Have braved the sands + Of those hot plains? + + If Eden's strength and bloom, + Gold water thus hath given, + If e'en beyond the tomb, + It is the drink of heaven, + Are not good wells + And crystal springs + _The very things + for our Hotels?_ + + * * * * * + +=_327._= THE PILGRIM FATHERS. + + The Pilgrim Fathers,--where are they? + The waves that brought them o'er + Still roll in the bay, and throw their spray, + As they break along the shore: + Still roll in the bay, as they roll'd that day + When the Mayflower moor'd below, + When the sea around was black with storms, + And white the shore with snow. + + The mists, that wrapp'd the Pilgrim's sleep, + Still brood upon the tide; + And his rocks yet keep their watch by the deep, + To stay its waves of pride. + But the snow-white sail, that he gave to the gale + When the heavens look'd dark, is gone;-- + As an angel's wing, through an opening cloud, + Is seen, and then withdrawn. + + The Pilgrim exile,--sainted name! + The hill, whose icy brow + Rejoiced when he came, in the morning's flame, + In the morning's flame burns now. + And the moon's cold light, as it lay that night + On the hill-side and the sea, + Still lies where he laid his houseless head;-- + But the Pilgrim,--where is he? + + The Pilgrim Fathers are at rest. + When summer's throned on high, + And the world's warm breast is in verdure dress'd + Go, stand on the hill where they lie. + The earliest ray of the golden day + On that hallow'd spot is cast; + And the evening sun, as he leaves the world, + Looks kindly on that spot last. + + The Pilgrim _spirit_ has not fled; + It walks in the noon's broad light; + And it watches the bed of the glorious dead, + With their holy stars, by night. + It watches the bed of the brave who have bled, + And shall guard this ice-bound shore, + Till the waves of the bay, where the Mayflower lay, + Shall foam and freeze no more. + + * * * * * + + +=_James G. Percival, 1786-1856._= (Manual, p. 515.) + +=_328._= THE CORAL GROVE. + + Deep in the wave is a coral grove, + Where the purple mullet and gold-fish rove; + Where the sea-flower spreads its leaves of blue, + That never are wet with the falling dew, + But in bright and changeful beauty shine, + Far down in the green and glassy brine. + The floor is of sand, like the mountain drift, + And the pearl-shells spangle the flinty snow; + From coral rocks, the sea-plants lift + Their boughs, where the tides and billows flow; + The water is calm and still below, + For the winds and waves are absent there, + And the sands are bright as the stars that glow + In the motionless fields of upper air. + There, with its waving blade of green, + The sea-flag streams through the silent water, + And the crimson leaf of the dulse is seen + To blush like a banner bathed in slaughter. + There, with a light and easy motion, + The fan-coral sweeps through the clear, deep sea, + And the yellow and scarlet tufts of ocean + Are bending like corn on the upland lea, + And life, in rare and beautiful forms, + Is sporting amid those bowers of stone. + + * * * * * + + +=_Richard H. Dana, 1787-._= (Manual, pp. 501, 504, 514.) + +From "The Buccaneer." + +=_329._= + + A sweet, low voice, in starry nights, + Chants to his ear a 'plaining song; + Its tones come winding up the heights, + Telling of woe and wrong; + And he must listen, till the stars grow dim, + The song that gentle voice doth sing to him. + + O, it is sad that aught so mild + Should bind the soul with bands of fear; + That strains to soothe a little child + The man should dread to hear! + But sin hath broke the world's sweet peace, unstrung + The harmonious chords to which the angels sung. + + * * * * * + + But he no more shall haunt the beach, + Nor sit upon the tall cliff's crown, + Nor go the round of all that reach, + Nor feebly sit him down, + Watching the swaying weeds; another day, + And he'll have gone far hence that dreadful way. + + To-night the charméd number's told. + "Twice have I come for thee," it said. + "Once more, and none shall thee behold. + Come, live one, to the dead!" + So hears his soul, and fears the coming night, + Yet sick and weary of the soft, calm light. + + Again he sits within that room; + All day he leans at that still board; + None to bring comfort to his gloom, + Or speak a friendly word. + Weakened with fear, lone, haunted by remorse, + Poor, shattered wretch, there waits he that pale horse. + + * * * * * + + +=_Richard Henry Wilde, 1789-._= (Manual, pp. 521, 501.) + +=_330._= MY LIFE IS LIKE THE SUMMER ROSE. + + My life is like the summer rose + That opens to the morning sky, + But, ere the shades of evening close, + Is scattered on the ground to die; + Yet on that rose's humble bed + The softest dews, of night are shed, + As if she wept such waste to see; + But none shall drop a tear for me. + + My life is like the autumn leaf + That trembles in the moon's pale ray; + Its hold is frail, its state is brief, + Restless, and soon to pass away; + But when that leaf shall fall and fade, + The parent tree will mourn its shade, + The winds bewail the leafless tree; + But none shall breathe a sigh, for me. + + My life is like the print which feet + Have left on Tampa's desert strand; + Soon as the rising tide shall beat, + Their track will vanish from the sand; + Yet, as if grieving to efface + All vestige of the human race, + On that lone shore loud moans the sea; + But none shall thus lament for me. + + * * * * * + + +=_James A. Hillhouse, 1789-1844._= (Manual, p. 487.) + +From "Hadad." + +=_331._= + + _Hadad._ Confide in me. + I can transport thee, O, to a paradise + To which this Canaan is a darksome span. + Beings shall welcome, serve thee, lovely as angels; + The elemental powers shall stoop, the sea + Disclose her wonders, and receive thy feet + Into her sapphire chambers; orbéd clouds + Shall chariot thee from zone to zone, while earth, + A dwindled, islet, floats beneath thee. Every + Season and clime shall blend for thee the garland. + The Abyss of time shall cast its secrets, ere + The flood marred primal nature, ere this orb + Stood in her station. Thou shalt know the stars, + The houses of eternity, their names, + Their courses, destiny--all marvels high. + + _Tam._ Talk not so madly. + + * * * * * + +From "The Judgment." + +=_332._= + + As, when from some proud capital that crowns + Imperial Ganges, the reviving breeze + Sweeps the dank mist, or hoary river fog + Impervious mantled o'er her highest towers, + Bright on the eye rush Bramah's temples, capp'd + With spiry tops, gay-trellised minarets, + Pagods of gold, and mosques with burnish'd domes, + Gilded, and glistening in the morning sun, + So from the hill the cloudy curtains roll'd, + And, in the lingering lustre of the eve, + Again the Saviour and his seraphs shone. + Emitted sudden in his rising, flash'd + Intenser light, as toward the right hand host + Mild turning, with a look ineffable, + The invitation he proclaim'd in accents + Which on their ravish'd ears pour'd thrilling, like + The silver sound of many trumpets, heard + Afar in sweetest jubilee: then, swift + Stretching his dreadful sceptre to the left, + That shot forth horrid lightnings, in a voice + Clothed but in half its terrors, yet to them + Seem'd like the crush of heaven, pronounced the doom. + The sentence utter'd as with life instinct, + The throne uprose majestically slow; + Each angel spread his wings; in one dread swell + Of triumph mingling as they mounted, trumpets + And harps, and golden lyres, and timbrels sweet, + And many a strange and deep-toned instrument + Of heavenly minstrelsy unknown on earth, + And angels' voices, and the loud acclaim + Of all the ransom'd like a thunder shout, + Far through the skies melodious echoes roll'd + And faint hosannas distant climes return'd. + + * * * * * + + +=_John M. Harney,[79] 1789-1855._= + +From "Crystallina: a Fairy Tale." + +=_333._= + + On the stormy heath a ring they form; + They place therein the fearful maid, + And round her dance in the howling storm. + The winds beat hard on her lovely head: + But she clasped her hands, and nothing said. + + O, 'twas, I ween, a ghastly sight + To see their uncouth revelry. + The lightning was the taper bright, + The thunder was the melody, + To which they danced with horrid glee. + + The fierce-eyed owl did on them scowl, + The bat played round on leathern wing, + The coal-black wolf did at them howl, + The coal-black raven did croak and sing, + And o'er them flap his dusky wing. + + An earthquake heaved beneath their feet, + Pale meteors revelled in the sky, + The clouds sailed by like a routed fleet, + The night-winds shrieked as they passed by, + The dark-red moon was eclipsed on high. + +[Footnote 79: One of the earliest poets of the West, but a native of +Delaware.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Charles Sprague, 1791-._= (Manual, p. 514.) + +From "Curiosity." + +=_334._= THE NEWSPAPER. + + Turn to the Press--its teeming sheets survey, + Big with the wonders of each passing day; + Births, deaths, and weddings, forgeries, fires, and wrecks, + Harangues and hailstorms, brawls and broken necks; + Where half-fledged bards, on feeble pinions, seek + An immortality of near a week; + Where cruel eulogists the dead restore, + In maudlin praise, to martyr them once more; + Where ruffian slanderers wreak their coward spite, + And need no venomed dagger while they write. + + * * * * * + + Yet, sweet or bitter, hence what fountains burst, + While still the more we drink the more we thirst. + Trade hardly deems the busy day begun + Till his keen eye along the page has run; + The blooming daughter throws her needle by, + And reads her schoolmate's marriage with a sigh; + While the grave mother puts her glasses on, + And gives a tear to some old crony gone. + The preacher, too, his Sunday theme lays down. + To know what last new folly fills the town. + Lively or sad, life's meanest, mightiest things, + The fate of fighting cocks, or fighting kings-- + Nought comes amiss; we take the nauseous stuff, + Verjuice or oil, a libel or a puff. + + * * * * * + + +=_Lydia H. Sigourney, 1791-1865._= (Manual, pp. 484, 523.) + +=_335._= THE WIDOW AT HER DAUGHTER'S BRIDAL. + + Deal gently, thou whose hand hath won + The young bird from its nest away, + Where, careless, 'neath a vernal sun, + She gayly carolled day by day; + The haunt is lone, the heart must grieve, + From where her timid wing doth soar + They pensive lisp at hush of eve, + Yet hear her gushing song no more. + + Deal gently with her; thou art dear, + Beyond what vestal lips have told, + And, like a lamb from fountains clear, + She turns, confiding, to thy fold. + She round thy sweet, domestic bower + The wreath of changeless love shall twine, + Watch for thy step at vesper hour, + And blend her holiest prayer with thine. + + Deal gently, thou, when, far away, + 'Mid stranger scenes her foot shall rove, + Nor let thy tender care decay; + The soul of woman lives in love. + And shouldst thou, wondering, mark a tear, + Unconscious, from her eyelids break, + Be pitiful, and soothe the fear + That man's strong heart may ne'er partake. + + A mother yields her gem to thee, + On thy true breast to sparkle rare; + She places 'neath thy household tree + The idol of her fondest care; + And, by thy trust to be forgiven + When judgment wakes in terror wild, + By all thy treasured hopes of heaven, + Deal gently with the widow's child. + + * * * * * + + +=_William O. Sutler,[80] 1793-._= + +From "The Boatman's Horn." + +=_336._= + + O Boatman, wind that horn again; + For never did the listening air + Upon its lambent bosom bear + So wild, so soft, so sweet a strain. + What though thy notes are sad and few, + By, every simple boatman blown? + Yet is each pulse to nature true, + And melody in every tone. + How oft, in boyhood's joyous day, + Unmindful of the lapsing hours, + I've loitered on my homeward way, + By wild Ohio's bank of flowers, + While some lone boatman from the deck + Poured his soft numbers to that tide, + As if to charm from storm and wreck + The boat where all his fortunes ride! + Delighted Nature drank the sound, + Enchanted Echo bore it round + In whispers soft and softer still, + From hill to plain, and plain to hill. + +[Footnote 80: A native of Kentucky; a favorite Western poet; at one time +prominent as a politician.] + + * * * * * + +=_337._= THE BATTLE-FIELD OF RAISIN. + + The battle's o'er; the din is past; + Night's mantle on the field is cast; + The Indian yell is heard no more; + The silence broods o'er Erie's shore. + At this lone hour I go to tread + The field where valor vainly bled; + To raise the wounded warrior's crest, + Or warm with tears his icy breast; + To treasure up his last command, + And bear it to his native land. + It may one pulse of joy impart + To a fond mother's bleeding heart, + Or, for a moment, it may dry + The tear-drop in the widow's eye. + Vain hopes, away! The widow ne'er + Her warrior's dying wish shall hear. + The passing zephyr bears no sigh; + No wounded warrior meets the eye; + Death is his sleep by Erie's wave; + Of Raisin's snow we heap his grave. + How many hopes lie buried here-- + The mother's joy, the father's pride, + The country's boast, the foeman's fear, + In 'wildered havoc, side by side! + Lend me, thou silent queen of night, + Lend me a while thy waning light, + That I may see each well-loved form + That sank beneath the morning storm. + + * * * * * + + +=_William Cullen Bryant, 1794-._= (Manual, pp. 487, 524.) + +From his "Poems." + +=_338._= LINES TO A WATER FOWL. + + Whither, midst falling dew, + While glow the heavens with the last steps of day, + Far through their rosy depths dost thou pursue + Thy solitary way? + + Vainly the fowler's eye + Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong, + As, darkly seen against the crimson sky, + Thy figure floats along. + + Seek'st thou the plashy brink + Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide, + Or where the rocking billows rise and sink + On the chafed ocean side? + + There is a Power whose care + Teaches thy way along that pathless coast,-- + The desert and illimitable air,-- + Lone wandering, but not lost. + + All day thy wings have fanned, + At that far height, the cold, thin atmosphere, + Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land, + Though the dark night is near. + + And soon that toil shall end, + Soon shalt thou find a summer home and rest, + And scream among thy fellows; reeds shall bend + Soon, o'er thy sheltered nest. + + Thou'rt gone; the abyss of heaven + Hath swallowed up thy form; yet on my heart + Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given, + And shall not soon depart. + + He who, from zone to zone, + Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight, + In the long way that I must tread alone, + Will lead my steps aright. + + * * * * * + +From "The Antiquity of Freedom." + +=_339._= FREEDOM IRREPRESSIBLE. + + O Freedom, thou art not, as poets dream, + A fair, young girl, with light and delicate limbs, + And wavy tresses gushing from the cap + With which the Roman master crowned his slave + When he took off the gyves. A bearded man, + Armed to the teeth, art thou; one mailéd hand + Grasps the broad shield, and one the sword; thy brow, + Glorious in beauty though it be, is scarred + With tokens of old wars; thy massive limbs + Are strong with struggling. Power at thee has launched + His bolts, and with his lightnings smitten thee. + They could not quench the life thou hast from heaven. + Merciless power has dug thy dungeon deep, + And his swart armorers, by a thousand fires, + Have forged thy chain; yet, while he deems thee bound, + The links are shivered, and the prison walls + Fall outward; terribly thou springest forth, + As springs the flame above a burning pile, + And shoutest to the nations, who return + Thy shoutings, while the pale oppressor flies. + + * * * * * + +From "Thanatopsis." + +=_340._= COMMUNION WITH NATURE, SOOTHING. + + To him who in the love of Nature holds + Communion with her visible forms, she speaks + A various language: for his gayer hours + She has a voice of gladness, and a smile, + An eloquence of beauty, and she glides + Into his darker musings, with a mild + And healing sympathy, that steals away + Their sharpness, ere he is aware. When thoughts + Of the last bitter hour come like a blight + Over thy spirit, and sad images + Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall, + And breathless darkness, and the narrow house. + Make thee to shudder, and grow sick at heart;-- + Go forth, under the open sky, and list + To Nature's teachings, while from all around-- + Earth and her waters, and the depths of air,-- + Comes a still voice. Yet a few days, and thee + The all-beholding sun shall see no more + In all his course; nor yet in the cold ground. + Where thy pale form was laid, with many tears, + Nor in the embrace of ocean, shall exist + Thy image. Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim + Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again, + And lost each human trace, surrendering up + Thine individual being, shalt thou go + To mix for ever with the elements, + To be a brother to the insensible rock, + And to the sluggish clod which the rude swain + Turns with his share, and treads upon. The oak + Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mould. + + * * * * * + + As the long train + Of ages glide away, the sons of men, + The youth in life's green spring, and he who goes + In the full strength of years, matron, and maid, + And the sweet babe, and the gray-headed man,-- + Shall one by one be gathered to thy side, + By those, who in their turn shall follow them. + So live, that when thy summons comes to join + The innumerable caravan, that moves + To that mysterious realm where each shall take + His chamber in the silent halls of death, + Thou go not like the quarry-slave at night, + Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed + By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave, + Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch + About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams. + + * * * * * + + =_341._= THE LIVING LOST. + + Matron! the children of whose love, + Each to his grave, in youth had passed, + and now the mould is heaped above + The dearest and the last! + Bride! who dost wear the widow's veil + Before the wedding flowers are pale! + Ye deem the human heart endures + No deeper, bitterer grief than yours. + + Yet there are pangs of keener wo, + Of which the sufferers never speak, + Nor to the world's cold pity show + The tears that scald the cheek, + Wrung from their eyelids by the shame + And guilt of those they shrink to name, + Whom once they loved with cheerful will, + And love, though fallen and branded, still. + + Weep, ye who sorrow for the dead; + Thus breaking hearts their pain relieve; + And reverenced are the tears ye shed. + And honored ye who grieve. + The praise of those who sleep in earth, + The pleasant memory of their worth, + The hope to meet when life is past, + Shall heal the tortured mind at last. + + But ye, who for the living lost + That agony in secret bear, + Who shall with soothing words accost + The strength of your despair? + Grief for your sake is scorn for them + Whom ye lament, and all condemn; + And o'er the world of spirits lies + A gloom from which ye turn your eyes. + + * * * * * + +=_342._= THE SONG OF THE SOWER. + + Brethren, the sower's task is done. + The seed is in its Winter bed. + Now let the dark-brown mould be spread, + To hide it from the sun, + And leave it to the kindly care + Of the still earth and brooding air. + As when the mother, from her breast, + Lays the hushed babe apart to rest, + And shades its eyes, and waits to see + How sweet its waking smile will be. + The tempest now may smite, the sleet + All night on the drowned furrow beat, + And winds that from the cloudy hold + Of winter, breathe the bitter cold, + Stiffen to stone the yellow-mould, + Yet safe shall lie the wheat; + Till, out of heaven's unmeasured blue, + Shall walk again the genial year, + To wake with warmth, and nurse with dew, + The germs we lay to slumber here. + O blessed harvest yet to be! + Abide thou with the love that keeps, + In its warm bosom tenderly, + The life which wakes, and that which sleeps. + The love that leads the willing spheres + Along the unending track of years, + And watches o'er the sparrow's nest, + Shall brood above thy winter rest, + And raise thee from the dust, to hold + Light whisperings with the winds of May; + And fill thy spikes with living gold, + From Summer's yellow ray. + Then, as thy garners give thee forth, + On what glad errands shalt thou go, + Wherever, o'er the waiting earth, + Roads wind, and rivers flow! + The ancient East shall welcome thee + To mighty marts beyond the sea; + And they who dwell where palm-groves sound + To summer winds the whole year round, + Shall watch, in gladness, from the shore, + The sails that bring thy glistening store. + + * * * * * + +=_343._= THE PLANTING OF THE APPLE-TREE. + + Come, let us plant the apple-tree! + Cleave the tough greensward with the spade; + Wide let its hollow bed be made; + There gently lay the roots, and there + Sift the dark mould with kindly care, + And press it o'er them tenderly, + As, round the sleeping infant's feet, + We softly fold the cradle-sheet: + So plant we the apple-tree. + + What plant we in the apple-tree? + Buds, which the breath of summer days + Shall lengthen into leafy sprays; + Boughs, where the thrush with crimson breast + Shall haunt and sing and hide her nest. + We plant upon the sunny lea + A shadow for the noontide hour, + A shelter from the summer shower, + When we plant the apple-tree. + + What plant we in the apple-tree? + Sweets for a hundred flowery springs, + To load the May-wind's restless wings, + When, from the orchard-row, he pours + Its fragrance through our open doors; + A world of blossoms for the bee; + Flowers for the sick girl's silent room; + For the glad infant, sprigs of bloom, + We plant with the apple-tree. + + What plant we in the apple-tree? + Fruits that shall swell in sunny June, + And redden in the August noon, + And drop as gentle airs come by + That fan the blue September sky; + While children, wild with noisy glee, + Shall scent their fragrance as they pass, + And search for them the tufted grass + At the foot of the apple-tree. + + And when above this apple-tree + The winter stars are quivering bright, + And winds go howling through the night, + Girls, whose young eyes o'erflow with mirth, + Shall peel its fruit by cottage-hearth, + And guests in prouder homes shall see, + Heaped with the orange and the grape, + As fair as they in tint and shape, + The fruit of the apple-tree. + + The fruitage of this apple-tree, + Winds, and our flag of stripe and star, + Shall bear to coasts that lie afar, + Where men shall wonder at the view, + And ask in what fair groves they grew; + And they who roam beyond the sea, + Shall look, and think of childhood's day, + And long hours passed in summer play + In the shade of the apple-tree. + + Each year shall give this apple-tree + A broader flush of roseate bloom, + A deeper maze of verdurous gloom, + And loosen, when the frost-clouds lower, + The crisp brown leaves in thicker shower; + The years shall come and pass, but we + Shall hear no longer, where we lie, + The summer's songs, the autumn's sigh, + In the boughs of the apple-tree. + + And time shall waste this apple tree. + Oh, when its aged branches throw + Thin shadows on the sward below, + Shall fraud and force and iron-will + Oppress the weak and helpless still? + What shall the tasks of mercy be, + Amid the toils, the strifes, the tears + Of those who live when length of years + Is wasting this apple-tree? + + "Who planted this old apple-tree?" + The children of that distant day + Thus to some aged man shall say; + And gazing on its mossy stem, + The gray-haired man shall answer them: + "A poet of the land was he. + Born in the rude, but good, old times; + 'Tis said he made some quaint old rhymes + On planting the apple-tree." + + * * * * * + + +=_Maria Brooks, 1795-1845._= (Manual, p. 523.) + +=_344._= MARRIAGE. + + The bard has sung, God never formed a soul + Without its own peculiar mate, to meet + Its wandering half, when ripe to crown the whole + Bright plan of bliss, most heavenly, most complete! + + But thousand evil things there are that hate + To look on happiness: these hurt, impede, + And, leagued with time, space, circumstance, and fate, + Keep kindred heart from heart, to pine, and pant, and bleed. + + And as the dove to far Palmyra flying, + From where her native founts of Antioch beam, + Weary, exhausted, longing, panting, sighing, + Lights sadly at the desert's bitter stream; + + So, many a soul, o'er life's drear desert faring, + Love's pure, congenial spring unfound, unquaffed, + Suffers, recoils, then thirsty and despairing + Of what it would, descends, and sips the nearest draught. + + * * * * * + + +=_Joseph Rodman Drake, 1795-1820._= (Manual, p. 517.) + +From "The Culprit Fay." + +=_345._= THE FAY'S DEPARTURE. + + * * * * * + + The moon looks down on old Crow-nest, + She mellows the shades, on his shaggy breast, + And seems his huge grey form to throw + In a silver cone on the wave below; + His sides are broken by spots of shade, + By the walnut bough and the cedar made, + And through their clustering branches dark + Glimmers and dies the fire-fly's spark-- + Like starry twinkles that momently break, + Through the rifts of the gathering tempest's rack. + + The stars are on the moving stream, + And fling, as its ripples gently flow, + A burnished length of wavy beam + In an eel-like, spiral line below; + The winds are whist, and the owl is still, + The bat in the shelvy rock is hid. + And naught is heard on the lonely hill + But the cricket's chirp, and the answer shrill + Of the gauze-winged katy-did; + And the plaint of the wailing whip-poor-will, + Who mourns unseen, and ceaseless sings, + Ever a note of wail and woe, + Till morning spreads her rosy wings, + And earth and sky in her glances grow. + + The moth-fly, as he shot in air, + Crept under the leaf, and hid her there; + The katy-did forgot its lay, + The prowling gnat fled fast away, + The fell mosquito checked his drone + And folded his wings till the Fay was gone, + And the wily beetle dropped his head, + And fell on the ground as if he were dead; + They crouched them close in the darksome shade, + They quaked all o'er with awe and fear, + For they had felt the blue-bent blade, + And writhed at the prick of the elfin spear; + Many a time on a summer's night. + When the sky was clear, and the moon was bright, + They had been roused from the haunted ground, + By the yelp and bay of the fairy hound; + They had heard the tiny bugle-horn, + They had heard the twang of the maize-silk string, + When the vine-twig bows were tightly drawn, + And the nettle shaft through air was borne, + Feathered with down of the hum-bird's wing. + And now they deemed the courier-ouphe, + Some hunter sprite of the elfin ground; + And they watched till they saw him mount the roof + That canopies the world around; + Then glad they left their covert lair, + And freaked about in the midnight air. + + * * * * * + + +=_Fitz-Greene Halleck, 1795-1869._= (Manual, p. 515.) + +=_346._= MARCO BOZZARIS. + + At midnight, in his guarded tent, + The Turk was dreaming of the hour + When Greece, her knee in suppliance bent, + Should tremble at his power; + In dreams, through camp and court he bore + The trophies of a conqueror; + In dreams his song of triumph heard; + Then wore his monarch's signet ring: + Then pressed that monarch's throne--a king; + As wild his thoughts, and gay of wing, + As Eden's garden bird. + + At midnight, in the forest shades, + Bozzaris ranged his Suliote band, + True as the steel of their tried blades, + Heroes in heart and hand. + There had the Persian thousands stood, + There had the glad earth drunk their blood + On old Platoea's day; + And now there breathed that haunted air + The sons of sires that conquer'd there, + With arm to strike and soul to dare, + As quick, as far as they. + + An hour pass'd on--the Turk awoke; + That bright dream was his last; + He woke to hear his sentries shriek, + "To arms! they come! the Greek! the Greek!" + He woke--to die, midst flame, and smoke, + And shout, and groan, and sabre-stroke, + And death-shots, falling thick and fast + As lightnings from the mountain-cloud; + And heard, with voice as trumpet loud, + Bozzaris cheer his band: + "Strike--till the last arm'd foe expires; + Strike--for your altars and your fires; + Strike--for the green graves of your sires: + God, and your native land!" + + They fought--like brave men, long and well; + They piled that ground with Moslem slain; + They conquer'd--but Bozzaris fell, + Bleeding at every vein. + His few surviving comrades saw-- + His smile when rang their proud hurrah, + And the red field was won: + Then saw in death his eyelids close + Calmly, as to a night's repose + Like flowers at set of sun. + + Come to the bridal chamber, Death! + Come to the mother's, when she feels, + For the first time, her first-born's breath; + Come when the blessed seals + That close the pestilence, are broke, + And crowded cities wail its stroke; + Come in consumption's ghastly form, + The earthquake shock, the ocean storm; + Come when the heart beats high and warm, + With banquet-song, and dance, and wine; + And thou art terrible: the tear, + The groan, the knell, the pall, the bier, + And all we know, or dream, or fear, + Of agony, are thine. + + But to the hero, when his sword + Has won the battle for the free, + Thy voice sounds like a prophet's word; + And in its hollow tones are heard + The thanks of millions yet to be. + Come, when his task of fame is wrought-- + Come, with her laurel-leaf blood-bought-- + Come, in her crowning hour--and then + Thy sunken eye's unearthly light + To him is welcome as the sight + Of sky and stars to prison'd men: + Thy grasp is welcome as the hand + Of brother in a foreign land; + Thy summons welcome as the cry + That told the Indian isles were nigh, + To the world-seeking Genoese; + When the land-wind from woods of palm, + And orange-groves, and fields of balm, + Blew o'er the Haytian seas. + + Bozzaris! with the storied brave + Greece nurtured in her glory's time, + Rest thee--there is no prouder grave, + E'en in her own proud clime. + Site wore no funeral weeds for thee, + Nor bade the dark hearse wave its plume, + Like torn branch, from death's leafless tree, + In sorrow's pomp and pageantry, + The heartless luxury of the tomb: + But she remembers thee as one + Long loved and for a season gone, + For thee her poet's lyre is wreathed, + Her marble wrought, her music breathed: + For thee she rings the birth-day bells; + Of thee her babes' first lisping tells, + For thine, her evening prayer is said + At palace couch, and cottage bed; + Her soldier, closing with the foe, + Gives for thy sake a deadlier blow; + His plighted maiden, when she fears + For him, the joy of her young years, + Thinks of thy fate, and checks her tears. + And she, the mother of thy boys, + Though in her eye and faded cheek + Is read the grief she will not speak, + The memory of her buried joys, + And even she who gave thee birth, + Will by their pilgrim-circled hearth, + Talk of thy doom without a sigh: + For thou art Freedom's now, and Fame's, + One of the few, the immortal names, + That were not born to die. + + * * * * * + +From "Fanny." + +=_347._= THE BROKEN MERCHANT. + + Fanny! 'twas with her name my song began; + 'Tis proper and polite her name should end it; + If in my story of her woes, or plan + Or moral can be traced, 'twas not intended; + And if I've wronged her, I can only tell her + I'm sorry for it--so is my bookseller. + + * * * * * + + Her father sent to Albany a prayer + For office, told how fortune had abused him, + And modestly requested to be mayor-- + The council very civilly refused him; + Because, however much they might desire it, + The "public good," it seems, did not require it. + + Some evenings since, he took a lonely stroll + Along Broadway, scene of past joys and evils; + He felt that withering bitterness of soul, + Quaintly denominated the "blue devils;" + And thought of Bonaparte and Belisarius, + Pompey, and Colonel Burr, and Caius Marius. + + And envying the loud playfulness and mirth. + Of those who passed him, gay in youth and hope, + He took at Jupiter a shilling's worth + Of gazing, through the showman's telescope; + Sounds as of far-off bells came on his ears, + He fancied 'twas the music of the spheres. + + He was mistaken, it was no such thing, + 'Twas Yankee Doodle, played by Scudder's band; + He muttered, as he lingered listening, + Something of freedom and our happy land; + Then sketched, as to his home he hurried fast, + This sentimental song--his saddest and his last. + + * * * * * + + +=_John G.C. Brainard, 1796-1828._= (Manual, p. 523.) + +From Lines "To the Connecticut River." + +=_348._= THE PAST AND THE PRESENT. + + From that lone lake, the sweetest of the chain, + That links the mountain to the mighty main, + Fresh from the rock and swelling by the tree, + Rushing to meet, and dare, and breast the sea-- + Fair, noble, glorious river! in thy wave + The sunniest slopes and sweetest pastures lave; + The mountain torrent, with its wintry roar, + Springs from its home and leaps upon thy shore: + The promontories love thee--and for this + Turn their rough cheeks, and stay thee for thy kiss. + + * * * * * + + Dark as the forest leaves that strew the ground, + The Indian hunter here his shelter found; + Here cut his bow and shaped his arrows true, + Here built his wigwam and his bark canoe, + Speared the quick salmon leaping up the fall, + And slew the deer without the rifle-ball. + + * * * * * + + What Art can execute, or Taste devise, + Decks thy fair course and gladdens in thine eyes-- + As broader sweep the bendings of thy stream, + To meet the southern sun's more constant beam. + Here cities rise, and sea-washed commerce hails + Thy shores and winds with all her flapping sails, + From Tropic isles, or from the torrid main-- + Where grows the grape, or sprouts the sugar-cane-- + Or from the haunts where the striped haddock play, + By each cold northern bank and frozen bay. + Here, safe returned from every stormy sea, + Waves the striped flag, the mantle of the free-- + That star-lit flag, by all the breezes curled + Of yon vast deep whose waters grasp the world. + + * * * * * + + +=_Robert C. Sands, 1799-1832._= (Manual, p. 504.) + +From "Weehawken." + +=_349._= HISTORICAL REMINISCENCES. + + Eve o'er our path is stealing fast: + Yon quivering splendors are the last + The sun will fling, to tremble o'er + The waves that kiss the opposing shore; + His latest glories fringe the height + Behind us, with their golden light. + + * * * * * + + Yet should the stranger ask what lore + Of by-gone days, this winding shore, + Yon cliffs, and fir-clad steeps, could tell + If vocal made by Fancy's spell, + The varying legend might rehearse + Fit themes for high romantic verse. + + O'er yon rough heights and moss-clad sod + Oft hath the stalwart warrior trod; + Or peered with hunter's gaze, to mark + The progress of the glancing bark. + Spoils, strangely won on distant waves. + Have lurked in yon obstructed caves. + + When the great strife for Freedom rose, + Here scouted oft her friends and foes, + Alternate, through the changeful war, + And beacon-fires flashed bright and far; + And here, when Freedom's strife was won, + Fell, in sad feud, her favored son;-- + + Her son,--the second of the band, + The Romans of the rescued land. + Where round yon capes the banks descend, + Long shall the pilgrim's footsteps bend; + There, mirthful hearts shall pause to sigh + There, tears shall dim the patriot's eye. + + There last he stood. Before his sight + Flowed the fair river, free and bright; + The rising Mart, and isles and bay, + Before him in their glory lay,-- + Scenes of his love and of his fame,-- + The instant ere the death-shot came. + + * * * * * + + +=_George W. Doane, 1799-1859._= (Manual, p. 523.) + +From "Evening." + +=_350._= + + Softly now the light of day + Fades upon my sight away; + Free from care, from labor free, + Lord, I would commune with thee. + + Thou, whose all-pervading eye + Nought escapes, without, within, + Pardon each infirmity, + Open fault, and secret sin. + + Soon for me the light of day + Shall forever pass away; + Then, from sin and sorrow free, + Take me, Lord, to dwell with thee! + + Thou who sinless, yet hast known + All of man's infirmity; + Then, from thy eternal throne, + Jesus, look with pitying eye. + + * * * * * + + +=_George P. Morris, 1801-1864._= (Manual, p. 523.) + +=_351._= HIGHLANDS OF THE HUDSON. + + Where Hudson's wave o'er silvery sands + Winds through the hills afar, + Old Crow-nest like a monarch stands, + Crowned with, a single star. + And there amid the billowy swells + Of rock-ribbed, cloud-capped earth, + My fair and gentle Ida dwells, + A nymph of mountain birth. + + The snow-flake that the cliff receives-- + The diamonds of the showers-- + Spring's tender blossoms, buds, and leaves-- + The sisterhood of flowers-- + Morn's early beam, eve's balmy breeze-- + Her purity define;-- + But Ida's dearer far than these + To this fond breast of mine. + + * * * * * + + +=_George D. Prentice, 1802-1869._= (Manual, p. 487.) + +From "The Mammoth Cave." + +=_352._= CONTRAST OF NATURE WITHOUT. + + All day, as day is reckoned on the earth, + I've wandered in these dim and awful aisles, + Shut from the blue and breezy dome of heaven, + ... And now + I'll sit me down upon yon broken rock, + To muse upon the strange and solemn things + Of this mysterious realm. + All day my steps + Have been amid the beautiful, the wild, + The gloomy, the terrific; crystal founts + Almost invisible in their serene + And pure transparency, high pillared domes + With stars and flowers, all fretted like the halls + Of Oriental monarchs--rivers dark, + And drear, and voiceless, as Oblivion's stream, + That flows through Death's dim vale of silence,--gulfs + All fathomless, down which the loosened rock + Plunges, until its far-off echoes come + Fainter and fainter, like the dying roll + Of thunders in the distance. + ... Beautiful + Are all the thousand snow-white gems that lie + In these mysterious chambers, gleaming out + Amid the melancholy gloom, and wild + These rocky hills and cliffs, and gulfs, but far + More beautiful and wild, the things that greet + The wanderer in our world of light--the stars + Floating on high, like islands of the blest,-- + The autumn sunsets glowing like the gate + Of far-off Paradise; the gorgeous clouds + On which the glories of the earth and sky + Meet, and commingle; earth's unnumbered flowers, + All turning up their gentle eyes to heaven; + The birds, with bright wings glancing in the sun, + Filling the air with rainbow miniatures; + The green old forests surging in the gale; + The everlasting mountains, on whose peaks + The setting sun burns like an altar-flame. + + * * * * * + + +=_Charles Constantine Pise, 1802-1866._= (Manual, p. 532.) + +From "The Pleasures of Religion." + +=_353._= THE RAINBOW. + + Mark, o'er yon wild, as melts the storm away, + The rainbow tints their various hues display; + Beauteous, though faint, though deeply shaded, bright, + They span the clearing heavens, and charm the sight. + Yes, as I gaze, methinks I view--the while, + Hope's radiant form, and Mercy's genial smile. + Who doth not see, in that sweet bow of heaven, + Circling around the twilight hills of even, + Religion's light, which o'er the wilds of life + Shoots its pure rays through misery and strife; + Soothes the lone bosom, as it pines in woe, + And turns to heaven this barren world below? + O, what were man, did not her hallowed ray + Disperse, the clouds that thicken on his way! + A weary pilgrim, left in cheerless gloom, + To grope his midnight journey to the tomb; + His life a tempest, death, a wreck forlorn, + In sorrow dying, as in sorrow born. + + * * * * * + +From "The Tourist" + +=_354._= VIEW AT GIBRALTAR. + + And from this height, how beauteous to survey + The neighboring shores, the bright cerulean bay: + Myriads of sails are swelling on the deep, + And oars, in myriads, through the waters sweep. + Behold, in peace, all nations here unite, + Their various pennons streaming to the sight: + The red cross glows, the Danish crown appears, + The half-moon rises, and the lion rears, + But mark, bold-towering o'er the conscious wave, + The starry banners of my country brave, + Stream like a meteor to the wooing breeze, + And float all-radiant o'er the sunny seas! + Hail, native flag! for ever mayst thou blow-- + Hope to the friend, and terror to the foe! + Again I hail thee, Calpe! on thy steep + I wandered high, and gazed upon the deep! + Nature's best fortress, which no warlike foe, + No martial scheme, can ever overthrow. + Art, too, had added strength, and given a grace + That smooths the rugged aspect of thy face. + What wondrous halls along the mountain made! + What trains of cannon in those halls arrayed! + They frown imperious from their lofty state, + Prepared around to deal the scourge of fate. + + * * * * * + + +=_Elijah P. Lovejoy,[81] 1802-1816._= + +From "Lines to my Mother." + +=_355._= + + There is a fire that burns on earth, + A pure and holy flame; + It came to men from heavenly birth, + And still it is the same + As when it burned the chords along + That bore the first-born seraph's song; + Sweet as the hymn of gratitude + That swelled to Heaven when "all was good." + No passion in the choirs above + Is purer than a mother's love. + * * * * * + My mother! I am far away + From home, and love, and thee; + And stranger hands may heap the clay + That soon may cover me; + Yet we shall meet--perhaps not here, + But in yon shining, azure sphere; + And if there's aught assures me more, + Ere yet my spirit fly, + That Heaven has mercy still in store + For such a wretch as I, + 'Tis that a heart so good as thine + Must bleed, must burst, along with mine. + + And life is short, at best, and time + Must soon prepare the tomb; + And there is sure a happier clime + Beyond this world of gloom. + And should it be my happy lot, + After a life of care and pain, + In sadness spent, or spent in vain, + To go where sighs and sin are not, + 'Twill make the half my heaven to be, + My mother, evermore with thee. + +[Footnote 81: Born in Maine, but lived at the West; was editor of a +religions newspaper, which early assailed slavery as wrong; lost his +life in defending his press against a mob at Alton, Illinois, July, +1836.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Edward Coate Pinkney, 1802-1828_.= (Manual, p. 521.) + +=356=. A HEALTH. + + I fill this cup to one made up of loveliness alone; + A woman, of her gentle sex the seeming paragon, + To whom the better elements and kindly stars have given + A form so fair, that, like the air, 'tis less of earth than heaven. + + Her every tone is music's own, like those of morning birds; + And something more than melody dwells ever in her words. + The coinage of her heart are they, and from her lips each flows, + As one may see the burdened bee forth issue from the rose. + + Affections are as thoughts to her, the measures of her hours; + Her feelings have the fragrance and the freshness of young flowers; + And lovely passions, changing oft, so fill her, she appears + The image of themselves by turns, the idol of past years. + + Of her bright face, one glance will trace a picture on the brain, + And of her voice, in echoing hearts a sound must long remain; + But memory such as mine of her, so very much, endears + When death is nigh, my latest sigh will not be life's, but hers. + + I fill this cup to one made up of loveliness alone, + A woman, of her gentle sex, the seeming paragon. + Her health! and would on earth there stood some more of such a frame, + That life might be all poetry, and weariness a name. + + * * * * * + + +=_Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803-._= (Manual, pp. 478, 503, 531.) + +=357.= HYMN SUNG AT THE COMPLETION OF THE CONCORD MONUMENT. + + By the rude bridge that arched the flood, + Their flag to April's breeze unfurled, + Here once the embattled farmers stood, + And fired the shot heard round the world. + + The foe long since in silence slept; + Alike the conqueror silent sleeps; + And Time the ruined bridge has swept + Down the dark stream which seaward creeps. + + On this green bank, by this soft stream, + We set to-day a votive stone, + That memory may their deed redeem, + When, like our sires, our sons are gone. + + Spirit, that made those heroes dare + To die, or leave their children free, + Bid Time and Nature gently spare + The shaft we raise to them and thee. + + * * * * * + +From "May Day." + +=_358._= DISAPPEARANCE OF WINTER. + + Not for a regiment's parade, + Nor evil laws or rulers made, + Blue Walden rolls its cannonade, + But for a lofty sign + Which the Zodiac threw, + That the bondage-days are told, + And waters free as winds shall flow. + Lo! how all the tribes combine + To rout the flying foe. + See, every patriot oak-leaf throws + His elfin length upon the snows, + Not idle, since the leaf all day + Draws to the spot the solar ray, + Ere sunset quarrying inches down, + And half-way to the mosses brown; + While the grass beneath the rime + Has hints of the propitious time, + And upward pries and perforates + Through the cold slab a thousand gates, + Till the green lances peering through + Bend happy in the welkin blue, + * * * * * + The ground-pines wash their rusty green, + The maple-tops their crimson tint, + On the soft path each track is seen, + The girl's foot leaves its neater print. + The pebble loosened from the frost + Asks of the urchin to be tost. + In flint and marble beats a heart, + The kind Earth takes her children's part, + The green lane is the school-boy's friend, + Low leaves his quarrel apprehend, + The fresh ground loves his top and ball, + The air rings jocund to his call, + The brimming brook invites a leap, + He dives the hollow, climbs the steep. + The youth reads omens where he goes, + And speaks all languages, the rose. + The wood-fly mocks with tiny noise + The far halloo of human voice; + The perfumed berry on the spray + Smacks of faint memories far away. + A subtle chain of countless rings + The next unto the farthest brings, + And, striving to be man, the worm + Mounts through all the spires of form. + + * * * * * + +From "Voluntaries II." + +=_359._= INSPIRATION OF DUTY. + + In an age of joys and toys, + Wanting wisdom, void of right, + Who shall nerve heroic boys + To hazard all in Freedom's fight,-- + Break shortly off their jolly games, + Forsake their comrades gay, + And quit proud homes and youthful dames, + For famine, toil, and fray? + Yet on the nimble air benign + Speed nimbler messages, + That waft the breath of grace divine + To hearts in sloth and ease. + So nigh is grandeur to our dust, + So near is God to man, + When duty whispers low, _Thou must_, + The youth replies, _I can_. + * * * * * + Stainless soldier on the walls, + Knowing this,--and knows no more,-- + Whoever fights, whoever falls + Justice conquers evermore, + Justice after as before.-- + + * * * * * + + +=_Thomas C. Upham,[82] 1799-1873._= + +=_360._= ON A SON LOST AT SEA. + + Boy of my earlier days and hopes! Once more, + Dear child of memory, of love, of tears! + I see thee, as I saw in days of yore, + As in thy young, and in thy lovely, years. + + The same in youthful look, the same in form; + The same the gentle voice I used to hear; + Though many a year hath passed, and many a storm + Hath dashed its foam around thy cruel bier. + + Deep in the stormy ocean's hidden cave + Buried, and lost to human care and sight, + What power hath interposed to rend thy grave? + What arm hath brought thee thus to life and light? + + I weep,--the tears my aged cheek that stain, + The throbs that once more swell my aching breast, + Embodying one of anxious thought and pain, + That wept and watched around that place of rest. + + O leave me not, my child! Or, if it be, + That coming thus, thou canst not longer stay, + Yet shall this kindly visit's mystery + Give rise to hopes that never can decay. + + Dear cherished image from thy stormy bed! + Child of my early woe, and early joy! + 'Tis thus at last the sea shall yield her dead, + And give again my loved, my buried boy. + +[Footnote 82: A philosophical and religious writer of much merit and +earnestness; author of a volume of poems; for a long time professor +of moral and mental philosophy in Bowdoin College. A native of New +Hampshire.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Jacob Leonard Martin,[83] 1803-1848._= + +=_361_=. THE CHURCH OF SANTA CROCE, FLORENCE. + + Tomb of the mighty dead,[84] illustrious shrine, + Where genius, in the majesty of death, + Reposes solemn, sepulchred beneath, + Temple o'er every other fane divine! + Dark Santa Crocé, in whose dust recline + Their mouldering relics whose immortal wreath. + Blooms on, unfaded by Time's withering breath, + In these proud ashes what a prize is thine! + Sure it is holy ground I tread upon; + Nor do I breathe unconsecrated air, + As, rapt, I gaze on each undying name. + These monuments are fragments of the throne + Once reared by genius on this spot so fair, + When Florence was the seat of arts and early fame. + +[Footnote 83: A native of North Carolina; best known in political life, +but meritorious in literature.] + +[Footnote 84: In this church repose Galileo, Michael Angelo, Alfieri, and +other illustrious Italians.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Geo. W. Bethune, 1803-1862._= (Manual, p. 487.) + +Invocation. + +=_362._= MYTHOLOGY GIVES PLACE TO CHRISTIANITY. + + Hushed is their song; from long-frequented grove, + Pale Memory, are thy bright-eyed daughters gone; + No more in strains of melody and love, + Gush forth thy sacred waters, Helicon; + Prostrate on Egypt's plain, Aurora's son, + God of the sunbeam and the living lyre, + No more shall hail thee with mellifluous tone; + Nor shall thy Pythia, raving from thy fire, + Speak of the future sooth to those who would inquire. + + No more at Delos, or at Delphi now, + Or e'en at mighty Ammon's Lybian shrine, + The white-robed priests before the altar bow, + To slay the victim and to pour the wine, + While gifts of kingdoms round each pillar twine; + Scarce can the classic pilgrim, sweeping free + From fallen architrave the desert vine. + Trace the dim names of their divinity-- + Gods of the ruined temples, where, oh where! are ye? + + The Naiad bathing in her crystal spring, + The guardian Nymph of every leafy tree, + The rushing Aeolus on viewless wing, + The flower-crowned Queen of every cultured lea, + And he who walked, with monarch-tread, the sea, + The awful Thunderer, threatening them aloud, + God! were their vain imaginings of Thee, + Who saw Thee only through the illusive cloud + That sin had flung around their spirits, like a shroud. + + As fly the shadows of uncertain night, + On misty vapors of the early day, + When bursts o'er earth the sun's resplendent light-- + Fantastic visions! they have passed away, + Chased by the purer Gospel's orient ray. + My soul's bright waters flow from out thy throne, + And on my ardent breast thy sunbeam's play; + Fountain of thought! True Source of light! I own + In joyful strains of praise, thy sovereign power alone. + + O breathe upon my soul thy Spirit's fire, + That I may glow like seraphim on high, + Or rapt Isaiah kindling o'er his lyre; + And sent by Thee, let holy Hope be nigh, + To fill with prescient joy my ravished eye, + And gentle Love; to tune each jarring string + Accordant with the heavenly harmony; + Then upward borne, on Faith's aspiring wing, + The praises of my God to listening earth, I sing. + + * * * * * + + +=_Charles Fenno Hoffman, 1806-._= (Manual, pp. 487, 505, 519.) + +From "The Vigil of Faith." + +=_363._= THE RED MAN'S HEAVEN. + + White man! I say not that they lie + Who preach a faith so dark and drear, + That wedded hearts in yon cold sky + Meet not as they were mated here. + But scorning not thy faith, thou must + Stranger, in mine have equal trust,-- + The Red man's faith, by Him implanted, + Who souls to both our bodies granted. + Thou know'st in life we mingle not; + Death cannot change our different lot! + He who hath placed the White man's heaven + Where hymns in vapory clouds are chanted, + To harps by angel fingers play'd, + Not less on his Red children smiles, + To whom a land of souls is given, + Where in the ruddy West array'd. + Brighten our blessed hunting isles. + + * * * * * + + Those blissful ISLANDS OF THE WEST! + I've seen, myself, at sunset time, + The golden lake in which they rest; + Seen, too, the barks that bear The Blest, + Floating toward that fadeless clime: + First dark, just as they leave our shore, + Their sides then brightening more and more, + Till in a flood of crimson light + They melted from my straining sight. + And she who climb'd the storm-swept steep, + She who the foaming wave would dare, + So oft love's vigil here to keep,-- + Stranger, albeit thou think'st I dote, + I know, I know she watches there! + Watches upon that radiant strand, + Watches to see her lover's boat + Approach The Spirit-Land. + + He ceased, and spoke no more that night, + Though oft, when chillier blew the blast, + I saw him moving in the light + The fire, that he was feeding, cast; + While I, still wakeful, ponder'd o'er + His wondrous story more and more. + I thought, not wholly waste the mind + Where Faith so deep a root could find, + Faith which both love and life could save, + And keep the first, in age still fond. + Thus blossoming this side the grave + In steadfast trust of fruit beyond. + And when in after years I stood + By INCA-PAH-CHO'S haunted water, + Where long ago that hunter woo'd + In early youth its island daughter, + And traced the voiceless solitude + Once witness of his loved one's slaughter-- + At that same season of the leaf + In which I heard him tell his grief,-- + I thought some day I'd weave in rhyme, + That tale of mellow autumn time. + + * * * * * + + +=_William Gilmore Simms, 1806-1870._= (Manual, pp. 523, 490, 510.) + +From "The Cassique of Accabee." + +=_364._= NATURE INSPIRES SENTIMENT. + + It was a night of calm. O'er Ashley's waters + Crept the sweet billows to their own soft tune, + While she, most bright of Keawah's fair daughters, + Whose voice might spell the footsteps of the moon, + As slow we swept along, + Poured forth her own sweet song-- + A lay of rapture not forgotten soon. + + Hushed was our breathing, stayed the lifted oar, + Our spirits rapt, our souls no longer free, + While the boat, drifting softly to the shore, + Brought us within the shades of Accabee. + "Ah!" sudden cried the maid, + In the dim light afraid, + "'Tis here the ghost still walks of the old Yemassee." + + And sure the spot was haunted by a power + To fix the pulses in each youthful heart; + Never was moon more gracious in a bower, + Making delicious fancy-work for art, + Weaving so meekly bright + Her pictures of delight, + That, though afraid to stay, we sorrowed to depart. + + "If these old groves are haunted"--sudden then, + Said she, our sweet companion,--"it must be + By one who loved, and was beloved again, + And joy'd all forms of loveliness to see:-- + Here, in these groves they went, + Where love and worship, blent, + Still framed the proper God for each idolatry. + + "It could not be that love should here be stern, + Or beauty fail to sway with sov'reign might; + These from so blesséd scenes should something learn, + And swell with tenderness, and shape delight: + These groves have had their power, + And bliss, in by-gone hour, + Hath charm'd with sight and song the passage of the night." + + "It were a bliss to think so;" made reply + Our Hubert--"yet the tale is something old, + That checks us with denial;--and our sky, + And these brown woods that, in its glittering fold, + Look like a fairy clime, + Still unsubdued by time, + Have evermore the tale of wrong'd devotion told." + + "Give us thy legend, Hubert;" cried the maid;-- + And, with down-dropping oars, our yielding prow + Shot to a still lagoon, whose ample shade + Droop'd from the gray moss of an old oak's brow: + The groves, meanwhile, lay bright, + Like the broad stream, in light, + Soft, sweet as ever yet the lunar loom display'd. + + * * * * * + + +=_Nathaniel Parker Willis, 1807-1867._= (Manual, pp. 504, 519.) + +From the "Sacred Poems." + +=_365._= HAGAR IN THE WILDERNESS. + + * * * * * + The morning pass'd, and Asia's sun rose up + In the clear heaven, and every beam was heat. + The cattle of the hills were in the shade, + And the bright plumage of the Orient lay + On beating bosoms in her spicy trees. + It was an hour of rest; but Hagar found + No shelter in the wilderness, and on + She kept her weary way, until the boy + Hung down his head, and open'd his parch'd lips + For water; but she could not give it him. + She laid him down beneath the sultry sky,-- + For it was better than the close, hot breath + Of the thick pines,--and tried to comfort him,-- + But he was sore athirst, and his blue eyes + Were dim and bloodshot, and he could not know + Why God denied him water in the wild. + + She sat a little longer, and he grew + Ghastly and faint, as if he would have died. + It was too much for her, she lifted him, + And bore him further on, and laid his head + Beneath the shadow of a desert shrub; + And, shrouding up her face, she went away, + And sat to watch where he could see her not, + Till he should die; and watching him, she mourned: + + "God stay thee in thine agony, my boy! + I cannot see thee die; I cannot brook + Upon thy brow to look, + And see death settle on my cradle-joy. + How have I drunk the light of thy blue eye! + And could I see thee die? + + "I did not dream of this when thou wert straying, + Like an unbound gazelle, among the flowers; + Or wearing rosy hours, + By the rich gush of water-sources playing, + Then sinking weary to thy smiling sleep, + So beautiful and deep. + + "O, no! and when I watch'd by thee the while, + And saw thy bright lip curling in thy dream, + And thought of the dark stream + In my own land of Egypt, the far Nile, + How pray'd I that my father's land might be + An heritage for thee! + + "And now the grave for its cold breast hath won thee, + And thy white, delicate limbs the earth will press; + And, O, my last caress + Must feel thee cold, for a chill hand is on thee. + How can I leave my boy, so pillow'd there + Upon his clustering hair!" + + She stood beside the well her God had given + To gush in that deep wilderness, and bathed + The forehead of her child until he laugh'd + In his reviving happiness, and lisp'd + His infant thought of gladness at the sight + Of the cool plashing of his mother's hand. + + * * * * * + +=_366._= UNSEEN SPIRITS. + + The shadows lay along Broadway,-- + 'Twas near the twilight tide,-- + And slowly there, a lady fair + Was waiting in her pride. + Alone walked she, yet viewlessly + Walked spirits at her side. + + Peace charmed the street beneath her feet, + And honor charmed the air, + And all astir looked kind on her, + And called her good as fair; + For all God ever gave to her, + She kept with chary care. + + She kept with care her beauties rare, + From lovers warm and true; + For her heart was cold to all but gold, + And the rich came not to woo. + Ah, honored well, are charms to sell, + When priests the selling do! + + Now, walking there, was one more fair-- + A slight girl, lily pale, + And she had unseen company + To make the spirit quail; + 'Twixt want and scorn, she walked forlorn, + And nothing could avail. + + No mercy now can clear her brow + For this world's peace to pray; + For, as love's wild prayer dissolved in air, + Her woman's heart gave way, + And the sin forgiven by Christ in heaven + By man is cursed alway. + + * * * * * + + +=_Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1807-._= (Manual, pp. 503, 505, 519, 531.) + +=_367._= LINES TO RESIGNATION. + + There is no flock, however watched and tended + But one dead lamb is there! + There is no fireside, howso'er defended, + But has one vacant chair! + + The air is full of farewells to the dying, + And mournings for the dead; + The heart of Rachel, for her children crying, + Will not be comforted! + + Let us be patient! these severe afflictions + Not from the ground arise, + But oftentimes celestial benedictions + Assume this dark disguise. + + We see but dimly through the mists and vapors; + Amid these earthly damps, + What seem to us but sad, funereal tapers + May be heaven's distant lamps. + + There is no Death! What seems so is transition. + This life of mortal breath + Is but a suburb of the life elysian, + Whose portal we call Death. + + She is not dead,--the child of our affection,-- + But gone unto that school + Where she no longer needs our poor protection, + And Christ himself doth rule. + + In that great cloister's stillness and seclusion, + By guardian angels led, + Safe from temptation, safe from sin's pollution, + She lives, whom we call dead. + + Day after day we think what she is doing + In those bright realms of air; + Year after year, her tender steps pursuing, + Behold her grown more fair. + + Thus do we walk with her, and keep unbroken + The bond which nature gives, + Thinking that our remembrance, though unspoken, + May reach her where she lives. + + Not as a child shall we again behold her; + For when with raptures wild + In our embraces we again enfold her, + She will not be a child; + + But a fair maiden, in her Father's mansion, + Clothed with celestial grace; + And beautiful with all the soul's expansion + Shall we behold her face. + + And though at times impetuous with emotion + And anguish long suppressed, + The swelling heart heaves, moaning like the ocean, + That cannot be at rest,-- + + We will be patient, and assuage the feeling + We may not wholly stay; + By silence sanctifying, not concealing, + The grief that must have way. + + * * * * * + +From "The Seaside and The Fireside." + +=_368._= THE WEDDING; THE LAUNCH; THE SHIP. + + The prayer is said, + The service read, + The joyous bridegroom bows his head; + And in tears the good old Master + Shakes the brown hand of his son, + Kisses his daughter's glowing cheek + In silence, for he cannot speak, + And ever faster + Down his own the tears begin to run. + The worthy pastor-- + The Shepherd of that wandering flock, + That has the ocean for its wold, + That has the vessel for its fold, + Leaping ever from rock to rock-- + Spake, with accents mild and clear, + Words of warning, words of cheer, + But tedious to the bridegroom's ear. + + * * * * * + + Then the Master, + With a gesture of command, + Waved his hand; + And at the word, + Loud and sudden there was heard, + All around them and below, + The sound of hammers, blow on blow, + Knocking away the shores and spurs. + And see! she stirs! + She starts,--she moves,--she seems to feel + The thrill of life along her keel, + And, spurning with her foot the ground, + With one exulting, joyous bound, + She leaps into the ocean's arms! + + And lo! from the assembled crowd + There rose a shout, prolonged and loud, + That to the ocean, seemed to say,-- + "Take her, O bridegroom, old and gray, + Take her to thy protecting arms, + With all her youth and all her charms!" + How beautiful she is! How fair + She lies within those arms, that press + Her form with many a soft caress + Of tenderness and watchful care! + Sail forth into the sea, O ship! + Through wind and wave, right onward steer! + The moistened eye, the trembling lip, + Are not the signs of doubt or fear. + + Sail forth into the sea of life, + O gentle, loving, trusting wife, + And safe from all adversity + Upon the bosom of that sea + Thy comings and thy goings be! + For gentleness and love and trust + Prevail o'er angry wave and gust; + And in the wreck of noble lives + Something immortal still survives! + + Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State! + Sail on, O Union strong and great! + Humanity with all its fears, + With all the hopes of future years, + Is hanging breathless on thy fate! + We know what master laid thy keel, + What workman wrought thy ribs of steel, + Who made each mast, and sail, and rope, + What anvils rang, what hammers beat, + In what a forge and what a heat + Were shaped the anchors of thy hope! + Fear not each sudden sound and shock, + 'Tis of the wave and not the rock; + 'Tis but the flapping of the sail, + And not a rent made by the gale! + In spite of rock and tempest-roar, + In spite of false lights on the shore, + Sail on, nor fear to breast the sea! + Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee, + Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears, + Our faith triumphant o'er our fears, + Are all with thee,--are all with thee. + + * * * * * + +From "Evangeline." + +=_369._= SONG OF THE MOCKING-BIRD, AT SUNSET. + + Softly the evening came. The sun, from the western horizon, + Like a magician, extended his golden wand o'er the landscape; + Twinkling vapors arose; and sky and water and forest + Seemed all on fire at the touch, and melted and mingled together. + Hanging between two skies, a cloud with edges of silver, + Floated the boat, with its dripping oars, on the motionless + water. + Filled was Evangeline's heart with inexpressible sweetness. + Touched by the magic spell, the sacred fountains of feeling + Glowed with the light of love, as the skies and waters around + her. + Then from a neighboring thicket the mocking-bird, wildest of + singers, + Swinging aloft on a willow spray that hung o'er the water, + Shook from his little throat such floods of delirious music, + That the whole air and the woods and the waves seemed silent + to listen. + Plaintive at first were the tones and sad; then soaring to madness, + Seemed they to follow or guide the revel of frenzied Bacchantes. + Single notes were then heard, in sorrowful, low lamentation; + Till, having gathered them all, he flung them abroad in derision, + As when, after a storm, a gust of wind through the tree-tops + Shakes down the rattling rain in a crystal shower on the + branches. + With such a prelude as this, and hearts that throbbed with + emotion, + Slowly they entered the Têche, where it flows through the green + Opelousas, + And through the amber air, above the crest of the woodland, + Saw the column of smoke that arose from a neighboring dwelling;-- + Sounds of a horn they heard, and the distant lowing of cattle. + + * * * * * + +From "The Song of Hiawatha." + +=_370._= HIAWATHA'S DEPARTURE. + + On the shore stood Hiawatha, + Turned and waved his hand at parting; + On the clear and luminous water + Launched his birch canoe for sailing, + From the pebbles of the margin + Shoved it forth into the water; + Whispered to it, "Westward! westward!" + And with speed it darted forward. + And the evening sun descending + Set the clouds on fire with redness, + Burned the broad sky, like a prairie, + Left upon the level water + One long track and trail of splendor, + Down whose streams, as down a river, + Westward, westward Hiawatha + Sailed into the fiery sunset, + Sailed into the purple vapors, + Sailed into the dusk of evening. + And the people from the margin + Watched him floating, rising, sinking, + Till the birch canoe seemed lifted + High into that sea of splendor, + Till it sank into the vapors + Like the new moon slowly, slowly + Sinking in the purple distance. + And they said, "Farewell for ever!" + Said, "Farewell, O Hiawatha!" + And the forests, dark and lonely, + Moved through all their depth of darkness, + Sighed, "Farewell, O Hiawatha!" + And the waves upon the margin + Rising, rippling on the pebbles, + Sobbed, "Farewell, O Hiawatha!" + And the heron, the Shu-shuh-gah, + From her haunts among the fen-lands, + Screamed, "Farewell, O Hiawatha!" + Thus departed Hiawatha, + Hiawatha the beloved, + In the glory of the sunset, + In the purple mists of evening, + To the regions of the home-wind, + Of the Northwest wind Keewaydin, + To the islands of the Blessed, + To the kingdom of Ponemah, + To the land of the Hereafter! + + * * * * * + + +=_William D. Gallagher, 1808-._= (Manual, p. 523.) + +=_371._= THE LABORER. + + Stand up--erect! Thou hast the form, + And likeness of thy God!--who more? + A soul as dauntless mid the storm + Of daily life, a heart as warm + And pure, as breast e'er bore. + + What then?--Thou art as true a Man + As moves the human mass among; + As much a part of the Great plan + That with creation's dawn began, + As any of the throng. + + Who is thine enemy? the high + In station, or in wealth the chief? + The great, who coldly pass thee by, + With proud step and averted eye? + Nay! nurse not such belief. + + * * * * * + + No:--uncurbed passions--low desires-- + Absence of noble self-respect-- + Death, in the breast's consuming fires, + To that high Nature which aspires + For ever, till thus checked: + + * * * * * + + True, wealth thou hast not: 'tis but dust! + Nor place; uncertain as the wind! + But that thou hast, which, with thy crust + And water, may despise the lust + Of both--a noble mind. + + With this and passions under ban, + True faith, and holy trust in God, + Thou art the peer of any man. + Look up, then--that thy little span + Of life, may be well trod! + + * * * * * + + +=_John G. Whittier, 1808-._= (Manual, pp. 490, 522.) + +=_372._= WHAT THE VOICE SAID. + + Maddened by Earth's wrong and evil, + "Lord," I cried in sudden ire, + "From thy right hand, clothed with thunder, + Shake the bolted fire! + + "Love is lost, and Faith is dying; + With the brute, the man is sold; + And the dropping blood of labor + Hardens into gold." + + * * * * * + + "Thou, the patient Heaven upbraiding," + Spake a solemn Voice within; + "Weary of our Lord's forbearance, + Art thou free from sin?" + + * * * * * + + "Earnest words must needs be spoken + When the warm heart bleeds or burns + With its scorn of wrong, or pity + For the wronged, by turns. + + "But, by all thy nature's weakness, + Hidden faults and follies known, + Be thou, in rebuking evil, + Conscious of thine own. + + "Not the less shall stern-eyed Duty + To thy lips her trumpet set, + But with harsher blasts shall mingle + Wailings of regret." + + Cease not, Voice of holy speaking, + Teacher sent of God, be near, + Whispering through the day's cool silence, + Let my spirit hear! + + So, when thoughts of evil doers + Waken scorn, or hatred move, + Shall a mournful fellow-feeling + Temper all with love. + + * * * * * + +From "The Tent on the Beach." + +=_373._= THE ATLANTIC TELEGRAPH. + + O lonely bay of Trinity, + O dreary shores, give ear! + Lean down unto the white-lipped sea + The voice of God to hear! + + From world to world his couriers fly, + Thought-winged, and shod with fire; + The angel of his stormy sky + Rides down the sunken wire. + + What saith the herald of the Lord? + "The world's long strife is done; + Close wedded by that mystic cord, + Its continents are one. + + "And one in heart, as one in blood, + Shall all her peoples be; + The hands of human brotherhood + Are clasped beneath the sea. + + "Through Orient seas, o'er Afric's plain + And Asian mountains borne, + The vigor of the Northern brain + Shall nerve the world outworn. + + "From clime to clime, from shore to shore, + Shall thrill the magic thread; + The new Prometheus steals once more + The fire that wakes the dead." + + Throb on, strong pulse of thunder! beat + From answering beach to beach; + Fuse nations in thy kindly heat, + And melt the chains of each! + + Wild terror of the sky above, + Glide tamed and dumb below! + Bear gently, Ocean's carrier-dove, + Thy errands to and fro. + + Weave on, swift shuttle of the Lord, + Beneath the deep so far, + The bridal robe of earth's accord, + The funeral shroud of war! + + For lo! the fall of Ocean's wall, + Space mocked, and time outrun; + And round the world the thought of all + Is as the thought of one! + + The poles unite, the zones agree, + The tongues of striving cease; + As on the sea of Galilee, + The Christ is whispering, Peace! + + * * * * * + +From Snow-Bound. + +=_374._= DESCRIPTION OF A SNOW STORM. + + The sun that brief December day + Rose cheerless over hills of gray, + And, darkly circled, gave at noon + A sadder light than waning moon, + Slow tracing down the thickening sky + Its mute and ominous prophecy, + A portent seeming less than threat, + It sank from sight before it set. + A chill no coat, however stout, + Of homespun stuff could quite shut out, + A hard, dull bitterness of cold, + That checked, mid-vein, the circling race + Of life-blood in the sharpened face, + The coming of the snow-storm told. + The wind blew east: we heard the roar + Of Ocean on his wintry shore, + And felt the strong pulse throbbing there + Beat with low rhythm our inland air. + + * * * * * + + Unwarmed by any sunset light + The gray day darkened into night, + A night made hoary with the swarm + And whirl-dance of the blinding storm, + A zigzag wavering to and fro + Crossed and recrossed the wingéd snow: + And ere the early bed-time came + The white drift piled the window-frame, + And, through the glass, the clothes-line posts + Looked in like tall and sheeted ghosts. + + So all night long the storm rolled on: + The morning broke without a sun; + In tiny spherule traced with lines + Of Nature's geometric signs, + In starry flake and pellicle, + All day the hoary meteor fell; + And, when the second morning shone, + We looked upon a world unknown, + On nothing we could call our own. + Around the glistening wonder bent + The blue walls of the firmament, + No cloud above, no earth below,-- + A universe of sky and snow! + + * * * * * + +From "The Pennsylvania Pilgrim." + +=_375._= THE QUAKER'S CREED. + + * * * * * + + Gathered from many sects, the Quaker brought + His old beliefs, adjusting to the thought + That moved his soul, the creed his fathers taught. + + One faith alone, so broad that all mankind + Within themselves its secret witness find, + The soul's communion with the Eternal Mind, + + The Spirit's law, the Inward Rule and Guide, + Scholar and peasant, lord and serf, allied, + The polished Penn, and Cromwell's Ironside. + + As still in Hemskerck's Quaker meeting, face + By face, in Flemish detail, we may trace + How loose-mouthed boor, and fine ancestral grace, + + Sat in close contrast,--the clipt-headed churl, + Broad market-dame, and simple serving-girl, + By skirt of silk and periwig in curl! + + For soul touched soul; the spiritual treasure-trove + Made all men equal, none could rise above, + Nor sink below, that level of God's love. + + So, with his rustic neighbors sitting down, + The homespun frock beside the scholar's gown, + Pastorius, to the manners of the town + + Added the freedom of the woods, and sought + The bookless wisdom by experience taught, + And learned to love his new-found home, while not + + Forgetful of the old; the seasons went + Their rounds, and somewhat to his spirit lent + Of their own calm and measureless content. + + Glad even to tears, he heard the robin sing + His song of welcome to the Western spring, + And bluebird borrowing from the sky his wing. + + And when the miracle of autumn came, + And all the woods with many-colored flame + Of splendor, making summer's greenness tame, + + Burned unconsumed, a voice without a sound + Spake to him from each kindled bush around + And made the strange, new landscape holy ground. + + * * * * * + + +=_Albert Pike, 1809-._= (Manual, p. 523.) + +From "Lines on the Rocky Mountains." + +=_376._= THE EVERLASTING HILLS. + + The deep, transparent sky is full + Of many thousand glittering lights-- + Unnumbered stars that calmly rule + The dark dominions of the night. + The mild, bright moon has upward risen, + Out of the gray and boundless plain, + And all around the white snows glisten, + Where frost, and ice, and silence, reign,-- + While ages roll away, and they unchanged remain. + + These mountains, piercing the blue sky + With their eternal cones of ice,-- + The torrents dashing from on high, + O'er rock, and crag, and precipice,-- + Change not, but still remain as ever, + Unwasting, deathless, and sublime, + And will remain while lightnings quiver, + Or stars the hoary summits climb, + Or rolls the thunder-chariot of eternal Time. + + * * * * * + + +=_Anne C. Lynch Botta._= + +From her "Poems." + +=_377._= THE DUMB CREATION. + + Deal kindly with those speechless ones, + That throng our gladsome earth; + Say not the bounteous gift of life + Alone is nothing worth. + + What though with mournful memories + They sigh not for the past? + What though their ever joyous now + No future overcast. + + No aspirations fill their breast + With longings undefined; + They live, they love, and they are blest + For what they seek they find. + + They see no mystery in the stars, + No wonder in the plain, + And Life's enigma wakes in them, + No questions dark and vain. + + To them earth is a final home, + A bright and blest abode; + Their lives unconsciously flow on + In harmony with God. + + To this fair world our human hearts + Their hopes and longings bring, + And o'er its beauty and its bloom, + Their own dark shadows fling. + + Between the future and the past + In wild unrest we stand, + And ever as our feet advance, + Retreats the promised land. + + And though Love, Fame, and Wealth, and Power + Bind in their gilded bond, + We pine to grasp the unattained-- + The _something_ still beyond. + + And, beating on their prison bars, + Our spirits ask more room, + And with unanswered questionings, + They pierce beyond the tomb. + + Then say thou not, oh, doubtful heart! + There is no life to come: + That in some tearless, cloudless land; + Thou shalt not find thy home. + + * * * * * + + +=_Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1809-._= (Manual, pp. 478, 520.) + +From his Poems. + +=_378._= THE LAST LEAF. + + I saw him once before, + As he passed by the door, + And again + The pavement stones resound, + As he totters o'er the ground + With his cane. + + + My grandmamma has said,-- + Poor old lady, she is dead + Long ago,-- + That he had a Roman nose, + And his cheek was like a rose + In the snow. + + But now his nose is thin, + And it rests upon his chin + Like a staff, + And a crook is in his back. + And a melancholy crack + In his laugh. + + I know it is a sin + For me to sit and grin + At him here; + But the old three-cornered hat, + And the breeches, and all that, + Are so queer! + + And if I should live to be + The last leaf upon the tree + In the spring,-- + Let them smile, as I do now, + At the old forsaken bough + Where I cling. + + * * * * * + +From "The Professor at the Breakfast Table." + +=_379._= A MOTHER'S SECRET. + + * * * * * + + They reach the holy place, fulfill the days + To solemn feasting given, and grateful praise. + At last they turn, and far Moriah's height + Melts into southern sky and fades from sight. + All day the dusky caravan has flowed + In devious trails along the winding road,-- + (For many a step their homeward path attends, + And all the sons of Abraham are as friends.) + Evening has come,--the hour of rest and joy;-- + Hush! hush! that whisper,--"Where is Mary's boy?" + O weary hour! O aching days that passed, + Filled with strange fears, each wilder than the last: + The soldier's lance,--the fierce centurion's sword,-- + The crushing wheels that whirl some Roman lord,-- + The midnight crypt that sucks the captive's breath,-- + The blistering sun on Hinnom's vale of death! + Thrice on his cheek had rained the morning light, + Thrice on his lips the mildewed kiss of night, + Crouched by some porphyry column's shining plinth, + Or stretched beneath the odorous terebinth. + At last, in desperate mood, they sought once more + The Temple's porches, searched in vain before; + They found him seated with the ancient men,-- + The grim old rufflers of the tongue and pen,-- + Their bald heads glistening as they clustered near, + Their gray beards slanting as they turned to hear, + Lost In half-envious wonder and surprise + That lips so fresh should utter words so wise. + And Mary said,--as one who, tried too long, + Tells all her grief and half her sense of wrong.-- + "What is this thoughtless thing which thou hast done? + Lo, we have sought thee sorrowing, O my son!" + Few words he spake, and scarce of filial tone,-- + Strange words, their sense a mystery yet unknown; + Then turned with them and left the holy hill, + To all their mild commands obedient still. + The tale was told to Nazareth's sober men, + And Nazareth's matrons told it oft again; + The maids retold it at the fountain's side; + The youthful shepherds doubted or denied; + It passed around among the listening friends, + With all that fancy adds and fiction lends, + Till newer marvels dimmed the young renown + Of Joseph's son, who talked the Rabbies down. + But Mary, faithful to its lightest word, + Kept in her heart the sayings she had heard, + Till the dread morning rent the Temple's veil, + And shuddering Earth confirmed the wondrous tale. + + Youth fades; love droops; the leaves of friendship fall; + A mother's secret hope outlives them all. + + * * * * * + + +=_Willis Gaylord Clark, 1810-1841._= (Manual, pp. 503, 523.) + +From his "Literary Remains." + +=_380._= AN INVITATION TO EARLY PIETY. + + Come, while the morning of thy life is glowing-- + Ere the dim phantoms thou art chasing die; + Ere the gay spell which earth is round thee throwing, + Fade like the sunset of a summer sky; + Life hath but shadows, save a promise given, + Which lights the future with a fadeless ray; + O, touch the sceptre--win a hope in heaven-- + Come--turn thy spirit from the world away. + + Then will the crosses of this brief existence, + Seem airy nothings to thine ardent soul; + And shining brightly in the forward distance, + Will of thy patient race appear the goal; + Home of the weary! where in peace reposing, + The spirit lingers in unclouded bliss, + Though o'er its dust the curtained grave is closing-- + Who would not _early_ choose a lot like this? + + * * * * * + + +=_James Russell Lowell, 1819-._= (Manual, p. 520.) + +From his "Miscellaneous Poems," &c. + +=_381._= A SONG. + + Violet! sweet violet! + Thine eyes are full of tears; + Are they wet + Even yet, + With the thought of other years? + Or with gladness are they full, + For the night so beautiful, + And longing for those far-off spheres? + + Loved-one of my youth thou wast, + Of my merry youth, + And I see, + Tearfully, + All the fair and sunny past, + All its openness and truth, + Ever fresh and green in thee + As the moss is in the sea. + + Thy little heart, that hath with love + Grown colored like the sky above, + On which thou lookest ever,-- + Can it know + All the woe + Of hope for what returneth never, + All the sorrow and the longing + To these hearts of ours belonging? + + Out on it! no foolish pining + For the sky + Dims thine eye, + Or for the stars so calmly shining; + Like thee let this soul of mine + Take hue from that wherefor I long, + Self-stayed and high, serene and strong, + Not satisfied with hoping--but divine. + + Violet! dear violet! + Thy blue eyes are only wet + With joy and love of him who sent thee, + And for the fulfilling sense + Of that glad obedience + Which made thee all that Nature meant thee! + + * * * * * + +From "The Present Crisis." + +=_382._= IMPORTANCE OF A NOBLE DEED. + + When a deed is done for Freedom, through the broad earth's aching breast + Runs a thrill of joy prophetic, trembling on from east to west, + And the slave, where'er he cowers, feels the soul within him climb + To the awful verge of manhood, as the energy sublime + Of a century, bursts full-blossomed on the thorny stem of Time. + + * * * * * + + Once, to every man and nation, comes the moment to decide, + In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or evil side; + Some great cause, God's new Messiah, offering each the bloom or blight, + Parts the goats upon the left hand, and the sheep upon the right, + And the choice goes by for ever, twist that darkness and that light. + + * * * * * + + We see dimly in the Present what is small and what is great, + Slow of faith how weak an arm may turn the iron helm of fate, + But the soul is still oracular; amid the market's din, + List the ominous stern whisper from the Delphic cave within,-- + "They enslave their children's children, who make compromise with sin." + + * * * * * + +From The Atlantic Monthly. + +=_383._= THE SPANIARDS' GRAVES AT THE ISLES OF SHOALS. + + O sailors, did sweet eyes look after you, + The day you sailed away from sunny Spain? + Bright eyes that followed fading ship and crew, + Melting in tender rain? + + Did no one dream of that drear night to be, + Wild with the wind, fierce with the stinging snow, + When, on yon granite point that frets the sea, + The ship met her death-blow? + + Fifty long years ago these sailors died: + (None know how many sleep beneath the waves:) + Fourteen gray head-stones, rising side by side, + Point out their nameless graves,-- + + Lonely, unknown, deserted, but for me, + And the wild birds that flit with mournful cry, + And sadder winds, and voices of the sea + That moans perpetually. + + Wives, mothers, maidens, wistfully, in vain + Questioned the distance for the yearning sail, + That, leaning landward, should have stretched again + White arms wide on the gale, + + To bring back their beloved. Year by year, + Weary they watched, till youth and beauty passed, + And lustrous eyes grew dim, and age drew near, + And hope was dead at last. + + Still summer broods o'er that delicious land, + Rich, fragrant, warm with skies of golden glow: + Live any yet of that forsaken band + Who loved so long ago? + + O Spanish women, over the far seas, + Could I but show you where your dead repose! + Could I send tidings on this northern breeze, + That strong and steady blows! + + Dear dark-eyed sisters, you remember yet + These you have lost, but you can never know + One stands at their bleak graves whose eyes are wet + With thinking of your woe! + + * * * * * + + +=_Edgar Allen Poe._= (Manual, p. 510.) + +From his Works. + +=_384._= "THE RAVEN." + + Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, + Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,-- + While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, + As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door; + "'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door,-- + Only this, and nothing more." + + Ah! distinctly I remember, it was in the bleak December, + And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor. + Eagerly I wished the morrow;--vainly I had sought to borrow, + From my books, surcease of sorrow,--sorrow for the lost Lenore,-- + For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore,-- + Nameless here for evermore. + + And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain + Thrilled me--filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before; + So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating, + "'Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door-- + Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door; + This it is, and nothing more." + + Presently my soul grew stronger: hesitating then no longer, + "Sir," said I, "or madam, truly your forgiveness I implore; + But the fact is, I was napping, and so gently you came rapping, + And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door, + That I scarce was sure I heard you." Here I opened wide the door; + Darkness there,--and nothing more. + + Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing, + Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before; + But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token, + And the only word there spoken was the whisper'd word, "Lenore!" + This I whisper'd, and an echo murmur'd back the word, "Lenore!" + Merely this, and nothing more. + + Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning, + Soon again I heard a tapping, something louder than before. + "Surely," said I,--"surely that is something at my window-lattice; + Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore,-- + Let my heart be still a moment, and this mystery explore;-- + 'Tis the wind, and nothing more." + + Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter, + In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore. + Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or staid he; + But with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door,-- + Perched upon a bust of Pallas, just above my chamber door,-- + Perched, and sat, and nothing more. + + Then, this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling, + By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore, + "Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou," I said, "art sure no + craven, + Ghastly, grim, and ancient Raven wandering from the nightly shore-- + Tell me what thy lordly name is on the night's Plutonian shore!" + Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore." + + Much I marvell'd this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly, + Though its answer little meaning, little relevancy bore; + For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being + Ever yet was bless'd with seeing bird above his chamber door,-- + Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door,-- + With such name as "Nevermore." + + But the Raven, sitting lonely on that placid bust, spoke only + That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour. + Nothing further then he utter'd; not a feather then he flutter'd-- + Till I scarcely more than mutter'd, "Other friends have flown before-- + On the morrow _he_ will leave me, as my Hopes have flown before," + Then the bird said, "Nevermore." + + Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken, + "Doubtless," said I, "what it utters is its only stock and store, + Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful disaster + Follow'd fast and follow'd faster, till his songs one burden bore-- + Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy burden bore + Of 'Never--never--more!'" + + But the Raven still beguiling all my sad soul into smiling, + Straight I wheel'd a cushioned seat in front of bird, and bust, and + door; + Then upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking + Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore-- + What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore + Meant in croaking "Nevermore." + + This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing + To the fowl, whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom's core; + This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining + On the cushion's velvet lining that the lamp-light gloated o'er, + But whose velvet violet lining which the lamp-light gloated o'er + _She_ shall press, ah, never more! + + Then methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer + Swung by seraphim whose footfalls tinkled on the tufted floor. + "Wretch," I cried, "thy God hath lent thee--by these angels he hath sent + thee + Respite--respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore! + Quaff, O quaff, this kind nepenthe, and forget this lost Lenore!" + Quoth the Raven, "Never more." + + "Prophet," said I, "thing of evil! prophet still, if bird or devil!-- + Whether tempter sent, or whether tempest toss'd thee here ashore, + Desolate, though all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted-- + On this home by Horror haunted--tell me truly, I implore-- + Is there--is there balm in Gilead?--tell me--tell me, I implore!" + Quoth the Raven, "Never more." + + "Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil!--prophet still, if bird or devil! + By that heaven that bends above us--by that God we both adore-- + Tell this soul, with sorrow laden, if within the distant Aidenn, + It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore-- + Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore!" + Quoth the Raven, "Never more." + + "Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!" I shrieked, + upstarting-- + "Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian shore! + Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken! + Leave my loneliness unbroken!--quit the bust above my door! + Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!" + Quoth the Raven, "Never more." + + And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting, + On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door; + And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming, + And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor; + And my soul from out that shadow, that lies floating on the floor, + Shall be lifted--never more. + + * * * * * + + +=_Alfred B. Street, 1811-._= (Manual, pp. 522, 531.) + +From his "Poems." + +=_385._= AN AUTUMN LANDSCAPE. + + Overhead + There is a blending of cloud, haze, and sky; + A silvery sheet, with spaces of soft hue; + A trembling veil of gauze is stretched athwart + The shadowy hill-sides and dark forest-flanks; + A soothing quiet broods upon the air, + And the faint sunshine winks with drowsiness. + Far sounds melt mellow on the ear: the bark, + The bleat, the tinkle, whistle, blast of horn, + The rattle of the wagon-wheel, the low, + The fowler's shot, the twitter of the bird, + And even the hue of converse from the road. + + * * * * * + + The sunshine flashed on streams, + Sparkled on leaves, and laughed on fields and woods. + All, all was life and motion, as all now + Is sleep and quiet. Nature in her change + Varies each day, as in the world of man + She moulds the differing features. Yea, each leaf + Is variant from its fellow. Yet her works + Are blended in a glorious harmony, + For thus God made his earth. Perchance His breath + Was music when He spake it into life, + Adding thereby another instrument + To the innumerable choral orbs + Sending the tribute of their grateful praise + In ceaseless anthems towards His sacred throne. + + * * * * * + +From "Drawings and Tintings." + +=_386._= THE FALLS OF THE MONGAUP. + + Struggling along the mountain path, + We hear, amid the gloom, + Like a roused giant's voice of wrath, + A deep-toned, sullen boom: + Emerging on the platform high, + Burst sudden to the startled eye + Rocks, woods, and waters, wild and rude-- + A scene of savage solitude. + + Swift as an arrow from the bow; + Headlong the torrent leaps, + Then tumbling round, in dazzling snow + And dizzy whirls it sweeps; + Then, shooting through the narrow aisle + Of this sublime cathedral pile, + Amidst its vastness, dark and grim, + It peals its everlasting hymn. + + Pyramid on pyramid of rock + Towers upward, wild and riven, + As piled by Titan hand, to mock + The distant smiling heaven. + And where its blue streak is displayed, + Branches their emerald net-work braid + So high, the eagle in his flight + Seems but a dot upon the sight. + + Here column'd hemlocks point in air + Their cone-like fringes green; + Their trunks hang knotted, black and bare, + Like spectres o'er the scene; + Here lofty crag and deep abyss, + And awe-inspiring precipice; + There grottoes bright in wave-worn gloss, + And carpeted with velvet moss. + + No wandering ray e'er kissed with light + This rock-walled sable pool, + Spangled with foam-gems thick and white, + And slumbering deep and cool; + But where yon cataract roars down, + Set by the sun, a rainbow crown + Is dancing, o'er the dashing strife-- + Hope glittering o'er the storm of life. + + Beyond, the smooth and mirror'd sheet + So gently steals along, + The very ripples, murmuring sweet, + Scarce drown the wild bee's song; + The violet from the grassy side + Dips its blue chalice in the tide; + And, gliding o'er the leafy brink, + The deer, unfrightened, stoops to drink. + + Myriads of man's time-measured race + Have vanished from the earth, + Nor left a memory of their trace, + Since first this scene had birth; + These waters, thundering now along, + Joined in Creation's matin-song; + And only by their dial-trees + Have known the lapse of centuries! + + * * * * * + + +=_Laura M.H. Thurston, 1812-1842._= (Manual, P. 524.) + +=_387._= LINES ON CROSSING THE ALLEGHANIES. + + I hail thee, Valley of the West, + For what thou yet shalt be! + I hail thee for the hopes that rest + Upon thy destiny! + Here from this mountain height, I see + Thy bright waves floating rapidly, + Thine emerald fields outspread; + And feel that in the book of fame, + Proudly shall thy recorded name + In later days be read. + + Oh! brightly, brightly glow thy skies + In Summer's sunny hours! + The green earth seems a paradise + Arrayed in summer flowers! + But oh! there is a land afar, + Whose skies to me all brighter are, + Along the Atlantic shore! + For eyes beneath their radiant shrine + In kindlier glances answered mine: + Can these their light restore? + + Upon the lofty bound I stand, + That parts the East and West; + Before me lies a fairy land; + Behind--_a home of rest!_ + _Here_, Hope her wild enchantment flings, + Portrays all bright and lovely things, + My footsteps to allure-- + But _there_, in memory's light I see + All that was once most dear to me-- + My young heart's cynosure! + + * * * * * + + +=_Francis S. Osgood, 1812-1850_= (Manual, p. 523.) + +=_388._= "The Parting." + + I looked not, I sighed not, I dared not betray + The wild storm of feeling that strove to have way, + For I knew that each sign of the sorrow _I_ felt + _Her_ soul to fresh pity and passion would melt, + And calm was my voice, and averted my eyes, + As I parted from all that in being I prize. + + I pined but one moment that form to enfold. + Yet the hand that touched hers, like the marble was cold,-- + I heard her voice falter a timid farewell, + Nor trembled, though soft on my spirit it fell, + And she knew not, she dreamed not, the anguish of soul + Which only my pity for her could control. + + It is over--the loveliest dream of delight + That ever illumined a wanderer's night! + Yet one gleam of comfort will brighten my way, + Though mournful and desolate ever I stray: + It is this--that to her, to my idol, I spared + The pang that her love could have softened and shared! + + * * * * * + + +=_Harriet Beecher Stowe._= (Manual, p. 484.) + +From the "Religious Poems." + +=_389._= THE PEACE OF FAITH. + + When winds are raging o'er the upper ocean, + And billows wild contend with angry roar, + 'Tis said, far down, beneath the wild commotion, + That peaceful stillness reigneth evermore. + + Far, far beneath, the noise of tempests dieth, + And silver waves chime ever peacefully, + And no rude storm, how fierce soe'er it flieth, + Disturbs the Sabbath of that deeper sea. + + So to the heart that knows Thy love, O Purest! + There is a temple, sacred evermore, + And all the babble of life's angry voices + Dies in hushed stillness at its peaceful door. + + Far, far away, the roar of passion dieth, + And loving thoughts rise calm and peacefully, + And no rude storm, how fierce soe'er it flieth, + Disturbs that soul that dwells, O Lord, in Thee. + + O Rest of rests! O Peace, serene, eternal! + Thou ever livest, and Thou changest never; + And in the secret of Thy presence dwelleth + Fullness of joy, for ever and for ever. + + * * * * * + +=_390._= "ONLY A YEAR." + + One year ago,--a ringing voice, + A clear blue eye, + And clustering curls of sunny hair, + Too fair to die. + + Only a year,--no voice, no smile, + No glance of eye, + No clustering curls of golden hair, + Fair but to die! + + One year ago,--what loves, what schemes + Far into life! + What joyous hopes, what high, resolves, + What generous strife! + + The silent picture on the wall, + The burial stone, + Of all that beauty, life, and joy + Remain alone! + + One year,--one year,--one little year, + And so much gone! + And yet the even flow of life + Moves calmly on. + + The grave grows green, the flowers bloom fair, + Above that head; + No sorrowing tint of leaf or spray + Says he is dead. + + No pause or hush of merry birds + That sing above, + Tells us how coldly sleeps below + The form we love. + + Where hast thou been this year, beloved? + What hast thou seen? + What visions fair, what glorious life, + Where thou hast been? + + The veil! the veil! so thin, so strong! + 'Twixt us and thee; + The mystic veil! when shall it fall, + That we may see? + + Not dead, not sleeping, not even gone, + But present still, + And waiting for the coming hour + Of God's sweet will. + + Lord of the living and the dead, + Our Saviour dear! + We lay in silence at thy feet + This sad, sad year! + + * * * * * + + +=_Henry T. Tuckerman._= + +From his "Poems." + +=_391._= THE STATUE OF WASHINGTON. + + The quarry whence thy form majestic sprung, + Has peopled earth with grace, + Heroes and gods that elder bards have sung, + A bright and peerless race, + But from its sleeping veins ne'er rose before, + A shape of loftier name + Than his, who, Glory's wreath with meekness wore, + The noblest son of fame + Sheathed is the sword that Passion never stained; + His gaze around is cast, + As if the joys of Freedom, newly gained, + Before his vision passed; + As if a nation's shout of love and pride + With music filled the air, + And his calm soul was lifted on the tide + Of deep and grateful prayer; + As if the crystal mirror of his life + To fancy sweetly came, + With scenes of patient toil and noble strife, + Undimmed by doubt or shame; + As if the lofty purpose of his soul + Expression would betray-- + The high resolve Ambition to control, + And thrust her crown away! + O, it was well in marble, firm and white, + To carve our hero's form, + Whose angel guidance was our strength in fight, + Our star amid the storm; + Whose matchless truth has made his name divine, + And human freedom sure, + His country great, his tomb earth's dearest shrine, + While man and time endure! + And it is well to place his image there, + Beneath, the dome he blest; + Let meaner spirits who its councils share, + Revere that silent guest! + Let us go up with high and sacred love, + To look on his pure brow, + And as, with solemn grace, he points above, + Renew the patriot's vow! + + * * * * * + + +=_John G. Saxe, 1816-._= (Manual, p. 523, 531.) + +From "Early Rising." + +=_392._= THE BLESSING OF SLEEP. + + "God bless the man who first invented sleep!" + So Sancho Panza said, and so say I: + And bless him, also, that he didn't keep + His great discovery to himself; nor try + To make it--as the lucky fellow might-- + A close monopoly by patent-right! + + * * * * * + + 'Tis beautiful to leave the world a while + For the soft visions of the gentle night; + And free, at last, from mortal care or guile, + To live as only in the angels' sight, + In Sleep's sweet realm so cosily shut in, + Where, at the worst, we only dream of sin! + + So let us sleep, and give the Maker praise. + I like the lad, who, when his father thought + To clip his morning nap by hackneyed praise + Of vagrant worm by early songster caught, + Cried, "Served him right!--it's not at all surprising; + The worm was punished, sir, for early rising!" + + * * * * * + +=_393._= "YE TAILYOR-MAN; A CONTEMPLATIVE BALLAD." + + Right jollie is ye tailyor-man + As annie man may be; + And all ye daye, upon ye benche + He worketh merrilie. + + And oft, ye while in pleasante wise + He coileth up his lymbes, + He singeth songs ye like whereof + Are not in Watts his hymns. + + And yet he toileth all ye while + His merrie catches rolle; + As true unto ye needle as + Ye needle to ye pole. + + What cares ye valiant tailyor-man + For all ye cowarde fears? + Against ye scissors of ye Fates, + He points his mightie shears. + + He heedeth not ye anciente jests + That witless sinners use; + What feareth ye bolde tailyor-man + Ye hissinge of a goose? + + He pulleth at ye busie threade, + To feede his lovinge wife + And eke his childe; for unto them + It is the threade of life. + + He cutteth well ye rich man's coate, + And with unseemlie pride, + He sees ye little waistcoate In + Ye cabbage bye his side, + + Meanwhile ye tailyor-man his wife, + To labor nothing loth, + Sits bye with readie hande to baste + Ye urchin, and ye cloth. + + Full happie is ye tailyor-man + Yet is he often tried, + Lest he, from fullness of ye dimes, + Wax wanton in his pride. + + Full happie is ye tailyor-man, + And yet he hath a foe, + A cunning enemie that none + So well as tailyors knowe. + + It is ye slipperie customer + Who goes his wicked wayes, + And wears ye tailyor-man his coate, + But never, never payes! + + * * * * * + +From "The Money King." + +=_394._= ANCIENT AND MODERN GHOSTS CONTRASTED. + + In olden times,--if classic poets say + The simple truth, as poets do to-day,-- + When Charon's boat conveyed a spirit o'er + The Lethean water to the Hadean shore, + The fare was just a penny,--not too great, + The moderate, regular, Stygian statute rate. + _Now_, for a shilling, he will cross the stream, + (His paddles whirling to the force of steam!) + And bring, obedient to some wizard power, + Back to the Earth more spirits in an hour, + Than Brooklyn's famous ferry could convey, + Or thine, Hoboken, in the longest day! + Time was when men bereaved of vital breath, + Were calm and silent in the realms of Death; + When mortals dead and decently inurned + Were heard no more; no traveler returned, + Who once had crossed the dark Plutonian strand, + To whisper secrets of the spirit-land,-- + Save when perchance some sad, unquiet soul-- + Among the tombs might wander on parole,-- + A well-bred ghost, at night's bewitching noon, + Returned to catch some glimpses of the moon, + Wrapt in a mantle of unearthly white, + (The only rapping of an ancient sprite!) + Stalked round in silence till the break of day, + Then from the Earth passed unperceived away. + Now all is changed: the musty maxim fails, + And dead men _do_ repeat the queerest tales! + Alas, that here, as in the books, we see + The travelers clash, the doctors disagree! + Alas, that all, the further they explore, + For all their search are but confused the more! + Ye great departed!--men of mighty mark,-- + Bacon and Newton, Adams, Adam Clarke, + Edwards and Whitefield, Franklin, Robert Hall, + Calhoun, Clay, Channing, Daniel Webster,--all + Ye great quit-tenants of this earthly ball,-- + If in your new abodes ye cannot rest, + But must return, O, grant us this request: + Come with a noble and celestial air, + To prove your title to the names ye bear! + Give some clear token of your heavenly birth; + Write as good English as ye wrote on earth! + Show not to all, in ranting prose and verse, + The spirit's progress is from bad to worse; + And, what were once superfluous to advise, + Don't tell, I beg you, such, egregious lies!-- + Or if perchance your agents are to blame, + Don't let them trifle with your honest fame; + Let chairs and tables rest, and "rap" instead, + Ay, "knock" your slippery "Mediums" on the head! + + * * * * * + +=_395._= "Boys" + + "The proper study of mankind is man,"-- + The most perplexing one, no doubt, is woman, + The subtlest study that the mind can scan, + Of all deep problems, heavenly or human! + + But of all studies in the round of learning, + From nature's marvels down to human toys, + To minds well fitted for acute discerning, + The very queerest one is that of boys! + + If to ask questions that would puzzle Plato, + And all the schoolmen of the Middle Age,-- + If to make precepts worthy of old Cato, + Be deemed philosophy, your boy's a sage! + + If the possession of a teeming fancy, + (Although, forsooth, the younker doesn't know it,) + Which he can use in rarest necromancy, + Be thought poetical, your boy's a poet! + + If a strong will and most courageous bearing, + If to be cruel as the Roman Nero; + If all that's chivalrous, and all that's daring, + Can make a hero, then the boy's a hero! + + But changing soon with his increasing stature, + The boy is lost in manhood's riper age, + And with him goes his former triple nature,-- + No longer Poet, Hero, now, nor Sage! + + * * * * * + +=_396._= SONNET TO A CLAM. + + Inglorious friend! most confident I am + Thy life is one of very little ease; + Albeit men mock thee with their similes, + And prate of being "happy as a clam!" + What though thy shell protects thy fragile head + From the sharp bailiffs of the briny sea? + Thy valves are, sure, no safety-valves to thee, + While rakes are free to desecrate thy bed, + And bear thee off,--as foemen take their spoil,-- + Far from thy friends and family to roam; + Forced, like a Hessian, from thy native home, + To meet destruction in a foreign broil! + Though thou art tender, yet thy humble bard + Declares, O clam! thy case is shocking hard! + + * * * * * + + +=_Lucy Hooper, 1816-1841._= (Manual, p. 524.) + +=_397._= "THE DEATH-SUMMONS." + + A voice is on mine ear--a solemn voice: + I come, I come, it calls me to my rest; + Faint not, my yearning heart; rejoice, rejoice; + Soon shalt thou reach the gardens of the blest: + On the bright waters there, the living streams, + Soon shalt thou launch in peace thy weary bark, + Waked by rude waves no more from gentle dreams, + Sadly to feel that earth to thee is dark-- + Not bright as once; O, vain, vain memories, cease, + I cast your burden down--I strive for peace. + + I heed the warning voice: oh, spurn me not, + My early friend; let the bruised heart go free: + Mine were high fancies, but a wayward lot + Hath made my youthful dreams in sadness flee; + Then chide not, I would linger yet awhile, + Thinking o'er wasted hours, a weary train, + Cheered by the moon's soft light, the sun's glad smile, + Watching the blue sky o'er my path of pain, + Waiting nay summons: whose shall be the eye + To glance unkindly--I have come to die! + + Sweet words--to die! O, pleasant, pleasant sounds, + What bright revealings to my heart they bring; + What melody, unheard in earth's dull rounds, + And floating from the land of glorious Spring + The eternal home! my weary thoughts revive, + Fresh flowers my mind puts forth, and buds of love, + Gentle and kindly thoughts for all that live, + Fanned by soft breezes from the world above: + And pausing not, I hasten to my rest-- + Again, O, gentle summons, thou art blest! + + * * * * * + + +=_Catharine Ann Warfield._= + +=_398._= "THE RETURN TO ASHLAND.[85]" + + Unfold the silent gates, + The Lord of Ashland waits + Patient without, to enter his domain; + Tell not who sits within, + With sad and stricken mien, + That he, her soul's beloved, hath come again. + + Long hath she watched for him, + Till hope itself grew dim, + And sorrow ceased to wake the frequent tear; + But let these griefs depart, + Like shadows from her heart-- + Tell her, the long expected host is here. + + He comes--but not alone, + For darkly pressing on, + The people pass beneath his bending trees, + Not as they came of yore, + When torch and banner bore + Their part amid exulting harmonies. + + But still, and sad, they sweep + Amid the foliage deep, + Even to the threshold of that mansion gray, + Whither from life's unrest, + As an eagle seeks his nest, + It ever was his wont to flee away. + + And he once more hath come + To that accustomed home, + To taste a calm, life never offered yet; + To know a rest so deep, + That they who watch and weep, + In this vain world may well its peace regret. + +[Footnote 85: The home of Henry Clay.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Arthur Cleveland Coxe, 1818-._= (Manual, p. 523.) + +=_399._= THE HEART'S SONG. + + In the silent midnight watches, + List thy bosom door; + How it knocketh, knocketh, knocketh, + Knocketh evermore! + Say not 'tis thy pulse's beating; + 'Tis thy heart of sin; + 'Tis thy Saviour knocks, and crieth, + "Rise, and let me in." + + Death comes down with reckless footstep + To the hall and hut; + Think you Death will tarry knocking + Where the door is shut? + Jesus waiteth, waiteth, waiteth; + But thy door is fast. + Grieved, away thy Saviour goeth; + Death breaks in at last. + + Then 'tis thine to stand entreating + Christ to let thee in, + At the gate of heaven beating, + Wailing for thy sin. + Nay, alas! thou foolish virgin, + Hast thou then forgot? + Jesus waited long to know thee,-- + Now he knows thee not. + + * * * * * + + +=_William Ross Wallace, 1819-._= (Manual, p. 523.) + +=_400._= THE NORTH EDDA. + + Noble was the old North Edda, + Filling many a noble grave, + That for "man the one thing needful + In his world is to be brave." + + This, the Norland's blue-eyed mother + Nightly chanted to her child, + While the Sea-King, grim and stately, + Looked upon his boy and smiled. + + * * * * * + + Let us learn that old North Edda + Chanted grandly on the grave, + Still for man the one thing needful + In his world is to be brave. + + Valkyrs yet are forth and choosing + Who must be among the slain; + Let us, like that grim old Sea-King, + Smile at Death upon the plain,-- + + Smile at tyrants leagued with falsehood, + Knowing Truth, eternal, stands + With the book God wrote for Freedom + Always open in her hands,-- + + Smile at fear when in our duty, + Smile at Slander's Jotun-breath, + Smile upon our shrouds when summoned + Down the darkling deep of death. + + Valor only grows a manhood; + Only this upon our sod, + Keeps us in the golden shadow + Falling from the throne of God. + + * * * * * + + +=_Walter Whitman, 1819-.[86]_= + +From Leaves of Grass. + +=_401._= THE BROOKLYN FERRY AT TWILIGHT. + + I too, many and many a time cross'd the river, the sun half an hour + high; + I watched the Twelfth-month sea-gulls--I saw them high in + the air, floating with motionless wings, oscillating their + bodies, + I saw how the glistening yellow lit up parts of their bodies, + and left the rest in strong shadow, + I saw the slow-wheeling circles, and the gradual edging toward + the south. + + I too saw the reflection of the summer sky in the water, + Had my eyes dazzled by the shimmering track of beams, + Look'd at the fine centrifugal spokes of light round the shape + of my head, in the sun-lit water, + Look'd on the haze on the hills southward and south-westward, + Look'd on the vapor as it flew in fleeces tinged with violet, + Look'd towards the lower bay to notice the arriving ships, + Saw their approach, saw aboard those that were near me, + Saw the white sails of schooners and sloops, saw the ships at + anchor, + The sailors at work in the rigging, or out astride the spars, + The round masts, the swimming motion of the hulls, the slender + serpentine pennants, + The large and small steamers in motion, the pilots in their + pilot-houses, + The white wake left by the passage, the quick tremulous whirl + of the wheels, + The flags of all nations, the falling of them at sun-set, + The scallop-edged waves in the twilight, the ladled cups, the + frolicsome crests and glistening, + The stretch afar growing dimmer and dimmer, the gray walls + of the granite store-houses by the docks, + On the river the shadowy group, the big steam-tug closely + flank'd on each side by the barges--the hay-boat, the + belated lighter, + On the neighboring shore, the fires from the foundry chimneys + burning high and glaringly into the night. + Casting their flicker of black, contrasted with wild red and + yellow light, over the tops of houses, and down into the + clefts of streets. + + These and all else, were to me the same as they are to you; + I project myself a moment to tell you--also I return. + +[Footnote 86: Was born in New York in 1819, and has been printer, +teacher, and later, an official at Washington. His poetry, though +irregular in form, and often coarse in sentiment, is decidedly original +and vigorous.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Amelia B. Welby, 1819-1852._= (Manual, p. 523.) + +=_402._= "THE BEREAVED." + + It is a still and lovely spot + Where they have laid thee down to rest; + The white rose and forget-me-not + Bloom sweetly on thy breast, + And birds and streams with liquid lull + Have made the stillness beautiful. + + And softly through the forest bars + Light, lovely shapes, on glossy plumes, + Float ever in, like winged stars, + Amid the purpling glooms. + Their sweet songs, borne from tree to tree, + Thrill the light leaves with melody. + + Alas! too deep a weight of thought + Had filled thy heart in youth's sweet hour; + It seemed with love and bliss o'erfraught; + As fleeting passion-flower + Unfolding 'neath a southern sky, + To blossom soon, and soon to die. + + Alas! the very path I trace, + In happier hours thy footsteps made; + This spot was once thy resting place, + Within the silent shade. + Thy white hand trained the fragrant bough + That drops its blossoms o'er me now. + + * * * * * + + Yet in those calm and blooming bowers + I seem to feel thy presence still, + Thy breath seems floating o'er the flowers, + Thy whisper on the hill; + The clear, faint starlight, and the sea, + Are whispering to my heart of thee. + + No more thy smiles my heart rejoice, + Yet still I start to meet thy eye, + And call upon the low, sweet voice, + That gives me no reply-- + And list within my silent door + For the light feet that come no more. + + * * * * * + + +=_Rebecca S. Nichols,_= about =_1820-._= (Manual, pp. 503, 524.) + +From "Musings." + +=_403._= + + How like a conquerer the king of day + Folds back the curtains of his orient couch, + Bestrides the fleecy clouds, and speeds his way + Through skies made brighter by his burning touch; + For, as a warrior from the tented field + Victorious, hastes his wearied limbs to rest, + So doth the sun his brazen sceptre yield, + And sink, fair Night, upon thy gentle breast. + + * * * * * + + Fair Vesper, when thy golden tresses gleam + Amid the banners of the sunset sky, + Thy spirit floats on every radiant beam + That gilds with beauty thy sweet home on high; + Then hath my soul its hour of deepest bliss, + And gentle thoughts like angels round me throng, + Breathing of worlds (O, how unlike to this!) + Where dwell eternal melody and song. + + * * * * * + + +=_Alice Cary._= + +"The Old House." + +=_404._= ATTRACTIONS OF OUR EARLY HOME. + + My little birds, with backs as brown + As sand, and throats as white as frost, + I've searched the summer up and down, + And think the other birds have lost + The tunes, you sang so sweet, so low, + About the old house, long ago. + + My little flowers, that with your bloom + So hid the grass you grew upon, + A child's foot scarce had any room + Between you,--are you dead and gone? + I've searched through fields and gardens rare, + Nor found your likeness any where. + + My little hearts, that beat so high + With love to God, and trust in men, + Oh come to me, and say if I + But dream, or was I dreaming then, + What time we sat within the glow + Of the old house-hearth, long ago? + + My little hearts, so fond, so true, + I searched the world all far and wide, + And never found the like of you: + God grant we meet the other side + The darkness 'twixt us, now that stands, + In that new house not made with hands! + + * * * * * + + +=_Sidney Dyer,_=[87] about =_1820-._= + +=_405._= THE POWER OF SONG. + + However humble be the bard who sings, + If he can touch one chord of love that slumbers, + His name, above the proudest line of kings, + Shall live immortal in his truthful numbers. + + The name of him who sung of "Home, sweet home,[88]" + Is now enshrined with every holy feeling; + And though he sleeps beneath no sainted dome, + Each heart a pilgrim at his shrine is kneeling. + + The simple lays that wake no tear when sung, + Like chords of feeling from the music taken, + Are, in the bosom of the singer, strung, + Which every throbbing heart-pulse will awaken. + +[Footnote 87: A Baptist clergyman, who has lived for many years at +Indianapolis, Indiana; the author of numerous songs.] + +[Footnote 88: John Howard Payne.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Austin T. Earle,[89] 1821-._= + +From "Warm Hearts had We." + +=_406._= + + The autumn winds were damp and cold, + And dark the clouds that swept along, + As from the fields, the grains of gold + We gathered, with the husker's song. + Our hardy forms, though thinly clad, + Scarce felt the winds that swept us by, + For she a child, and I a lad, + Warm hearts had we, my Kate and I. + + We heaped the ears of yellow corn, + More worth than bars of gold to view: + The crispy covering from it torn, + The noblest grain that ever grew; + Nor heeded we, though thinly clad, + The chilly winds that swept us by; + For she a child, and I a lad, + Warm hearts had we, my Kate and I. + +[Footnote 89: Was born in Tennessee; a well-known Western writer of both +verse and prose.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Thomas Buchanan Read, 1822-1872._= (Manual, p. 523.) + +From "Sylvia, or the Last Shepherd." + +=_407._= THE MOURNFUL MOWERS. + + * * * * * + + Thus sang the shepherd crowned at noon + And every breast was heaved with sighs;-- + Attracted by the tree and tune, + The winged singers left the skies. + + Close to the minstrel sat the maid; + His song had drawn her fondly near: + Her large and dewy eyes betrayed + The secret to her bosom dear. + + The factory people through the fields, + Pale men and maids and children pale, + Listened, forgetful of the wheel, + Till the last summons woke the vale. + + And all the mowers rising said, + "The world has lost its dewy prime; + Alas! the Golden age is dead, + And we are of the Iron time! + + "The wheel and loom have left our homes,-- + Our maidens sit with empty hands, + Or toil beneath yon roaring domes, + And fill the factory's pallid bands, + + "The fields are swept as by a war, + Our harvests are no longer blythe; + Yonder the iron mower's-car, + Comes with his devastating scythe. + + "They lay us waste by fire and steel, + Besiege us to our very doors; + Our crops before the driving wheel + Fall captive to the conquerors. + + "The pastoral age is dead, is dead! + Of all the happy ages chief; + Let every mower bow his head, + In token of sincerest grief. + + "And let our brows be thickly bound + With every saddest flower that blows; + And all our scythes be deeply wound + With every mournful herb that grows." + + Thus sang the mowers; and they said, + "The world has lost its dewy prime; + Alas! the Golden age is dead, + And we are of the Iron time!" + + Each wreathed his scythe and twined his head; + They took their slow way through the plain: + The minstrel and the maiden led + Across the fields the solemn train. + + The air was rife with clamorous sounds, + Of clattering factory-thundering forge,-- + Conveyed from the remotest bounds + Of smoky plain and mountain gorge. + + Here, with a sudden shriek and roar, + The rattling engine thundered by; + A steamer past the neighboring shore + Convulsed the river and the sky. + + The brook that erewhile laughed abroad, + And o'er one light wheel loved to play, + Now, like a felon, groaning trod + Its hundred treadmills night and day. + + The fields were tilled with steeds of steam, + Whose fearful neighing shook the vales; + Along the road there rang no team,-- + The barns were loud, but not with flails. + + And still the mournful mowers said, + "The world has lost its dewy prime; + Alas! the Golden age is dead, + And we are of the Iron time!" + + * * * * * + +From "The Closing Scene." + +=_408._= + + All sights were mellowed, and all sounds subdued, + The hills seemed farther, and the streams sang low; + As in a dream, the distant woodman hewed + His winter log, with many a muffled blow. + + * * * * * + + The sentinel cock upon the hill-side crew, + Crew thrice, and all was stiller than before, + Silent, till some replying warder blew + His alien horn, and then was heard no more. + + Where erst the jay, within the elm's tall crest, + Made garrulous trouble round her unfledged young, + And where the oriole hung her swaying nest, + By every light wind, like a censer, swung. + + * * * * * + + Amid all this, the centre of the scene, + The white-haired matron, with monotonous tread, + Plied the swift wheel, and, with her joyless mien, + Sat like a Fate, and watched the flying thread. + + * * * * * + + While yet her cheek was bright with summer bloom, + Her country summoned, and she gave her all; + And twice war bowed to her his sable plume, + Re-gave the swords to rust upon the wall-- + + Re-gave the swords, but not the hand that drew, + And struck for Liberty its dying blow; + Nor him who, to his sire and country true, + Fell 'mid the ranks of the invading foe. + + Long, but not loud, the droning wheel went on, + Like the low murmur of a hive at noon; + Long, but not loud, the memory of the gone + Breathed through her lips a sad and tremulous tune. + + At last the thread was snapped; her head was bowed; + Life dropped the distaff through his hands serene; + And loving neighbors smoothed her careful shroud, + While death and winter closed the autumn scene. + + * * * * * + + +=_Margaret M. Davidson, 1823-1837._= (Manual, p. 523.) + +From Lines in Memory of her Sister Lucretia. + +=_409._= + + O thou, so early lost, so long deplored! + Pure spirit of my sister, be thou near; + And, while I touch this hallowed harp of thine, + Bend from the skies, sweet sister, bend and hear. + + For thee I pour this unaffected lay; + To thee these simple numbers all belong: + For though thine earthly form has passed away, + Thy memory still inspires my childish song. + + Take, then, this feeble tribute; 'tis thine own; + Thy fingers sweep my trembling heartstrings o'er, + Arouse to harmony each buried tone, + And bid its wakened music sleep no more. + + Long has thy voice been silent, and thy lyre + Hung o'er thy grave, in death's unbroken rest; + But when its last sweet tones were borne away, + One answering echo lingered in my breast. + + O thou pure spirit! if thou hoverest near, + Accept these lines, unworthy though they be, + Faint echoes from thy fount of song divine, + By thee inspired, and dedicate to thee. + + * * * * * + + +=_John R. Thompson,[90] 1823-1873._= + +=_410._= MUSIC IN CAMP. + + Two armies covered hill and plain, + Where Rappahannock's waters + Ran deeply crimsoned with the stain + Of battle's recent slaughters. + + The summer clouds lay pitched like tents + In meads of heavenly azure, + And each dread gun of the elements + Slept in its hid embrazure. + + The breeze so softly blew, it made + No forest leaf to quiver, + And the smoke of the random cannonade + Rolled slowly from the river. + + And now, where circling hills looked down, + With cannon grimly planted, + O'er listless camp and silent town + The golden sunset slanted. + + When on the fervid air there came + A strain--now rich and tender; + The music seemed itself aflame + With day's departing splendor. + + And yet once more the bugles sang + Above the stormy riot; + No shout upon the evening rang-- + There reigned a holy quiet, + + The sad, slow stream, its noiseless flood + Poured o'er the glistening pebbles; + All silent now the Yankees stood, + And silent stood the Rebels. + + No unresponsive soul had heard + That plaintive note's appealing, + So deeply "Home, Sweet Home" had stirred + The hidden founts of feeling. + + Or Blue, or Gray, the soldier sees, + As by the wand of fairy, + The cottage 'neath the live-oak trees, + The cabin by the prairie. + + Or cold or warm, his native skies + Bend in their beauty o'er him; + Seen through the tear-mist in his eyes, + His loved ones stand before him. + + As fades the iris after rain + In April's tearful weather, + The vision vanished, as the strain + And daylight died together. + + But memory, waked by music's art, + Expressed in simplest numbers, + Subdued the sternest Yankee's heart, + Made light the Rebel's slumbers. + + And fair the form of music shines, + That bright, celestial creature, + Who still 'mid war's embattled lines, + Gave this one touch of Nature. + +[Footnote 90: Received a liberal education and relinquishing his +profession--the law--for literature, was for some years editor of the +Southern Literary Messenger. Has written chiefly for the magazines and +for the newspapers. A native of Virginia.] + + * * * * * + + +=_George Henry Boker, 1824-._= (Manual, p. 520.) + +From the "Ode to a Mountain Oak." + +=_411._= THE OAK AN EMBLEM. + + Type of unbending Will! + Type of majestic self-sustaining Power! + Elate in sunshine, firm when tempests lower, + May thy calm strength my wavering spirit fill! + Oh! let me learn from thee, + Thou proud and steadfast tree, + To bear unmurmuring what stern Time may send; + Nor 'neath life's ruthless tempests bend: + But calmly stand like thee, + Though wrath and storm shake me, + Though vernal hopes in yellow Autumn end, + And, strong in truth, work out my destiny. + Type of long-suffering Power! + Type of unbending Will! + Strong in the tempest's hour, + Bright when the storm is still; + Rising from every contest with an unbroken heart, + Strengthen'd by every struggle, emblem of might thou art! + Sign of what man can compass, spite of an adverse state, + Still from thy rocky summit, teach us to war with Fate! + + * * * * * + +=_412._= DIRGE FOR A SAILOR. + + Slow, slow! toll it low, + As the sea-waves break and flow; + With the same dull slumberous motion. + As his ancient mother, Ocean, + Rocked him on, through storm and calm, + From the iceberg to the palm: + So his drowsy ears may deem + That the sound which breaks his dream + Is the ever-moaning tide + Washing on his vessel's side. + + Slow, slow! as we go. + Swing his coffin to and fro; + As of old the lusty billow + Swayed him on his heaving pillow: + So that he may fancy still, + Climbing up the watery hill, + Plunging in the watery vale, + With her wide-distended sail, + His good ship securely stands + Onward to the golden lands. + + Slow, slow! heave-a-ho!-- + Lower him to the mould below; + With the well-known sailor ballad, + Lest he grow more cold and pallid + At the thought that Ocean's child, + From his mother's arms beguiled. + Must repose for countless years, + Reft of all her briny tears, + All the rights he owned by birth, + In the dusty lap of earth. + + * * * * * + + +=_William Allen Butler, 1825-._= (Manual, p. 521.) + +From "Nothing to Wear." + +=_413._= + + O ladies, dear ladies, the next sunny day + Please trundle your hoops just out of Broadway, + From its whirl and its bustle, its fashion and pride, + And the temples of Trade which tower on each side, + To the alleys and lanes, where Misfortune and Guilt + Their children have gathered, their city have built; + Where Hunger and Vice, like twin beasts of prey, + Have hunted their victims to gloom and despair; + Raise the rich, dainty dress, and the fine broidered skirt, + Pick your delicate way through the dampness and dirt, + Grope through the dark dens, climb the rickety stair + To the garret, where wretches, the young and the old, + Half-starved, and half-naked, lie crouched from the cold. + See those skeleton limbs, and those frost-bitten feet, + All bleeding and bruised by the stones of the street; + Hear the sharp cry of childhood, the deep groans that swell + From the poor dying creature who writhes on the floor, + Hear the curses that sound like the echoes of Hell, + As you sicken and shudder and fly from the door; + Then home to your wardrobes, and say, if you dare, + Spoiled children of Fashion--you've nothing to wear! + + And O, if perchance there should be a sphere, + Where all is made right which so puzzles us here, + + * * * * * + + Where the soul, disenchanted of flesh and of sense, + Unscreened by its trappings, and shows, and pretence, + Must be clothed for the life and the service above, + With purity, truth, faith, meekness, and love; + O daughters of Earth! foolish virgins, beware! + Lest in that upper realm, you have nothing to wear! + + * * * * * + + +=_Bayard Taylor, 1825-._= (Manual, pp. 523, 531.) + +From "The Atlantic Monthly." + +=_414._= "THE BURDEN OF THE DAY." + + I. + + Who shall rise and cast away, + First, the Burden of the Day? + Who assert his place, and teach + Lighter labor, nobler speech, + Standing firm, erect, and strong, + Proud as Freedom, free as song? + + II. + + Lo! we groan beneath the weight + Our own weaknesses create; + Crook the knee and shut the lip, + All for tamer fellowship; + Load our slack, compliant clay + With the Burden of the Day! + + III. + + Higher paths there are to tread; + Fresher fields around us spread; + Other flames of sun and star + Flash at hand and lure afar; + Larger manhood might we share, + Surer fortune, did we dare! + + IV. + + In our mills of common thought + By the pattern all is wrought: + In our school of life, the man + Drills to suit the public plan, + And through labor, love and play, + Shifts the Burden of the Day. + + V. + + Power of all is right of none! + Right hath each beneath the sun + To the breadth and liberal space + Of the independent race,-- + To the chariot and the steed, + To the will, desire, and deed! + + VI. + + Ah, the gods of wood and stone + Can a single saint dethrone, + But the people who shall aid + 'Gainst the puppets they have made? + First they teach and then obey: + 'Tis the Burden of the Day. + + VII. + + Thunder shall we never hear + In this ordered atmosphere? + Never this monotony feel + Shattered by a trumpet's peal? + Never airs that burst and blow + From eternal summits, know? + + VIII. + + Though no man resent his wrong, + Still is free the poet's song: + Still, a stag, his thought may leap + O'er the herded swine and sheep, + And in pastures far away + Lose the burden of the Day! + + * * * * * + + +=_John Townsend Trowbridge,[91] 1827-._= + +From the Atlantic Monthly. + +=_415._= "DOROTHY IN THE GARRET." + + In the low-raftered garret, stooping + Carefully over the creaking boards, + Old Maid Dorothy goes a-groping + Among its dusty and cobwebbed hoards; + Seeking some bundle of patches, hid + Far under the eaves, or bunch of sage, + Or satchel hung on its nail, amid + The heir-looms of a by-gone age. + + There is the ancient family chest, + There the ancestral cards and hatchel; + Dorothy, sighing, sinks down to rest, + Forgetful of patches, sage, and satchel. + Ghosts of faces peer from the gloom + Of the chimney, where, with swifts and reel, + And the long-disused, dismantled loom, + Stands the old-fashioned spinning wheel. + + She sees it back in the clean-swept kitchen, + A part of her girlhood's little world; + Her mother is there by the window, stitching; + Spindle buzzes, and reel is whirled + With many a click; on her little stool + She sits, a child by the open door, + Watching, and dabbling her feet in the pool + Of sunshine spilled on the gilded floor. + + Her sisters are spinning all day long; + To her wakening sense, the first sweet warning + Of daylight come, is the cheerful song + To the hum of the wheel, in the early morning. + Benjie, the gentle, red-cheeked boy, + On his way to school, peeps in at the gate; + In neat, white pinafore, pleased and coy, + She reaches a hand to her bashful mate; + + And under the elms, a prattling pair, + Together they go, through glimmer and gloom + It all comes back to her, dreaming there + In the low-raftered garret room; + The hum of the wheel, and the summer weather + The heart's first trouble, and love's beginning, + Are all in her memory linked together; + And now it is she herself that is spinning. + + With the bloom of youth on cheek and lip, + Turning the spokes with the flashing pin, + Twisting the thread from the spindle-tip, + Stretching it out and winding it in, + To and fro, with a blithesome tread, + Singing she goes, and her heart is full, + And many a long-drawn golden thread + Of fancy, is spun with the shining wool. + +[Footnote 91: After struggling through many early discouragements has +attained high repute, both in prose and verse. Has written several +novels. New York is his native State.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Henry Timrod,[92] 1829-1867._= + +From his "Poems." + +=_416._= THE UNKNOWN DEAD. + + The rain is plashing on my sill, + But all the winds of Heaven are still; + And so it falls with that dull sound + Which thrills us in the church-yard ground, + When the first spadeful drops like lead + Upon the coffin of the dead. + Beyond my streaming window-pane, + I cannot see the neighboring vane, + Yet from its old familiar tower + The bell comes, muffled, through the shower + What strange and unsuspected link + Of feeling touched, has made me think-- + While with a vacant soul and eye + I watch that gray and stony sky-- + Of nameless graves on battle-plains + Washed by a single winter's rains, + Where--some beneath Virginian hills, + And some by green Atlantic rills, + Some by the waters of the West-- + A myriad unknown heroes rest? + Ah! not the chiefs, who, dying, see + Their flags in front of victory, + Or, at their life-blood's noble cost + Pay for a battle nobly lost, + Claim from their monumental beds + The bitterest tears a nation sheds. + Beneath yon lonely mound--the spot + By all save some fond few, forgot-- + Lie the true martyrs of the fight + Which strikes for freedom and for right. + Of them, their patriot zeal and pride, + The lofty faith that with them died, + No grateful page shall farther tell + Than that so many bravely fell; + And we can only dimly guess + What worlds of all this world's distress, + What utter woe, despair, and dearth, + Their fate has brought to many a hearth. + Just such a sky as this should weep + Above them, always, where they sleep; + Yet, haply, at this very hour + Their graves are like a lover's bower; + And Nature's self, with eyes unwet, + Oblivious of the crimson debt + To which she owes her April grace, + Laughs gayly o'er their burial-place. + +[Footnote 92: A native of South Carolina. He has a fine poetic sentiment, +with much beauty of expression, and is an especial favorite in the +South.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Susan A. Talley Von Weiss,_=[93] about =_1830-._= + +=_417._= THE SEA-SHELL. + + Sadly the murmur, stealing + Through the dim windings of the mazy shell, + Seemeth some ocean-mystery concealing + Within its cell. + + And ever sadly breathing, + As with the tone of far-off waves at play, + That dreamy murmur through the sea-shell wreathing + Ne'er dies away. + + It is no faint replying + Of far-off melodies of wind and wave, + No echo of the ocean billow, sighing + Through gem-lit cave. + + It is no dim retaining + Of sounds that through the dim sea-caverns swell + But some lone ocean spirit's sad complaining, + Within that cell. + + + * * * * * + + I languish for the ocean-- + I pine to view the billow's heaving crest; + I miss the music of its dream-like motion, + That lulled to rest. + + How like art thou, sad spirit, + To many a one, the lone ones of the earth! + Who in the beauty of their souls inherit + A purer birth; + + * * * * * + + Yet thou, lone child of ocean, + May'st never more behold thine ocean-foam, + While they shall rest from each wild, sad emotion, + And find their home! + +[Footnote 93: A native of Virginia; her poetical pieces have been much +admired.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Albert Sutliffe,[94] 1830-._= + +=_418._= "MAY NOON." + + The farmer tireth of his half-day toil, + He pauseth at the plough, + He gazeth o'er the furrow-lined soil, + Brown hand above his brow. + + He hears, like winds lone muffled 'mong the hills, + The lazy river run; + From shade of covert woods, the eager rills + Bound forth into the sun. + + The clustered clouds of snowy apple-blooms, + Scarce shivered by a breeze, + With odor faint, like flowers in feverish rooms, + Fall, flake by flake, in peace. + + 'Tis labor's ebb; a hush of gentle joy, + For man, and beast, and bird; + The quavering songster ceases its employ; + The aspen is not stirred. + + But Nature hath no pause; she toileth still; + Above the last-year leaves + Thrusts the lithe germ, and o'er the terraced hill + A fresher carpet weaves. + + From many veins she sends her gathered streams + To the huge-billowed main, + Then through the air, impalpable as dreams, + She calls them back again. + + She shakes the dew from her ambrosial locks, + She pours adown the steep + The thundering waters; in her palm, she rocks + The flower-throned bee to sleep. + + Smile in the tempest, faint and fragile man, + And tremble in the calm! + God plainest shows what great. Jehovah can, + In these fair days of balm. + +[Footnote 94: A native of Connecticut, but has lived for many years in +the West, and latterly in Minnesota.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Elijah E. Edwards,[95] 1831-._= + +=_419._= "LET ME REST." + + "Let me rest!" + It was the voice of one + Whose life-long journey was but just begun. + With genial radiance shone his morning sun; + The lark sprang up rejoicing from her nest, + To warble praises in her Maker's ear; + The fields were clad in flower-enamelled vest, + And air of balm, and sunshine clear, + Failed not to cheer + That yet unweary pilgrim; but his breast + Was harrowed with a strange, foreboding fear; + Deeming the life to come, at best, + But weariness, he murmured, "Let me rest." + + * * * * * + + "Let me rest!" + But not at morning's hour, + Nor yet when clouds above my pathway lower; + Let me bear up against affliction's power, + Till life's red sun has sought its quiet west, + Till o'er me spreads the solemn, silent night, + When, having passed the portals of the blessed, + I may repose upon the Infinite, + And learn aright + Why He, the wise, the ever-loving, traced + The path to heaven through a desert waste. + Courage, ye fainting ones! at His behest + Ye pass through labor unto endless rest. + +[Footnote 95: Born in Ohio; of late professor of ancient languages in +Minnesota; a contributor in prose and verse to various magazines.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Paul Hamilton Hayne,[96] 1831-._= + +=_420._= "OCTOBER." + + The passionate summer's dead! the sky's aglow + With roseate flushes of matured desire; + The winds at eve are musical and low + As sweeping chords of a lamenting lyre, + Far up among the pillared clouds of fire, + Whose pomp in grand procession upward grows, + With gorgeous blazonry of funereal shows, + To celebrate the summer's past renown. + Ah, me! how regally the heavens look down, + O'ershadowing beautiful autumnal woods, + And harvest-fields with hoarded incense brown, + And deep-toned majesty of golden floods, + That lift their solemn dirges to the sky, + To swell the purple pomp that floateth by. + +[Footnote 96: A poet and critic of much Note; a native of South +Carolina.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Rosa V. Johnson Jeffrey_=[97] about =_1832-._= + +=_421._= ANGEL WATCHERS. + + Angel faces watch my pillow, angel voices haunt my sleep,-- + And upon the winds of midnight, shining pinions round me sweep; + Floating downward on the starlight, two bright infant-forms I see-- + They are mine, my own bright darlings, come from heaven to visit me. + + Earthly children smile upon me, but those little ones' above, + Were the first to stir the fountains of a mother's deathless love, + And, as now they watch my slumber, while their soft eyes on me shine, + God forgive a mortal yearning still to call his angels mine. + + Earthly children fondly call me, but no mortal voice can seem + Sweet as those that whisper "Mother!" 'mid the glories of my dream; + Years will pass, and earthly prattlers cease perchance to lisp my name; + But my angel babies' accents shall be evermore the same. + + And the bright band now around me, from their home perchance will rove, + In their strength no more depending on my constant care and love; + But my first-born still shall wander, from the sky in dreams to rest + Their soft cheeks and shining tresses on an earthly mother's breast. + + Time may steal away the freshness, or some 'whelming grief destroy + All the hopes that erst had blossomed, in my summer-time of joy; + Earthly children may forsake me, earthly friends perhaps betray, + Every tie that now unites me to this life may pass away;-- + + But, unchanged, those angel watchers, from their blest immortal home, + Pure and fair, to cheer the sadness of my darkened dreams shall come; + And I cannot feel forsaken, for, though 'reft of earthly love, + Angel children call me "Mother," and my soul will look above. + +[Footnote 97: A native of Mississippi, but of late a resident of +Kentucky; the author of several novels, and of many poetical pieces.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Sarah J. Lippincott._= + +From Putnam's Magazine. + +=_422._= "ABSOLUTION." + + The long day waned, when spent with pain, I seemed + To drift on slowly toward the restful shore,-- + So near, I breathed in balm, and caught faint gleams + Of Lotus-blooms that fringe the waves of death, + And breathless Palms that crown the heights of God. + + Then I bethought me how dear hands would close + These wistful eyes in welcome night, and fold + These poor, tired hands in blameless idleness. + In tender mood I pictured forth the spot + Wherein I should be laid to take my rest. + + "It shall be in some paradise of graves, + Where Sun and Shade do hold alternate watch; + Where Willows sad trail low their tender green, + And pious Elms build arches worshipful, + O'ertowered by solemn Pines, in whose dark tops + Enchanted storm-winds sigh through summer-nights; + The stalwart exile from fair Lombardy, + And slender Aspens, whose quiet, watchful leaves + Give silver challenge to the passing breeze, + And softly flash and clash like fairy shields, + Shall sentinel that quiet camping ground; + The glow and grace of flowers will flood those mounds + An ever-widening sea of billowy bloom; + And not least lovely shall my grave-sod be, + With Myrtles blue, and nestling Violets, + And Star-flowers pale with watching--Pansies, dark, + With mourning thoughts, and Lilies saintly pure; + Deep-hearted Roses, sweet as buried love, + And Woodbine-blossoms dripping honeyed dew + Over a tablet and a sculptured name. + There little song-birds, careless of my sleep, + Shall shake fine raptures from their throats, and thrill + With life's triumphant joy the ear of Death; + And lovely, gauzy creatures of an hour + Preach immortality among the graves. + The chime of silvery waters shall be there-- + A pleasant stream that winds among the flowers, + But lingers not, for that it ever hears, + Through leagues of wood and field and towered town, + The great sea calling from his secret deeps." + + 'Twas here, methought or dreamed, an angel came + And stood beside my couch, and bent on me + A face of solemn questioning, still and stern, + But passing beautiful, and searched my soul + With steady eyes, the while he seemed to say. + + What hast thou done here, child, that thy poor dust + Should lie embosomed in such loveliness? + Why should the gracious trees stand guard o'er thee? + Hast thou aspired, like them, through all thy life, + And rest and healing with thy shadow cast? + Have deeds of thine brightened the world like flowers, + And sweetened it with holiest charities? + + * * * * * + + +=_Edmund Clarence Stedman,[98] 1833-._= + +From "The Blameless Prince and other Poems." + +=_423._= THE MOUNTAINS. + + Two thousand feet in air it stands + Betwixt the bright and shaded lands, + Above the regions it divides + And borders with its furrowed sides. + The seaward valley laughs with light + Till the round sun o'erhangs this height; + But then, the shadow of the crest + No more the plains that lengthen west + Enshrouds, yet slowly, surely creeps + Eastward, until the coolness steeps + A darkling league of tilth and wold, + And chills the flocks that seek their fold. + + Not like those ancient summits lone, + Mont Blanc on his eternal throne,-- + The city-gemmed Peruvian, peak,-- + The sunset portals landsmen seek, + Whose train, to reach the Golden Land, + Crawls slow and pathless through the sand,-- + Or that whose ice-lit beacon guides + The mariner on tropic tides, + And flames across the Gulf afar, + A torch by day, by night a star,-- + Not thus to cleave the outer skies. + Does my serener mountain rise. + Nor aye forget its gentle birth + Upon the dewey, pastoral earth. + + But ever, in the noonday light, + Are scenes whereof I love the sight,-- + Broad pictures of the lower world + Beneath my gladdened eyes unfurled. + Irradiate distances reveal + Fair nature wed to human weal; + The rolling valley made a plain; + Its chequered squares of grass and grain; + The silvery rye, the golden wheat, + The flowery elders where they meet,-- + Ay, even the springing corn I see, + And garden haunts of bird and bee; + And where, in daisied meadows, shines + The wandering river through its vines, + Move, specks at random, which I know + Are herds a-grazing to and fro. + +[Footnote 98: Was born in Connecticut but has long resided in New York, +where he has combined an active business life with literary pursuits--a +favorite contributor to that magazines.] + + * * * * * + + +=_John James Piatt,[99] 1835-._= + +From "Landmarks and other Poems." + +=_424._= LONG AGO. + + Though for the soul a lovely Heaven awaits, + Through years of woe, + The Paradise with angels in its gates + Is Long Ago. + + The heart's lost Home! Ah, thither winging ever, + In silence, show + Vanishing faces! but they vanish never + In Long Ago! + + Ye toil'd through desert sands to reach To-morrow, + With footsteps slow, + Poor Yesterdays! Immortal gleams ye borrow + In Long Ago. + + The world is dark: backward our thoughts are yearning, + Our eyes o'erflow: + Sweet Memories, angels to our tears returning, + Leave Long Ago. + + We climb: child-roses to our knees are climbing, + From valleys low; + To call us back, dear birds and brooks are rhyming + In Long Ago. + + Hands clasp'd, tears shed, sad songs are sung!--the fair + Beloved ones, lo! + Shine yonder, through the angel gates of air, + In Long Ago. + +[Footnote 99: Of Western birth and education. His verse though somewhat +crude, has a flow of tenderness and freshness.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Celia Thaxter,[100] 1835-._= + +From The Atlantic Monthly. + +=_425._= "REGRET." + + Softly Death touched her, and she passed away, + Out of this glad, bright world she made more fair; + Sweet as the apple blossoms, when in May, + The orchards flush, of summer grown aware. + + All that fresh delicate beauty gone from sight, + That gentle, gracious presence felt no more! + How must the house be emptied of delight! + What shadows on the threshold she passed o'er! + + She loved me. Surely I was grateful, yet + I could not give her back all she gave me,-- + Ever I think of it with vain regret, + Musing upon a summer by the sea: + + Remembering troops of merry girls who pressed + About me, clinging arms and tender eyes, + And love, light scent of roses. With the rest + She came to fill my heart with new surprise. + + The day I left them all and sailed away, + While o'er the calm sea, 'neath the soft gray sky + They waved farewell, she followed me to say + Yet once again her wistful, sweet "good by." + + At the boat's bow she drooped; her light green dress + Swept o'er the skiff in many a graceful fold, + Her glowing face, bright with a mute caress, + Crowned with her lovely hair of shadowy gold: + + And tears she dropped into the crystal brine + For me, unworthy, as we slowly swung + Free of the mooring. Her last look was mine, + Seeking me still the motley crowd among. + + O tender memory of the dead I hold + So precious through the fret and change of years! + Were I to live till Time itself grew old, + The sad sea would be sadder for those tears. + +[Footnote 100: A native of New Hampshire; long resident on the Isles of +Shoals, and remarkable for her vivid pictures of ocean life, in both +prose and verse.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Theophilus H. Hill.[101] 1836-._= + +From "The Song of the Butterfly." + +=_426._= + + When the shades of evening fall, + Like the foldings of a pall,-- + When the dew is on the flowers, + And the mute, unconscious hours, + Still pursue their noiseless flight + Through the dreamy realms of night, + In the shut or open rose + Ah, how sweetly I repose! + + * * * * * + + And Diana's starry train, + Sweetly scintillant again, + Never sleep while I repose + On the petals of the rose. + Sweeter couch hath who than I? + Quoth the brilliant Butterfly. + + Life is but a summer day, + Gliding languidly away; + Winter comes, alas! too soon,-- + Would it were forever June! + Yet though brief my flight may be, + Fun and frolic still for me! + When the summer leaves and flowers, + Now so beautiful and gay, + In the cold autumnal showers, + Droop and fade, and pine away, + Who would not prefer to die? + What were life to _such as I_? + Quoth the flaunting Butterfly. + +[Footnote 101: Born in North Carolina; in the intervals of his law +practice has published a volume of poems.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Thomas Hailey Aldrich.[102] 1836-._= + +From his "Poems." + +=_427._= THE CRESCENT AND THE CROSS. + + Kind was my friend who, in the Eastern land, + Remembered me with such a gracious hand, + And sent this Moorish Crescent which has been + Worn on the tawny bosom of a queen. + + No more it sinks and rises in unrest + To the soft music of her heathen breast; + No barbarous chief shall bow before it more, + No turbaned slave shall envy and adore! + + I place beside this relic of the Sun + A cross of Cedar brought from Lebanon, + Once 'borne, perchance, by some pale monk who trod + The desert to Jerusalem--and his God! + + Here do they lie, two symbols of two creeds, + Each meaning something to our human needs, + Both stained with blood, and sacred made by faith, + By tears, and prayers, and martyrdom, and death. + + That for the Moslem is, but this for me! + The waning Crescent lacks divinity: + It gives me dreams of battles, and the woes + Of women shut in hushed seraglios. + + But when this Cross of simple wood I see, + The Star of Bethlehem shines again for me, + And glorious visions break upon my gloom-- + The patient Christ, and Mary at the Tomb! + +[Footnote 102: Born in New Hampshire, but long connected with the press in +New York. Has produced several volumes of poetry of unusual beauty and +finish.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Francis Bret Harte._= + +From his "Poems." + +=_428._= DICKENS IN CAMP. + + Above the pines the moon was slowly drifting, + The river ran below; + The dim Sierras, far beyond, uplifting + Their minarets of snow. + + The roaring camp-fire, with rude humor, painted + The ruddy tints of health, + On haggard face, and form that drooped and fainted + In the fierce race for wealth; + + Till one arose, and from his pack's scant treasure + A hoarded volume drew, + And cards were dropped from hands of listless leisure, + To hear the tale anew; + + And then, while round them shadows gathered faster, + And as the firelight fell, + He read aloud the book wherein the Master + Had writ of "Little Nell." + + Perhaps 'twas boyish fancy,--for the reader + Was youngest of them all,-- + But, as he read, from clustering pine and cedar, + A silence seemed to fall. + + The fir-trees, gathering closer in the shadows, + Listened in every spray, + While the whole camp, with "Nell" on English meadows, + Wandered, and lost their way. + + And so in mountain solitudes--o'ertaken + As by some spell divine-- + Their cares dropped from them like the needles shaken + From out the gusty pine. + + Lost is that camp I and wasted all its fire: + And he who wrought that spell?-- + Ah, towering pine and stately Kentish spire, + Ye have one tale to tell! + + Lost is that camp! but let its fragrant story + Blend with the breath that thrills + With hop-vines' incense all the pensive glory + That fills the Kentish hills. + + And on that grave where English oak and holly + And laurel wreaths intwine, + Deem it not all a too presumptuous folly,-- + This spray of Western pine! + + * * * * * + +From "East and West Poems." + +=_429._= THE TWO SHIPS. + + As I stand by the cross on the lone mountain's crest, + Looking over the ultimate sea, + In the gloom of the mountain a ship lies at rest, + And one sails away from the lea: + One spreads its white wings on a far-reaching track, + With pennant and sheet flowing free; + One hides in the shadow with sails laid aback,-- + The ship that is waiting for me! + + But lo, in the distance the clouds break away! + The Gate's glowing portals I see; + And I hear from the outgoing ship in the bay + The song of the sailors in glee: + So I think of the luminous footprints that bore + The comfort o'er dark Galilee, + And wait for the signal to go to the shore, + To the ship that is waiting for me. + + * * * * * + + +=_Charles Dimitry,[103] 1838-._= + +=_430._= "THE SERGEANT'S STORY." + + Our army lay, + At break of day, + A full league from the foe away. + At set of sun, + The battle done, + We cheered our triumph, dearly won. + + * * * * * + + All night before, + We marked the roar + Of hostile guns that on us bore; + And 'here and there, + The sudden blare + Of fitful bugles smote the air. + + No idle word + The quiet stirred + Among us as the morning neared; + And brows were bent, + As silent went + Unto its post each regiment. + + Blank broke the day, + And wan and gray + The drifting clouds went on their way. + So sad the morn, + Our colors torn, + Upon the ramparts drooped forlorn! + + At early sun, + The vapors dun + Were lifted by a nearer gun; + At stroke of nine, + Auspicious sign + The sun shone out along the line. + + Then loud and clear, + From cannoneer + And rifleman arose a cheer; + For as the gray + Mists cleared away, + We saw the charging foe's array. + +[Footnote 103: Of a Louisiana family: is considered one of the most +promising of the young writers of the South. The present is a favorable +specimen of the poetry of the secession writers.] + + * * * * * + + +=_John Hay._=[104] + +From "Pike County Ballads." + +=_431._= THE PRAIRIE. + + The skies are blue above my head, + The prairie green below, + And flickering o'er the tufted grass + The shifting shadows go, + Vague-sailing, where the feathery clouds + Fleck white the tranquil skies, + Black javelins darting where aloft + The whirring pheasant flies. + + A glimmering plain in drowsy trance + The dim horizon bounds, + Where all the air is resonant + With sleepy summer sounds,-- + The life that sings among the flowers, + The lisping of the breeze, + The hot cicada's sultry cry, + The murmurous dream of bees. + + The butterfly--a flying flower-- + Wheels swift in flashing rings, + And flutters round his quiet kin + With brave flame-mottled wings. + The wild Pinks burst in crimson fire, + The Phlox' bright clusters shine, + And Prairie-cups are swinging free + To spill their airy wine. + + * * * * * + + Far in the East, like low-hung clouds + The waving woodlands lie; + Far in the West, the glowing plain + Melts warmly in the sky; + No accent wounds the reverent air, + No foot-print dints the sod,-- + Lone in the light the prairie lies, + Rapt in a dream of God. + +[Footnote 104: Born in Indiana. Gave up the practice of the law to become +Secretary and Aide-de-camp to President Lincoln. Served briefly in the +Rebellion war with the rank of Colonel, and was afterward Secretary of +Legation at Paris and Madrid, and for some months, Chargé d'Affaires at +Vienna. Subsequently applied himself to literature and journalism.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Joaquin Miller._=[105] + +From "Songs of the Sierras." + +=_432._= THE FUTURE OF CALIFORNIA. + + Dared I but say a prophecy, + As sang the holy men of old, + Of rock-built cities yet to be + Along those shining shores of gold, + Crowding athirst into the sea, + What wondrous marvels might be told! + Enough to know that empire here + Shall burn her brightest, loftiest star; + Here art and eloquence shall reign, + As o'er the wolf-reared realm of old; + Here learn'd and famous from afar, + To pay their noble court, shall come, + And shall not seek or see in vain, + But look on all, with wonder dumb. + + Afar the bright Sierras lie, + A swaying line of snowy white, + A fringe of heaven hung in sight + Against the blue base of the sky. + + I look along each gaping gorge, + I near a thousand sounding strokes, + Like giants rending giant oaks, + Or brawny Vulcan at his forge; + I see pick-axes flash and shine, + And great wheels whirling in a mine. + Here winds a thick and yellow thread, + A moss'd and silver stream instead; + And trout that leap'd its rippled tide + Have turn'd upon their sides and died. + + Lo! when the last pick in the mine + Is rusting red with idleness, + And rot yon cabins in the mould, + And wheels no more croak in distress, + And tall pines reassert command, + Sweet bards along this sunset shore + Their mellow melodies will pour; + Will charm as charmers very wise, + Will strike the harp with master-hand, + Will sound unto the vaulted skies + The valor of these men of old-- + The mighty men of 'Forty-nine; + Will sweetly sing and proudly say, + Long, long agone, there was a day + When there were giants in the land. + +[Footnote 105: Cincinnatus Heine Miller, commonly known by his assumed +name of Joaquin Miller. Born in Indiana, but was taken when very young +to Oregon. After a wild career in Oregon and California, he at length +studied for the law. His poetry, like his life, is of an eccentric +cast.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Joel Chandler Harris,[106] 1846-._= + +=_433._= "AGNES." + + She has a tender, winning way, + And walks the earth with gentle grace, + And roses with the lily play + Amid the beauties of her face. + + When'er she tunes her voice to sing, + The song-birds list, with anxious looks, + For it combines the notes of spring + With all the music of the brooks. + + Her merry laughter, soft and low, + Is as the chimes of silver bells,-- + That like sweet anthems float, and flow + Through woodland groves and bosky dells, + + And when the violets see her eyes, + They flush and glow--with love and shame, + They meekly droop with sad surprise, + As though unworthy of the name. + + But still they bloom where'er she throws + Her dainty glance and smiles so sweet. + And e'en amid stern winter's snows + The daisies spring beneath her feet. + + She wears a crown of Purity, + Full set with woman's brightest gem,-- + A wreath of maiden modesty, + And Virtue is the diadem. + + And when the pansies bloom again, + And spring and summer intertwine. + Great joys will fall on me like rain, + For she will be for ever mine! + +[Footnote 106: A native of Georgia; is deemed one of the best of the +younger poets of the South.] + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Choice Specimens of American +Literature, And Literary Reader, by Benj. 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For +example an eBook of filename 10234 would be found at: + + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/0/2/3/10234 + +or filename 24689 would be found at: + https://www.gutenberg.org/2/4/6/8/24689 + +An alternative method of locating eBooks: + https://www.gutenberg.org/GUTINDEX.ALL + + diff --git a/old/11122-8.zip b/old/11122-8.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..6b3d8ae --- /dev/null +++ b/old/11122-8.zip diff --git a/old/11122.txt b/old/11122.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..cdffafd --- /dev/null +++ b/old/11122.txt @@ -0,0 +1,21525 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Choice Specimens of American Literature, +And Literary Reader, by Benj. N. Martin + +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: Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader + Being Selections from the Chief American Writers + +Author: Benj. N. Martin + +Release Date: February 17, 2004 [EBook #11122] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHOICE SPECIMENS *** + + + + +Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Keren Vergon, Gene Smethers and PG +Distributed Proofreaders + + + + + +CHOICE SPECIMENS + +OF + +AMERICAN LITERATURE, + +AND + +LITERARY READER, + + + +BEING SELECTIONS FROM THE CHIEF AMERICAN WRITERS, + +BY + +PROF. BENJ. N. MARTIN, D.D., L.H.D., PROFESSOR OF THE UNIVERSITY OF THE +CITY OF NEW YORK. 1874 + + + +PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. + +The former edition of this work was prepared simply as a supplement to +Shaw's "Choice Specimens of English Literature." Though it extended to +a larger size than had been anticipated, and was therefore issued in a +separate volume, it still proved so straitened in point of space as to +be in some important respects defective and inadequate. The decision of +the publishers to reprint it in an enlarged form furnishes to the editor +a welcome opportunity to correct its deficiencies, and to make several +important emendations. + +When the work of collecting suitable extracts from the great body of our +literature was fairly entered upon, it soon became apparent that little +aid could be had from the earlier manuals. Besides being in great +measure obsolete, they were from the beginning disproportionate, and +geographically too local in subject and spirit; both of which may be +deemed grave defects. + +The last twenty years have made great changes in American authorship. +Many new names must now be added to the older lists, and many formerly +familiar ones must be dropped from them. Hence these extracts have for +the most part been derived, with assiduous care, directly from the +collected works of our standard authors. This part of my labor has been +greatly facilitated by the courtesy of the gentlemen connected with the +Society, the Mercantile, and the Astor, Library, whose constant kindness +I gratefully acknowledge. + +The principal alterations which will be found in this edition are the +following. + +1. The extracts, formerly, of necessity, brief and fragmentary, have +given place to more extended and coherent passages. + +2. A much larger space has been allotted to the more eminent authors. +Such writers as Franklin, Jefferson, Calhoun, Webster, Wirt, Irving, +Cooper, Hawthorne, Channing, Beecher, Prescott, Motley, Shea, Bryant, +Poe, Emerson, and Lowell, have been much more adequately exhibited. + +3. Many later writers have been added, so that the work more fully +represents the rapid development of literary effort among us. + +4. A few writers, formerly included, have been dropped from the list, +not always as less deserving a place, but sometimes as having less +adaptation to the purposes of the book. + +Much care has been bestowed upon the dates of the several authors, and +in bringing up details of information to the latest period. The same +pains have been taken to furnish a just representation of the writers, +too often overlooked in our manuals, of the Southern and Western +portions of our country. Though often wanting in mere grace of style, +they are apt to be original and vigorous; and often possessing valuable +material, they are well worthy of perusal. In all these respects this +collection has been carefully elaborated; and the editor hopes that it +will be found to give a somewhat proportionate and complete view for its +compass, of our best literature. + +In adapting the selections to Mr. Tuckerman's interesting "Sketch of +American Literature," specimens have generally been taken from several +authors in each of his groups. Some names not found in his "Sketch," +have been introduced, chiefly for the fuller illustration of the +literature of the south and west. In this particular, Coggeshall's +"Poets and Poetry of the West" has afforded great assistance. Among +the more recent aids of the same kind, I must also mention Davidson's +"Living Writers of the South," and Raymond's "Southland Writers." +Especial acknowledgment is due to the "Cyclopedia" of the Messrs. +Duyckinck; Appleton's "Annual Cyclopedia" has furnished many important +dates; and I have occasionally been indebted to the works of Allibone, +Cheever, Griswold, Cleveland, Hart, and Underwood. Not only the local +literature however, but the several professions, and the great religious +denominations, are also represented by prominent writers. + +It seemed unnecessary to treat the female writers as a distinct class; +they are, therefore, arranged under the departments to which they +respectively belong, as Essayists, Novelists, Poets, &c. + +I should be claiming a merit which does not belong to me, should I fail +to say, that, for much of the labor which this treatise has involved, I +am indebted to the co-operation of my brother, Mr. William T. Martin, +whose acquaintance with our literature has not often been surpassed, and +whose valuable aid and counsel have been freely afforded me. + +The hours which have been spent in culling extracts from so many able +and entertaining writers, though laborious, have been to the editor full +of interest, and often of delight. He trusts that these fruits of his +labor will be useful, in imparting, especially to his youthful readers, +not only an acquaintance with the best of our national authors, but a +taste for literature, and a good ideal of literary excellence, than +which few things in intellectual education are more to be esteemed. If +successful in these respects, he will be abundantly satisfied; and in +this hope, he submits his work to the judgment of the public. + + + + +CONTENTS + + + +CHAPTER I. + + +=_1._= RELIGIOUS WRITERS OF THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES. + + Roger Williams, 1598-1683 + 1. True Liberty defined. + + Cotton Mather, 1663-1728 + 2. Preservation of New England Principles. + + Jonathan Edwards, 1703-1758 + 3. Meaning of the Phrase Moral Inability. + + Samuel Davies, 1725-1761 + 4. Life and Immortality revealed through the Gospel. + + Nathaniel Emmons, 1745-1840 + 5. Rule of Private Judgment. + + + =_2._= HISTORICAL WRITERS OF THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH + CENTURIES. + + Cadwallader Colden, 1688-1776 + 6. The Five Nations assert their Superiority. + + William Stith, 1689-1755 + 7. The rule of Powhatan. + 8. Pocahontas in England. + + William Smith, 1728-1793 + 9. Manners of the People of New York. + + + =_3._= MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS OF THE SEVENTEENTH AND + EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES. + + John Winthrop, 1587-1649 + 10. True Liberty defined. + 11. Proposed Treatment of the Indians. + + William Byrd, 1674-1744 + 12. The Ginseng and Snakeroot Plants. + + Benjamin Franklin, 1706-1790 + 13. Good Resolutions.--The Croaker. + 14. Franklin's Electrical Kite. + 15. Motion for Prayers in the Convention. + 16. The Ephemeron. An Emblem. + + + =_4._= LATER RELIGIOUS WRITERS AND DIVINES. + + John Woolman, 1730-1772 + 17. Remarks on Slavery and Labor. + + John M. Mason, 1770-1829 + 18. Grandeur of the Bible Society. + 19. The Right of the State to Educate. + + Timothy Dwight, 1752-1817 + 20. The Wilderness reclaimed. + 21. The Glory of Nature, from God. + + John Henry Hobart, 1775-1830 + 22. The Divine Glory in Redemption. + + Lyman Beecher, 1775-1863 + 23. The Being of a God. + + William Ellery Channing, 1780-1842 + 24. Character of Napoleon. + 25. Grandeur of the prospect of Immortality. + 26. The Duty of the Free States. + + Edward Payson, 1783-1827 + 27. Natural Religion. + + Joseph S. Buckminster, 1784-1812 + 28. Necessity of Regeneration. + + Nathaniel W. Taylor, 1786-1858 + 29. Proof of Immortality from the Moral Nature of Man. + + Edward Hitchcock, 1793-1864 + 30. Geological Proof of Divine Benevolence. + + John P. Durbin, 1800- + 31. First Sight of Mount Sinai. + + Leonard Bacon, 1802- + 32. The Day approaching. + 33. The Benefits of Capital. + + James W. Alexander, 1804-1859 + 34. The Church a Temple. + + Martin J. Spaulding, 1810-1872 + 35. Trials of the Pioneer Catholic Clergy in the West. + + James H. Thornwell, 1811-1862 + 36. Evil tendencies of an act of Sin. + + Charles P. McIlvaine, 1799-1873 + 37. Attestations of the Resurrection. + + George W. Bethune, 1805-1862 + 38. Aspirations towards Heaven. + 39. The Prospects of Art in the United States. + + William R. Williams, 1804- + 40. Lead us not into Temptation. + + George B. Cheever, 1807- + 41. Sin distorts the judgment. + 42. Mont Blanc. + + Horace Bushnell, 1804- + 43. Unconscious Influence. + 44. The True Rest of the Christian. + + Alfred T. Bledsoe, about 1809- + 45. Moral Evil consistent with the Holiness of God. + + Richard Fuller, 1808- + 46. The Desire of all Nations shall come. _Haggai_ ii. 7. + + Henry Ward Beecher, 1813- + 47. A Picture in a College at Oxford. + 48. Frost on the Window. + 49. Nature designed for our enjoyment. + 50. Life in the Country. + 51. The Conception of Angels, Superhuman. + + John McClintock, 1814-1870 + 52. The Christian the only true Lover of Nature. + + Noah Porter, 1811- + 53. Science magnifies God. + + William H. Milburn, 1823- + 54. The Pioneer Preachers of the Mississippi Valley. + + + =_5._= ORATORS, AND LEGAL AND POLITICAL WRITERS, OF THE ERA + OF THE REVOLUTION. + + John Dickinson, 1732-1808 + 55. Aspect of the War in May, 1779. + + John Adams, 1735-1826 + 56. Character of James Otis. + 57. The Requisites of a Good Government. + + Patrick Henry, 1736-1799 + 58. The Necessity of the War. + 59. The Constitution should be amended before Adoption. + + John Rutledge, 1735-1826 + 60. An Independent Judiciary the Safeguard of Liberty. + + Thomas Jefferson, 1743-1826 + 61. Essential Principles of American Government. + 62. Character of Washington. + 63. Geographical Limits of the Elephant and the Mammoth. + 64. The Unhappy Effects of Slavery. + + John Jay, 1745-1829 + 65. An Appeal to Arms. + + + =_6._= ORATORS, AND LEGAL AND POLITICAL WRITERS, OF THE ERA + SUBSEQUENT TO THE REVOLUTION. + + Alexander Hamilton, 1757-1804 + 66. Nature of the Federal Debt. + 67. The French Revolution. + + Fisher Ames, 1758-1808 + 68. Obligation of National Good Faith. + + Gouverneur Morris, 1752-1816 + 69. Qualifications of a Minister of Foreign Affairs. + + William Pinkney, 1764-1820 + 70. Responsibility for Slavery. + 71. American Belligerent Rights. + + James Madison, 1751-1836 + 72. Value of a Record of the Debates on the Federal Constitution. + 73. Inscription for a Statue of Washington. + + John Randolph, 1773-1832 + 74. Change is not Reform. + 75. The Error of Decayed Families. + + James Kent, 1763-1847 + 76. Law of the States. + + Edward Livingston, 1764-1836 + 77. The Proper Office of the Judge. + + John Quincy Adams, 1767-1848 + 78. The Right of Petition Universal. + 79. The Administration of Washington. + + Henry Clay, 1777-1852 + 80. Emancipation of the South American States. + 81. Dangers of Disunion. + + John C. Calhoun, 1782-1850 + 82. Dangers of an Unlimited Power of Removal from Office. + 83. Peculiar merit of our Political System. + 84. Concurrent Majorities supersede Force. + + Daniel Webster, 1782-1852 + 85. Inestimable Value of the Federal Union;--Extract from the Reply + to Hayne. + 86. Object of the Bunker Hill Monument. + 87. Benefits of the U.S. Constitution. + 88. Right of changing Allegiance. + + Joseph Story, 1779-1845 + 89. Chief Justice Marshall. + 90. Progress of Jurisprudence. + + Lewis Cass, 1782-1866 + 91. Policy of Removing the Indians. + + Rufus Choate, 1799-1859 + 92. Conservative Force of the American Bar. + 93. The Age of the Pilgrims the Heroic Period of our History. + + William H. Seward, 1801-1872 + 94. Military Services of Lafayette in America. + + Abraham Lincoln, 1809-1865 + 95. Obligation to the Patriot Dead. + + Charles Sumner, 1811-1873 + 96. Prospective Results of the Kansas and Nebraska Bill. + 97. Heroic Effort cannot Fail. + 98. Our Foreign Relations. + 99. Prophetic Voices about America. + + Alexander H. Stephens, 1812- + 100. Origin of the American Flag. + + + =_7._= BIOGRAPHICAL WRITERS. + + Benjamin Rush, 1745-1813 + 101. Life of Edward Drinker, a Centenarian. + + John Marshall, 1755-1835 + 102. The Conquest of Canada. + + John Armstrong, 1759-1843 + 103. Capture of Stoney Point. + + Charles Caldwell, 1772-1853 + 104. A Lecture of Dr. Rush. + + Thomas H. Benton, 1783-1858 + 105. The Character of Macon. + + Alexander Slidell Mackenzie, 1803-1848 + 106. Recapture of the Frigate Philadelphia, at Tripoli. + + I.F.H. Claiborne. About 1804- + 107. Tecumseh's Speech to the Creek Indians. + + George W. Greene, 1811- + 108. Foreign Officers in the Revolutionary Army. + + James Parton, 1822- + 109. Career and Character of Aaron Burr. + 110. Henry Clay and the Western Bar. + 111. Western Theatres. + + + =_8._= HISTORY, GENERAL AND SPECIAL. + + John Heckewelder, 1743-1823 + 112. Settlements of the Christian Indians. + + Jeremy Belknap, 1744-1798 + 113. The Mast Pine. + + David Ramsay, 1749-1815 + 114. Feeling of South Carolina towards the Mother Country. + + Henry Lee, 1756-1818 + 115. Indian Services of General Rodgers Clarke. + 116. The career of Captain Kirkwood. + + Peter S. Duponceau. 1760-1844 + 117. Character of William Penn. + + Charles J. Ingersoll, 1782-1862 + 118. Calhoun Characterized. + 119. Battle of Chippewa. + + Henry M. Brackenridge, 1786-1871 + 120. Old St. Genevieve, in Missouri. + + Gulian C. Verplanck, 1786-1870 + 121. The Profession of the Schoolmaster. + + John W. Francis, 1789-1861 + 122. Public Changes during a Single Lifetime. + + William Meade, 1789-1862 + 123. Character of the Early Virginia Clergy. + + Jared Sparks, 1794-1866 + 124. The Battle of Bennington. + 125. Services, Death, and Character of Pulaski. + + William H. Prescott, 1796-1859 + 126. Moral Consequences of the Discovery of America. + 127. Picture-writing of the Mexicans. + 128. Ransom and Doom of the Inca. + + George Bancroft, 1800- + 129. Virginia and its Inhabitants, in early times. + 130. Contrast of English and French Colonization in America. + 131. Death of Montcalm. + 132. Character of the Declaration of Independence. + 133. The First Policy of Spain in the American Revolution. + + J.G.M. Ramsey. About 1800- + 134. The Military Services of General Sevier. + + Charles Gayarre, 1805- + 135. General Jackson at New Orleans. + + Brantz Mayer, 1809- + 136. Rekindling the Sacred Fire in Mexico. + + Albert J. Pickett, 1810-1858 + 137. The Indians and the First Settlers in Alabama. + + Charles W. Upham, 1803- + 138. Defeat of the Indian King Philip. + + John L. Motley, 1814- + 139. Character of Alva. + 140. Siege and Abandonment of Ostend. + 141. The Rise of the Dutch Republic. + + Alex'r B. Meek, 1814-1865 + 142. Exiled French Officers in Alabama. + 143. The Youth of the Indian Chief, Weatherford. + + Abel Stevens, 1815- + 144. The Early Methodist Clergy in America. + + Francis Parkman, 1823- + 145. The Old Western Hunters and Trappers. + 146. Marquette Exploring the Upper Mississippi. + + John G. Shea, 1824- + 147. Difficulties of the Catholic Indian Missionaries. + 148. Exploration of the Mississippi. + + John G. Palfrey, 1796- + 149. Happiness of Winthrop's Closing Years. + + + + CHAPTER II. + + + =_1._= ESSAYISTS, MORALISTS, AND REFORMERS. + + Joseph Dennie, 1768-1813 + 150. Reflections on the Seasons. + + William Gaston, 1778-1844 + 151. The Importance of Integrity. + + Jesse Buel, 1778-1839 + 152. Extent and Defects of American Agriculture. + + Robert Walsh, 1784-1859 + 153. False Sympathy with Criminals. + + Thomas S. Grimke, 1786-1834 + 154. Literary Excellence of the English Bible. + + Henry C. Carey, 1793- + 155. Agriculture as a Science. + + Edmund Ruffin, 1793-1863 + 156. Improvement of Acid Soils. + + Francis Wayland, 1796-1865 + 157. Superiority of the Moral Sentiments. + + Horace Mann, 1796-1857 + 158. Thoughts for a Young Man. + + Orestes A. Brownson, 1800- + 159. The Duty of Progress. + 160. Catholic Europe in the Seventeenth Century, despotic. + + Theodore D. Woolsey, 1801- + 161. Importance of the Study of International Law. + + Taylor Lewis, 1802- + 162. Unity of the Mosaic Account of the Creation. + 163. Cruel Intestine Wars caused by National Division. + + Horace Greeley, 1811-1872 + 164. The Problem of Labor. + 165. The Beneficence of Labor-saving Inventions. + 166. Literature as a Vocation;--the Editor. + 167. Tranquility of Rural Life. + + Theodore Parker, 1810-1860 + 168. Winter and Spring. + 169. The true idea of a Christian Church. + 170. Character of Franklin. + 171. Character of Jefferson. + + Wendell Phillips, 1811- + 172. The War for the Union. + 173. Character of Toussaint L'Ouverture. + + Thomas Starr King, 1824-1864 + 174. Great Principles and Small Duties. + + + =_2._= GENERAL AND POLITE LITERATURE. + + William Wirt, 1772-1834 + 175. The Example of Patrick Henry no argument for Indolence. + 176. Jefferson's Seat at Monticello. + + Timothy Flint, 1780-1840 + 177. The Western Boatman. + + Washington Irving, 1783-1859 + 178. Title and Table of Contents of Knickerbocker's History of New + York. + 179. The Army at New Amsterdam. + 180. A Mother's Memory. + 181. Columbus a Prisoner. + 182. Arrival of Columbus at Court. + 183. A Time of Unexampled Prosperity. + 184. Death and Burial of General Braddock. + 185. Baron Steuben in the Revolutionary Army. + + Richard H. Wilde, 1780-1847 + 186. Interest of Tasso's Life. + + George Ticknor, 1791-1871 + 187. The Design of Cervantes in writing Don Quixote. + + James Hall, 1793-1868 + 188. Description of a Prairie. + + H.R. Schoolcraft, 1793-1864 + 189. The Chippewa Indian. + + Edward Everett, 1794-1865 + 190. Astronomy for all Time. + 191. Description of a Sunrise. + 192. The Celtic Immigration. + + Hugh S. Legare. 1797-1843 + 193. The Study of the Ancient Classics. + 194. Disadvantages of Colonial Life. + + Francis L. Hawks, 1798-1866 + 195. Japan interesting in many Aspects. + + George P. Marsh, 1801- + 196. Method of learning English. + 197. The Evergreens of Southern Europe. + + George H. Calvert, 1803- + 198. Estimate of Coleridge. + + Ralph W. Emerson, 1803- + 199. Influence of Nature. + 200. The power of Childhood. + 201. Advantage of working in harmony with Nature. + 202. Rules for Reading. + + John R. Bartlett, 1805- + 203. Lynch Law at El Paso. + + Nat'l P. Willis, 1807-1867 + 204. The American Abroad. + 205. Character and Writings of James Hillhouse. + + H.W. Longfellow, 1807- + 206. The interrupted Legend. + + Henry Reed, 1808-1854 + 207. Legendary Period of Britain. + + C.M. Kirkland, 1808-1864 + 208. The Felling of a Great Tree. + 209. The Bee Tree. + + Margaret Fuller Ossoli 1810-1850 + 210. Carlyle characterized. + + Oliver W. Holmes, 1809- + 211. Consequences of exposing an old error. + 212. Pleasures of Boating. + 213. The unspoken Declaration. + 214. Mechanics of Vital Action. + + John Wm. Draper, 1810- + 215. Truths in the ancient Philosophies. + 216. Future Influence of America. + + James R. Lowell, 1810- + 217. New England two Centuries ago. + 218. From an Essay on Dryden. + 219. Love of Birds and Squirrels. + 220. Chaucer's love of Nature. + + Edgar A. Poe, 1811-1849 + 221. The Chiming of the Clock. + 222. The Philosophy of Composition. + + H.T. Tuckerman, 1813-1871 + 223. The Heart superior to the Intellect. + + H.N. Hudson, 1814- + 224. Instructive Character of Shakespeare's Works. + + Mary H. Eastman. About 1817- + 225. Lake Itasca, the Source of the Mississippi. + 226. A Plea for the Indians. + + Mary E. Moragne, 1815- + 227. The Huguenot Town. + + Richard H. Dana, Jr., 1815- + 228. A Death at Sea. + + Evert A. Duyckinck, 1816- + 229. Newspapers. + + Horace B. Wallace, 1817-1852 + 230. Art an Emanation of Religious Affection. + + H.D. Thoreau, 1817-1862 + 231. Description of "Poke" or Garget, (Phytolacca Decandra). + 232. Walden Pond. + 233. Wants of the Age. + + Elizabeth F. Ellett, 1818- + 234. Escape of Mary Bledsoe from the Indians. + + James J. Jarves, 1818- + 235. The Art Idea. + + Edwin P. Whipple, 1819- + 236. Poets and Poetry of America. + + J.T.L. Worthington, 1847- + 237. The Sisters. + + Alice Cary, 1820-1871 + 238. Clovernook, the End of the History. + + Donald G. Mitchell, 1822- + 239. A Talk about Porches. + + Richard Grant White, 1822- + 240. The Character of Shakespeare's Style. + + Thos. W. Higginson, 1823- + 241. Elegance of French Style. + + Charles G. Leland, 1824- + 242. Aspect of Nuremberg. + + Geo. Wm. Curtis, 1824- + 243. Under the Palms. + + John L. McConnell, 1826- + 244. The Early Western Politician. + + Sarah J. Lippincott. About 1833 + 245. Death in Town, and in Country. + + Francis Bret Harte, 1837- + 246. Birth of a Child in a Miner's Camp. + + Wm. D. Howells, 1837- + 247. Snow in Venice. + + Mary A. Dodge, 1838- + 248. Scenery of the Upper Mississippi. + + + =_3._= LATER MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS. + + George Washington, 1732-1799 + 249. Natural advantages of Virginia. + + Matthew F. Maury, 1806-1873 + 250. The Mariner's Guide across the Deep. + 251. The Gulf Stream. + + O.M. Mitchell, 1810-1862 + 252. The Great Unfinished Problems of the Universe. + + + =_4._= NATURAL HISTORY, SCENERY, ETC. + + William Bartram, 1739-1813 + 253. Scenes on the Upper Oconee, Georgia. + 254. The Wood Pelican of Florida. + + + Alex'r Wilson, 1766-1813 + 255. Nest of the Red-headed Woodpecker. + 256. The White-headed, or Bald Eagle. + + Stephen Elliott, 1771-1830 + 257. Completeness and variety of Nature. + + John J. Audubon, 1776-1851 + 258. The Passenger Pigeon. + 259. Emigrants Removing Westward. + 260. Interest of Exploration in the Remote West. + + Daniel Drake, 1785-1852 + 261. Objects of the Western Mound Builders. + + John Bachman, 1790-1874 + 262. The Opossum. + + J.A. Lapham, 1811- + 263. The Smaller Lakes of Wisconsin. + 264. Ancient Earthworks. + + Chas. W. Webber, 1819-1856 + 265. The Mocking Bird. + + Chas. Lanman, 1819- + 266. Maple Sugar-Making among the Indians. + + Ephraim G. Squier, 1821- + 267. Indian Pottery. + + + =_5._= WRITERS OF TRAVEL AND ADVENTURE. + + Benj'n Silliman, 1779-1864 + 268. The Falls of Montmorenci. + + John L. Stephens, 1805-1852 + 269. Discovery of a Ruined City in the Woods. + + John C. Fremont, 1813- + 270. Ascent of a Peak of the Rocky Mountains. + 271. The Columbia River, Oregon. + + Elisha K. Kane, 1822-1857 + 272. Discovery of an Open Arctic Sea. + + Bayard Taylor, 1825- + 273. Monterey, California. + 274. Approach to San Francisco. + 275. Swiss Scenery;--a Battlefield;--Picturesque Dwellings. + + + =_6._= NOVELISTS AND WRITERS OF FICTION. + + Chas. Brockden Brown, 1771-1810 + 276. The Yellow Fever in Philadelphia. + + Washington Allston, 1779-1843 + 277. Impersonation of the Power of Evil. + 278. On a Picture by Caracci. + 279. Originality of Mind. + + James K. Paulding, 1779-1860 + 280. Characteristics of the Dutch and German Settlers. + 281. Abortive Towns. + + Jas. Fenimore Cooper, 1789-1851 + 282. The Shooting Match. + 283. Long Tom Coffin. + 284. Death of the Old Trapper in the Pawnee Village. + 285. Escape from the Wreck. + 286. Naval Results of the War of 1812. + + Catharine M. Sedgwick, 1789-1867 + 287. The Minister Condemning Vain Apparel. + 288. Kosciusko's Garden at West Point. + + John Neal, 1793- + 289. The Nature of True Poetry. + + John P. Kennedy, 1795-1870 + 290. The Mansion at Swallow Barn. + 291. A Disappointed Politician. + 292. Wirt's Style of Oratory. + + William Ware, 1797-1852 + 293. The Christian Martyr. + + Lydia M. Child, 1802- + 294. Ill temper contagious. + + Robert M. Bird, 1803-1854 + 295. The Quaker Huntsman. + + Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1805-1864 + 296. Portrait of Edward Randolph. + 297. Description of an Old Sailor. + 298. A Picture of Girlhood. + 299. Sculpture: Art and Artists. + 300. Ruins of Furness Abbey. + 301. Scenery of the Merrimac. + 302. A Dungeon of Ancient Rome. + + Wm. Gilmore Simms, 1806-1870 + 303. The Battle of Eutaw. + 304. Character and Services of Gen. Marion. + + Harriet B. Stowe, 1812- + 305. Memorials of a Dead Child. + 306. The Old Meeting House. + + Maria J. McIntosh, 1815- + 307. Debate between Webster and Hayne. + + Catharine A. Warfield, 1817- + 308. View of the Sky by Night. + + Herman Melville, 1819- + 309. Sperm-Whale Fishing. + + Josiah G. Holland, 1819- + 310. The Wedding-Present. + + John Esten Cooke, 1830- + 311. The Portrait. + 312. Aspects of Summer. + + Sarah A. Dorsey. About 1835- + 313. Scenery at Natchez, Mississippi. + + Anne M. Crane, + 314. Impression of a Sea-Scene. + + Mary C. Ames. About 1837- + 315. A Railway Station in the Country. + + + + CHAPTER III. + + + POETS. + + Francis Hopkinson, 1737-1791 + 316. From "The Battle of the Kegs." + + John Trumbull, 1750-1831 + 317. From "McFingall." + + Philip Freneau, 1752-1832 + 318. From "An Indian Burying-ground." + + David Humphreys, 1753-1818 + 319. From "The Happiness of America." + + Sam'l J. Smith, 1771-1835 + 320. "Peace, Be Still." + + William Clifton, 1772-1799 + 321. From "Lines to Fancy." + + Robert Treat Paine, 1773-1811 + 322. The Miser. + + John Blair Linn, 1777-1804 + 323. From "The Powers of Genius." + + Francis S. Key, 1779-1843 + 324. "The Star-Spangled Banner." + + Washington Allston, 1779-1843 + 325. From "The Sylphs of the Seasons." + + John Pierpont, 1785-1866 + 326. A Temperance Song. + 327. The. Pilgrim Fathers. + + Jas. G. Percival, 1786-1856 + 328. The Coral Grove. + + Richard H. Dana, 1787- + 329. From "The Buccaneer." + + Richard H. Wilde, 1789-1847 + 330. My Life is like the Summer Rose. + + Jas. A. Hillhouse, 1789-1841 + 331. From "Hadad." + 332. From "The Judgment." + + John M. Harney, 1789-1825 + 333. From "Cristalina; a fairy tale." + + Charles Sprague, 1791- + 334. From "Curiosity." + + L.H. Sigourney, 1791-1865 + 335. The Widow at her Daughter's Bridal. + + Wm. O. Butler, 1793- + 336. From "The Boatman's Horn." + 337. The Battle-field of Raisin. + + Wm. C. Bryant, 1794- + 338. Lines to a Water Fowl. + 339. Freedom Irrepressible. + 340. Communion with Nature, Soothing. + 341. The Living Lost. + 342. The Song of the Sower. + 343. The Planting of the Apple-Tree. + + Maria Brooks, 1795-1845 + 344. "Marriage." + + Joseph R. Drake, 1705-1820 + 345. The Fay's Departure. + + Fitz-Greene Halleck, 1795-1869 + 346. Marco Bozzaris. + 347. The Broken Merchant. + + J.G.C. Brainard, 1796-1828 + 348. From "Lines to the Connecticut River." + + Robert C. Sands, 1799-1832 + 349. From "Weehawken." + + George W. Doane, 1799-1859 + 350. From "Evening." + + Geo. P. Morris, 1801-1864 + 351. Highlands of the Hudson. + + Geo. D. Prentice, 1802-1869 + 352. From "The Mammoth Cave." + + Chas. C. Pise, 1802-1866 + 353. The Rainbow. + 354. View at Gibraltar. + + E.P. Lovejoy, 1802-1836 + 355. From "Lines to my Mother." + + Edward C. Pinkney, 1802-1828 + 356. A Health. + + R.W. Emerson, 1803- + 357. Hymn sung at the Completion of the Concord Monument. + 358. Disappearance of Winter. + 359. Inspiration of Duty. + + Thos. C. Upham, 1799-1873 + 360. On a Son Lost at Sea. + + Jacob L. Martin, 1805-1848 + 361. The Church of Santa Croce, Florence. + + Geo. W. Bethune, 1805-1862 + 362. Mythology gives place to Christianity. + + Chas. F. Hoffman, 1806- + 363. The Red Man's Heaven. + + Wm. Gilmore Simms, 1806-1870 + 364. Nature inspires sentiment. + + Nath'l P. Willis, 1807-1867 + 365. From "Hagar in the Wilderness." + 366. Unseen Spirits. + + H.W. Longfellow, 1807- + 367. Lines to Resignation. + 368. From The Wedding; The Launch: The Ship. + 369. Song of the Mocking-bird, at Sunset. + 370. Hiawatha's Departure. + + Wm. D. Gallagher, 1808- + 371. The Laborer. + + John G. Whittier, 1808- + 372. What the Voice said. + 373. The Atlantic Telegraph. + 374. Description of a Snow Storm. + 375. The Quaker's Creed. + + Albert Pike, 1809- + 376. The Everlasting Hills. + + Anne C. Lynch Botta. About 1809 + 377. The Dumb Creation. + + Oliver W. Holmes, 1809- + 378. From "The Last Leaf." + 379. A Mother's Secret. + + Willis G. Clark, 1810-1841 + 380. "An Invitation to Early Piety." + + James R. Lowell, 1810- + 381 A Song, "The Violet." + 382. Importance of a Noble Deed. + 383. The Spaniards' Graves at the Isles of Shoals. + + Edgar A. Poe, 1811-1849 + 384. The Raven. + + Alfred B. Street, 1811- + 385. An Autumn Landscape. + 386. The Falls of the Mongaup. + + Laura M. H. Thurston, 1812-1842 + 387. Lines on Crossing the Alleghanies. + + Frances S. Osgood, 1812-1850 + 388. From "The Parting." + + Harriet B. Stowe, 1812- + 389. The Peace of Faith. + 390. Only a Year. + + H.T. Tuckerman, 1813-1871 + 391. The Statue of Washington. + + John G. Saxe, 1816- + 392. The Blessings of Sleep. + 393. "Ye Tailyor man; a contemplative ballad." + 394. Ancient and Modern Ghosts contrasted. + 395. Boys. + 396. Sonnet to a Clam. + + Lucy Hooper, 1816-1841 + 397. The "Death-Summons." + + Catharine A. Warfield, 1817- + 398. From "The Return to Ashland." + + Arthur C. Coxe, 1818- + 399. The Heart's Song. + + Wm. Ross Wallace, 1819- + 400. The North Edda. + + Walter Whitman, 1819- + 401. The Brooklyn Ferry at Twilight. + + Amelia B. Welby, 1819-1852 + 402. The Bereaved. + + R.S. Nichols. About 1820- + 403. From "Musings." + + Alice Cary, 1820-1871 + 404. Attractions of our early Home. + + Sidney Dyer. About 1820- + 405. The Power of Song. + + Austin T. Earle, 1822- + 406. From "Warm Hearts had We." + + Thos. Buchanan Read, 1822- + 407. The Mournful Mowers. + 408. From "The Closing Scene." + + Margaret M. Davidson, 1823-1837 + 409. From Lines in Memory of her Sister Lucretia. + + John R. Thompson, 1823-1873 + 410. Music in Camp. + + Geo. H. Boker, 1824- + 411. From the "Ode to a Mountain Oak" + 412. Dirge for a Sailor. + + Wm. Allen Butler, 1825- + 413. From "Nothing to Wear." + + Bayard Taylor, 1825- + 414. "The Burden of the Day." + + John T. Trowbridge, 1827- + 415. "Dorothy in the Garret." + + Henry Timrod, 1829-1867 + 416. The Unknown Dead. + + Susan A. Talley Von Weiss. About 1830- + 417. The Sea-Shell. + + Albert Sutliffe, 1830- + 418. "May Noon." + + Elijah E. Edwards, 1831- + 419. "Let me Rest." + + Paul H. Hayne, 1831- + 420. October. + + Rosa V. Johnson Jeffrey. About 1832- + 421. From "Angel Watchers." + + Sarah J. Lippincott, 1833- + 422. "Absolution." + + E.C. Stedman, 1833- + 423. The Mountain. + + John J. Piatt, 1835- + 424. Long Ago. + + Celia Thaxter, 1835- + 425. "Regret." + + Theophilus H. Hill, 1836- + 426. From "The Song of the Butterfly." + + Thos. B. Aldrich, 1836- + 427. The Crescent and the Cross. + + Francis Bret Harte, 1837- + 428. Dickens in Camp. + 429. The Two Ships. + + Charles Dimitry, 1838- + 430. From "The Sergeant's Story." + + John Hay, 1841- + 431. The Prairie. + + Joaquin Miller, + 432. The Future of California. + + Joel C. Harris, 1846- + 433. Agnes. + + +ALPHABETICAL INDEX OF AUTHORS. + + * * * * * + +(The Figures refer to the Number of the Selection.) + + * * * * * + + ADAMS, JOHN 56, 57 + ADAMS, JOHN QUINCY 78, 79 + ALEXANDER, JAMES W. 34 + ALDRICH, THOMAS B. 427 + ALLSTON, WASHINGTON 277, 278, 279, 325 + AMES, FISHER 68 + AMES, MARY C. 315 + ARMSTRONG, JOHN 103 + AUDUBON, JOHN J. 258, 259, 260 + + BACHMAN, JOHN 262 + BACON, LEONARD 32, 33 + BANCROFT, GEORGE 129, 130, 131, 132, 133 + BARTLETT, JOHN R. 203 + BARTRAM, WILLIAM 253, 254 + BEECHER, HENRY WARD 47, 48, 49, 50, 51 + BEECHER, LYMAN 23 + BELKNAP, JEREMY 113 + BENTON, THOMAS H. 105 + BETHUNE, GEORGE W. 38, 39, 362 + BIRD, ROBERT M. 295 + BLEDSOE, ALBERT T. 45 + BOKER, GEORGE HENRY 411, 412 + BOTTA, ANNE C. LYNCH 377 + BRACKENRIDGE, HENRY M. 120 + BRAINARD, JOHN G.C. 348 + BROOKS, MARIA 344 + BROWN, C. BROCKDEN 276 + BROWNSON, ORESTES A. 159, 160 + BRYANT, WILLIAM C. 338, 339, 340, 341, 342, 343 + BUCKMINSTER, JOSEPH S. 28 + BUEL, JESSE 152 + BUSHNELL, HORACE 43, 44 + BUTLER, WILLIAM ALLEN 413 + BUTLER, WILLIAM O. 336, 337 + BYRD, WILLIAM 12 + + CALDWELL, CHARLES 104 + CALHOUN, JOHN C. 82, 83, 84 + CALVERT, GEORGE H. 198 + CAREY, HENRY C. 155 + CARY, ALICE 238, 404 + CASS, LEWIS 91 + CHANNING, WM. ELLERY 24, 25, 26 + CHEEVER, GEORGE B. 41, 42 + CHILD, LYDIA MARIA 294 + CHOATE, RUFUS 92, 93 + CLAIBORNE, I.F.H. 107 + CLARK, WILLIS G. 380 + CLAY, HENRY 80, 81 + CLIFTON, WILLIAM 321 + COLDEN, CADWALLADER 6 + COOKE, JOHN ESTEN 311, 312 + COOPER, J. FENIMORE 282, 283, 284, 285, 286 + COXE, ARTHUR C. 399 + CRANE, ANNE M. 314 + CURTIS, GEORGE WM. 243 + + DANA, RICHARD H. 329 + DANA, RICHARD H., JR. 228 + DAVIDSON, MARGARET M. 409 + DAVIES, SAMUEL 4 + DENNIE, JOSEPH 150 + DICKINSON, JOHN 55 + DIMITRY, CHARLES 430 + DOANE, GEORGE W. 350 + DODGE, MARY A. 248 + DORSEY, SARAH A. 313 + DRAKE, DANIEL 261 + DRAKE, JOSEPH R. 345 + DRAPER, JOHN WM. 215, 216 + DUPONCEAU, PETER S. 117 + DWIGHT, TIMOTHY 20, 21 + DURBIN, JOHN P. 31 + DUYCKINCK, EVERT A. 229 + DYER, SIDNEY 405 + + EARLE, AUSTIN T. 406 + EASTMAN, MARY H. 225, 226 + EDWARDS, ELIJAH E. 419 + EDWARDS, JONATHAN 3 + ELLETT, ELIZABETH F. 234 + ELLIOTT, STEPHEN 257 + EMERSON, RALPH WALDO 199, 200, 201, 202, 357, 358, 359 + EMMONS, NATHANIEL 5 + EVERETT, EDWARD 190, 191, 192 + + FLINT, TIMOTHY 177 + FRANCIS, JOHN W. 122 + FRANKLIN, BENJAMIN 13, 14, 15, 16 + FREMONT, JOHN C. 270, 271 + FRENEAU, PHILIP 318 + FULLER, RICHARD 46 + + GALLAGHER, WILLIAM D. 371 + GASTON, WILLIAM 151 + GAYARRE, CHARLES 135 + GREELEY, HORACE 164, 165, 166, 167 + GREENE, GEORGE W. 108 + GRIMKE, THOMAS S. 154 + + HALL, JAMES 188 + HALLECK, FITZ-GREENE 346, 347 + HAMILTON, ALEXANDER 66, 67 + HARNEY, JOHN M. 333 + HARRIS, JOEL C. 433 + HARTE, FRANCIS BRET 246, 428, 429 + HAWKS, FRANCIS L. 195 + HAWTHORNE, NATHANIEL 296, 297, 298, 299, 300, 301, 302 + HAY, JOHN 431 + HAYNE, PAUL H. 420 + HECKEWELDER, JOHN 112 + HENRY, PATRICK 58, 59 + HIGGINSON, THOMAS 241 + HILL, THEOPHILUS H. 426 + HILLHOUSE, JAMES A. 331, 332 + HITCHCOCK, EDWARD 30 + HOBART, JOHN H. 22 + HOFFMAN, CHARLES F. 363 + HOLLAND, JOSIAH G. 310 + HOLMES, OLIVER W. 211, 212, 213, 214, 378, 379 + HOOPER, LUCY 397 + HOPKINSON, FRANCIS 316 + HUDSON, HENRY N. 224 + HOWELLS, WILLIAM D. 247 + HUMPHREYS, DAVID 319 + + INGERSOLL, CHARLES J. 118, 119 + IRVING, WASHINGTON 178, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183, 184, 185 + + JARVES, JAMES J. 235 + JAY, JOHN 65 + JEFFERSON, THOMAS 61, 62, 63, 64 + JEFFREY, ROSA V. JOHNSON 421 + + KANE, ELISHA K. 272 + KENNEDY, JOHN P. 290, 291, 292 + KENT, JAMES 76 + KEY, FRANCIS S. 324 + KING, THOS. STARR 174 + KIRKLAND, CAROLINE M. 208, 209 + + LANMAN, CHARLES 266 + LAPHAM, J.A. 263, 264 + LEE, HENRY 115, 116 + LEGARE, HUGH S. 193, 194 + LELAND, CHARLES G. 242 + LEWIS, TAYLOR 162, 163 + LINCOLN, ABRAHAM 95 + LINN, JOHN B. 323 + LIPPINCOTT, SARAH J. 245, 422 + LIVINGSTON, EDWARD 77 + LONGFELLOW, HENRY W. 206, 367, 368, 369, 370 + LOVEJOY, ELIJAH P. 355 + LOWELL, JAS. RUSSELL 217, 218, 219, 220, 381, 382, 383 + + MACKENZIE, A. SLIDELL 106 + McCLINTOCK, JOHN 52 + McCONNELL, JOHN L. 244 + McILVAINE, CHARLES P. 37 + McINTOSH, MARIA J. 307 + MADISON, JAMES 73, 73 + MANN, HORACE 158 + MARSH, GEORGE P. 196, 197 + MARSHALL, JOHN 102 + MARTIN, JACOB L. 361 + MASON, JOHN M. 18, 19 + MATHER, COTTON 2 + MAURY, MATTHEW F. 250, 251 + MAYER, BRANTZ 136 + MEADE, WILLIAM 123 + MEEK, ALEXANDER B. 142, 143 + MELVILLE, HERMAN 309 + MILBURN, WILLIAM H. 54 + MILLER, JOAQUIN 432 + MITCHELL, DONALD G. 239 + MITCHELL, ORMSBY M. 252 + MORAGNE, MARY E. 227 + MORRIS, GEORGE P. 351 + MORRIS, GOUVERNEUR 69 + MOTLEY, JOHN L. 139, 140, 141 + + NEAL, JOHN 289 + NICHOLS, REBECCA S. 403 + + OSGOOD, FRANCIS S. 388 + OSSOLI, MARGARET FULLER 210 + + PAINE, ROBERT T. 322 + PALFREY, JOHN G. 149 + PARKER, THEODORE 168, 169, 170, 171 + PARKMAN, FRANCIS 145, 146 + PARTON, JAMES 109, 110, 111 + PAULDING, JAMES K. 280, 281 + PAYSON, EDWARD 27 + PERCIVAL, JAMES G. 328 + PHILLIPS, WENDELL 172, 173 + PIATT, JOHN J. 424 + PICKETT, ALBERT J. 137 + PIERPONT, JOHN 326, 327 + PIKE, ALBERT 376 + PINKNEY, EDWARD C. 356 + PINKNEY, WILLIAM 70, 71 + PISE, CHARLES C. 353, 354 + POE, EDGAR A. 221, 222, 384 + PORTER, NOAH 53 + PRENTICE, GEORGE 352 + PRESCOTT, WILLIAM H. 126, 127, 128 + + RAMSAY, DAVID 114 + RAMSEY, J.G.M. 134 + RANDOLPH, JOHN 74, 75 + READ, THOS. BUCHANAN 407, 408 + REED, HENRY 207 + RUFFIN, EDMUND 156 + RUSH, BENJAMIN 101 + RUTLEDGE, JOHN 60 + + SANDS, ROBERT C. 349 + SAXE, JOHN G. 392, 393, 394, 395, 396 + SCHOOLCRAFT, HENRY R. 189 + SEDGWICK, CATHARINE M. 287, 288 + SEWARD, WILLIAM 94 + SHEA, JOHN G. 147, 148 + SIGOURNEY, LYDIA H. 335 + SILLIMAN, BENJAMIN 268 + SIMMS, WM. GILMORE 303, 304, 364 + SMITH, SAMUEL J. 320 + SMITH, WILLIAM 9 + SPARKS, JARED 124, 125 + SPAULDING, MARTIN J. 35 + SPRAGUE, CHARLES 334 + SQUIER, EPHRAIM G. 267 + STEDMAN, E.C. 423 + STEPHENS, ALEXANDER H. 100 + STEPHENS, JOHN L. 269 + STEVENS, ABEL 144 + STITH, WILLIAM 7, 8 + STORY, JOSEPH 89, 90 + STOWE, HARRIET BEECHER 305, 306, 389, 390 + STREET, ALFRED B. 385, 386 + SUMNER, CHARLES 96, 87, 98, 99 + SUTLIFFE, ALBERT 418 + + TAYLOR, BAYARD 273, 274, 275, 414 + TAYLOR, NATHANIEL W. 29 + THAXTER, CELIA 425 + THOMPSON, JOHN R. 410 + THORNWELL, JAMES H. 36 + THOREAU, HENRY D. 231, 232, 233 + THURSTON, LAURA M.H. 387 + TICKNOR, GEORGE 187 + TIMROD, HENRY 416 + TROWBRIDGE, JOHN T. 415 + TRUMBULL, JOHN 317 + TUCKERMAN, HENRY T. 223, 391 + + UPHAM, CHARLES W. 138 + UPHAM, THOMAS C. 360 + + VERPLANCK, GULIAN C. 121 + VON WEISS, SUSAN A. TALLEY 417 + + WALLACE, HORACE B. 230 + WALLACE, WILLIAM R. 400 + WALSH, ROBERT 153 + WARE, WILLIAM 293 + WARFIELD, CATHERINE A. 308, 398 + WASHINGTON, GEORGE 249 + WAYLAND, FRANCIS 157 + WEBBER, CHARLES W. 265 + WEBSTER, DANIEL 85, 86, 87, 88 + WELBY, AMELIA B. 402 + WHIPPLE, EDWIN P. 236 + WHITE, RICHARD GRANT 240 + WHITMAN, WALTER 401 + WHITTIER, JOHN G. 372, 373, 374, 375 + WILDE, RICHARD H. 186, 330 + WILLIAMS, ROGER 1 + WILLIAMS, WILLIAM R. 40 + WILLIS, NATHANIEL P. 204, 205, 365, 366 + WILSON, ALEXANDER 255, 256 + WINTHROP, JOHN 10, 11 + WIRT, WILLIAM 176 + WOOLMAN, JOHN 17 + WOOLSEY, THEODORE D. 161 + WORTHINGTON, JANE T.L. 237 + + + +CHOICE SPECIMENS + +OF + +AMERICAN LITERATURE. + + * * * * * + + + +CHAPTER I. + + +RELIGIOUS WRITERS OF THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES. + + +=_Roger Williams, 1598-1683._= (Manual, pp. 480, 512.) + +From his "Memoirs." + +=_1.=_ EXTENT OF RELIGIOUS FREEDOM. + +There goes many a ship to sea, with many hundred souls in one ship, +whose weal and woe is common, and is a true picture of a commonwealth, +or a human combination or society. It hath fallen out, sometimes, that +both Papists and Protestants, Jews and Turks, may be embarked into one +ship. Upon which supposal, I affirm that all the liberty of conscience, +that ever I pleaded for, turns upon these two hinges; that none of the +Papists, Protestants, Jews, or Turks, be forced to come to the ship's +prayers, nor compelled from their own particular prayers or worship, +if they practice any.... If any of the seamen refuse to perform their +service, or passengers to pay their freight; if any refuse to help, in +person or purse, towards the common charges or defence; if any refuse to +obey the common laws or orders of the ship concerning their common +peace or preservation; if any shall mutiny and rise up against their +commanders and officers; if any should preach or write, that there ought +to be no commanders nor officers, because all are equal in Christ, +therefore no masters nor officers, no laws, nor orders, no corrections +nor punishments,--I say I never denied but in such cases, whatever is +pretended, the commander or commanders may judge, resist, compel, and +punish such transgressors, according to their deserts and merits. + + * * * * * + + +=_Cotton Mather, 1663-1728._= (Manual pp. 479, 512.) + +From the "Antiquities," or Book I, of the "Magnalia." + +=2.= PRESERVATION OF NEW ENGLAND PRINCIPLES. + +'Tis now time for me to tell my reader, that in _our age_, there has +been another essay made, not by French, but by English PROTESTANTS, to +fill a certain country in America with _Reformed Churches_; nothing +in _doctrine_, little in _discipline_, different from that of Geneva. +Mankind will pardon _me_, a native of that country, if smitten with a +just fear of encroaching and ill-bodied _degeneracies_, I shall use my +modest endeavors to prevent the _loss_ of a country so signalized for +the _profession_ of the purest _Religion_, and for the _protection_ of +God upon it in that holy profession. I shall count my country _lost_, in +the loss of the primitive _principles_, and the primitive _practices_, +upon which it was at first established: but certainly one good way to +save that _loss_, would be to do something, that the memory of _the +great things done for us by our God_, may not be _lost_, and that the +story of the circumstances attending the _foundation_ and _formation_ +of this country, and of its _preservation_ hitherto, may be impartially +handed unto posterity. THIS is the undertaking whereto I now address +myself; and now, _Grant me thy gracious assistances, O my God! that in +this my undertaking I may be kept from every false way._ + + * * * * * + + +=_Jonathan Edwards, 1703-1758_=. (Manual, p. 479.) + +From the "Inquiry, &c., into the Freedom of the Will." + +=_3._= MEANING OF THE PHRASE "MORAL INABILITY." + +It must be observed concerning Moral Inability, in each kind of it, that +the word _Inability_ is used in a sense very diverse from its original +import.... In the strictest propriety of speech, a man has a thing in +his power, if he has it in his choice, or at his election; and a man +cannot be truly said to be unable to do a thing, when he can do it if he +will. It is improperly said, that a person cannot perform those external +actions which are dependent on the act of the will, and which would be +easily performed, if the act of the will were present. And if it be +improperly said, that he cannot perform those external voluntary actions +which depend on the will, it is in some respect more improperly said, +that he is unable to exert the acts of the will themselves; because it +is more evidently false, with respect to these, that he cannot if he +will; for to say so is a downright contradiction: it is to say he cannot +will if he does will. And in this case, not only is it true, that it is +easy for a man to do the thing if he will, but the very willing is the +doing; when once he has willed, the thing is performed; and nothing +else remains to be done. Therefore, in these things to ascribe a +non-performance to the want of power or ability, is not just; because +the thing wanting is not a being able, but a being willing. There +are faculties of mind, and capacity of nature, and everything else +sufficient, but a disposition; nothing is wanting but a will. + + * * * * * + + +=_Samuel Davies, 1725-1761._= (Manual, p. 480.) + +From his "Sermons." + +=_4._= LIFE AND IMMORTALITY REVEALED THROUGH THE GOSPEL. + +So extensive have been the havoc and devastation which death has made +in the world for near six thousand years, ever since it was first +introduced by the sin of man, that this earth is now become one vast +grave-yard or burying-place for her sons. The many generations that have +followed upon each other, in so quick a succession, from Adam to this +day, are now in the mansions under ground.... Some make a short journey +from the womb to the grave; they rise from nothing at the creative +fiat of the Almighty, and take an immediate flight into the world of +spirits.... Like a bird on the wing, they perch on our globe, rest a +day, a month, or a year, and then fly off for some other regions. It is +evident these were not formed for the purposes of the present state, +where they make so short a stay; and yet we are sure they are not made +in vain by an all-wise Creator; and therefore we conclude they are young +immortals, that immediately ripen in the world of spirits, and there +enter upon scenes for which it was worth their while coming into +existence.... A few creep into their beds of dust under the burden of +old age and the gradual decays of nature. In short, the grave is _the +place appointed for all living_; the general rendezvous of all the sons +of Adam. There the prince and the beggar, the conqueror and the slave, +the giant and the infant, the scheming politician and the simple +peasant, the wise and the fool, Heathens, Jews, Mahometans, and +Christians, all lie equally low, and mingle their dust without +distinction.... There lie our ancestors, our neighbors, our friends, +our relatives, with whom we once conversed, and who were united to our +hearts by strong and endearing ties; and there lies our friend, the +sprightly, vigorous youth, whose death is the occasion of this funeral +solemnity. This earth is overspread with the ruins of the human frame: +it is a huge carnage, a vast charnel-house, undermined and hollowed with +the graves, the last mansions of mortals. + + * * * * * + + +=_Nathaniel Emmons,[1] 1745-1840._= + +From his "Sermons." + +=_5._= THE RIGHT OF PRIVATE JUDGMENT. + +The right of private judgment involves the right of forming our opinions +according to the best light we can obtain. After a man knows what +others have said or written, and after he has thought and searched the +Scriptures, upon any religious subject, he has a right to form his own +judgment exactly according to evidence. He has no right to exercise +prejudice or partiality; but he has a right to exercise impartiality, in +spite of all the world. After all the evidence is collected from every +quarter, then it is the proper business of the understanding or judgment +to compare and balance evidence, and to form a decisive opinion or +belief, according to apparent truth. We have no more right to judge +without evidence than we have to judge contrary to evidence; and we have +no more right to doubt without, or contrary to, evidence, than we have +to believe without, or contrary to, evidence. We have no right to keep +ourselves in a state of doubt or uncertainty, when we have sufficient +evidence to come to a decision. The command is, "Prove all things; hold +fast that which is good." The meaning is, Examine all things; and after +examination, decide what is right. + +[Footnote 1: A Congregational clergyman of Massachusetts, original in +theology, and eminently lucid in style.] + + + * * * * * + + + +HISTORICAL WRITERS OF THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES. + + +=_Cadwallader Colden,[2] 1688-1776._= + +From "The History of the Five Nations." + +=_6._= CONVICTION OF THEIR SUPERIORITY + +The _Five Nations_ think themselves by nature superior to the rest of +mankind.... All the nations round them have, for many years, entirely +submitted to them, and pay a yearly tribute to them in _wampum_; they +dare neither make war nor peace without the consent of the _Mohawks_. +Two old men commonly go, about every year or two, to receive this +tribute; and I have often had opportunity to observe what anxiety the +poor Indians were under while these two old men remained in that part of +the country where I was. An old Mohawk Sachem, in a poor blanket and +a dirty shirt, may be seen issuing his orders with as arbitrary an +authority as a Roman dictator. It is not for the sake of tribute, +however, that they make war, but from the notions of glory which they +have ever most strongly imprinted on their minds; and the farther they +go to seek an enemy, the greater glory they think they gain; there +cannot, I think, be a greater or stronger instance than this, how +much the sentiments impressed on a people's mind conduce to their +grandeur.... The Five Nations, in their love of liberty and of their +country, in their bravery in battle, and their constancy in enduring +torments, equal the fortitude of the most renowned Romans. + +[Footnote 2: A native of Scotland, but for many years a resident of New +York, where he was eminent in politics and science.] + + * * * * * + + +=_William Stith, 1755._= (Manual, p. 490.) + +From "The History of Virginia." + +=_7._= THE RULE OF POWHATAN. + +Although both himself and people were very barbarous, and void of all +letters and civility, yet was there such a government among them, that +the magistrates for good command, and the people for due subjection, +excelled many places that would be counted very civil. He had under him +above thirty inferior Kings or Werowances, who had power of life and +death, but were bound to govern according to the customs of their +country. However, his will was in all cases, their supreme law, and must +be obeyed. They all knew their several lands, habitations, and limits, +to fish, fowl, or hunt in. But they held all of their great Werowance, +_Powhatan_; to whom they paid tribute of skins, beads, copper, pearl, +deer, turkies, wild beasts, and corn. All his subjects reverenced him, +not only as a King, but as half a God; and it was curious to behold, +with what fear and adoration they obeyed him. For at his feet they +presented whatever he commanded; and a frown of his brow would make +their greatest Spirits tremble. And indeed it was no wonder; for he was +very terrible and tyrannous in punishing such as offended him, with +variety of cruelty, and the most exquisite torture. + + * * * * * + +=_8._= POCAHONTAS IN ENGLAND. + +However, Pocahontas was eagerly sought and kindly entertained +everywhere. Many courtiers, and others of his acquaintance, daily +flocked to Captain Smith to be introduced to her. They generally +confessed that the hand of God did visibly appear in her conversion, +and that they had seen many English ladies worse favored, of less exact +proportion, and genteel carriage than she was.... The whole court were +charmed and surprised at the decency and grace of her deportment; and +the king himself, and queen, were pleased honorably to receive and +esteem her. The Lady Delawarr, and those other persons of quality, +also waited on her to the masks, balls, plays, and other public +entertainments, with which she was wonderfully pleased and delighted. +And she would, doubtless, have well deserved, and fully returned, all +this respect and kindness, had she lived to arrive in Virginia. + + * * * * * + + +=_William Smith, 1793._= (Manual, p. 490.) + +From "The History of the Province of New York." + +=_9._=. MANNERS OF THE INHABITANTS. + +New York is one of the most social places on the continent. The men +collect themselves into weekly evening clubs. The ladies, in winter, are +frequently entertained either at concerts of music or assemblies, and +make a very good appearance. They are comely, and dress well, and scarce +any of them have distorted shapes. Tinctured with a Dutch education, +they manage their families with becoming parsimony, good providence, and +singular neatness. The practice of extravagant gaming, common to the +fashionable part of the fair sex in some places, is a vice with which +my countrywomen cannot justly be charged. There is nothing they +so generally neglect as reading, and indeed all the arts for the +improvement of the mind; in which, I confess, we have set them the +example. They are modest, temperate, and charitable; naturally +sprightly, sensible, and good-humored; and, by the helps of a more +elevated education, would possess all the accomplishments desirable +in the sex. Our schools are in the lowest order: the instructors want +instruction; and, through a long, shameful neglect of all the arts and +sciences, our common speech is extremely corrupt, and the evidences of +a bad taste, both as to thought and language, are visible in all our +proceedings, public and private. + +The history of our diseases belongs to a profession with which I am +very little acquainted. Few physicians amongst us are eminent for +their skill. Quacks abound like locusts in Egypt, and too many have +recommended themselves to a full practice and profitable subsistence. +Loud as the call is, to our shame be it remembered, we have no law +to protect the lives of the king's subjects from the malpractice of +pretenders. Any man, at his pleasure, sets up for physician, apothecary, +and chirurgeon. The natural history of this province would of itself +furnish a small volume; and, therefore, I leave this also to such as +have capacity and leisure to make useful observations in that curious +and entertaining branch of natural philosophy. + +The clergy of this province are, in general, but indifferently +supported, it is true they live easily, but few of them leave any thing +to their children.... As to the number of our clergymen, it is large +enough at present, there being but few settlements unsupplied with a +ministry and some superabound. In matters of religion we are not so +intelligent in general as the inhabitants of the New England colonies, +but both in this respect and good morals we certainly have the advantage +of the Southern provinces. One of the king's instructions to our +governors recommends the investigation of means for the conversion of +negroes and Indians. An attention to both, especially the latter, has +been too little regarded. If the missionaries of the English Society for +propagating the Gospel instead of being seated in opulent christianized +towns had been sent out to preach among the savages, unspeakable +political advantages would have flowed from such a salutary measure. + + * * * * * + + + +MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS OF THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES. + + +=_John Winthrop, 1587-1649._= (Manual, p. 490.) + +From his "Life and Letters." + +=_10._= TRUE LIBERTY DEFINED. + +For the other point concerning liberty, I observe a great mistake in the +country about that. There is a twofold liberty,--natural (I mean as our +nature is now corrupt) and civil, or federal. The first is common to man +with beasts and other creatures. By this, man, as he stands in relation +to man simply, hath liberty to do what he lists: it is a liberty to evil +as well as to good. This liberty is incompatible and inconsistent with +authority, and cannot endure the least restraint of the most just +authority. The exercise and maintaining of this liberty makes men grow +more evil, and, in time, to be worse than brute beasts. This is +that great enemy of truth and peace, that wild beast, which all the +ordinances of God are bent against, to restrain and subdue it. The other +kind of liberty I call civil, or federal; it may also be termed moral, +in reference to the covenant between God and man in the moral law, and +the politic covenants and constitutions amongst men themselves. This +liberty is the proper end and object of authority, and cannot subsist +without it; and it is a liberty to that only which is good, just, and +honest. This liberty you are to stand for, with the hazard not only of +your goods, but of your lives, if need be. + + * * * * * + +From "The History of New England." + +=_11._= PROPOSED TREATMENT OF THE INDIANS. + +We received a letter at the General Court from the magistrates of +Connecticut, and New Haven, and of Aquiday,[3] wherein they declared +their dislike of such as would have the Indians rooted out, as being of +the cursed race of Ham, and their desire of our mutual accord in seeking +to gain them by justice and kindness, and withal to watch over them to +prevent any danger by them, &c. We returned answer of our consent with +them in all things propounded, only we refused to include those of +Aquiday in our answer, or to have any treaty with them. + +[Footnote 3: The original name of Rhode Island.] + + * * * * * + + +=_William Byrd,[4] 1674-1744._= + +From "History of the Dividing Line between Virginia and North Carolina." + +=_12._= THE GINSENG AND SNAKEROOT PLANTS. + +Though practice will soon make a man of tolerable vigor an able footman, +yet, as a help to bear fatigue, I used to chew a root of ginseng as I +walked along. This kept up my spirits, and made me trip away as nimbly +in my half jack-boots as younger men could in their shoes.... The +Emperor of China sends ten thousand men every year on purpose to gather +it.... Providence has planted it very thin in every country. Nor, +indeed, is mankind worthy of so great a blessing, since health and +long life are commonly abused to ill purposes. This noble plant grows +likewise at the Cape of Good Hope. It grows also on the northern +continent of America, near the mountains, but as sparingly as truth and +public spirit. + +Its virtues are, that it gives an uncommon warmth and vigor to the +blood, and frisks the spirits beyond any other cordial. It cheers the +heart even of a man that has a bad wife, and makes him look down with +great composure on the crosses of the world. It promotes insensible +perspiration, dissolves all phlegmatic and viscous humors that are apt +to obstruct the narrow channels of the nerves. It helps the memory, and +would quicken even Helvetian dullness. 'Tis friendly to the lungs, much +more than scolding itself. It comforts the stomach and strengthens the +bowels, preventing all colics and fluxes. In one word, it will make a +man live a great while, and very well while he does live; and, what +is more, it will even make old age amiable, by rendering it lively, +cheerful, and good-humored.... + +I found near our camp some plants of that kind of Rattlesnake +root, called star-grass. The leaves shoot out circularly, and grow +horizontally and near the ground. The root is in shape not unlike the +rattle of that serpent, and is a strong antidote against the bite of it. +It is very bitter, and where it meets with any poison, works by violent +sweats, but where it meets with none, has no sensible operation but +that of putting the spirits into a great hurry, and so of promoting +perspiration. + +The rattlesnake has an utter antipathy to this plant, insomuch that if +you smear your hands with the juice of it, you may handle the viper +safely. Thus much I can say on my own experience, that once in July, +when these snakes are in their greatest vigor, I besmeared a dog's nose +with the powder of this root, and made him trample on a large snake +several times, which, however, was so far from biting him, that it +perfectly sickened at the dog's approach, and turned his head from him +with the utmost aversion. + +In our march one of the men killed a small rattlesnake, which had no +more than two rattles. Those vipers remain in vigor generally till +towards the end of September, or sometimes later, if the weather +continues a little warm. On this consideration we had provided three +several sorts of rattlesnake root, made up into proper doses, and ready +for immediate use, in case any one of the men or their horses had been +bitten.... + +In the low grounds the Carolina gentlemen shewed us another plant, which +they said was used in their country to cure the bite of the rattlesnake. +It put forth several leaves, in figure like a heart, and was clouded so +like the common Assarabacca, that I conceived it to be of that family. +[Footnote 4: A native of Virginia:--was sent to England for his +education, where he became intimate with the wits of Queen Anne's time. +On his return to Virginia, he became a prominent official. He has left +very pleasing accounts of his explorations.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Benjamin Franklin, 1706-1790._= (Manual, pp. 478, 486.) + +Extract from his Autobiography. + +=_13._= GOOD RESOLUTIONS.--THE CROAKER. + +I grew convinced, that _truth, sincerity_, and _integrity_, in dealings +between man and man, were of the utmost importance to the felicity of +life, and I formed written resolutions, which still remain in my journal +book, to practice them ever while I lived. Revelation had indeed no +weight with me, as such; but I entertained an opinion, that, though +certain actions might not be bad, _because_ they were forbidden by it, +or good _because_ it commended them; yet probably those actions might be +forbidden _because_ they were bad for us, or commanded because they were +beneficial to us, in their own natures, all the circumstances of things +considered. And this persuasion, with the kind hand of Providence, +or some guardian angel, or accidental favorable circumstances or +situations, or all together, preserved me, through this dangerous +time of youth, and the hazardous situations I was sometimes in among +strangers, remote from the eye and advice of my father, free from any +_wilful_ gross immorality or injustice, that might have been expected +from my want of religion. I say wilful because the instances I have +mentioned had something of _necessity_ in them, from my youth, +inexperience, and the knavery of others. I had therefore a tolerable +character to begin the world with; I valued it properly, and determined +to preserve it. + +We had not been long returned to Philadelphia, before the new types +arrived from London. We settled with Keimer and left him by his consent +before he heard of it. We found a house to let near the market, and took +it. To lessen the rent, which was then but twenty-four pounds a year, +though I have since known it to let for seventy, we took in Thomas +Godfrey, a glazier, and his family, who were to pay a considerable part +of it to us, and we to board with them. We had scarce opened our letters +and put our press in order, before George House, an acquaintance of +mine, brought a countryman to us, whom he had met in the street, +inquiring for a printer. All our cash was now expended in the variety of +particulars we had been obliged to procure, and this countryman's five +shillings, being our first-fruits, and coming so seasonably, gave me +more pleasure than any crown I have since earned; and the gratitude +I felt towards House has made me often more ready, than perhaps I +otherwise should have been, to assist young beginners. + +There are croakers in every country, always boding its ruin. Such a one +there lived in Philadelphia; a person of note, an elderly man, with +a wise look and a very grave manner of speaking; his name was Samuel +Mickle. This gentleman, a stranger to me, stopped me one day at my +door, and asked me if I was the young man, who had lately opened a new +printing-house? Being answered in the affirmative, he said he was sorry +for me, because it was an expensive undertaking, and the expense would +be lost; for Philadelphia was a sinking place, the people already half +bankrupts, or near being so; all the appearances of the contrary, such +as new buildings and the rise of rents, being to his certain knowledge +fallacious; for they were in fact among the things that would ruin us. +Then he gave me such a detail of misfortunes now existing, or that were +soon to exist, that he left me half melancholy. Had I known him before +I engaged in this business, probably I never should have done it. This +person continued to live in this decaying place, and to declaim in the +same strain, refusing for many years to buy a house there, because all +was going to destruction; and at last I had the pleasure of seeing him +give him five times as much for one, as he might have bought it for when +he first began croaking. + + * * * * * + +From a Letter to Peter Collinson. + +=_14._= FRANKLIN'S ELECTRICAL KITE. + +As frequent mention is made in public papers from Europe of the success +of the Philadelphia experiment for drawing the electric fire from +clouds, by means of pointed rods of iron erected on high, buildings, +&c., it may be agreeable to the curious to be informed that the same +experiment has succeeded in Philadelphia, though made in a different and +more easy manner, which is as follows: + +Make a small cross of two light strips of cedar, the arms so long as +to reach to the four corners of a large thin silk handkerchief, when +extended; tie the corners of the handkerchief to the extremities of +the cross, so you have the body of a kite; which, being properly +accommodated with a tail, loop, and string, will rise in the air, like +those made of paper; but this, being of silk, is fitter to bear the wet +and wind of a thundergust without tearing. To the top of the upright +stick of the cross is to be fixed a very sharp-pointed wire, rising a +foot or more above the wood. To the end of the twine, next the hand, is +to be tied a silk ribbon, and where the silk and twine join, a key may +be fastened. This kite is to be raised when a thundergust appears to be +coming on, and the person who holds the string must stand within a door +or window, or under some cover, so that the silk ribbon may not be wet; +and care must be taken that the twine does not touch the frame of the +door or window. As soon as any of the thunder-clouds come over the kite, +the pointed wire will draw the electric fire from them, and the kite, +with all the twine, will be electrified, and the loose filaments of +the twine will stand out every way, and be attracted by an approaching +finger. And when the rain has wetted the kite and twine, so that it +can conduct the electric fire freely, you will find it stream out +plentifully from the key on the approach of your knuckle. At this key +the phial may be charged; and all the other electric experiments be +performed, which are usually done by the help of a rubbed glass globe +or tube, and thereby the sameness of the electric matter with that of +lightning be completely demonstrated. + + * * * * * + +=_15._= MOTION FOR PRAYERS IN THE CONVENTION. + +Mr. President: + +The small progress we have made, after four or five weeks close +attendance and continual reasonings with each other, our different +sentiments on almost every question, several of the last producing +as many _Noes_ as _Ayes_, is, methinks, a melancholy proof of the +imperfection of the human understanding. We indeed seem to _feel_ our +own want of political wisdom, since we have been running all about +in search of it. We have gone back to ancient history for models of +government, and examined the different forms of those republics, which, +having been originally formed with the seeds of their own dissolution, +now no longer exist; and we have viewed modern States all round Europe, +but find none of their constitutions suitable to our circumstances. + +In this situation of this assembly, groping, as it were, in the dark to +find political truth, and scarce able to distinguish it when presented +to us, how has it happened, Sir, that we have not hitherto once +thought of humbly applying to the Father of Lights to illuminate our +understandings? In the beginning of the contest with Britain, when we +were sensible of danger, we had daily prayers in this room for the +divine protection. Our prayers, Sir, were heard; and they were +graciously answered. All of us, who were engaged in the struggle, must +have observed frequent instances of a superintending Providence in +our favor. To that kind Providence we owe this happy opportunity of +consulting in peace on the means of establishing our future national +felicity. And have we now forgotten that powerful Friend? or do we +imagine we no longer need His assistance? I have lived, Sir, a long +time; and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this +truth, _that God governs in the affairs of men_. And if a sparrow cannot +fall to the ground without his notice, is it probable that an empire can +rise without his aid? We have been assured, Sir, in the Sacred Writings, +that "except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build +it." I firmly believe this; and I also believe, that without his +concurring aid, we shall succeed in this political building no better +than the builders of Babel; we shall be divided by our little, partial, +local interests, our projects will be confounded, and we ourselves shall +become a reproach and a by-word down to future ages. And, what is worse, +mankind may hereafter, from this unfortunate instance, despair of +establishing government by human wisdom, and leave it to chance, war, +and conquest. + +I therefore beg leave to move, + +That henceforth, prayers, imploring the assistance of Heaven and its +blessing on our deliberations, be held in this assembly every morning +before we proceed to business; and that one or more of the clergy of +this city be requested to officiate in that service. + + * * * * * + +From his "Essays." + +=_16._= THE EPHEMERON. AN EMBLEM. + +"It was," said he, "the opinion of learned philosophers of our race, +who lived and flourished long before my time, that this vast world, the +Moulin Joly, could not itself subsist more than eighteen hours; and I +think there was some foundation for that opinion, since, by the apparent +motion of the great luminary that gives life to all nature, and which in +my time has evidently declined considerably towards the ocean at the end +of our earth, it must then finish its course, be extinguished in the +waters that surround us, and leave the world in cold and darkness, +necessarily producing universal death and destruction. I have lived +seven of those hours--a great age, being no less than four hundred and +twenty minutes of time. How very few of us continue so long! I have seen +generations born, flourish, and expire ... And I must soon follow them; +for, by the course of nature, though still in health, I cannot expect to +live above seven or eight minutes longer. What now avail all my toil +and labor in amassing honey-dew on this leaf, which I cannot live to +enjoy!--what the political struggles I have been engaged in for the good +of my compatriot inhabitants of this bush, or my philosophical studies +for the benefit of our race in general! for in politics what can laws +do without morals? Our present race of ephemera will, in a course of +minutes, become corrupt, like those of other and older bushes, and +consequently as wretched. And in philosophy how small our progress! +Alas! art is long, and life is short. My friends would comfort me with +the idea of a name they say I shall leave behind me.... But what will +fame be to an ephemeron who no longer exists? and what will become of +all history, in the eighteenth hour, when the world itself, even the +whole Moulin Joly, shall come to its end, and be buried in universal +ruin?" + + * * * * * + + + +LATER RELIGIOUS WRITERS AND DIVINES. + + +=_John Woolman,[5] 1720-1772._= + +From his "Life and Travels." + +=_17._= REMARKS ON SLAVERY AND LABOR. + +A people used to labor moderately for their living, training up their +children in frugality and business, have a happier life than those who +live on the labor of slaves. Freemen find satisfaction in improving and +providing for their families; but negroes, laboring to support others +who claim them as their property, and expecting nothing but slavery +during life, have not the like inducement to be industrious.... Men +having power, too often misapply it: though we make slaves of the +negroes, and the Turks make slaves of the Christians, liberty is the +natural right of all men equally.... The slaves look to me like a +burdensome stone to such who burden themselves with them. The burden +will grow heavier and heavier, till times change in a way disagreeable +to us.... I was troubled to perceive the darkness of their imaginations, +and, in some pressure of spirits, said the love of ease and gain are the +motives, in general, of keeping slaves; and men are wont to take hold of +weak arguments to support a cause which is unreasonable.... + +I was silent during the meeting for worship, and, when business came on, +my mind was exercised concerning the poor slaves, but did not feel my +way clear to speak. In this condition I was bowed in spirit before the +Lord, and, with tears and inward supplication, besought him so to open +my understanding that I might know his will concerning me; and at length +my mind was settled in silence. + +At times when I have felt true love open my heart towards my +fellow-creatures, and have been engaged in weighty conversation in the +cause of righteousness, the instructions I have received under these +exercises in regard to the true use of the outward gifts of God, have +made deep and lasting impressions on my mind. I have beheld how the +desire to provide wealth and to uphold a delicate life has grievously +entangled many, and has been like a snare to their offspring, and though +some have been affected with a sense of their difficulties, and have +appeared desirous at times to be helped out of them, yet for want of +abiding under the humbling power of truth, they have continued in these +entanglements; expensive living in parents and children hath called for +a large supply, and in answering this call, the faces of the poor have +been ground away, and made thin through hard dealing.... + +... In the uneasiness of body which I have many times felt by too much +labor, not as a forced but a voluntary oppression, I have often been +excited to think on the original cause of that oppression which is +imposed on many in the world. The latter part of the time wherein I +labored on our plantation, my heart, through the fresh visitations of +heavenly love, being often tender, and my leisure time being frequently +spent in reading the life and doctrines of our blessed Redeemer, the +account of the sufferings of martyrs, and the history of the first rise +of our Society, a belief was gradually settled in my mind, that if such +as had great estates, generally lived in that humility and plainness +which belong to a Christian life, and laid much easier rents and +interests on their lands and moneys, and thus led the way to a right use +of things, so great a number of people might be employed in things +useful, that labor both for men and other creatures would need to be no +more than an agreeable employ, and divers branches of business, which +serve chiefly to please the natural inclinations of our minds, and which +at present seem necessary to circulate that wealth which some gather, +might, in this way of pure wisdom, be discontinued. + +[Footnote 5: A Quaker preacher, a native of New Jersey, whose Travels +and Autobiography have been much admired abroad, notably by Charles +Lamb.] + + * * * * * + + +=_John M. Mason,[6] 1770-1829._= + +From the Address in behalf of the Bible Society. + +=_18._= GRANDEUR OF THE ENTERPRISE. + +If there be a single measure which can overrule objection, subdue +opposition, and command exertion, this is the measure. That all our +voices, all our affections, all our hands, should be joined in the grand +design of promoting "peace on earth and good will toward man"--that +they should resist the advance of misery--should carry the light of +instruction into the dominions of ignorance, and the balm of joy to the +soul of anguish; and all this by diffusing the oracles of God--addresses +to the understanding an argument which cannot be encountered; and to the +heart an appeal which its holiest emotions rise up to second.... + +_People of the United States_; Have you ever been invited to an +enterprise of such grandeur and glory? Do you not value the Holy +Scriptures? Value them as containing your sweetest hope; your most +thrilling joy? Can you submit to the thought that _you_ should be torpid +in your endeavors to disperse them, while the rest of Christendom is +awake and alert? Shall _you_ hang back in heartless indifference, when +princes come down from their thrones, to bless the cottage of the poor +with the gospel of peace; and imperial sovereigns are gathering their +fairest honors from spreading abroad the oracles of the Lord your God. +Is it possible that _you_ should not see, in this state of human things, +a mighty motion of Divine providence? The most heavenly charity treads +close upon the march of conflict and blood! The world is at peace! +Scarce has the soldier time to unbind his helmet, and to wipe away the +sweat from his brow, ere the voice of mercy succeeds to the clarion of +battle, and calls the nations from enmity to love! Crowned heads bow to +the head which is to wear "many crowns," and, for the first time since +the promulgation of Christianity, appear to act in unison for the +recognition of its gracious principles, as being fraught alike with +happiness to man, and honor to God. + +What has created so strange, so beneficent an alteration. This is no +doubt the doing of the Lord, and it is marvelous in our eyes. But what +instrument has he thought fit chiefly to use. That which contributes in +all latitudes and climes to make Christians feel their unity, to rebuke +the spirit of strife, and to open upon them the day of brotherly +concord--the Bible!--the Bible!--through Bible Societies! + +[Footnote 6: A Presbyterian clergyman of great distinction, long settled +in New York; rarely surpassed in controversial acuteness, and in +religious eloquence.] + + * * * * * + +=_19._= THE RIGHT OF THE STATE TO EDUCATE. + +No sagacity can foretell what characters shall be developed, or what +parts performed, by these boys and girls who throng our streets, and +sport in our fields. In their tender breasts are concealed the germs, in +their little hands are lodged the weapons, of a nation's overthrow +or glory. Would it not, then, be madness, would it not be a sort of +political suicide, for the commonwealth to be unconcerned what direction +their infant powers shall take, or into what habits their budding +affections shall ripen? or will it be disputed that the civil authority +has a _right_ to take care, by a paternal interference on behalf of +the children, that the next generation shall not prostrate in an hour, +whatever has been consecrated to truth, to virtue, and to happiness by +the generations that are past? + + * * * * * + + +=_Timothy Dwight, 1752-1817._= (Manual, pp. 479, 504.) + +From "Travels in New England," &c. + +=_20._= THE WILDERNESS RECLAIMED. + +In these countries _lands are universally held in fee simple_. Every +farmer, with too few exceptions to deserve notice, labors on his own +ground, and for the benefit of himself and his family merely. This, +also, if I am not deceived, is a novelty; and its influence is seen to +be remarkably happy in the industry, sobriety, cheerfulness, personal +independence, and universal prosperity of the people at large.... A +succession of New England villages, composed of neat houses, surrounding +neat schoolhouses and churches, adorned with gardens, meadows, and +orchards, and exhibiting the universal easy circumstances of the +inhabitants, is, at least in my own opinion, one of the most delightful +prospects which this world can afford. + +_The conversion of a wilderness into a desirable residence for man_, +is an object which no intelligent spectator can behold, without being +strongly interested in such a combination of enterprise, patience, and +perseverance. Few of those human efforts which have excited the applause +of mankind, have demanded equal energy, or merited equal approbation. A +forest changed within a short period into fruitful fields covered with +houses, schools, and churches, and filled with inhabitants possessing +not only the necessaries and comforts, but also the conveniences of +life, and devoted to the worship of Jehovah, when seen only in prophetic +vision, enraptured the mind even of Isaiah; and when realized, can +hardly fail to delight that of a spectator. At least, it may compensate +the want of ancient castles, ruined abbeys, and fine pictures. + + * * * * * + +From the Theology. + +=_21._= THE GLORY OF NATURE, FROM GOD. + +There is another and very important view in which this subject demands +our consideration. _Theology spreads its influence over the creation +and providence of God, and gives to both almost all their beauty and +sublimity._ Creation and providence, seen by the eye of theology, +and elucidated by the glorious commentary on both furnished in the +Scriptures, become new objects to the mind; immeasurably more noble, +rich, and delightful, than they can appear to a worldly, sensual mind. +The heavens and the earth, and the great as well as numberless events +which result from the divine administration, are in themselves vast, +wonderful, frequently awful, in many instances solemn, in many +exquisitely beautiful, and in a great number eminently sublime. All +these attributes, however, they possess, if considered only in the +abstract, in degrees very humble and diminutive, compared with the +appearance which they make, when beheld as the works of Jehovah. +Mountains, the ocean, and the heavens, are majestic and sublime. Hills +and valleys, soft landscapes, trees, fruits, and flowers, and many +objects in the animal and mineral kingdoms, are beautiful. But what is +this beauty, what is this grandeur, compared with that agency of God, to +which they owe their being? Think what it is for the Almighty hand to +spread the plains, to heave the mountains, and to pour the ocean. Look +at the verdure, flowers, and fruits which in the mild season adorn the +surface of the earth; the uncreated hand fashions their fine forms, +paints their exquisite colors, and exhales their delightful perfumes. In +the spring, his life re-animates the world; in the summer and autumn, +his bounty is poured out upon the hills and valleys; in the winter, "his +way is in the whirlwind, and in the storm; and the clouds are the dust +of his feet." His hand "hung the earth upon nothing," lighted up the +sun in the heavens, and rolls the planets, and the comets through the +immeasurable fields of ether. His breath kindled the stars; his voice +called into existence worlds innumerable, and filled the expanse with +animated being. To all he is present, over all he rules, for all he +provides. The mind, attempered to divine contemplation, finds him in +every solitude, meets him in every walk, and in all places, and at all +times, sees itself surrounded by God. + + * * * * * + + +=_John Henry Hobart,[7] 1775-1830._= + +From a "Sermon." + +=_22._= THE DIVINE GLORY IN REDEMPTION. + +At the display of the divine power and glory that created the world, +"the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for +joy." Surely not less universal, not less ardent the exultation in those +pure and perfect spirits that continually surround the Divine Majesty +at the view of the infinite wisdom, love, and power which planned the +redemption of a fallen world--which thus devised the mode by which +pardon could be extended to the sinner without sanctioning his sin, and +favor to the offending rebel against the divine government, without +weakening its authority, impeaching its holiness, or subverting its +justice. In the nature of the divine Persons thus counselling for man's +redemption, it is not for him, blind, and erring, and impotent, it is +not for angels, it is not for cherubim or seraphim, for a moment to +look. The inner glory of the divine nature burns with a blaze, if I may +so with reverence speak, too intense, too radiant, for finite vision. +But in its manifestations, in its outer, its more distant rays, shining +on the plan of man's redemption, all is mildness, and softness, and +peace. Holiness, and justice, and mercy are seen blending their sacred +influences, and conveying light and joy in that truth which the counsels +of the Godhead alone could render possible. God can be just, and yet +justify the sinner. + +... Let us not, then, neglect this wonderful counsel of God for our +salvation; let us not be unaffected by this most stupendous display of +divine power, love, and mercy; let us not reject the offers of peace and +salvation from the God whom we have offended, and the Sovereign who is +finally to judge us. But, on the contrary, let us gratefully adore the +mercy and the grace of the Godhead in the plan of redemption, effected +in the incarnation, the obedience, the sufferings, the death, and the +triumphant resurrection of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. Let it be +our great object to be conformed to the likeness of his death, in +mortifying all our corrupt affections, and to experience the power of +his resurrection in living a new and holy life, that we may enjoy the +new and lively hopes of everlasting glory, which his resurrection +assures to all true believers. + +[Footnote 7: An eminent divine and bishop of the Episcopal church; a +native of Pennsylvania.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Lyman Beecher,[8] 1775-1803._= + +From the "Lectures on Political Atheism." + +=_23._= THE BEING OF A GOD. + +It is a thing eminently to be desired that there should be a supreme +benevolent Intelligence, who is the creator and moral governor of the +universe, whose subjects and kingdom shall endure for ever. Such a one +the nature of man demands, and his whole soul pants after. + +We feel our littleness in presence of the majestic elements of nature, +our weakness compared with their power, and our loneliness in the vast +universe, unenlightened, unguided, and unblessed, by any intelligence +superior to our own. We behold the flight of time, the passing fashion +of the world, and the gulf of annihilation curtained with the darkness +of an eternal night. + +At the side of this vortex, which covers with deep oblivion the past, +and impenetrable darkness the future, nature shudders and draws back, +and the soul, with sinking heart, looks mournfully around upon this fair +creation, and up to these beautiful heavens, and in plaintive accents +demands, "Is there, then, no deliverance from this falling back into +nothing? Must this conscious being cease--this reasoning, thinking power, +and these warm affections, their delightful movements? Must this eye +close in an endless night, and this heart fall back upon everlasting +insensibility? O, thou cloudless sun, and ye far-distant stars, in all +your journeyings in light, have ye discovered no blessed intelligence +who called you into being, lit up your fires, marked your orbits, wheels +you in your courses, around whom ye roll, and whose praises ye silently +celebrate? Are ye empty worlds, and desolate, the sport of chance? or, +like our sad earth, are ye peopled with inhabitants, waked up to a brief +existence, and hurried reluctantly, from an almost untested being, back +to nothing? O that there were a God, who made you greater than ye all, +whose being in yours we might see, whose intelligence we might admire, +whose will we might obey, and whose goodness we might adore!" Such, +except where guilt seeks annihilation as the choice of evils, is the +unperverted, universal longing after God and immortality. + +[Footnote 8: A Congregational clergyman, prominent, in the early part +of this century, for his zeal and piety, and for the eloquence and +originality of his sermons: father of a numerous family distinguished in +theology and literature.] + + * * * * * + + +=_William Ellery Channing, 1780-1842._= (Manual, p. 480.) + +From the Essay on Napoleon Bonaparte. + +=_24._= CHARACTER OF NAPOLEON. + +With powers which might have made him a glorious representative and +minister of the beneficent Divinity, and with natural sensibilities +which might have been exalted into sublime virtues, he chose to separate +himself from his kind, to forego their love, esteem, and gratitude, +that he might become their gaze, their fear, their wonder; and for this +selfish, solitary good, parted with peace and imperishable renown. + +His insolent exaltation of himself above the race to which he belonged, +broke out in the beginning of his career. His first success in Italy +gave him the tone of a master, and he never laid it aside to his last +hour. One can hardly help being struck with the _natural air_ with which +he arrogates supremacy in his conversation and proclamations. We never +feel as if he were putting on a lordly air. In his proudest claims, he +speaks from his own mind, and in native language. His style is swollen, +but never strained, as if he were conscious of playing a part above his +real claims. Even when he was foolish and impious enough to arrogate +miraculous powers and a mission from God, his language showed that he +thought there was something in his character and exploits to give a +color to his--blasphemous pretensions. The empire of the world seemed +to him to be in a measure his due, for nothing short of it corresponded +with his conceptions of himself; and he did not use mere verbiage, +but spoke a language to which he gave some credit, when he called his +successive conquests "the fulfilment of his destiny." This spirit +of self-exaggeration wrought its own misery, and drew down upon him +terrible punishments; and this it did by vitiating and perverting his +high powers. First, it diseased his fine intellect, gave imagination the +ascendency over judgment, turned the inventiveness and fruitfulness of +his mind into rash, impatient, restless energies, and thus precipitated +him into projects, which, as the wisdom of his counsellors pronounced, +were fraught with ruin. To a man, whose vanity took him out of the rank +of human beings, no foundation for reasoning was left. All things seemed +possible. His genius and his fortune were not to be bounded by the +barriers which experience had assigned to human powers. Ordinary rules +did not apply to him. He even found excitement and motives in obstacles +before which other men would have wavered; for these would enhance the +glory of triumph, and give a new thrill to the admiration of the world. + +To us there is something radically and increasingly shocking in the +thought of one man's will becoming a law to his race; in the thought of +multitudes, of vast communities, surrendering conscience, intellect, +their affections, their rights, their interests, to the stern mandate of +a fellow-creature. When we see one word of a frail man on the throne +of France, tearing a hundred thousand sons from their homes, breaking +asunder the sacred ties of domestic life, sentencing myriads of the +young to make murder their calling, and rapacity their means of support, +and extorting from nations their treasures to extend this ruinous sway, +we are ready to ask ourselves, Is not this a dream? and, when the sad +reality comes home to us, we blush for a race which can stoop to such an +abject lot. At length, indeed, we see the tyrant humbled, stripped of +power, but stripped by those who, in the main, are not unwilling to play +the despot on a narrower scale, and to break down the spirit of nations +under the same iron sway. + + * * * * * + + +=_Manning._= + +From a Discourse upon Immortality. + +=_25._= GRANDEUR OF THE PROSPECT. + +To me there is but one objection against immortality, if objection it +may be called, and this arises from the very greatness of the truth. +My mind sometimes sinks under its weight, is lost in its immensity; I +scarcely dare believe that such a good is placed within my reach. When I +think of myself, as existing through all future ages, as surviving this +earth and that sky, as exempted from every imperfection and error of my +present being, as clothed with an angel's glory, as comprehending with +my intellect and embracing in my affections, an extent of creation +compared with which the earth is a point; when I think of myself as +looking on the outward universe with an organ of vision that will reveal +to me a beauty and harmony and order not now imagined, and as having +an access to the minds of the wise and good, which will make them in +a sense my own; when I think of myself as forming friendships with +innumerable beings of rich and various intellect and of the noblest +virtue, as introduced to the society of heaven, as meeting there the +great and excellent, of whom I have read in history, as joined with "the +just made perfect" in an ever-enlarging ministry of benevolence, as +conversing with Jesus Christ with the familiarity of friendship, and +especially as having an immediate intercourse with God, such as the +closest intimacies of earth dimly shadow forth;--when this thought of my +future being comes to me, whilst I hope, I also fear; the blessedness +seems too great; the consciousness of present weakness and unworthiness +is almost too strong for hope. But when, in this frame of mind, I +look round on the creation, and see there the marks of an omnipotent +goodness, to which nothing is impossible, and from which every thing may +be Loped; when I see around me the proofs of an Infinite Father, who +must desire the perpetual progress of his intellectual offspring; when +I look next at the human mind, and see what powers a few years have +unfolded, and discern in it the capacity of everlasting improvement: and +especially when I look at Jesus, the conqueror of death, the heir of +immortality, who has gone as the forerunner of mankind into the mansions +of light and purity, I can and do admit the almost overpowering thought +of the everlasting life, growth, felicity, of the human soul. + + * * * * * + +From Remarks on the case of the Ship Creole. + +=_26._= THE DUTY OF THE FREE STATES. + +I have now finished my task. I have considered the Duties of the Free +States in relation to Slavery, and to other subjects of great and +immediate concern. In this discussion I have constantly spoken of Duties +as more important than Interests; but these in the end will be found to +agree. The energy by which men prosper is fortified by nothing so much +as by the lofty spirit which scorns to prosper through abandonment of +duty. + +I have been called by the subjects here discussed to speak much of the +evils of the times, and the dangers of the country; and in treating of +these a writer is almost necessarily betrayed into what may seem a tone +of despondence. His anxiety to save his country from crime or calamity, +leads him to use unconsciously a language of alarm which may excite the +apprehension of inevitable misery. But I would not infuse such fears. I +do not sympathize with the desponding tone of the day. It may be that +there are fearful woes in store for this people; but there are many +promises of good to give spring to hope and effort; and it is not wise +to open our eyes and ears to ill omens alone. It is to be lamented that +men who boast of courage in other trials, should shrink so weakly from +public difficulties and dangers, and should spend in unmanly reproaches, +or complaints, the strength which they ought to give to their country's +safety. But this ought not to surprise us in the present case: for +our lot, until of late, has been singularly prosperous, and great +prosperity enfeebles men's spirits, and prepares them to despond when it +shall have passed away. The country, we are told, is "ruined." What! the +country ruined, when the mass of the population have hardly retrenched +a luxury! We are indeed paying, and we ought to pay, the penalty of +reckless extravagance, of wild and criminal speculation, of general +abandonment to the passion for sudden and enormous gains. But how are +we ruined? Is the kind, nourishing earth about to become a cruel +step-mother? Or is the teeming soil of this magnificent country sinking +beneath our feet? Is the ocean dried up? Are our cities and villages, +our schools and churches, in ruins? Are the stout muscles which have +conquered sea and land, palsied? Are the earnings of past years +dissipated, and the skill which gathered them forgotten? I open my eyes +on this ruined country, and I see around me fields fresh with verdure, +and behold on all sides the intelligent countenance, the sinewy limb, +the kindly look, the free and manly bearing, which indicate any thing +but a fallen people. Undoubtedly we have much cause to humble ourselves +for the vices which our recent prosperity warmed into being, or rather +brought out from the depths of men's souls. But in the reprobation which +these vices awaken, have we no proof that the fountain of moral life in +the nation's heart is not exhausted. In the progress of temperance, of +education, and of religious sensibility, in our land, have we no +proof that there is among us an impulse towards improvement, which no +temporary crime or calamity can overpower. + +After all, there is a growing intelligence in this community; there is +much domestic virtue, there is a deep working of Christianity; there is +going on a struggle of higher truths with narrow traditions, and of a +wider benevolence with social evils; there is a spirit of freedom, a +recognition of the equal rights of men; there are profound impulses +received from our history, from the virtues of our fathers, and +especially from our revolutionary conflict; and there is an indomitable +energy, which, after rearing an empire in the wilderness, is fresh for +new achievements. + +There is one Duty of the Free States of which I have not spoken; it is +the duty of Faith in the intellectual and moral energies of the country, +in its high destiny, and in the good Providence which has guided it +through so many trials and perils to its present greatness. We indeed +suffer much, and deserve to suffer more. Many dark pages are to be +written in our history. But generous seed is still sown in this nation's +mind. Noble impulses are working here. We are called to be witnesses to +the world, of a freer, more equal, more humane, more enlightened social +existence, than has yet been known. May God raise us to a more thorough +comprehension of our work! May he give us faith in the good which we are +summoned to achieve! May he strengthen us to build up a prosperity not +tainted by slavery, selfishness, or any wrong; but pure, innocent, +righteous, and overflowing, through a just and generous intercourse, on +all the nations of the earth! + + * * * * * + + +=_Edward Payson, 1733-1827,_= (Manual, p. 480.) + +From the "Selections." + +=_27._= NATURAL RELIGION. + +I know that those who hate and despise the religion of Jesus because it +condemns their evil deeds, have endeavored to deprive him of the honor +of communicating to mankind the glad tidings of life and immortality. I +know that they have dragged the mouldering carcass of paganism from the +grave, animated her lifeless form with a spark stolen from the sacred +altar, arrayed her in the spoils of Christianity, re-lighted her +extinguished taper at the torch of revelation, dignified her with the +name of natural religion, and exalted her in the temple of reason, as a +goddess, able, without divine assistance, to guide mankind to truth and +happiness. But we also know, that all her boasted pretensions are vain, +the offspring of ignorance, wickedness, and pride. We know that she is +indebted to that revelation which she presumes to ridicule, and contemn, +for every semblance of truth or energy which she displays. We know that +the most she can do, is to find men blind and leave them so; and to +lead them still farther astray, in a labyrinth of vice, delusion, and +wretchedness. This is incontrovertibly evident, both from past and +present experience; and we may defy her most eloquent advocates to +produce a single instance in which she has enlightened or reformed +mankind. If, as is often asserted, she is able to guide us in the path +of truth and happiness, why has she ever suffered her votaries to +remain a prey to vice and ignorance. Why did she not teach the learned +Egyptians to abstain from worshiping their leeks and onions? Why not +instruct the polished Greeks to renounce their sixty thousand gods? +Why not persuade the enlightened Romans to abstain from adoring their +deified murderers? Why not prevail on the wealthy Phoenicians to refrain +from sacrificing their infants to Saturn? Or, if it was a task beyond +her power to enlighten the ignorant multitude, reform their barbarous +and abominable superstitions, and teach them that they were immortal +beings, why did she not, at least, instruct their philosophers in the +great doctrine of the immortality of the soul, which they so earnestly +labored in vain to discover? They enjoyed the light of reason and +natural religion, in its fullest extent, yet so far were they from +ascertaining the nature of our future and eternal existence, that +they--could not determine whether we should exist at all Bevon the +grave; nor could all their advantages preserve them from the grossest +errors, and the most unnatural crimes. + + * * * * * + + +=_Joseph S. Buckminster, 1784-1812._= (Manual, p. 480.) + +From the "Sermons." + +=_28._= NECESSITY OF REGENERATION. + +Look back, my hearers, upon your lives, and observe the numerous +opinions that you have adopted and discarded, the numerous attachments +you have formed and forgotten, and recollect how imperceptible were +the revolutions of your sentiments, how quiet the changes of your +affections. Perhaps, even now, your minds may be passing through some +interesting processes, your pursuits may be taking some new direction, +and your character may soon exhibit to the world some unexpected +transformation. Compare with this the spiritual regeneration of the +heart. So is every one that is born of the Spirit. Perhaps the following +may not be an imperfect description of the process that takes place in +a mind which is the subject of a radical conversion. The motion of the +wind is unseen, its effects are visible; the trees bend and fields are +laid waste; though the altering sentiments and affections are unnoticed, +the altered character obtrudes itself upon our observation. Truths +before contemplated without concern, now seize the mind with a grasp +too firm to be shaken. The world which is to succeed the present is no +longer a subject of accidental thought, of wavering belief, or lifeless +speculation; a region to which no tie binds us, and which no curiosity +leads us to explore. To the regenerated mind, the character and +condition of man appears in a new, and interesting light. To a being +whose existence has but just commenced, death is only a boundary, a +line, that marks off the first, the smallest portion of existence. +Earth with her retinue of allurements, her band of fascinating +syrens, exclaims, "We have lost our hold on this man! He is no longer +ours!" Religion welcomes her new adherent; she beckons him to turn his +steps into a new,--a pleasanter path; and God himself looks down from +heaven with complacency and love, illuminating his track by the light +of his countenance, marking the first step he takes in religion, and +supporting him by the staff of his grace,--the aid of his Holy Spirit. + +The first objects that engage the dawning mind of the child are objects +of sense. That which is born of the flesh is flesh. It is a selfish, +sensual creature, ignorant of its Creator, of its destination; +uninclined to the purity, the spirituality, the power of religion; +alienated from the life of God, the life of the soul. Unrenewed by the +influence of religious truth, undirected by the guiding hand of an +Almighty Father, how shall such a creature reach the regions of immortal +bliss? Is it enthusiasm, is it folly, is it hypocrisy, to say to such, a +creature, "You must be born again before you can see the kingdom of +God?" Is that Redeemer to be disclaimed who offers you his divine aid to +form anew your character, to exalt your affections, to enlighten your +dreary and desolate understanding? + + * * * * * + + +=_Nathaniel W. Taylor[9] 1781-1871._= + +From the "Lectures on the Moral Government of God." + +=_29._= PROOF OF IMMORTALITY FROM THE MORAL NATURE OF MAN. + +The argument from _the moral nature_ of man is made still more +impressive by the superiority of its design and object. If there is no +existence for man beyond the present state, what can we suppose to be +the design of his Creator in forming him a moral being? What powers, +what capacities are involved in his nature! What capacity to enjoy, and +what power to impart happiness to others! Who can reflect on the nature +of such a creature, his intelligence, his susceptibility, his will, his +conscience, the dignity, the excellence of which he is capable, the +moral victories and triumphs he may win, his fitness to hold on his way +with archangels, strong in advancing all that good which infinite wisdom +could devise, and infinite benevolence could love, the graces with which +he may be adorned, and the beatitudes with which he may be blessed, +and not believe that he is made to be one with the God who has created +him--a partaker of his blessedness, a companion of his eternity. + +If we consider what an almost total failure there is, even on the +part of every good man, to attain in any respect the great end of his +creation; how weak in resolution and feeble in heart--how little success +in subduing his passions and governing his temper--how much of life is +spent before he even begins to live in obedience to the demands of +duty and of conscience--how remote he is from the uniform and settled +tranquility of perfect virtue--what dissatisfaction he feels with, the +present, unappeased by all the world can offer--what an Impatience and +disgust with the littleness of all he finds--what an ever-restless +aspiration after nobler and higher things--what anticipations and hopes +from futurity never realized, here on earth--how does our spirit labor +under a sense of the incongruity between his attainments and his powers! +and, unless there is a future state, what an insignificance is imparted +to all that can be called virtue here on earth, and also to man himself! + +[Footnote 9: An eminent Congregational divine, long professor of +theology in Tale College, and distinguished by the vigor and originality +of his thinking.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Edward Hitchcock, 1793-1804._= (Manual, p. 532.) + +From "The Religion of Geology." + +=_30._= GEOLOGICAL PROOF OF DIVINE BENEVOLENCE. + +My second argument in proof of the divine benevolence is derived from +the disturbed, broken, and overturned condition of the earth's crust. + +To the casual observer the rocks have the appearance of being lifted up, +shattered, and overturned; but it is only the geologist who knows +the vast extent of this disturbance. He never finds crystalline, +non-fossiliferous rocks which have not been more or less removed from +their original position. The older fossiliferous strata exhibit almost +equal evidence of the operation of a powerful disturbing force, though +sometimes found in their original horizontal position. The newer rocks +have experienced less of this agency, though but few of them have not +been elevated or dislocated. + +If these strata had remained horizontal, as they were originally +deposited, it is obvious that all the valuable ores, minerals, and +rocks, which man could not have discovered by direct excavation, +must have remained forever unknown to him. Now, man has very seldom +penetrated the rocks below the depth of half a mile, and rarely so deep +as that; whereas, by the elevations, dislocations, and overturnings +that have been described, he obtains access to all deposits of useful +substances that lie within fifteen or twenty miles of the surface; and +many are thus probably brought to light from a greater depth. He is +indebted, then, to this disturbing agency for nearly all the useful +metals, coal, rock salt, marble, gypsum, and other useful minerals; +and when we consider how necessary these substances are to civilized +society, who will doubt that it was a striking act of benevolence which +thus introduced disturbance, dislocation, and apparent ruin into the +earth's crust? + + * * * * * + + +=_John P. Durbin,[10] 1800._= + +From "Observations in the East." + +=_31._= FIRST SIGHT OF MOUNT SINAI. + +For two hours we ascended this wild, narrow pass, enclosed between +stupendous granite cliffs, whose debris encumbered the defile, often +rendering the passage difficult and dangerous. Escaping from the pass, +we crossed the head of a basin-like plain, which declined to the +south-west, and ascending gradually, gloomy, precipitous, mountain +masses rose to view on either hand, with detached snow-beds lying in +their clefts. The caravan moved slowly, and apparently with a more +solemn, measured tread. The Bedouins became serious and silent, and +looked steadily before them, as if to catch the first glimpse of some +revered object. The space before us gradually expanded, when suddenly +Tualeb, pointing to a black, perpendicular cliff, whose two riven and +rugged summits rose some twelve or fifteen hundred feet directly in +front of us, exclaimed, _"Gebel Mousa!"_ How shall I describe the effect +of that announcement? Not a word was spoken by Moslem or Christian, but +slowly and silently we advanced into the still expanding plain, our eyes +immovably fixed on the frowning precipices of the stern and desolate +mountain. We were doubtless on the plain where Israel encamped at the +giving of the law, and that grand and gloomy height before us was Sinai, +on which God descended in fire, and the whole mountain was enveloped In +smoke, and shook under the tread of the Almighty, while his presence was +proclaimed by the long, loud peals of repeated thunder, above which +the blast of the trumpet was heard waxing loader and louder, and +reverberating amid the stern and gloomy mountain heights around; and +then God spoke with Moses. + +[Footnote 10: A native of Kentucky; is deemed one of the most eloquent +divines in the Methodist church.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Leonard Bacon, 1802._= (Manual, p, 480.) + +From a "Missionary Sermon." + +=_32._= THE DAY APPROACHING. + +The time is to come when the world will be filled with the knowledge, +the fear, and the praise of God Not always will war deluge the earth +with fire and blood. Not always will idolatry offend the heavens with +its abominations. Not always will despotism, political and spiritual, +national and domestic, degrade and corrupt the masses of mankind. Not +always will superstition, on the one hand, and infidelity, on the other, +reject and despise the blessed revelation of forgiveness for sinners +through Jesus, the Lamb of God. Not always will cold philosophy, and +erratic enthusiasm, and fanaticism fierce and malignant, conspire to +corrupt and pervert the gospel itself, turning even the streams from the +fountain of life into waters of bitterness and poison. No, no; the time +will come when the sun, in his daily journey round the renovated world, +shall waken with his morning beam in every human dwelling the voice of +joyful, thankful, spiritual worship. Then shall the boundless soul of +Immanuel, who once travailed in the agony of the world's redemption, "be +satisfied" with his victories over death and sin. The ransomed of the +Lord shall return and come to Zion with songs, and with garlands of +everlasting joy; and from the earth, no longer accursed for the sake of +man, sorrow and sighing shall flee away. + + * * * * * + +From the New Englander. + +=_33._= THE BENEFITS OF CAPITAL. + +What wealth can be created without capital? Robinson Crusoe, on his +lonely island, was a capitalist as well as a laborer and a land-holder. +Put him down there without any capital--simply a naked, featherless, +two-legged and two-handed, animal, without clothes, without a gun or a +fish-hook, without hoe, or hatchet, or knife, or rusty nail, without a +particle of food to keep him from fainting, and what will become of him? +He gathers perhaps some wild fruits from the bushes; he picks up perhaps +some shell-fish from the water's edge; he surprises a fawn or a kid, and +throttles it and tears it to pieces with his fingers; he kindles a fire +perhaps by rubbing two dry sticks together till they ignite with the +friction; and so he keeps himself alive for a few days; but how little +progress does he make! But let him by any means have a little to begin +with in the shape of implements and materials; give him an axe or a +spade, a jack-knife, or only a fragment of an iron hoop, give him a gill +of seed wheat, or a single potato, or no more than a grain of maize, for +planting; and how soon will his condition be changed! He has begun to +be, even in this small way, a capitalist; and his labor, drawing +something from the past, begins to reach into the future. Instead of +spending all his time and strength in a constant scratching for the food +of to-day, how soon will he have a blanket of skins, and a hut, and a +garden in which he is preparing to-day the food of future months. Give +him now a little more capital; let him have the means of stocking his +farm with some sort of domestic animals; give him only a steer and a +heifer, or even a pair of goats, and how soon will he begin to be rich. + + * * * * * + + +=_James W. Alexander, 1804-1859._= (Manual, p. 480.) + +From his "Discourses on Christian Faith and Practice." + +=_34._= THE CHURCH A TEMPLE. + +In surveying the past, we observe a beautiful fitness and an enchanting +variety in the materials which have been already built into that part +of the edifice which has thus far been reared. How unlike the corps +of prophets to the corps of apostles; and how unlike the several +individuals of each. We have Scripture authority for placing these +among the most honorable and sustaining parts of the fabric, near the +corner-stone: for we are "built upon the foundation of the apostles and +prophets." Isaiah with his evangelic clarion. Jeremiah with his pastoral +reed of sorrows, and David with his many-voiced harp, sometimes loud in +notes of triumph, and sometimes subdued to the voice of weeping, stand +out with a marked individuality which becomes the more surprising, the +more nearly we examine the distinctive features. They may be likened +to those immense but goodly stones, carried up in courses, along the +precipitous side of the valley, to form the basis for the temple of +Solomon. The twelve apostles, including the last, and humanly speaking, +the greatest, though brethren, how unlike. Who for an instant, could +mistake Paul for Peter, or either of them for John. They occupy salient +angles of the great foundation, and lie nearest to the corner-stone, +elect and precious. Some of their brethren, though not visible in the +front which meets the eye, may have done equal service in the bearing +up of the mass. Martyrs and confessors found their place, in succeeding +ages, as the wall advanced; some as glorious for ornament as strong for +use. When love needed a signal display, amidst the blood of martyrdom, +we see it immortalized in an Ignatius and a Polycarp. When stalking +heresy needed a front of steel to stand unmoved against all its columns, +we find an "Athanasius against the world." When the language of +Greece is to be elevated to new dignity by conveying the wonders of +Christianity, we hear the golden eloquence of a Basil and a Chrysostom. +When Roman philosophy had died out of the world, we behold it revived in +an Augustine, the father of the fathers. Later down in ages, we catch +glimpses even amidst Romish corruptions of a Bernard and a Kempis. The +note of alarm is given to a sleeping carnal church, first by Wicliff, +Huss, and Jerome, then by Zwingle, Luther, Calvin, and Knox. + + * * * * * + + +=_Martin John Spaulding,[11] 1810-1872._= + +From "Sketches of the Early Catholic Missions in Kentucky." + +=_35._= LIFE IN THE NEW SETTLEMENTS. + +The early Catholic emigrants to Kentucky, in common with their brethren +of other denominations, had to endure many privations and hardships. +As we may well conceive, there were few luxuries to be found in the +wilderness, in the midst of which they had fixed their new habitations. +They often suffered even for the most indispensable necessaries of life. +To obtain salt, they had to travel many miles to the licks, through a +country infested with savages; and they were often obliged to remain +there for several days, until they could procure a supply. + +There were then no regular roads in Kentucky. The forests were filled +with a luxuriant undergrowth, thickly interspersed with the cane, and the +whole closely interlaced with the wild pea-vine. These circumstances +rendered them nearly impassable; and almost the only chance of effecting +a passage through this vegetable wilderness, was by following the paths +or traces made by the herds of buffalo and other wild beasts. Luckily +these traces were numerous, especially in the vicinity of the licks, +which the buffalo were in the habit of frequenting, to drink the salt +water, or lick the earth impregnated with salt. + +The new colonists resided in log-cabins, rudely constructed, with no +glass in the windows, with floors of dirt, or, in the better sort of +dwellings, of puncheons of split timber, roughly hewed with the axe. +After they had worn out the clothing brought with them from the old +settlements, both men and women were under the necessity of wearing +buckskin or homespun apparel. Such a thing as a store was not known +in Kentucky for many years: and the names of broadcloth, ginghams +and calicoes, were never even so much as breathed. Moccasins made of +buckskin, supplied the place of our modern shoes, blankets thrown over +the shoulder, answered the purpose of our present fashionable coats and +cloaks; and handkerchiefs tied around the head served instead of hats +and bonnets. A modern fashionable bonnet would have been a matter of +real wonderment in those days of unaffected simplicity. + +The furniture of the cabins was of the same primitive character. Stools +were used instead of chairs: the table was made of slabs of timber, +rudely put together. Wooden vessels and platters supplied the place +of our modern plates and china-ware; and a "tin cup was an article of +delicate furniture, almost as rare as an iron-fork[12]," The beds were +either placed on the floor, or on bedsteads of puncheons, supported by +forked pieces of timber, driven into the ground, or resting on pins +let into auger-holes in the sides of the cabin. Blankets, and bear and +buffalo-skins, constituted often the principal bed-covering. + +One of the chief resources for food was the chase. All kinds of game +were then very abundant; and when the hunter chanced, to have a goodly +supply of ammunition, his fortune was made for the year. The game was +plainly dressed, and served up on wooden platters, with corn-bread, and +the Indian dish-the well known _hominy_. The corn was ground with great +difficulty, on the laborious hand-mills; for mills of other descriptions +were then, and for many years afterwards, unknown in Kentucky. + +Such was the simple manner of life led by our "pilgrim fathers." They +had fewer luxuries, but perhaps were, withal, more happy than their more +fastidious descendants. Hospitality was not then an empty name; every +log-cabin was freely thrown open to all who chose to share in the best +cheer its inmates could afford. The early settlers of Kentucky were +bound together by the strong ties of common hardships and dangers--to +say nothing of other bonds of union--and they clung together with great +tenacity. On the slightest alarm of Indian invasion, they all made +common cause, and flew together to the rescue. There was less +selfishness, and more generous chivalry; less bickering, and more +cordial charity, then, than at present; notwithstanding all our boasted +refinement. + +[Footnote 11: Born in Kentucky, and long eminent as a controversial +writer and a Prelate of the Roman Catholic church. His "sketches" give +much interesting information respecting the early history of that church +at the West.] + +[Footnote 12: Marshall--History of Kentucky.] + + * * * * * + + +=_James Henry Thornwell,[13] 1811-1862._= + +From the "Discourses on Truth." + +=_36._= EVIL TENDENCIES OF AN ACT OF SIN. + +There is a double tendency in every voluntary determination, one to +propagate itself, the other to weaken or support, according to its own +moral quality, the general principle of virtue. Every sin, therefore, +imparts a proclivity to other acts of the same sort, and disturbs and +deranges, at the same time, the whole moral constitution, it tends to +the formation of special habits, and to the superinducing of a general +debility of principle, which lays a man open to defeat from every +species of temptation. The extent to which a single act shall produce +this double effect, depends upon its intensity, its intensity depends +upon the fullness and energy of will which will enter into it, and the +energy of will depends upon the strength of the motives resisted. An +act, therefore, which concludes an earnest and protracted conflict, +which has not been reached without a stormy debate in the soul, which +marks the victory of evil over the love of character, sensibility to +shame, the authority of conscience and the fear of God, an act of this +sort concentrates in itself the essence of all the single determinations +which preceded it, and possesses power to generate a habit and to +derange the constitution, equal to that which the whole series of +resistances to duty, considered as so many individual instances of +transgression, is fitted to impart. By one such act a man is impelled +with an amazing momentum in the path of evil. He lives years of sin in a +day or an hour. It is always a solemn crisis when the first step is to +be taken in a career of guilt, against which nature and education, +or any other strong influences protest. The results are unspeakably +perilous when a man has to fight his way into crime. The victory creates +an epoch in his life. He is from that hour, without a miracle of grace, +a lost man. The earth is strewed with wrecks of character which were +occasioned by one fatal determination at a critical point in life, when +the will stood face to face with duty, and had to make its decision +deliberately and intensely for evil. + +[Footnote 13: A Presbyterian divine, and professor of Theology, in South +Carolina, his native state: a distinguished theological writer of the +South.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Charles P. McIlvaine,[14] 1799-1873._= + +From a Sermon on the Resurrection of Christ. + +=_37._=. ATTESTATIONS OF THE RESURRECTION. + +Here we remark, in general, that his resurrection was the great sign +and crowning miracle to which our Lord, all the way of his ministry, to +the day of his crucifixion, referred both friends and opposers, for the +final confirmation of all his claims and doctrines. He staked all on the +promise that he would rise from death. The Jews asked of him a sign, +that they might believe. He answered, "There shall no sign be given, but +the sign of the prophet Jonas. For as Jonas was three days and nights +in the whale's belly, so shall the Son of Man be three days and three +nights in the heart of the earth." Thus on that single; event, the +resurrection of Christ, the whole of Christianity, as it all centres in, +and depends on him, was made to hinge. Redemption waited the evidence +of resurrection. Nothing was to be accounted as sealed and finally +certified, till Jesus should deliver himself from the power of death. +All of the gospel, all the hopes it brings to us, all the promises with +which it comforts us, were taken for their final verdict, as true or +false, sufficient or worthless, to the door of that jealously-guarded +and stone-sealed sepulchre, waiting the settlement of the question, +_will he rise?_ + +But an event so momentous was not left to but one class of evidences. +There was a way by which thousands at once were made to receive as +powerful assurance that Christ was risen, as if they had seen him in his +risen body. Jesus, before his death, had made a great promise to his +disciples, to be fulfilled by him only after his death and resurrection; +a promise impossible to be fulfilled if his resurrection failed; because +then, not only would he be under the power of death, but all his claim +to divine power would be brought to nought. It was the promise of the +Holy Ghost. "When the Comforter is come whom I will send unto you from +the Father, even the Spirit of Truth, which proceedeth from the Father, +he shall testify of me, he shall glorify me." + +It was after he had "shown himself alive after his passion, by many +infallible proofs, being seen of his disciples forty days, and speaking +to them of the things pertaining to the Kingdom of God," that the day +for the accomplishment of that promise came. The day was that which +commemorated the giving of the law on Mount Sinai. It was now to +witness the going forth of the gospel from Jerusalem. I need not relate +to you the wonderful events of that day of Pentecost, the coming of the +Holy Ghost with the "sound as of a rushing mighty wind" that "filled all +the house;" the cloven tongues "like as of fire," which sat on each of +the disciples; the evidence that it was the Spirit of God which had then +come, given in the sudden and astonishing change which immediately came +over the apostles, transforming them from weak and timid men to the +boldest and strongest; in the change which suddenly came upon the power +of their ministry, converting it from the weak agent it had previously +been in contact with all the unbelief and wickedness of men into an +instrument so mighty that out of a congregation of Jews of all nations, +many of whom had probably partaken in the crucifixion of Christ, three +thousand that day were bowed down to repentance and subdued to his +obedience. + +Thus was the day of Pentecost, a great day of testimony to the life and +divine power, and consequently the resurrection of Christ. Each of those +who heard the divers tongues of the ministry of that day, each of the +three thousand, was a witness of the same. + +[Footnote 14: A native of New Jersey; in early life Chaplain and +Professor of Moral Philosophy in the Military Academy at West Point +and long time Bishop of Ohio in the Protestant Episcopal Church. His +Treatise on the Evidences of Christianity has great merit, and his +theological and controversial writings are in high esteem: greatly +venerated for his truly evangelical character.] + + * * * * * + + +=_George W. Bethune, 1805-1862._= (Manual, p. 487.) + +From the "Expository Lectures on the Heidelberg Catechism." + +=_38._= ASPIRATIONS TOWARDS HEAVEN. + +Our Christian life is a course through, this world, which we are to run +looking unto Jesus, at the right hand of the throne of God. The mark of +the prize of the high calling is in heaven. Nay, it is the hope of +heaven which keeps our souls surely and steadfastly. No matter what +other proofs of his being a Christian, a man may think that he has--what +moral virtue, what present zeal, what reverence for God and sacred +things, what kindness and faithfulness to his fellow-men,--if he have +not this longing thirst for heaven, he should doubt his Christianity. +The regenerate soul can be satisfied with nothing short of awaking with +the divine likeness. We cannot pray aright without hoping for heaven, +for there only will the askings of a pious heart be fully granted. We +cannot give thanks aright without hoping for heaven, for there are the +consummate blessings of the Redeemer's purchase. We cannot serve God +aright without hoping for heaven, for there only is our faithfulness to +be acknowledged, and our wages paid. Our hopes should be submissive, and +our longing patient; we should be willing to remain so long as God has +work for us here, but ever with a yearning sense that to depart and be +with Christ is far better. Grace in the heart is an ascensive power, +ever lifting its desires upward and upward, and so above the temptations +of time and earth. We can never drive this world out of our hearts, but +by bringing heaven into them. And heaven meets our affections when they +ascend, as it met Jesus; and he who so walks, climbing the arduous way +from the Valley of Baca to the temple on the mount (for we must walk +until we get our wings of angelic strength), will so approach the +heavenly threshold, as, like holy Enoch, he can cross it at a step. + +Oh, dear friends, what an advantage have they whose Jesus is in heaven, +over those first disciples when they had him with them personally on +earth. They were for building tabernacles on Tabor, looking for a +temporal kingdom, walking by sight and not by faith; but our Lord now +above, draws up to a better, higher, holier home, our aims, our desires, +and our love. + + * * * * * + +From "A Lecture:" Philadelphia, 1840. + +=_39._= THE PROSPECTS OF ART IN THE UNITED STATES. + +It is well for those who have sufficient wealth, to bring among us good +works of foreign or ancient masters, especially if they allow free +access to them for students and copyists. The true gems are, however, +rare, and very costly. A single masterpiece would swallow up the whole +sum which even the richest of our countrymen would be willing to devote +in the way of paintings. I hope, however, soon to see the day when +there shall be a fondness for making collections of works by _American +artists_, or those resident among us. Such collections, judiciously +made, would supply the best history of the rise and progress of the arts +in the United States. They would, more than any other means, stimulate +artists to a generous emulation. They would reflect high honor upon +their possessors, as men who love Art for its own sake, and are willing +to serve and encourage it. They would highly gratify the foreigner of +taste who comes curious to observe the working of our institutions and +our habits of life. He does not cross the sea to find Vandykes and +Murillos. He can enjoy them at home; but he wishes to discover what the +children of the West can do in following or excelling European example. +The expense of such a collection could not be very great. A few +thousands of dollars, less than is often lavished upon the French plate +glass and lustres, damask hangings, and Turkey carpets of a pair of +parlors (more than which few of our houses can boast), would cover their +walls with good specimens of American art, and do far more credit to the +taste and heart of the owner. + + * * * * * + + +=_William R. Williams,[15] 1804._= (Manual, p. 480.) + +From "The Lectures on the Lord's Prayer." + +=_40._= LEAD US NOT INTO TEMPTATION. + +We are warranted in praying to be brought through, temptation, when it +is not of our own seeking, but of _God's sending_. If we walk without +care and without vigilance, if we acknowledge not God in our ways, and +take counsel at Ekron, and not at Zion,--leaving the Bible unread, and +the closet unvisited,--if the sanctuary and the Sabbath lose their +ancient hold upon us, and we then go on frowardly in the way of our own +eyes, and after the counsel of our own heart, we have reason to tremble. +A conscience quick and sensitive, under the presence of the indwelling +Spirit, is like the safety-lamp of the miner, a ready witness and a +mysterious guardian against the deathful damps, that unseen, but fatal, +cluster around our darkling way. To neglect prayer and watching, is to +lay aside that lamp, and then, though the eye see no danger and the +ear hear no warning, spiritual death may be gathering around us her +invisible vapors, stored with ruin, and rife for a sudden explosion. We +are _tempting God_, and shall _we_ be delivered? + +And if this be so with, the negligent professor of religion, is it not +applicable also to the openly careless, who never acknowledged Christ's +claims to the heart and the life? + +With an evil nature, and a mortal body, and a brittle and brief tenure +of earth, you are traversing perilous paths. Had you God for your +friend, your case would be far other than it is. Peril and snare might +still beset you; but you would confront and traverse them, as the +Hebrews of old did the weedy bed of the Red Sea, its watery walls +guarding their dread way, the pillar of light the vanguard, and the +pillar of cloud the rearguard of their mysterious progress, the ark +and the God of the ark piloting and defending them.... You are like a +presumptuous and unskilful traveller, passing under the arch of the +waters of Niagara. The falling cataract thundering above you; a +slippery, slimy rock beneath your gliding feet; the smoking, roaring +abyss yawning beside you; the imprisoned winds beating back your +breath; the struggling daylight coming but mistily to the bewildered +eyes,--what is the terror of your condition if your guide, in whose +grasp your fingers tremble, be malignant, and treacherous, and suicidal, +determined on destroying your life at the sacrifice of his own? He +assures you that he will bring you safely through upon the other side of +the fall. And SUCH is SATAN. Lost himself, and desperate, he is set on +swelling the number of his compeers in shame, and woe, and ruin. + +[Footnote 15: A Baptist divine, born in New York city, where he has long +been settled over a church; eminent for general scholarship and literary +ability.] + + * * * * * + + +=_George B. Cheever, 1807-_=(Manual, pp. 480, 490.) + +From "The Wanderings of a Pilgrim." + +=_41._= MONT BLANC. + +It is like those heights of ambition so much coveted in the world, and +so glittering in the distance, where, if men live to reach them, they +cannot live upon them. They may have all the appliances and means of +life, as these French _savants_ carried their tents to pitch upon the +summit of Mont Blanc; but the peak that looked so warm and glittering in +the sunshine, and of such a rosy hue in the evening rays, was too deadly +cold, and swept by blasts too fierce and cutting; they were glad to +relinquish the attempt, and come down. The view of the party a few hours +below the summit, was a sight of deep interest. So was the spectacle of +the immeasurable ridges and fields, gulfs and avalanches, heights and +depths, unfathomable chasms and impassable precipices, of ice and snow, +of such dazzling whiteness, of such endless extent, in such gigantic +masses. + + * * * * * + +From "Lectures on the Pilgrim's Progress." + +=_42._=. SIN DISTORTS THE JUDGMENT. + +On the other hand, those who do not love God, cannot expect to find in +his Word a system of truth that will please their own hearts. A sinful +heart can have no right views of God, and of course will have defective +views of his Word: for sin distorts the judgment, and overturns the +balance of the mind on all moral subjects, far more than even the best +of men are aware of. There is, there can be, no true reflection of God +or of his Word, from the bosom darkened with guilt, from the heart at +enmity with him. That man will always look at God through the medium of +his own selfishness, and at God's Word through the coloring of his own +wishes, prejudices, and fears. + +A heart that loves the Saviour, and rejoices in God as its Sovereign, +reflects back in calmness the perfect view of his character, which +it finds in his Word. Behold on the borders of a mountain lake, the +reflection of the scene above, received into the bosom of the lake +below! See that crag projecting, the wild flowers that, hang out from +it, and bend as if to gaze at their own forms in the water beneath. +Observe that plot of green grass above, that tree springing from the +cleft, and over all, the quiet sky reflected in all its softness and +depth from the lake's steady surface. Does it not seem as if there were +two heavens. How perfect the reflection! And just as perfect and clear, +and free from confusion and perplexity, is the reflection of God's +character, and of the truths of his Word, from the quietness of the +heart that loves the Saviour, and rejoices in his supreme and sovereign +glory. + +Now look again. The wind is on the lake, and drives forward its waters +in crested and impetuous waves, angry and turbulent. Where is that sweet +image? There is no change above: the sky is as clear, the crag projects +as boldly, the flowers look just as sweet in their unconscious +simplicity; but below, banks, trees, and skies are all mingled in +confusion. There is just as much confusion in every unholy mind's idea +of God and his blessed Word. God and his truth are always clear, always +the same, but the passions of men fill their own hearts with obscurity +and turbulence; their depravity is itself obscurity; and through all +this perplexity and wilful ignorance, they contend that God is just such +a being as they behold him, and that they are very good beings in his +sight. We have heard of a defect in the bodily vision, that represents +all objects upside down; that man would certainly be called insane, +who, under the influence of this misfortune, should so blind his +understanding, as to believe and assert that men walked on their heads, +and that the trees grew downwards. Now, is it not a much greater +insanity for men who in their hearts do not love God, and in their lives +perhaps insult and disobey him, to give credit to their own perverted +misrepresentations of him and of his Word? As long as men will continue +to look at God's truth through the medium of their own pride and +prejudice, so long will they have mistaken views of God and eternity, so +long will their own self righteousness look better to them for a resting +place, than the glorious righteousness of Him, who of God is made unto +us our Wisdom, Righteousness, Sanctification, and Redemption. + + * * * * * + + +=_Horace Bushnell, 1804-_= (Manual, p, 480.) + +From the "Sermons for the New Life." + +=_43._= UNCONSCIOUS INFLUENCE. + +The Bible calls the good man's life a light, and it is the nature of +light to flow out spontaneously in all directions, and fill the world +unconsciously with its beams. So the Christian shines, it would say, not +so much because he will, as because he is a luminous object. Not that +the active influence of Christians is made of no account in the figure, +but only that this symbol of light has its propriety in the fact +that their unconscious influence is the chief influence, end has the +precedence in its power over the world. And yet there are many who will +be ready to think that light is a very tame and feeble instrument, +because it is noiseless. An earthquake for example, is to them a much +more vigorous, and effective agency. Hear how it comes thundering +through the solid foundations of nature. It rocks a whole continent. The +noblest works of man--cities, monuments, and temples--are in a moment +levelled to the ground or swallowed down the opening gulfs of fire.... +But lot the light of the morning cease, and return no more: let the +hour of morning come, and bring with it no dawn; the outcries of a +horror-stricken world fill the air, and make, as it were, the darkness +audible. The beasts go wild and frantic at the loss of the sun. The +vegetable growths turn pale and die. A. chill creeps on, and frosty +winds begin to howl across the freezing earth. Colder and yet colder +is the night. The vital blood, at length, of all creatures stops, +congealed. Down goes the frost toward the earth's centre. The heart of +the sea is frozen; nay, the earthquakes are themselves frozen in, +under their fiery caverns. The very globe itself, too, and all the +fellow-planets that have lost their sun, are become mere balls of ice, +swinging silent in the darkness. Such is the light which revisits us in +the silence of the morning. It make no shock or scar. It would not wake +an infant in his cradle. And yet it perpetually new creates the world, +rescuing it each morning as a prey from night and chaos. So the +Christian is a light, even "the light of the world;" and we must not +think that, because he shines insensibly or silently, as a mere luminous +object, he is therefore powerless. The greatest powers are ever those +which lie back of the little stirs and commotions of nature: and I +verily believe that the insensible influences of good men are as much +more potent than what I have called their voluntary or active, as the +great silent powers of nature are of greater consequence than her little +disturbances and tumults. The law of human influence is deeper than many +suspect, and they lose sight of it altogether. The outward endeavors +made by good men or bad, to sway others, they call their influence; +whereas it is, in fact, but a fraction, and in most cases, but a very +small fraction, of the good or evil that flows out of their lives. + + * * * * * + +From "Christ and His Salvation." + +=_44._= THE TRUE REST OF THE CHRISTIAN. + +Once more the analogies of the sleep of Jesus suggest the Christian +right, and even duty, of those relaxations, which are necessary, at +times, to loosen the strain of life and restore the freshness of its +powers. Christ, as we have seen, actually tore himself away from +multitudes waiting to be healed, that he might refit himself by sleep. +He had a way, too, of retiring often to mountain solitudes and by-places +on the sea, partly for the resting of his exhausted energies. Sometimes +also he called his disciples off in this manner, saying, "come ye +yourselves apart into a desert place and rest awhile." Not that every +disciple is, of course, to retire into solitudes and desert places, when +he wants recreation. Jesus was obliged to seek such places to escape +the continual press of the crowd. In our day, a waking rest of travel, +change of scene, new society, is permitted, and when it is a privilege +assumed by faithful men, to recruit them for their works of duty they +have it by God's sanction, and even as a part of the sound economy of +life. Going after a turn of gaiety, or dissipation, not after Christian +rest, or going after rest only because you are wearied and worried by +selfish overdoings, troubled and spent by toils that serve an idol, is +a very different matter. The true blessing of rest is on you, only when +you carry a good mind with you, able to look back on works of industry +and faithfulness, suspended for a time, that you may do them more +effectually. Going in such a frame, you shall rest awhile, as none but +such can rest. Nature will dress herself in beauty to your eye, calm +thoughts will fan you with their cooling breath, and the joy of the Lord +will be strength to your wasted brain and body. Ah, there is no luxury +of indulgence to be compared with this true Christian rest! Money will +not buy it, shows and pleasures can not woo its approach, no conjuration +of art, or contrived gaiety, will compass it even for an hour: but it +settles, like dew, unsought, upon the faithful servant of duty, bathing +his weariness and recruiting his powers for a new engagement in his +calling. Go ye thus apart and rest awhile if God permits. + + * * * * * + + +=_Albert Taylor Bledsoe,[16] about 1809-_= + +From "The Theodicy." + +=_45._= MORAL EVIL CONSISTENT WITH THE HOLINESS OF GOD. + +The argument of the atheist assumes, as we have seen, that a Being of +infinite power could easily prevent sin, and cause holiness to exist. It +assumes that it is possible, that it implies no contradiction, to create +an intelligent moral agent, and place It beyond all liability to sin. +But this is a mistake. Almighty power itself, we may say with, the most +profound reverence, cannot create such a being, and place it beyond the +possibility of sinning. If it could not sin, there would be no merit, no +virtue, in its obedience. That is to say, it would not be a moral agent +at all, but a machine merely. The power to do wrong, as well as to do +right, is included in the very idea of a moral and accountable agent, +and no such agent can possibly exist without being invested with such +a power. To suppose such an agent to be created, and placed beyond all +liability to sin, is to suppose it to be what it is, and not what it is, +at one and the same time; it is to suppose a creature to be endowed with +a power to do wrong, and yet destitute of such a power, which is a plain +contradiction. Hence Omnipotence cannot create such a being, and deny to +it a power to do evil, or secure it against the possibility of sinning. + +[Footnote 16: The most prominent among the living philosophical writers +of the South: at present editor of the Southern Review.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Richard Fuller,[17] 1808-_= + +From a Sermon. + +=_46._= THE DESIRE OF ALL NATIONS SHALL COME. _Haggai_ ii. 7. + +Follow the adorable Jesus from scene to scene of ever deepening insult +and sorrow, tracked everywhere by spies hunting for the precious blood. +Behold his sacred face swollen with tears and stripes; and, last of all, +ascend Mount Calvary, and view there the amazing spectacle: earth and +hell gloating on the gashed form of the Lord of Glory; men and devils +glutting their malice in the agony of the Prince of Life; and all the +scattered rays of vengeance which would have consumed our guilty race, +converging and beating in focal intensity upon Him of whom the Eternal +twice exclaimed, in a voice from heaven, "This is my beloved Son, in +whom I am well pleased." After this, what are our emotions? Can we ever +be cold or faithless? No, my brethren, it is impossible, unless we +forget this Saviour, and lose sight of that cross on which he poured out +his soul for us. + +That is an affecting passage in Roman history which records the death +of Manlius. At night, and on the Capitol, fighting hand to hand, had he +repelled the Gauls, and saved the city, when all seemed lost. Afterwards +he was accused; but the Capitol towered in sight of the forum where he +was tried, and, as he was about to be condemned, he stretched out his +hands, and pointed, weeping, to that arena of his triumph. At this the +people burst into tears, and the judges could not pronounce sentence. +Again the trial proceeded, but was again defeated; nor could he be +convicted until they had removed him to a low spot, from which the +Capitol was invisible. And behold my brethren, what I am saying. While +the cross is in view, vainly will earth and sin seek to shake the +Christian's loyalty and devotion; one look at that purple monument of +a love which alone, and when all was dark and lost, interposed for our +rescue, and their efforts will be baffled. Low must we sink, and blotted +from our hearts must be the memory of that deed, before we can become +faithless to the Redeemer's cause, and perfidious to his glory. + +[Footnote 17: A Baptist divine of much distinction: a native of South +Carolina but long settled in Baltimore.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Henry Ward Beecher, 1813-_= (Manual, p. 480.) + +From the "Star Papers." + +=_47._= A PICTURE IN A COLLEGE AT OXFORD. + +I was much affected by a head of Christ. Not that it met my ideal of +that sacred front, but because it took me in a mood that clothed it with +life and reality. For one blessed moment I was with the Lord. I know +him. I loved him. My eyes I could not close for tears. My poor tongue +kept silence; but my heart spoke, and I loved and adored. The amazing +circuit of one's thoughts in so short a period is wonderful. They circle +round through all the past, and up through the whole future; and both +the past and future are the present, and are one. For one moment there +arose a keen anguish, like a shooting pang, for that which I was; and I +thought my heart would break that I could bring but only such a nature +to my Lord; but in a moment, as quick as the flash of sunlight which +follows the shadow of summer clouds across the fields, there seemed to +spring out upon me from my Master a certainty of love so great and noble +as utterly to consume my unworth, and leave me shining bright, as if it +were impossible for Christ to love a heart without making it pure and +beautiful by the resting on it of that illuming affection, just as the +sun bathes into beauty the homeliest object when he looks full upon it. + + * * * * * + +=_48._= FROST ON THE WINDOW. + +But the indefatigable night repairs the desolation. New pictures supply +the waste ones. New cathedrals there are, new forests, fringed and +blossoming, new sceneries, and new races of extinct animals. We are rich +every morning, and poor every noon. One day with us measures the space +of two hundred years in kingdoms--a hundred years to build up, and a +hundred years to decay and destroy; twelve hours to overspread the +evanescent pane with glorious beauty, and twelve to extract and +dissipate the pictures.... Shall we not reverently and rejoicingly +behold in these morning pictures, wrought without color, and kissed upon +the window by the cold lips of Winter, another instance of that Divine +Beneficence of beauty which suffuses the heavens? + + * * * * * + +From "Lectures to Young Men." + +=_49._= NATURE, DESIGNED FOR OUR ENJOYMENT. + +The _necessity_ of amusement is admitted on all hands. There is an +appetite of the eye, of the ear, and of every sense, for which God has +provided the material. Gaiety of every degree, this side of puerile +levity, is wholesome to the body, to the mind, and to the morals. Nature +is a vast repository of manly enjoyments. The magnitude of God's works +is not less admirable than its exhilarating beauty. The rudest forms +have something of beauty; the ruggedest strength is graced with some +charm; the very pins, and rivets, and clasps of nature, are attractive +by qualities of beauty, more than is necessary for mere utility. The sun +could go down without gorgeous clouds; evening could advance without its +evanescent brilliance; trees might have flourished without symmetry; +flowers have existed without odor, and fruit without flavor. When I have +journeyed through forests, where ten thousand shrubs and vines exist +without apparent use; through prairies, whose undulations exhibit sheets +of flowers innumerable, and absolutely dazzling the eye with their +prodigality of beauty--beauty, not a tithe of which is ever seen by +man--I have said, it is plain that God is himself passionately fond of +beauty, and the _earth_ is his garden, as an _acre_ is man's. God has +made us like Himself, to be pleased by the universal beauty of the +world. He has made provision in nature, in society, and in the family, +for amusement and exhilaration enough to fill the heart with the +perpetual sunshine of delight. + +Upon this broad earth, purfled with flowers, scented with odors, +brilliant in colors, vocal with echoing and re-echoing melody, I take +my stand against all demoralizing pleasure. Is it not enough that our +Father's house is so full of dear delights, that we must wander prodigal +to the swine-herd for husks, and to the slough for drink?--when the +trees of God's heritage bend over our head and solicit our hand to pluck +the golden fruitage, must we still go in search of the apples of Sodom, +outside fair and inside ashes. + +Men shall crowd to the circus to hear clowns, and see rare feats of +horsemanship; but a bird may poise beneath the very sun, or flying +downward, swoop from the high heaven; then flit with graceful ease +hither and thither, pouring liquid song as if it were a perennial +fountain of sound--no man cares for that. + +Upon the stage of life, the vastest tragedies are performing in every +act; nations pitching headlong to their final catastrophe; others, +raising their youthful forms to begin the drama of existence. The world +of society is as full of exciting interest, as nature is full of beauty. +The great dramatic throng of life is bustling along--the wise, the fool, +the clown, the miser, the bereaved, the broken-hearted. Life mingles +before us smiles and tears, sighs and laughter, joy and gloom, as the +spring mingles the winter-storm and summer-sunshine. To this vast +Theatre which God hath builded, where stranger plays are seen than ever +author writ, man seldom cares to come. When God dramatizes, when nations +act, or all the human kind conspire to educe the vast catastrophe, men +sleep and snore, and let the busy scene go on, unlocked, unthought +upon.... It is my object then, not to withdraw the young from pleasure, +but from unworthy pleasures; not to lessen their enjoyments, but to +increase them, by rejecting the counterfeit and the vile. + + * * * * * + +From "Norwood." + +=_50._= LIFE IN THE COUNTRY. + +It was this union of seclusion and publicity that made Norwood a place +of favorite resort, through the summer, of artists, of languid scholars, +and of persons of quiet tastes. There was company for all that shunned +solitude, and solitude for all that were weary of company. Each house +was secluded from its neighbor. Yards and gardens full of trees and +shrubbery, the streets lined with venerable trees, gave the town at a +little distance the appearance of having been built in an orchard or a +forest-park. A few steps and you could be alone--a few steps too would +bring you among crowds. Where else could one watch the gentle conflict +between sounds and silence with such dreamy joy?--or make idleness seem +so nearly like meditation?--or more nimbly chase the dreams of night +with even brighter day-dreams, wondering every day what has become of +the day before, and each week where the week has gone, and in autumn +what has become of the summer, that trod so noiselessly that none knew +how swift were its footsteps! The town filled by July, and was not empty +again till late October. + +There are but two perfect months in our year--June and October. People +from the city usually arrange to miss both. June is the month of +gorgeous greens; October, the month of all colors. June has the full +beauty of youth; October has the splendor of ripeness. Both of them are +out-of-door months. If the year has anything to tell you, listen now! If +these months teach the heart nothing, one may well shut up the book of +the year. + + * * * * * + +From "The Life of Jesus the Christ." + +=_51._= THE CONCEPTION OF ANGELS, SUPERHUMAN. + +The angels of the oldest records are like the angels of the latest. The +Hebrew thought had moved through a vast arc of the infinite cycle of +truth, between the days when Abraham came from Ur of Chaldea, and the +times of our Lord's stay on earth. But there is no development in angels +of later over those of an earlier date. They were as beautiful, as +spiritual, as pure and noble, at the beginning as at the close of the +old dispensation. Can such creatures, transcending earthly experience, +and far out-running any thing in the life of man, be creations of the +rude ages of the human understanding? We could not imagine the Advent +stripped of its angelic lore. The dawn without a twilight, the sun +without clouds of silver and gold, the morning on the fields without +dew-diamonds,--but not the Saviour without his angels? They shine within +the Temple, they bear to the matchless mother a message which would have +been a disgrace from mortal lips, but which from theirs fell upon her +as pure as dew-drops upon the lilies of the plain of Esdraelon. They +communed with the Saviour in his glory of transfiguration, sustained +him in the anguish of the garden, watched at the tomb; and as they had +thronged the earth at his coming, so they seem to have hovered in the +air in multitudes at the hour of his ascension. Beautiful as they seem, +they are never mere poetic adornments. The occasions of their appearing +are grand. The reasons are weighty. Their demeanor suggests and befits +the highest conception of superior beings. These are the very elements +that a rude age could not fashion. Could a sensuous age invent an order +of beings, which, touching the earth from a heavenly height on its most +momentous occasions, could still, after ages of culture had refined +the human taste and moral appreciation, remain ineffably superior in +delicacy, in pure spirituality, to the demands of criticism? Their very +coming and going is not with earthly movement. They suddenly are seen +in the air as one sees white clouds round out from the blue sky, in +a summer's day, that melt back even while one looks upon them. They +vibrate between the visible and the invisible. They come without motion. +They go without flight. They dawn and disappear. Their words are few, +but the Advent Chorus yet is sounding its music through the world. + + * * * * * + + +=_John McClintock,[18] 1814-1870._= + +From a Sermon on "The Ground of Man's Love to God." + +=_52._= THE CHRISTIAN THE ONLY TRUE LOVER OF NATURE. + +It is not too much to say that the only _true_ lover of nature, is he +that loves God in Christ. It is as with one standing in one of those +caves of unknown beauty of which travellers tell us. While it is dark, +nothing can be seen but the abyss, or at most, a faint glimmer of +ill-defined forms. But flash into it the light of a single torch, and +myriad splendors crowd upon the gaze of the beholder. He sees long-drawn +colonnades, sparkling with gems; chambers of beauty and glory open on +every hand, flashing back the light a thousand fold increased, and in +countless varied hues. So the sense of God's love in the heart gives an +eye for nature, and supplies the torch to illuminate its recesses of +beauty. For the ear that can hear them, ten thousand voices speak, and +all in harmony, the name of God! The sun, rolling in his majesty,-- + + "And with his tread, of thunder force, + Fulfilling his appointed course,"-- + +is but a faint and feeble image of the great central Light of the +universe. The spheres of heaven, in the perpetual harmony of their +unsleeping motion, swell the praise of God; the earth, radiant with +beauty, and smiling in joy, proclaims its Maker's love; and the +ocean,--that + + "Glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form + Glasses itself in tempests,"-- + +as it murmurs on the shore, or foams with its broad billows over the +deep, declares its God; and even the tempests, that, in their "rising +wrath, sweep sea and sky," still utter the name of Him who rides upon +the whirlwind and directs the storm. In a word, the whole universe is +but a temple, with God for its deity, and the redeemed _man_ for its +worshipper. + +[Footnote 18: Distinguished among the Methodist clergy for eloquence and +learning; a native of Pennsylvania.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Noah Porter,[19] 1811-_= + +From "The Science of Nature versus the Science of Man." + +=_53._= SCIENCE MAGNIFIES GOD. + +We contend at present only for the position that we cannot have a +science of nature which does not regard the spirit of man as a part of +nature. But is this all? Do man and nature exhaust the possibilities of +being? We cannot answer this question here. But we find suggestions from +the spectrum and the spectroscope which may be worth our heeding. The +materials with which we have to do in their most brilliant scientific +theories seem at first to overwhelm us with their vastness and +complexity. The hulks are so enormous, the forces are so mighty, the +laws are so wide-sweeping, and at times so pitiless, the distances are +so over-mastering, even the uses and beauties are so bewildering, that +we bow in mute and almost abject submission to the incomprehensible all; +of which we hesitate to affirm aught, except what has been manifest to +our observant senses and connected by our inseparable associations. We +forget what our overmastering thought has done in subjecting this +universe to its interpretations. Its vast distances have been +annihilated, for we have connected the distant with the near by the one +pervading force which Newton divined. We have analyzed the flame that +burns in our lamp, and the flame that burns in the sun, by the same +instrument,--connecting by a common affinity, at the same instant and +under the same eye, two agents, the farthest removed in place and the +most subtle in essence. As we have overcome distances, so we have +conquered time, reading the story of antecedent cycles with a confidence +equal to that with which we forecast the future ages. The philosopher +who penetrates the distant portions of the universe by the +_omnipresence_ of his scientific generalizations, who reads the secret +of the sun by the glance of his penetrating eye, has little occasion to +deny that all its forces may be mastered by a single all-knowing and +_omnipresent_ Spirit, and that its secrets can be read by one all-seeing +eye. The scientist who evolves the past in his confident thought, under +a few grand titles of generalized forces and relations, and who develops +and almost gives law to the future by his faith in the persistence of +force, has little reason to question the existence of an intellect +capable of deeper insight and larger foresight than his own, which can +grasp all the past and the future by an all-comprehending intelligence, +and can control its wants by a personal energy that is softened to +personal tenderness and love. + +[Footnote 19: A Congregational divine, born in Connecticut, long +Professor of Metaphysics in Yale College, and writer of many critical +Essays and Reviews. His treatise on "The Human Intellect," is the most +elaborate American work upon Psychology.] + + * * * * * + + +=_William Henry Milburn,[20] 1823-_= + +From "Lectures." + +=_54._= THE PIONEER PREACHERS OF THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. + +The spoken eloquence of New England is for the most part from +manuscript. Her first settlers brought old-world forms, and fashions +from the old world, with them. Their preachers were set an appalling +distance from their congregations. Between the pulpit, perched far up +toward the ceiling, and the seats, was an awful abysmal depth. Above the +lofty desk was dimly seen the white cravat, and above that the head +of the preacher. His eye was averted and fastened downward upon his +manuscript, and his discourse, or exercitation, or whatever it might be, +was delivered in a monotonous, regular cadence, probably relieved +from time to time by some quaint blunder, the result of indistinct +penmanship, or dim religious light. It was not this preacher's business +to arouse his audience. The theory of worship of the period was +opposed to that. This people did not wish excitement, or stimulus, or +astonishment, or agitation. They simply desired information; they wished +to be instructed; to have their judgment informed, or their reason +enlightened. Thus the preacher might safely remain perched up in his far +distant unimpassioned eyrie. + +But how would such a style of eloquence--if, indeed, truth will permit +the name of eloquence to be applied to the reading of matter from a +preconcerted manuscript--how would such a style of delivery be received +out in the wild West? Place your textual speaker out in the backwoods, +on the stump, where a surging tide of humanity streams strongly around +him, where the people press up toward him on every side, their keen +eyes intently perusing his to see if he be in real earnest,--"dead in +earnest"--and where, as with a thousand darts, their contemptuous scorn +would pierce him through if he were found playing a false game, trying +to pump up tears by mere acting, or arousing an excitement without +feeling it. Would such a style of oratory succeed there? By no means. +The place is different; the hearers are different; the time, the thing +required, all the circumstances, are totally different. Here, in the +vast unwalled church of nature, with the leafy tree-tops for a ceiling, +their massy stems for columns; with the endless mysterious cadences of +the forest for a choir; with the distant or nearer music and murmur of +streams, and the ever-returning voice of birds, sounding in their ears +for the made-up music of a picked band of exclusive singers: here stand +men whose ears are trained to catch the faintest foot-fall of the +distant deer, or the rustle of their antlers against branch or bough of +the forest track--whose eyes are skilled to discern the trail of savages +who leave scarce a track behind them; and who will follow upon +that trail--utterly invisible to the untrained eye--as surely as a +blood-hound follows the scent, ten or twenty, or a hundred miles, whose +eye and hand are so well practised that they can drive a nail, or snuff +a candle, with the long, heavy western rifle. Such men, educated for +years, or even generations, in that hard school of necessity, where +every one's hand and wood-man's skill must keep his head; where +incessant pressing necessities required ever a prompt and sufficient +answer in deeds; and where words needed to be but few, and those +the plainest and directest, required no delay nor preparation, nor +oratorical coquetting, nor elaborate preliminary scribble; no hesitation +nor doubts in deeds; no circumlocution in words. To restrain, influence, +direct, govern, such a surging sea of life as this, required something +very different from a written address. + +[Footnote 20: Born in Philadelphia; a Methodist divine, long afflicted +with blindness; but widely popular as a preacher and lecturer.] + + * * * * * + + + +ORATORS, AND LEGAL AND POLITICAL WRITERS, OF THE ERA OF THE REVOLUTION. + + +=_John Dickinson, 1732-1808._= (Manual, p. 486.) + +From "The Address of Congress to the States." May 26, 1779. + +=_55._= THE ASPECT OF THE WAR. + +To our constituents we submit the propriety and purity of our +intentions, well knowing they will not forget that we lay no burdens +upon them but those in which we participate with them--a happy sympathy, +that pervades societies formed on the basis of equal liberty. Many +cares, many labors, and may we not add, reproaches, are peculiar to us. +These are the emoluments of our unsolicited stations; and with these we +are content, if YOU approve our conduct. If you do not, we shall return +to our private condition, with no other regret than that which will +arise from our not having served you as acceptably and essentially as +we wished and strove to do, though as cheerfully and faithfully as we +could. + +Think not we despair of the commonwealth, or endeavor to shrink from +opposing difficulties. No! Your cause is too good, your objects too +sacred, to be relinquished. We tell you truths because you are freemen, +who can bear to hear them, and may profit by them; and when they reach +your enemies, we fear not the consequences, because we are not ignorant +of their resources or our own. Let your good sense decide upon the +comparison.... + +We well remember what you said at the commencement of this war. You +saw the immense difference between your circumstances and those of your +enemies, and you knew the quarrel must decide on no less than your +lives, liberties, and estates. All these you greatly put to every +hazard, resolving rather to die freemen than to live slaves; and justice +will oblige the impartial world to confess you have uniformly acted on +the same generous principle. Persevere, and you insure peace, freedom, +safety, glory, sovereignty, and felicity to yourselves, your children, +and your children's children. + +Encouraged by favors already received from Infinite Goodness, gratefully +acknowledging them, earnestly imploring their continuance, constantly +endeavoring to draw them down on your heads by an amendment of your +lives, and a conformity to the Divine will, humbly confiding in the +protection so often and wonderfully experienced, vigorously employ the +means placed by Providence in your hands for completing your labors. + +Fill up your battalions--be prepared in every part to repel the +incursions of your enemies--place your several quotas in the continental +treasury--lend money for public uses--sink the emissions of your +respective States--provide effectually for expediting the conveyance of +supplies for your armies and fleets, and for your allies--prevent the +produce of the country from being monopolized--effectually superintend +the behavior of public officers--diligently promote piety, virtue, +brotherly love, learning, frugality, and moderation--and may you be +approved before Almighty God, worthy of those blessings we devoutly wish +you to enjoy. + + * * * * * + + +=_John Adams, 1735-1826._= (Manual, p. 486.) + +From his "Life and Works." + +=_56._= CHARACTER OF JAMES OTIS. + +JAMES OTIS, of Boston, sprang from families among the earliest of the +planters of the Colonies, and the most respectable in rank, while the +word _rank_, and the idea annexed to it, were tolerated in America. He +was a gentleman of general science and extensive literature. He had been +an indefatigable student during the whole course of his education in +college and at the bar. He was well versed in Greek and Roman history, +philosophy, oratory, poetry, and mythology. His classical studies had +been unusually ardent, and his acquisitions uncommonly great.... It +was a maxim which he inculcated on his pupils, as his patron in the +profession, Mr. Gridley, had done before him, "_that a lawyer ought +never to be without a volume of natural or public law, or moral +philosophy, on his table or in his pocket_." In the history, the common +law, and statute laws, of England, he had no superior, at least in +Boston. + +Thus qualified to resist the system of usurpation and despotism, +meditated by the British ministry, under the auspices of the Earl +of Bute, Mr. Otis resigned his commission from the crown, as +Advocate-General,--an office very lucrative at that time, and a sure +road to the highest favors of government in America,--and engaged in +the cause of his country without fee or reward. His argument, speech, +discourse, oration, harangue,--call it by which name you will, was the +most impressive upon his crowded audience of any that I ever heard +before or since, excepting only many speeches by himself in Faneuil +Hall, and in the House of Representatives, which he made from time to +time for ten years afterwards. There were no stenographers in those +days. Speeches were not printed; and all that was not remembered, like +the harangues of Indian orators, was lost in air. Who, at the distance +of fifty-seven years, would attempt, upon memory, to give even a sketch +of it? Some of the heads are remembered, out of which Livy or Sallust +would not scruple to compose an oration for history. I shall not essay +an analysis or a sketch of it at present. I shall only say, and I do say +in the most solemn manner, that Mr. Otis's oration against "_writs of +assistance_" breathed into this nation the breath of life. + + * * * * * + +From the "Thoughts on Government." + +=_57._= REQUISITES OF A GOOD GOVERNMENT. + +The dignity and stability of government in all its branches, the morals +of the people, and every blessing of society, depend so much upon an +upright and skilful administration of justice, that the judicial power +ought to be distinct from both the legislative and executive, and +independent upon both, that so it may be a check upon both, as both +should be checks upon that. + +... Laws for the liberal education of youth, especially of the lower +class of people, are so extremely wise and useful, that, to a humane +and generous mind, no expense for this purpose would be thought +extravagant.... You and I, my dear friend, have been sent into life at a +time when the greatest lawgivers of antiquity would have wished to live. +How few of the human race have ever enjoyed an opportunity of making +an election of government, more than of air, soil, or climate, for +themselves or their children! When, before the present epocha, had +three millions of people full power and a fair opportunity, to form +and establish the wisest and happiest government that human wisdom can +contrive? + + * * * * * + + +=_Patrick Henry, 1736-1799._= (Manual, p. 484.) + +From "Speech in the Convention of Virginia," 1775. + +=_58._= THE NECESSITY OF THE WAR. + +I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of +experience. I know of no way of judging of the future but by the past. +And judging by the past, I wish to know what has been the conduct of +the British ministry for the last ten years to justify those hopes with +which gentlemen have been pleased to solace themselves and the house. +Is it that insidious smile with which our petition has been lately +received. Trust it not, Sir, it will prove a snare to your feet. Suffer +not yourselves to be betrayed with a kiss. Ask yourselves how this +gracious reception of our petition comports with those warlike +preparations which cover our waters and darken our land. Are fleets and +armies necessary to a work of love and reconciliation? Have we shown +ourselves so unwilling to be reconciled that force must be called in +to win back our love? Let us not deceive ourselves, sir. These are the +implements of war, and subjugation--the last arguments to which kings +resort. There is no longer any room for hope. If we wish to be free, if +we mean to preserve inviolate those inestimable privileges for which we +have been so long contending, if we mean not basely to abandon the +noble struggle in which we have been so long engaged, and which we have +pledged ourselves never to abandon until the glorious object of our +contest is obtained, we must fight, I repeat it, sir, we must fight. An +appeal to arms and to the God of Hosts is all that is left us. + +They tell us, sir, that we are weak; unable to cope with so formidable +an adversary. But when shall we be stronger? Will it be the next week, +or the next year? Will it be when we are totally disarmed, and when +a British guard shall be stationed in every house? Shall we gather +strength by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of +effectual resistance, by lying supinely on our backs, and hugging the +delusive phantom of hope, until our enemies shall have bound us hand and +foot? + +Sir, we are not weak, if we make a proper use of those means which the +God of nature hath placed in our power. Three millions of people, armed +in the holy cause of liberty, and in such a country as that which we +possess, are invincible by any force which our enemy can send against +us. Besides, sir, we shall not fight our battles alone. There is a just +God, who presides over the destinies of nations, and who will raise up +friends to fight our battles for us. The battle, sir, is not to the +strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave. Besides, +sir, we have no election. If we were base enough to desire it, it is +now too late to retire from the contest. There is no retreat but in +submission and slavery. Our chains are forged. Their clanking may be +heard on the plains of Boston. The war is inevitable--and let it come! I +repeat it, sir, let it come! + +It is vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, Peace, +peace; but there is no peace. The war is actually begun. The next +gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of +resounding arms. Our brethren are already in the field. Why stand we +here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life +so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains +and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may +take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death! + + * * * * * + +From a Speech on the Ratification of the Federal Constitution. + +=_59._= NECESSITY OF AMENDMENT BEFORE ADOPTION. + +I exhort gentlemen to think seriously, before they ratify this +constitution, and to indulge a salutary doubt of their being able to +succeed in any effort they may make to get amendments after adoption. +With respect to that part of the proposal, which says that every power +not specially granted to Congress remains with the people; it must be +previous to adoption, or it will involve this country in inevitable +destruction. To talk of it, as a thing to be subsequently obtained, +and not as one of your unalienable rights, is leaving it to the casual +opinion of the Congress who shall take up the consideration of that most +important right. They will not reason with you about the effect of +this constitution. They will not take the opinion of this committee +concerning its operation. They will construe it even as they please. +If you place it subsequently, let me ask the consequences? Among ten +thousand implied powers which they may assume, their may, if we be +engaged in war, liberate every one of your slaves if they please. And +this must and will be done by men, a majority of whom have not a common +interest with you. They will, therefore, have no feeling for _your_ +interests.... Is it not worth while to turn your eyes for a moment from +subsequent amendments, to the real situation of your country? You may +have a union, but can you have a lasting union in these circumstances? +It will be in vain to expect it. But if you agree to previous +amendments, you will have union, firm, solid, permanent. I cannot +conclude without saying, that I shall have nothing to do with it, if +subsequent amendments be determined upon. Oppressions will be carried on +as radically by the majority when adjustments and accommodations will +be held up. I say, I conceive it my duty, if this government be adopted +before it is amended, to go home. I shall act as I think my duty +requires. Every other gentleman will do the same. Previous amendments, +in my opinion, are necessary to procure peace and tranquility. I fear, +if they be not agreed to, every movement and operation of government +will cease, and how long that baneful thing, _civil discord_, will stay +from this country, God only knows. When men are free from restraint, +how long will you suspend their fury? The interval between this and +bloodshed is but a moment. The licentious and wicked of the community +will seize with avidity every thing you hold. In this unhappy situation, +what is to be done? It surpasses my stock of wisdom to determine. If you +will, in the language of freemen, stipulate that there are rights which +no man under heaven can take from you, you shall have me going along +with you; but not otherwise. + + * * * * * + + +=_John Rutledge, 1739-1800._= (Manual, p. 484.) + +From "Speech on the Judiciary Establishment." + +=_60._= AN INDEPENDENT JUDICIARY THE SAFEGUARD OF LIBERTY. + +While this shield remains to the states, it will be difficult to +dissolve the ties which knit and bind them together. As long as this +buckler remains to the people, they cannot be liable to much, or +permanent oppression. The government may be administered with violence, +offices may be bestowed exclusively upon those who have no other merit +than that of carrying votes at elections,--the commerce of our country +may be depressed by nonsensical theories, and public credit may suffer +from bad intentions; but so long as we have an independent judiciary, +the great interests of the people will be safe. Neither the president, +nor the legislature, can violate their constitutional rights. Any +such attempt would be checked by the judges, who are designed by the +constitution to keep the different branches of the government within +the spheres of their respective orbits, and say thus far shall you +legislate, and no further. Leave to the people an independent judiciary, +and they will prove that man is capable of governing himself,--they will +be saved from what has been the fate of all other republics, and they +will disprove the position that governments of a republican form cannot +endure. + +We are asked by the gentleman from Virginia, if the people want judges +to protect them? Yes, sir, in popular governments constitutional checks +are necessary for their preservation; the people want to be protected +against themselves; no man is so absurd as to propose the people +collectedly will consent to the prostration of their liberties; but if +they be not shielded by some constitutional checks, they will suffer +them to be destroyed--to be destroyed by demagogues, who at the time +they are soothing and cajoling the people, with bland and captivating +speeches, are forging chains for them; demagogues who carry, daggers in +their hearts, and seductive smiles in their hypocritical faces, who are +dooming the people to despotism, when they profess to be exclusively the +friends of the people; against such designs and such artifices, were our +constitutional checks made, to preserve the people of this country. + + * * * * * + + +=_Thomas Jefferson, 1743-1826._= (Manual, pp. 486, 490.) + +From his "Inaugural Address", March 4th, 1801. + +=_61._= ESSENTIAL PRINCIPLES OF AMERICAN GOVERNMENT. + +Kindly separated by nature and a wide ocean from the exterminating havoc +of one quarter of the globe, too high-minded to endure the degradations +of the others, possessing a chosen country with room enough for our +descendants to the hundredth and thousandth generation, entertaining a +due sense of our equal right to the use of our own faculties, to the +acquisitions of our industry, to honor and confidence from our fellow +citizens, resulting not from birth but from our actions and their sense +of them, enlightened by a benign religion, professed, indeed, and +practised, in various forms, yet all of them including honesty, truth, +temperance, gratitude, and the love of man; acknowledging and adoring +an overruling Providence, which by all its dispensations proves that +it delights in the happiness of man here and his greater happiness +hereafter; with all these blessings, what more is necessary to make us +a happy and prosperous people? Still one thing more, fellow-citizens, a +wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one +another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own +pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth +of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, +and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities. + +About to enter, fellow-citizens, on the exercise of duties which +comprehend everything dear and valuable to you, it is proper that +you should understand what I deem the essential principles of +our government, and consequently those which ought to shape its +administration. I will compress them within the narrowest compass they +will bear, stating the general principle, but not all its limitations. +Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion, +religious, or political; peace, commerce, and honest friendship, with +all nations, entangling alliances with none; the support of the state +governments in all their rights, as the most competent administrations +for our domestic concerns and the surest bulwarks against +anti-republican tendencies; the preservation of the general government +in its whole constitutional vigor, as the sheet anchor of our peace at +home and safety abroad; a jealous care of the right of election by the +people, a mild and safe corrective of abuses which are lopped by the +sword of revolution where peaceable remedies are unprovided; absolute +acquiescence in the decisions of the majority, the vital, principle +of republics, from which there is no appeal but to force, the vital +principle and immediate parent of despotism; a well disciplined militia, +our best reliance in peace and for the first moments of war, till +regulars may relieve them; the supremacy of the civil over the military +authority; economy in the public expense, that labor may be lightly +burdened; the honest payment of our debts send sacred preservation of +the public faith; encouragement of agriculture, and of commerce as its +handmaid; the diffusion of information and the arraignment of all abuses +at the bar of public reason; freedom of religion; freedom of the press; +freedom of person under the protection of the _habeas corpus_; and +trial by juries impartially selected; these principles form the bright +constellation which has gone before us, and guided our steps through an +age of revolution and reformation. The wisdom of our sages and the blood +of our heroes have been devoted to their attainment. They should be +the creed of our political faith, the text of civil instruction, the +touchstone by which to try the services of those we trust; and should we +wander from them in moments of error or alarm, let us hasten to retrace +our steps and to regain the road which alone leads to peace, liberty, +and safety. + + * * * * * + +=_62._= CHARACTER OF WASHINGTON. + +His mind was great and powerful, without being of the very first order; +his penetration strong, though not so acute as a Newton, Bacon, or +Locke; and as far as he saw no judgment was ever sounder. It was slow in +operation, being little aided by invention or imagination, but sure in +conclusion. Hence the common remark of his officers, of the advantage he +derived from councils of war, where hearing all suggestions, he selected +whatever was best; and certainly no General ever planned his battles +more judiciously. But if deranged during the course of the action, if +any member of his plan was dislocated by sudden circumstances, he was +slow in re-adjustment. The consequence was that he often failed in the +field, and rarely against an enemy in station, as at Boston and York. +He was incapable of fear, meeting personal dangers with the calmest +unconcern. Perhaps the strongest feature in his character was prudence; +never acting until every circumstance, every consideration was maturely +weighed; refraining if he saw a doubt, but when once decided, going +through with his purpose, whatever obstacles opposed. His integrity was +most pure, his justice the most inflexible I have ever known; no motives +of interest or consanguinity, of friendship or hatred, being able to +bias his decision. He was indeed in every sense of the words, a wise, +a good, and a great man. His temper was naturally irritable, and high +toned; but reflection and resolution had obtained a firm and habitual +ascendancy over it. If ever however it broke its bonds, he was most +tremendous in his wrath. In his expenses he was honorable, but exact; +liberal in contributions to whatever promised utility, but frowning and +unyielding on all visionary projects, and all unworthy calls on his +charity. His heart was not warm in its affections; but he exactly +calculated every man's value, and gave him a solid esteem proportioned +to it. His person, you know, was fine, his stature exactly what one +would wish, his deportment easy, erect, and noble; the best horseman of +his age, and the most graceful figure that could be seen on horseback. +Although in the circle of his friends, where he might be unreserved with +safety, he took a free share in conversation, his colloquial talents +were not above mediocrity, possessing neither copiousness of ideas, nor +fluency of words. In public, when called on for a sudden opinion, he was +unready, short, and embarrassed. Yet he wrote readily, rather diffusely, +in an easy and correct style. This he had acquired by conversation with +the world, for his education was merely reading, writing, and common +arithmetic, to which he added surveying at a later day. His time was +employed in action chiefly, reading little, and that only in agriculture +and English history. His correspondence became necessarily extensive, +and with journalizing his agricultural proceedings, occupied most of his +leisure hours within doors. On the whole, his character was in its mass, +perfect; in nothing, bad; in few points indifferent; and it may truly be +said that never did nature and fortune combine more perfectly to make a +man great. + + * * * * * + +From the "Notes on Virginia." + +=_63._= GEOGRAPHICAL LIMITS OF THE ELEPHANT AND THE MAMMOTH. 1781. + +From the thirtieth degree of south latitude to the thirtieth of north +are nearly the limits which nature has fixed for the existence +and multiplication of the elephant known to us. Proceeding thence +northwardly to thirty-six and a half degrees, we enter those assigned +to the mammoth. The farther we advance north, the more their vestiges +multiply, as far as the earth has been explored in that direction; and +it is as probable as otherwise, that this progression continues to the +pole itself, if land extends so far. The centre of the frozen zone, +then, may be the acme of their vigor, as that of the torrid is of the +elephant. Thus nature seems to have drawn a belt of separation between +these two tremendous animals, whose breadth indeed is not precisely +known, though at present we may suppose it to be about six and a half +degrees of latitude; to have assigned to the elephant the regions +south of these confines, and those north to the mammoth, founding the +constitution of the one in her extreme of heat, and that of the other +in the extreme of cold. When the Creator has therefore separated their +nature as far as the extent of the scale of animal life allowed to this +planet would permit, it seems perverse to declare it the same, from a +partial resemblance of their tusks and bones. But to whatever animal we +ascribe these remains, it is certain such a one has existed in America, +and that it has been the largest of all terrestrial beings. + + * * * * * + +=64.= THE UNHAPPY EFFECTS OF SLAVERY. + +These must doubtless be an unhappy influence on the manners of our +people produced by the existence of slavery among us.... With the morals +of the people, their industry also is destroyed. For in a warm climate +no man will labor for himself who can make another labor for him. This +is so true, that of the proprietors of slaves a very small proportion +indeed are ever seen to labor. And can the liberties, of a nation be +thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis--a conviction +in the minds of the people that they are the gift of God? that they are +not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed, I tremble for my country +when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever; +that considering numbers, nature, and natural means only, a revolution +of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation, is among possible +events; that it may become probable by supernatural interference. +The Almighty has no attribute which can take sides with us in such +a contest. But it is impossible to be temperate, and to pursue this +subject through the various considerations of policy, of morals, of +history, natural and civil. We must be contented to hope they will force +their way into every one's mind. I think a change already perceptible +since the origin of the present revolution. The spirit of the master +is abating, that of the slave is rising from the dust, his condition +mollifying, the way I hope preparing, under the auspices of Heaven, for +a total emancipation. + + * * * * * + + +=_John Jay, 1745-1829._= (Manual, pp. 484, 486.) + +From the "Address from the Convention." December 23, 1776. + +=_65._= AN APPEAL TO ARMS. + +Rouse, brave citizens! Do your duty like men; and be persuaded that +Divine Providence will not permit this western world to be involved in +the horrors of slavery. Consider that, from the earliest ages of the +world, religion, liberty, and reason have been bending their course +towards the setting sun. The holy Gospels are yet to be preached to +these western regions; and we have the highest reason to believe that +the Almighty will not suffer slavery and the gospel to go hand in hand. +It cannot, it will not be. + +But if there be any among us dead to all sense of honor and love +of their country; if deaf to all the calls of liberty, virtue, and +religion; if forgetful of the magnanimity of their ancestors, and the +happiness of their children; if neither the examples nor the success of +other nations, the dictates of reason and of nature, or the great duties +they owe to their God, themselves, and their posterity have any effect +upon them; if neither the injuries they have received, the prize they +are contending for, the future blessings or curses of their children, +the applause or the reproach of all mankind, the approbation or +displeasure of the great Judge, or the happiness or misery consequent +upon their conduct, in this and a future state can move them,--then let +them be assured that they deserve to be slaves, and are entitled to +nothing but anguish and tribulation.... Let them forget every duty, +human and divine, remember not that they have children, and beware how +they call to mind the justice of the Supreme Being. + + * * * * * + + +=_Alexander Hamilton, 1757-1804._= (Manual, pp. 484, 486.) + +From "Vindication of the Funding System." + +=_66._= CHARACTER OF THE DEBT. + +A person who, unacquainted with the fact, should learn the history +of our debt from the declamations with which certain newspapers are +perpetually charged, would be led to suppose that it is the mere +creature of the _present_ government, for the purpose of burthening the +people with taxes, and producing an artificial and corrupt influence +over them; he would, at least, take it for granted that it had been +contracted in the pursuit of some wanton or vain project of ambition or +glory; he would scarcely be able to conceive that every part of it was +the relict of a war which had given independence, and preserved liberty +to the country; that the present government found it as it is, in point +of magnitude (except as to the diminutions made by itself), and has done +nothing more than to bring under a regular regimen and provision, what +was before a scattered and heterogeneous mass. + +And yet this is the simple and exact state of the business. The whole of +the debt embraced by the provisions of the funding system, consisted of +the unextinguished principal and arrears of interest, of the debt which +had been contracted by the United States in the course of the late war +with Great Britain, and which remained uncancelled, and the principal +and arrears of interest of the separate debts of the respective States +contracted during the same period, which remained, _outstanding, and +unsatisfied, relating to services and supplies for carrying on the war_. +Nothing more was done by that system, than to incorporate these two +species of debt into the mass, and to make for the whole, one general, +comprehensive provision. There is therefore, no arithmetic, no logic, +by which it can be shown that the funding system has augmented the +aggregate debt of the country. The sum total is manifestly the same; +though the parts which were before divided are now united. There is, +consequently, no color for an assertion, that the system in question +either created any _new_ debt, or made any addition to the _old_. + +And it follows, that the collective burthen upon the people of the +United States must have been as great _without_ as _with_ the union of +the different portions and descriptions of the debt. The only difference +can be, that without it that burthen would have been otherwise +distributed, and would have fallen with unequal weight, instead of being +equally borne as it now is. + +These conclusions which have been drawn respecting the non-increase of +the debt, proceed upon the presumption that every part of the public +debt, as well that of the States individually, as that of the United +States, was to have been honestly paid. If there is any fallacy in this +supposition, the inferences may be erroneous; but the error would imply +the disgrace of the United States, or parts of them,--a disgrace from +which every man of true honor and genuine patriotism will be happy to +see them rescued. + +When we hear the epithets, "vile matter," "corrupt mass," bestowed upon +the public debt, and the owners of it indiscriminately maligned as the +harpies and vultures of the community, there is ground to suspect that +those who hold the language, though they may not dare to avow it, +contemplate a more summary process for getting rid of debts than that of +paying them. Charity itself cannot avoid concluding from the language +and conduct of some men, (and some of them of no inconsiderable +importance,) that in their vocabularies _creditor_ and _enemy_ are +synonymous terms, and that they have a laudable antipathy against every +man to whom they owe money, either as individuals or as members of the +society. + + * * * * * + +From a "Letter to Lafayette," October 6, 1789. + +=_67._= THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. + +I have seen, with a mixture of pleasure and apprehension, the progress +of events which have lately taken place in your country. As a friend to +mankind and to liberty, I rejoice in the efforts which you are making to +establish it, while I fear much for the final success of the attempts, +for the fate of those I esteem who are engaged in them, and for the +danger in case of success, of innovations greater than will consist with +the real felicity of your nation. If your affairs still go well when +this reaches you, you will ask why this foreboding of ill, when all the +appearances have been so much in your favor. I will tell you: I dread +disagreements among those who are now united (which will be likely to be +improved by the adverse party) about the nature of your constitution; I +dread the vehement character of your people, whom I fear you may find it +more easy to bring on, than to keep within proper bounds after you +have put them in motion. I dread the interested refractoriness of your +nobles, who cannot all be gratified, and who may be unwilling to +submit to the requisite sacrifices. And I dread the reveries of your +philosophic politicians, who appear in the moment to have great +influence, and who, being mere speculatists, may aim at more refinement +than suits either with human nature, or the composition of your nation. + + * * * * * + + +=_Fisher Ames, 1738-1808._= (Manual, p. 487.) + +From the "Speech on the British Treaty." April 15, 1795. + +=_68._= OBLIGATION OF NATIONAL GOOD FAITH. + +The consequences of refusing to make provision for the treaty are not +all to be foreseen. By rejecting, vast interests are committed to the +sport of the winds: chance becomes the arbiter of events, and it is +forbidden to human foresight to count their number, or measure their +extent. Before we resolve to leap into this abyss, so dark and so +profound, it becomes us to pause, and reflect upon such of the dangers +as are obvious and inevitable. If this assembly should be wrought into +a temper to defy these consequences, it is vain, it is deceptive, to +pretend that we can escape them. It is worse than weakness to say, that +as to public faith, our vote has already settled the question. Another +tribunal than our own is already erected; the public opinion, not merely +of our own country, but of the enlightened world, will pronounce a +judgment that we cannot resist, that we dare not even affect to despise. + +... This, sir, is a cause that would be dishonored and betrayed if I +contented myself with appealing only to the understanding. It is too +cold, and its processes are too slow, for the occasion. I desire to +thank God that since he has given me an intellect so fallible, he has +impressed upon me an instinct that is sure. On a question of shame and +honor, reasoning is sometimes useless, and worse. I feel the decision in +my pulse; if it throws no light upon the brain, it kindles a fire at the +heart. + +What is patriotism? Is it a narrow affection for the spot where a man +was born? Are the very clods where we tread entitled to this ardent +preference, because they are greener? No, sir, this is not the character +of the virtue, and it soars higher for its object. It is an extended +self-love, mingling with all the enjoyments of life, and twisting itself +with the minutest filaments of the heart. It is thus we obey the laws of +society, because they are the laws of virtue. In their authority we +see not the array of force and terror, but the venerable image of our +country's honor. Every good citizen makes that honor his own, and +cherishes it not only as precious, but as sacred. He is willing to risk +his life in its defence; and is conscious that he gains protection, +while he gives it. For what rights of a citizen will be deemed +inviolable, when a state renounces the principles that constitute +their security? Or, if his life should not be invaded, what would +its enjoyments be in a country odious in the eyes of strangers, and +dishonored in his own? Could he look with affection and veneration to +such a country as his parent? The sense of having one would die within +him; he would blush for his patriotism, if he retained any, and justly. +for it would be a vice; he would be a banished man in his native land. + +I see no exception to the respect that is paid among nations to the law +of good faith. If there are cases in this enlightened period when it +is violated, then are none when it is decried. It is the philosophy of +politics, the religion of governments. It is observed by barbarians; a +whiff of tobacco smoke, or a string of beads, gives not merely binding +force, but sanctity, to treaties. Even in Algiers, a truce may be bought +for money; but when ratified, even Algiers is too wise or too just, to +disown and annul its obligation. Thus we see, neither the ignorance of +savages, nor the principles of an association for piracy and rapine, +permit a nation to despise its engagements. If, sir, there could be a +resurrection from the foot of the gallows, if the victims of justice +could live again, collect together, and form a society, they would, +however loath, soon find themselves obliged to make justice, that +justice under which they fell, the fundamental law of their state. They +would perceive it was their interest to make others respect, and they +would, therefore, soon pay some respect themselves, to the obligations +of good faith. + + * * * * * + + +=_Gouverneur Morris, 1752-1816._= (Manual, p. 484.) + +From a "Report to Congress in 1780." + +=_69._= QUALIFICATIONS OF A MINISTER OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS. + +A minister of foreign affairs should have a genius quick, lively, +penetrating; should write on all occasions with clearness and +perspicuity; be capable of expressing his sentiments with dignity, and +conveying strong sense and argument in easy and agreeable diction; his +temper mild, cool, and placid; festive, insinuating, and pliant, yet +obstinate; communicative, and yet reserved. He should know the human +face and heart, and the connections between them; should be versed +in the laws of nature and nations, and not ignorant of the civil and +municipal law; should be acquainted with the history of Europe, and with +the interests, views, commerce, and productions of the commercial and +maritime powers; should know the interests and commerce of America, +understand the French and Spanish languages, at least the former, and be +skilled in the modes and forms of public business; a man educated more +in the world than in the closet, that by use, as well as by nature, he +may give proper attention to great objects, and have proper contempt for +small ones. He should be attached to the independence of America, and +the alliance with France, as the great pillars of our politics; and this +attachment should not be slight and accidental, but regular, consistent, +and founded in strong conviction. His manners, gentle and polite; +above all things, honest, and least of all things, avaricious. His +circumstances and connections should be such as to give solid pledges +for his fidelity; and he should by no means be disagreeable to the +prince with whom we are in alliance, his ministers, or subjects. + + * * * * * + + +=_William Pinkney,[21] 1764-1820._= + +From "Speech in the Maryland Legislature." 1798. + +=_70._= RESPONSIBILITY FOR SLAVERY. + +For my own part, I would willingly draw the veil of oblivion over this +disgusting scene of iniquity, but that the present abject state of those +who are descended from these kidnapped sufferers, perpetually brings it +forward to the memory. + +But wherefore should we confine the edge of censure to our ancestors, +or those from whom they purchased? Are not we equally guilty? _They_ +strewed around the seeds of slavery; _we_ cherish and sustain the +growth. _They_ introduce the system; _we_ enlarge, invigorate, and +confirm it. Yes, let it be handed down to posterity, that the people of +Maryland, who could fly to arms with the promptitude of Roman citizens, +when the hand of oppression was lifted up against themselves; who could +behold their country desolated and their citizens slaughtered; who could +brave with unshaken firmness every calamity of war before they would +submit to the smallest infringement of their rights--that this very +people could yet see thousands of their fellow-creatures, within the +limits of their territory, bending beneath an unnatural yoke, and, +instead of being assiduous to destroy their shackles, be anxious to +immortalize their duration, so that a nation of slaves might forever +exist in a country whose freedom is its boast. + +[Footnote 21: Highly distinguished as a lawyer, orator, and diplomatist; +a native of Maryland.] + + * * * * * + +From "Speech in the Nereide Case." + +=_71._= WAR, AND AMERICAN BELLIGERENT RIGHTS. + +I throw into the opposite scale the ponderous claim of War; a claim of +high concernment, not to us only, but to the world; a claim connected +with the maritime strength of this maritime state, with public honor and +individual enterprise, with all those passions and motives which can be +made subservient to national success and glory, in the hour of national +trial and danger. I throw into the same scale the venerable code of +universal law, before which it is the duty of this Court, high as it is +in dignity, and great as are its titles to reverence, to bow down with +submission, I throw into the same scale a solemn treaty, binding upon +the claimant and upon you. In a word, I throw into that scale the rights +of belligerent America, and, as embodied with them, the rights of these +captors, by whose efforts and at whose cost the naval exertions of the +government have been seconded, until our once despised and drooping flag +has been made to wave in triumph, where neither France nor Spain could +venture to show a prow. You may call these rights by what name you +please. You may call them _iron_ rights:--I care not. It is more than +enough for me that they are RIGHTS. It is more than enough for me that +they come before you encircled and adorned by the laurels which we have +torn from the brow of the naval genius of England: that they come before +you recommended, and endeared, and consecrated by a thousand +recollections, which it would be baseness and folly not to cherish, and +that they are mingled in fancy and in fact with all the elements of our +future greatness.... + +We are now, thank God, once more at peace. Our belligerent rights may +therefore sleep for a season. May their repose be long and profound! But +the time must arrive when the interests and honor of this great nation +will command them to awake; and when it does arrive, I feel undoubting +confidence that they will rise from their slumber in the fullness of +their strength and majesty, unenfeebled and unimpaired by the judgment +of this high court. + +The skill and valor of our infant navy, which has illuminated every sea, +and dazzled the master states of Europe by the splendor of its triumphs, +have given us a pledge which I trust will continue to be dear to every +American heart, and to influence the future course of our policy, that +the ocean is destined to acknowledge the youthful dominion of the West. + + * * * * * + + +=_James Madison, 1751-1836._= (Manual, p. 486.) + +From his "Report of Debates in the Federal Convention." + +=_72._= VALUE OF A RECORD OF THE DEBATES. + +The close of the war, however, brought no cure for the public +embarrassments. The states relieved from the pressure of foreign danger, +and flushed with the enjoyment of independent and sovereign power, +instead of a diminished disposition to part with it, persevered in +omissions, and in measures, incompatible with their relations to the +federal government, and with those among themselves. + +... It was known that there were individuals who had betrayed a bias +towards monarchy, and there had always been some not unfavorable to a +partition of the Union into several confederacies; either from a better +chance of figuring on a sectional theatre, or that the sections would +require stronger governments, or by their hostile conflicts lead to a +monarchical consolidation. The idea of dismemberment had recently made +its appearance in the newspapers. + +Such were the defects, the deformities, the diseases, and the ominous +prospects, for which the convention were to provide a remedy, and +which ought never to be overlooked in expounding and appreciating the +constitutional charter--the remedy that was provided. + +The curiosity I had felt during my researches into the history of the +most distinguished confederacies, particularly those of antiquity, and +the deficiency I found in the means of satisfying it, more especially +in what related to the process, the principles, the reasons, and the +anticipations, which prevailed in the formation of them, determined me +to preserve, as far as I could, an exact account of what might pass in +the convention whilst executing its trust--with the magnitude of which +I was fully impressed, as I was by the gratification promised to future +curiosity by an authentic exhibition of the objects, the opinions, and +the reasonings, from which the new system of government was to receive +its peculiar structure and organization. Nor was I unaware of the value +of such a contribution to the fund of materials for the history of a +constitution, on which would be staked the happiness of a people great +even in its infancy, and possibly the cause of liberty throughout the +world. + +Of the ability and intelligence of those who composed the Convention +the debates and proceedings may be a test, as the character of the work +which was the offspring of their deliberations must be tested by the +experience of the future added to that of nearly half a century that has +passed. + +But whatever may be the judgment pronounced on the competency of the +architects of the Constitution, or whatever may be the destiny of the +edifice prepared by them, I feel it a duty to express my profound and +solemn conviction, derived from my intimate opportunity of observing and +appreciating the views of the Convention, collectively and individually, +that there never was an assembly of men, charged with a great, and +arduous trust, who were more pure in their motives, or more exclusively +or anxiously devoted to the object committed to them, than were the +members of the Federal Convention of 1787, to the object of devising and +proposing a constitutional system which should best supply the defects +of that which it was to replace, and best secure the permanent liberty +and happiness of their country. + + * * * * * + +=_73._= INSCRIPTION FOR A STATUE OF WASHINGTON. + +The General Assembly of Virginia have caused this statue to be erected +as a monument of affection and gratitude to George Washington, who, +uniting to the endowments of the hero the virtues of the patriot, and +exerting both in establishing the liberties of his country, has rendered +his name dear to his fellow-citizens, and given to the world an immortal +example of true glory. + + * * * * * + + +=_John Randolph, 1773-1832._= (Manual, p. 487.) + +From a Speech in the Virginia Convention. + +=_74._= "CHANGE IS NOT REFORM." + +Sir, I see no wisdom in making this provision for future changes. You +must give Governments time to operate on the People, and give the People +time to become gradually assimilated to their institutions. Almost any +thing is better than this state of perpetual uncertainty. A People may +have the best form of Government that the wit of man ever devised, and +yet, from its uncertainty alone, may, in effect, live under the worst +Government in the world. Sir, how often must I repeat, that _change_ is +not _reform?_ I am willing that this new Constitution shall stand as +long as it is possible for it to stand; and that, believe me, is a very +short time. Sir, it is vain to deny it. They may say what they please +about the old Constitution,--the defect is not there. It is not in the +form of the old edifice,--neither in the design nor in the elevation; it +is in the _material_, it is in the People of Virginia. To my knowledge +that People are changed from what they have been. The four hundred men +who went out with David were _in debt_. The fellow-laborers of Catiline +were _in debt_. The partizans of Caesar were _in debt_. And I defy you +to show me a desperately indebted People, anywhere, who can bear a +regular, sober Government. I throw the challenge to all who hear me. I +say that the character of the good old Virginia planter,--the man who +owned from five to twenty slaves, or less, who, lived by hard work, and +who paid his debts,--is passed away. A new order of things is come. The +period has arrived of living by one's wits; of living by contracting +debts that one cannot pay; and above all, of living by office-hunting. + +Sir, what do we see? Bankrupts,--branded bankrupts,--giving great +dinners, sending their children to the most expensive schools, giving +grand parties, and just as well received as anybody in society! I say +that, in such a state of things, the old Constitution was too good for +them,--they could not bear it. No, Sir; they could not bear a freehold +suffrage, and a property representation. I have always endeavored to do +the People justice; but I will not flatter them,--I will not pander to +their appetite for change. I will do nothing to provide for change. I +will not agree to any rule of future apportionment, or to any provision +for future changes, called amendments to the Constitution. Those who +love change,--who delight in public confusion, who wish to feed the +cauldron, and make it bubble,--may vote if they please for future +changes. But by what spell, by what formula, are you going to bind the +People to all future time? The days of Lycurgus are gone by, when we +could swear the People not to alter the Constitution until he should +return. You may make what entries on parchment you please; give me a +Constitution that will last for half a century; that is all I wish for. +No Constitution that you can make will last the one-half of half a +century. Sir, I will stake anything, short of my salvation, that those +who are malcontent now, will be more malcontent, three years hence, than +they are at this day. I have no favor for this Constitution. I shall +vote against its adoption, and I shall advise all the people of my +district to set their faces, aye, and their shoulders, too, against it. + + * * * * * + +From "Letters to a young Relative." + +=_75._= THE ERROR OF DECAYED FAMILIES. + +One of the best and wisest men I ever knew has often said to me that a +decayed family could never recover its loss of rank in the world, +until the members of it left off talking and dwelling upon its former +opulence. This remark, founded in a long and clear observation +of mankind, I have seen verified in numerous instances in my own +connections, who, to use the words of my oracle, will never thrive until +they can become poor folks. He added, they may make some struggles, and +with apparent success, to recover lost ground; they may, and sometimes +do, get half way up again; but they are sure to fall back, unless, +reconciling themselves to circumstances, they become in form, as well as +in fact, poor folks. + + * * * * * + + +=_James Kent, 1763-1847._= (Manual, pp. 488, 504.) + +From "Commentaries on American Law." + +=_76._= LAW OF THE STATES. + +The judicial power of the United States is necessarily limited to +national objects. The vast field of the law of property, the very +extensive head of equity jurisdiction, and the principal rights and +duties which flow from our civil and domestic relations, fall within the +control, and we might almost say the exclusive cognizance, of the state +governments. We look essentially to the state courts for protection to +all these momentous interests. They touch, in their operation, every +chord of human sympathy, and control our best destinies. It is their +province to reward and to punish. Their blessings and their terrors will +accompany us to the fireside, and "be in constant activity before the +public eye." The elementary principles of the common law are the same +in every state, and equally enlighten and invigorate every part of our +country. Our municipal codes can be made to advance with equal steps +with that of the nation, in discipline, in wisdom, and in lustre, if the +state governments (as they ought in all honest policy) will only render +equal patronage and security to the administration of justice. The true +interests and the permanent freedom of this country require that the +jurisprudence of the individual states should be cultivated, cherished, +and exalted, and the dignity and reputation of the state authorities +sustained, with becoming pride. In their subordinate relation to the +United States, they should endeavor to discharge the duty which they +owe to the latter, without forgetting the respect which they owe to +themselves. In the appropriate language of Sir William Blackstone, +and which he applies to the people of his own country, they should be +"loyal, yet free; obedient, yet independent." + + * * * * * + + +=_Edward Livingston,[22] 1764-1836._= + +From the "Report on the Penal Code for Louisiana." + +=_77._= THE PROPER OFFICE OF THE JUDGE. + +Judges are generally men who have grown old in the practice at the bar. +With the knowledge which this experience gives, they acquire a habit, +very difficult to be shaken off, of taking a side in every question that +they hear debated, and when the mind is once enlisted, their passions, +prejudices, and professional ingenuity are always arrayed on the same +side, and furnish arms for the contest. Neutrality cannot, under +these circumstances, be expected; but the law should limit as much as +possible, the evil that this almost inevitable state of things must +produce. In the theory of our law, judges are the counsel for the +accused, in practice they are, with a few honorable exceptions, his most +virulent prosecutors. The true principles of criminal jurisprudence +require that they should be neither. Perfect impartiality is +incompatible with these duties. A good judge should have no wish that +the guilty should escape, or that the innocent should suffer; no false +pity, no undue severity, should bias the unshaken rectitude of +his judgment; calm in deliberation, firm in resolve, patient in +investigating the truth, tenacious of it when discovered, he should join +urbanity of manners, to dignity of demeanor, and an integrity above +suspicion, to learning and talent; such a judge is what, according to +the true structure of our courts, he ought to be,--the protector, not +the advocate of the accused; his judge, not his accuser; and while +executing these functions, he is the organ by which the sacred will +of the law is pronounced. Uttered by such a voice, it will be heard, +respected, felt, obeyed; but impose on him the task of argument, of +debate; degrade him from the bench to the bar; suffer him to overpower +the accused with his influence, or to enter the lists with his advocate, +to carry on the contest of sophisms, of angry arguments, of tart +replies, and all the wordy war of forensic debate; suffer him to do +this, and his dignity is lost; his decrees are no longer considered as +the oracles of the law; they are submitted to, but not respected; and +even the triumph of his eloquence or ingenuity, in the conviction of the +accused, must be lessened by the suspicion that it has owed its success +to official influence, and the privilege of arguing without reply. For +these reasons, the judge is forbidden to express any opinion on the +facts which are alleged in evidence, much less to address any argument +to the jury; but his functions are confined to expounding the law, and +stating the points of evidence on which the recollection of the jury may +differ. + +[Footnote 22: Was born in New York; eminent as a statesman, and as the +author of a code of laws for Louisiana, his adopted state.] + + * * * * * + + +=_John Quincy Adams, 1767-1848._= (Manual, pp. 487, 504.) + +From the "Speech on the Right of Petition." + +=_78._= THE RIGHT OF PETITION UNIVERSAL. + +Sir, it is well known, that, from the time I entered this House, down to +the present day, I have felt it a sacred duty to present any petition, +couched in respectful language, from any citizen of the United States, +be its object what it may; be the prayer of it that in which I could +concur, or that to which I was utterly opposed. It is for the sacred +right of petition that I have adopted this course.... Where is your law +which says that the mean, and the low, and the degraded, shall be +deprived of the right of petition, if their moral character is not good? +Where, in the land of freemen, was the right of petition ever placed on +the exclusive basis of morality and virtue? Petition is +_supplication_--it is _entreaty_--it is _prayer!_ And where is the +degree of vice or immorality which shall deprive the citizen of the +right to _supplicate_ for a boon, or to _pray for mercy!_ Where is such +a law to be found?... And what does your law say? Does it say that, +before presenting a petition, you shall look into it, and see whether it +comes from the virtuous, and the great, and the mighty. No, sir; it says +no such thing. The right of petition belongs to _all_. And so far from +refusing to present a petition because it might come from those low in +the estimation of the world, it, would be an additional incentive, if +such incentive were wanting. + + * * * * * + +From a "Discourse on the Jubilee of the Constitution." + +=_79._= THE ADMINISTRATION OF WASHINGTON. + +When Solon, by the appointment of the people of Athens, had formed, and +prevailed upon them to adopt a code of fundamental laws, the best that +they would bear, he went into voluntary banishment for ten years, to +save his system from the batteries of rival statesmen working upon +popular passions and prejudices excited against his person. In eight +years of a turbulent and tempestuous administration, Washington +had settled upon firm foundations the practical execution of the +Constitution of the United States. In the midst of the most appalling +obstacles, through the bitterest internal dissensions, and the most +formidable combinations of foreign antipathies and cavils, he had +subdued all opposition to the Constitution itself; had averted all +dangers of European war; had redeemed the captive children of his +country from Algiers; had reduced by chastisement, and conciliated by +kindness, the most hostile of the Indian tribes; had restored the +credit of the nation, and redeemed their reputation of fidelity to +the performance of their obligations; had provided for the total +extinguishment of the public debt; had settled the union upon the +immovable foundation of principle; and had drawn around his head, for +the admiration and emulation of after times, a brighter blaze of glory +than had ever encircled the brows of hero or statesman, patriot or sage. + +The administration of Washington fixed the character of the Constitution +of the United States, as a practical system of government, which it +retains to this day. Upon his retirement, its great antagonist, Mr. +Jefferson, came into the government again, as Vice-President of the +United States, and four years after succeeded to the Presidency itself. +But the funding system and the bank were established. The peace with +both the great belligerent powers of Europe was secured. The disuniting +doctrines of unlimited separate State sovereignty were laid aside. +Louisiana, by a stretch of power in Congress, far beyond the highest +tone of Hamilton, was annexed to the Union--and although dry-docks, and +gun-boats, and embargoes, and commercial restrictions, still refused the +protection of the national arm to commerce, and although an overweening +love of peace, and a reliance upon reason as a weapon of defence against +foreign aggression, eventuated in a disastrous though glorious war +with the gigantic power of Britain,--the Constitution as construed by +Washington, still proved an effective government for the country. + + * * * * * + + +=_Henry Clay, 1777-1832._= (Manual, p. 486.) + +From a "Speech in the United States Senate," March 24, 1818. + +=_80._= EMANCIPATION OF THE SOUTH AMERICAN STATES. + +Our Revolution was mainly directed against the mere theory of tyranny. +We had suffered comparatively but little; we had, in some respects, been +kindly treated; but our intrepid and intelligent forefathers saw, in the +usurpation of the power to levy an inconsiderable tax, the long train of +oppressive acts that were to follow. They rose; they breasted the storm; +they achieved our freedom, Spanish America for centuries has been doomed +to the practical effects of an odious tyranny. If we were justified, she +is more than justified. + +I am no propagandist. I would not seek to force upon other nations +our principles and our liberty if they did not want them. I would not +disturb the repose even of a detestable despotism. But if an abused and +oppressed people will their freedom; if they seek to establish it; if, +in truth, they have established it,--we have a right, as a sovereign +power, to notice the fact, and to act as circumstances and our interest +require. I will say, in the language of the venerated father of my +country, "born in a land of liberty, my anxious recollections, my +sympathetic feelings, and my best wishes, are irresistibly excited, +whensoever, in any country, I see an oppressed nation unfurl the banners +of freedom." + + * * * * * + +From the "Speech in the Senate on the Compromise Bill." + +=_81._= DANGERS OF DISUNION. + +South Carolina must perceive the embarrassments of her situation. She +must be desirous,--it is unnatural to suppose that she is not,--to +remain in the Union. What! a State whose heroes in its gallant ancestry +fought so many glorious battles along with the other States of this +Union,--a State with which this confederacy is linked by bonds of such a +powerful character! I have sometimes fancied what would be her condition +if she goes out of this Union; if her five hundred thousand people +should at once be thrown upon their own resources. She is out of the +Union. What is the consequence? She is an independent power. What +then does she do? She must have armies and fleets, and an expensive +government; have foreign missions; she must raise taxes; enact this very +tariff, which has driven her out of the Union, in order to enable her to +raise money, and to sustain the attitude of an independent power. If she +should have no force, no navy to protect her, she would be exposed to +piratical incursions. Their neighbor, St. Domingo, might pour down a +horde of pirates on her borders, and desolate her plantations. She must +have her embassies; therefore she must have a revenue. And, let me tell +you, there is another consequence, an inevitable one. She has a certain +description of persons recognized as property South of the Potomac, and +West of the Mississippi, which would be no longer recognized as such, +except within their own limits. This species of property would sink to +one half of its present value, for it is Louisiana and the southwestern +States which are her great market. + + * * * * * + +If there be any who want civil war, who want to see the blood of any +portion of our countrymen spilt, I am not one of them. I wish to see war +of no kind; but, above all, I do not desire to see a civil war. When war +begins, whether civil or foreign, no human sight is competent to foresee +when, or how, or where it is to terminate. But when a civil war shall be +lighted up in the bosom of our own happy land, and armies are marching, +and commanders are winning their victories, and fleets are in motion on +our coast, tell me if you can tell me, if any human being can tell its +duration? God alone knows where such a war would end. In what a state +will our institutions be left? In what state our liberties? I want no +war; above all, no war at home. + + * * * * * + + +=_John C. Calhoun, 1782-1850._= (Manual, p. 486.) + +From his "Speech on the Bill to regulate the Power of Removal." + +=_82._= DANGERS OF AN UNLIMITED POWER OF REMOVAL FROM OFFICE. + +Let us not be deceived by names. The power in question is too great for +the chief magistrate of a free state. It is in its nature an imperial +power; and if he be permitted to exercise it, his authority must become +as absolute as that of the autocrat of all the Russias. To give him +the power to dismiss at his will and pleasure, without limitation or +control, is to give him an absolute and unlimited control over the +subsistence of almost all who hold office under government. Let him +have the power, and the sixty thousand who now hold employments +under government would become dependent upon him for the means of +existence.... I know that there are many virtuous and high-minded +citizens who hold public office; but it is not, therefore, the less true +that the tendency of the power of dismissal is such as I have attributed +to it; and that, if the power be left unqualified, and the practice be +continued as it has of late, the result must be the complete corruption +and debasement of those in public employment.... + +I have seen the spirit of independent men, holding public office, sink +under the dread of this fearful power, too honest and too firm to become +the instruments of the flatterers of power, yet too prudent, with all +the consequences before them, to whisper disapprobation of what, in +their hearts, they condemned. Let the present state of things continue, +let it be understood that none are to acquire the public honors or +to retain them, but by flattery and base compliance, and in a few +generations the American character will become utterly corrupt and +debased. + + * * * * * + +From the "Address on the relation of the States to the General +Government." + +=_83._= PECULIAR MERIT OF OUR POLITICAL SYSTEM. + +Happily for us, we have no artificial and separate classes of society. +We have wisely exploded all such distinctions; but we are not, on that +account, exempt from all contrariety of interests, as the present +distracted and dangerous condition of our country, unfortunately, but +too clearly proves. With us they are almost exclusively geographical, +resulting mainly from difference of climate, soil, situation, industry, +and production; but are not, therefore, less necessary to be protected +by an adequate constitutional provision, than where the distinct +interests exist in separate classes. The necessity is, in truth, +greater, as such separate and dissimilar geographical interests are more +liable to come into conflict, and more dangerous, when in that state, +than those of any other description: so much so, that _ours is the +first instance on record where they have not formed, in an extensive +territory, separate and independent communities, or subjected the whole +to despotic sway._ That such may not be our unhappy fate also, must be +the sincere prayer of every lover of his country. + +So numerous and diversified are the interests of our country, that they +could not be fairly represented in a single government, organized so +as to give to each great and leading interest a separate and distinct +voice, as in governments to which I have referred. A plan was adopted +better suited to our situation, but perfectly novel in its character. +The powers of government were divided, not, as heretofore, in reference +to classes, but geographically. One General Government was formed +for the whole, to which were delegated all the powers supposed to be +necessary to regulate the interests common to all the States, leaving +others subject to the separate control of the States, being, from their +local and peculiar character, such that they could not be subject to the +will of a majority of the whole Union, without the certain hazard of +injustice and oppression. It was thus that the interests of the whole +were subjected, as they ought to be, to the will of the whole, while the +peculiar and local interests were left under the control of the States +separately, to whose custody only they could be safely confided. This +distribution of power, settled solemnly by a constitutional compact, to +which all the States are parties, constitutes the peculiar character +and excellence of our political system. It is truly and emphatically +_American, without example or parallel_. + +To realize its perfection, we must view the General Government and those +of the States as a whole, each in its proper sphere independent; +each perfectly adapted to its respective objects; the States acting +separately, representing and protecting the local and peculiar +interests: and acting jointly through one General Government, with the +weight respectively assigned to each by the Constitution, representing +and protecting the interest of the whole, and thus perfecting, by an +admirable but simple arrangement, the great principle of representation +and responsibility, without which no government can be free or just. To +preserve this sacred distribution as originally settled, by coercing +each to move in its prescribed orbit, is the great and difficult +problem, on the solution of which the duration of our Constitution, of +our union, and, in all probability, our liberty depends. How is this to +be effected? + + * * * * * + +From his "Works." + +=_84._= CONCURRENT MAJORITIES SUPERSEDE FORCE. + +It has been already shown, that the same constitution of man which leads +those who govern to oppress the governed,--if not prevented,--will, with +equal force and certainty, lead the latter to resist oppression, when +possessed of the means of doing so peaceably and successfully. But +absolute governments, of all forms, exclude all other means of +resistance to their authority, than that of force; and, of course, leave +no other alternative to the governed, but to acquiesce in oppression, +however great it may be, or to resort to force to put down the +government. But the dread of such a resort must necessarily lead the +government to prepare to meet force in order to protect itself; and +hence, of necessity, force becomes the conservative principle of all +such governments. + +On the contrary, the government of the concurrent majority, where the +organism is perfect, excludes the possibility of oppression, by giving +to each interest, or portion, or order,--where there are established +classes,--the means of protecting itself, by its negative, against all +measures calculated to advance the peculiar interests of others at +its expense. Its effect, then, is to cause the different interests, +portions, or orders,--as the case may be, to desist from attempting to +adopt any measure calculated to promote the prosperity of one, or more, +by sacrificing that of others; and thus to force them to unite in such +measures only as would promote the prosperity of all, as the only +means to prevent the suspension of the action of the government;--and, +thereby, to avoid anarchy, the greatest of all evils. It is by means of +such authorized and effectual resistance, that oppression is prevented, +and the necessity of resorting to force superseded, in governments of +the concurrent majority;--and, hence, compromise, instead of force, +becomes their conservative principle. + +It would, perhaps, be more strictly correct to trace the conservative +principle of constitutional governments to the necessity which compels +the different interests, or portions, or orders, to compromise,--as +the only way to promote their respective prosperity, and to avoid +anarchy,--rather than to the compromise itself. No necessity can be more +urgent and imperious, than that of avoiding anarchy. It is the same as +that which makes government indispensable to preserve society; and is +not less imperative than that which compels obedience to superior +force. Traced to this source, the voice of a people,--uttered under the +necessity of avoiding the greatest of calamities, through the organs of +a government so constructed as to suppress the expression of all partial +and selfish interests, and to give a full and faithful utterance to the +sense of the whole community, in reference to its common welfare,--may +without impiety, be called _the voice of God_. To call any other so, +would be impious. + + * * * * * + + +=_Daniel Webster, 1782-1852._= (Manual, pp. 478, 486.) + +From the "Reply to Hayne, in the United States Senate." + +=_85._= INESTIMABLE VALUE OF THE FEDERAL UNION. + +I cannot, even now, persuade myself to relinquish it, without expressing +once more my deep conviction, that, since it respects nothing less than +the union of the states, it is of most vital and essential importance +to the public happiness. I profess, sir, in my career hitherto, to have +kept steadily in view the prosperity and honor of the whole country, and +the preservation of our Federal Union. It is to that Union we owe our +safety at home, and our consideration and dignity abroad. It is to that +Union we are chiefly indebted for whatever makes us most proud of our +country. That Union we reached only by the discipline of our virtues in +the severe school of adversity. It had its origin in the necessities of +disordered finance, prostrate commerce, and ruined credit. Under its +benign influences, these great interests immediately awoke, as from the +dead, and sprang forth with newness of life. Every year of its duration +has teemed with fresh proofs of its utility and its blessings; and +although our territory has stretched out wider and wider, and our +population spread farther and farther, they have not outrun its +protection or its benefits. It has been to us all a copious fountain of +national, social, personal happiness. I have not allowed myself, sir, to +look beyond the Union, to see what might lie hidden in the dark recess +behind. I have not coolly weighed the chances of preserving liberty, +when the bonds that unite us together shall be broken asunder, I have +not accustomed myself to hang over the precipice of disunion, to see +whether, with my short sight, I can fathom the depth of the abyss below; +nor could I regard him as a safe counsellor in the affairs of this +government, whose thoughts should be mainly bent on considering, not +how the Union should be best preserved, but how tolerable might be the +condition of the people when it shall be broken up and destroyed. While +the Union lasts, we have high, exciting, gratifying prospects spread +out before us, for us and our children. Beyond that I do not seek to +penetrate the veil. God grant that, in my day at least, that curtain may +not rise. God grant that, on my vision never may be opened what lies +behind. When my eyes shall be turned to behold, for the last time, the +sun in heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken and dishonored +fragments of a once glorious Union; on states dissevered, discordant, +belligerent; on a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, +in fraternal blood! Let their last feeble and lingering glance rather +behold the gorgeous ensign of the republic, now known and honored +throughout the earth, still full high advanced, its arms and trophies +streaming in their original lustre, not a stripe erased or polluted, +nor a single star obscured,--bearing for its motto no such miserable +interrogatory as, _What is all this worth?_ nor those other words +of delusion and folly, _Liberty first, and Union afterwards_; but +everywhere, spread all over in characters of living light, blazing on +all its ample folds, as they float over the sea and over the land, and +in every wind under the whole heavens, that other sentiment, dear to +every American heart--Liberty _and_ Union, now and forever, one and +inseparable! + + * * * * * + +From the "Speech at the Laying of the Corner Stone of the Bunker Hill +Monument." + +=_86._= OBJECT OF THE MONUMENT. + +Let it not be supposed that our object is to perpetuate national +hostility, or even to cherish a mere military spirit. It is higher, +purer, nobler. We consecrate our work to the spirit of national +independence, and we wish that the light of peace may rest upon it +forever. We rear a memorial of our conviction of that unmeasured benefit +which has been conferred on our own land, and of the happy influences +which have been produced, by the same events, on the general interests +of mankind. We come, as Americans, to mark a spot which must forever be +dear to us and our posterity. We wish that whoever, in all coming +time, shall turn his eye hither, may behold that the place is not +undistinguished where the first great battle of the Revolution was +fought. We wish that this structure may proclaim the magnitude and +importance of that event to every class and every age. We wish that +infancy may learn the purpose of its erection, from maternal lips, +and that weary and withered age may behold it, and be solaced by the +recollections which it suggests. We wish that labor may look up here, +and be proud in the midst of its toil. We wish that in those days of +disaster, which, as they come upon all nations, must be expected to come +upon us also, desponding patriotism may turn its eyes hitherward, and be +assured that the foundations of our national power are still strong. We +wish that this column, rising towards heaven among the pointed spires of +so many temples dedicated to God, may contribute also to produce, in all +minds, a pious feeling of dependence and gratitude. We wish, finally, +that the last object to the sight of him who leaves his native shore, +and the first to gladden his who revisits it, may be something which +shall remind him of the liberty and the glory of his country. Let it +rise! let it rise, till it meet the sun in his coming; let the earliest +light of the morning gild it, and parting day linger and play on its +summit. + + * * * * * + +From his "Works." + +=_87._= BENEFITS OF THE CONSTITUTION. + +Its benefits are not exclusive. What has it left undone, which any +government could do for the whole country? In what condition has it +placed us? Where do we now stand? Are we elevated, or degraded, by its +operation? What is our condition, under its influence, at the very +moment when some talk of arresting its power and breaking its unity? Do +we not feel ourselves on an eminence? Do we not challenge the respect of +the whole world? What has placed us thus high? What has given us this +just pride? What else is it, but the unrestrained and free operation +of that same Federal Constitution, which it has been proposed now to +hamper, and manacle, and nullify? Who is there among us, that, should +he find himself on any spot of the earth where human beings exist, and +where the existence of other nations is known, would not be proud to +say, I am an American? I am a countryman of Washington? I am a citizen +of that Republic, which although it has suddenly sprung up, yet there +are none on the globe who have ears to hear, and have not heard of +it,--who have eyes to see and have not read of it,--who know any +thing,--and yet do not know of its existence and its glory? And, +gentlemen, let me now reverse the picture. Let me ask, who is there +among us, if he were to be found to-morrow in one of the civilized +countries of Europe, and were there to learn that this goodly form of +Government had been overthrown--that the United States were no longer +united--that a death-blow had been struck upon their bond of Union--that +they themselves had destroyed their chief good and their chief +honor,--who is there, whose heart would not sink within him? Who is +there, who would not cover his face for very shame? + +At this very moment, gentlemen, our country is a general refuge for the +distressed and the persecuted of other nations. Whoever is in affliction +from political occurrences in his own country, looks here for shelter. +Whether he be republican, flying from the oppression of thrones--or +whether he be monarch or monarchist, flying from thrones that crumble +and fall under or around him,--he feels equal assurance, that if he +get foothold on our soil, his person is safe, and his rights will be +respected. + +And who will venture to say, that in any government now existing in the +world, there is greater security for persons or property than in that of +the United States? We have tried these popular institutions in times of +great excitement and commotion; and they have stood substantially firm +and steady, while the fountains of the great deep have been elsewhere +broken up; while thrones, resting on ages of prescription, have tottered +and fallen; and while in other countries, the earthquake of unrestrained +popular commotion has swallowed up all law, and all liberty, and all +right, together. Our Government has been tried in peace, and it has been +tried in war; and has proved itself fit for both. It has been assailed +from without, and it has successfully resisted the shock; it has been +disturbed within, and it has effectually quieted the disturbance. It can +stand trial--it can stand, assault--it, can stand adversity.--it can +stand every thing, but the marring of its own beauty, and the weakening +of its own strength. It can stand every thing, but the effects of +our own rashness, and our own folly. It can stand everything, but +disorganization, disunion, and nullification. + + * * * * * + +From his Correspondence with Lord Ashburton. + +=_88._= THE RIGHT OF CHANGING ALLEGIANCE. + +England acknowledges herself overburdened with population of the poorer +classes. Every instance of the emigration of persons of those classes is +regarded by her as a benefit. England, therefore, encourages emigration; +means are notoriously supplied to emigrants, to assist their conveyance, +from public funds; and the New World, and most especially these United +States, receive the many thousands of her subjects thus ejected from the +bosom of their native land by the necessities of their condition. They +come away from poverty and distress in over-crowded cities, to seek +employment, comfort, and new homes, in a country of free institutions, +possessed by a kindred race, speaking their own language, and having +laws and usages in many respects like those to which they have been +accustomed; and a country which, upon the whole, is found to possess +more attractions for persons of their character and condition, than any +other on the face of the globe. It is stated that, in the quarter of the +year ending with June last, more than twenty-six thousand emigrants left +the single port of Liverpool for the United States, being four or five +times as many as left the same port within the same period, for the +British Colonies and all other parts of the world. Of these crowds +of emigrants, many arrive in our cities in circumstances of great +destitution, and the charities of the country, both public and private, +are severely taxed to relieve their immediate wants. In time they mingle +with the new community in which they find themselves, and seek means of +living. Some find employment in the cities, others go to the frontiers, +to cultivate lands reclaimed from the forest; and a greater or less +number of the residue, becoming in time naturalized citizens, enter into +the merchant service under the flag of their adopted country. + +Now, my Lord, if war should break out between England and a European +power, can any thing be more unjust, any thing more irreconcilable to +the general sentiments of mankind, than that England should seek out +these persons, thus encouraged by her, and compelled by their own +condition, to leave their native homes, tear them away from their +new employments, their new political relations, and their domestic +connections, and force them to undergo the dangers and hardships of +military service for a country which, has thus ceased to be their own +country? Certainly, certainly, my Lord, there can be but one answer to +this question. Is it not far more reasonable that England should either +prevent such emigration of her subjects, or that, if she encourage and +promote it, she should leave them, not to the embroilment of a double +and contradictory allegiance, but to their own voluntary choice, to form +such relations, political or social, as they see fit, in the country +where they are to find their bread, and to the laws and institutions of +which they are to look for defence and protection. + + * * * * * + + +=_Joseph Story, 1779-1845._= (Manual, pp. 487, 531.) + +From his "Miscellaneous Writings." + +=_89._= CHIEF JUSTICE MARSHALL. + +When can we expect to be permitted to behold again so much moderation +united with so much firmness, so much sagacity with so much modesty, so +much learning with so much experience, so much solid wisdom with so +much purity, so much of every thing to love and admire, with +nothing--absolutely nothing, to regret? What, indeed, strikes us as the +most remarkable in his whole character, even more than his splendid +talents, is the entire consistency of his public life and principles. +There is nothing in either which calls for apology or concealment. +Ambition has never seduced him from his principles, nor popular clamor +deterred him from the strict performance of duty. Amid the extravagances +of party spirit he has stood with a calm, and steady inflexibility, +neither bending to the pressure of adversity, nor bounding with the +elasticity of success. He has lived as such a man should live, (and yet, +how few deserve the commendation!) by and with, his principles. Whatever +changes of opinion have occurred in the course of his long life, +have been gradual and slow; the results of genius acting upon larger +materials, and of judgment matured by the lessons of experience. + +If we were tempted to say, in one word, what it was in which he chiefly +excelled other men, we should say, in wisdom--in the union of that +virtue, which has ripened under the hardy discipline of principles, +with that knowledge which has constantly sifted and refined its old +treasures, and as constantly gathered new. The constitution, since its +adoption, owes more to him than to any other single mind, for its true +interpretation and vindication. Whether it lives or perishes, his +exposition of its principles will be an enduring monument to his fame, +as long as solid reasoning, profound analysis, and sober views of +government, shall invite the leisure, or command the attention, of +statesmen and jurists.... Yet it may be affirmed by those who have had +the privilege of intimacy with Mr. Chief Justice Marshall, that he +rises, rather than falls, with the nearest survey; and that in the +domestic circle he is exactly what a wife, a child, a brother, and a +friend would most desire. In that magical circle, admiration of +his talents is forgotten in the indulgence of those affections and +sensibilities which are awakened only to be gratified. + + * * * * * + +From his "Miscellanies." + +=_90._= DIGNITY OF AMERICAN JURISPRUDENCE. + +The most delicate, and at the same time the proudest attribute of +American jurisprudence, is the right of its judicial tribunals to decide +questions of constitutional law. In other governments these questions +cannot be entertained or decided by courts of justice; and, therefore, +whatever may be the theory of the constitution, the legislative +authority is practically omnipotent, and there is no means of contesting +the legality or justice of a law, but by an appeal to arms. This can be +done only when oppression weighs heavily and grievously on the whole +people, and is then resisted by all because it is felt by all. But the +oppression that strikes at a humble individual, though it robs him of +character, or fortune, or life, is remediless; and, if it becomes the +subject of judicial enquiry, judges may lament, but cannot resist, the +mandates of the legislature. Far different is the case in our country; +and the privilege of bringing every law to the test of the constitution +belongs to the humblest citizen, who owes no obedience to any +legislative act which transcends the constitutional limits. + +The discussion of constitutional questions throws a lustre round the +bar, and gives a dignity to its functions, which can rarely belong to +the profession in any other country. Lawyers are here emphatically +placed as sentinels upon the outposts of the constitution, and no nobler +end can be proposed for their ambition or patriotism than to stand as +faithful guardians of the constitution, ready to defend its legitimate +powers, and to stay the arm of legislative, executive, or popular +oppression. If their eloquence can charm, when it vindicates the +innocent, and the suffering under private wrongs; if their learning +and genius can, with almost superhuman witchery, unfold the mazes and +intricacies by which the minute links of title are chained to the +adamantine pillars of the law;--how much more glory belongs to them when +this eloquence, this learning, and this genius, are employed in defence +of their country; when they breathe forth the purest spirit of morality +and virtue in support of the rights of mankind; when they expound the +lofty doctrines which sustain and connect, and guide the destinies of +nations; when they combat popular delusions at the expense of fame, and +friendship, and political honors; when they triumph by arresting the +progress of error and the march of power, and drive back the torrent +that threatens destruction equally to public liberty and to private +property, to all that delights us in private life, and all that gives +grace and authority in public office. + + * * * * * + + +=_Lewis Cass,[23] 1782-1866._= + +From his "Report of the Secretary of War." December 1831. + +=_91._= POLICY OF REMOVING THE INDIANS. + +The associations which bind the Indians to the land of their forefathers +are strong and enduring; and these must be broken by their emigration. +But they are also broken by our citizens, who every day encounter all +the difficulties of similar changes in pursuit of the means of support. +And the experiments that have been made satisfactorily show that, +by proper precautions and liberal appropriations, the removal and +establishment of the Indians can be effected with little comparative +trouble to them, or us.... If they remain, they must decline, and +eventually disappear. Such is the result of all experience. If they +remove, they may be comfortably established, and their moral and +physical condition ameliorated.... + +The great moral debt we owe to this unhappy race is universally felt and +acknowledged. Diversities of opinion exist respecting the proper mode of +discharging this obligation, but its validity is not denied. + +Indolent in his habits, the Indian is opposed to labor; improvident +in his mode of life, he has little foresight in providing, or care in +preserving. Taught from infancy to reverence his own traditions and +institutions, he is satisfied of their value, and dreads the anger of +the Great Spirit, if he should depart from the customs of his fathers. +Devoted to the use of ardent spirits, he abandons himself to +its indulgence without restraint. War and hunting are his only +occupations.... Shall they be advised to remain, or remove? If the +former, their fate is written in the annals of their race; if the +latter, we may yet hope to see them renovated in character and +condition, by our example and instruction, and their exertions. + +[Footnote 23: A native of New Hampshire, but for many years a citizen of +Michigan: conspicuous in public life, and a writer of high authority on +Indian and military affairs, and the settlement of the north-west.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Rufus Choate, 1799-1859._= (Manual, p. 487.) + +From his "Lectures and Addresses." + +=_92._= CONSERVATIVE FORCE OF THE AMERICAN BAR. + +Is it not so that in its nature, in its functions, in the intellectual +and practical habits which it forms, in the opinions to which it +conducts, in all its tendencies and influences of speculation and +action, it is, and ought to be, professionally and peculiarly such an +element and such an agent, that it contributes, or ought to be held to +contribute, more than all things else, or as much as anything else, to +preserve our organic forms, our civil and social order, our public and +private justice, our constitutions of government, even the Union itself? +In these crises through which our liberty is to pass, may not, must not, +this function of conservatism become more and more developed, and more +and more operative? May it not one day be written, for the praise of the +American Bar, that it helped to keep the true idea of the state alive +and germinant in the American mind; that it helped to keep alive the +sacred sentiments of obedience, and reverence, and justice, of the +supremacy of the calm and grand reason of the law over the fitful +will of the individual and the crowd; that it helped to withstand the +pernicious sophism that the successive generations, as they come to +life, are but as so many successive flights of summer flies, without +relations to the past or duties to the future, and taught instead that +all--all the dead, the living, the unborn--were one moral person-one for +action, one for suffering, one for responsibility; that the engagements +of one age may bind the conscience of another; the glory or the shame +of a day may brighten or stain the current of a thousand years of +continuous national being? + + * * * * * + +From the "Address before the New England Society of New York." + +=_93._= THE AGE OF THE PILGRIMS, OUR HEROIC PERIOD. + +I have said that I deemed it a great thing for a nation, in all the +periods of its fortunes, to be able to look back to a race of founders, +and a principle of institution, in which, it might seem to see the +realized idea of true heroism. That felicity, that pride, that help, is +ours. Our past--both its great eras, that of settlement, and that of +independence--should announce, should compel, should spontaneously +evolve as from a germ, a wise, moral, and glorious future. These heroic +men and women should not look down on a dwindled posterity. It should +seem to be almost of course, too easy to be glorious, that they who +keep the graves, bear the name, and boast the blood, of men in whom +the loftiest sense of duty blended itself with the fiercest spirit of +liberty, should add to their freedom, justice: justice to all men, to +all nations; justice, that venerable virtue, without which freedom, +valor, and power, are but vulgar things. + +And yet is the past nothing, even our past, but as you, quickened by its +examples, instructed by its experiences, warned by its voices, assisted +by its accumulated instrumentality, shall reproduce it in the life of +to-day. Its once busy existence, various sensations, fiery trials, +dear-bought triumphs; its dynasty of heroes, all its pulses of joy and +anguish, and hope and fear, and love and praise, are with the years +beyond the flood. "The sleeping and the dead are but as pictures." Yet, +gazing on these, long and intently, and often, we may pass into the +likeness of the departed,--may emulate their labors, and partake of +their immortality. + + * * * * * + + +=_William H. Seward,[24] 1801-1872._= + +"Oration on Lafayette," July 16th, 1834. + +=_94._= HIS MILITARY SERVICES IN AMERICA. + +There were indeed other and heroic volunteers from European countries, +but they were either exiles who had no homes, or they were soldiers by +profession, who followed the sword wherever a harvest was to be reaped +with it.... Lafayette's first act in America gave new evidence of +disinterestedness and magnanimity. He found the small patriot army rent +asunder by jealous feuds growing out of ambition for preferment. What +revolution, however holy, has not suffered by such evils! How many +a revolution has been lost by them! Schuyler, the brave, the +high-spirited, and wise, now the victim of an intrigue, was hesitating +whether to submit to a privation of rank justly due him, or to resign. +Putnam's recent promotion produced bitter complaints; and Gates was +laboring night and day, aided by a powerful faction, to displace +Washington from the chief command. The correspondence of the Father of +his country, now first published, reveals the fact that the compensation +attached to military rank was by no means an unimportant object of the +universal rage for preferment, which then threatened to break up the +army. Lafayette set a noble example to the republican chiefs. He +declined the tender of a commission as major-general, with the +emoluments, and stipulated, on the contrary, for leave to serve without +reward, and even without a command, until he should have made a title to +it by actual achievements. He won his commission by the blood he gave to +his adopted country in the battle of Brandywine, by rallying the troops +in the retreat at Chester Bridge, and by his brave resistance and +capture, with the aid of militia-men, of a superior force of British +and Hessian regulars; and thus, without exciting murmurs among his +compatriots, and with the thanks of Congress, he rose to the command of +a division in the army of the United States. Lavish of gold, as he had +already shown that he was lavish of blood, he clothed and equipped +these troops, numbering two thousand, at his own expense; and they soon +became, under his exact but affectionate discipline, the favorite corps +of the whole army. + +Lafayette stood second to Washington in the affections of the American +people, and in the applauses of the friends of liberty throughout the +world. Certainly whatever honors that people could have conferred upon +any one would have been sure to wait on him. Let those who think that +preferment, power, and applause are always the chief objects of human +ambition, look now at this illustrious and yet youthful personage, +cheerfully resigning his command, and without one murmur of regret for +the honors laid down, or one glance towards the honors gathering before +him, taking affectionate leave of his companions in arms, and their +great chief, and returning to his native land, to resume there the +duties he owed as a subject and member of the State, in France. + +[Footnote 24: A prominent statesman, formerly Governor of New York, of +which state he is a native. He is known in literature by many addresses, +speeches, and diplomatic papers, often of high merit.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Abraham Lincoln,[25] 1809-1865._= + +"Speech at the Dedication of the National Cemetery at Gettysburg," +November 19, 1883. + +=_95._= OBLIGATION TO THE PATRIOT DEAD. + +Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon this +continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the +proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a +great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived +and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of +that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final +resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might +live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But +in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot +hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, +have consecrated it far above our power to add or detract. The world +will little note, nor long remember, what we say here; but it can never +forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather to be +dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here, have +thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to +the great task remaining before us, that from these honored dead we +take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full +measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall +not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new +birth of freedom, and that governments of the people, by the people, and +for the people, shall not perish from the earth. + +[Footnote 25: Born in Kentucky; a prominent lawyer and statesman of +Illinois; was elected President of the United States in 1860; was +eminent for his profound appreciation of 'the subsequent struggle, and +for his patriotic appeals in behalf of the nation. Assassinated April +13, 1865.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Charles Sumner, 1811-1874._= (Manual, p. 487.) + +From the "Speech in the Senate on the Nebraska and Kansas Bill," May 25, +1854. + +=_96._= PROSPECTIVE RESULTS OF THE BILL. + +Sir, the bill which you are now about to pass is at once the worst and +the best bill on which Congress ever acted. Yes, sir, worst and best at +the same time. + +It is the worst bill, inasmuch as it is a present victory of slavery. In +a Christian land, and in an age of civilization, a time-honored statute +of freedom is struck down, opening the way to all the countless woes and +wrongs of human bondage. Among the crimes of history, another is about +to be recorded, which no tears can blot out, and which, in better days, +will be read with universal shame. + +But there is another side, to which I gladly turn. Sir, it is the best +bill on which Congress ever acted; for it annuls all past compromises +with slavery, and makes all future compromises impossible. Thus it puts +freedom and slavery face to face, and bids them grapple. Who can doubt +the result? It opens wide the door of the future, when, at last, there +will really be a North, and the slave power will be broken; when this +wretched despotism will cease to dominate over our government, no longer +impressing itself upon everything at home and abroad; when the national +government shall be divorced in every way from slavery, and according +to the true intention of our fathers, freedom shall be established by +Congress everywhere, at least beyond the local limits of the states. + +Thus, sir, now standing at the very grave of freedom in Kansas and +Nebraska, I lift myself to the vision of that happy resurrection, by +which freedom will be secured, not only in these territories, but +everywhere under the national government. More clearly than ever before, +I now penetrate that "All-Hail-Hereafter" when slavery must disappear. +Proudly I discern the flag of my country, as it ripples in every breeze, +at last become in reality, as in name, the Flag of Freedom, undoubted, +pure, and irresistible. Am I not right, then, in calling this bill the +best on which Congress ever acted? + +Sorrowfully I bend before the wrong you are about to commit. Joyfully I +welcome all the promises of the future. + + * * * * * + +From the "Speech for Union against the Slave Power," June 8, 1848. + +=_97._= HEROIC EFFORTS CANNOT FAIL. + +There are occasions of political difference, I admit, when it may become +expedient to vote for a person who does not completely represent our +sentiments. There are some matters that come legitimately within the +range of expediency and compromise. The Tariff and the Currency are +unquestionably of this character. If a candidate differs from me, more +or less, on these, I may yet be disposed to vote for him. But the +question now before the country is of another character. This will not +admit of compromise. It is not within the domain of expediency. _To be +wrong on this is to be wholly wrong._ It is not merely expedient for us +to defend Freedom, when assailed, but our duty so to do, unreservedly, +and careless of consequences. Who is there in this assembly that would +help to fasten a fetter upon Oregon or Mexico? Who is there that would +not oppose every effort for this purpose? Nobody. Who is there, then, +that can vote for Taylor or Cass? + +But it is said that we shall throw away our votes, and that our +opposition will fail. Sir! no honest, earnest effort in a good cause +ever fails. It may not be crowned with the applause of men; it may not +seem to touch the goal of immediate worldly success, which is the end +and aim of so much of life. But still it is not lost. It helps to +strengthen the weak with new virtue; to arm the irresolute with proper +energy; to animate all with devotion to duty, which in the end conquers +all. Fail! Did the martyrs fail, when with their precious blood they +sowed the seed of the Church? Did the discomfited champions of Freedom +fail, who have left those names in history which can never die? Did the +three hundred Spartans fail, when, in the narrow pass, they did not fear +to brave the innumerable Persian hosts, whose very arrows darkened the +sun? No! Overborne by numbers, crushed to earth, they have left an +example which is greater far than any victory. And this is the least we +can do. Our example shall be the source of triumph hereafter. It +will not be the first time in history that the hosts of Slavery have +outnumbered the champions of Freedom. But where is it written that +Slavery finally prevailed. + + * * * * * + +Returning to our forefathers for our principles, let us borrow, also, +something of their courage and union. Let us summon to our sides the +majestic forms of those civil heroes, whose firmness in council was +equalled only by the firmness of Washington in war. Let us listen +again to the eloquence of the elder Adams, animating his associates in +Congress to independence: let us hang anew upon the sententious wisdom +of Franklin; let us be enkindled, as were the men of other days, by the +fervid devotion to Freedom, which flamed from the heart of Jefferson. +Deriving instruction from our enemies, let us also be taught by the +Slave Power. The two hundred thousand slaveholders are always united in +purpose. Hence their strength. Like arrows in a quiver, they cannot be +broken. The friends of Freedom have thus far been divided. _Union_, +then, must be our watchword,--union, among men of all parties. By such a +union we shall consolidate an opposition which must prevail. + + * * * * * + +From a Speech, September 16, 1863. + +=_98._= OUR FOREIGN RELATIONS. + +It only remains that the Republic should lift itself to the height of +its great duties. War is hard to bear,--with its waste, its pains, its +wounds, its funerals. But in this war we have not been choosers. We have +been challenged to the defence of our country, and in this sacred cause, +to crush Slavery. There is no alternative. Slavery began the combat, +staking its life, and determined to rule or die. That we may continue +freemen there must be no slaves; so that our own security is linked with +the redemption of a race. Blessed lot, amidst the harshness of war, to +wield the arms and deal the blows under which the monster will surely +fall! + +But while thus steady in our purpose at home, we must not neglect +that proper moderation abroad, which becomes the consciousness of our +strength and the nobleness of our cause. The mistaken sympathy which +foreign powers now bestow upon slavery,--or it may be the mistaken +insensibility,--under the plausible name of "neutrality," which they +profess,--will be worse for them than for us. For them it will be a +record of shame which their children would gladly wash out with tears. +For us it will be only another obstacle vanquished in the battle for +civilization, where unhappily false friends are mingled with open +enemies. Even if the cause shall seem for a while imperilled from +foreign powers, yet our duties are none the less urgent. If the pressure +be great, the resistance must be greater; nor can there be any retreat. +Come weal or woe this is the place for us to stand. + +I know not if a republic like ours can count even now upon the certain +friendship of any European power, unless it be the republic of William +Tell. The very name is unwelcome to the full-blown representatives of +monarchical Europe, who forget how proudly, even in modern history, +Venice bore the title of _Serenissima Respublica_. It will be for us +to change all this, and we shall do it. Our successful example will be +enough. Thus far we have been known chiefly through that vital force +which slavery could only degrade, but not subdue. Now at last, by the +death of slavery, will the republic begin to live. For what is life +without liberty? Stretching from ocean to ocean,--teeming with +population, bountiful in resources of all kinds, and thrice-happy in +universal enfranchisement, it will be more than conqueror. Nothing too +vast for its power; nothing too minute for its care. Triumphant over the +foulest wrong ever inflicted, after the bloodiest war ever waged, it +will know the majesty of right and the beauty of peace, prepared always +to uphold the one, and to cultivate the other. Strong in its own mighty +stature, filled with all the fulness of a new life, and covered with a +panoply of renown, it will confess that no dominion is of value which +does not contribute to human happiness. Born in this latter day, and the +child of its own struggles, without ancestral claims, but heir of +all the ages,--it will stand forth to assert the dignity of man, and +wherever any member of the human family is to be succored, there its +voice will reach,--as the voice of Cromwell reached across France +even to the persecuted mountaineers of the Alps. Such will be this +republic;--upstart among the nations. Aye! as the steam-engine, the +telegraph, and chloroform are upstart. Comforter and helper like these, +it can know no bounds to its empire over a willing world. But the first +stage is the death of slavery. + + * * * * * + +From "Prophetic Voices about America." + +=_99._= NATIONAL GREATNESS ATTAINABLE THROUGH PEACE. + +Such are some of the prophetic voices about America, differing in +character and importance, but all having one augury, and opening one +vista, illimitable in extent and vastness. Farewell to the idea of +Montesquieu, that a republic can exist only in a small territory.... + +Such grandeur may justly excite anxiety rather than pride, for duties +are in corresponding proportion. There is occasion for humility also, +as the individual considers his own insignificance in the transcendent +mass. The tiny polyp, in its unconscious life, builds the everlasting +coral; each citizen is little more than the industrious insect. The +result is accomplished by continuous and combined exertion. Millions of +citizens, working in obedience to nature, can accomplish anything. Of +course, war is an instrumentality which a true civilization disowns. +Here some of our prophets have erred. Sir Thomas Browne was so much +overshadowed by his own age, that his vision was darkened by "great +armies," and even "hostile and piratical attacks" on Europe. It was +natural that D'Aranda, schooled in worldly affairs, should imagine the +new-born power ready to seize the Spanish possessions. Among our own +countrymen, Jefferson looked to war for the extension of dominion. The +Floridas he says on one occasion, "are ours on the first moment of war, +and until a war they are of no particular necessity to us." Happily +they were acquired in another way. Then again, while declaring that no +constitution was ever before so calculated as ours for extensive empire +and self-government, and insisting upon Canada as a component part, +he calmly says that "this would be, of course, in the first war." +Afterwards, while confessing a longing for Cuba, "as the most +interesting addition that could ever be made to our system of States," +he says that "he is sensible that this can never be obtained, even with +her own consent, without war." Thus at each stage is the baptism of +blood. In much better mood the good Bishop recognized empire as moving +gently in the pathway of light. All this is much clearer now than when +he prophesied. It is easy to see that empire obtained by force is +unrepublican and offensive to that first principle of our Union +according to which all just government stands only on the consent of the +governed. Our country needs no such ally as war. Its destiny is mightier +than war. Through peace it will have every thing. This is our talisman. +Give us peace, and population will increase beyond all experience; +resources of all kinds will multiply infinitely; arts will embellish the +land with immortal beauty, the name of Republic will be exalted, until +every neighbor, yielding to irresistible attraction, will seek a new +life in becoming a part of the great whole; and the national example +will be more puissant than army or navy for the conquest of the world. + + * * * * * + + +=_Alexander H. Stephens,[26] 1812-._= + +From Appendix to "The Constitutional View." + +=_100._= ORIGIN OF THE AMERICAN FLAG. + +The stars, as a matter of course, represent states. The origin of +the stripes, I think, if searched out, would be found to be a little +curious. All I know upon that point is, that on the 4th day of July, +1776, after the Declaration of Independence was carried, a committee was +appointed by Congress, consisting of Mr. Jefferson, Dr. Franklin, and +John Adams, to prepare a _device_ for a _seal_ of the United States.... +This seal, as reported, or the _device_ in full, as reported, was +never adopted. But in it we see the emblems, in part, which are still +preserved in the flag. + +The stripes, or lines, which, on Mr. Jefferson's original plan, were +to designate the six quarterings of the shield, as signs of the six +countries from which our ancestors came, are now, I believe, considered +as representations of the old thirteen states, and with most persons the +idea of a shield is lost sight of. You perceive that, by drawing six +lines or stripes on a shield figure, it will leave seven spaces of the +original color, and of course give thirteen apparent stripes; hence the +idea of their being all intended to represent the old thirteen states. +My opinion, is, that this was the origin of the stripes. Mr. Jefferson's +quartered shield for a seal device was seized upon as a national emblem, +that was put upon the flag. We have now the stars as well as the +stripes. When each of these was adopted I cannot say; but the flag, as +it now is, was designed by Captain Reid, as I tell you, and adopted by +Congress. + +[Footnote 26: One of the most eminent public men of the south; a native +of Georgia.] + + * * * * * + + + +BIOGRAPHICAL WRITERS. + + +=_Benjamin Rush,[27] 1743-1813._= + +From "Essays, Literary, Moral," etc. + +=_101._= THE LIFE OF EDWARD DRINKER, A CENTENARIAN. + +He saw and heard more of those events which are measured by time, than +have ever been seen or heard since the age of the patriarchs; he saw the +same spot of earth which at one period of his life was covered with wood +and bushes, and the receptacle of beasts and birds of prey, afterwards +become the seat of a city not only the first in wealth and arts in the +new, but rivalling, in both, many of the first cities in the old world. +He saw regular streets where he once pursued a hare; he saw churches +rising upon morasses, where he had often heard the croaking of frogs; he +saw wharves and warehouses where he had often seen Indian savages draw +fish from the river for their daily subsistence; and he saw ships of +every size and use in those streams where he had often seen nothing but +Indian canoes.... He saw the first treaty ratified between the newly +confederated powers of America and the ancient monarchy of France, with +all the formalities of parchment and seals, on the same spot, probably, +where he once saw William Penn ratify his first and last treaty with +the Indians, without the formality of pen, ink, or paper.... He saw the +beginning and end of the empire of Great Britain in Pennsylvania. He +had been the subject of seven successive crowned heads, and afterwards +became a willing citizen of a republic; for he embraced the liberties +and independence of America in his withered arms, and triumphed in the +last years of his life in the salvation of his country. + +[Footnote 27: A native of Pennsylvania, eminent as a writer, and +especially as a teacher and practitioner of medicine.] + + * * * * * + + +=_John Marshall, 1755-1835._= (Manual, p. 490.) + +From the "History of the American Colonies." + +=_102._= THE CONQUEST OF CANADA. + +During these transactions, General Amherst was taking measures for the +annihilation of the remnant of French power in Canada. He determined to +employ the immense force under his command for the accomplishment of +this object, and made arrangements during the winter to bring the armies +from Quebec, Lake Champlain, and Lake Ontario, to act against Montreal. + +The junction of these armies presenting before Montreal a force not +to be resisted, the Governor offered to capitulate. In the month of +September, Montreal, and all other places within the government of +Canada, then remaining in the possession of France, were surrendered to +his Britannic majesty. The troops were to be transported to France, and +the Canadians to be protected in their property, and the full enjoyment +of their religion. + +That colossal power which France had been long erecting in America, with +vast labor and expense; which had been the motive for one of the most +extensive and desolating wars of modern times, was thus entirely +overthrown. The causes of this interesting event are to be found in the +superior wealth and population of the colonies of England, and in +her immense naval strength; an advantage, in distant war, not to be +counterbalanced by the numbers, the discipline, the courage, and the +military talents, which may be combined in the armies of an inferior +maritime power. + +The joy diffused throughout the British dominions by this splendid +conquest, was mingled with a proud sense of superiority, which did +not estimate with exact justice the relative means employed by the +belligerents. In no part of those dominions was this joy felt in a +higher degree, or with more reason, than in America. In that region, the +wars between France and England had assumed a form, happily unknown to +other parts of the civilized world. Not confined as in Europe to men in +arms--women and children were its common victims. It had been carried by +the savage to the fire-side of the peaceful peasant, where the tomahawk +and the scalping-knife were applied indiscriminately to every age, and +to either sex. The hope was now fondly indulged that these scenes, at +least in the northern and middle colonies, were closed forever. + + * * * * * + + +=_John Armstrong,[28] 1759-1843._= + +From the Life of General Wayne. + +=_103._= STORMING OF STONY POINT. + +Wayne, believing that few things were impracticable to discipline and +valor, after a careful reconnoissance, adopted the project, and hastened +to give it execution. Beginning his march on the 15th from Sandy Beach, +he at eight o'clock in the evening took a position within a mile and +a half of his object. By the organization given to the attack, the +regiments of Febiger and Meigs, with Hull's detachment, formed the +column of the right; and the regiment of Butler and Murfey's detachment, +that of the left. A party of twenty men furnished with axes for pioneer +duty, and followed by a sustaining corps of one hundred and fifty men +with unloaded arms, preceded each column, while a small detachment was +assigned to purposes merely of demonstration. + +At half after eleven o'clock, the hour fixed on for the assault, the +columns were in motion; but from delays made inevitable by the nature of +the ground, it was twenty minutes after twelve before this commenced, +when neither the morass, now overflowed by the tide, nor the formidable +and double row of _abattis_, nor the high and strong works on the summit +of the hill, could for a moment damp the ardor or stop the career of +the assailants, who, in the face of an incessant fire of musketry and +a shower of shells and grape-shot, forced their way through every +obstacle, and with so much concert of movement, that both columns +entered the fort and reached its centre, nearly at the same moment. Nor +was the conduct of the victors less conspicuous for humanity than for +valor. Not a man of the garrison was injured after the surrender; and +during the conflict of battle, all were spared who ceased to make +resistance. + +The entire American loss in this enterprise, so formidable in prospect, +did not exceed one hundred men. The pioneer parties, necessarily the +most exposed, suffered most. Of the twenty men led by Lieutenant Gibbons +of the Sixth Pennsylvania Regiment, seventeen were killed or wounded. +Wayne's own escape on this occasion was of the hair-breadth kind. Struck +on the head by a musket-ball, he fell; but immediately rising on one +knee, he exclaimed, "March on, carry me into the fort; for should the +wound be mortal, I will die at the head of the column." The enemy's +loss in killed and captured amounted to six hundred and seven men. This +affair, the most brilliant of the war, covered the commanding general +with laurels. + +[Footnote 28: An officer of the revolutionary army, and a conspicuous +actor in the War of 1812; has written chiefly on military affairs.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Charles Caldwell,[29] 1772-1853._= + +From his "Autobiography." + +=_104._= A LECTURE OF DR. RUSH. + +At length, however, though the class of the winter, all told, amounted +to less than a hundred, a sufficient number had arrived to induce the +professors to commence their lectures; and the introductory of Dr. Rush +was a performance of deep and touching interest, and never, I think, to +be forgotten (while his memory endures), by any one who listened to it, +and was susceptible of the impression it was calculated to make. It +consisted in a well-written and graphical description of the terrible +sweep of the late pestilence; the wild dismay and temporary desolation +it had produced; the scenes of family and individual suffering and woe +he had witnessed during its ravages; the mental dejection, approaching +despair, which he himself had experienced, on account of the entire +failure of his original mode of practice in it, and the loss of his +earliest patients (some of them personal friends); the joy he felt on +the discovery of a successful mode of treating it; the benefactions +which he had afterwards the happiness to confer; and the gratulations +with which, after the success of his practice had become known, he was +often received in sick and afflicted families. The discourse, though +highly colored, and marked by not a few figures of fancy and bursts of +feeling, was, notwithstanding, sufficiently fraught, with substantial +matter to render it no less instructive than it was fascinating. + +[Footnote 29: A native of North Carolina; prominent as a physician and +controversialist.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Thomas H. Benton, 1783-1858._= (Manual, p. 487.) + +From the "Thirty Years' View of the United States Senate." + +=_105._= THE CHARACTER OF MACON.[30] + +He was above the pursuit of wealth, but also above dependence and +idleness, and, like an old Roman of the elder Cato's time, worked in the +fields at the head of his slaves in the intervals of public duty, and +did not cease this labor until advancing age rendered him unable to +stand the hot sun of summer.... I think it was the summer of 1817,--that +was the last time (he told me) he tried it, and found the sun too hot +for him,--then sixty years of age, a senator, and the refuser of all +office. How often I think of him, when I see at Washington robustious +men going through a scene of supplication, tribulation, and degradation, +to obtain office, which the salvation of the soul does not impose upon +the vilest sinner! His fields, his flocks, and his herds, yielded an +ample supply of domestic productions. A small crop of tobacco--three +hogsheads when the season was good, two when bad--purchased the exotics +which comfort and necessity required, and which the farm did not +produce. He was not rich, but rich enough to dispense hospitality and +charity, to receive all guests in his house, from the president to the +day laborer--no other title being necessary to enter his house but that +of an honest man;... and above all, he was rich enough to pay as he +went, and never to owe a dollar to any man. + +... He always wore the same dress,--that is to say, a suit of the same +material, cut, and color, superfine navy-blue,--the whole suit from the +same piece, and in the fashion of the time of the Revolution, and always +replaced by a new one before it showed age. He was neat in his person, +always wore fine linen, a fine cambric stock, a fine fur hat with a +brim to it, fair top-boots--the boot outside of the pantaloons, on the +principle that leather was stronger than cloth. + +... He was an habitual reader and student of the Bible, a pious and +religious man, and of the "_Baptist persuasion_," as he was accustomed +to express it. + +[Footnote 30: Nathaniel Macon, United States Senator from North +Carolina.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Alexander Slidell Mackenzie, 1803-1845._= (Manual, pp. 490, 505.) + +From the Life of Commodore Decatur. + +=_106._= RECAPTURE, AND BURNING OF THE FRIGATE "PHILADELPHIA," AT +TRIPOLI. + +When all were safely assembled on the deck of the Intrepid, (for so +admirably had the service been executed that not a man was missing, and +only one slightly wounded,) Decatur gave the order to cut the fasts and +shove off. The necessity for prompt obedience and exertion was urgent. +The flames had now gained the lower rigging, and ascended to the tops; +they darted furiously from the ports, flashing from the quarter gallery +round the mizzen of the Intrepid, as her stern dropped clear of the +ship. To estimate the perils of their position, it should be borne in +mind, that the fire had been communicated by these fearless men to the +near neighborhood of both magazines of the Philadelphia. The Intrepid +herself was a fire ship, having been supplied with combustibles, a mass +of which, ready to be converted into the means of destroying other +vessels of the enemy, if the opportunity should offer, lay in barrels on +her quarter deck, covered only with a tarpaulin. + +With destruction thus encompassing them within and without, Decatur and +his brave followers were unmoved. Calmly they put forth the necessary +exertion, breasted the Intrepid off with spars, and pressing on their +sweeps, caused her slowly to withdraw from the vicinity of the burning +mass. A gentle breeze from the land came auspiciously at the same +moment, and wafted the Intrepid beyond the reach of the flames, bearing +with it, however, a shower of burning embers, fraught with danger to +a vessel laden with combustibles, had not discipline, order, and calm +self-possession, been at hand for her protection. Soon this peril was +also left behind, and Decatur and his followers were at a sufficient +distance to contemplate securely the spectacle which the Philadelphia +presented. Hull, spars, and rigging, were now enveloped in flames. As +the metal of her guns became heated, they were discharged in succession +from both sides, serving as a brilliant salvo in honor of the victor, +and not harmless for the Tripolitans, as her starboard battery was fired +directly into the town. + +The town itself, the castles, the minarets of the mosques, and the +shipping in the harbor, were all brought into distinct view by the +splendor of the conflagration. It served also to reveal to the enemy the +cause of their disaster, in the little Intrepid, as she slowly withdrew +from the harbor. The shot of the shipping and castles fell thickly +around her, throwing up columns of spray, which the brilliant light +converted into a new ornament of the scene. Only one shot took effect, +and that passed through her top-gallant sail. Three hearty American +cheers were now given in mingled triumph and derision. Soon after, the +boats of the Siren joined company, and assisted in towing the Intrepid +out of the harbor. The cables of the Philadelphia having burned off, she +drifted on the rocks near the westward entrance of the harbor; and then +the whole spectacle, so full of moral sublimity, considering the means +by which it had been effected, and of material grandeur, had its +appropriate termination in the final catastrophe of her explosion. + +Nor were the little band of heroes on board the Intrepid the only +exulting spectators of the scene. Lieutenant Stewart and his companions +on board the Siren, watching with intense interest, beheld in the +conflagration a pledge of Decatur's success; and Captain Bainbridge, +with his fellow-captives in the dungeons of Tripoli, saw in it a motive +of national exultation, and an earnest that a spirit was at work to +hasten the day of their liberation. + + * * * * * + + +=_I.F.H. Claiborne,[31] About 1804-._= + +From "Life and Times of General Samuel Dale." + +=_107._= TECUMSEH'S SPEECH TO THE CREEK INDIANS. + +I saw the Shawnees issue from their lodge; they were painted black, and +entirely naked except the flap about their loins. Every weapon but the +war-club,--then first introduced among the Creeks,--had been laid aside. +An angry scowl sat on all their visages; they looked like a procession +of devils. Tecumseh led, the warriors followed, one in the footsteps of +the other. The Creeks, in dense masses, stood on each side of the path, +but the Shawnees noticed no one; they marched to the pole in the centre +of the square, and then turned to the left. + +... They then marched in the same order to the Council, or King's +house,--as it was termed in ancient times, and drew up before it. The +Big Warrior and the leading men were sitting there. The Shawnee chief +sounded his war-whoop,--a most diabolical yell, and each of his +followers responded. Tecumseh then presented to the Big Warrior a wampum +belt of five different-colored stands, which the Creek chief handed to +his warriors, and it was passed down the line. The Shawnee pipe was then +produced; it was large, long, and profusely decorated with shells, +beads, and painted eagle and porcupine quills. It was lighted from the +fire in the centre, and slowly passed from the Big Warrior along the +line. All this time not a word had been uttered; every thing was still +as death; even the winds slept, and there was only the gentle rustle of +the falling leaves. At length Tecumseh spoke, at first slowly, and in +sonorous tones, but soon he grew impassioned, and the words fell in +avalanches from his lips. His eyes burned with supernatural lustre, and +his whole frame trembled with emotion; his voice resounded over the +multitude,--now sinking in low and musical whispers, now rising to its +highest key, hurling out his words like a succession of thunderbolts. +His countenance varied with his speech; its prevalent expression was a +sneer of hatred and defiance; sometimes a murderous smile; for a brief +interval a sentiment of profound sorrow pervaded it; and at the close, a +look of concentrated vengeance, such, I suppose, as distinguishes the +arch-enemy of mankind, I have heard many great orators, but I never saw +one with the vocal powers of Tecumseh, or the same command of the +muscles of his face. + +... Had I been deaf, the play of his countenance would have told me what +he said. Its effect on that wild, superstitious, untutored, and warlike +assemblage may be conceived; not a word was said, but stern warriors, +the "stoics of the woods," shook with emotion, and a thousand tomahawks +were brandished in the air. Even the Big Warrior, who had been true to +the whites, and remained faithful during the war, was for the moment +visibly affected, and more than once I saw his huge hand clutch, +spasmodically, the handle of his knife.... When he resumed his seat, the +northern pipe was again passed round in solemn silence. The Shawnees +then simultaneously leaped up with one appalling yell, and danced their +tribal war-dance, going through the evolutions of battle, the scout, the +ambush, the final struggle, brandishing their war-clubs, and screaming, +in terrific concert, an infernal harmony fit only for the regions of the +damned. + +[Footnote 31: Was born in Mississippi; by profession a lawyer, and for +some years a member of Congress; author of several biographical works of +interest, chiefly relating to the Southwest.] + + * * * * * + + +=_George Washington Greene,[32] 1811-._= + +From The Life of General Greene. + +=_108._= FOREIGN OFFICERS IN THE REVOLUTIONARY ARMY. + +... Mrs. Greene had joined her husband early in January, bringing with +her her summer's acquisition, a stock of French that quickly made her +little parlor the favorite resort of foreign officers. There was often +to be seen Lafayette, not yet turned of twenty-one, though a husband, a +father, and a major-general; graver somewhat in his manners than +strictly belonged either to his years or his country; and loved and +trusted by all, by Washington and Greene especially. Steuben, too, was +often there, wearing his republican uniform, as, fifteen years before, +he had worn the uniform of the despotic Frederick; as deeply skilled in +the ceremonial of a court as in the manoeuvring of an army; with a +glittering star on his left breast, that bore witness to the faithful +service he had rendered in his native Germany; and revolving in his +accurate mind designs which were to transform this mass of physical +strength, which Americans had dignified with the name of army, into a +real army which Frederick himself might have accepted. He had but little +English at his command as yet, but at his side there was a mercurial +young Frenchman, Peter Duponceau, who knew how to interpret both his +graver thoughts and the lighter gallantries with which the genial old +soldier loved to season his intercourse with the wives and daughters of +his new fellow-citizens. As the years passed away, Duponceau himself +became a celebrated man, and loved to tell the story of these checkered +days. Another German, too, De Kalb, was sometimes seen there, taller, +statelier, graver than Steuben, with the cold, observant eye of the +diplomatist, rather than the quick glance of the soldier, though a +soldier too, and a brave and skillful one; caring very little about the +cause he had forsaken his noble chateau and lovely wife to fight for, +but a great deal about the promotion and decorations which his good +service hero was to win him in France; for he had made himself a +Frenchman, and served the King of France, and bought him French lands, +and married a French wife. Already before this war began, he had come +hither in the service of France to study the progress of the growing +discontent; and now he was here again an American major-general, led +partly by the ambition of rank, partly by the thirst of distinction, but +much, too, by a certain restlessness of nature, and longing for +excitement and action, not to be wondered at in one who had fought his +way up from a butlership to a barony. He and Steuben had served on +opposite sides during the Seven Years War, though born both of them on +the same bank of the Rhine; and though when Steuben first came, De Kalb +was in Albany, yet in May they must have met more than once. How did +they feel towards each other, the soldier of Frederick, and the soldier +of Louis? If we had known more about this, we should have known better, +perhaps, why Lafayette, a fast friend of De Kalb, speaks of the +"methodic mediocrity" of Steuben, and Steuben of the "vanity and +presumption" of the young major-general. + +In the same circle, too, was the young Fleury whom we have seen bearing +himself so gallantly at Fort Mifflin, and who, a year after, was to +render still more brilliant service at Stony Point; and the Marquis de +la Rouerie, concealing his rank under the name of Armand, and combatting +an unsuccessful love by throwing himself headlong into the tumult of +war; and Mauduit Duplessis, whose skill as an engineer had been proved +at Red Bank, and who about this time was breveted Lieutenant-Colonel, +at Washington's recommendation, for "gallant conduct at Brandywine and +Germantown," and "distinguished services at Fort Mercer," and a "degree +of modesty not always found in men who have performed brilliant +actions," but whom neither modesty nor gallantry could save from a +fearful death at San Domingo; and Gimat, aide to Lafayette now, but who +afterwards led Lafayette's van as colonel in the successful assault +of the British redoubts at Yorktown; and La Colombe, who was to serve +Lafayette faithfully in France as he served him here; and Ternant, +distinguished in America, France, and Holland, but who this year +rendered invaluable service to American discipline by his aid in +carrying out the reforms of Steuben. Kosciusko was in the north, but +Poland had still another representative, the gallant Pulaski, who had +done good service during the last campaign, and who the very next year +was to lay down his life for us at the siege of Savannah. + +[Footnote 32: Born in Rhode Island; a grandson of the distinguished +General Greene of the Revolution, whose life he has written, with many +interesting details of that struggle.] + + * * * * * + + +=_James Parton, 1822-._= (Manual, pp. 490, 532.) + +From "Life and Times of Aaron Burr." + +=_109._= CAREER AND CHARACTER OF BURR. + +To judge this man, to decide how far he was unfortunate, and how far +guilty; how much we ought to pity, and how much to blame him,--is a task +beyond my powers. And what occasion is there for judging him, or for +judging any one? We all know that his life was an unhappy failure. He +failed to gain the small honors at which he aimed; he failed to live +a life worthy of his opportunities; he failed to achieve a character +worthy of his powers. It was a great, great pity. And any one is to be +pitied, who, in thinking of it, has any other feelings than those of +compassion--compassion for the man whose life was so much less a blessing +to him than it might have been, and compassion for the country, which +after producing so rare and excellent a kind of man, lost a great part +of the good he might have done her. + +The great error of his career, as before remarked, was his turning +politician. He was too good for a politician, and not great enough for a +statesman. + +If his expedition had succeeded, it was in him, I think, to have run a +career in Spanish America similar to that of Napoleon in Europe. Like +Napoleon, he would have been one of the most amiable despots, and one of +the most destructive. Like Napoleon, he would have been sure, at last, +to have been overwhelmed in a prodigious ruin. Like Napoleon, he would +have been idolized and execrated. Like Napoleon, he would, have had his +half dozen friends to go with him to St. Helena. Like Napoleon, he would +have justified to the last, with the utmost sincerity, nearly every +action of his life. + +We live in a better day than he did. Nearly every thing is better now +in the United States than it was fifty years ago, and a much larger +proportion of the people possess the means of enjoying and improving +life. If some evils are more obvious and rampant than they were, they +are also better known, and the remedy is nearer ... + +Politics, apart from the pursuit of office, have again become real and +interesting. The issue is distinct and important enough to justify the +intense concern of a nation. To a young man coming upon the stage of +life with the opportunities of Aaron Burr, a glorious and genuine +political career is possible. The dainty keeping aloof from the +discussion of public affairs, which has been the fashion until lately, +will not again find favor with any but the very stupid, for a long +time to come. The intellect of the United States once roused to the +consideration of political questions, will doubtless be found competent +to the work demanded of it. + +The career of Aaron Burr can never be repeated in the United States. +That of itself is a proof of progress. The game of politics which he +played is left, in these better days, to far inferior men, and the moral +license which he and Hamilton permitted themselves, is not known in the +circles they frequented. But the graver errors, the radical vices, of +both men belong to human nature, and will always exist to be shunned and +battled. + + * * * * * + +From "Famous Americans." + +=_110._= HENRY CLAY'S CAREER AT THE WESTERN BAR. + +It is surprising how addicted to litigation were the earlier settlers of +the Western States. The imperfect surveys of land, the universal habit +of getting goods on credit at the store, and "difficulties" between +individuals ending in bloodshed, filled the court calendars, with land +disputes, suits for debt, and exciting murder cases, which gave to +lawyers more importance and better chances of advancement than they +possessed in the older States. Mr. Clay had two strings to his bow. +Besides being a man of red-tape and pigeon-holes, exact, methodical, and +strictly attentive to business, he had a power over a Kentucky jury +such as no other man has ever wielded. To this day nothing pleases aged +Kentuckians better than to tell stories which they heard their fathers +tell of Clay's happy repartees to opposing counsel, his ingenious +cross-questioning of witnesses, his sweeping torrents of invective, his +captivating courtesy, his melting pathos. Single gestures, attitudes, +tones, have come down to us through two or three memories, and still +please the curious guest at Kentucky firesides. But when we turn to the +cold records of this part of his life, we find little to justify his +traditional celebrity. It appears that the principal use to which his +talents were applied during the first years of his practice at the bar, +was in defending murderers. He seems to have shared the feeling which +then prevailed in the Western country, that to defend a prisoner at the +bar is a nobler thing than to assist in defending the public against his +further depredations; and he threw all his force into the defence of +some men who would have been "none the worse for a hanging." One day, in +the streets of Lexington, a drunken fellow whom he had rescued from the +murderer's doom, cried out, "Here comes Mr. Clay, who saved my life." +"Ah! my poor fellow," replied the advocate, "I fear I have saved too +many like you, who ought to be hanged.". The anecdotes printed of his +exploits in cheating the gallows of its due, are of a quality which +shows that the power of this man over a jury lay much in his manner. His +delivery, which "bears absolute sway in oratory," was bewitching and +irresistible, and gave to quite common-place wit and very questionable +sentiment, an amazing power to please and subdue. + + * * * * * + +From an Article in the Atlantic Monthly. + +=_111._= WESTERN THEATRES. + +At the West, along with much reckless and defiant unbelief in every +thing high and good, there is also a great deal of that terror-stricken +pietism which refuses to attend the theatre unless it is very bad +indeed, and is called "Museum." This limits the business of the theatre; +and as a good theatre is necessarily a very expensive institution, it +improves very slowly, although the Western people are in precisely that +state of development and culture to which the drama is best adapted and +is most beneficial. We should naturally expect to find the human mind, +in the broad, magnificent West, rising superior to the prejudices +originating in the little sects of little lands. So it will rise in due +time. So it has risen, in some degree. But mere grandeur of nature has +no educating effect upon the soul of man; else Switzerland would not +have supplied Paris with footmen, and the hackmen of Niagara would spare +the tourist. It is only a human mind that can instruct a human mind. + + * * * * * + +To witness the performance, and to observe the rapture expressed +upon the shaggy and good-humored countenances of the boatmen, was +interesting, as showing what kind of banquet will delight a human soul, +starved from its birth. It likes a comic song very much, if the song +refers to fashionable articles of ladies costume, or holds up to +ridicule members of Congress, policemen, or dandies. It is not averse +to a sentimental song, in which "Mother, dear," is frequently +apostrophized. It delights in a farce from which most of the dialogue +has been cut away, while all the action is retained,--in which people +are continually knocked down, or run against one another with great +violence. It takes much pleasure in seeing Horace Greeley play a part in +a negro farce, and become the victim of designing colored brethren. But +what joy, when the beauteous Terpsichorean nymph bounds upon the scene, +rosy with paint, glistening with spangles, robust with cotton and cork, +and bewildering with a cloud of gauzy skirts! What a vision of beauty +to a man who has seen nothing for days and nights but the hold of a +steamboat and the dull shores of the Mississippi! + + * * * * * + + + +HISTORY, GENERAL AND SPECIAL. + + +=_John Heckewelder,[33] 1743-1823._= + +From the "Narrative" of the Moravian Missions among the Indians. + +=_112._= SETTLEMENTS OF THE CHRISTIAN INDIANS. + +Both these congregations, being supplied with missionaries and +schoolmasters, were so prosperous that they became the admiration of +visitors, some of whom thought it next to a miracle that, by the light +of the gospel, a savage race should be brought to live together in peace +and harmony, and above all devote themselves to religion. The people +residing in the neighborhood of those places were also intimate with +these Indians, and both were serviceable to each other; one instance of +which is here inserted. In February of the year 1761, a white man, who +had lost a child, came to Nain weeping, and begging that the Indian +Brethren would assist him and his wife to search for his child, which +had been missing since the day before. Several of the Indian Brethren +immediately went to the house of the parents, and discovered the +footsteps of the child, and tracing the same for the distance of two +miles, found the child in the woods, wrapped up in its petticoat, and +shivering with cold. The joy of the parents was so great that they +reported the circumstance wherever they went. To some of the white +people, who had been in dread of the near settlement of these Indians, +this incident was the means of making them easy, and causing them to +rejoice in having such good neighbors. + +... The war being over, the Indians who had been engaged in it freely +confessed to their friends and relations, and to some white people they +had heretofore been acquainted with, that "the Brethren's settlements +had been as a stumbling-block to them; that had it not been for these, +they would most assuredly have laid waste the whole country from the +mountains to Philadelphia; and that many plans had been formed for +destroying these settlements." + +[Footnote 33: Prominent among the Moravian clergy for his experience of +missionary life among the American Indians, for his knowledge of the +Indian languages, and for his lifelong devotion to the missionary work.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Jeremy Belknap, 1744-1798._= (Manual, p. 490.) + +From "The History of New Hampshire." + +=_113._= THE MAST PINE. + +Another thing worthy of observation is the aged and majestic appearance +of the trees, of which the most noble is the mast pine. This tree often +grows to the height of one hundred and fifty, and sometimes two hundred +feet. It is straight as an arrow, and has no branches but very near the +top. It is from twenty to forty inches in diameter at its base, and +appears like a stately pillar, adorned with a verdant capital, in form +of a cone. Interspersed among these are the common forest trees of +various kinds. + +When a mast tree is to be felled, much preparation is necessary. So tall +a stick, without any limbs nearer the ground than eighty or a hundred +feet, is in great danger of breaking in the fall. To prevent this the +workmen have a contrivance which they call bedding the tree, which is +thus executed. They know in what direction the tree will fall; and they +cut down a number of smaller trees which grow in that direction; or if +there be none, they draw others to the spot, and place them so that the +falling tree may lodge on their branches; which breaking or yielding +under its pressure, render its fall easy and safe. A time of deep snow +is the most favorable season, as the rocks are then covered, and a +natural bed is formed to receive the tree. When fallen, it is examined, +and if to appearance it be sound, it is cut in the proportion of three +feet in length to every inch of its diameter, for a mast; but if +intended for a bow-sprit or a yard, it is cut shorter. If it be not +sound throughout, or if it break in falling, it is cut into logs for the +saw-mill. + +When a mast is to be drawn on the snow, one end is placed on a sled, +shorter, but higher than the common sort, and rests on a strong block, +which is laid across the middle of the sled. + +In descending a long and steep hill they have a contrivance to prevent +the load from making too rapid a descent. Some of the cattle are placed +behind it; a chain which is attached to their yokes is brought forward +and fastened to the hinder end of the load, and the resistance which +is made by these cattle checks the descent. This operation is called +_tailing_. The most dangerous circumstance is the passing over the +top of a sharp hill, by which means the oxen which are nearest to the +tongues are sometimes suspended, till the foremost cattle can draw the +mast so far over the hill as to give them opportunity to recover the +ground. In this case the drivers are obliged to use much judgment and +care to keep the cattle from being killed. There is no other way to +prevent this inconvenience than to level the roads. + + * * * * * + + +=_David Ramsay, 1749-1815._= (Manual, p. 491.) + +From "The History of the Revolution in South Carolina." + +=_114._= FEELING OF THE PROVINCE TOWARD GREAT BRITAIN. + +In South Carolina, an enemy to the Hanoverian succession, or to the +British constitution, was scarcely known. The inhabitants were fond +of British manners even to excess. They for the most part, sent their +children to Great Britain for education, and spoke of that country under +the endearing appellation of Home. They were enthusiasts for that sacred +plan of civil and religious happiness under which they had grown up and +flourished.... Wealth poured in upon them from a thousand channels. The +fertility of the soil generously repaid the labor of the husbandman, +making the poor to sing, and industry to smile, through every corner +of the land. None were indigent but the idle and unfortunate. Personal +independence was fully within the reach of every man who was healthy +and industrious. The inhabitants, at peace with all the world, enjoyed +domestic tranquility, and were secure in their persons and property. +They were also completely satisfied with their government, and wished +not for the smallest change in their political constitution. + +In the midst of these enjoyments, and the most sincere attachment to the +mother country, to their king and his government, the people of South +Carolina, without any original design on their part, were step by step +drawn into an extensive war, which involved them in every species of +difficulty, and finally dissevered them from the parent state. + +... Every thing in the colonies contributed to nourish a spirit of +liberty and independence. They were planted under the auspices of the +English constitution in its purity and vigor. Many of their inhabitants +had imbibed a largo portion of that spirit which brought one tyrant to +the block, and expelled another from his dominions. They were +communities of separate, independent individuals, for the most part +employed in cultivating a fruitful soil, and under no general influence +but of their own feelings and opinions; they were not led by powerful +families, or by great officers in church or state.... Every inhabitant +was, or easily might be, a freeholder. Settled on lands of his own, he +was both farmer and landlord. Having no superior to whom he was obliged +to look up, and producing all the necessaries of life from his own +grounds, he soon became independent. His mind was equally free from all +the restraints of superstition. No ecclesiastical establishment invaded +the rights of conscience, or lettered the free-born mind. At liberty to +act and think as his inclination prompted, he disdained the ideas of +dependence and subjection. + + * * * * * + + +=_Henry Lee,[34] 1736-1818._= + +From "Memoirs" of the War in the South. + +=_115._= CLARKE'S SERVICES AGAINST THE INDIANS. + +JOHN RODGERS CLARKE, colonel in the service of Virginia, against our +neighbors the Indians in the revolutionary war, was among our best +soldiers, and better acquainted with the Indian warfare than any officer +in our army. This gentleman, after one of his campaigns, met in Richmond +several of our cavalry officers, and devoted all his leisure in +ascertaining from them the various uses to which horse were applied, +as well as the manner of such application. The information he acquired +determined him to introduce this species of force against the Indians, +as that of all others the most effectual. + +By himself, by Pickens, and lately by Wayne, was the accuracy of +Clarke's opinion justified.... + +The Indians, when fighting with infantry, are very daring. This temper +of mind results from his consciousness of his superior fleetness; which, +together with his better knowledge of woods, assures to him extrication +out of difficulties, though desperate. This is extinguished when he +finds that, he is to save himself from the pursuit of horse, and with +its extinction falls that habitual boldness. + +[Footnote 34: In the revolutionary war he was distinguished as a cavalry +officer, and subsequently, in political life, as a writer and speaker.] + + * * * * * + +=_116._= THE CAREER OF CAPTAIN KIRKWOOD. + +The State of Delaware furnished one regiment only; and certainly no +regiment in the army surpassed it in soldiership. The remnant of that +corps, less thaw two companies, from the battle of Camden, was commanded +by Captain Kirkwood, who passed through the war with high reputation; +and yet, as the line of Delaware consisted of but one regiment, and +that regiment was reduced to a captain's command. Kirkwood never +could be promoted in regular routine--a very glaring defect in the +organization of the army, as it gave advantages to parts of the same +army denied to other portions of it. The sequel is singularly hard. +Kirkwood retired, upon peace, as a captain; and when the army under St. +Clair was raised to defend the west from the Indian enemy, this veteran +resumed his sword as the eldest captain in the oldest regiment. + +In the decisive defeat of the 4th of November,[35] the gallant +Kirkwood fell, bravely sustaining his point of the action. It was the +thirty-third time he had risked his life for his country; and he died as +he had lived, the brave, meritorious, unrewarded Kirkwood. + +[Footnote 35: St. Clair's defeat.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Peter S. Duponceau,[36] 1760-1844._= + +From "An Address." + +=_117._= CHARACTER OF PENN. + +WILLIAM PENN stands the first among the lawgivers whose names and deeds +are recorded in history. Shall we compare him with Lycurgus, Solon, +Romulus, those founders of military commonwealths, who organized their +citizens in deadly array against the rest of their species, taught them +to consider their fellow-men as barbarians, and themselves as alone +worthy to rule over the earth?... But see William Penn, with weaponless +hand, sitting down peaceably with his followers, in the midst of +savage nations whose only occupation was shedding the blood of their +fellow-men, disarming them by his justice, and teaching them, for the +first time, to view a stranger without distrust. See them bury their +tomahawks in his presence, so deep that man shall never be able to +find them again. See them, under the shade of the thick groves of +Coaquannock, extend the bright chain of friendship, and solemnly promise +to preserve it as long as the sun and moon shall endure. See him then, +with his companions, establishing his commonwealth on the sole basis of +religion, morality, and universal love, and adopting, as the fundamental +maxim of his government, the rule handed down to us from Heaven, "Glory +to God on high, and on earth peace and good will towards men." + +[Footnote 36: An eminent jurist and philologist, of French origin, but +for many years a citizen of Philadelphia.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Charles J. Ingersoll,[37] 1782-1862._= + +From the "Historical Sketch" of the War of 1812. + +=_118._= CALHOUN CHARACTERIZED + +John Caldwell Calhoun was the same slender, erect, and ardent logician, +politician, and sectarian, in the House of Representatives in 1814 that +he is in the Senate of 1847. Speaking with aggressive aspect, flashing +eye, rapid action and enunciation, unadorned argument, eccentricity of +judgment, unbounded love of rule, impatient, precipitate, kind temper, +excellent in colloquial attractions, caressing the young, not courting +rulers; conception, perception, and demonstration quick and clear, with +logical precision arguing paradoxes, and carrying home conviction beyond +rhetorical illustration; his own impressions so intense as to discredit, +scarcely listen to, any other suggestions; well educated and informed. + +[Footnote 37: A native of Pennsylvania; long conspicuous in the law, +literature, and political life.] + + * * * * * + +=_119._= BATTLE OF CHIPPEWA. + +In a fair national trial of the military faculties, courage, activity, +and fortitude, discipline, gunnery, and tactics, for the first time the +palm was awarded by Englishmen to Americans over Englishmen. Without +fortuitous advantage the Americans proved too much for the redoubtable +English, though superior in number, therefore universally arrogating to +themselves even with inferior numbers, a mastery but faintly questioned +by most Americana; no accident to depreciate the triumph of the younger +over the older nation; no more fortune than what favors the bravest. + +Physical and even corporeal national characteristics, did not escape +comparison in this normal contest. The American rather more active and +more demonstrative than his ancestors, many of the officers of imposing +figure, Scott and McNeil particularly, towering with gigantic stature +above the rest, stood opposed in striking contrast to the short, thick, +brawny, burly Briton, hard to overcome.... The Marquis of Tweedale, +with his sturdy, short person, and stubborn courage, represented +the British.... Even the names betokened at once consanguinity and +hostility. Scott, McNeill, and McRee, in arms against Gordon, Hay, and +Maconochie. And the harsh Scotch nomenclature, compared with the more +euphonious savage Canada, Chippewa, Niagara, which latter modern English +prosody has corrupted from the measure of Goldsmith's Traveller:-- + + "Where wild Oswego spreads her swamps around, + And Niagara stuns with thundering sound." + +... Mankind impressed by numbers and bloodshed, regard the second more +extensive battle near the falls of Niagara, on the 25th of the same +month, between the same parties with British reinforcements, known as +the battle of Bridgewater, as more important than its precursor.... The +victory of Chippewa was the resurrection or birth of American arms, +after their prostration by so long disuse, and when at length taken up +again, by such continual and deplorable failures, that the martial and +moral influence of the first decided victory opened and characterized +an epoch in the annals and intercourse of the two kindred and rival +nations, whose language is to be spoken, as their institutions are +rapidly spreading, throughout most of mankind. Fought between only some +three or four thousand men in both armies, at a place remote from +either of their countries, the battle of Chippewa may not bear vulgar +comparison with the great military engagements of modern Europe. + +... The charm of British military invincibility was as effectually +broken, by a single brigade, as that of naval supremacy was by a single +frigate, as much as if a large army or fleet had been the agent. + + * * * * * + + +=_Henry M. Brackenridge,[38] 1786-._= (Manual, p. 505.) + +From "Recollections of the West." + +=_120._= OLD ST. GENEVIEVE, IN MISSOURI. + +The house of M. Beauvais was a long, low building, with a porch or shed +in front, and another in the rear; the chimney occupied the center, +dividing the house into two parts, with each a fireplace. One of these +served for dining-room, parlor, and principal bed-chamber; the other was +the kitchen; and each had a small room taken off at the end for private +chambers or cabinets. There was no loft or garret, a pair of stairs +being a rare thing in the village. The furniture, excepting the beds and +the looking-glass, was of the most common kind.... The yard was enclosed +with cedar pickets, eight or ten inches in diameter, and six feet high, +placed upright, sharpened at the top, in the manner of a stockade fort. +In front the yard was narrow, but in the rear quite spacious, and +containing the barn and stables, the negro quarters, and all the +necessary offices of a farm-yard. Beyond this, there was a spacious +garden enclosed with pickets.... + +The pursuits of the inhabitants were chiefly agricultural, although all +were more or less engaged in traffic for peltries with the Indians, or +in working the lead mines in the interior. Peltry and lead constituted +almost the only circulating medium. All politics, or discussions of the +affairs of government were entirely unknown; the commandant took care +of all that sort of thing. But instead of them, the processions and +ceremonies of the church, and the public balls, furnished ample matter +for occupation and amusement. Their agriculture was carried on in a +field of several thousand acres, enclosed at the common expense, and +divided into lots.... Whatever they may have gained in some respects, I +question very much whether the change of government has contributed to +increase their happiness. About a quarter of a mile off, there was a +village of Kickapoo Indians, who lived on the most friendly terms with +the white people. The boys often intermingled with those of the +white village, and practised shooting with the bow and arrow--an +accomplishment which I acquired with the rest, together with a little +smattering of the Indian language, which I forgot on leaving the place. + +[Footnote 38: Distinguished in literature and as a political writer; a +native of Pennsylvania.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Gulian C. Verplanck, 1786-1870._= (Manual, p. 487.) + +From the "Literary and Historical Discourses." + +=_121._= THE SCHOOLMASTER. + +The schoolmaster's occupation is laborious and ungrateful; its rewards +are scanty and precarious. He may indeed be, and he ought to be animated +by the consciousness of doing good, that best of all consolations, that +noblest of all motives. But that too must be often clouded by doubt and +uncertainty. Obscure and inglorious as his daily occupation may appear +to learned pride or worldly ambition, yet to be truly successful and +happy he must be animated by the spirit of the same great principles +which inspired the most illustrious benefactors of mankind. If he bring +to his task high talent and rich acquirement, he must be content to look +into distant years for the proof that his labors have not been wasted, +that the good seed which he daily scatters abroad does not fall on stony +ground and wither away, or among thorns to be choked by the cares, the +delusions, or the vices of the world. He must solace his toils with +the same prophetic faith that enabled the greatest of modern +philosophers,[39] amidst the neglect or contempt of his own times, to +regard himself as sowing the seeds of truth for posterity and the care +of Heaven. He must arm himself against disappointment and mortification +with a portion of that same noble confidence which soothed the greatest +of modern poets when weighed down by care and danger, by poverty, old +age, and blindness, still + + "--In prophetic dreams he saw + The youth unborn with pious awe + Imbibe each virtue from his sacred page." + +He must know and he must love to teach his pupils not the meager +elements of knowledge, but the secret and the use of their own +intellectual strength, exciting and enabling them hereafter to raise for +themselves the veil which covers the majestic form of Truth. He must +feel deeply the reverence due to the youthful mind fraught with mighty +though undeveloped energies and affections, and mysterious and eternal +destinies. Thence he must have learned to reverence himself and his +profession, and to look upon its otherwise ill-requited toils as their +own exceeding great reward. + +If such are the difficulties and the discouragements, such the duties, +the motives, and the consolations of teachers who are worthy of that +name and trust, how imperious then the obligation upon every enlightened +citizen who knows and feels the value of such men to aid them, to cheer +them, and to honor them. + +But let us not be content with barren honor to buried merit. Let us +prove our gratitude to the dead by faithfully endeavoring to elevate the +station, to enlarge the usefulness, and to raise the character of the +schoolmaster amongst us. Thus shall we best testify our gratitude to the +teachers and guides of our own youth, thus best serve our country, +and thus most effectually diffuse over our land light, and truth, and +virtue. + +[Footnote 39: Bacon.] + + * * * * * + + +=_John W. Francis, 1789-1861._= (Manual, pp. 487, 532.) + +From his "Reminiscences." + +=_122._= PUBLIC CHANGES DURING A SINGLE LIFETIME. + +He who has passed a period of some three score years and upward, some +faithful Knickerbocker for instance, native born, and ever a resident +among us, whose tenacious memory enables him to meditate upon the +thirty thousand inhabitants at the time of his birth, with the almost +oppressive population of some seven hundred thousand which the city at +present contains; who contrasts the cheap and humble dwellings of +that earlier date, with the costly and magnificent edifices which now +beautify the metropolis; who studies the sluggish state of the mechanic +arts at the dawn of the Republic, and the mighty demonstrations of skill +which our Fulton, and our Stevens, our Douglas, our Hoe, and our Morse, +have produced; who remembers the few and humble water-craft conveyances +of days past, and now beholds the majestic leviathans of the ocean which +crowd our harbors; who contemplates the partial and trifling commercial +transactions of the Confederacy, with the countless millions of +commercial business which engross the people of the present day, in our +Union; who estimates the offspring of the press, and the achievements of +the telegraph, he who has been the spectator of all this, may be justly +said to have lived the period of many generations, and to have stored +within his reminiscences the progress of an era the most remarkable in +the history of his species. + +If he awakens his attention to a consideration of the progress of +intellectual and ethical pursuits, if he advert to the prolific +demonstrations which surround him for the advancement of knowledge, +literary and scientific, moral and religious, the indomitable spirit of +the times strikes him with more than logical conviction. The beneficence +and humanity of his countrymen may be pointed out by contemplating her +noble free schools, her vast hospitals and asylums for the alleviation +of physical distress and mental infirmities; with the reflection that +all these are the triumphs of a self-governed people, accomplished +within the limited memory of an ordinary life. Should reading enlarge +the scope of his knowledge, let him study the times of the old Dutch +Governors, when the Ogdens erected the first church in the fort of New +Amsterdam, in 1642, and then survey the vast panoramic view around him +of the two hundred and fifty and more edifices, now consecrated to the +solemnities of religious devotion. It imparts gratification to know that +the old Bible which was used in that primary church of Van Twiller is +still preserved by a descendant of the builder, a precious relic of the +property of the older period, and of the devotional impulse of those +early progenitors. To crown the whole, time in its course has recognized +the supremacy of political and religious toleration, and established +constitutional freedom on the basis of equal rights and even and exact +justice to all men. That New York has given her full measure of toil, +expenditure, and talent in furtherance of these vast results, by her +patriots and statesmen, is proclaimed in grateful accents by the myriad +voice of the nation at large. + + * * * * * + + +=_William, Meade, 1789-1862._= + +From the "Old Churches &c. of Virginia." + +=_123._= Character of the Early Virginia Clergy. + +It has been made a matter of great complaint against the Legislature of +Virginia, that it should not only have withdrawn the stipend of sixteen +thousand weight of tobacco from the clergy, but also have seized upon +the glebes. I do not mean to enter on the discussion of the legality of +that act, or of the motives of those who petitioned for it. Doubtless +there were many who sincerely thought that it was both legal and right, +and that they were doing God and religion a service by it. I hesitate +not, however, to express the opinion, in which I have been and am +sustained by many of the best friends of the Church then and ever +since, that nothing could have been more injurious to the cause of true +religion in the Episcopal Church, or to its growth in any way, than the +continuance of either stipend or glebes. Many clergymen of the most +unworthy character would have been continued among us, and such a +revival as we have seen have never taken place.... Not merely have the +pious members of the Church taken this view of the subject, since the +revival of it under other auspices, but many of those who preferred the +Church at that day, for other reasons than her evangelical doctrine and +worship, saw that It was best that she should be thrown upon her own +resources. I had a conversation with Mr. Madison, soon after he ceased +to be President of the United States, in which I became assured of this. +He himself took an active part in promoting the act for the putting down +the establishment of the Episcopal Church, while his relative was Bishop +of it, and all his family connection attached to it.... + +It may be well here to state, what will more fully appear when we come +to speak of the old glebes and churches in a subsequent number, that +the character of the laymen of Virginia for morals and religion was in +general greatly in advance of that of the clergy. The latter, for the +most part, were the refuse or more indifferent of the English, Irish, +and Scotch Episcopal churches, who could not find promotion and +employment at home. The former were natives of the soil, and descendants +of respectable ancestors, who migrated at an early period.... Some of +the vestries, as their records painfully show, did what they could to +displace unworthy ministers, though they often failed through defect of +law. In order to avoid the danger of having evil ministers fastened upon +them, as well as from the scarcity of ministers, they made much use of +lay-readers as substitutes.... The reading of the service and sermons in +private families, which contributed so much to the preservation of an +attachment to the Church in the same, was doubtless promoted by this +practice of lay-reading. Those whom Providence raised up to resuscitate +the fallen Church of Virginia can testify to the fact that the families +who descended from the above mentioned, have been their most effective +supports.... And when, in the providence of God. they are called on to +leave their ancient homes, and form new settlements in the distant South +and West, none are more active and reliable in transplanting the Church +of their Fathers. + + * * * * * + + +=_Jared Sparks, 1794-1866._= (Manual, p. 490.) + +From "The Life of General Stark." + +=_124._= THE BATTLE OF BENNINGTON. + +The German troops with their battery were advantageously posted upon a +rising ground, at a bend in the Wollamsac (a tributary of the Hoosac), +on its north bank. The ground fell off to the north and west, a +circumstance of which Stark skilfully took advantage. Peters' corps of +Tories were entrenched on the other side of the stream, in lower ground, +and nearly in front of the German Battery. The little river, that +meanders through the scene of the action, is fordable in all places. +Stark was encamped upon the same side of it as the Germans, but, owing +to its serpentine course, it crossed his line of march twice on his way +to their position. Their post was carefully reconnoitered at a mile's +distance, and the plan of attack was arranged in the following manner. +Colonel Nichols, with two hundred men, was detached to attack the rear +of the enemy's left, and Colonel Herrick, with three hundred men, to +fall upon the rear of their right, with orders to form a junction before +they made the assault. Colonels Hubbard and Stickney were also ordered +to advance with two hundred men on their right, and one hundred in +front, to divert their attention from the real point of attack. The +action commenced at three o'clock in the afternoon, on the rear of the +enemy's left, when Colonel Nichols, with great precision, carried into +effect the dispositions of the commander. His example was followed by +every other portion of the little army. General Stark himself moved +forward slowly in front, till he heard the sound of the guns from +Colonel Nichols' party, when he rushed upon the Tories, and in a few +moments the action became general. "It lasted," says Stark, in his +official report, "two hours, and was the hottest I ever saw. It was like +one continued clap of thunder." The Indians, alarmed at the prospect of +being enclosed between the parties of Nichols and Herrick, fled at the +commencement of the action, their main principle of battle array being +to contrive or to escape, an ambush, or an attack in the rear. The +Tories were soon driven over the river, and were thus thrown in +confusion on the Germans, who were forced from their breast-work. +Baum made a brave and resolute defence. The German dragoons, with the +discipline of veterans, preserved their ranks unbroken, and, after their +ammunition was expended, were led to the charge by their Colonel with +the sword; but they were overpowered and obliged to give way, leaving +their artillery and baggage on the field. + +They were well enclosed in two breast-works, which, owing to the rain +on the 15th, they had constructed at leisure. But notwithstanding +this protection, with the advantage of two pieces of cannon, arms and +ammunition in perfect order, and an auxiliary force of Indians, they +were driven from their entrenchments by a band of militia just brought +to the field, poorly armed, with few bayonets, without field-pieces, and +with little discipline. The superiority of numbers on the part of the +Americans, will, when these things are considered, hardly be thought to +abate anything from the praise due to the conduct of the commander, or +the spirit and courage of his men. + + * * * * * + +From the "Life of Count Pulaski." + +=_125._= HIS SERVICES, DEATH, AND CHARACTER. + +(The Battle of Brandywine.)--On that occasion, Count Pulaski, as well as +Lafayette, was destined to strike his first blow in defence of American +liberty. Being a volunteer, and without command, he was stationed near +General Washington till towards the close of the action, when he asked +the command of the General's body guard,--about thirty horse, +and advanced rapidly within pistol-shot of the enemy, and after +reconnoitering their movements, returned and reported that they were +endeavoring to cut off the line of retreat, and particularly the train +of baggage. He was then authorized to collect as many of the scattered +troops as came in his way, and employ them according to his discretion, +which he did in a manner so prompt and bold, as to effect an important +service in the retreat of the army; fully sustaining, by his conduct and +courage, the reputation for which the world had given him credit. Four +days after this event, he was appointed by Congress to the command of +the cavalry, with the rank of brigadier general. + +(Before Charleston in 1779.)--Scarcely waiting till the enemy had +crossed the ferry, Pulaski sallied out with his legion and a few mounted +volunteers, and made an assault upon the advanced parties. With the +design of drawing the British into an ambuscade, he stationed his +infantry on low ground behind a breast-work, and then rode forward a +mile, with his cavalry in the face of a party of light-horse, with whom +he came to close quarters, and kept up a sharp skirmish till he was +compelled to retreat by the increasing numbers of the enemy. His +coolness, courage, and disregard of personal danger, were conspicuous +throughout the rencounter, and the example of this prompt and bold +attack had great influence in raising the spirits of the people, and +inspiring the confidence of the inexperienced troops then assembled in +the city. The infantry, impatient to take part in the conflict, advanced +to higher ground in front of the breast-work and thus the scheme of an +ambuscade was defeated. + +(His death at Savannah.)--The cavalry were stationed in the rear of the +advanced columns, and in the confusion which appeared in front, and in +the obscurity caused by the smoke, Pulaski was uncertain where he ought +to act. To gain information on this point, he determined to ride forward +in the heat of the conflict, and called to Captain Bentalou to accompany +him. They had proceeded but a short distance, when they heard of the +havoc that had been produced in the swamp among the French troops. +Hoping to animate these troops by his presence, he rushed onward, and +while riding swiftly to the place where they were stationed, he received +a wound in the groin from a swivel-shot, and fell from his horse near +the abattis. Captain Bentalou was likewise wounded by a musket-ball. +Count Pulaski was left on the field till nearly all the troops had +retreated, when some of his men returned, in the face of the enemy's +guns, and took him to the camp. (His character.)--He possessed in a +remarkable degree, the power of winning and controlling men, a power so +rare that it may be considered not less the fruit of consummate art than +the gift of nature. Energetic, vigilant, untiring in the pursuit of an +object, fearless, fertile in resources, calm in danger, resolute and +persevering under discouragements, he was always prepared for events, +and capable of effecting his purposes with the best chance of +success.... He embraced our cause as his own, harmonizing, as it did +with his principles and all the noble impulses of his nature, the cause +of liberty and of human rights; he lost his life in defending it; thus +acquiring the highest of all claims to a nation's remembrance and +gratitude. + + * * * * * + + +=_William H. Prescott, 1796-1859._= (Manual, p. 494.) + +From the "History of Ferdinand and Isabella." + +=_126._= MORAL CONSEQUENCES OF THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. + +Whatever be the amount of physical good or evil immediately resulting +to Spain from her new discoveries, their moral consequences were +inestimable. The ancient limits of human thought and action were +overleaped; the veil which had covered the secrets of the deep for so +many centuries was removed; another hemisphere was thrown open; and a +boundless expansion promised to science, from the infinite varieties in +which nature was exhibited in these unexplored regions. The success of +the Spaniards kindled a generous emulation in their Portuguese rivals, +who soon after accomplished their long-sought passage into the Indian +seas, and thus completed the great circle of maritime discovery. It +would seem as if Providence had postponed this grand event, until the +possession of America, with its stores of precious metals, might supply +such materials for a commerce with the east, as should bind together +the most distant quarters of the globe. The impression made on the +enlightened minds of that day is evinced by the tone of gratitude and +exultation, in which they indulge, at being permitted to witness the +consummation of these glorious events, which their fathers had so long, +but in vain, desired to see. + +The discoveries of Columbus occurred most opportunely for the Spanish +nation, at the moment when it was released from its tumultuous struggle +in which it had been engaged for so many years with the Moslems. The +severe schooling of these wars had prepared it for entering on a bolder +theater of action, whose stirring and romantic perils raised still +higher the chivalrous spirit of the people. The operation of this spirit +was shown in the alacrity with which private adventurers embarked in +expeditions to the New World, under cover of the general license, during +the last two years of this century. Their efforts, combined with those +of Columbus, extended the range of discovery from its original limits; +twenty-four degrees of north latitude, to probably more than fifteen +south, comprehending some of the most important territories in the +western hemisphere. Before the end of 1500, the principal groups of +the West India islands had been visited, and the whole extent of +the southern continent coasted from the Bay of Honduras to Cape St. +Augustine. One adventurous mariner, indeed, named Lepe, penetrated +several degrees south of this, to a point not reached by any other +voyager for ten or twelve years after. A great part of the kingdom +of Brazil was embraced in this extent, and two successive Castilian +navigators landed and took formal possession of it for the crown of +Castile, previous to its reputed discovery by the Portuguese Cabral; +although the claims to it were relinquished by the Spanish Government, +conformably to the famous line of demarkation established by the treaty +of Tordesillas. + +While the colonial empire of Spain was thus every day enlarging, the man +to whom it was all due was never permitted to know the extent, or the +value of it. He died in the conviction in which he lived, that the land +he had reached was the long-sought Indies. But it was a country far +richer than the Indies; and had he on quitting Cuba struck into a +westerly, instead of southerly direction, it would have carried him into +the very depths of the golden regions, whose existence he had so long +and vainly predicted. As it was, he "only opened the gates," to use his +own language, for others more fortunate than himself; and, before he +quitted Hispaniola for the last time, the young adventurer arrived +there, who was destined by the conquest of Mexico to realize all the +magnificent visions, which had been derided only as visions, in the +lifetime of Columbus. + + * * * * * + +From "The History of the Conquest of Mexico." + +=_127._= PICTURE-WRITING OF THE MEXICANS. + +While these things were passing, Cortes observed one of Teuhtlile's +attendants busy with a pencil, apparently delineating some object. On +looking at his work, he found that it was a sketch, on canvas, of the +Spaniards, their costumes, arms, and, in short, different objects of +interest, giving to each its appropriate form and color. This was the +celebrated picture-writing of the Aztecs, and as Teuhtlile informed him, +this man was employed in portraying the various objects for the eye of +Montezuma, who would thus gather a more vivid notion of their appearance +than from any description by words. Cortes was pleased with the idea; +and as he knew how much the effect would be heightened by converting +still life into action, he ordered out the cavalry on the beach, the +wet sands of which afforded a firm footing for the horses. The bold +and rapid movements of the troops, as they went through their military +exercises, the apparent ease with which they managed the fiery animals +on which they were mounted, the glancing of their weapons, and the +shrill cry of the trumpet, all filled the spectators with astonishment; +but when they heard the thunders of the cannon, and witnessed the +volumes of smoke and flame issuing from these terrible engines, and the +rushing sound of the balls, as they dashed through the trees of the +neighboring forest, shivering their branches into fragments, they were +filled with consternation, from which the Aztec chief himself was +not wholly free. Nothing of all this was lost on the painters, who +faithfully recorded, after their fashion, every particular, not omitting +the ships--"the water-houses," as they called them--of the strangers, +which, with their dark hulls and snow-white sails reflected from the +water, were swinging lazily at anchor on the calm bosom of the bay. All +was depicted with a fidelity that excited in their turn the admiration +of the Spaniards, who, doubtless unprepared for this exhibition of +skill, greatly overestimated the merits of the execution. + + * * * * * + +From "The History of the Conquest of Peru." + +=_128._= RANSOM AND DOOM OF THE INCA. + +These articles consisted of goblets, ewers, salvers, vases of every +shape and size, ornaments and utensils for the temples and the royal +palaces, tiles and plates for the decoration of the public edifices, +curious imitations of different plants and animals. Among the plants, +the most beautiful was the Indian corn, in which the golden ear was +sheathed in its broad leaves of silver, from which hung a rich tassel of +threads of the same precious metal. A fountain was also much admired, +which sent up a sparkling jet of gold, while birds and animals of the +same material played in the waters at its base. The delicacy of the +workmanship of some of these, and the beauty and ingenuity of the +design, attracted the admiration of better judges than the rude +Conquerors of Peru. + +Before breaking up these specimens of Indian art, it was determined to +send a quantity, which should be deducted from the royal fifth, to the +Emperor. It would serve as a sample of the ingenuity of the natives, +and would show him the value of his conquests. A number of the most +beautiful articles was selected, to the amount of a hundred thousand +ducats, and Hernando Pizarro was appointed to be the bearer of them to +Spain. + +The doom of the Inca was proclaimed by sound of trumpet in the great +square of Caxamalca; and, two hours after sunset, the Spanish soldiery +assembled by torch-light in the _plaza_ to witness the execution of the +sentence. It was on the twenty-ninth of August, 1533. Atahuallpa was led +out chained hand and foot,--for he had been kept in irons ever since the +great excitement had prevailed in the army respecting an assault. Father +Vicente de Valverde was at his side, striving to administer consolation, +and, if possible, to persuade him at this last hour to abjure his +superstition and embrace the religion of his Conquerors. He was willing +to save the soul of his victim from the terrible expiation in the next +world, to which he had so cheerfully consigned his mortal part in this. + +During Atahuallpa's confinement the friar had repeatedly expounded to +him the Christian doctrines, and the Indian monarch discovered much +acuteness in apprehending the discourse of his teacher. But it had not +carried conviction to his mind, and though he listened with patience, +he had shown no disposition to renounce the faith of his fathers. The +Dominican made a last appeal to him in this solemn hour; and, when +Atahuallpa was bound to the stake, with the fagots that were to kindle +his funeral pile lying around him, Valverde, holding up the cross, +besought him to embrace it, and be baptized, promising that by so doing +the painful death to which he had been sentenced should be commuted +for the milder form, of the _garrote_,--a mode of punishment by +strangulation, used for criminals in Spain. + +The unhappy monarch asked if this were really so, and, on its being +confirmed by Pizarro he consented to abjure his own religion, and +receive baptism. The ceremony was performed by Father Valverde, and the +new convert received the name of Juan de Atahuallpa,--the name of Juan +being conferred in honor of John the Baptist, on whose day the event +took place. + +Atahuallpa expressed a desire that his remains might be transported +to Quito, the place of his birth, to be preserved with those of his +maternal ancestors. Then turning to Pizarro, as a last request, he +implored him to take compassion on his young children, and receive them +under his protection. Was there no other one in that dark company who +stood grimly around him, to whom he could look for the projection of his +offspring? Perhaps he thought there was no other so competent to afford +it, and that the wishes so solemnly expressed in that hour might meet +with respect even from his Conqueror. Then, recovering his stoical +bearing, which for a moment had been shaken, he submitted himself calmly +to his fate,--while the Spaniards, gathering around, muttered their +_credos_ for the salvation his soul. Thus by the death of a vile +malefactor perished the last of the Incas. + + * * * * * + + +=_George Bancroft, 1800-._= (Manual, pp. 487, 491, 531.) + +From the "History of the United States." + +=_129._= VIRGINIA AND ITS INHABITANTS IN EARLY TIMES. + +The genial climate and transparent atmosphere delighted those who had +come from the denser air of England. Every object in nature was new and +wonderful. The loud and frequent thunder-storms were phenomena that had +been rarely witnessed in the colder summers of the north; the forests, +majestic in their growth, and free from underwood, deserved admiration +for their unrivalled magnificence; the purling streams and the frequent +rivers, flowing between alluvial banks, quickened the ever-pregnant soil +into an unwearied fertility; the strangest and the most delicate flowers +grew familiarly in the fields; the woods were replenished with sweet +barks and odors; the gardens matured the fruits of Europe, of which the +growth was invigorated and the flavor improved by the activity of the +virgin mould. Especially the birds, with their gay plumage and varied +melodies, inspired delight; every traveller expressed his pleasure in +listening to the mocking-bird, which carolled a thousand several tunes, +imitating and excelling the notes of all its rivals. The humming-bird, +so brilliant in its plumage, and so delicate in its form, quick in +motion, yet not fearing the presence of man, hunting about the flowers +like the bee gathering honey, rebounding from the blossoms into which +it dips its bill, and as soon returning "to renew its addresses to its +delightful objects," was ever admired as the smallest and the most +beautiful of the feathered race. The rattlesnake, with the terrors of +its alarms and the power of its venom; the opossum, soon to become as +celebrated for the care of its offspring as the fabled pelican: the +noisy frog, booming from the shallows like the English bittern; the +flying squirrel; the myriads of pigeons, darkening the air with the +immensity of their flocks, and, as men believed, breaking with their +weight the boughs of trees on which they alighted,--were all honored +with frequent commemoration, and became the subjects of the strangest +tales. The concurrent relation of all the Indians justified the belief +that, within ten days journey towards the setting of the sun, there +was a country where gold might be washed from the sand, and where the +natives themselves had learned the use of the crucible; but definite +and accurate as were the accounts, inquiry was always baffled; and the +regions of gold remained for two centuries an undiscovered land. + +Various were the employments by which the calmness of life was relieved. +George Sandys, an idle man, who had been a great traveller, and who did +not remain in America, a poet, whose verse was tolerated by Dryden +and praised by Isaac Walton, beguiled the ennui of his seclusion by +translating the whole of Ovid's Metamorphoses. To the man of leisure the +chase furnished a perpetual resource. It was not long before the horse +was multiplied in Virginia; and to improve that noble animal was early +an object of pride, soon to be favored by legislation. Speed was +especially valued, and "the planters pace" became a proverb.... + + * * * * * + +=_130_=. CONTRAST OF ENGLISH AND FRENCH COLONIZATION IN AMERICA. + +In Asia, the victories of Olive at Plassy, of Coote at the Wandewash, +and of Watson and Pococke on the Indian seas, had given England the +undoubted ascendency in the East Indies, opening to her suddenly the +promise of untold treasures and territorial acquisitions without end. In +America, the Teutonic race, with its strong tendency to individuality +and freedom, was become the master from the Gulf of Mexico to the Poles; +and the English tongue, which but a century and a half before had for +its entire world a part only of two narrow islands on the outer verge +of Europe, was now to spread more widely than any that had ever given +expression to human thought. + +Go forth, then, language of Milton and Hampden, language of my country, +take possession of the North American continent! Gladden the waste +places with every tone that has been rightly struck on the English lyre, +with every English word that has been spoken well for liberty and for +man! Give an echo to the now silent and solitary mountains; gush out +with the fountains that as yet sing their anthems all day long without +response; fill the valleys with the voices of love in its purity, the +pledges of friendship in its faithfulness; and as the morning sun drinks +the dewdrops from the flowers all the way from the dreary Atlantic to +the Peaceful Ocean, meet him with the joyous hum of the early industry +of freemen! Utter boldly and spread widely through the world the +thoughts of the coming apostles of the people's liberty, till the sound +that cheers the desert shall thrill through the heart of humanity, and +the lips of the messenger of the people's power, as he stands in beauty +upon the mountains, shall proclaim the renovating tidings of equal +freedom for the race!... + +France, of all the states on the continent of Europe the most powerful +by territorial unity, wealth, numbers, industry, and culture, seemed +also by its place marked out for maritime ascendency. Set between many +seas, it rested upon the Mediterranean, possessed harbors on the German +Ocean, and embraced within its wide shores and jutting headlands, the +bays and open, waters of the Atlantic; its people, infolding at one +extreme the offspring of colonists from Greece, and at the other, +the hardy children of the Northmen, were called, as it were, to the +inheritance of life upon the sea. The nation, too, readily conceived or +appropriated great ideas, and delighted in bold resolves. Its travellers +had penetrated farthest into the fearful interior of unknown lands; +its missionaries won most familiarly the confidence of the aboriginal +hordes; its writers described with keener and wiser observation the +forms of nature in her wildness, and the habits and languages of savage +man; its soldiers,--and every lay Frenchman in America owed military +service,--uniting beyond all others celerity with courage, knew best how +to endure the hardships of forest life and to triumph in forest warfare. +Its ocean chivalry had given a name and a colony to Carolina, and its +merchants a people to Acadia. The French discovered the basin of the +St. Lawrence; were the first to explore and possess the banks of the +Mississippi, and planned an American empire that should unite the widest +valleys and most copious inland waters of the world. + +But new France was governed exclusively by the monarchy of its +metropolis; and was shut against the intellectual daring of its +philosophy, the liberality of its political economists, the movements of +its industrial genius, its legal skill, and its infusion of Protestant +freedom. Nothing representing the new activity of thought in modern +France, went to America. Nothing had leave to go there but what was old +and worn out. + +The colonists from England brought over the forms of the government of +the mother country, and the purpose of giving them a better development +and a fairer career in the western world. The French emigrants took with +them only what belonged to the past, and nothing that represented +modern freedom. The English emigrants retained what they called English +privileges, but left behind in the parent country English inequalities, +the monarch, and nobility, and prelacy. French America was closed +against even a gleam of intellectual independence; nor did it contain so +much as one dissenter from the Roman Church; English America had English +liberties in greater purity and with far more of the power of the people +than England. Its inhabitants were self-organized bodies of freeholders, +pressing upon the receding forests, winning their way farther and +farther forward every year, and never going back. They had schools, so +that in several of the colonies there was no one to be found beyond +childhood, who could not read and write; they had the printing press +scattering among them books, and pamphlets, and many newspapers; they +had a ministry chiefly composed of men of their own election. In private +life they were accustomed to take care of themselves; in public affairs +they had local legislatures, and municipal self-direction. And now this +continent from the Gulf of Mexico to where civilized life is stayed by +barriers of frost, was become their dwelling-place and their heritage. + + * * * * * + +From "The History of the United States." + +=_131._= DEATH OF MONTCALM. + +But already the hope of New France was gone. Born and educated in camps, +Montcalm had been carefully instructed, and was skilled in the language +of Homer as well as in the art of war. Greatly laborious, just, +disinterested, hopeful even to rashness, sagacious in council, swift in +action, his mind was a well-spring of bold designs; his career in Canada +a wonderful struggle against inexorable destiny. Sustaining hunger and +cold, vigils and incessant toil, anxious for his soldiers, unmindful +of himself, he set, even to the forest-trained red men, an example of +self-denial and endurance, and in the midst of corruption made the +public good his aim. Struck by a musket ball, as he fought opposite +Monckton, he continued in the engagement, till, in attempting to rally +a body of fugitive Canadians in a copse near St. John's gate, he was +mortally wounded. + +On hearing from the surgeon that death was certain, "I am glad of it," +he cried; "how long shall I survive?" "Ten or twelve hours, perhaps +less." "So much the better; I shall not live to see the surrender of +Quebec." To the council of war he showed that in twelve hours all the +troops near at hand might be concentrated and renew the attack before +the English were intrenched. When De Ramsay, who commanded the garrison, +asked his advice about defending the city, "To your keeping," he +replied, "I commend the honor of France. As for me, I shall pass the +night with God, and prepare myself for death," Having written a letter +recommending the French prisoners to the generosity of the English, his +last hours were given to the hope of endless life, and at five the next +morning he expired. + + * * * * * + +From "The History of the United States." + +=_132._= CHARACTER OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. + +From the fullness of his own mind, without consulting one single book, +Jefferson drafted the declaration, he submitted it separately to +Franklin and to John Adams, accepted from each of them one or two +unimportant verbal corrections, and on the twenty-eighth of June +reported it to Congress, which now on the second of July immediately +after the resolution of independence entered upon its consideration. +During the remainder of that day and the next two, the language, the +statements, and the principles of the paper were closely scanned. + + * * * * * + +This immortal state paper, which for its composer was the aurora of +enduring fame, was "the genuine effusion of the soul of the country +at that time," the revelation of its mind, when, in its youth, its +enthusiasm, its sublime confronting of danger, it rose to the highest +creative powers of which man is capable. The bill of rights which it +promulgates, is of rights that are older than human institutions, and +spring from the eternal justice that is anterior to the state. Two +political theories divided the world: one founded the commonwealth +on the reason of state, the policy of expediency, the other on the +immutable principles of morals; the new republic, as it took its place +among the powers of the world, proclaimed its faith in the truth and +reality and unchangeableness of freedom, virtue, and right. The heart of +Jefferson in writing the declaration, and of Congress in adopting it, +beat for all humanity; the assertion of right was made for the entire +world of mankind, and all coming generations, without any exception +whatever; for the proposition which admits of exceptions can never be +self-evident. As it was put forth in the name of the ascendant people +of that time, it was sure to make the circuit of the world, passing +everywhere through the despotic countries of Europe; and the astonished +nations as they read that all men are created equal, started out of +their lethargy, like those who have been exiles from childhood, when +they suddenly hear the dimly remembered accents of their mother tongue. + + * * * * * + +=_133._= EARLIER POLICY OF SPAIN IN THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. + +The King of France, whilst he declared his wish to make no conquest +whatever in the war, held out to the King of Spain, with the consent of +the United States, the acquisition of Florida; but Florida had not power +to allure Charles the Third, or his ministry, which was a truly Spanish +ministry, and wished to pursue a truly Spanish policy. There was indeed +one word which, if pronounced, would be a spell potent enough to alter +their decision; a word that calls the blood into the cheek of a Spaniard +as an insult to his pride, a brand of inferiority on his nation. That +word was Gibraltar. Meantime, the King of Spain declared that he would +not then, nor in the future, enter into the quarrel of France and +England; that he wished to close his life in tranquility, and valued +peace too highly to sacrifice it to the interests or opinions of +another. + +So the flags of France and the United States went together into the +field against Great Britain, unsupported by any other government, yet +with the good wishes of all the peoples of Europe. The benefit then +conferred on the United States was priceless. In return, the revolution +in America came opportunely for France.... For the blessing of that same +France, America brought new life and hope; she superseded scepticism by +a wise and prudent enthusiasm in action, and bade the nation that became +her ally lift up its heart from the barrenness of doubt to the highest +affirmation of God and liberty, to freedom and union with the good, the +beautiful, and the true. + + * * * * * + + +=_J.G.M. Ramsey,[40] about 1800-._= + +From "The Annals of Tennessee." + +=_134._= SKETCH OF GENERAL JOHN SEVIER. + +The Etowah campaign was the last military service rendered by Sevier, +and the only one for which he ever received compensation from the +government. For nearly twenty years he had been constantly engaged in +incessant and unremitted service. He was in thirty-five battles, some of +them hardly contested, and decisive. He was never wounded, and in all +his campaigns and battles was successful and the victor. He was careful +of the lives of his soldiery; and, although he always led them to the +victory, he lost, in all his engagements with the enemy, but fifty-six +men. The secret of his invariable success was the impetuosity and vigor +of his charge. Himself an accomplished horseman, a graceful rider, +passionately fond of a spirited charger, always well mounted, at the +head of his dragoons, he was at once in the midst of the fight. His +rapid movement, always unexpected and sudden, disconcerted the enemy, +and, at the first onset, decided the victory. He was the first to +introduce the Indian war-whoop in his battles with the savages, the +Tories, and the British. More harmless than the leaden missile, it +was not less efficient, and was always the precursor and attendant of +victory. The prisoners at King's Mountain said, "We could stand your +fighting; but your cursed hallooing confused us. We thought the +mountains had regiments, instead of companies." Sevier's enthusiasm was +contagious; he imparted it to his men. He was the idol of the soldiery; +and his orders were obeyed cheerfully, and executed with precision. In +a military service of twenty years, one instance is not known of +insubordination, on the part of the soldier, or of discipline by the +commander. + +Sevier's troops were generally his neighbors, and the members of his own +family. Often no public provision was made for their pay, equipments, or +subsistence. These were furnished by himself, being at once commander, +commissary, and paymaster. The soldiery rendezvoused at his house, which +often became a cantonment; his fields, ripe or unripe, were given up to +his horsemen; powder and lead, provisions, clothing, even all he had, +belonged to his men. + +The Etowah campaign terminated the military services of General Sevier. +Hereafter, we will have to record his not less important agency in the +civil affairs of Tennessee. + +[Footnote 40: A native of Tennessee. His Annals contain much valuable +material.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Charles Gayarre, 1805-._= (Manual, p. 490.) + +From the "History of Louisiana." + +=_135._= GENERAL JACKSON AT NEW ORLEANS. + +His very physiognomy prognosticated what soul was encased within the +spare but well-ribbed form which had that "lean and hungry look" +described by England's greatest bard as bespeaking little sleep of +nights, but much of ambition, self-reliance, and impatience of control. +His lip and eye denoted the man of unyielding temper, and his very hair, +slightly silvered, stood erect like quills round his wrinkled brow, as +if they scorned to bend. Some sneered, it is true, at what they called +a military tyro, at the impromptu general who had sprung out of the +uncouth lawyer and the unlearned judge, who in arms had only the +experience of a few months, acquired in a desultory war against wild +Indians, and who was, not only without any previous training to his new +profession, but also without the first rudiments of a liberal education, +for he did not even know the orthography of his own native language. +Such was the man who, with a handful of raw militia, was to stand in +the way of the veteran troops of England, whose boast it was to have +triumphed over one of the greatest captains known in history. But those +who entertained such distrust had hardly come in contact with General +Jackson, when they felt that they had to deal with a master-spirit. +True, he was rough hewn from the rock, but rock he was, and of that kind +of rock which Providence chooses to select as a fit material to use in +its structures of human greatness. True, he had not the education of a +lieutenant in a European army; but what lieutenant, educated or not, +who had the will and the remarkable military adaptation so evident in +General Jackson's intellectual and physical organization, ever remained +a subaltern? Much less could General Jackson fail to rise to his proper +place in a country where there was so much more elbow-room, and fewer +artificial obstacles than in less favored lands. But, whatever those +obstacles might have been, General Jackson would have overcome them all. +His will was of such an extraordinary nature that, like Christian faith, +it could almost have accomplished prodigies and removed mountains. It is +impossible to study the life of General Jackson without being convinced +that this is the most remarkable feature of his character. His will had, +as it were, the force and the fixity of fate; that will carried him +triumphantly through his military and civil career, and through the +difficulties of private life. So intense and incessantly active this +peculiar faculty was in him, that one would suppose that his mind was +nothing but will--a will so lofty that it towered into sublimity. In him +it supplied the place of genius--or, rather, it was almost genius. On +many occasions, in the course of his long, eventful life, when his +shattered constitution made his physicians despair of preserving him, he +seemed to continue to live merely because it was his will; and when his +unconquerable spirit departed from his enfeebled and worn-out body, +those who knew him well might almost have been tempted to suppose that +he had not been vanquished by death, but had at last consented to +repose. This man, when he took the command at New Orleans, had made up +his mind to beat the English; and, as that mind was so constituted that +it was not susceptible of entertaining much doubt as to the results of +any of its resolves, he went to work with an innate confidence which +transfused itself into the population he had been sent to protect. + + * * * * * + + +=_Brantz Mayer, 1809-._= (Manual, p. 490.) + +From "Mexico, Aztec," &c. + +=_136._= REKINDLING THE SACRED FIRE. + +At the end of the Aztec or Toltec cycle of fifty-two years,--for it +is not accurately ascertained to which of the tribes the astronomical +science of Tenochtitlan is to be attributed,--these primitive children +of the New World believed that the world was in danger of instant +destruction. Accordingly, its termination became one of their most +serious and awful epochs, and they anxiously awaited the moment when the +sun would be blotted out from the heavens, and the globe itself resolved +once more into chaos. As the cycle ended in the winter, the season of +the year, with its drearier sky and colder air, in the lofty regions of +the valley, added to the gloom that fell upon the hearts of the people. +On the last day of the fifty-two years, all the fires in temples and +dwellings were extinguished, and the natives devoted themselves to +fasting and prayer. They destroyed alike their valuable and worthless +wares; rent their garments, put out their lights, and hid themselves for +awhile in solitude.... + +At dark on the last dread evening,--as soon as the sun had set, as they +imagined, forever,--a sad and solemn procession of priests and people +marched forth from the city to a neighboring hill, to rekindle the "New +Fire." This mournful march was called "the procession of the gods," and +was supposed to be their final departure from their temples and altars. + +As soon as the melancholy array reached the summit of the hill, it +reposed in fearful anxiety until the Pleiades reached the zenith in the +sky, whereupon the priests immediately began the sacrifice of a human +victim, whose breast was covered with a wooden shield, which the chief +_flamen_ kindled by friction. When the sufferer received the fatal stab +from the sacrificial knife of _obsidian,_ the machine was set in motion +on his bosom until the blaze had kindled. The anxious crowd stood round +with fear and trembling. Silence reigned over nature and man. Not a word +was uttered among the countless multitude that thronged the hill-sides +and plains, whilst the priest performed his direful duty to the gods. At +length, as the fire sparks gleamed faintly from the whirling instrument, +low sobs and ejaculations were whispered among the eager masses. As the +sparks kindled into a blaze, and the blaze into a flame, and the flaming +shield and victim were cast together on a pile of combustibles which +burst at once into the brightness of a conflagration, the air was rent +with the joyous shouts of the relieved and panic-stricken Indians. Far +and wide over the dusky crowds beamed the blaze like a star of promise. +Myriads of upturned faces greeted it from hills, mountains, temples, +terraces, teocallis, house-tops, and city walls; and the prostrate +multitudes hailed the emblem of light, life, and fruition, as a blessed +omen of the restored favor of their gods, and the preservation of their +race for another cycle. At regular intervals, Indian couriers held aloft +brands of resinous wood, by which they transmitted the "New Fire" from +hand to hand, from village to village, and town to town, throughout the +Aztec empire. Light was radiated from the imperial or ecclesiastical +center of the realm. In every temple and dwelling it was rekindled from +the sacred source; and when the sun rose again on the following morning, +the solemn procession of priests, princes, and subjects, which had taken +up its march from the capital on the preceding night with solemn steps, +returned once more to the abandoned capital, and, restoring the gods to +their altars, abandoned themselves to joy and festivity, in token of +gratitude and relief from impending doom. + + * * * * * + + +=_Albert James Pickett,[41] 1858-._= (Manual, p. 490.) + +From "The History of Alabama." + +=_137._= THE INDIANS AND THE EARLY SETTLERS OF ALABAMA. + +During my youthful days, I was accustomed to be much with the Creek +Indians, hundreds of whom came almost daily to the trading-house. For +twenty years I frequently visited the Creek nation. Their green-corn +dances, ball plays, war ceremonies, and manners and customs, are all +fresh in my recollection. In my intercourse with them I was thrown into +the company of many old white men called "Indian country men," who had +for years conducted a commerce with them. Some of these men had come to +the Creek nation before the Revolutionary War, and others, being +tories, had fled to it during the war, and after it to escape from whig +persecution. They were unquestionably the shrewdest and most interesting +men with whom I ever conversed. Generally of Scotch descent, many of +them were men of some education. All of them were married to Indian +wives, and some of them had intelligent and handsome children.... I +often conversed with the chiefs while they were seated in the shades +of the spreading mulberry and walnut, upon the banks of the beautiful +Tallapoosa. As they leisurely smoked their pipes, some of them related +to me the traditions of their country. I occasionally saw Choctaw and +Cherokee traders, and learned much from them. I had no particular object +in view, at that time, except the gratification of a curiosity which +led me, for my own satisfaction alone, to learn something of the early +history of Alabama. + +[Footnote 41: A native of North Carolina, who removed in early life to +Alabama. His "History" abounds in interesting matter.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Charles Wentworth Upham, 1802_= (Manual, pp. 490, 532.) + +From the "History of Witchcraft and Salem Village." + +=_138._= DEFEAT OF THE INDIAN KING PHILIP. + +The Indians were carrying all before them. Philip was spreading +conflagration, devastation, and slaughter around the borders, and +striking sudden and deadly blows into the heart of the country. It was +evident that he was consolidating the Indian power into irresistible +strength.... From other scouting parties it became evident that this +opinion was correct, and that the Indians were collecting stores and +assembling their warriors somewhere, to fall upon the colonies at the +first opening of spring. Further information made it certain that +their place of gathering was in the Narragansett country, in the +south-westerly part of the colony of Rhode Island. There was no +alternative but, as a last effort, to strike the enemy at that point +with the utmost available force.... It was between, one and two o'clock +in the afternoon, and the short winter day was wearing away, Winslow saw +the position at a glance, and, by the promptness of his decision, +proved himself a great captain. He ordered an instant assault. +The Massachusetts troops were in the van, the Plymouth, with the +commander-in-chief, in the center, the Connecticut in the rear. The +Indians had erected a block-house near the entrance, filled with +sharpshooters, who also lined the palisades. The men rushed on, although +it was into the Jaws of death, under an unerring fire. The block-house +told them where the entrance was. The companies of Moseley and Davenport +led the way. Moseley succeeded in passing through. Davenport fell +beneath three fatal shots, just within the entrance. Isaac Johnson, +captain of the Roxbury company, was killed while on the log. But death +had no terrors to that army. The center and rear divisions pressed up to +support the front, and fill the gaps, and all equally shared the glory +of the hour. Enough survived the terrible passage to bring the Indians +to a hand-to-hand fight within the fort. After a desperate straggle of +nearly three hours, the savages were driven from their stronghold, and +with the setting of that sun their power was broken. Philip's fortunes +had received a decided overthrow, and the colonies were saved. In all +military history there is not a more daring exploit. Never, on any +field, has more heroic prowess been displayed. + + * * * * * + + +=_John Lothrop Motley, 1814-._= (Manual, p. 532.) + +From "The History of the United Netherlands." + +=_139._= CHARACTER OF ALVA. + +Ferdinando Alvarez de Toledo, Duke of Alva, was now in his sixtieth +year. He was the most successful and experienced general of Spain, or of +Europe. No man had studied more deeply, or practiced more constantly, +the military science. In the most important of all arts at that epoch he +was the most consummate artist. In the only honorable profession of the +age he was the most thorough and the most pedantic professor. Having +proved in his boyhood at Fontarabia, and in his maturity at Muehlberg, +that he could exhibit heroism and headlong courage when necessary, he +could afford to look with contempt upon the witless gibes which his +enemies had occasionally perpetrated at his expense.... "Recollect," +said he to Don John of Austria, "that the first foes with whom one has +to contend are one's own troops--with their clamors for an engagement at +this moment, and their murmurs about results at another; with their 'I +thought that the battle should be fought,' or, 'It was my opinion that +the occasion ought not to be lost.'" + +On the whole, the Duke of Alva was inferior to no general of his age. +As a disciplinarian, he was foremost in Spain, perhaps in Europe. +A spendthrift of time, he was an economist of blood; and this was, +perhaps, in the eye of humanity, his principal virtue.... Such were +his qualities as a military commander. As a statesman, he had neither +experience nor talent. As a man, his character was simple. He did not +combine a great variety of vices; but those which he had were colossal, +and he possessed no virtues. He was neither lustful nor intemperate; but +his professed eulogists admitted his enormous avarice, while the world +has agreed that such an amount of stealth and ferocity, of patient +vindictiveness and universal blood-thirstiness, were never found in a +savage beast of the forest, and but rarely in a human bosom. + + * * * * * + +From "The History of the United Netherlands." + +=_140._= SIEGE AND ABANDONMENT OF OSTEND. + +The Archduke Albert and the Infanta Isabella entered the place in +triumph, if triumph it could be called. It would be difficult to +imagine a more desolate scene. The artillery of the first years of the +seventeenth century was not the terrible enginery of destruction that +it has become in the last third of the nineteenth, but a cannonade, +continued so steadily and so long, had done its work. There were no +churches, no houses, no redoubts, no bastions, no walls, nothing but a +vague and confused mass of ruin. Spinola conducted his imperial guests +along the edge of extinct volcanoes, amid upturned cemeteries, through +quagmires, which once were moats, over huge mounds of sand, and vast +shapeless masses of bricks and masonry, which had been forts. He +endeavored to point out places where mines had been exploded, where +ravelins had been stormed, where the assailants had been successful, and +where they had been bloodily repulsed. But it was all loathsome, hideous +rubbish. There were no human habitations, no hovels, no casemates. The +inhabitants had burrowed at last in the earth, like the dumb creatures +of the swamps and forests. In every direction the dykes had burst, and +the sullen wash of the liberated waves, bearing hither and thither +the floating wreck of fascines and machinery, of planks and building +materials, sounded far and wide over what should have been dry land. The +great ship channel, with the unconquered Half-moon upon one side and +the incomplete batteries and platforms of Bucquoy on the other, still +defiantly opened its passage to the sea, and the retiring fleets of the +garrison were white in the offing. All around was the grey expanse of +stormy ocean, without a cape or a headland to break its monotony, as the +surges rolled mournfully in upon a desolation more dreary than their +own. The atmosphere was murky and surcharged with rain, for the wild, +equinoctial storm which had held Maurice spell-bound, had been raging +over land and sea for many days. At every step the unburied skulls of +brave soldiers who had died in the cause of freedom, grinned their +welcome to the conquerors. Isabella wept at the sight. She had cause to +weep. Upon that miserable sandbank more than a hundred thousand men had +laid down their lives by her decree, in order that she and her husband +might at last take possession of a most barren prize. This insignificant +fragment of a sovereignty which her wicked old father had presented to +her on his deathbed--a sovereignty which he had no more moral right or +actual power to confer than if it had been in the planet Saturn--had +at last been appropriated at the cost of all this misery. It was of no +great value, although its acquisition had caused the expenditure of at +least eight millions of florins, divided in nearly equal proportions +between the two belligerents. It was in vain that great immunities were +offered to those who would remain, or who would consent to settle in the +foul Golgotha. The original population left the place in mass. No human +creatures were left save the wife of a freebooter and her paramour, a +journeyman blacksmith. This unsavory couple, to whom entrance into the +purer atmosphere of Zeeland was denied, thenceforth shared with the +carrion crows the amenities of Ostend. + + * * * * * + +From the Preface to the "Rise of the Dutch Republic." + +=_141._= THE RISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC. + +The rise of the Dutch Republic must ever be regarded as one of the +leading events of modern times. Without the birth of this great +commonwealth, the various historical phenomena of the sixteenth and +following centuries must have either not existed, or have presented +themselves under essential modifications.... From the handbreadth of +territory called the province of Holland, rises a power which wages +eighty years' warfare with the most potent empire upon earth, and which, +during the progress of the struggle, becoming itself a mighty state, and +binding about its own slender form a zone of the richest possessions of +earth, from pole to tropic, finally dictates its decrees to the empire +of Charles. + +... To the Dutch Republic, even more than to Florence at an earlier day +is the world indebted for practical instruction in that great science of +political equilibrium which must always become more and more important +as the various states of the civilized world are pressed more closely +together, and as the struggle for pre-eminence becomes more feverish and +fatal. Courage and skill in political and military combinations enabled +William the Silent to overcome the most powerful and unscrupulous +monarch of his age. The same hereditary audacity and fertility of genius +placed the destiny of Europe in the hands of William's great-grandson, +and enabled him to mould into an impregnable barrier the various +elements of opposition to the overshadowing monarchy of Louis XIV. As +the schemes of the Inquisition and the unparalleled tyranny of Philip, in +one century led to the establishment of the Republic of the United +Provinces, so, in the next, the revocation of the Nantes Edict and the +invasion of Holland are avenged by the elevation of the Dutch Stadholder +upon the throne of the stipendiary Stuarts. + +To all who speak the English language, the history of the great agony +through which the republic of Holland was ushered into life must have +peculiar interest, for it is a portion of the records of the +Anglo-Saxon race--essentially the same whether in Friesland, England, or +Massachusetts. + +... The great Western Republic, therefore--in whose ... veins flows much of +that ancient and kindred blood received from the nation once ruling a +noble portion of its territory, and tracking its own political existence +to the same parent spring of temperate human liberty--must look with +affectionate interest upon the trials of the elder commonwealth. + +... The lessons of history and the fate of free states can never be +sufficiently pondered by those upon whom so large and heavy a +responsibility for the maintenance of rational human freedom rests. + + * * * * * + + +=_Alexander B. Meek,[42] 1814-1865._= (Manual, p. 523.) + +From "Romantic Passages in Southwestern History." + +=_142._= EXILED FRENCH OFFICERS IN ALABAMA. + +Upon the colony they bestowed the name of Marengo, which is still +preserved in the county. Other relics of their nomenclature, drawn +similarly from battles in which some of them had been distinguished, are +to be found in the villages of Linden and Arcola.... + +Who that would have looked upon Marshal Grouchy or General Lefebvre, as, +dressed in their plain, rustic habiliments,--the straw hat, the homespun +coat, the brogan shoes,--they drove the plough in the open field, or +wielded the axe in the new-ground clearing, would, if unacquainted with +their history, have dreamed that those farmer-looking men had sat in the +councils of monarchs, and had headed mighty armies in the fields of the +sternest strife the world has ever seen? "Do you know, sir," said a +citizen to a traveller, who, in 1819, was passing the road from Arcola +to Eaglesville,--"do you know, sir, who is that fine-looking man who +has just ferried you across the creek?" "No. Who is he?" was the reply. +"That," said the citizen, "is the officer who commanded Napoleon's +advanced guard when he returned from Elba." This was Colonel Raoul, now +a general in France. + +[Footnote 42: One of the few writers of Alabama. The "Romantic passages" +is a book of great interest.] + + * * * * * + +=_143._= THE YOUTH OF THE INDIAN CHIEF WEATHERFORD. + +But the mind of the young Indian, though grasping with singular +readiness the knowledge thus imparted, was subject to stronger tastes +and propensities; and he indulged in all the wild pursuits and +amusements of the youth of his nation with an alacrity and spirit which +won their approval and admiration. He became one of the most active, +athletic, and swift-footed participants in their various games and +dances, and was particularly expert and successful, as a hunter, in the +use of the rifle and the bow. He was also noted, even in his youth, for +his reckless daring as a rider, and his graceful feats of horsemanship, +which the fine stables of his father enabled him to indulge. To use the +words of an old Indian woman who knew him at this period, "The squaws +would quit hoeing corn, and smile and gaze upon him as he rode by the +corn-patch." + + * * * * * + + +=_Abel Stevens,[43] 1815-._= + +From "The History of Methodism." + +=_144._= THE EARLY METHODIST CLERGY IN AMERICA. + +They composed a class which, perhaps, will never be seen again. They +were distinguished by native mental vigor, shrewdness, extraordinary +knowledge of human nature, many of them by overwhelming natural +eloquence, the effects of which on popular assemblies are scarcely +paralleled in the history of ancient or modern oratory, and not a few by +powers of satire and wit which made the gainsayer cower before them. To +these intellectual attributes they added great excellences of the heart, +a zeal which only burned more fervently where that of ordinary men would +have grown faint, a courage that exulted in perils, a generosity which +knew no bounds, and left most of them in want in their latter days, a +forbearance and co-operation with each other which are seldom found in +large bodies, an entire devotion to one work, and, withal, a simplicity +of character which extended even to their manners and their apparel. +They were likewise characterized by rare physical abilities. They were +mostly robust. The feats of labor and endurance which they performed, +in incessantly preaching in villages and cities, among slave huts and +Indian wigwams, in journeyings seldom interrupted by stress of weather, +in fording creeks, swimming rivers, sleeping in forests,--these, with +the novel circumstances with which such a career frequently brought them +into contact, afford examples of life and character which, in the hands +of genius, might be the materials for a new department of romantic +literature. They were men who labored as if the judgment fires were +about to break out on the world, and time to end with their day. They +were precisely the men whom the moral wants of the new world at the time +demanded. + +[Footnote 43: A prominent clergyman of the Methodist church. His History +of Methodism is a work of great research and value. A native of +Pennsylvania.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Francis Parkman, 1823-._= (Manual, pp. 496, 505.) + +From "The Conspiracy of Pontiac." + +=_145._= HUNTERS AND TRAPPERS. + +These rude and hardy men, hunters and traders, scouts and guides, who +ranged the woods beyond the English borders, and formed a connecting +link between barbarism and civilization, have been touched upon already. +They were a distinct, peculiar class, marked with striking contrasts of +good and evil. Many, though by no means all, were coarse, audacious, +and unscrupulous; yet, even in the worst, one might often have found a +vigorous growth of warlike virtues, an iron endurance, an undespairing +courage, a wondrous sagacity, and singular fertility of resource. In +them was renewed, with all its ancient energy, that wild and daring +spirit, that force and hardihood of mind, which marked our barbarous +ancestors of Germany and Norway. These sons of the wilderness still +survive. We may find them to this day, not in the valley of the Ohio, +nor on the shores of the lakes, but far westward on the desert range of +the buffalo, and among the solitudes of Oregon. Even now, while I write, +some lonely trapper is climbing the perilous defiles of the Rocky +Mountains, his strong frame cased in time-worn buck-skin, his rifle +griped in his sinewy hand. Keenly he peers from side to side, lest +Blackfoot or Arapahoe should ambuscade his path. The rough earth is his +bed, a morsel of dried meat and a draught of water are his food and +drink, and death and danger his companions. No anchorite could fare +worse, no hero could dare more; yet his wild, hard life has resistless +charms; and while he can wield a rifle, he will never leave it. Go with +him to the rendezvous, and he is a stoic no more. Here, rioting among +his comrades, his native appetites break loose in mad excess, in deep +carouse, and desperate gaming. Then follow close the quarrel, the +challenge, the fight,--two rusty rifles and fifty yards of prairie. + + * * * * * + +From "The Discovery of the Great West." + +=_146._= EXPLORATION OF THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER. + +The river twisted among the lakes and marshes choked with wild rice; +and, but for their guides, they could scarcely have followed the +perplexed and narrow channel. It brought them at last to the portage; +where, after carrying their canoes a mile and a half over the prairie +and through the marsh, they launched them on the Wisconsin, bade +farewell to the waters that flowed to the St. Lawrence, and committed +themselves to the current that was to bear them they knew not +whither,--perhaps to the Gulf of Mexico, perhaps to the South Sea or +the Gulf of California. They glided calmly down the tranquil stream, by +islands choked with trees and matted with entangling grape-vines; by +forests, groves, and prairies,--the parks and pleasure-grounds of a +prodigal nature; by thickets and marshes and broad bare sand-bars; under +the shadowing trees, between whose tops looked down from afar the bold +brow of some woody bluff. At night, the bivouac,--the canoes inverted on +the bank, the flickering fire, the meal of bison-flesh or venison, the +evening pipes and slumber beneath the stars; and when in the morning +they embarked again, the mist hung on the river like a bridal veil; +then melted before the sun, till the glassy water and the languid woods +basked breathless in the sultry glare. + +On the 17th of June, they saw on their right the broad meadows, bounded +in the distance by rugged hills, where now stand the town and fort of +Prairie du Chien. Before them, a wide and rapid current coursed athwart +their way, by the foot of lofty heights wrapped thick in forests. They +had found what they sought, and "with a joy," writes Marquette, "which +I cannot express," they steered forth their canoes on the eddies of the +Mississippi. + +Turning southward, they paddled down the stream, through a solitude +unrelieved by the faintest trace of man. A large fish, apparently one +of the huge cat-fish of the Mississippi, blundered against Marquette's +canoe with a force which seems to have startled him; and once, as +they drew in their net, they caught a "spade-fish," whose eccentric +appearance greatly astonished them. At length, the buffalo began to +appear, grazing in herds on the great prairies which then bordered the +river; and Marquette describes the fierce and stupid look of the old +bulls, as they stared at the intruders through the tangled mane which +nearly blinded them. + + * * * * * + + +=_John Gilmary Shea,[44] 1824-. _= + +From "The History of Catholic Missions among the Indians." + +=_147._= DIFFICULTIES OF THE ENTERPRISE. + +The discovery of America, like every other event in the history of the +world, had, in the designs of God, the great object of the salvation of +mankind. In that event, more clearly, perhaps, than it is often given to +us here below, we can see and adore that Providence which thus gave to +millions, long sundered from the rest of man by pathless oceans, the +light of the gospel, and the proffered boon of redemption.... + +The field was one as yet unmatched for extent and difficulty. That +region now studded with cities and towns, traversed in every direction +by the panting steam-car or lightning telegraph, was then an almost +unbroken forest, save where the wide prairie rolled its billows of grass +towards the western mountains, or was lost in the sterile, salt, and +sandy plains of the southwest. No city raised to heaven spire, dome, or +minaret; no plough turned up the rich, alluvial soil; no metal dug from +the bowels of the earth had been fashioned into instruments to aid man +in the arts of peace and war.... + +The simplest arts of civilized life were unknown. In one little section +of the Gila and Rio Grande, the people spun and wove a native cotton, +manufactured a rude pottery, and lived in houses or castle-towns of +unburnt bricks. Elsewhere the canoe or cabin of bark or hides, and the +arabesque mat, denoted the highest point of social progress. + +Elsewhere the whole country was inhabited by tribes of a nomadic +character, rarely collected in villages except at particular seasons, or +for specific objects, though here and there were found more sedentary +tribes in villages of bark, encircled by walls of earth, or palisades of +wood, whose institutions, commercial spirit, and agriculture, superior +to that of the wild rovers, seemed to show the remnant of some more +civilized tribe in a state of decadence. Around each isolated tribe lay +an unbroken wilderness extending for miles on every side, where the +braves roamed, hunters alike of beasts and men. So little intercourse or +knowledge of each other existed, so desolate was the wilderness that +a vagabond tribe might wander from one extreme of the continent to +another, and language alone could tell the nation to which they +belonged. + +The whole country was thus occupied by comparatively small, but hostile +tribes, so numerous, that almost every river and every lake has handed +down the name of a distinct nation. In form, in manners, and in habits, +these tribes presented an almost uniform appearance: language formed the +great distinctive mark to the European, though the absence of a feather +or a line of paint disclosed to the native the tribe of the wanderer +whom he met. + +The country itself presented a thousand obstacles: there was danger from +flood, danger from wild beasts, danger from the roving savage, danger +from false friends, danger from the furious rapids on rivers, danger of +loss of sight, of health, of use of motion and of limbs, in the new, +strange life of an Indian wigwam.... + +Once established in a tribe, the difficulties were increased. After +months, nay, years, of teaching, the missionaries found that the fickle +savage was easily led astray; never could they form pupils to our life +and manners. The nineteenth century failed, as the seventeenth failed, +in raising up priests from among the Iroquois or the Algonquins; and at +this day a pupil of the Propaganda, who disputed in Latin on theses of +Peter Lombard, roams at the head of a half-naked band in the billowy +plains of Nebraska. + +[Footnote 44: This writer is much distinguished for his numerous works, +most of which relate to the early missions of the Roman Catholic church +in America. He is a native of New York.] + + * * * * * + +From "Introduction to Early Voyages," etc. + +=_148._= EXPLORATION OF THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER. + +Many a river lives embalmed in history and in historic verse. The +Euphrates, the Nile, the Jordan, the Tiber, and the Rhine typify the +course of empires and dynasties. Countries have been described _per +flumina_, but these streams possess renown rather from some city that +frowned on their currents, or some battle fought and won on their banks. +The great River of our West, from its immense length and the still +increasing importance of its valley, possesses a history of its own. Its +discovery by the Spanish adventurers, a Cabeza de Vaca, a De Soto, a +Tristan, who reached, crossed, or followed it, is its period of early +romance, brilliant, brief, and tragic. Its exploration by Marquette and +La Salle follows,--work of patient endurance and investigation, still +tinged with that light of heroism that hovers around all who struggle +with difficulty and adversity to attain a great and useful end. Then +come the early voyages depicting the successive stages of its banks from +a wilderness to civilization. + +The death of La Salle in Texas in his attempt to reach Illinois closes +the chapter of exploration. Iberville opens a new period by his voyage +to the mouth of the Mississippi, which crowning the previous efforts, +gave the valley of the great river to civilization, Christianity, and +progress. The river had become an object of rivalry. English, French, +and Spanish at the same moment sought to secure its mouth, but fortune +favored the bold Canadian, and the white flag reared by La Salle was +planted anew. + +... At the moment when these narratives take us to the valley of the +Mississippi, that immense territory presented a strange contrast to its +present condition. From its head waters amid the lakes of Minnesota to +its mouth; from its western springs in the heart of the Rocky mountains +to its eastern cradle in the Alleghenies, all was yet in its primeval +state. The Europeans had but one spot, Tonty's little fort; no white men +roamed it but the trader or the missionary. With a sparse and scattered +Indian population, the country teeming with buffalo, deer, and game, was +a scene of plenty. The Indian has vanished from its banks with the game +that he pursued. The valley numbers as many states now as it did white +men then; a busy, enterprising, adventurous, population, numbering its +millions, has swept away the unprogressive and unassimilating red man. +The languages of the Illinois, the Quapaw, the Tonica, the Natchez, the +Ouma, are heard no more by the banks of the great water; no calumet now +throws round the traveller its charmed power; the white banner of France +floated long to the breeze, but with the flag of England and the +standard of Spain all disappeared we may say within a century. For fifty +years one single flag met the eye, and appealed to the heart of the +inhabitants of the shores of the Mississippi.[45] Two now divide it: let +us hope that the altered flag may soon resume its original form, and +meet the heart's warm response at the month as at the source of the +Mississippi. + +[Footnote 45: In allusion to the Rebellion.] + + * * * * * + + +=_John Gorham Palfrey, 1796-._= (Manual, pp. 504, 532.) + +From the "History of New England." + +=_149._= HAPPINESS OF WINTHROP'S CLOSING YEARS. + +He was greatly privileged in living so long. Just before he died, that +ecclesiastical arrangement had been made, which he might naturally +hope would preserve the churches of New England in purity, peace, and +strength, to remote times. Religious and political dissensions, which +had disturbed and threatened the infant Church and the forming +State, appeared to be effectually composed. The tribunals, carefully +constituted for the administration of impartial and speedy justice, +understood and did their duty, and commanded respect. The education of +the generations which were to succeed had been provided for with an +enlightened care. The College had bountifully contributed its ripe +first-fruits to the public service; and the novel system of a universal +provision of the elements of knowledge at the public cost, had been +inaugurated with all circumstances of encouragement. + +A generation was coming forward which remembered nothing of what +Englishmen had suffered in New England for want of the necessaries +and comforts of life. The occupations of industry were various and +remunerative. Land was cheap, and the culture of it yielded no penurious +reward to the husbandman; while he who chose to sell his labor was at +least at liberty to place his own estimate upon it, and found it always +in demand. The woods and waters were lavish of gifts which were to be +had simply for the taking. The white wings of commerce, in their long +flight to and from the settler's home, wafted the commodities which +afford enjoyment and wealth to both sender and receiver. The numerous +handicrafts, which in its constantly increasing division of labor, a +thriving society employs, found liberal recompense; and manufactures on +a larger scale were beginning to invite accumulations of capital and +associated labor. + +The Confederacy of the Four Colonies was an humble, but a substantial, +power in the world. It was known to be such by its French, Dutch, and +savage neighbors; by the alienated communities on Narragansett Bay; and +by the rulers of the mother country. + +During Winthrop's last ten years, nowhere else in the world had +Englishmen been so happy as under the generous government which his +mind inspired and regulated. What one mind could do for a community's +well-being, his had done. The prosecution of the issues he had wrought +for was now to be committed to the wisdom and courage of a younger +generation, and to the course of events, under the continued guidance of +a propitious Providence. + + + +CHAPTER II. + + + +ESSAYISTS, MORALISTS, AND REFORMERS. + + +=_Joseph Dennie, 1768-1812._= (Manual, p. 497.) + +From "The Lay Preacher." + +=_150._= REFLECTION'S ON THE SEASONS. + +"Truly the light is sweet, and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to +behold the sun." + +The sensitive Gray, in a frank letter to his friend West, assures him +that, when the sun grows warm enough to tempt him from the fireside, he +will, like all other things, be the better for his influence; for the +sun is an old friend, and an excellent nurse, &c. This is an opinion +which will be easily entertained by every one who has been cramped by +the icy hand of Winter, and who feels the gay and renovating influence +of Spring. In those mournful months when vegetables and animals are +alike coerced by cold, man is tributary to the howling storm and the +sullen sky, and is, in the phrase of Johnson, a "slave to gloom;" but +when the earth is disencumbered of her load of snows, and warmth is +felt, and twittering swallows are heard, he is again jocund and free. +Nature renews her charter to her sons.... Hence is enjoyed, in the +highest luxury,-- + + "Day, and the sweet approach of even and morn, + And sight of vernal bloom and summer's rose, + And flocks, and herds, and human face divine." + +It is nearly impossible for me to convey to my readers an idea of the +"vernal delight" felt at this period by the Lay Preacher, far declined +in the vale of years. My spectral figure, pinched by the rude gripe +of January, becomes as thin as that "dagger of lath" employed by the +vaunting Falstaff, and my mind, affected by the universal desolation of +winter, is nearly as vacant of joy and bright ideas as the forest is of +leaves and the grove is of song. Fortunately for my happiness, this +is only periodical spleen. Though in the bitter months, surveying my +attenuated body, I exclaim with the melancholy prophet, "My leanness, my +leanness! woe is me!" and though, adverting to the state of my mind, I +behold it "all in a robe of darkest grain," yet when April and May +reign in sweet vicissitude, I give, like Horace, care to the winds, and +perceive the whole system excited by the potent stimulus of sunshine.... +I have myself in winter felt hostile to those whom I could smile upon in +May, and clasp to my bosom in June. + + * * * * * + + +=_William Gaston,[46] 1778-1844._= + +From "Essays and Addresses." + +=_151._= THE IMPORTANCE OF INTEGRITY. + +The first great maxim of human conduct--that which it is all-important +to impress on the understandings of young men, and recommend to their +hearty adoption--is, above all things, in all circumstances, and under +every emergency, to preserve a clean heart and an honest purpose.... +Without it, neither genius nor learning, neither the gifts of God, nor +human exertions, can avail aught for the accomplishment of the great +objects of human existence. Integrity is the crowning virtue,--integrity +is the pervading principle which ought to regulate, guide, control, and +vivify every impulse, device, and action. Honesty is sometimes spoken of +as a vulgar virtue; and perhaps, that honesty which barely refrains from +outraging the positive rules ordained by society for the protection +of property, and which ordinarily pays its debts and performs its +engagements, however useful and commendable a quality, is not to be +numbered among the highest efforts of human virtue. But that integrity +which, however tempting the opportunity, or however secure against +detection, no selfishness nor resentment, no lust of power, place, +favor, profit, or pleasure, can cause to swerve from the strict rule of +right, is the perfection of man's moral nature. In this sense, the poet +was right when he pronounced "an honest man's the noblest work of God." +It is almost inconceivable what an erect and independent spirit this +high endowment communicates to the man, and what a moral intrepidity +and vivifying energy it imparts to his character.... Erected on such a +basis, and built up of such materials, fame is enduring. Such is the +fame of our Washington--of the man "inflexible to ill, and obstinately +just." While, therefore, other monuments, intended to perpetuate +human greatness, are daily mouldering into dust, and belie the proud +inscriptions which they bear, the solid, granite pyramid of his glory +lasts from age to age, imperishable, seen afar off, looming high over +the vast desert, a mark, a sign, and a wonder, for the wayfarers though +this pilgrimage of life. + +[Footnote 46: A prominent lawyer and statesman of North Carolina.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Jesse Buel, 1778-1839._= (Manual, p. 504.) + +From "The Farmer's Instructor." + +=_152._= EXTENT AND DEFECTS OF AMERICAN AGRICULTURE. + +We have associated, gentlemen, to increase the pleasures and profits +of rural labor, to enlarge the sphere of useful knowledge, and, by +concentrating our energies, to give them greater effect in advancing the +public good. In no country does the agricultural class bear so great a +proportion to the whole population as in this. In England one-third of +the inhabitants only are employed in husbandry; in France, two-thirds; +in Italy, a little more than three-fourths; while in the United States +the agricultural portion probably exceeds five-sixths. And in no country +does the agricultural population exercise such a controlling political +power, contribute so much to the wealth, or tend so strongly to give an +impress to the character of a nation as in the United States. Hence it +may be truly said of us that our agriculture is our nursing mother, +which nurtures, and gives growth, and wealth, and character to our +country.... Knowing no party, and confined to no sect, its benefits and +its blessings, like dews from heaven, fall upon all. + +... Our agriculture is greatly defective. It is susceptible of much +improvement. How shall we effect this improvement? The old are _too old +to learn_, or, rather, to unlearn what have been the habits of their +lives. The young cannot learn as they ought to learn, and as the public +interests require, because they have no suitable school for their +instruction. We have no place where they can learn the _principles_ upon +which the _practice_ of agriculture is based, none where they can be +instructed in all the modern improvements of the art. + +Much injury has been done to the cause of agriculture by sanguine +speculations, which have only led to expense and disappointments; but +all works on agriculture are not of that character; nor should it be +forgotten that theory is the parent of practical knowledge, and that the +very systems which farmers themselves adopt, were originally founded +upon those theories which they so much affect to despise. Neither can +it be denied that systems grounded upon theory alone, unsupported by +experiment, are properly viewed with distrust; for the most plausible +reasoning upon the operations of nature, without accompanying proof +deduced from facts, may lead to a wrong conclusion, and it is often +difficult to separate that which is really useful, from that which is +merely visionary.... Prudence, therefore, dictates the necessity of +caution; but ignorance is opposed to every change, from the mere want of +judgment to discriminate between that which is purely speculative, and +that which rests upon a more solid foundation. + + * * * * * + + +=_Robert Walsh, 1784-1859._= (Manual, p. 504.) + +From "Didactics, Social, Literary, &c." + +=_153._= FALSE SYMPATHY WITH CRIMINALS. + +Whatever the impulse to guilt, some suppression or aberration of +the reason may ever be alleged and admitted. In this mode, however, +sentimentalists might argue or whine away the whole body of crimes and +punishments. It is the duty of every true friend of humanity and order, +to protest against perverted sensibilities or sophistical refinements, +which find warrant or apology for depraved appetites,--for the worst +distemperature of the mind, and the most fatal catastrophes,--in natural +propension, and unrestrained feeling. Spurious sympathy is a more +prolific evil than sanguinary rigor, useless and pernicious as the +latter is, in our humble opinion. Public executions do more harm than +good,--but are not worse than morbid public commiseration and entreaty +for criminals, to whom the real justice of the law has been applied, +after fair and merciful trial.... + +Many of the worst criminals, who, in different ages and countries, +have justly suffered ignominious death on the wheel, the block, or the +gallows, were men of "extraordinary character," of singular acuteness, +of the most decided spirit. To acknowledge this fact is not to applaud +their conduct, or admire their general ultimate character.... + +We have constantly remembered what we early read in the works of Mr. +Burke, that it is the propensity of degenerate minds to admire or +worship _splendid wickedness_; that, with too many persons, the ideas of +justice and morality are fairly conquered and overpowered by guilt when +it is grown gigantic, and happens to be associated with the lustre +of genius, the glare of fashion, or the robes of power. Against this +species of degeneracy or illusion it has been our uniform endeavor to +guard ourselves, and our conscientious practice to warn and exhort +others. The integrity and delicacy of the moral sense, whether in +individuals or communities, form a most important subject of the care of +all public writers and speakers, in all transactions by which, or the +history or treatment of which, the public, judgment and feelings may +be affected. Hence, when mail robbers or murderers are to be tried or +executed, we should be disposed to avoid all extraordinary bustle, or +concern, or voluminous details about their fate; we should deem it the +true policy of practical ethics to abstain from everything calculated to +produce adventitious interest or consequence for the culprits. It is not +with pleasure that we hear of the crowds that besiege the door of the +court-room, or see in the newspapers the many columns of evidence, with +an endless repetition of trifling circumstances, any more than we +can rejoice for the cause of moral and social order when convicted +highwaymen or murderers are carried to the gallows as _saints_, and hung +amidst vast assemblages, either merely indulging a callous curiosity, +or losing all the horror of their offences in emotions of compassion or +admiration, awakened by the dramatic nature of the whole scene. + + * * * * * + + +=_Thomas S. Grimke,[47] 1786-1834._= + +From "Addresses, Scientific and Literary." + +=_154._= LITERARY EXCELLENCE OF THE ENGLISH BIBLE. + +The translation of the Bible, in the reign of James I., is the most +remarkable and interesting event in the history of translations.... +The great excellence of the translation is due to six considerations. +_First_, it was made under a very solemn sense of the important duty +devolved on those who were thus selected. Hence arose that prevailing +air of dignity, gravity, simplicity, which is so conspicuous. +_Secondly_, the translators came to the task looking to the _thoughts_, +not to the _style_. Their object was not that of all other translators, +to imitate and rival the beauty of _style_. Their sole object was to +render faithfully, and in a plain, appropriate style, the _thoughts_ +of the sacred writers. Hence they became _thoroughly imbued with the +spirit_ of the original, and gave an incomparably better version of the +Hebrew and Greek Testaments than any or all of them together could have +done of any classic. Had each of them left us translations of some +classic, I hesitate not to say they would not now have been found in +any library but as mere curiosities. _Thirdly_, the number of persons +employed contributed very much to prevent any _personal_ style from +prevailing, and gave to the whole an air of plain, simple uniformity. +_Fourthly_, the era was providential in one important view. As the +translation was made before all the bitterness of sectarian spirit +distracted the English Protestant church, it was executed far less with +a view to party differences than could have been the case at any time +afterwards. _Fifthly_, fortunately the only great religious difference +that could have affected it was the dispute with the Catholic church, +and, as to that, all Protestants were agreed in England on every +important point. _Sixthly_, the English language was then at the +happiest stage of its progress, with all the strength, simplicity, and. +clearness of the elder literature, whilst, at the same time, it was free +from the cant of the age of Charles I. and Cromwell, from the vulgarity +and levity of that of Charles II., and from the artificial character of +that of Anne. + +Such a translation is an illustrious monument of the age, the nation, +the language. It is, properly speaking, less a translation than an +original, having most of the merit of the _former_ as to _style_, and +all the merit of the _latter_ as to _thought_. It is the noblest, best, +most finished classic of the English tongue. + +[Footnote 47: A native of South Carolina, distinguished in the law and in +literature.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Henry C. Carey, 1793-._= (Manual, p. 504.) + +From "Principles of Social Science." + +=_155._= AGRICULTURE AS A SCIENCE. + +That agriculture may become a science, it is indispensable that man +always repay to the great bank from which he has drawn his food, the +debt he thereby has contracted. The earth, as has been already said, +gives nothing, but is ready to lend everything; and when the debts are +punctually repaid, each successive loan is made on a larger scale; but +when the debtor fails in punctuality, his credit declines, and the loans +are gradually diminished, until at length he is turned out from house +and home. No truth in the whole range of science is more readily +susceptible of proof than that the community which limits itself to the +exportation of raw produce must end by the exportation of men, and those +men the slaves of nature, even when not actually bought and sold by +their fellow men. + +... With the growth of commerce, the necessity for moving commodities +back, and forth steadily declines, with constant improvement in the +machinery of transportation, and diminution in the risk of losses of the +kind that are covered by insurance against dangers of the sea, or those +of fire. The treasures of the earth then become developed, and stone and +iron take the place of wood in all constructions, while the exchanges +between the miner of coal and of iron--of the man who quarries the +granite, and him who raises the food--rapidly increase in quantity, and +diminish the necessity for resorting to the distant market. + + * * * * * + + +=_Edmund Ruffin, 1793-1863._= + +From "An Essay on Calcarcous Manures." + +=_156._= IMPROVEMENT OF ACID SOILS. + +Nearly all the woodland now remaining in lower Virginia, and also much +of the land which has long been arable, is rendered unproductive by +acidity; and successive generations have toiled on such land, almost +without remuneration, and without suspecting that their worst virgin +land was then richer than their manured lots appeared to be. The +cultivator of such soil, who knows not its peculiar disease, has no +other prospect than a gradual decrease of his always scanty crops. But +if the evil is once understood, and the means of its removal are within +his reach, he has reason to rejoice that his soil was so constituted as +to be preserved from the effects of the improvidence of his forefathers, +who would have worn out any land not almost indestructible. The presence +of acid, by restraining the productive powers of the soil, has, in a +great measure, saved it from exhaustion; and after a course of cropping, +which would have utterly ruined soils much better constituted, the +powers of our acid land remain not greatly impaired, though dormant, +and ready to be called into action by merely being relieved of its acid +quality. A few crops will reduce a new acid field to so low a rate of +product, that it scarcely will pay for its cultivation; but no great +change is afterwards caused, by continuing scourging tillage and +grazing, for fifty years longer. Thus our acid soils have two remarkable +and opposite qualities,--both proceeding from the same cause; they can +neither be enriched by manure, nor impoverished by cultivation, to +any great extent. Qualities so remarkable deserve all our powers of +investigation; yet their very frequency seems to have caused them to be +overlooked; and our writers on agriculture have continued to urge those +who seek improvement, to apply precepts drawn from English authors, +to soils which are totally different from all those for which their +instructions were intended. + + * * * * * + + +=_Francis Wayland, 1796-1865._= (Manual, pp. 487, 502, 504.) + +From "The Limitations of Human Responsibility." + +=_157._= SUPERIORITY OF THE MORAL SENTIMENTS. + +It is a common remark, that, whenever it has been thought necessary to +arouse the mind of man to enterprises of great pith and moment, the +appeal has always been made to his moral sentiments. Hence, among the +most ancient nations, it was the invariable custom to accompany the +declaration of war with religious ceremonies; and if, in later times, +this custom has become somewhat less usual, the change itself, in a more +remarkable manner, illustrates the tendency of our nature.... But let +victory declare for the assailed, let the invader become the invaded, +let it become necessary to stimulate men to put forth the highest effort +of human daring, and the sacred names of conscience, of duty to family, +to country, and to God, are universally invoked, and the Supreme Being +is urgently appealed to, to succor the cause of a sinking commonwealth. +It is, perhaps, worth while to remark, in passing, that this +consciousness of right is a source of power which belongs specially to +the oppressed, and which, other things being equal, will always insure +to them the victory; and, when other things are not equal, it is +frequently sufficient, of itself, to outweigh a vast preponderance of +physical force. It is, moreover, efficient in proportion to the purity of +the moral principle of a people. We hence perceive the elements of +superiority which, by the constitution of our nature, have been bestowed +upon virtue. + +Another illustration of the power of the moral principle, is seen in +the sentiments with which we contemplate the character of confessors, +martyrs, and men of every age, who have sacrificed every thing else +for the sake of adherence to righteousness. The highest glory of human +nature is to love right better than life, and to obey the dictates of +conscience at every conceivable hazard. Even falsehood, when sealed with +blood, acquires not unfrequently, for a time, an irrepressible power. +Truth, when uttered from the stake, or on the scaffold, becomes +absolutely irresistible. We admire Plato, surrounded by listening +princes, and vieing with them in oriental magnificence; but we venerate +Socrates in his dungeon, patiently suffering death for holding forth the +truth; and the dictates of our own bosoms spontaneously assign to him +the highest place among the uninspired teachers of wisdom. Or, to turn +to more awful examples, the foundations of the Christian religion were +laid in blood. The Captain of our salvation "was obedient unto death, +the death of the cross." The martyrdoms of the early age of the church +gave to the world examples of the love of right, of which it had never +before conceived even the possibility, and thus set on foot a moral +reformation, which is destined to work in the character of man a +universal transformation. + + * * * * * + + +=_Horace Mann, 1796-1859._= (Manual, p. 532.) + +From "Lectures on various Subjects." + +=_158._= THOUGHTS FOR A YOUNG MAN. + +In this country most young men are poor. Time is the rock from which +they are to hew out their fortunes; and health, enterprise, and +integrity, the instruments with which to do it. For this, diligence in +business, abstinence from pleasures, privation even, of everything that +does not endanger health, are to be joyfully welcomed and borne. When we +look around us, and see how much of the wickedness of the world +springs from poverty, it seems to sanctify all honest efforts for the +acquisition of an independence; but when an independence is acquired, +then comes the moral crisis, then comes an Ithuriel test, which shows +whether a man is higher than a common man, or lower than a common +reptile. In the duty of accumulation--and I call it a _duty_, in the most +strict and literal signification of that word--all below a competence +is most valuable, and its acquisition most laudable; but all above a +fortune is a misfortune. It is a misfortune to him who amasses it; for +it is a voluntary continuance in the harness of a beast of burden, when +the soul should enfranchise and lift itself up into a higher region of +pursuits and pleasures. It is a persistence in the work of providing +goods for the body after the body has already been provided for; and +it is a denial of the higher demands of the soul, after the time has +arrived, and the means are possessed, of fulfilling those demands.... +Because the lower service was once necessary, and has, therefore, been +performed, it is a mighty wrong, when, without being longer necessary, +it usurps the sacred rights of the higher. + + * * * * * + + +=_Orestes A. Brownson, 1800-._= (Manual, p. 480.) + +From "New Views." + +=_159._= THE DUTY OF PROGRESS. + +Progress is the end for which man was made. To this end it is his duty +to direct all his enquiries, all his systems of religion and philosophy, +all his institutions of politics and society, all the productions of his +genius and taste, in one word, all the modes of his activity. This is +his duty. Hitherto, he has performed it but blindly, without knowing, +and without admitting it. Humanity has but to-day, as it were, risen to +self-consciousness, to a perception of its own capacity, to a glimpse of +its inconceivably grand and holy destiny. Heretofore it has failed to +recognize clearly its duty. It has advanced, but not designedly, +not with foresight; it has done it instinctively, by the aid of the +invisible but safe-guiding hand of its Father. Without knowing what it +did, it has condemned progress while it was progressing. It has stoned +the prophets and reformers, even while it was itself reforming and +uttering glorious prophecies of its future condition. But the time has +now come for humanity to understand itself, to accept the law imposed +upon it for its own good, to foresee its end, and march with intention +steadily towards it. Its future religion is the religion of progress. +The true priests are those who can quicken in mankind a desire for +progress, and urge them forward in the direction of the true, the good, +the perfect. + + * * * * * + +From "The Convert." + +=_160._= POLITICS OF CATHOLIC EUROPE IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY +DESPOTIC. + +In France, Spain, Portugal, and a large part of Italy, all through the +seventeenth century, the youth were trained in the maxim, The prince is +the State, and his pleasure is law. Bossuet, in his politics, did only +faithfully express the political sentiments and convictions of his age, +shared by the great body of Catholics as well as of non-Catholics. +Rational liberty had few defenders, and they were exiled, like Fenelon, +from the court. The politics of Philip II. of Spain, of Richelieu, +Mazarin, and Louis XIV. in France, which were the politics of Catholic +Europe, hardly opposed, except by the popes, through the greater part +of the sixteenth and the whole of the seventeenth centuries, tended +directly to enslave the people, and to restrict the freedom, and +efficiency of the church. Had either Philip, or, after him, Louis, +succeeded, by linking the Catholic cause to his personal ambition, in +realizing his dream of universal monarchy, Europe would most likely have +been plunged into a political and social condition as unenviable as that +into which old Asia has been plunged for these four hundred years; and +it may well be believed that it was Providence that raised and directed +the tempest that scattered the Grand Armada, and that gave victory to +the arms of Eugene and Marlborough. + + * * * * * + + +=_Theodore Dwight Woolsey, 1801-._= + +From his "Introduction to the Study of International Law." + +=_161._= IMPORTANCE OF THE STUDY. + +From all that has been said it has become apparent that the study of +international law is important, as an index of civilization, and not to +the student of law only, but to the student of history. In our land, +especially, it is important, on more than one account, that this science +should do its share in enlightening educated minds. One reason for this +lies in the new inducements which we, as a people, have to swerve from +national rectitude. Formerly our interests threw us on the side of +unrestricted commerce, which is the side towards which justice inclines, +and we lived far within our borders with scarcely the power to injure or +be injured, except on the ocean. Now we are running into the crimes to +which strong nations are liable. Our diplomatists unblushingly moot the +question of taking foreign territory by force if it cannot be purchased; +our executive prevents piratical expeditions against the lands of +neighboring States as feebly and slowly as if it connived at them; we +pick quarrels to gain conquests; and at length, after more than half a +century of public condemnation of the slave-trade, after being the first +to brand it as piracy, we hear the revival of the trade advocated as a +right, as a necessity. Is it not desirable that the sense of justice, +which seems fading out of the national mind before views of political +expediency or destiny, should be deepened and made fast by that study +which frowns on national crimes? + +And, again, every educated person ought to become acquainted with +national law, because he is a responsible member of the body politic; +because there is danger that party views will make our doctrine in this +science fluctuating, unless it is upheld by large numbers of intelligent +persons; and because the executive, if not controlled, will be tempted +to assume the province of interpreting international law for us. As it +regards the latter point it may be said, that while Congress has power +to define offences against the laws of nations, and thus, if any public +power, to pronounce authoritatively what the law of nations is, the +executive through the Secretary of State, in practice, gives the lead in +all international questions. In this way the Monroe doctrine appeared; +in this way most other positions have been advanced; and perhaps this +could not be otherwise. But we ought to remember that the supreme +executives in Europe have amassed power by having diplomatic relations +in their hands, that thus the nation may become involved in war against +its will, and that the prevention of evils must lie, if there be any, +with the men who have been educated in the principles of international +justice. + +I close this treatise here, hoping that it may be of some use to my +native land, and to young men who may need a guide in the science of +which it treats. + + * * * * * + + +=_Taylor Lewis, 1802-.[48]_= + +From "The Six Days of Creation." + +=_162._= UNITY OF THE MOSAIC ACCOUNT. + +Another striking trait of the Mosaic cosmogony is its unbroken wholeness +or unity.... Be it invention or inspiration, it is the invention or the +inspiration of one mind. Other cosmogonies, though bearing unmistakable +evidence of their descent from the Mosaic, have had successive deposits, +in successive series, of mythological strata. This stands towering out +in lonely sublimity, like the everlasting granite of the Alps or the +Himalaya, as compared with the changing alluvium of the Nile or the +Ganges. As the serene air that ever surrounds the head of Mont Blanc +excels in purity the mists of the fen, so does the lofty theism of the +Mosaic account rise high above the nature-worship of the Egyptian and +Hesiodean theogonies. "In the beginning God made the heavens and the +earth. And the earth was waste and void, and darkness was upon the face +of the deep. And the Spirit of God brooded over the waters. And God +said, Let there be light, and it was light. And God saw the light that +it was fair, and God divided the light from the darkness. And thus there +was an evening and a morning--one day!" What is there like it, or to be +at all compared with it, in any mythology on earth? There it stands, +high above them all, and remote from them all, in its air of great +antiquity, in its unaccountableness, in its serene truthfulness, in +its unapproachable sublimity, in that impress of divine majesty and +ineffable holiness which even the unbelieving neologist has been +compelled to acknowledge, and by which every devout reader feels that +the first page in Genesis is forever distinguished from any mere human +production. + +[Footnote 48: Born In New York; a prolific writer, eminent for his +profound scholarship, his wide acquaintance with Oriental and Biblical +literature, and his originality and freedom of mind: long Professor of +Greek in Union College.] + + * * * * * + +From "State Rights." + +=_163._= CRUEL INTESTINE WARS CAUSED BY NATIONAL DIVISION. + +If it were Death alone! But "Hell follows hard after." What a heaving +Tartarus was Greece, when all hope of a true nationality was given up! +From Corcyra to Rhodes, from Byzantium to Cyrene, one bloody scene of +faction, "sedition, privy conspiracy, and rebellion." In the cities, in +the isles, in the colonies, banishments, confiscations, ostracisms, and +cruel deaths. The most ferocious parties everywhere, fomented in the +smaller States by the influence of the larger, and kept alive in the +leading cities by the continual presence of foreign emissaries. With us +it would be far more like Satan's kingdom, inasmuch as our states are +more numerous, relatively more petty, and, from the increased powers of +modern knowledge and modern invention, capable of the greater mutual +mischief. + +We are not prophesying at random. Here is our old guidebook. The road +is all mapped out, the way surveyed, by which we march to ruin. All the +dire calamities of Greece may be traced to this word autonomia.[49] + +... Greece presented the first great proof of a fact of which we are now +in danger of furnishing another and more terrible example to the world. +It is the utter impossibility of peace, in a territory made by nature a +geographical unity, inhabited by a people, or peoples, of one lineage, +one language, bound together in historical reminiscences, yet divided +into petty sovereign States too small for any respectable nationalities +themselves, and yet preventing any beneficent nationality as a whole. No +animosities have been so fierce as those existing among people thus +geographically and politically related. No wars with each other have +been so cruel; no home factions have been so incessant, so treacherous, +and so debasing. The very ties that draw them near only awaken occasions +of strife, which would not have existed between tribes wholly alien to +each other in language and religion. + +[Footnote 49: State sovereignty.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Horace Greeley,[50] 1811-1873._= + +From a "Lecture on the Emancipation of Labor." + +=_164._= THE PROBLEM OF LABOR. + +The worker of the nineteenth century stands a sad and careworn man. +Once in a while a particular flowery Fourth of July oration, political +harangue, or Thanksgiving sermon, catching him well filled with creature +comforts, and a little inclined to soar starward, will take him off his +feet, and for an hour or two he will wonder if ever human lot was so +blessed as that of the free-born American laborer. He hurrahs, and is +ready to knock any man down who will not readily and heartily agree that +this is a great country, and our industrious classes the happiest people +on earth.... The hallucination passes off, however, with the silvery +tones of the orator, and the exhilarating fumes of the liquor which +inspired it. The inhaler of the bewildering gas bends his slow steps at +length to his sorry domicile, or wakes therein on the morrow, in a sober +and practical mood. His very exaltation, now past, has rendered him more +keenly susceptible to the deficiencies and impediments which hem him +in: his house seems narrow, his food coarse, his furniture scanty, his +prospects gloomy, and those of his children more sombre, if possible; +and as he hurries off to the day's task which he has too long neglected, +and for which he has little heart, he too falls into that train of +thought which is beginning to encircle the globe, and of which the +burden may be freely rendered thus: "Why should those by whose toil all +comforts and luxuries are produced, or made available, enjoy so scanty a +share of them? Why should a man able and eager to work, ever stand idle +for want of employment in a world where so much needful work impatiently +awaits the doing? Why should a man be required to surrender something of +his independence, in accepting the employment which will enable him to +earn by honest effort the bread of his family? Why should the man who +faithfully labors for another, and receives therefor less than the +product of his labor, be currently held the obliged party, rather than +he who buys the work and makes a good bargain of it? In short, why +should Speculation and Scheming ride so jauntily in their carriages, +splashing honest Work as it trudges humbly and wearily by on foot?" +Such, as I interpret it, is the problem which occupies and puzzles the +knotted brain of Toil in our day. + +[Footnote 50: The well-known journalist of New York; conspicuous for his +many writings on social and political reform, his reminiscences, &c.; a +native of New Hampshire.] + + * * * * * + +From an Address on Success in Business. + +=_165._= THE BENEFICENCE OF LABOR-SAVING INVENTIONS. + +There is, if not an ever-increasing need, an ever-increasing +consciousness of need, of labor-saving inventions and machinery. And, if +those inventions should render labor twenty times as productive as it +is to-day, should make this a general rule, that all human labor shall +produce twenty times as much as it does to-day--there would be no glut +of products, as so many mistakenly apprehend. There would only be a +very much fuller and broader satisfaction of human needs. Our wants +are infinite. They expand and dilate on every side, according to our +means--often very much in advance of our means,--of satisfying them. If +labor shall become--as I doubt not it will become at an early day, far +more productive, far more effective, than it is now, we shall hear +nothing like a complaint that there are no more wants to be satisfied, +but the contrary. And yet, we know the fact is deplorably true, that the +time is scarcely yet remote when the laboring class, distinctively so +called, set its face resolutely against new inventions--set to work +deliberately to destroy labor-saving machinery, and so to act as more +and more to throw labor back into the barbaric period when probably +every yard of cloth cost a day's labor, as did every bushel of grain. +England herself, it is computed now does the work, by means of steam and +machinery, of eight hundred millions of men. And yet English wants are +no more satisfied to-day than they were a thousand years ago. I do not +say they are altogether unsatisfied; but I say that the consciousness of +want, the demand for products, is just as keen to-day; and I have not +a doubt that if inventions could be introduced into China whereby the +labor of her people should be rendered fifty times as effective as it is +to-day, you would find not a dearth of employment as a consequence, but +rather an increase of activity and an increased demand for labor. To-day +British capital and British talent are fairly grid-ironing the ancient +plains and slopes of Hindostan with British canals, irrigating, and +railroads. It is their _gold_ they say; but it is not British capital, +so much as British genius and British confidence, that are required. +There is wealth enough in India, more gold and silver and gems, probably +to-day than in Europe, for the precious metals always flow thither, and +they very seldom flow thence. + + * * * * * + +From "Recollections of a Busy Life." + +=_166._= LITERATURE AS A VOCATION; THE EDITOR. + +No other public teacher lives so wholly in the present, as the +Editor; and the noblest affirmations of unpopular truth,--the most +self-sacrificing defiance of a base and selfish Public Sentiment that +regards only the most sordid ends, and values every utterance solely +as it tends to preserve quiet and contentment, while the dollars fall +jingling into the merchant's drawer, the land-jobber's vault, and +the miser's bag,--can but be noted in their day, and with their day +forgotten. It is his cue to utter silken and smooth sayings,--to condemn +Vice so as not to interfere with the pleasures, or alarm the consciences +of the vicious,--to praise and champion Liberty so as not to give +annoyance or offence to Slavery, and to commend and glorify Labor +without attempting to expose or repress any of the gainful contrivances +by which Labor is plundered and degraded. Thus sidling dexterously +between somewhere and nowhere, the Able Editor of the Nineteenth Century +may glide through life respectable and in good case, and lie down to his +long rest with the non-achievements of his life emblazoned on the very +whitest marble, surmounting and glorifying his dust. + +There is a different and sterner path,--I know not whether there be +any now qualified to tread it,--I am not sure that even one has ever +followed it implicitly, in view of the certain meagerness of its +temporal rewards, and the haste wherewith any fame acquired in a sphere +so thoroughly ephemeral as the Editor's, must be shrouded by the dark +waters of oblivion. This path demands an ear ever open to the plaints of +the wronged and the suffering, though they can never repay advocacy, and +those who mainly support newspapers will be annoyed and often exposed +by it; a heart as sensitive to oppression and degradation in the next +street as if they were practised in Brazil or Japan; a pen as ready +to expose and reprove the crimes whereby wealth is amassed and luxury +enjoyed in our own country at this hour, as if they had only been +committed by Turks or Pagans in Asia, some centuries ago. Such an +Editor, could one be found or trained, need not expect to lead an easy, +indolent, or wholly joyous life,--to be blessed by Archbishops, or +followed by the approving shouts of ascendant majorities; but he might +find some recompense for their loss, in the calm verdict of an approving +conscience: and the tears of the despised and the friendless, preserved +from utter despair by his efforts and remonstrances, might freshen for a +season the daisies that bloomed above his grave. + + * * * * * + +From "The Crystal Palace and its Lessons." + +=_167._= TRANQUILITY OF RURAL LIFE. + +As for me, long tossed on the stormiest waves of doubtful conflict and +arduous endeavor, I have begun to feel, since the shades of forty years +fell upon me, the weary tempest-driven voyager's longing for land, the +wanderer's yearning for the hamlet where in childhood he nestled by +his mother's knee, and was soothed to sleep on her breast. The sober +down-hill of life dispels many illusions, while it developes or +strengthens within us the attachment, perhaps long smothered or +overlaid, for "that dear hut, our home." And so I, in the sober +afternoon of life, when its sun, if not high, is still warm, have bought +me a few acres of land in the broad, still country, and bearing thither +my household treasures, have resolved to steal from the city's labors +and anxieties at least one day in each week, wherein to revive as a +farmer, the memories of my childhood's humble home. And already I +realize that the experiment cannot cost so much as it is worth. Already +I find in that day's quiet, an antidote and a solace for the feverish, +festering cares of the weeks which environ it. Already, my brook murmurs +a soothing even-song to my burning, throbbing brain; and my trees, +gently stirred by the fresh breezes, whisper to my spirit something of +their own quiet strength and patient trust in God. And thus do I faintly +realize, though but for a brief and flitting day, the serene joy which +shall irradiate the Farmer's vocation, when a fuller and truer education +shall have refined and chastened his animal cravings, and when Science +shall have endowed him with her treasures, redeeming Labor from +drudgery, while quadrupling its efficiency, and crowning with beauty and +plenty our bounteous, beneficent Earth. + + * * * * * + + +=_Theodore Parker_,= about =_1812-1860_=. (Manual, p. 531.) + +From "Lessons from the World of Nature," &c. + +=_168._= WINTER AND SPRING. + +In the hard, cold winter of our northern lands, how do we feel a longing +for the presence of life! Then we love to look on a pine or fir tree, +which seems the only living thing in the woods, surrounded by dead oaks, +birches, maples, looking like the gravestones of buried vegetation: +that seems warm and living then; and at Christmas, men bring it into +meetinghouses and parlors, and set it up, full of life, and laden with +kindly gifts for the little folk. Then even the unattractive crow seems +half sacred, through the winter bearing messages of promise from the +perished autumn to the advancing spring--this dark forerunner of the +tuneful tribes which are to come. We feel a longing for fresh, green +nature, and so in the shelter of our houses keep some little Aaron's +rod, budding alike with promise and memory; or in some hyacinth or +Dutchman's tulip we keep a prophecy of flowers, and start off some +little John to run before, and with his half-gospel tell of some great +Emmanuel, and signify to men that the kingdom of heavenly beauty is near +at hand. Now that forerunner disappears, for the desire of all nations +has truly come; the green grass is creeping everywhere, and it is +spangled with many flowers that came unasked.... + +What if there was a spring time of blossoming but once in a hundred +years! How would men look forward to it, and old men, who had beheld its +wonders, tell the story to their children, how once all the homely trees +became beautiful, and earth was covered with freshness and new growth! +How would young men hope to become old, that they might see so glad a +sight! And when beheld, the aged man would say, "Lord, now lettest thou +thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation." + + * * * * * + +From an "Installation Sermon," January 4th, 1846. + +=_169._= THE TRUE IDEA OF A CHRISTIAN CHURCH. + +The saints of olden time perished at the stake; they hung on gibbets; +they agonized upon the rack; they died under the steel of the tormentor. +It was the heroism of our fathers' day that swam the unknown seas; froze +in the woods; starved with want and cold; fought battles with the red +right hand. It is the sainthood and heroism of our day that toils for +the ignorant, the poor, the weak, the oppressed, the wicked. Yes, it is +our saints and heroes who fight fighting; who contend for the slave, and +his master too, for the drunkard, the criminal; yes, for the wicked or +the weak in all their forms.... But the saints and the heroes of this +day, who draw no sword, whose right hand is never bloody, who burn in no +fires of wood or sulphur, nor languish briefly on the hasty cross; the +saints and heroes who, in a worldly world, dare to be men; in an age of +conformity and selfishness, speak for Truth and Man, living for noble +aims, men who will swear to no lies howsoever popular; who will honor +no sins, though never so profitable, respectable, and ancient; men who +count Christ not their master, but teacher, friend, brother, and strive +like him to practice all they pray; to incarnate and make real the Word +of God, these men I honor far more than the saints of old.... Racks and +fagots soon waft the soul to God, stern messengers, but swift. A boy +could bear that passage,--the martyrdom of death. But the temptation of +a long life of neglect, and scorn, and obloquy, and shame, and want, and +desertion by false friends; to live blameless though blamed, cut off +from human sympathy, that is the martyrdom of to-day. I shed no tears +for such martyrs. I shout when I see one; I take courage and thank God +for the real saints, prophets and heroes of to-day.... Yea, though now +men would steal the rusty sword from underneath the bones of a saint or +hero long deceased, to smite off therewith the head of a new prophet, +that ancient hero's son; though they would gladly crush the heart out of +him with the tombstones they piled up for great men, dead and honored +now; yet in some future day, that mob penitent, baptized with a new +spirit, like drunken men returned to sanity once more, shall search +through all this land for marble white enough to build a monument to +that prophet whom their fathers slew; they shall seek through all the +world for gold of fineness fit to chronicle such names. I cannot wait; +but I will honor such men now, not adjourn the warning of their voice, +and the glory of their example, till another age! The church may cast +out such men; burn them with the torments of an age too refined in its +cruelty to use coarse fagots and the vulgar axe! It is no loss to these +men; but the ruin of the church. I say the Christian church of the +nineteenth century must honor such men, if it would do a church's work; +must take pains to make such men as these, or it is a dead church, with +no claim on us, except that we bury it. A true church will always be +the church of martyrs. The ancients commenced every great work with a +victim! We do not call it so; but the sacrifice is demanded, got ready, +and offered by unconscious priests long ere the enterprise succeeds. Did +not Christianity begin with a martyrdom? + + * * * * * + +From "Historic Americans." + +=_170._= CHARACTER OF FRANKLIN. + +His was the morality of a strong, experienced person, who had seen the +folly of wise men, the meanness of proud men, the baseness of honorable +men, and the littleness of great men, and made liberal allowances for +the failures of all men. If the final end to be reached were just, he +did not always inquire about the provisional means which led thither. He +knew that the right line is the shortest distance between two points, in +morals as in mathematics, but yet did not quarrel with such as attained +the point by a crooked line. Such is the habit of politicians, +diplomatists, statesmen, who look on all men as a commander looks on his +soldiers, and does not ask them to join the church or keep their hands +clean, but to stand to their guns and win the battle. + +Thus, in the legislature of Pennsylvania, Franklin found great +difficulty in carrying on the necessary measures for military defence, +because a majority of the Assembly were Quakers, who, though friendly +to the success of the revolution founded contrary to their principles, +refused to vote the supplies of war. So he caused them to vote +appropriations to purchase bread, flour, wheat, _or other grain_. The +Government said, "I shall take the money, for I understand very well +their meaning,--other grain is gunpowder." He afterwards moved the +purchase of a fire-engine, saying to his friend, "Nominate me on the +committee, and I will nominate you; we will buy a great gun, which is +certainly a fire engine; the Quakers can have no objection to that." + +Such was the course of policy that Franklin took, as I think, to excess; +but yet I believe that no statesman of that whole century did so much to +embody the eternal rules of right in the customs of the people, and to +make the constitution of the universe the common law of all mankind; and +I cannot bestow higher praise than that, on any man whose name I can +recall. He mitigated the ferocities of war. He built new hospitals, and +improved old ones. He first introduced this humane principle into the +Law of Nations, that in time of war, private property on land shall +be unmolested, and peaceful commerce continued, and captive soldiers +treated as well as the soldiers of the captors. Generous during his +life-time, his dead hand still gathers and distributes blessings to the +mechanics of Boston, and their children. True is it that + + "Him only pleasure leads and peace attends, + Whose means are pure and spotless as his ends." + +But it is a great thing in this stage of the world to find a man whose +_ends_ are pure and spotless. Let us thank him for that. + + * * * * * + +From "Historic Americans." + +=_171._= CHARACTER OF THOMAS JEFFERSON. + +Of all those who controlled the helm of affairs during the time of the +Revolution, and while the Constitution and the forms of our National and +State Institutions were carefully organized, there is none who has been +more generally popular, more commonly beloved, more usually believed to +be necessary to the Legislation and Administration of his country, than +Thomas Jefferson. It may not be said of him that of all those famous men +he could least have been spared; for in the rare and great qualities for +patiently and wisely conducting the vast affairs of State and Nation in +pressing emergencies, he seems to have been wanting. But his grand merit +was this--that while his powerful opponents favored a strong government, +and believed it necessary thereby to repress what they called the +lower classes, he, Jefferson, believed in Humanity; believed in a true +Democracy. He respected labor and education, and upheld the right to +education of all men. These were the Ideas in which he was far in +advance of all the considerable men, whether of his State or of his +Nation--ideas which he illustrated through long years of his life and +conduct. The great debt that the Nation owes to him is this--that he so +ably and consistently advocated these needful opinions, that he made +himself the head and the hand of the great party that carried +these ideas into power, that put an end to all possibility of +class-government, made naturalization easy, extended the suffrage and +applied it to judicial office, opened a still wider and better education +to all, and quietly inaugurated reforms, yet incomplete, of which we +have the benefit to this day, and which, but for him, we might not have +won against the party of Strong Government, except by a difficult and +painful Revolution. + + * * * * * + + +=_Wendell Phillips,[51] 1811-._= + +From "A Lecture delivered in December, 1861." + +=_172._= THE WAR FOR THE UNION. + +I would have government announce to the world that we understand the +evil which has troubled our peace for seventy years, thwarting the +natural tendency of our institutions, sending ruin along our wharves +and through our workshops every ten years, poisoning the national +conscience. We know well its character. But democracy, unlike other +governments, is strong enough to let evils work out their own +death--strong enough to face them when they reveal their proportions. It +was in this sublime consciousness of strength, not of weakness, that our +fathers submitted to the well-known evil of slavery, and tolerated it +until the viper we thought we could safely tread on, at the touch of +disappointment, starts up a fiend whose stature reaches the sky. But +our cheeks do not blanch. Democracy accepts the struggle. After this +forbearance of three generations, confident that she has yet power to +execute her will, she sends her proclamation, down to the Gulf--freedom +to every man beneath the stars, and death to every institution that +disturbs our peace, or threatens the future of the republic. + +[Footnote 51: A native of Massachusetts: a vigorous thinker and speaker +on the great moral and political topics of the day, and the most +eloquent of the Anti-Slavery leaders.] + + * * * * * + +From His "Speeches, Lectures." &c. + +=_173._= CHARACTER OF TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE. + +Above the lust of gold, pure in private life, generous in the use of his +power, it was against such a man that Napoleon sent his army, giving to +General Leclerc,--the husband of his beautiful sister Pauline,--thirty +thousand of his best troops, with orders to re-introduce slavery. Among +these soldiers came all of Toussaint's old mulatto rivals and foes. + + * * * * * + +Mounting his horse, and riding to the eastern end of the island, Samana, +he looked out on a sight such as no native had ever seen before. Sixty +ships of the line, crowded by the best soldiers of Europe, rounded the +point. They were soldiers who had never yet met an equal, whose tread, +like Caesar's, had shaken Europe,--soldiers who had scaled the Pyramids, +and planted the French banners on the walls of Rome. He looked a moment, +counted the flotilla, let the reins fall on the neck of his horse, and, +turning to Christophe, exclaimed: "All France is come to Hayti; they can +only come to make us slaves; and we are lost." He then recognized the +only mistake of his life,--his confidence in Bonaparte, which had led +him to disband his army. Returning to the hills, he issued the only +proclamation which bears his name and breathes vengeance: "My children, +France comes to make us slaves. God gave us liberty; France has no right +to take it away. Burn the cities, destroy the harvests, tear up the +roads with cannon, poison the wells, show the white man the hell he +comes to make"; and he was obeyed. When the great William of Orange saw +Louis XIV. cover Holland with troops, he said, "Break down the dykes, +give Holland back to ocean"; and Europe said, "Sublime!" When Alexander +saw the armies of France descend upon Russia, he said: "Burn Moscow, +starve back the invaders"; and Europe said, "Sublime!" This black saw +all Europe marshalled to crush him, and gave to his people the same +heroic example of defiance. + + * * * * * + + +=_Thomas Starr King, 1824-1864._= (Manual, p. 532.) + +From "Patriotism and other Papers." + +=_174._= GREAT PRINCIPLES AND SMALL DUTIES. + +If we go to Nature for our morals, we shall learn the necessity of +perfection in the smallest act. Infinite skill is not exhausted nor +concentrated in the structure of a firmament, in drawing the orbit of a +planet, in laying the strata of the earth, in rearing the mountain cone. +The care for the bursting flower is as wise as the forces displayed in +the rolling star; the smallest leaf that falls and dies unnoticed in the +forest is wrought with a beauty as exquisite as the skill displayed in +the sturdy oak. All the wisdom of Nature is compressed and revealed +in the sting of the bee; and the pride of human art is mocked by the +subtile mechanism and cunning structure of a fly's foot and wing. +However minute the task, it reveals the polish of perfection. Omnipotent +skill is stamped on the infinitely small, as on the infinitely great. +It is a moral stenography like this which we need in daily life.... +The lesson of Christianity, then, urged and enforced by Nature, is +the inestimable worth of common duties, as manifesting the greatest +principles; it bids us attain perfection, not by striving to do dazzling +deeds, but by making our experience divine; it tells us that the +Christian hero will ennoble the humblest field of labor; that nothing is +mean which can be performed as duty; but that religious virtue, like the +touch of Midas, converts the humblest call of conscience into spiritual +gold. + +The Greek philosopher, Plato, has left an instructive and beautiful +poetic picture of the judgment of souls, when they had been collected +from the regions of temporary bliss and pain, and suffered once more to +return to the duties and pleasures of earthly life. The spirits advanced +by lot, to make their choice of the condition and form under which they +should re-enter the world. The dazzling and showy fortunes, the lives of +kings and warriors and statesmen were soon exhausted; and the spirit of +Ulysses, who had been the wisest prince among all the Greeks, came last +to choose. He advanced with sorrow, fearing that his favorite condition +had been selected by some more fortunate soul who had gone before him. +But, to his surprise and pleasure, Ulysses found that the only life +which had not been chosen was the lot of an obscure and private man, +with its humble cares and quiet joys; the lot which he, the wisest, +would have selected, had his turn come first; the life for which he had +longed, since he had felt the folly and meanness of station, wealth, and +power.... + + + + +CHAPTER III. + + + +GENERAL AND POLITE LITERATURE. + + +=_William Wirt, 1772-1834._= (Manual, pp. 487, 490.) + +From the "Life of Patrick Henry." + +=_175._= HENRY'S EXAMPLE NO ARGUMENT FOR INDOLENCE. + +I cannot learn that he gave in his youth any evidence of that precocity +which sometimes distinguishes uncommon genius. His companions recollect +no instance of premature wit, no striking sentiment, no flash of fancy, +no remarkable beauty or strength of expression, and no indication +however slight, either of that impassioned love of liberty, or of that +adventurous daring and intrepidity, which marked so strongly his future +character. So far was he indeed from exhibiting any one prognostic of +this greatness, that every omen foretold a life at best, of mediocrity, +if not of insignificance. His person is represented as having been +coarse, his manners uncommonly awkward, his dress slovenly, his +conversation very plain, his aversion to study invincible, and his +faculties almost entirely benumbed by indolence. No persuasion could +bring him either to read or to work. On the contrary, he ran wild in the +forest like one of the _Aborigines_ of the country, and divided his life +between the dissipation and uproar of the chase, and the languor of +inaction. + +His propensity to observe and comment upon the human character, was, +so far as I can learn, the only circumstance which distinguished him +advantageously from his youthful companions. This propensity seems to +have been born with him, and to have exerted itself instinctively, the +moment that a new subject was presented to his view. Its action was +incessant, and it became at length almost the only intellectual exercise +in which he seemed to take delight. To this cause, may be traced that +consummate knowledge of the human heart which he finally attained, and +which enabled him when he came upon the public stage, to touch the +springs of passion with a master hand, and to control the resolutions +and decisions of his hearers with a power almost more than mortal. + +From what has been already stated, it will be seen how little education +had to do with the formation of this great man's mind. He was indeed a +mere child of nature, and nature seems to have been too proud and too +jealous of her work, to permit it to be touched by the hand of art. She +gave him Shakespeare's genius, and bade him, like Shakespeare, to depend +on that alone. Let not the youthful reader, however, deduce from the +example of Mr. Henry, an argument in favor of indolence, and the +contempt of study. Let him remember that the powers which surmounted the +disadvantage of those early habits, were such as very rarely appear upon +this earth. Let him remember, too, how long the genius even of Mr. Henry +was kept down, and hidden from the public view, by the sorcery of those +pernicious habits; through what years of poverty and wretchedness they +doomed him to struggle; and let him remember, that at length, when in +the zenith of his glory. Mr. Henry himself, had frequent occasions to +deplore the consequences of his early neglect of literature, and to +bewail the ghosts of his departed hours. + + * * * * * + +From "Eulogium on Adams and Jefferson." + +=_176._= JEFFERSON'S SEAT AT MONTICELLO. + +Approaching the house on the east, the visitor instinctively paused, to +cast around one thrilling glance at this magnificent panorama, and then +passed to the vestibule, where, if he had not been previously informed, +he would immediately perceive that he was entering the house of no +common man. In the spacious and lofty hall which opens before him, he +marks no tawdry and unmeaning ornaments, but before, on the right, on +the left, all around, the eye is struck and gratified with objects of +science and taste, so classed and arranged as to produce their finest +effect. On one side, specimens of sculpture set out in such order as to +exhibit ... the historical progress of that art, from the first rude +attempts of the aborigines of our country up to that exquisite and +finished bust of the great patriot himself, from the master-hand +of Ceracchi. On the other side, the visitor sees displayed a vast +collection of specimens of Indian art--their paintings, weapons, +ornaments, and manufactures; on another, an array of the fossil +productions of our country, mineral and animal, the polished remains of +those colossal monsters that once trod our forests, and are no more; and +a variegated display of the branching honors of those "monarchs of the +waste," that still people the wilds of the American continent. + +From this hall he was ushered into a noble saloon, from which the +glorious landscape of the west again bursts upon his view, and which +within is hung thick around with the finest productions of the +pencil--historical paintings of the most striking subjects from all +countries and all ages, the portraits of distinguished men and patriots +both of Europe and America, and medallions and engravings in endless +profusion. + +While the visitor was yet lost in the contemplation of these treasures +of the arts and sciences, he was startled by the approach of a strong +and sprightly step; and, turning with instinctive reverence to the door +of entrance, he was met by the tall, and animated, and stately figure +of the patriot himself, his countenance beaming with intelligence and +benignity, and his outstretched hand, with its strong and cordial +pressure, confirming the courteous welcome of his lips; and then came +that charm of manner and conversation that passes all description--so +cheerful, so unassuming, so free, and easy, and frank, and kind, and +gay, that even the young, and overawed, and embarrassed visitor at once +forgot his fears, and felt himself by the side of an old and familiar +friend. + + * * * * * + + +=_Timothy Flint, 1780-1840._= (Manual, p. 490.) + +From "Recollections of the Mississippi Valley." + +=_177._= THE WESTERN BOATMAN. + +Three is no wonder that the way of life which the boatman, lead, in turn +extremely indolent and extremely laborious, for days together requiring +little or no effort, and attended with no danger, and then on a sudden +laborious and hazardous beyond the Atlantic navigation, generally +plentiful as it regards food, and always so as it regards whiskey, +should always have seductions that prove irresistible to the young +people that live near the banks of the river. The boats float by their +dwellings on beautiful spring mornings, when the verdant forest, the +mild and delicious temperature of the air, the delightful azure of the +sky of this country, the fine bottom on the one hand, and the romantic +bluff on the other, the broad, and smooth stream rolling calmly down +through the forest, and floating the boat gently forward,--all these +circumstances harmonize in the excited youthful imagination. The boatmen +are dancing to the violin on the deck of their boat. They scatter their +wit among the girls on the shore, who come down to the water's edge to +see the pageant pass. The boat glides on until it disappears behind a +point of wood; at this moment, perhaps, the bugle, with which all the +boats are provided, strikes up its note in the distance, over the water. +These scenes, and these notes, echoing from the bluffs of the beautiful +Ohio, have a charm for the imagination, which, although I have heard a +thousand times repeated, and at all hours, and in all positions, is even +to me always new, and always delightful. No wonder that to the young, +who are reared in these remote regions, with that restless curiosity +which is fostered by solitude and silence, who witness scenes like these +so frequently,--no wonder that the severe and unremitting labors of +agriculture, performed directly in the view of such scenes, should +become tasteless and irksome. + + * * * * * + + +=_Washington Irving, 1783-1839._= (Manual, pp. 478, 498.) + +From "Knickerbocker's History of New York." + +=_178._= FROM "TITLE AND TABLE OF CONTENTS." + +A history of New York, from the beginning of the world to the end of the +Dutch dynasty,... being the only authentic history of the times that +ever hath been or ever will be published, by Diedrick Knickerbocker.... +Book I., chap. i. Description of the World.... Book II., chap. i.... +Also of Master Hendrick Hudson, his discovery of a strange country.... +Chap. vii. How the people of Pavonia migrated from Communipaw to the +Island of Manhattan.... Chap. ix. How the city of New Amsterdam waxed +great under the protection of St. Nicholas, and the absence of laws and +statutes. Book III., chap. iii. How the town of New Amsterdam arose out +of mud, and came to be marvellously polished and polite, together with +a picture of the manners of our great-great-grandfathers.... Book IV., +chap. vi. Projects of William the Testy for increasing the currency; he +is outwitted by the Yankees. The great Oyster War.... Book V., chap. +viii. How the Yankee crusade against the New Netherlands was baffled by +the sudden outbreak of witchcraft among the people of the East ... Book +VII., chap. ii. How Peter Stuyvesant labored to civilize the community. +How he was a great promoter of holydays. How he instituted kissing on +New Year's Day.... Chap. iii. How troubles thicken on the province. How +it is threatened by the Helderbergers,--the Merrylanders, and the Giants +of the Susquehanna. + + * * * * * + +=_179._= THE ARMY AT NEW AMSTERDAM. + +First of all came the Van Bummels, who inhabit the pleasant borders +of the Bronx. These were short, fat men, wearing exceeding large +trunk-breeches, and are renowned for feats of the trencher; they were +the first inventors of suppawn, or mush and milk.... Lastly came the +Knickerbockers, of the great town of Schahticoke, where the folks lay +stones upon the houses in windy weather, lest they should be blown away. +These derive their name, as some say, from _Knicker_, to shake, and +_Beker_, a goblet, indicating thereby that they were sturdy tosspots of +yore; but in truth, it was derived from _Knicker_, to nod, and _Bocken_, +books, plainly meaning that they were great nodders or dozers over +books; from them did descend the writer of this History. + + * * * * * + +From the "Tales of a Traveller." + +=_180._= A MOTHER'S MEMORY. + +A part of the church-yard is shaded by large trees. Under one of them +my mother lay buried. You have no doubt thought me a light, heartless +being. I thought myself so; but there are moments of adversity which let +us into some feelings of our nature to which we might otherwise remain +perpetual strangers. + +I sought my mother's grave: the weeds were already matted over it, and +the tombstone was half hid among nettles. I cleared them away, and they +stung my hands; but I was heedless of the pain, for my heart ached too +severely. I sat down on the grave, and read, over and over again, the +epitaph on the stone. + +It was simple,--but it was true. I had written it myself, I had tried +to write a poetical epitaph, but in vain; my feelings refused to utter +themselves in rhyme. My heart had gradually been filling during my +lonely wanderings; it was now charged to the brim, and overflowed, I +sunk upon the grave, and buried my face in the tall grass, and wept like +a child. Yes, I wept in manhood upon the grave, as I had in infancy upon +the bosom, of my mother. Alas! how little do we appreciate a mother's +tenderness while living! how heedless are we in youth of all her +anxieties and kindness! But when she is dead and gone; when the cares +and coldness of the world come withering to our hearts; when we find how +hard it is to find true sympathy;--how few love us for ourselves; how +few will befriend us in our misfortunes--then it is that we think of +the mother we have lost. It is true I had always loved my mother, even +in my most heedless days; but I felt how inconsiderate and ineffectual +had been my love. My heart melted as I retraced the days of infancy, +when I was led by a mother's hand, and rocked to sleep in a mother's +arms, and was without care or sorrow. "O my mother!" exclaimed I, +burying my face again in the grass of the grave, "O that I were once +more by your side; sleeping never to wake again on the cares and +troubles of this world." + +I am not naturally of a morbid temperament, and the violence of my +emotion gradually exhausted itself. It was a hearty, honest, natural +discharge of grief which had been slowly accumulating, and gave me +wonderful relief. I rose from the grave as if I had been offering up a +sacrifice, and I felt as if that sacrifice had been accepted. + +I sat down again on the grass, and plucked one by one the weeds from her +grave: the tears trickled more slowly down my cheeks, and ceased to be +bitter. It was a comfort to think that she had died before sorrow +and poverty came upon her child, and all his great expectations were +blasted. + +I leaned my cheek upon my hand, and looked upon the landscape. Its quiet +beauty soothed me. The whistle of a peasant from an adjoining field came +cheerily to my ear. I seemed to respire hope and comfort with the free +air that whispered through the leaves, and played lightly with my hair, +and dried the tears upon my cheek. A lark, rising from the field before +me, and leaving as it were a stream of song behind him as he rose, +lifted my fancy with him. He hovered in the air just above the place +where the towers of Warwick castle marked the horizon, and seemed as +if fluttering with delight at his own melody. "Surely," thought I, "if +there were such a thing as a transmigration of souls, this might be +taken for some poet let loose from earth, but still revelling in song, +and carolling about fair fields and lordly towers." + + * * * * * + +From "The Life and Voyages of Columbus." + +=_181._= COLUMBUS A PRISONER. + +The arrival of Columbus at Cadiz, a prisoner, and in chains, produced +almost as great a sensation as his triumphant return from his first +voyage. It was one of those striking and obvious facts, which speak to +the feelings of the multitude, and preclude the necessity of reflection. +No one stopped to inquire into the case. It was sufficient to be +told that Columbus was brought home in irons from the world he had +discovered. A general burst of indignation arose in Cadiz, and its +neighboring city, Seville, which was immediately echoed throughout all +Spain.... However Ferdinand might have secretly felt disposed towards +Columbus, the momentary tide of public feeling was not to be resisted. +He joined with his generous queen in her reprobation of the treatment of +the admiral, and both sovereigns hastened to give evidence to the world, +that his imprisonment had been without their authority, and contrary to +their wishes. + + * * * * * + +=_182._= HIS ARRIVAL AT COURT. + +He appeared at court in Granada, on the 17th of December, not as a man +ruined and disgraced, but richly dressed, and attended by an honorable +retinue. He was received by their majesties with unqualified favor and +distinction. When the queen beheld this venerable man approach, and +thought on all that he had deserved, and all that he had suffered, +she was moved to tears. Columbus had borne up firmly against the rude +conflicts of the world; he had endured with lofty scorn the injuries and +insults of ignoble men; but he possessed strong and quick sensibility. +When he found himself thus kindly received by his sovereigns, and beheld +tears in the benign eyes of Isabella, his long-suppressed feelings burst +forth. He threw himself upon his knees, and for some time could not +utter a word for the violence of his tears and sobbings. + + * * * * * + +From Wolfert's Roost. + +=_183._= "A TIME OF UNEXAMPLED PROSPERITY." + +Every now and then the world is visited by one of these delusive +seasons, when "the credit system," as it is called, expands to full +luxuriance; every body trusts every body; a bad debt is a thing unheard +of; the broad way to certain and sudden wealth lies plain and open, and +men are tempted to dash forward boldly, from the facility of borrowing. + +Promissory notes, interchanged between scheming individuals, are +liberally discounted at the banks, which become so many mints to coin +words into cash; and as the supply of words is inexhaustible, it may +readily be supposed what a vast amount of promissory capital is soon +in circulation. Every one now talks in thousands; nothing is heard +but gigantic operations in trade, great purchases and sales of real +property, and immense sums made at every transfer. All, to be sure, +as yet exists in promise; but the believer in promises calculates the +aggregate as solid capital, and falls back in amazement at the amount of +public wealth, "the unexampled state of public prosperity!" + +Now is the time for speculative and dreaming or designing men. They +relate their dreams and projects to the ignorant and credulous, dazzle +them with golden visions, and set them maddening after shadows. The +example of one stimulates another; speculation rises on speculation; +bubble rises on bubble; every one helps with his breath to swell the +windy superstructure, and admires and wonders at the magnitude of the +inflation he has contributed to produce. + +Speculation is the romance of trade, and casts contempt upon all its +sober realities. It renders the stock-jobber a magician, and the +exchange a region of enchantment. It elevates the merchant into a kind +of Knight-errant, or rather a commercial Quixote. The slow but sure +gains of snug percentage become despicable in his eyes: no "operation" +is thought worthy of attention, that does not double or treble the +investment. No business is worth following, that does not promise an +immediate fortune. As he sits musing over his ledger, with pen behind +his ear, he is like La Mancha's hero in his study, dreaming over his +books of chivalry. His dusty counting-house fades before his eyes, or +changes into a Spanish mine; he gropes after diamonds, or dives after +pearls. The subterranean garden of Aladdin is nothing to the realms of +wealth that break upon his imagination. + +When a man of business, therefore, hears on every side rumors of +fortunes suddenly acquired; when he finds banks liberal, and brokers +busy; when he sees adventurers flush of paper capital, and full of +scheme and enterprise; when he perceives a greater disposition to buy +than to sell; when trade overflows its accustomed channels, and deluges +the country; when he hears of new regions of commercial adventure, of +distant marts and distant mines, swallowing merchandise and disgorging +gold; when he finds joint stock companies of all kinds forming; +railroads, canals, and locomotive engines, springing up on every side; +when idlers suddenly become men of business, and dash into the game +of commerce as they would into the hazards of the faro table; when he +beholds the streets glittering with new equipages, palaces conjured up +by the magic of speculation; tradesmen flushed with sudden success, and +vying with each other in ostentatious expense; in a word, when he hears +the whole community joining in the theme of "unexampled prosperity." +let him look upon the whole as a "weather breeder," and prepare for the +impending storm. + + * * * * * + +From The Life of Washington. + +=_184._= DEATH AND BURIAL OF BRADDOCK. + +The proud spirit of Braddock was broken by his defeat. He remained +silent the first evening after the battle, only ejaculating at night, +"Who would have thought it!" He was equally silent the following day; +yet hope still seemed to linger in his breast, from another ejaculation: +"We shall better know how to deal with them another time!" + +He was grateful for the attentions paid to him by Captain Stewart and +Washington, and more than once, it is said, expressed his admiration of +the gallantry displayed by the Virginians in the action. It is said, +moreover, that in his last moments, he apologized to Washington for the +petulance with which he had rejected his advice, and bequeathed to him +his favorite charger and his faithful servant, Bishop, who had helped to +convey him from the field. + +Some of these facts, it is true, rest on tradition, yet we are willing +to believe them, as they impart a gleam of just and generous feeling +to his closing scene. He died on the night of the 13th, at the Great +Meadows, the place of Washington's discomfiture in the preceding year. +His obsequies were performed before break of day. The chaplain having +been wounded, Washington read the funeral service. All was done in +sadness, and without parade, so as not to attract the attention of +lurking savages, who might discover and outrage his grave. It is +doubtful even whether a volley was fired over it, that last military +honor which he had recently paid to the remains of an Indian warrior. +The place of his sepulture, however, is still known, and pointed out. + +Reproach spared him not, even when in his grave. The failure of the +expedition was attributed both in England and America, to his obstinacy, +his technical pedantry, and his military conceit. He had been +continually warned to be on his guard against ambush and surprise, but +without avail. Had he taken the advice urged on him by Washington and +others, to employ scouting parties of Indians and rangers, he would +never have been so signally surprised and defeated. + +Still his dauntless conduct on the field of battle shows him to have +been a man of fearless spirit; and he was universally allowed to be an +accomplished disciplinarian. His melancholy end, too, disarms censure +of its asperity. Whatever may have been his faults and errors, he in a +manner expiated them by the hardest lot that can befall a brave soldier, +ambitious of renown--an unhonored grave in a strange land: a memory +clouded by misfortune, and a name for ever coupled with defeat. + + * * * * * + +=_185._= BARON STEUBEN IN THE REVOLUTIONARY ARMY. + +The committee having made their report, the baron's proffered services +were accepted with a vote of thanks for his disinterestedness, and he +was ordered to join the army of Valley Forge. That army, in its ragged +condition and squalid quarters, presented a sorry aspect to a strict +disciplinarian from Germany, accustomed to the order and appointments +of European camps; and the baron often declared, that under such +circumstances no army in Europe could be kept together for a single +month. The liberal mind of Steuben, however, made every allowance; and +Washington soon found in him a consummate soldier, free from pedantry or +pretension. + + * * * * * + +For a time, there was nothing but drills throughout the camp, then +gradually came evolutions of every kind. The officers were schooled as +well as the men. The troops, says a person who was present in the camp, +were paraded in a single line with shouldered arms; every officer in his +place. The baron passed in front, then took the musket of each soldier +in hand, to see whether it was clean and well polished, and examined +whether the men's accoutrements were in good order. + +He was sadly worried for a time with the militia; especially when any +manoeuvre was to be performed. The men blundered in their exercise; the +baron blundered in his English; his French and German were of no avail; +he lost his temper, which was rather warm; swore in all three languages +at once, which made the matter worse, and at length called his aide +to his assistance, to help him curse the blockheads as it was +pretended--but no doubt to explain the manoeuvre. + +Still the grand marshal of the court of Hohenzollern mingled with the +veteran soldier of Frederick, and tempered his occasional bursts of +impatience; and he had a kind generous heart, that soon made him a +favorite with the men. His discipline extended to their comforts. He +inquired into their treatment by the officers. He examined into the +doctor's reports; visited the sick; and saw that they were well lodged +and attended. + +He was an example, too, of the regularity and system he exacted. One of +the most alert and indefatigable men in the camp; up at day-break if not +before, whenever there were to be any important manoeuvres, he took his +cup of coffee and smoked his pipe while his servant dressed his hair, +and by sunrise he was in the saddle, equipped at all points, with the +star of his order of knighthood glittering on his breast, and was off to +the parade, alone, if his suite were not ready to attend him. + +The strong good sense of the baron was evinced in the manner in which he +adapted his tactics to the nature of the army and the situation of the +country, instead of adhering with bigotry to the systems of Europe. His +instructions were appreciated by all. The officers received them gladly +and conformed to them. The men soon became active and adroit. The army +gradually acquired a proper organization, and began to operate, like +a great machine; and Washington found in the baron an intelligent, +disinterested, truthful coadjutor, well worthy of the badge he wore of +the Order of _Fidelity_. + + * * * * * + + +=_Richard Henry Wilde, 1789-1847._= (Manual, pp. 501, 521.) + +From "Conjectures concerning Torquato Tasso." + +=_186._= INTEREST OF TASSO'S LIFE. + +There is scarcely any poet whose life excites a more profound and +melancholy interest than that of Torquato Tasso. + +His short and brilliant career of glory captivates the imagination, +while the heart is deeply affected by his subsequent misfortunes. +Greater fame and greater misery have seldom been the lot of man, and a +few brief years sufficed for each extreme. + +An exile even in his boyhood, the proscription and confiscation suffered +by his father deprived him of home and patrimony. Honor and love, and +the favor of princes, and enthusiastic praise, dazzled his youth. Envy, +malice, and treachery, tedious imprisonment and imputed madness, insult, +poverty, and persecution, clouded his manhood. The evening of his days +was saddened by a troubled spirit, want, sickness, bitter memories, and +deluded hopes; and when at length a transient gleam of sunshine fell +upon his prospects, death substituted the immortal for the laurel crown. + +Mystery adds its fascination to his story. The causes of his +imprisonment are hidden in obscurity; it is still disputed whether he +was insane or not. + +Few points of literary history, therefore, are more interesting, or more +obscure, than the love, the madness, and the imprisonment of Tasso. + + * * * * * + + +=_George Ticknor, 1791-1871._= (Manual, p. 502.) + +From "The History of Spanish Literature." + +=_187._= DESIGN OF CERVANTES IN WRITING DON QUIXOTE. + +His purpose in writing the Don Quixote has sometimes been enlarged by +the ingenuity of a refined criticism, until it has been made to embrace +the whole of the endless contrast between the poetical and the prosaic +in our natures,--between heroism and generosity on one side, as if they +were mere illusions, and a cold selfishness on the other, as if it were +the truth and reality of life. But this is a metaphysical conclusion +drawn from views of the work at once imperfect and exaggerated; a +conclusion contrary to the spirit of the age, which was not given to a +satire so philosophical and generalizing, and contrary to the character +of Cervantes himself, as we follow it from the time when he first became +a soldier, through all his trials in Algiers, and down to the moment +when his warm and trusting heart dictated the Dedication of "Persiles +and Sigismunda" to the Count de Lemos. His whole spirit, indeed, seems +rather to have been filled with a cheerful confidence in human virtue, +and his whole bearing in life seems to have been a contradiction to that +discouraging and saddening scorn for whatever is elevated and generous, +which such an interpretation of the Don Quixote necessarily implies. + + * * * * * + +At the very beginning of the work, he announces it to be his sole +purpose to break down the vogue and authority of books of chivalry, and +at the end of the whole he declares anew in his own person, that "he +had no other desire than to render abhorred of men the false and absurd +stories contained in books of chivalry;" exulting in his success as an +achievement of no small moment. And such, in fact, it was, for we have +abundant proof that the fanaticism for these romances was so great in +Spain, during the sixteenth century, as to have become matter of alarm +to the more judicious.... + +To destroy a passion that had struck its roots so deeply in the +character of all classes of men, to break up the only reading which +at that time could be considered widely popular and fashionable, was +certainly a bold undertaking, and one that marks anything rather than +a scornful or broken spirit, or a want of faith in what is most to +be valued in our common nature. The great wonder is, that Cervantes +succeeded. But that he did there is no question. No book of chivalry was +written after the appearance of Don Quixote, in 1605; and from the same +date, even those already enjoying the greatest favor ceased, with one or +two unimportant exceptions, to be reprinted; so that, from that time to +the present, they have been constantly disappearing, until they are now +among the rarest of literary curiosities--a solitary instance of the +power of genius to destroy, by a single well-timed blow, an entire +department, and that, too, a flourishing and favored one, in the +literature of a great and proud nation. + +The general plan Cervantes adopted to accomplish this object, without, +perhaps, foreseeing its whole course, and still less all its results, +was simple as well as original. In 1605 he published the first part of +Don Quixote, in which a country gentleman of La Mancha, full of genuine +Castilian honor and enthusiasm, gentle and dignified in his character, +trusted by his friends, and loved by his dependants--is represented as +so completely crazed by long reading the most famous books of chivalry, +that he believes them to be true, and feels himself called on to become +the impossible knight-errant they describe,--nay, actually goes forth, +into the world to defend, the oppressed and avenge the injured, like the +heroes of his romances. + + * * * * * + + +=_James Hall, 1793-1868._= (Manual, p. 510.) + +From "Statistics of the West." + +=_188._= DESCRIPTION OF A PRAIRIE. + +Imagine a stream of a mile in width, whose waters are as transparent as +those of the mountain spring, flowing over beds of rock or gravel. Fancy +the prairie commencing at the water's edge--a natural meadow covered +with grass and flowers, rising, with a gentle slope, for miles, so that +in the vast panorama thousands of acres are exposed to the eye. The +prospect is bounded by a range of low hills, which sometimes approach +the river, and again recede, and whose summits, which are seen gently +waving along the horizon, form the level of the adjacent country.... The +timber is scattered in groves and strips, the whole country being one +vast illimitable prairie, ornamented by small collections of trees.... +But more often we see the single tree, without a companion near, or +the little clump, composed of a few dozen oaks or elms; and not +unfrequently, hundreds of acres embellished with a kind of open +woodland, and exhibiting the appearance of a splendid park, decorated +with skill and care by the hand of taste. Here we behold the beautiful +lawn enriched with flowers, and studded with trees, which are so +dispersed about as not to intercept the prospect, standing singly, so as +not to shade the ground, and occasionally collected in clusters, while +now and then the shade deepens into the gloom of the forest, or opens +into long vistas and spacious plains, destitute of tree or shrub. + +When the eye roves off from the green plain, to the groves, or points of +timber, these also are found ... robed in the most attractive hues. +The rich undergrowth is in full bloom. The red-bud, the dog-wood, the +crab-apple, the wild plum, the cherry, the wild rose, are abundant in +all the rich lands; and the grape-vine, though its blossom is unseen, +fills the air with fragrance. The variety of the wild fruit and +flowering shrubs is so great, and such the profusion of the blossoms +with which they are bowed down, that the eye is regaled almost to +satiety. + +The gayety of the prairie, its embellishments, and the absence of the +gloom and savage wildness of the forest, all contribute to dispel the +feeling of lonesomeness which usually creeps over the mind of the +solitary traveler in the wilderness. Though he may not see a house nor +a human being, and is conscious that he is far from the habitations of +men, he can scarcely divest himself of the idea that he is traveling +through scenes embellished by the hand of art. The flowers so fragile, +so delicate, and so ornamental, seem to have been tastefully disposed +to adorn the scene. The groves and clumps of trees appear to have been +scattered over the lawn to beautify the landscape; and it is not easy to +avoid that illusion of the fancy which persuades the beholder, that such +scenery has been created to gratify the refined taste of civilized man. + + * * * * * + + +=_Henry R. Schoolcraft, 1793-1864._= (Manual, p. 504.) + +From "Oneota." + +=_189._= THE CHIPPEWA INDIAN. + +Of all the existing branches of the Algonquin stock in America, this +extensive and populous tribe appears to have the strongest claims to +intellectual distinction, on the score of their traditions, so far at +least, as the present state of our inquiries extends. They possess +in their curious fictitious legends and lodge-tales, a varied and +exhaustless fund of tradition, which is repeated from generation to +generation. These legends hold, among the wild men of the north, the +relative rank of story-books; and are intended both to amuse and +instruct. This people possess also the art of picture writing in a +degree which denotes that they have been, either more careful, or more +fortunate, in the preservation of this very ancient art of the +human race. Warriors, and the bravest of warriors, they are yet an +intellectual people. + +... They believe that the great Spirit created material matter, and that +He made the earth and heavens, by the power of His will.... He made one +great and master-spirit of evil, to whom He also gave assimilated and +subordinate evil spirits having something of his own nature, to execute +his will. Two antagonist powers, they believe, were thus placed in the +world, who are continually striving for the mastery, and who have power +to affect the lives and fortunes of men. This constitutes the +ground-work of their religion, sacrifices, and worship. + +They believe that animals were created before men, and that they +originally had rule on the earth. By the power of necromancy, some of +these animals were transformed to men, who, as soon as they assumed this +new form, began to hunt the animals, and make war against them. It is +expected that these animals will resume their human shapes, in a future +state, and hence their hunters feign some clumsy excuses for their +present policy of killing them. They believe that all animals, and +birds, and reptiles, and even insects, possess reasoning faculties, +and have souls. It is in these opinions, that we detect the ancient, +doctrine of transmigration. + +One of the most curious opinions of this people is their belief in the +mysterious and sacred character of fire. They obtain sacred fire, for +all national and ecclesiastical purposes, from the flint. Their national +pipes are lighted with this fire. It is symbolical of purity. Their +notions of the boundary between life and death, which is also +symbolically the limit of the material verge between this and a future +state, are revealed in connection with the exhibition of flames of fire. +They also make sacrifices by fire of some part of the first fruits of +the chase. These traits are to be viewed, perhaps, in relation to their +ancient worship of the sun, above noticed, of which the traditions and +belief are still generally preserved. The existence of the numerous +classes of jossakeeds, or mutterers (the word is from the utterance of +sounds low on the earth), is a trait that will remind the reader of a +similar class of men in early ages in the eastern hemisphere. These +persons constitute, indeed, the Magi of our western forests. + + * * * * * + + +=_Edward Everett, 1794-1865._= (Manual, pp. 487, 531.) + +From "Orations and Speeches." + +=_190._= ASTRONOMY, FOR ALL TIME. + +There is much by day to engage the attention of the observatory; the +sun, his apparent motions, his dimensions, the spots on his disk (to +us the faint indications of movements of unimagined grandeur in his +luminous atmosphere), a solar eclipse, a transit of the interior +planets, the mysteries of the spectrum--all phenomena of vast importance +and interest. But night is the astronomer's accepted time: he goes to +his delightful labors when the busy world goes to its rest. A dark pall +spreads over the resorts of active life; terrestrial objects, hill and +valley, and rock and stream, and the abodes of men, disappear; but the +curtain is drawn up which concealed the heavenly hosts. There they shine +and there they move, as they moved and shone to the eyes of Newton and +Galileo, of Kepler and Copernicus, of Ptolemy and Hipparchus; yea, as +they moved and shone when the morning stars sang together, and all the +sons of God shouted for joy. All has changed on earth; but the glorious +heavens remain unchanged. The plough has passed over the remains of +mighty cities, the homes of powerful nations are desolate, the languages +they spoke are forgotten; but the stars that shone for them are shining +for us; the same eclipses run their steady cycle; the same equinoxes +call out the flowers of spring, and send the husbandman to the harvest; +the sun pauses at either tropic, as he did when his course began; and +sun and moon, and planet and satellite, and star, and constellation, and +galaxy, still bear witness to the power, the wisdom, and the love of Him +who placed them in the heavens, and upholds them there. + + * * * * * + +=_191._= DESCRIPTION OF THE SUNRISE. + +Much, however, as we are indebted to our observatories for elevating our +conceptions of the heavenly bodies, they present even to the unaided +sight, scenes of glory which, words are too feeble to describe. I had +occasion, a few weeks since, to take the early train from Providence +to Boston; and for this purpose rose at two o'clock in the morning. +Everything around was wrapt in darkness and hushed in silence, broken +only by what seemed at that hour the unearthly clank and rush of the +train. It was a mild, serene, midsummer's night,--the sky was without a +cloud,--the winds were whist. The moon, then in the last quarter, had +just risen, and the stars shone with a spectral lustre, but little +affected by her presence. Jupiter, two hours high, was the herald of the +day; the Pleiades, just above the horizon, shed their sweet influence +in the east; Lyra sparkled near the zenith; Andromeda veiled her +newly-discovered glories from the naked eye, in the south; the steady +pointers, far beneath the pole, looked meekly up from the depths of the +north, to their sovereign. + +Such was the glorious spectacle as I entered the train. As we proceeded, +the timid approach of twilight became more perceptible; the intense blue +of the sky began to soften; the smaller stars, like little children, +went first to rest; the sister beams of the Pleiades soon melted +together; but the bright constellations of the west and north remained +unchanged. Steadily the wondrous transfiguration went on. Hands of +angels, hidden from mortal eyes, shifted the scenery of the heavens; the +glories of night dissolved into the glories of the dawn. The blue sky +now turned more softly gray; the great watch-stars shut up their holy +eyes; the east began to kindle. Faint streaks of purple soon blushed +along the sky; the whole celestial concave was filled with the inflowing +tides of the morning light, which came pouring down from above in one +great ocean of radiance; till at length, as we reached the Blue Hills, a +flash of purple fire blazed out from above the horizon, and turned the +dewy tear-drops of flower and leaf, into rubies and diamonds. In a few +seconds, the everlasting gates of the morning were thrown wide open, +and the lord of day, arrayed in glories too severe for the gaze of man, +began his state. + +I do not wonder at the superstition of the ancient Magians, who, in the +morning of the world, went up to the hill-tops of Central Asia, and +ignorant of the true God, adored the most glorious work of His hand. But +I am filled with amazement when I am told that in this enlightened age, +and in the heart of the Christian world, there are persons who can +witness this daily manifestation of the power and wisdom of the Creator, +and yet say in their hearts, "there is no God." + + * * * * * + +From a Discourse on the Discover and Colonization of America. + +=_192._= THE CELTIC IMMIGRATION. + +This great Celtic race is one of the most remarkable that has appeared +in history. Whether it belongs to that extensive Indo-European family of +nations, which, in ages before the dawn of history, took up a line of +march in two columns from Lower India, and moving westward by both a +northern and a southward route, finally diffused itself over Western +Asia, Northern Africa, and the greater part of Europe; or whether, as +others suppose, the Celtic race belongs to a still older stock, and was +itself driven down upon the south and into the west of Europe by the +overwhelming force of the Indo-Europeans, is a question which we have +no time at present to discuss. However it may be decided, it would seem +that for the first time, as far as we are acquainted with the fortunes +of this interesting race, they have found themselves in a really +prosperous condition, in this country. Driven from the soil in the west +of Europe, to which their forefathers clang for two thousand years, they +have at length, and for the first time in their entire history, found +a real home in a land of strangers. Having been told, in the frightful +language of political economy, that at the daily table which Nature +spreads for the human family there is no cover laid for them in Ireland, +they have crossed the ocean to find occupation, shelter, and bread, on a +foreign but friendly soil. + +This "Celtic Exodus," as it has been aptly called, is to all the parties +immediately connected with it one of the most important events of the +day. To the emigrants themselves it may be regarded as a passing from +death to life. It will benefit Ireland by reducing a surplus population, +and restoring a sounder and juster relation of capital and labor. It +will benefit the laboring classes in England, where wages have been kept +down to the starvation-point by the struggle between native population +and the inhabitants of the sister island, for that employment and food, +of which there is not enough for both. This benefit will extend from +England to ourselves, and will lessen the pressure of that competition +which our labor is obliged to sustain, with the ill-paid labor of +Europe. In addition to all this, the constant influx into America of +stout and efficient hands supplies the greatest want in a new country, +which is that of labor, gives value to land, and facilitates the +execution of every species of private enterprise and public work. + +I am not insensible to the temporary inconveniences which are to be set +off against these advantages, on both sides of the water. Much suffering +attends the emigrant, there, on his passage, and after his arrival. It +is possible that the value of our native labor may have been depressed +by too sudden and extensive a supply from abroad; and it is certain that +our asylums and alms-houses are crowded with foreign inmates, and the +resources of public and private benevolence have been heavily drawn +upon. These are considerable evils, but they have perhaps been +exaggerated. + + * * * * * + + +=_Hugh S. Legare, 1797-1843._= (Manual, p. 487.) + +From his "Collected Writings." + +=_193._= THE STUDY OF THE ANCIENT CLASSICS. + +Not to have the curiosity to study the learned languages is not to have +any vocation at all for literature: it is to be destitute of liberal +curiosity and of enthusiasm; to mistake a self-sufficient and +superficial dogmatism for philosophy, and that complacent indolence +which is the bane of all improvement, for a proof of the highest degree +of it.... + +All that we ask, then, is, that a boy should be thoroughly taught the +ancient languages from his eighth to his sixteenth year, or thereabouts, +in which time he will have his taste formed, his love of letters +completely, perhaps enthusiastically, awakened, his knowledge of the +principles of universal grammar perfected, his memory stored with the +history, the geography, and the chronology of all antiquity, and with +a vast fund of miscellaneous literature besides, and his imagination +kindled with the most beautiful and glowing passages of Greek and Roman +poetry and eloquence; all the rules of criticism familiar to him--the +sayings of sages and the achievements of heroes indelibly impressed upon +his heart. He will have his curiosity fired for further acquisition, +and find himself in possession of the golden keys which open all the +recesses where the stores of knowledge have ever been laid up by +civilized man. The consciousness of strength will give him confidence, +and he will go to the rich treasures themselves, and take what he wants, +instead of picking up eleemosynary scraps from those whom, in spite of +himself, he will regard as his betters in literature. He will be let +into that great communion of scholars throughout all ages and all +nations,--like that more awful communion of saints in the holy church +universal,--and feel a sympathy with departed genius, and with the +enlightened and the gifted minds of other countries, as they appear +before him, in the transports of a sort of vision beatific, bowing down +at the same shrines, and flowing with the same holy love of whatever is +most pure, and fair, and exalted, and divine in human nature. + + * * * * * + +From a Review of Kent's Commentaries. + +=_194._= DISADVANTAGES OF COLONIAL LIFE. + +It is our misfortune, in one sense, to have succeeded, at the very +outset of our career, to an over-grown inheritance in the literature of +the mother country, and to have stood for a century in that political +and social relation towards her, which was of all others most +unfavorable to any originality in genius and opinions. Our good +fathers piously spoke of England as their _home_. The inferiority--the +discouraging and degrading inferiority--implied in a state of colonial +dependence, chilled the enthusiasm of talent, and repressed the +aspirations of ambition. Our youth were trained in English schools to +classical learning and good manners; but no scholarship--great as we +believe its efficacy to be--can either inspire or supply, the daring +originality and noble pride of genius, to which, by some mysterious +law of nature, the love of country and a national spirit seem to +be absolutely necessary. We imported our opinions ready-made--"by +balefuls," if it so pleases the Rev. Sidney Smith. We were taught +to read by English school-masters--and to reason by English +authors--English clergymen filled our pulpits, English lawyers our +courts--and above all things, we deferred to and dreaded the dictatorial +authority and withering contempt of English criticism. It is difficult +to imagine a state of things more fatal to intellectual dignity +and enterprise, and the consequences were such as might have been +anticipated. What is still more lamentable, although the cause has in a +good measure ceased, the effect continues, nor do we see any remedy for +the evil until our youth shall be taught to go up to the same original +and ever-living fountains of all literature, at which the Miltons, and +the Barrows, and the Drydens drank in so much of their enthusiasm and +inspiration, and to cast off entirely that slavish dependence upon the +opinions of others which they must feel, who take their knowledge of +what it is either their duty, their interest, or their ambition to +learn, at second hand. + + * * * * * + + +=_Francis L. Hawks, 1798-1866._= (Manual, p. 480.) + +From "Narrative of the United States Expedition to Japan." + +=_195._= JAPAN INTERESTING IN MANY ASPECTS. + +Viewed in any of its aspects, the empire of Japan has long presented to +the thoughtful mind an object of uncommon interest. And this interest +has been greatly increased by the mystery with which, for the last two +centuries, an exclusive policy has sought to surround the institutions +of this remarkable country.... + +The political inquirer, for instance, has wished to study in detail +the form of government, the administration of laws, and the domestic +institutions, under which a nation systematically prohibiting +intercourse with the rest of the world has attained to a state of +civilization, refinement, and intelligence, the mere glimpses of which +so strongly invite further investigation. + +The student of physical geography, aware how much national +characteristics are formed or modified by peculiarities of physical +structure in every country, would fain know more of the lands and the +seas, the mountains and the rivers, the forests and the fields, which +fall within the limits of this almost _terra incognita_. + +... The man of commerce asks to be told of its products and its trade, +its skill in manufactures, the commodities it needs, and the returns it +can supply. + +The scholar asks to be introduced to its literature, that he may +contemplate in historians, poets, and dramatists (for Japan has them +all), a picture of the national mind. + +The Christian desires to know the varied phases of their superstition +and idolatry, and longs for the dawn of that day when a purer faith +and more enlightened worship shall bring them within the circle of +Christendom. + +Amid such a diversity of pursuits as we have enumerated, a common +interest unites all in a common sympathy; and hence the divine and the +philosopher, the navigator and the naturalist, the man of business and +the man of letters, have alike joined in a desire for the thorough +exploration of a field at once so extensive and so inviting. + + * * * * * + + +=_George P. Marsh, 1801-._= (Manual, p. 532.) + +From "Lectures on the English Language." + +=_196._= METHOD OF LEARNING ENGLISH. + +The groundwork of English, indeed, can be, and best is, learned at the +domestic fireside--a school for which there is no adequate substitute; +but the knowledge there acquired is not, as in homogeneous languages, a +root, out of which will spontaneously grow the flowers and the fruits +which adorn and enrich the speech of man. English has been so much +affected by extraneous, alien, and discordant influences, so much +mixed with foreign ingredients, so much overloaded with adventitious +appendages, that it is to most of those who speak it, in a considerable +degree, a conventional and arbitrary symbolism. The Anglo-Saxon tongue +has a craving appetite, and is as rapacious of words, and as tolerant of +forms, as are its children, of territory and of religions. But in spite +of its power of assimilation, there is much of the speech of England +which has never become connatural to the Anglican people; and its +grammar has passively suffered the introduction of many syntactical +combinations, which are not merely irregular, but repugnant. I shall not +here inquire whether this condition of English is an evil. There are +many cases where a complex and cunningly-devised machine, dexterously +guided, can do that which the congenital hand fails to accomplish; but +the computing, of our losses and gains, the striking of our linguistic +balance, belongs elsewhere. Suffice it to say, that English is not a +language which teaches itself by mere unreflecting usage. It can only be +mastered, in all its wealth, in all its power, by conscious, persistent +labor; and therefore, when all the world is awaking to the value of +general philological science, it would ill become us to be slow in +recognizing the special importance of the study of our own tongue. + + * * * * * + +From "Man and Nature." + +=_197._= THE EVERGREENS OF SOUTHERN EUROPE. + +The multitude of species, intermixed as they are in their spontaneous +growth, gives the American forest landscape a variety of aspect not +often seen in the woods of Europe; and the gorgeous tints which nature +repeats from the dying dolphin to paint the falling leaf of the American +maples, oaks, and ash trees, clothe the hill-sides and fringe the +watercourses with a rainbow splendor of foliage, unsurpassed by the +brightest groupings of the tropical flora. It must be admitted, however, +that both the northern and the southern declivities of the Alps exhibit +a nearer approximation to this rich and multifarious coloring of +autumnal vegetation than most American travellers in Europe are willing +to allow; and, besides, the small deciduous shrubs, which often carpet +the forest glades of these mountains, are dyed with a ruddy and orange +glow, which, in the distant landscape, is no mean substitute for the +scarlet and crimson and gold and amber of the trans-atlantic woodland. + +No American evergreen known to me resembles the umbrella pine +sufficiently to be a fair object of comparison with it. A cedar, very +common above the Highlands on the Hudson, is extremely like the cypress, +straight, slender, with erect, compressed ramification, and feathered to +the ground, but its foliage is neither so dark nor so dense, the tree +does not attain the majestic height of the cypress, nor has it the lithe +flexibility of that tree. In mere shape, the Lombardy poplar nearly +resembles this latter, but it is almost a profanation to compare the +two, especially when they are agitated by the wind; for under such +circumstances, the one is the most majestic, the other the most +ungraceful, or--if I may apply such an expression to any thing but human +affectation of movement--the most awkward of trees. The poplar trembles +before the blast, flutters, struggles wildly, dishevels its foliage, +gropes around with its feeblest branches, and hisses as in impotent +passion. The cypress gathers its limbs still more closely to its stem, +bows a gracious salute rather than an humble obeisance to the tempest, +bends to the winds with an elasticity that assures you of its prompt +return to its regal attitude, and sends from its thick leaflets a murmur +like the roar of the far-off ocean. + + * * * * * + + +=_George H. Calvert, 1803-._= (Manual pp. 503, 505.) + +From "First Years in Europe." + +=_198._= ESTIMATE OF COLERIDGE. + +That Coleridge with his mental pockets full of gold, and with a mine in +fee wherefrom he not only replenished his daily purse but enriched his +neighbors, should now and then borrow a guinea, is a fact at which we +should rather smile than frown, or, more fitly, pass by without special +sensation, seeing what has been the practice of the highest,--a practice +which may with full ethical assent be regarded as a privilege inherent +in their supremacy, the free use of all knowledge collected and +experience acquired, no matter when, where, or by whom, being a natural +right of him _who has the genius to turn it to best account_. That in +certain cases where acknowledgment was due it was not made, we may +ascribe to opinion; or to defects which broke the complete rotundity of +such a circle of endowments that without this breach they would have +swollen their possessor to almost preterhuman proportions, empowering +him to "bestride the narrow world like a Colossus." + +Let the truth be spoken of all men. Let no man's greatness be a bar +to full utterance; but let temperance and charity--duties peculiarly +imperative when uttering derogatory truth--be especially observed +towards a resplendent suffering brother like Coleridge, suffering from +his own weakness, but on that very account entitled to a tenderer +consideration from those who are themselves endowed to feel and claim +something more than common human affinity with a nature so large and so +susceptive. Could but a tithe of the fresh insights he has given us be +allowed as an offset against his short-comings, never, from any scholar +of sound sensibilities, would a whisper be heard against his name. Under +the coarse, rusty, one-pronged spur of sectarian or political rancor, +or from the knawing consciousness of sterile inferiority to a creative +mind, plenty of people are ready and eager to try, with their net-work +of flimsy phrases, to cramp the play of a giant's limbs, or, with the +slow slimy poison of envy and malice, to spot and deform his beauty and +his symmetry. To such, to the half-eyed and the half-souled, to the +prosaic and the unsympathetic, be left all harsh condemnation of +Coleridge. + +For the living, not for the dead, are these inadequate words spoken. The +writings of Coleridge--in tone high, refined, noble; in expression rich, +choice, copious; in spirit as pure as the sun's light; intellectually +of rare breadth and mellowness and brilliancy--are a healthful power in +literature, their influence solely for good, warming, strengthening, +elevating. As for Coleridge himself, his is an immortal name; and as +he walks through the ages his robes adjusting themselves with varying +grace, in harmony with the mutations of opinion, his inward life will be +ever fresh to his fellow-men, while his detractors will be shaken from +him as _gryllidoe_ from the tunic of the superb Diana. + + * * * * * + + +=_Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803-_= (Manual pp. 478, 503, 531.) + +From "Essays," Second Series. + +=_199._= INFLUENCE OF NATURE. + +There are days which occur in this climate, at almost any season of +the year, wherein the world reaches its perfection; when the air, the +heavenly bodies, and the earth, make a harmony, as if Nature would +indulge her offspring; when, in these bleak upper sides of the planet, +nothing is to desire that we have heard of the happiest latitudes, and +we bask in the shining hours of Florida and Cuba; when everything that +has life gives sign of satisfaction, and the cattle that lie on the +ground seem to have great and tranquil thoughts. These halcyons may be +looked for with a little more assurance in that pure October weather +which we distinguish by the name of Indian summer. The day, immeasurably +long, sleeps over the broad hills, and warm, wide fields. To have lived +through all its sunny hours seems longevity enough. The solitary places +do not seem quite lonely. At the gates of the forest, the surprised man +of the world is forced to leave his city estimates of great and small, +wise and foolish. The knapsack of custom falls off his back with the +first step he makes into these precincts. Here is sanctity which shames +our religions, and reality which discredits our heroes. + + * * * * * + +From "Society and Solitude." + +=_200._= THE POWER OF CHILDHOOD. + +The perfection of the providence for childhood is easily acknowledged. +The care which covers the seed of the tree under tough husks and, stony +cases, provides, for the human plant, the mother's breast and the +father's house. The size of the nestler is comic, and its tiny +beseeching weakness is compensated perfectly by the happy patronizing +look of the mother, who is a sort of high reposing Providence toward it. +Welcome to the parents the puny straggler, strong in his weakness, his +little arms more irresistible than the soldier's, his lips touched with +persuasion which Chatham and Pericles in manhood had not. His unaffected +lamentations when he lifts up his voice on high, or, more beautiful, the +sobbing child,--the face all liquid grief, as he tries to swallow his +vexation,--soften all hearts to pity, and to mirthful and clamorous +compassion. The small despot asks so little that all reason and all +nature are on his side. His ignorance is more charming than all +knowledge, and his little sins more bewitching than any virtue. His +flesh is angels' flesh, all alive. "Infancy," said Coleridge, "presents +body and spirit in unity: the body is all animated." All day, between +his three or four sleeps, he coos like a pigeon-house, sputters, and +spurs, and puts on his faces of importance; and when he fasts, the +little Pharisee fails not to sound his trumpet before him. By lamp-light +he delights in shadows on the wall; by daylight, in yellow and scarlet. +Carry him out of doors,--he is overpowered by the light and the extent +of natural objects, and is silent. Then presently begins his use of his +fingers, and he studies power, the lesson of his race. First it appears +in no great harm, in architectural tastes. Out of blocks, thread-spools, +cards, and checkers, he will build his pyramid with the gravity of +Palladio. With an acoustic apparatus of whistle and rattle, he explores +the laws of sound. But chiefly, like his senior countrymen, the young +American studies new and speedier modes of transportation. Mistrusting +the cunning of his small legs, he wishes to ride on the necks and +shoulders of all flesh. The small enchanter nothing can withstand, no +seniority of age, no gravity of character; uncles, aunts, grandsires, +grandams, fall an easy prey: he conforms to nobody, all conform to +him; all caper and make mouths, and babble, and chirrup to him. On the +strongest shoulders he rides, and pulls the hair of laurelled heads. + + * * * * * + +=_201._= MAN MUST WORK IN HARMONY WITH PRINCIPLES. + +Civilization depends on morality. Everything good in man leans on what +is higher. This rule holds in small as in great. Thus, all our strength +and success in the work of our hands depend on our borrowing the aid of +the elements. You have seen a carpenter on a ladder with a broad-axe, +chopping upward chips from a beam. How awkward! At what disadvantage he +works! But see him on the ground, dressing his timber under him. Now, +not his feeble muscles, but the force of gravity brings down the axe; +that is to say, the planet itself splits his stick. The farmer had much +ill-temper, laziness, and shirking, to endure from his hand-sawyers +until one day he bethought him to put his saw-mill on the edge of a +waterfall; and the river never tires of turning his wheel; the river is +good-natured, and never hints an objection. + +We had letters to send: couriers could not go fast enough, nor far +enough; broke their wagons, foundered their horses, bad roads in spring, +snow-drifts in winter, heat in summer, could not get the horses out of a +walk. But we found out that the air and earth were full of electricity; +and always going our way,--just the way we wanted to send. _Would he +take a message?_ Just as lief as not; had nothing else to do; +would carry it in no time. Only one doubt occurred, one staggering +objection,--he had no carpet bag, no visible pockets, no hands, not so +much as a mouth, to carry a letter. But, after much thought and many +experiments, we managed to meet the conditions, and to fold up the +letter in such invisible compact form as he could carry in those +invisible pockets of his, never wrought by needle and thread,--and it +went like a charm. + +I admire still more than the saw-mill the skill which, on the sea-shore, +makes the tides drive the wheels and grind corn, and which thus engages +the assistance of the moon like a hired hand, to grind, and wind, and +pump, and saw, and split stone, and roll iron. + +Now that is the wisdom of a man, in every instance of his labor, +to hitch his wagon to a star, and see his chore done by the gods +themselves. That is the way we are strong, by borrowing the might of the +elements. The forces of steam, gravity, galvanism, light, magnets, wind, +fire, serve us day by day, and cost us nothing. + +Our astronomy is full of examples of calling in the aid of these +magnificent helpers. Thus, on a planet so small as ours, the want of +an adequate base for astronomical measurements is early felt, as, for +example, in detecting the parallax of a star. But the astronomer, having +by an observation fixed the place of a star, by so simple an expedient +as waiting six months, and then repeating his observation, contrived +to put the diameter of the earth's orbit, say two hundred millions of +miles, between his first observation and his second, and this line +afforded him a respectable base for his triangle. + +All our arts aim to win this vantage. We cannot bring the heavenly +powers to us, but, if we will only choose our jobs in directions in +which they travel, they will undertake them with the greatest pleasure. +It is a peremptory rule with them, that _they never go out of their +road_. We are dapper little busybodies, and run this way and that +way superserviceably; but they swerve never from their foreordained +paths,--neither the sun, nor the moon, nor a bubble of air, nor a mote +of dust. + +And as our handiworks borrow the elements, so all our social and +political action leans on principles. To accomplish anything excellent, +the will must work for catholic and universal ends. A puny creature +walled in on every side, as Daniel wrote,-- + + "Unless above himself he can, + Erect himself, how poor a thing is man!" + +but when his will leans on a principle, when, he is the vehicle of +ideas, he borrows their omnipotence. Gibraltar may be strong, but ideas +are impregnable, and bestow on the hero their invincibility. "It was +a great instruction," said a saint in Cromwell's war, "that the best +courages are but beams of the Almighty." Hitch your wagon to a star. Let +us not fag in paltry works which serve our pot and bag alone. Let us not +lie and steal. No god will help. We shall find all their teams going the +other way. Charles's Wain, Great Bear, Orion, Leo, Hercules: every god +will leave us. Work rather for those interests which the divinities +honor and promote,--justice, love, freedom, knowledge, utility. + + * * * * * + +=_202._= RULES FOR READING. + +Be sure, then, to read no mean books. Shun the spawn of the press on the +gossip of the hour. Do not read what you shall learn without asking, in +the street and the train. Dr. Johnson said, "he always went into stately +shops;" and good travelers stop at the best hotels; for, though they +cost more, they do not cost much more, and there is the good company and +the best information. In like manner, the scholar knows that the famed +books contain, first and last, the best thoughts and facts. Now and +then, by rarest luck, in some foolish grub street is the gem we want. +But in the best circles is the best information. If you should transfer +the amount of your reading day by day from the newspaper to the standard +authors.--But who dare speak of such a thing. + +The three practical rules, then, which I have to offer, are: 1st. Never +read any book that is not a year old. 2d. Never read any but famed +books. 3d. Never read any but what you like; or, in Shakespeare's +phrase, + + "No profit goes where is no pleasure ta'en: + In brief, sir, study what you most affect." + +Montaigne says, "Books are a languid pleasure;" but I find certain books +vital and spermatic, not leaving the reader what he was: he shuts the +book a richer man. I would never willingly read any others than such. + + * * * * * + + +=_John Russell Bartlett, 1805-._= + +From the "Personal Narrative of Explorations," &c. + +=_203._= LYNCH LAW AT EL PASO. + +On the present occasion, circumstances rendered it necessary for safety, +as well as for the purpose of warning the desperate gang who were now +about to have their deserts, that all should be doubly armed. In the +court-room, therefore, where one of the most solemn scenes of human +experience was enacting, all were armed save the prisoners. There sat +the judge, with a pistol lying on the table before him; the clerks and +attorneys wore revolvers at their sides; and the jurors were either +armed with similar weapons, or carried with them the unerring rifle. The +members of the commission and citizens, who were either guarding the +prisoners or protecting the court, carried by their sides a revolver, a +rifle, or a fowling-piece, thus presenting a scene more characteristic +of feudal times than of the nineteenth century. The fair but sun-burnt +complexion of the American portion of the jury, with their weapons +resting against their shoulders, and pipes in their mouths, presented a +striking contrast to the swarthy features of the Mexicans, muffled in +checkered _serapes_, holding their broad-brimmed glazed hats in their +hands, and delicate cigarritos in their lips. The reckless, unconcerned +appearance of the prisoners, whose unshaven faces and dishevelled hair +gave them the appearance of Italian bandits rather than of Americans or +Englishmen, the grave and determined bearing of the bench; the varied +costume and expression of the spectators and members of the Commission, +clad in serapes, blankets, or overcoats, with their different weapons, +and generally with long beards, made altogether one of the most +remarkable groups which ever graced a court-room.... + +The evidence being closed, a few remarks were now made by the +prosecuting attorney, followed by the charge of the judge, when the case +was given to the jury. In a short time they returned into court with a +verdict of guilty, against William Craig, Marcus Butler, and John Wade; +upon whom the judge then pronounced sentence of death. + +The prisoners were now escorted to the little plaza or open square in +front of the village church, where the priest met them, to give such +consolation as his holy office would afford. But their conduct, +notwithstanding the desire on the part of all to afford them every +comfort their position was susceptible of, continued reckless and +indifferent, even to the last moment. Butler alone was affected. He wept +bitterly, and excited much sympathy by his youthful appearance, being +but 21 years of age. His companions begged him "not to cry, as he could +die but once." + +The sun was setting when they arrived at the place of execution. The +assembled spectators formed a guard around a small alamo, or poplar +tree, which had been selected for the gallows. It was fast growing +dark, and the busy movements of a large number of the associates of the +condemned, dividing and collecting again in small bodies at different +points around and outside of the party, and then approaching nearer +to the centre, proved that an attack was meditated, if the slightest +opportunity should be given. But the sentence of the law was carried +into effect. + + * * * * * + + +=_Nathaniel Parker Willis, 1807-1867._= (Manual, pp. 504, 519.) + +From "Pencillings by the Way." + +=_204._= THE AMERICAN ABROAD. + +It is a queer feeling to find oneself a _foreigner_. One can not realize +long at a time how his face or his manners should have become peculiar; +and after looking at a print for five minutes in a shop-window, or +dipping into an English book, or in any manner throwing off the mental +habit of the instant, the curious gaze of the passer-by, or the accent +of a strange language, strikes one very singularly. Paris is full of +foreigners of all nations, and of course physiognomies of all characters +may be met everywhere; but, differing as the European nations do +decidedly from each other, they differ still more from the American. Our +countrymen, as a class, are distinguishable wherever they are met; not +as Americans however, for of the habits and manners of Our country, +people know nothing this side the water. But there is something in an +American face, of which I never was aware till I met them in Europe, +that is altogether peculiar. The French take the Americans to be +English; but an Englishman, while he presumes him his countryman, shows +a curiosity to know who he is, which is very foreign to his usual +indifference. As far as I can analyze it, it is the independent, +self-possessed bearing of a man unused to look up to any one as his +superior in rank, united to the inquisitive, sensitive, communicative +expression which is the index to our national character. The first is +seldom possessed in England but by a man of decided rank, and the latter +is never possessed by an Englishman at all. The two are united in no +other nation. Nothing is easier than to tell the rank of an Englishman, +and nothing puzzles an European more than to know how to rate the +pretensions of an American.... + + * * * * * + +From "Ephemera." + +=_205._= CHARACTER AND WRITINGS OF JAMES HILLHOUSE. + +Like the public feeling, the condition and powers of criticism toward +an author's fame, are essentially changed by his death. His personal +character, and the events of his life--the foreground, so to speak, in +the picture of his mind, are, till this event, wanting to the critical +perspective; and when the hand to correct is cold, and the ear to be +caressed and wounded is sealed, some of the uses of censure, and all +reserve in comparison and final estimate, are done away. + + * * * * * + +Such men as Hillhouse are not common, even in these days of universal +authorship. In accomplishment of mind and person, he was probably second +to no man. His poems show the first. They are fully conceived, nicely +balanced, exquisitely finished--works for the highest taste to relish, +and for the severest student in dramatic style to erect into a model. +Hadad was published in 1825, during my second year in college, and to +me it was the opening of a new heaven of imagination. The leading +characters possessed me for months, and the bright, clear, harmonious +language was, for a long time, constantly in my ears. The author was +pointed out to me, soon after, and for once, I saw a poet whose mind was +well imaged in his person. In no part of the world have I seen a man of +more distinguished mien, or of a more inborn dignity and elegance of +address. His person was very finely proportioned, his carriage chivalric +and high-bred, and his countenance purely and brightly intellectual. +Add to this a sweet voice, a stamp of high courtesy on everything he +uttered, and singular simplicity and taste in dress, and you have the +portrait of one who, in other days, would have been the mirror of +chivalry, and the flower of nobles and troubadours. Hillhouse was no +less distinguished in oratory. + +... Hillhouse had fallen upon days of thrift, and many years of his life +which he should have passed either in his study, or in the councils of +the nation, were enslaved to the drudgery of business. His constitution +seemed to promise him a vigorous manhood, however, and an old age of +undiminished fire, and when he left his mercantile pursuits, and retired +to the beautiful and poetic home of "Sachem's Wood," his friends looked +upon it as the commencement of a ripe and long enduring career +of literature. In harmony with such a life were all his +surroundings--scenery, society, domestic refinement, and +companionship--and never looked promise fairer for the realization of a +dream of glory. That he had laid out something of such a field in the +future, I chance to know, for, though my acquaintance with him was +slight, he confided to me in a casual conversation, the plan of a series +of dramas, different from all he had attempted, upon which he designed +to work with the first mood and leisure he could command. And with his +scholarship; knowledge of life, taste, and genius, what might not have +been expected from its fulfilment? But his hand is cold, and his lips +still, and his light, just rising to its meridian, is lost now to the +world. Love and honor to the memory of such a man. + + * * * * * + + +=_Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1807-. _= (Manual, pp. 503, 505.) + +From "Hyperion." + +=_206._= THE INTERRUPTED LEGEND. + +One by one the objects of our affection depart from us. But our +affections remain, and like vines stretch forth their broken, wounded +tendrils for support. The bleeding heart needs a balm to heal it; and +there is none but the love of its kind,--none but the affection of a +human heart. Thus the wounded, broken affections of Flemming began to +lift themselves from the dust and cling around this new object. Days +and weeks passed; and, like the Student Crisostomo, he ceased to love, +because he began to adore. And with this adoration mingled the prayer, +that, in that hour when the world is still, and the voices that praise +are mute, and reflection cometh like twilight, and the maiden, in her +day dreams, counted the number of her friends, some voice in the sacred +silence of her thoughts might whisper his name. + +They were sitting together one morning, on the green, flowery meadow, +under the ruins of Burg Unspunnen. She was sketching the ruins. The +birds were singing, one and all, as if there were no aching hearts, no +sin nor sorrow, in the world. So motionless was the bright air, that the +shadow of the trees lay engraven on the grass. The distant snow-peaks +sparkled in the sun, and nothing frowned, save the square tower of the +old ruin above them. + +"What a pity it is," said the lady, as she stopped to rest her weary +fingers, "what a pity it is, that there is no old tradition connected +with this ruin!" + +"I will make you one, if you wish," said Flemming. + +"Can you make old traditions?" + +"O, yes! I made three, the other day, about the Rhine, and one very old +one about the Black Forest. A lady with dishevelled hair; a robber with +a horrible slouched hat; and a night storm among the roaring pines." + +"Delightful! Do make one for me." + +"With the greatest pleasure. Where will you have the scene? Here, or in +the Black Forest." + +"In the Black Forest, by all means! Begin." + +"I will unite this ruin and the forest together. But first promise not +to interrupt me. If you snap the golden threads of thought, they will +float away on the air like the film of the gossamer, and I shall never +be able to recover them." + +"I promise." "Listen, then, to the Tradition of 'THE FOUNTAIN OF +OBLIVION.'" + +"Begin." + +Flemming was reclining on the flowery turf, at the lady's feet, looking +up with dreamy eyes into her sweet face, and then into the leaves of the +linden-trees overhead. + +"Gentle Lady! Dost thou remember the linden trees of Buelach,--those +tall and stately trees, with velvet down upon their shining leaves, and +rustic benches underneath their overhanging eaves? A leafy dwelling, fit +to be the home of elf or fairy, where first I told my love to thee, +thou cold and stately Hermione! A little peasant girl stood near, +and listened all the while, with eyes of wonder and delight, and an +unconscious smile, to hear the stranger still speak on in accents deep +yet mild,--none else was with us in that hour, save God and that little +child!" + +"Why, it is in rhyme!" + +"No, no! the rhyme is only in your imagination. You promised not to +interrupt me, and you have already snapped asunder the gossamer threads +of as sweet a dream as was ever spun from a poet's brain." + +"It certainly did rhyme!" + + * * * * * + + +=_Henry Reed, 1808-1854._= (Manual, p. 501.) + +From "Lectures on English History." + +=_207._= LEGENDARY PERIOD OF BRITISH HISTORY. + +It would be a weary, and probably vain inquiry to consider minutely the +claims which such historical materials have on our belief; and so little +is there attractive in the legends of British history, that I need +not attempt to dwell upon any of the alleged facts. But I wish before +passing from this part of my subject, briefly to examine the curious +tenacity with which the belief in this legendary literature was once +held, and to show that it was not relinquished until a more critical +standard of historic belief was adopted, and scientific investigation +took the place of uninquiring and passive credulity. It has been said +that no man, before the sixteenth century, presumed to doubt that the +Britons were descended from Brutus the Trojan; and it is equally certain +that no modern writer could presume confidently to assert it. + +... It is most difficult for us, in these later days of higher standards +of historic credibility, to form anything like an adequate conception, +of the entire and unquestioning confidence which was felt for the story +of British origin, and the race of ancient British kings. Of this +feeling there is a curious proof in a transaction in the reign of Edward +I., when the sovereignty of Scotland was claimed by the English monarch. +The Scots sought the interposition and protection of the pope, alleging +that the Scottish realm belonged of right to the see of Rome. Boniface +VIII., a pontiff not backward in asserting the claims of the papacy, +did interpose to check the English conquest, and was answered by an +elaborate and respectful epistle from Edward, in which the English claim +is most carefully and confidently derived from the conquest of the whole +country by the Trojans in the times of Eli and Samuel--assuredly a +very respectable antiquity of some two thousand four hundred years. +No Philadelphia estate could be more methodically traced back to the +proprietary title of William Penn, than was this claim to Scotland up to +Brutus, the exile from Troy.... Now, all this is set forth with the most +imperturbable seriousness, and with an air of complete assurance of the +truth. It appears, too, to have fully answered the purpose intended; +and the Scots, finding that the papal antiquity was but a poor defence +against such claims, and as if determined not to be outdone by the +Southron, replied in a document asserting their independence by virtue +of descent from Scota, one of the daughters of Pharaoh. The pope seems +to have been silenced in a conflict of ancestral authority, in which the +succession of St. Peter seemed quite a modern affair, when overshadowed, +by such Trojan and Egyptian antiquity. + + * * * * * + + +=_Caroline M. Kirkland, 1808-1864._= (Manual, p. 484.) + +From "Forest Life." + +=_208._= THE FELLING OF A GREAT TREE. + +One darling tree,--a giant oak which looked as if half a dozen Calibans +might have been pegged in its knotty entrails--this one tree, the +grandfather of the forest, we thought we had saved. It stood a little +apart,--it shadowed no man's land,--it shut the broiling sun from +nobody's windows, so we hoped it might be allowed to die a natural +death. But one unlucky day, a family fresh from "the 'hio" removed into +a house which stood at no great distance from this relic of primeval +grandeur. These people were but little indebted to fortune, and the size +of their potato-patch did not exactly correspond with the number of +rosy-cheeks within doors. So the loan of a piece of ground was a small +thing to ask or to grant. Upon this piece of lent land stood our +favorite oak. The potatoes were scarcely peeping green above the soil, +when we observed that the great boughs which we looked at admiringly a +dozen times a day, as they towered far above the puny race around them, +remained distinct in their outline, instead of exhibiting the heavy +masses of foliage which had usually clothed them before the summer +heat began. Upon nearer inspection it was found that our neighbor had +commenced his plantation by the operation of girdling the tree, for +which favor he expected our thanks, observing pithily that "nothing +wouldn't never grow under sich a great mountain as that!" It is well +that "Goth" and "Vandal" are not actionable. + +Yet the felling of a great tree has something of the sublime in it. When +the axe first falls on the trunk of a stately oak, laden with the green +wealth of a century, or a pine whose aspiring peak might look down on a +moderate church steeple, the contrast between the puny instrument and +the gigantic result to be accomplished approaches the ridiculous. But as +"the eagle towering in his pride of place was, by a mousing owl, hawked +at and killed," so the leaf-crowned monarch of the wood has no small +reason to quiver at the sight of a long-armed Yankee approaching his +deep-rooted trunk with an awkward axe. One blow seems to accomplish +nothing: not even a chip falls. But with another stroke comes a broad +slice of the bark, leaving an ominous, gaping wound. Another pair of +blows extends the gash, and when twenty such have fallen, behold a +girdled tree. This would suffice to kill, and a melancholy death it is; +but to fell is quite another thing.... Two deep incisions are made, +yet the towering crown sits firm as ever. And now the destroyer +pauses,--fetches breath,--wipes his beaded brow, takes a wary view +of the bearings of the tree,--and then with a slow and watchful care +recommences his work. The strokes fall doubtingly, and many a cautious +glance is cast upward, for the whole immense mass now trembles, as if +instinct with life, and conscious of approaching ruin. Another blow! it +waves,--a groaning sound is heard--... yet another stroke is necessary. +It is given with desperate force, and the tall peak leaves its place +with an easy sailing motion accelerated every instant, till it crashes +prone on the earth, sending far and wide its scattered branches, and +letting in the sunlight upon the cool, damp, mossy earth, for the first +time perhaps in half a century. + + * * * * * + +From "Western Clearings." + +=_209._= THE BEE TREE. + +One of the greatest temptations to our friend Silas, and to most of his +class, is a bee hunt. Neither deer, nor 'coons, nor prairie hens, nor +even bears, prove half as powerful enemies to anything like regular +business, as do these little thrifty vagrants of the forest. The +slightest hint of a bee tree will entice Silas Ashburn and his sons from +the most profitable job of the season, even though the defection is sure +to result in entire loss of the offered advantage; and if the hunt prove +successful, the luscious spoil is generally too tempting to allow of +any care for the future, so long as the "sweet'nin" can be persuaded to +last. "It costs nothing," will poor Mrs. Ashburn observe; "let 'em enjoy +it. It isn't often we have such good luck." + + * * * * * + + +=_Margaret Fuller Ossoli, 1810-1850._= (Manual, p. 502.) + +From "At Home and Abroad." + +=_210._= CHARACTER OF CARLYLE. + +Accustomed to the infinite wit and exhuberant richness of his writings, +his talk is still an amazement and a splendor scarcely to be faced with +steady eyes. He does not converse,--only harangues. It is the usual +misfortune of such marked men (happily not one invariable or inevitable) +that they cannot allow other minds room to breathe and show themselves +in their atmosphere, and thus miss the refreshment and instruction which +the greatest never cease to need from the experience of the humblest. +Carlyle allows no one a chance, but bears down all opposition, not only +by his wit and onset of words, resistless in their sharpness as so many +bayonets, but by actual physical superiority, raising his voice and +rushing on his opponent with a torrent of sound. This is not the least +from unwillingness to allow freedom to others; on the contrary, no +man would more enjoy a manly resistance to his thought; but it is the +impulse of a mind accustomed to follow out its own impulse as the hawk +its prey, and which knows not how to stop in the chase. Carlyle, indeed, +is arrogant and overbearing, but in his arrogance there is no littleness +or self-love: it is the heroic arrogance of some old Scandinavian +conqueror,--it is his nature, and the untamable impulse that has given +him power to crush the dragons. You do not love him, perhaps, nor +revere, and perhaps, also, he would only laugh at you if you did; but +you like him heartily, and like to see him the powerful smith, the +Siegfried, melting all the old iron, in his furnace till it glows to a +sunset red, and burns you if you senselessly go too near. He seemed to +me quite isolated, lonely as the desert; yet never was man more fitted +to prize a man, could he find one to match his mood. He finds such, but +only in the past. He sings rather than talks. He pours upon you a kind +of satirical, heretical, critical poem, with regular cadences, and +generally catching up near the beginning some singular epithet, which +serves as a _refrain_ when his song is full, or with which as with a +knitting-needle he catches up the stitches, if he has chanced now and +then to let fall a row. For the higher kinds of poetry he has no sense, +and his talk on that subject is delightfully and gorgeously absurd; he +sometimes stops a minute to laugh at it himself, then begins anew with +fresh vigor; for all the spirits he is driving before him seem to him as +Fata Morgana; ugly masks in fact, if he can but make them turn about, +but he laughs that they seem to others such dainty Ariels. He puts out +his chin sometimes till it looks like the beak of a bird, and his eyes +flash bright instinctive meanings like Jove's bird; yet he is not calm +and grand enough for the eagle: he is more like the falcon, and yet not +of gentle blood enough for that either. He is not exactly like anything +but himself, and therefore you cannot see him without the most hearty +refreshment and goodwill, for he is original, rich, and strong enough to +afford a thousand faults; one expects some wild land in a rich kingdom. +His talk, like his books, is full of pictures, his critical strokes +masterly; allow for his point of view, and his survey is admirable. He +is a large subject; I cannot speak more nor wiselier of him now, nor +needs it; his works are true, to blame and praise him, the Siegfried of +England, great and powerful, if not quite invulnerable, and of a might +rather to destroy evil than legislate for good. At all events, he seems +to be what Destiny intended, and represents fully a certain side; so we +make no remonstrance as to his being and proceeding for himself, though +we sometimes must for us. + + * * * * * + + +=_Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1809-._= (Manual, p. 520.) + +From "The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table." + +=_211._= CONSEQUENCES OF EXPOSING AN OLD ERROR. + +Did you never, in walking in the fields, come across a large flat stone +which had lain, nobody knows how long, just where you found it, with the +grass forming a little hedge, as it were, all round it, close to its +edges,--and have you not, in obedience to a kind of feeling that told +you it had been lying there long enough, insinuated your stick, or your +foot, or your fingers, under its edge, and turned it over as a housewife +turns a cake, when she says to herself, "It's done brown enough by this +time?" What an odd revelation, and what an unforeseen and unpleasant +surprise to a small community, the very existence of which you had not +suspected, until the sudden dismay and scattering among its members +produced by your turning the old stone over! Blades of grass flattened +down, colorless, matted together, as if they had been bleached and +ironed; hideous crawling creatures, some of them coleopterous or +horny-shelled,--turtle-bugs one wants to call them; some of them softer +but cunningly spread out and compressed like Lepine watches; (Nature +never loses a crack or a crevice, mind you, or a joint in a tavern +bedstead, but she always has one of her flat pattern live timekeepers +to slide into it;) black, glossy crickets, with their long filaments +sticking out like the whips of four-horse stage-coaches; motionless, +slug-like creatures, young larvae, perhaps more horrible in their pulpy +stillness than even in the infernal wriggle of maturity. But no sooner +is the stone turned and the wholesome light of day let upon this +compressed and blinded community of creeping things, than all of them +which enjoy the luxury of legs--and some of them have a good many--rush +round wildly, butting each other and everything in their way, and end in +a general stampede for underground retreats from the region poisoned by +sunshine. _Next year_ you will find the grass growing tall and green +where the stone lay; the ground-bird builds her nest where the beetle +had his hole; the dandelion and the buttercup are growing there, and the +broad fans of insect-angels open and shut over their golden disks, as +the rhythmic waves of blissful consciousness pulsate through their +glorified being. + +--The young fellow whom they call John saw fit to say, in his very +familiar way,--at which I do not choose to take offence, but which I +sometimes think it necessary to repress,--that I was coming it rather +strong on the butterflies. + +No, I replied; there is meaning in each of those images, the butterfly +as well as the others. The stone is ancient error. The grass is human +nature borne down and bleached of all its color by it. The shapes which +are found beneath are the crafty beings that thrive in darkness, and the +weaker organisms kept helpless by it. He who turns the stone over is +whosoever puts the staff of truth to the old lying incubus, no matter +whether he do it with a serious face or a laughing one. The next year +stands for the coming time. Then shall the nature which had lain +blanched and broken, rise in its full stature and native hues, in the +sunshine. Then shall God's minstrels build their nests in the hearts of +a new-born humanity. Then shall beauty--Divinity taking outlines and +color--light upon the souls of men as the butterfly, image of the +beautified spirit rising from the dust, soars from the shell that held +a poor grub, which would never have found wings, had not the stone been +lifted. + +You never need think you can turn over any old falsehood without a +terrible squirming and scattering of the horrid little population that +dwells under it. + + * * * * * + +=_212._= PLEASURES OF BOATING. + +I dare not publicly name the rare joys, the infinite delights, that +intoxicate me on some sweet June morning, when the river and bay are +smooth as a sheet of beryl-green silk, and I run along ripping it up +with my knife-edged shell of a boat, the rent closing after me like +those wounds of angels which Milton tells of, but the seam still shining +for many a long road behind me. To lie still, over the Flats, where the +waters are shallow, and see the crabs crawling and the sculpins gliding +busily and silently beneath the boat,--to rustle in through the long +harsh grass that leads up some tranquil creek,--to take shelter from the +sunbeams under one of the thousand-footed bridges, and look down its +interminable colonnades, crusted with green and oozy growths, studded +with minute barnacles, and belted with rings of dark muscles, while +overhead, streams and thunders that other river, whose every wave is +a human soul flowing to eternity as the river below flows to the +ocean,--lying there moored unseen, in loneliness so profound that +the columns of Tadmoor in the Desert could not seem more remote from +life,--the cool breeze on one's forehead, the stream whispering against +the half-sunken pillars,--why should I tell of these things, that I +should live to see my beloved haunts invaded and the waves blackened +with boats as with a swarm of water-beetles? What a city of idiots +we must be, not to have covered this glorious bay with gondolas and +wherries, as we have just learned to cover the ice in winter with +skaters! + + * * * * * + +From "The Guardian Angel." + +=_213._= THE UNSPOKEN DECLARATION. + +Myrtle had, perhaps, never so seriously inclined her ear to the honeyed +accents of the young pleader. He flattered her with so much tact, +that she thought she heard an unconscious echo through his lips of an +admiration which he only shared with all around him. But in him he made +it seem discriminating, deliberate, not blind, but very real. This it +evidently was which had led him to trust her with his ambitions and his +plans,--they might be delusions, but he could never keep them from her, +and she was the one woman in the world to whom he thought he could +safely give his confidence. + +The dread moment was close at had. Myrtle was listening with an +instinctive premonition of what was coming,--ten thousand mothers and +grandmothers, and great-grandmothers, and so on, had passed through it +all in preceding generations, until time readied backwards to the sturdy +savage who asked no questions of any kind, but knocked down the primeval +great-grandmother of all, and carried her off to his hole in the rock, +or into the tree where he had made his nest. Why should not the coming +question announce itself by stirring in the pulses, and thrilling in the +nerves, of the descendant of all these grandmothers? + +She was leaning imperceptibly towards him, drawn by the mere blind +elemental force, as the plummet was attracted to the side of +Schehallien. Her lips were parted, and she breathed a little faster than +so healthy a girl ought to breathe in a state of repose. The steady +nerves of William Murray Bradshaw felt unwonted thrills and tremors +tingling through them, as he came nearer and nearer the few simple words +with which he was to make Myrtle Hazard the mistress of his destiny. His +tones were becoming lower and more serious; there were slight breaks +once or twice in the conversation; Myrtle had cast down her eyes. + +"There is but one word more to add," he murmured softly, as he bent +towards her-- + +A grave voice interrupted him. "Excuse me, Mr. Bradshaw," said Master +Byles Gridley, "I wish to present a young gentleman to my friend here. I +promised to show him the most charming young person I have the honor to +be acquainted with, and I must redeem my pledge. Miss Hazard, I have +the pleasure of introducing to your acquaintance my distinguished young +friend, Mr. Clement Lindsay." + + * * * * * + +From "Currents and Counter Currents." + +=_214._= MECHANISM OF VITAL ACTION. + +But if the student of nature and the student of divinity can once agree +that all the forces of the universe, as well as all its power, +are immediately dependent upon its Creator,--that He is not only +omni_potent_ but omni_movent_,--we have no longer any fear of nebular +theories, or doctrines of equivocal generation, or of progressive +development.... + +We begin then by examining the general rules which the Creator seems +to have prescribed to His own operations. We ask, in the first place, +whether He is wont, so far as we know, to employ a great multitude +of materials, patterns, and forces, or whether He has seen fit to +accomplish many different ends by the employment of a few of these only. + +In all our studies of external nature, the tendency of increasing +knowledge has uniformly been to show that the rules of creation are +simplicity of material, economy of inventive effort, and thrift in the +expenditure of force. All the endless forms in which matter presents +itself to us, are resolved by chemistry into some three-score supposed +simple substances, some of these perhaps being only modifications of the +same element. The shapes of beasts and birds, of reptiles and fishes, +vary in every conceivable degree; yet a single vertebra is the pattern +and representation of the framework of them all, from eels to elephants. +The identity reaches still further,--across a mighty gulf of being,--but +bridges it over with a line of logic as straight as a sunbeam, and as +indestructible as the scymitar-edge that spanned the chasm, in the fable +of the Indian Hades. Strange as it may sound, the tail which the serpent +trails after him in the dust, and the head of Plato, were struck in the +die of the same primitive conception, and differ only in their special +adaptation to particular ends. Again, the study of the movements of the +universe has led us, from their complex phenomena, to the few simple +forces from which they flow. The falling apple and the rolling planet +are shown to obey the same tendency. The stick of sealing-wax which +draws a feather to it, is animated by the same impulse that convulses +the stormy heavens. These generalizations have simplified our view of +the grandest material operations, yet we do not feel that creative power +and wisdom have been shorn of any single ray, by the demonstrations of +Newton, or of Franklin. On the contrary, the larger the collection of +seemingly heterogeneous facts we can bring under the rule of a single +formula, the nearer we feel that we have reached towards the source +of knowledge, and the more perfectly we trace the little arc of +the immeasurable circle which comes within the range of our hasty +observations, at first like the broken fragments of a many-sided +polygon, but at last as a simple curve which encloses all we know, or +can know, of nature. To our own intellectual wealth, the gain is like +that of the over-burdened traveller, who should exchange hundred-weights +of iron for ounces of gold. Evanescent, formless, unstable, impalpable, +a fog of uncondensed experiences hovers over our consciousness like an +atmosphere of uncombined gases. One spark of genius shoots through +it, and its elements rush together and glitter before us in a single +translucent drop. It would hardly be extravagant to call Science the art +of packing knowledge. + + * * * * * + + +=_John William Draper,[52] 1810-._= + +From the "Human Physiology." + +=_215._= TRUTHS IN THE ANCIENT PHILOSOPHIES. + +It is not my intention to enter on an examination, or even enumeration, +of ancient philosophical opinions, nor to show that many of the +doctrines which have been brought forward within the last three +centuries existed in embryo in those times. It may, however, be observed +that, in the midst of much error, there were those who held just views +of the various problems of theology, law, politics, philosophy, and +particularly of the fundamental doctrines of natural science, the +constitution of the solar system, the geological history of the earth, +the nature of chemical forces, the physiological relations of animals +and plants. + +It is supposed by many, whose attention has been casually drawn to the +philosophical opinions of antiquity, that the doctrines which we still +retain as true came to the knowledge of the old philosophers, not so +much by processes of legitimate investigation as by mere guessing or +crude speculation, for which there was an equal chance whether they were +right or wrong; but a closer examination will show that many of them +must have depended on results previously determined or observed by the +Africans or Asiatics, and thus they seem to indicate that the human mind +has undergone in twenty centuries but little change in its manner of +action, and that, commencing with the same data, it always comes to the +same conclusions. Nor is this at all dependent on any inherent logic +of truth. Very many of the errors of antiquity have re-appeared in our +times. If the Greek schools were infected with materialism, pantheism, +and atheism, the later progress of philosophy has shown the same +characters. To a certain extent, such doctrines will receive an +impression from the prevailing creeds, but the arguments which have been +appealed to in their favor have always been the same. The distinction +between these heresies in ancient and modern times lies chiefly in the +grosser characters which they formerly assumed, arising partly from +the reflected influence of the existing mythology, and partly from the +imperfections of exact knowledge. Even the errors of early antiquity are +venerable. We must judge our predecessors by the rules by which we +hope posterity will judge us, making a generous allowance for the +imperfections of reason, the infirmities of character, and especially +for the prejudices of the times. To have devoutly believed in the +existence of a human soul, to have looked forward to its continuing +after the death of the body, to have expected a future state of rewards +and punishments, and to have drawn therefrom, as a philosophical +conclusion, the necessity of leading a virtuous life--these, though +they may be enveloped in a cloud of errors, are noble results of the +intellect of man. + +[Footnote 52: Distinguished as an author in chemistry +and physiology, and as a philosophical historian: a native of England, +but long a professor in New York University.] + + * * * * * + +From "Thoughts on the Future Civil Policy of America." + +=_216._= PROSPECTIVE INFLUENCES OF THE REPUBLIC. + +Now, when, we consider the position of the American continent,--its +Atlantic front looking upon Europe, its Pacific front looking upon +Asia,--when we reflect how much Nature has done for it in the wonderful +river system she has bestowed, and how varied are the mineral and +agricultural products it yields, it would seem as if we should be +constrained by circumstances to carry out spontaneously in practical +life the abstract suggestions of policy.... Great undertakings, such +as the construction of the Pacific Railroad, pressed into existence by +commercial motives and fostered for military reasons, will indirectly +accomplish political objects not yielding in importance to those that +are obvious and avowed. + +A few years more, and the influence of the great republic will +resistlessly extend in a direction that will lead to surprising +results.... The stream of Chinese emigration already setting into +California is but the precursor of the flood that is to come. Here are +the fields, there are the men. The dominant power on the Pacific Ocean +must necessarily exert a controlling influence in the affairs of Asia. + +The Roman empire is regarded, perhaps not unjustly, as the most imposing +of all human political creations. Italy extended her rule across the +eastern and western basins of the Mediterranean Sea, from the confines +of Parthia to Spain. A similar central, but far grander, position is +occupied by the American continent. The partitions of an interior and +narrow sea are replaced by the two great oceans. But, since history ever +repeats itself, the maxims that guided the policy of Rome in her advance +to sovereignty are not without application here. Her mistakes may be +monitions to us. + +A great, a homogeneous, and yet an active people, having strength and +security in its political institutions, may look forward to a career of +glory. It may, without offense, seek to render its life memorable in the +annals of the human race. + + * * * * * + + +=_James Russell Lowell, 1810-._= (Manual, pp. 503, 520.) + +From "Among my Books." + +=_217._= NEW ENGLAND TWO CENTURIES AGO. + +I have little sympathy with declaimers about the Pilgrim Fathers, who +look upon them all as men of grand conceptions and superhuman foresight. +An entire ship's company of Columbuses is what the world never saw. It +is not wise to form any theory and fit our facts to it, as a man in a +hurry is apt to cram his traveling-bag, with a total disregard of shape +or texture. But perhaps it may be found that the facts will only fit +comfortably together on a single plan, namely, that the fathers did have +a conception (which those will call grand who regard simplicity as a +necessary element of grandeur) of founding here a commonwealth on +those two eternal bases of Faith and Work; that they had, indeed, no +revolutionary ideas of universal liberty; but yet, what answered the +purpose quite as well, an abiding faith in the brotherhood of man and +the fatherhood of God; and that they did not so much propose to make all +things new, as to develop the latent possibilities of English law and +English character by clearing away the fences by which the abuse of +the one was gradually discommoning the other from the broad fields of +natural right. They were not in advance of their age, as it is called, +for no one who is so can ever work profitably in it; but they were alive +to the highest and most earnest thinking of their time. + + * * * * * + +=_218._= From an "Essay on Dryden." + +I do not think he added a single word to the language, unless, as +I suspect, he first used magnetism in its present sense of moral +attraction. What he did in his best writing was, to use the English as +if it were a spoken, and not merely an inkhorn language; as if it were +his own to do what he pleased with it, as if it need not be ashamed of +itself. In this respect, his service to our prose was greater than +any other man has ever rendered. He says he formed his style upon +Tillotson's (Bossuet on the other hand, formed _his_ upon Corneille's); +but I rather think he got it at Will's, for its greatest charm is, that +it has the various freedom of talk. In verse, he has a pomp which, +excellent in itself, became pompousness in his imitators. But he had +nothing of Milton's ear for various rhythm and interwoven harmony. He +knew how to give new modulation, sweetness, and force to the pentameter; +but in what used to be called pindarics, I am heretic enough to think +he generally failed. + + * * * * * + +From "My Study Windows." + +=_219._= LOVE OF BIRDS AND SQUIRRELS. + +Wilson's thrush comes every year to remind me of that most poetic of +ornithologists. He flits before me through the pine-walk like the very +genius of solitude. A pair of pewees have built immemorially on a +jutting brick in the arched entrance to the ice-house. Always on the +same brick, and never more than a single pair, though two broods of five +each are raised there every summer. How do they settle their claim to +the homestead? By what right of primogeniture? Once, the children of a +man employed about the place ooelogized the nest, and the pewees left us +for a year or two. I felt towards those boys as the messmates of the +Ancient Mariner did towards him after he had shot the albatross. But the +pewees came back at last, and one of them is now on his wonted perch, so +near my window that I can hear the click of his bill as he snaps a fly +on the wing.... The pewee is the first bird to pipe up in the morning; +and, during the early summer he preludes his matutinal ejaculation of +_pewee_ with a slender whistle, unheard at any other time. He saddens +with the season, and, as summer declines, he changes his note to _eheu, +pewee_! I as if in lamentation. Had he been an Italian bird, Ovid would +have had a plaintive tale to tell about him. He is so familiar as often +to pursue a fly through the open window into my library. + +There is something inexpressibly dear to me in these old friendships of +a lifetime. There is scarce a tree of mine but has had, at some time or +other, a happy homestead among its boughs, to which I cannot say, + + "Many light hearts and wings, + Which now be dead, lodged in thy living bowers." + +My walk under the pines would lose half its summer charm were I to miss +that shy anchorite, the Wilson's thrush, nor hear in haying time +the metallic ring of his song, that justifies his rustic name of +_scythe-whet_. I protect my game as jealously as an English squire. If +anybody had ooelogized a certain cuckoo's nest I know of (I have a pair +in my garden every year), it would have left me a sore place in my mind +for weeks. I love to bring these aborigines back to the mansuetude they +showed to the early voyagers, and before (forgive the involuntary pun), +they had grown accustomed to man and knew his savage ways. And they +repay your kindness with a sweet familiarity too delicate ever to breed +contempt. I have made a Penn-treaty with them, preferring that to the +Puritan way with the native, which converted them to a little Hebraism +and a great deal of Medford rum. If they will not come near enough to me +(as most of them will), I bring them close with an opera-glass,--a much +better weapon than a gun. I would not, if I could, convert them from +their pretty pagan ways. The only one I sometimes have savage doubts +about, is the red squirrel. I _think_ he ooelogizes; I _know_ he eats +cherries, (we counted five of them at one time in a single tree, the +stones pattering down like the sparse hail that preludes a storm), and +that he knaws off the small end of pears to get at the seeds. He steals +the corn from under the noses of my poultry. But what would you have? He +will come down upon the limb of the tree I am lying under, till he is +within a yard of me. He and his mate will scurry up and down the great +black-walnut for my diversion, chattering like monkeys. Can I sign his +death-warrant who has tolerated me about his grounds so long? Not I. Let +them steal, and welcome, I am sure I should, had I the same bringing up +and the same temptation. As for the birds, I do not believe there is one +of them but does more good than harm; and of how many featherless bipeds +can this be said. + + * * * * * + +=_220._= CHAUCER'S LOVE OF NATURE. + +He was the first great poet who really loved outward nature as the +source of conscious pleasurable emotion. The Troubadour hailed the +return of spring, but with him it was a piece of empty ritualism. +Chaucer took a true delight in the new green of the leaves, and the +return of singing birds--a delight as simple as that of Robin Hood:-- + + "In summer when the shaws be sheen, + And leaves be large and long, + It is full merry in fair forest + To hear the small birds' song." + +He has never so much as heard of the burthen and the mystery of all +this unintelligible world. His flowers and trees and birds have never +bothered themselves with Spinoza. He himself sings more like a bird than +any other poet, because it never occurred to him, as to Goethe, that he +ought to do so. He pours himself out in sincere joy and thankfulness. +When we compare Spenser's imitations of him with the original passages, +we feel that the delight of the later poet was more in the expression +than in the thing itself. Nature, with him, is only to be transfigured +by art. We walk among Chaucer's sights and sounds; we listen to +Spenser's musical reproduction of them. In the same way the pleasure +which Chaucer takes in telling his stories, has, in itself, the effect +of consummate skill, and makes us follow all the windings of his fancy +with sympathetic interest. His best tales run on like one of our inland +rivers, sometimes hastening a little and turning upon themselves in +eddies, that dimple without retarding the current, sometimes loitering +smoothly, while here and there a quiet thought, a tender feeling, a +pleasant image, a golden-hearted verse, opens quietly as a water-lily to +float on the surface without breaking it into ripple.... Chaucer never +shows any signs of effort, and it is a main proof of his excellence that +he can be so inadequately sampled by detached passages, by single lines +taken away from the connection in which they contribute to the general +effect. He has that continuity of thought, that evenly prolonged power, +and that delightful equanimity, which characterize the higher orders of +mind. There is something in him of the disinterestedness that made the +Greeks masters in art. His phrase is never importunate. His simplicity +is that of elegance, not of poverty. The quiet unconcern with which he +says his best things is peculiar to him among English poets, though +Goldsmith, Addison, and Thackeray, have approached it in prose. He +prattles inadvertently away, and all the while, like the princess in the +story, lets fall a pearl at every other word. It is such a piece of +good luck to be natural. It is the good gift which the fairy god-mother +brings to her prime favorites in the cradle. If not genius, it is alone +what makes genius amiable in the arts. If a man have it not he will +never find it; for when it is sought it is gone. + + * * * * * + + +=_Edgar Allen Poe, 1811-1849._= (Manual, p. 510.) + +From "The Masque of the Red Death." + +=_221._= CHIMING OF THE CLOCK. + +... The seventh apartment was closely shrouded in black velvet +tapestries that hung all over the ceiling and down the walls, falling in +heavy folds upon a carpet of the same material and hue. But in this +chamber only, the color of the windows failed to correspond with the +decorations. The panes here were scarlet--a deep blood color. Now in no +one of the seven apartments was there any lamp or candelabrum, amid the +profusion of golden ornaments that lay scattered to and fro, or depended +from the roof. There was no light of any kind emanating from lamp or +candle within the suite of chambers. But in the corridors that followed +the suite, there stood, opposite to each window, a heavy tripod, bearing +a brazier of fire, that projected its rays through the tinted glass and +so glaringly illumined the room. And thus were produced a multitude of +gaudy and fantastic appearances. But in the western or black chamber, +the effect of the fire-light that streamed upon the dark hangings +through the blood-tinted panes, was ghastly in the extreme, and produced +so wild a look upon the countenances of those who entered, that there +were few of the company bold enough to set foot within its precincts at +all. + +It was in this apartment, also, that there stood against the western +wall, a gigantic clock of ebony. Its pendulum swung to and fro with a +dull, heavy, monotonous clang; and when the minute-hand made the circuit +of the face, and the hour was to be stricken, there came from the brazen +lungs of the clock a sound which was clear and loud and deep, and +exceedingly musical, but of so peculiar a note and emphasis that, at +each lapse of an hour, the musicians of the orchestra were constrained +to pause, momentarily, in their performance, to hearken to the sound; +and thus the waltzers perforce ceased their evolutions; and there was a +brief disconcert of the whole gay company; and, while the chimes of the +clock yet rang, it was observed that the giddiest grew pale, and the +more aged and sedate passed their hands over their brows, as if in +confused revery or meditation. But when the echoes had fully ceased, a +light laughter at once pervaded the assembly; the musicians looked at +each other and smiled, as if at their own nervousness and folly, and +made whispering vows, each to the other, that the next chiming of the +clock should produce in them no similar emotion; and then, after the +lapse of sixty minutes, (which embrace three thousand and six hundred +seconds of the Time that flies,) there came yet another chiming of +the clock, and then were the same disconcert and tremulousness and +meditation as before. + + * * * * * + +From his "Essays." + +=_222._= The Philosophy of Composition. + +There is a radical error, I think, in the usual mode of constructing +a story. Either history affords a thesis--or one is suggested by an +incident of the day--or, at best, the author sets himself to work in +the combination of striking events to form merely the basis of his +narrative--designing, generally, to fill in with description, dialogue, +or autorial comment, whatever crevices of fact, or action, may, from +page to page, render themselves apparent. + +I prefer commencing with the consideration of an _effect_, keeping +originality _always_ in view--for he is false to himself who ventures to +dispense with so obvious and so easily attainable a source of interest. +I say to myself, in the first place, "Of the innumerable effects, or +impressions, of which the heart, the intellect, or (more generally) +the soul, is susceptible, what one shall I, on the present occasion, +select?" Having chosen a novel, first, and secondly a vivid, effect, I +consider whether it can be best wrought by incident or tone, whether by +ordinary incidents and peculiar tone, or the converse, or by peculiarity +both of incident and tone--afterward looking about me (or rather within) +for such combinations of event, or tone, as shall best aid me in the +construction of the effect. + +I have often thought how interesting a magazine paper might be written +by any author who would--that is to say, who could--detail, step by +step, the process by which any one of his compositions attained its +ultimate point of completion. Why such a paper has never been given to +the world, I am much at a loss to say--but, perhaps, the autorial vanity +has had more to do with the omission than any one other cause. Most +writers, poets in especial, prefer having it understood that they +compose by a species of fine frenzy, an ecstatic intuition, and would +positively shudder at letting the public take a peep behind the scenes, +at the elaborate and vacillating crudities of thought--at the true +purposes seized only at the last moment--at the innumerable glimpses of +idea that arrived not at the maturity of full view--at the fully matured +fancies discarded in despair as unmanageable--at the cautious selections +and rejections--at the painful erasures and interpolations--in a +word, at the wheels and pinions, the tackle for scene-shifting--the +step-ladders and demon-traps--the cock's feathers, the red paint and +the black patches, which, in ninety-nine cases out of the hundred, +constituted the properties of the literary _histrio_. + +I am aware, on the other hand, that the case is by no means common in +which an author is at all in condition to retrace the steps by which his +conclusions have been attained. In general, suggestions having arisen +pell-mell, are pursued and forgotten in a similar manner. + + * * * * * + + +=_Henry T. Tuckerman, 1813-._= + +From "New England Philosophy," an Essay from "The Optimist." + +=_223._= THE HEART SUPERIOR TO THE INTELLECT. + +Constant supplies of knowledge to the intellect, and the exclusive +cultivation of reason, may, indeed, make a pedant and a logician; but +the probability is, these benefits--if such they are--will be gained at +the expense of the soul. Sentiment, in its broadest acceptation, is as +essential to the true enjoyment and grace of life as mind. Technical +information, and that quickness of apprehension which New Englanders +call smartness, are not so valuable to a human being as sensibility to +the beautiful, and a spontaneous appreciation of the divine influences +which fill the realms of vision and of sound, and the world of action +and, feeling. The tastes, affections, and sentiments are more absolutely +the man than his talents or acquirements. And yet it is by, and through, +the latter that we are apt to estimate character, of which they are +at best but fragmentary evidences. It is remarkable that in the New +Testament, allusions to the intellect are so rare, while the "heart" and +the "spirit we are of" are ever appealed to.... + +To what end are society, popular education, churches, and all the +machinery of culture, if no living truth is elicited which fertilizes, +as well as enlightens. Shakespeare undoubtedly owed his marvelous +insight into the human soul, to his profound sympathy with man. He might +have conned whole libraries on the philosophy of the passions, he might +have coldly observed facts for years, and never have conceived of +jealousy like Othello's,--the remorse of Macbeth, or love like that of +Juliet.... + +Sometimes, in musing upon genius in its simpler manifestations, it seems +as if the great art of human culture consisted chiefly in preserving the +glow and freshness of the heart. It is certain that, in proportion as +its merely mental strength and attainment take the place of natural +sentiment, in proportion as we acquire the habit of receiving all +impressions through the reason, the teachings of Nature grow indistinct +and cold.... It is when we are overcome, and the pride of intellect +vanquished before the truth of nature, when instead of coming to a +logical decision we are led to bow in profound reverence before the +mysteries of life, when we are led back to childhood, or up to God, by +some powerful revelation of the sage or minstrel, it is then our natures +grow. To this end is all art. Exquisite vocalism, beautiful statuary, +and painting, and all true literature, have not for their great object +to employ the ingenuity of prying critics, or furnish the world with a +set of new ideas, but to move the whole nature by the perfection and +truthfulness of their appeal. There is a certain atmosphere exhaled from +the inspired page of genius, which gives vitality to the sentiments, and +through these, quickens the mental powers. And this is the chief good of +books. + + * * * * * + + +=_H.N. Hudson, 1814-._= (Manual, pp. 480, 501.) + +From "Preface to the Works of Shakespeare." + +=_224._= Shakespeare's Works Instructive. + +It is true, he often lays on us burdens of passion that would not be +borne in any other writer. But whether he wrings the heart with pity, or +freezes the blood with terror, or fires the soul with indignation, the +genial reader still rises from his pages refreshed. The reason of which +is, instruction keeps pace with excitement: he strengthens the mind +in proportion as he loads it. He has been called the great master of +passion: doubtless he is so; yet he makes us think as intensely as he +requires us to feel; while opening the deepest fountains of the heart, +he at the same time unfolds the highest energies of the head. Nay, with +such consummate art does he manage the fiercest tempests of our being, +that in a healthy mind the witnessing of them is always attended with +an overbalance of pleasure. With the very whirlwinds of passion he so +blends the softening and alleviating influences of poetry, that they +relish of nothing but sweetness and health.... He is not wont to exhibit +either utterly worthless or utterly faultless monsters; persons too +good, or too bad, to exist; too high to be loved, or too low to be +pitied; even his worst characters (unless we should except Goneril and +Regan, and even their blood is red like ours) have some slight fragrance +of humanity about them, some indefinable touches, which redeem them from +utter hatred and execration, and keep them within the pale of human +sympathy, or at least of human pity. + + * * * * * + + +=_Mary Henderson Eastman,[53]_= about =_1815-._= + +From "The American Aboriginal Port Folio." + +=_225._= Lake Itasca, the Source of the Mississippi. + +There it lay--the beautiful lake--swaying its folds of crystal water +between the hills that guarded it from its birth. There it lay, placid +as a sleeping child, the tall pines on the surrounding summits standing +like so many motionless and watchful sentinels for its protection. + +There was the sequestered birthplace of that mighty mass of waters, +that, leaving the wilderness of beauty where they lived undisturbed and +unknown, wound their way through many a desolate prairie, and fiercely +lashed the time-worn bluffs, whose sides were as walls to the great +city, where lived and died the toiling multitude. The lake was as some +fair and pure, maiden, in early youth, so beautiful, so full of repose +and truth, that it was impossible to look and not to love.... There was +but one landing to the lake, our travellers found. It was on a small +island, that they called Schoolcraft's Island. On a tall spruce tree +they raised the American flag. There was enough in the novelty of the +scenery, and of the event, to interest the white men of the party. There +was a solemnity mingled with their pleased emotions; for who had made +this grand picture, stretching out in its beauty and majesty before +them? What were they, in comparison with the great and good Being upon +whose works they were gazing? + +[Footnote 53: This lady--a native of Virginia--has written several +interesting books, chiefly relating to Indian tradition.] + + * * * * * + +=_226._= A PLEA FOR THE INDIANS. + +The light of the great council-fire--its blaze once illumined the entire +country we now call our own--is faintly gleaming out its unsteady and +dying rays. Our fathers were guests, and warmed themselves by its +hospitable rays; now we are lords, and rule with an iron hand over those +who received kindly, and entertained generously, the wanderer who came +from afar to worship his God according to his own will. The very hearth +where moulder the ashes of this once never-ceasing fire, is becoming +desolate, the decaying embers sometimes starting into a brief +brilliancy, and then fading into a gloom more sad, more silent, than +ever. Soon will be scattered, as by the winds of heaven, the last ashes +that remain. Think of it, O legislator! as thou standest in the Capitol, +the great council-hall of thy country; plead for them, "upon whose +pathway death's dark shadow falls." + + * * * * * + + +=_Mary E. Moragne,[54] 1815-._= + +From "The Huguenot Town." + +=_227._= RUINS OF THE OLD FRENCH SETTLEMENT. + +An ignorance of the common methods of agriculture practised here, as +well as strong prejudices in favor of their former habits of living, +prevented them from seizing with avidity on large bodies of land, by +individual possession; but the site of a town being selected, a lot of +four acres was apportioned to every citizen. In a short time a hundred +houses had risen, in a regularly compact body, in the square of which +stood a building superior in size and construction to the rest.... + +... The town was soon busy with the industry of its tradesmen; silk and +flax were manufactured, whilst the cultivators of the soil were taxed +with the supply of corn and wine. The hum of cheerful voices arose +during the week, mingled with the interdicted songs of praise; and on +the Sabbath the quiet worshippers assembled in their rustic church, +listened with fervent response to that faithful pastor, who had been +their spiritual leader through perils by sea and land, and who now +directed their free, unrestrained devotion to the Lord of the forest. + +... The woods still wave on in melancholy grandeur, with the added glory +of near a hundred years; but they who once lived and worshipped beneath +them--where are they? Shades of my ancestors,--where? No crumbling +wreck, no mossy ruin, points the antiquarian research to the place of +their sojourn, or to their last resting-places! The traces of a narrow +trench, surrounding a square plat of ground, now covered with the +interlacing arms of hawthorn and wild honey-suckle, arrest the attention +as we are proceeding along a strongly beaten track in the deep woods, +and we are assured that this is the site of the "old French town" which +has given its name to the portion of country around. + +[Footnote 54: One of the best female writers of South Carolina, who has +of late years laid aside her pen.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Richard H. Dana, Jr., 1815-._= (Manual, p. 504.) + +From "Two years before the Mast." + +=_228._= LOSS OF A MAN AT SEA. + + +Death is at all tunes solemn, but never so much so as at sea. A man dies +on shore; his body remains with his friends, and "the mourners go about +the streets;" but when a man falls overboard at sea and is lost, there +is a suddenness in the event, and a difficulty in realizing it, which +give to it an air of awful mystery. A man dies on shore--you follow his +body to the grave, and a stone marks the spot. You are often prepared +for the event. There is always something which helps you to realize it +when it happens, and to recall it when it has passed. A man is shot down +by your side in battle, and the mangled body remains an object, and a +real evidence; but at sea, the man is near you--at your side--you hear +his voice, and in an instant he is gone, and nothing but a vacancy shows +his loss. Then too, at sea--to use a homely but expressive phrase--you +miss a man so much. A dozen men are shut up together in a little bark, +upon the wide, wide sea, and for months and months see no forms and hear +no voices but their own, and one is taken suddenly from among them, and +they miss him at every turn. It is like losing a limb. There are no new +faces or new scenes to fill up the gap. There is always an empty berth +in the forecastle, and one man wanting when the small night watch is +mustered. There is one less to take the wheel, and one less to lay out +with you upon the yard. You miss his form, and the sound of his voice, +for habit had made them almost necessary to you, and each of your senses +feels the loss. + +All these things make such a death peculiarly solemn, and the effect of +it remains upon the crew for some time. There is more kindness shown by +the officers to the crew, and by the crew to one another. There is more +quietness and seriousness. The oath and the loud laugh are gone. The +officers are more watchful, and the crew go more carefully aloft. The +lost man is seldom mentioned, or is dismissed with a sailor's rude +eulogy, "Well, poor George is gone. His cruise is up soon. He knew his +work, and did his duty, and was a good shipmate." Then usually follows +some allusion to another world, for sailors are almost all believers; +but their notions and opinions are unfixed, and at loose ends. They +say,--"God won't be hard upon the poor fellow," and seldom get beyond +the common phrase which seems to imply that their sufferings and hard +treatment here, will excuse them hereafter. _To work hard, live hard, +die hard, and go to hell after all_, would be hard indeed. + +Yet a sailor's life is at best but a mixture of a little good with much +evil, and a little pleasure with much pain. The beautiful is linked with +the revolting, the sublime with the common-place, and the solemn with +the ludicrous. + +We had hardly returned on board with our sad report, before an auction +was held of the poor man's clothes. The captain had first, however, +called all hands aft, and asked them if they were satisfied that +everything had been done to save the man, and if they thought there was +any use in remaining there longer. The crew all said that it was in +vain, for the man did not know how to swim, and was very heavily +dressed. So we then filled away and kept her off to her course. + + * * * * * + + +=_Evert A. Duyckinck, 1816--._= (Manual, p. 502.) + +Essay from "Arcturus." + +=_229._= NEWSPAPERS. + +No one, it has been said, ever takes up a newspaper without interest, or +lays it down without regret. There is a deeper truth in this observation +than at first thought strikes the mind; it is not the casual +disappointment at the loss of fine writing, or the absence of particular +topics of news, or the variety of subjects that dispel all deep-settled +reflection; but a newspaper is in some measure a picture of human life, +and we can no more read its various paragraphs with pleasure, than +we can look back upon the events of any single day with, unmingled +satisfaction.... A man may learn, sitting by his fireside, more than +an angel would desire to know of human life, by reading well a single +newspaper. It is an instrument of many tones, running through the whole +scale of humanity; from the lightest gayety to the gravest sadness; from +the large interests of nations to the humblest affairs of the smallest +individual. On its single page we read of Births, Marriages, and Deaths; +the daily, almost hourly, register of royalty, how it eat, walked, and +laughed; and the single incident the world deems worth recording of the +life of poverty--how it died. It is a picture of motley human life; +a poet's thought, or an orator's eloquence in one column, and the +condemnation of a pickpocket in another.... + +Doubtless it was a very satisfactory thing for a Roman poet, when the +wind was quiet, to get an audience about him, under a portico, and +unwind his well-written scroll for an hour or two; but there must have +been a vast deal of secret machinery, and influence, and agitation, +to keep up his name with the people. The followers of Pythagoras, in +another country, we know, said he had a golden leg, and this satisfied +the people that his philosophy was divine. Truly were they the dark ages +before the invention of newspapers. Besides, what became of literature +when the poet's voice in the public bath, or library, where he recited, +was drowned by the din of arms?... + +What would we not give for a newspaper of the days of Homer, with +personal recollections of the contractors and commanders in the siege of +Troy; a reminiscence of Helen; the unedited fragments of Nestor; or a +traditional saying of Ulysses, who may be supposed too wise to have +published? What such a passage of literature would be to us, the journal +of to-day may be to some long distant age, when it is disentombed from +the crumbling corner-stone of some Astor House, Exchange, or Trinity +Church, on the deserted shore of an island, once New York. What +matters of curiosity would be poured fourth for the attention of the +inquisitive; how many learned theories which had sprung up in the +interim, put to rest; what anxiety moralists would be under to know the +number of churches, the bookseller's advertisements, and the convictions +at the Sessions! Some might be supposed to sigh over our lack of +improvement, the infant state of the arts, and our ineffectual attempts +at electro-magnetism, while others would dwell upon the old times when +Broadway was gayer with life, and the world got along better, than it +has ever done since. + + * * * * * + + +=_Horace Binney Wallace,[55] 1817-1852._= + +From "Art, Scenery, and Philosophy in Europe." + +=_230._= ART AN EMANATION OF RELIGIOUS AFFECTION. + +The spirit, conscious of an emotion of reverence for some unseen subject +of its own apprehension, desires to substantiate and fix its deity, and +to bring the senses into the same adoring attitude; and this can be done +only by setting before them a material representation of the divine. +This is illustrated in the universal and inveterate tendency of early +nations to idolatry.... + +How and why was it that the sculpture of the Greeks attained a character +so exalted that it shines on through our time, with a beam of glory +peculiar and inextinguishable? When we enter the chambers of the +Vatican, we are presently struck with the mystic influence that rays +from those silent forms that stand ranged along the walls. Like the +moral prestige that might encircle the vital presence of divine beings, +we behold divinities represented in human shapes idealized into a +significance altogether irresistible. What constitutes that idealizing +modification we know not; but we feel that it imparts to the figures +an interest and impressiveness which natural forms possess not. These +sculptured images seem directly to address the imagination. They do not +suffer the cold and critical survey of the eye, but awaken an instant +and vivid mental consideration. + +... It has sometimes been suggested that the superiority of the Greeks +in delineating the figure, arose from the familiarity with it which they +acquired from their frequent opportunities of viewing it nude,--on +account of their usages, costumes, climate, &c. This is too superficial +an account of that vital faculty of skill and knowledge upon this +subject, which was a part of the inherent capacity of the Greek.... The +outflow and characteristic exercise of Grecian inspiration in sculpture, +was in the representation of their mythology, which included heroes, or +deified men, as well as gods of the first rank. Later, it extended to +winners at the public games, athletes, runners, boxers;--but this class +of persons partook, in the national feeling, of a heroic or half-divine +superiority. A particular type of form, highly ideal, became appropriate +to them, as to the heroes, and to each of the gods. It may be added, +that a capacity thus derived from religious impressibility, extended to +a great number of natural forms, which were to the Greeks measurably +objects of a divine regard. Many animals as connected with the gods, or +with sacrifices, were sacred beings to them, and became subjects of +their surpassing gift in sculpture. In general, nature,--the visible, +the sensible, the actual, was to the Hellenic soul, Religion; as inward +and reflective emotions were and are, to the modern European. + +[Footnote 55: A young writer of great cultivation and of uncommon +promise. His premature death occurred while on a tour in Europe. A +native of Philadelphia.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Henry David Thoreau, 1817-1862._= (Manual, p. 532.) + +From "Autumnal Tints." + +=_231._= DESCRIPTION OF "POKE" OR GARGET, (_Phytolacca Decandra_.) + +Some which stand under our cliffs quite dazzle me with their purple +stems now, and early in September. They are as interesting to me as most +flowers, and one of the most important fruits of our autumn. Every part +is flower, (or fruit,) such is its superfluity of color,--stem, +branch, peduncle, pedicel, petiole, and even the at length yellowish +purple-veined leaves. Its cylindrical racemes of berries of various +hues, from green to dark purple, six or seven inches long, are +gracefully drooping on all sides, offering repasts to the birds; and +even the sepals from which the birds have picked the berries are a +brilliant lake-red, with crimson, flame-like reflections, equal to +anything of the kind,--all on fire with ripeness. Hence the _lacca_, +from lac, lake. There are at the same time flower-buds, flowers, green +berries, dark purple or ripe ones, and these flower-like sepals, all on +the same plant. + +We love to see any redness in the vegetation of the temperate zone. It +is the color of colors. This plant speaks to our blood. It asks a bright +sun on it to make it show to best advantage, and it must be seen at +this season of the year. On warm hill-sides its stems are ripe by the +twenty-third of August. At that date I walked through a beautiful grove +of them, six or seven feet high, on the side of one of our cliffs, where +they ripen early. Quite to the ground they were a deep brilliant purple +with a bloom, contrasting with the still clear green leaves. It appears +a rare triumph of Nature to have produced and perfected such a plant, as +if this were enough for a summer. What a perfect maturity it arrives +at! It is the emblem of a successful life concluded by a death not +premature, which is an ornament to Nature. What if we were to mature as +perfectly, root and branch, glowing in the midst of our decay, like the +Poke! I confess that it excites me to behold them. I cut one for a cane, +for I would fain handle and lean on it. I love to press the berries +between my fingers, and see their juice staining my hand. To walk amid +these upright, branching casks of purple wine, which retain and diffuse +a sunset glow, tasting each one with your eye, instead of counting the +pipes on a London dock,--what a privilege! For Nature's vintage is not +confined to the vine. Our poets have sung of wine, the product of a +foreign plant which commonly they never saw, as if our own plants had +no juice in them more than the singers. Indeed, this has been called by +some the American grape, and though a native of America, its juices are +used in some foreign countries to improve the color of the wine; so that +the poetaster maybe celebrating the virtues of the Poke without knowing +it. Here are berries enough to paint afresh the western sky, and play +the bacchanal with, if you will. And what flutes its ensanguined stems +would make, to be used in such a dance! It is truly a royal plant. I +could spend the evening of the year musing amid the Poke-stems. And +perchance amid these groves might arise at last a new school of +philosophy or poetry. + + * * * * * + +From "Walden, or Life in the Woods." + +=_232._= WALDEN POND. + +The greatest depth was exactly one hundred and two feet, to which may +be added the five feet which it has risen since, making one hundred and +seven. This is a remarkable depth for so small an area; yet not an inch +of it can be spared by the imagination. What if all ponds were shallow? +Would it not react on the minds of men? I am thankful that this pond was +made deep and pure for a symbol. While men believe in the infinite, some +ponds will be thought to be bottomless. + + * * * * * + +From "Life without Principle." + +=_233._= WANTS OF THE AGE. + +I saw, the other day, a vessel which had been wrecked, and many lives +lost, and her cargo of rags, juniper-berries, and bitter almonds, was +strewn along the shore. It seemed hardly worth the while to tempt the +dangers of the sea between Leghorn and New York, for the sake of a cargo +of juniper-berries and bitter almonds. America sending to the Old World +for her bitters! Is not the sea-brine,--is not shipwreck, bitter enough, +to make the cup of life go down here? Yet such, to a great extent, is +our boasted commerce; and there are those who style themselves statesmen +and philosophers who are so blind as to think that progress and +civilization depend on precisely this kind of interchange and +activity,--the activity of flies about a molasses-hogshead. Very well, +observes one, if men were oysters. And very well, answer I, if men were +mosquitoes. + +Lieutenant Herndon, whom our Government sent to explore the Amazon, +and, it is said, to extend the area of Slavery, observed that there was +wanting there "an industrious and active population, who know what the +comforts of life are, and who have artificial wants to draw out the +great resources of the country." But what are the "artificial wants" to +be encouraged? Not the love of luxuries, like the tobacco and slaves +of, I believe, his native Virginia, nor the ice and granite and other +material wealth of our native New England; nor are "the great resources +of a country" that fertility or barrenness of soil which produces these. +The chief want, in every State that I have been into, was a high and +earnest purpose in its inhabitants. This alone draws out "the great +resources" of Nature and at last taxes her beyond her resources; for man +naturally dies out of her. When we want culture more than potatoes, and +illumination more than sugar-plums, then the great resources of a world +are taxed and drawn out, and the result, or staple production, is, not +slaves, nor operatives, but men,--those rare fruits called heroes, +saints, poets, philosophers, and redeemers. + + * * * * * + + +=_Elisabeth F. Ellett, 1818-._= (Manual, pp. 484, 490.) + +From "Pioneer Women of the West" + +=_234._= ESCAPE OF MARY BLEDSOE FROM THE INDIANS. + +It was not consistent with Spencer's chivalrous character to attempt to +save himself by leaving his companion to the mercy of the foe. Bidding +her retreat as fast as possible, and encouraging her to keep her seat +firmly, he protected her by following more slowly in her rear, with his +trusty rifle in his hand. When the Indians in pursuit came too near, +he would raise his weapon as if to fire; and as he was known to be an +excellent marksman, the savages were not willing to encounter him, but +hastened to the shelter of trees, while he continued his retreat. In +this manner he kept them at bay for some miles, not firing a single +shot--for he knew that his threatening had more effect--until Mrs. +Bledsoe reached a station. Her life and his own, were, on this occasion, +saved by his prudence and presence of mind; for both would have been +lost had he yielded to the temptation to fire.... + +Bereaved of her husband, sons, and brother-in-law, by the murderous +savages, Mrs. Bledsoe was obliged to undertake not only the charge of +her husband's estate, but the care of the children, and their education +and settlement in life. These duties were discharged with unwavering +energy and Christian patience.... The record of her worth, and of what +she did and suffered, may win little attention from the careless many, +who regard not the memory of our "pilgrim mothers;" but the recollection +of her gentle virtues has not yet faded from the hearts of her +descendants, and those to whom they tell the story of her life will +acknowledge her the worthy companion of those noble men to whom belongs +the praise of having originated a new colony, and built up a goodly +state in the bosom of the forest. Their patriotic labors, their +struggles with the surrounding savages, their efforts in the maintenance +of the community they had founded,--sealed, as they finally were, with +their own blood, and the blood of their sons and relatives,--will never +be forgotten while the apprehension of what is noble, generous, and +good, survives in the hearts of their countrymen. + + * * * * * + + +=_James Jackson Jarves, 1818-._= (Manual, p. 531.) + +From "Art Hints." + +=_235._= THE ART IDEA. + +The first duty of art, as we have already intimated, is to make our +public buildings and places, as instructive and enjoyable as possible. +They should be pleasurable, full of attractive beauty and eloquent +teachings. Picturesque groupings of natural objects, architectural +surprises, sermons from the sculptor's chisel and the painter's palette, +the ravishment of the soul by its superior senses, the refinement of +mind and body by the sympathetic power of beauty,--these are a +portion of the means which a due estimation of art, as an element of +civilization, inspires the ruling will to provide freely for all. If art +be kept a rare and tabooed thing, a specialty for the rich and powerful, +it excites in the vulgar mind, envy and hate; but proffer it freely to +the public, and the public soon learns to delight in and protect it as +its rightful inheritance. It also tends to develop a brotherhood of +thought and feeling. During the civil strifes of Italy, art flourished +and was respected. Indeed, to some extent, it operated as a sort of +peace society, and was held sacred when nothing else was. Even rude +soldiers, amid the perils and necessities of sieges, turned aside +destruction from the walls that sheltered it. The history of art is full +of records of its power to soften and elevate the human heart. As soon +would man, were it possible, mar one of God's sunsets, as cease to +respect what genius has confided to his care, when once his mind has +been awakened to its meaning. + +The desire for art being awakened, museums to illustrate its technical +and historical progress, and galleries to exhibit its master-works, +become indispensable. In the light of education, appropriations for such +purposes are as much a duty of the government as for any other purpose +connected with the true welfare of the people; for its responsibilities +extend over the entire social system. + + * * * * * + + +=_Edwin P. Whipple, 1819-._= (Manual, p. 501.) + +From "Literature and Life." + +=_236._= WIT AND HUMOR IN LITERATURE. + +Every student of English theological literature knows that much of its +best portions gleams with wit. Five of the greatest humorists that ever +made the world ring with laughter were priests,--Rabelais, Scarron, +Swift, Sterne, and Sydney Smith. The prose works of Milton are radiant +with satire of the sharpest kind. Sydney Smith, one of the most +benevolent, intelligent and influential Englishmen of the nineteenth +century, a man of the most accurate insight and extensive information, +embodied the large stores of his practical wisdom in almost every form +of the ludicrous. Many of the most important reforms in England are +directly traceable to him. He really laughed his countrymen out of some +of their most cherished stupidities of legislation. + +And now let us be just to Mirth. Let us be thankful that we have in Wit +a power before which the pride of wealth and the insolence of office are +abased; which can transfix bigotry and tyranny with arrows of lightning; +which can strike its object over thousands of miles of space, across +thousands of years of time; and which, through its sway over an +universal weakness of man, is an everlasting instrument to make the bad +tremble and the foolish wince. Let us be grateful for the social and +humanizing influences of Mirth. Amid the sorrow, disappointment, agony, +and anguish of the world,--over dark thoughts and tempestuous passions, +the gloomy exaggerations of self-will, the enfeebling illusions of +melancholy,--Wit and Humor, light and lightning, shed their soft +radiance, or dart their electric flash. See how life is warmed and +illumined by Mirth! See how the beings of the mind, with which it has +peopled our imaginations, wrestle with the ills of existence,--feeling +their way into the harshest or saddest meditations, with looks that defy +calamity; relaxing muscles made rigid with pain; hovering o'er the couch +of sickness, with sunshine and laughter in their beneficent faces; +softening the austerity of thoughts whose awful shadows dim and +darken the brain,--loosening the gripe of Misery as it tugs at the +heart-strings! Let us court the society of these gamesome, and genial, +and sportive, and sparkling beings,--whom Genius has left to us as a +priceless bequest; push them not from the daily walks of the world's +life: let them scatter some humanities in the sullen marts of business; +let them glide in through the open doors of the heart; let their glee +lighten up the feast, and gladden the fireside of home: + + "That the night may be filled with music, + And the cares that infest the day + May fold their tents, like the Arabs, + And as silently steal away." + + * * * * * + + +=_Jane T.L. Worthington,-1847._= (Manual, p. 524.) + +From "Love Sketches." + +=_237._= THE SISTERS. + +The sisters were together, together for the last time in the happy home +of their childhood. The window before them was thrown open, and the +shadows of evening were slowly passing from each familiar outline on +which the gazers looked. They were both young and fair; and one, the +elder, wore that pale wreath the maiden wears but once. The accustomed +smile had forsaken her lip now, and the orange-flowers were scarcely +whiter than the cheek they shaded. The sister's hands were clasped in +each other, and they sat silently watching the gradual brightening of +the crescent moon, and the coming forth, one by one, of the stars. Not a +cloud was floating in the quiet sky; the light wind hardly stirred the +young leaves, and the air was fraught with the fragrance of early spring +flowers. It was the hour when reverie is deepest, and fantasies have the +earnestness of truth, when memory is melancholy in its vividness, and we +feel, "almost like a reality," the presence of those who may bless our +pathway no more. The loved, the lost-- + + "So many, yet how few!"-- + +gather around us, not as they are, chastened and troubled by battling +with trials and disappointments, but as they used to be, in the glow of +unwearied expectation. Old fears flit before us altered into pleasures, +and old hopes return bathed in tears. + + * * * * * + + +=_Alice Cary, 1820-1871._= (Manual, p. 484.) + +From "Clovernook." + +=_238._= THE END OF THE HISTORY. + +And so with the various seasons of the year. May, with her green lap +full of sprouting leaves and bright blossoms, her song-birds making the +orchards and meadows vocal, and rippling streams and cultivated gardens; +June, with full-blown roses and humming-bees, plenteous meadows and wide +cornfields, with embattled lines rising thick and green; August, with +reddened orchards and heavy-headed harvests of grain, October, with +yellow leaves and swart shadows; December, palaced in snow, and idly +whistling through his numb fingers;-all have their various charm; and in +the rose-bowers of summer, and as we spread our hands before the torches +of winter, we say joyfully, "Thou hast made all things beautiful in +their time." We sit around the fireside, and the angel feared and +dreaded by us all comes in, and one is taken from our midst. Hands that +have caressed us, locks that have fallen over us like a bath of beauty, +are hidden beneath shroud-folds. We see the steep edges of the grave, +and hear the heavy rumble of the clods; and, in the burst of passionate +grief, it seems that we can never still the crying of our hearts. But +the days rise and set, dimly at first, and seasons come and go, and, +by little and little, the weight rises from the heart, and the shadows +drift from before the eyes, till we feel again the spirit of gladness, +and see again the old beauty of the world. + + * * * * * + + +=_Donald G. Mitchell, 1822-._= (Manual, pp. 504, 531.) + +From "Wayside Hints." + +=_239._= A TALK ABOUT PORCHES. + +A country house without a porch is like a man without an eyebrow; it +gives expression, and gives expression where you most want it. The least +office of a porch is that of affording protection against the rain-beat +and the sun-beat. It is an interpreter of character; it humanizes bald +walls and windows; it emphasizes architectural tone; it gives hint of +hospitality; it is a hand stretched out (figuratively and lumberingly, +often) from the world within to the world without. + +At a church door even, a porch seems to me to be a blessed thing, and +a most worthy and patent demonstration of the overflowing Christian +charity, and of the wish to give shelter. Of all the images of wayside +country churches which keep in my mind, those hang most persistently +and agreeably, which show their jutting, defensive rooflets to keep the +brunt of the storm from the church-goer while he yet fingers at the +latch of entrance. + +I doubt if there be not something beguiling in a porch over the door of +a country shop--something that relieves the odium of bargaining, and +imbues even the small grocer with a flavor of cheap hospitalities. The +verandas (which is but a long translation of porch) that stretch along +the great river front of the Bellevue Hospital diffuse somehow a +gladsome cheer over that prodigious caravansery of the sick; and I never +see the poor creatures in their bandaged heads and their flannel +gowns, enjoying their convalescence in the sunshine of those exterior +corridors, but I reckon the old corridors for as much as the young +doctors, in bringing them from convalescence into strength, and a new +fight with the bedevilments of the world. + +What shall we say, too, of inn porches? Does anybody doubt their +fitness? Is there any question of the fact--with any person of +reasonably imaginative mood--that Falstaff and Nym and Bardolph, and the +rest, once lolled upon the benches of the porch that overhung the door +of the Boar's Head Tavern, Eastcheap? Any question about a porch, and a +generous one, at the Tabard, Southwark--presided over by that wonderful +host who so quickened the story-telling humors of the Canterbury +pilgrims of Master Chaucer? + +Then again, in our time, if one were to peel away the verandas and the +exterior corridors from our vast watering-place hostelries, what an arid +baldness of wall and of character would be left! All sentiment, all +glowing memories, all the music of girlish footfalls, all echoes of +laughter and banter and rollicking mirth, and tenderly uttered vows +would be gone. + +King David when he gave out to his son Solomon the designs for the +building of the Temple, included among the very first of them, (1 Chron. +XXVIII. 11) the "pattern of a porch." It is not, however, of porches +of shittim-wood and of gold, that I mean to talk just now--nor even of +those elaborate architectural features which will belong of necessity +to the entrance-way of every complete study of a country house. I plead +only for some little mantling hood about every exterior door-way, +however humble. + +There are hundreds of naked, vulgar-looking dwellings, scattered up and +down our country highroads, which only need a little deft and adroit +adaptation of the hospitable feature which I have made the subject of +this paper, to assume an air of modest grace, in place of the present +indecorous exposure of a wanton. + + * * * * * + + +=_Richard Grant White,[56] 1822-._= + +From "Memoirs of the Life of William Shakespeare." + +=_240._= THE CHARACTER OF SHAKESPEARE'S STYLE. + +Writing for the general public, he used such language as would convey +his meaning to his auditors,--the common phraseology of his period. +But what a language was that! In its capacity for the varied and exact +expression of all moods of mind, all forms of thought, all kinds of +emotion, a tongue unequaled by any other known to literature! A language +of exhaustless variety; strong without ruggedness, and flexible without +effeminacy. A manly tongue; yet bending itself gracefully and lovingly +to the tenderest and the daintiest needs of woman, and capable of giving +utterance to the most awful and impressive thoughts, in homely words +that come from the lips, and go to the heart, of childhood. It would +seem as if this language had been preparing itself for centuries to be +the fit medium of utterance for the world's greatest poet. Hardly more +than a generation had passed since the English tongue had reached its +perfect maturity; just time enough to have it well worked into the +unconscious usage of the people, when Shakespeare appeared, to lay upon +it a burden of thought which would test its extremest capability. He +found it fully formed and developed, but not yet uniformed and cramped +and disciplined by the lexicographers and rhetoricians,--those martinets +of language, who seem to have lost for us in force and flexibility as +much as they have gained for us in precision. The phraseology of that +day was notably large and simple among ordinary writers and speakers. +Among the college-bred writers and their imitators, there was too +great a fondness for little conceits; but even with them this was an +extraneous blemish, like that sometimes found in the ornament upon a +noble building. Shakespeare seized this instrument to whose tones all +ears were open, and with the touch of a master he brought out all its +harmonies. It lay ready to any hand; but his was the first to use it +with absolute control; and among all its successors, great as some +are, he has had, even in this single respect, no rival. No unimportant +condition of his supreme mastery over expression was his entire freedom +from restraint--it may almost be said from consciousness--in the choice +of language. He was no precisian, no etymologist, no purist. He was not +purposely writing literature. The only criticism that he feared was that +of his audience, which represented the English people of all grades +above the peasantry. These he wished should not find his writing +incomprehensible or dull: no more. If we except the translators of the +Bible, Shakespeare wrote the best English that has yet been written. + +[Footnote 56: A native of New York City; distinguished as a student and +editor of Shakespeare, and more recently for his critical articles on +the English language and grammar.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Thomas Wentworth Higginson, 1823-._= (Manual, p. 531). + +From "Atlantic Essays." + +=_241._= ELEGANCE OF FRENCH STYLE. + +In France alone among living nations is literature habitually pursued +as an art; and in consequence of this, despite the seeds of decay which +imperialism sowed, French prose-writing has no rival in contemporary +literature. We cannot fully recognize this fact through translations, +because only the most sensational French books appear to be translated. +But as French painters and actors now habitually surpass all others even +in what are claimed as the English qualities,--simplicity and truth,--so +do French prose-writers excel. To be set against the brutality of +Carlyle and the shrill screams of Ruskin, there is to be seen across +the Channel the extraordinary fact of an actual organization of good +writers, the French Academy, whose influence all nations feel. Under +their authority we see introduced into literary work an habitual +grace and perfection, a clearness and directness, a light and pliable +strength, and a fine shading of expression, such as no other tongue can +even define. We see the same high standard in their criticism, in their +works of research, in the Revue des Deux Mondes, and in short throughout +literature. What is there in any other language, for instance, to be +compared with the voluminous writings of Sainte-Beuve, ranging over all +history and literature, and carrying into all, that incomparable style, +so delicate, so brilliant, so equable, so strong,--touching all themes, +not with the blacksmith's hand of iron, but with the surgeon's hand of +steel. + +In the average type of French novels, one feels the superiority to +the English in quiet power, in the absence of the sensational and +exaggerated, and in keeping close to the level of real human life. They +rely for success upon perfection of style, and the most subtle analysis +of human character; and therefore they are often painful,--just as +Thackeray is painful,--because they look at artificial society, and +paint what they see. Thus they dwell often on unhappy marriages, because +such things grow naturally from the false social system in France. On +the other hand, in France there is very little house-breaking, and +bigamy is almost impossible, so that we hear delightfully little about +them: whereas, if you subtract these from the current English novels, +what is there left? + + * * * * * + + +=_Charles Godfrey Leland,[57] 1824._= + +From "Meister Karl's Sketch-book." + +=_242._= ASPECT OF NUREMBERG. + +There is a picturesque disorder--a lyrical confusion about the entire +place, which is perfectly irresistible. Turrets shoot up in all sorts of +ways, on all sorts of occasions, upon all sorts of houses; and little +boxes, with delicate Gothic windows, cling to their sides and to one +another, like barnacles to a ship; while the houses themselves are +turned round and about in so many positions that you wonder that a few +are not upside down or lying on their sides by way of completing the +original arrangement of no arrangement at all. It always seemed to me as +if the buildings in Nuremberg had, like the furniture in Irving's tale, +been indulging over night in a very irregular dance, and suddenly +stopped in the most complicated part of a confusion worse confounded. +Galleries, quaint staircases, and towers with projecting upper stories, +as well as eccentric chimneys, demented door-ways, insane weather-vanes, +and highly original steeples, form the most common-place materials in +building; and it has more than once occurred to me that the architects +of this city, even at the present day, must have imbibed their +principles; not from the lecture-room, but from the most remarkable +inspirations of some romantic scene-painter. During the last two +centuries men appear to have striven, with a most uncommendable zeal, +all over Christendom, to root out and extirpate every trace of the +Gothic. In Nuremberg alone they have religiously preserved what little +they originally had in domestic architecture, and added to it.... + +Nuremberg, like Avignon, is one of the very few cities which have +retained in an almost perfect state, the feudal walls and turrets with +which they were invested by the middle ages. At regular intervals along +these walls occur little towers, for their defence, reminding one of +beads strung on a rosary; the great watch-tower at the gate, with its +projecting machicolation, forming the pendent cross,--the whole serving +to guard the town within from the dangers of war, even as the rosary +protects the city of Mansoul from the attacks of Sin and Death--though, +sooth to say, since the invention of gunpowder and the Reformation, both +the one and the other appear to have lost much of their former efficacy. +Directly through the center of the town runs a small stream called the +Pegnitz, "dividing the town into two nearly equal halves, named after +the two great churches situated within them; the northern being termed +St. Sebald's, and the southern, St. Lawrence side." + +In the northern part of the division of St. Sebaldus rises a high hill, +formed, at the summit, of vast rocks, on which is situated the ancient +Reicheveste, or Imperial Castle, whose origin is fairly lost in the dark +old days of Heathenesse. From it the traveller can obtain an admirable +view of the romantic town below. In regarding it, I was irresistibly +reminded of the remarkable resemblance existing between most of its +buildings and the children's toys manufactured by the ingenious artisans +of Nuremberg and its vicinity. + +[Footnote 57: A native of Philadelphia, who has resided much abroad, and +pursued a varied literary career; he possesses a familiarity with the +German language and character, which he has turned to good account in +the comic ballads by Hans Breitman.] + + * * * * * + + +=_George William Curtis, 1824-._= (Manual, p. 504.) + +From "Nile Notes of a Howadji." + +=_243._= UNDER THE PALMS. + +Thenceforward, in the land of Egypt, palms are perpetual. They are the +only foliage of the Nile; for we will not harm the modesty of a few +mimosas and sycamores, by foolish claims. They are the shade of the mud +villages, marking their site in the landscape, so that the groups of +palms are the number of villages. They fringe the shore and the horizon. +The sun sets golden behind them, and birds sit swinging upon their +boughs and float gloriously among their trunks; on the ground beneath +are flowers; the sugar-cane is not harmed by the ghostly shade, nor the +tobacco, and the yellow flowers of the cotton-plant star its dusk at +evening. The children play under them; the old men crone and smoke; the +surly bison and the conceited camels repose. The old Bible-pictures +are ceaselessly painted, but with softer, clearer colors, than in the +venerable book. + +... But the eye never wearies of palms, more than the ear of +singing-birds. Solitary they stand upon the sand, or upon the level, +fertile land in groups, with a grace and dignity that no tree surpasses. +Very soon the eye beholds in their forms the original type of the +columns which it will afterwards admire in the temples. Almost the first +palm is architecturally suggestive, even in those western gardens--but +to artists living among them and seeing only them! men's hands are not +delicate in the early ages, and the fountain fairness of the palms is +not very flowingly fashioned in the capitals; but in the flowery +perfection of the Parthenon the palm triumphs. The forms of those +columns came from Egypt, and that which was the suspicion of the earlier +workers, was the success of more delicate designing. So is the palm +inwound with our art, and poetry, and religion, and of all trees would +the Howadji be a palm, wide-waving peace and plenty, and feeling his kin +to the Parthenon and Raphael's pictures. + +But nature is absolute taste, and has no pure ornament, so that the +palm is no less useful than beautiful. The family is infinite, and ill +understood. The cocoa-nut, date, and sago, are all palms. Ropes and +sponges are wrought of their tough interior fibre. The various fruits +are nutritious; the wood, the roots, and the leaves, are all consumed. +It is one of nature's great gifts to her spoiled sun-darlings. Whoso is +born of the sun is made free of the world. Like the poet Thompson, he +may put his hands in his pockets and eat apples at leisure. + + * * * * * + + +=_John L. McConnell, 1826-._= (Manual, p. 510.) + +From "Western Characters." + +=_244._= THE EARLY WESTERN POLITICIAN. + +He was tall, gaunt, angular, swarthy, active, and athletic. His hair was +invariably black as the wing of the raven. Even in that small portion +which the cap of raccoon-skin left exposed to the action of sun and +rain, the gray was but thinly scattered, imparting to the monotonous +darkness only a more iron character.... A stoop in the shoulders +indicated that, in times past, he had been in the habit of carrying a +heavy rifle, and of closely examining the ground over which he walked; +but what the chest thus lost in depth it gained in breadth. His lungs +had ample space in which to play. There was nothing pulmonary even in +the drooping shoulders.... + +From shoulders thus bowed hung long, muscular arms, sometimes, perhaps, +dangling a little ungracefully, but always under the command of their +owner, and ready for any effort, however violent. These were terminated +by broad, bony hands, which looked like grapnels; their grasp, indeed, +bore no faint resemblance to the hold of those symmetrical instruments. +Large feet, whose toes were usually turned in, like those of the Indian, +were wielded by limbs whose vigor and activity were in keeping with the +figure they supported. Imagine, with these peculiarities, a free, bold, +rather swaggering gait, a swarthy complexion, and comformable features +and tones of voice, and, excepting his costume, you have before your +fancy a complete picture of the early western politician. + + * * * * * + + +=_Sarah J. Lippincott,[58]_= about =_1833-_=. (Manual p. 484.) + +From "Records of Five Years." + +=_245._= DEATH IN TOWN AND COUNTRY. + +Up the long ascent it moved,--that shadow of our mortal sorrow and +perishable earthly estate, that shadow of the dead man's hearse, along +the way his feet had often trod, past the spring over whose brink he +may have often bent with thirsting lip, past lovely green glades, mossy +banks, and fairy forests of waving ferns, on which his eye had often +dwelt with a vague and soft delight; and so passed out of our view. But +its memory went not out of our hearts that day. + +In this pure, healthful region, where nature seems so unworn, so +youthful and vigorous, where dwell simplicity, humble comfort, and quiet +happiness, death has startled us as something strange and unnatural.... + +How different is it in the city!... There, on many a corner, one +is confronted with the black, significant sign of the undertaker's +"dreadful trade," or comes upon some marble-yard, filled with a ghastly +assemblage of anticipatory gravestones and monuments; graceful broken +columns, which are to typify the lovely incompleteness of some young +life now full of beauty and promise; melancholy, drooping figures, types +of grief forever inconsolable, destined, perhaps, to stand proxy for +mourning young widows now happy wives; sculptured lambs, patiently +waiting to take their places above the graves of little children whom +yet smiling mothers nightly lay to sleep in soft cribs, without the +thought of a deeper dark and silence of a night not far away, or of the +dreary beds soon to be prepared for their darlings "i' the earth." + +[Footnote 58: Originally and very favorably known by the assumed name of +"Grace Greenwood."] + + * * * * * + + +=_Francis Bret Harte,[59] 1837-._= + +From "The Luck of Roaring Camp," &c. + +=_246._= BIRTH OF A CHILD IN A MINER'S CAMP. + +... The camp lay in a triangular valley, between two hills and a river. +The only outlet was a steep trail over the summit of a hill that faced +the cabin, now illuminated by the rising moon. The suffering woman might +have seen it from the rude bunk whereon she lay,--seen it winding like a +silver thread until it was lost in the stars above. + +A fire of withered pine-boughs added sociability to the gathering. By +degrees the natural levity of Roaring Camp returned. Bets were freely +offered and taken regarding the result. Three to five that "Sal would +get through with it," even, that the child would survive; side bets as +to the sex and complexion of the coming stranger.... + +In the midst of an excited discussion an exclamation came from those +nearest the door, and the camp stopped to listen. Above the swaying and +moaning of the pines, the swift rush of the river, and the crackling of +the fire, rose a sharp, querulous cry. The pines stopped moaning, the +river ceased to rush, and the fire to crackle. It seemed as if Nature +had stopped to listen too. + +The camp rose to its feet as one man! It was proposed to explode a +barrel of gunpowder; but, in consideration of the situation of the +mother, better counsels prevailed, and only a few revolvers were +discharged; for, whether owing to the rude surgery of the camp, or some +other reason, Cherokee Sal was sinking fast. Within an hour she had +climbed, as it were, the rugged road that led to the stars, and so passed +out of Roaring Camp, its sin and shame, forever.... + +I do not think that the announcement disturbed them much, except in +speculation as to the fate of the child, "Can he live now?" was asked of +Stumpy. The answer was doubtful. The only other being of Cherokee Sal's +sex and maternal condition in the settlement, was an ass. There was some +conjecture as to fitness, but the experiment was tried. It was less +problematical than the ancient treatment of Romulus and Remus, and +apparently as successful. + +Strange to say, the child thrived. Perhaps the invigorating climate of +the mountain camp was compensation for maternal deficiencies. Nature +took the foundling to her broader breast. In that rare atmosphere of the +Sierra foot-hills--that air pungent with balsamic odor, that ethereal +cordial at once bracing and exhilarating--he may have found food and +nourishment, or a subtle chemistry that transmuted asses' milk to lime +and phosphorus. Stumpy inclined to the belief that it was the latter +and good nursing, "Me and that ass," he would say, "has been father and +mother to him! Don't you," he would add, apostrophizing the helpless +bundle before him, "never go back on us." + +[Footnote 59: Prominent among the more recent American writers; a native +of New York, but long resident in California; noted for his vivid +portraiture of the early life, and remarkable scenery of that State, in +a style uncommonly suggestive.] + + * * * * * + + +=_William Dean Howells, 1837-._= (Manual, p. 531.) + +From "Venetian Life." + +=_247._= SNOW IN VENICE. + +... The lofty crest of the bell-tower was hidden in the folds of falling +snow, and I could no longer see the golden angel upon its summit. But +looked at across the Piazza, the beautiful outline of St. Mark's Church +was perfectly penciled in the air, and the shifting threads of the +snow-fall were woven into a spell of novel enchantment around a +structure that always seemed to me too exquisite in its fantastic +loveliness to be anything but the creation of magic. The tender snow had +compassionated the beautiful edifice for all the wrongs of time, and so +hid the stains and ugliness of decay that it looked as if just from the +hands of the builder--or, better said, just from the brain of the +architect. There was marvellous freshness in the colors of the mosaics +in the great arches of the facade; and all that glorious harmony into +which the temple rises, of marble scrolls and leafy exuberance airily +supporting the statues of the saints, was a hundred times etherialized +by the purity and whiteness of the drifting flakes. The snow lay lightly +on the golden globes that tremble like peacock-crests above the vast +domes, and plumed them with softest white; it robed the saints in +ermine; and it danced over all its work as if exulting in its beauty.... + +Through the wavering snow-fall, the Saint Theodore upon one of the +granite pillars of the Piazzetta did not show so grim as his wont is, +and the winged lion on the other might have been a winged lamb, so mild +and gentle he looked by the tender light of the storm. The towers of the +island churches loomed faint and far away in the dimness; the sailors in +the rigging of the ships that lay in the Basin, wrought like phantoms +among the shrouds; the gondolas stole in and out of the opaque distance, +more noiselessly and dreamily than ever; and a silence almost palpable, +lay upon the mutest city in the world. + + * * * * * + + +=_Mary Abigail Dodge,[60] 1838-._= + +From "Wool Gathering." + +=_248._= SCENERY OF THE UPPER MISSISSIPPI. + +Up the broad, cold, steel-blue river we wind steadily to its Northern +home. No flutter of its orange groves, no fragrance of its Southern +roses, no echo of its summer lands, can penetrate these distances. Only +prophecies of the sturdy North are here,--the glitter of the Polar sea, +the majesty of Arctic solitudes. The imagination is touched. The eye +looks out upon a hemisphere. Vast spaces, lost ages, the unsealed +mysteries of cold and darkness and eternal silence, sweep around the +central thought, and people the wilderness with their solemn symbolism, +Prettiness of gentle slope, wealth, and splendor of hue, are not +wanting, but they shine with veiled light. Mountains come down to meet +the Great River. The mists of the night lift slowly away, and we are +brought suddenly into the presence-chamber. One by one they stand out in +all their rugged might, only softened here and there by fleecy clouds +still clinging to their sides, and shining pink in the ruddy dawn. Bold +bluffs that have come hundreds of miles from their inland home guard the +river. They rise on both sides, fronting us, bare and black, layer of +solid rock piled on solid rock, defiant fortifications of some giant +race, crowned here and there with frowning tower; here and there +overborne and overgrown with wild-wood beauty, vine and moss and +manifold leafage, gorgeous now with the glory of the vanishing summer. +It is as if the everlasting hills had parted to give the Great River +entrance to the hidden places of the world. And then the bold bluffs +break into sharp cones, lonely mountains rising head and shoulders above +their brethren, and keeping watch over the whole country; groups of +mountains standing sentinels on the shores, almost leaning over the +river, and hushing us to breathless silence as we sail through their +awful shadow. And then the earth smiles again, the beetling cliffs +recede into distances, and we glide through a pleasant valley. Green +levels stretch away to the foot of the far cliffs, level with the +river's blue, and as smooth,--sheltered and fertile, and fit for future +homes. Nay, already the pioneer has found them, and many a hut and +cottage and huddle of houses show whence art and science and all the +amenities of human life, shall one day radiate. And even as we greet +them we have left them, and the heights clasp us again, the hills +overshadow us, the solitude closes around us. + +[Footnote 60: Born in Massachusetts, author of numerous magazine articles +of merit and earnestness, afterwards republished as books; known to her +readers as Gail Hamilton.] + + * * * * * + + + +LATER MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS. + + +=_George Washington[61], 1732-1799._= + +From a Letter to Sir John Sinclair. + +=_249._= NATURAL ADVANTAGES OF VIRGINIA. + +The United States, as you well know, are very extensive, more than +fifteen hundred miles between the northeastern and southwestern +extremities; all parts of which, from the seaboard to the Appalachian +Mountains, which divide the eastern from the western waters, are +entirely settled; though not as compactly as they are susceptible of; +and settlements are progressing rapidly beyond them. + +Within so great a space, you are not to be told, that there is a great +variety of climates, and you will readily suppose, too, that there +are all sorts of land, differently improved, and of various prices, +according to the quality of the soil, its contiguity to, or remoteness +from, navigation, the nature of the improvements, and other local +circumstances.... + +Notwithstanding these abstracts, and although I may incur the charge of +partiality in hazarding such an opinion at this time, I do not hesitate +to pronounce, that the lands on the waters of the Potomac will in a few +years be in greater demand and in higher estimation, than in any other +part of the United States. But, as I ought not to advance this doctrine +without assigning reasons for it, I will request you to examine a +general map of the United States; and the following facts will strike +you at first view; that they lie in the most temperate latitude of +the United States, that the main river runs in a direct course to the +expanded parts of the western country, and approximates nearer to the +principal branches of the Ohio, than any other eastern water, and of +course must become a great, if not (under all circumstances), the best +highway into that region; that the upper seaport of the Potomac is +considerably nearer to a large portion of Pennsylvania, than that +portion is to Philadelphia, besides accommodating the settlers thereof +with inland navigation for more than two hundred miles; that the amazing +extent of tide navigation, afforded by the bay and rivers of the +Chesapeake, has scarcely a parallel. + +When to these it is added, that a site at the junction of the inland and +tide navigations of that river is chosen for the permanent seat of the +general government, and is in rapid preparation for its reception; +that the inland navigation is nearly completed, to the extent above +mentioned; that its lateral branches are capable of great improvement +at a small expense, through the most fertile parts of Virginia in +a southerly direction, and crossing Maryland and extending into +Pennsylvania in a northerly one, through which, independently of what +may come from the western country, an immensity of produce will be +water-borne, thereby making the Federal City the great emporium of the +United States; I say, when these things are taken into consideration, I +am under no apprehension of having the opinion I have given, relative to +the value of land on the Potomac, controverted by impartial men. + +[Footnote 61: Washington's correspondence was voluminous, and on the +subjects relating to climate, agriculture, and internal improvements, +he wrote with interest and ability. The letter to Sinclair is +characteristic.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Matthew F. Maury,[62] 1806-1873._= + +From "The Physical Geography of the Sea." + +=_250._= THE MARINER'S GUIDE ACROSS THE DEEP. + +So to shape the course on voyages as to make the most of the winds and +currents at sea, is the perfection of the navigator's art. How the winds +blow, and the currents flow, along this route or that, is no longer +matter of opinion or subject of speculation, but it is a matter of +certainty determined by actual observation.... The winds and the weather +daily encountered by hundreds who have sailed on the same voyage before +him, and "the distance made good" by each one from day to day, have been +tabulated in a work called Sailing Directions, and they are so arranged +that he may daily see how much he is ahead of time, or how far he is +behind time; nay, his path has been literally blazed through the winds +for him on the sea; mile-posts have been set up on the waves, and +finger-boards planted, and time-tables furnished for the trackless +waste, by which the ship-master, on his first voyage to any port, may +know as well as the most experienced trader whether he be in the right +road or no. + +... The route that affords the bravest winds, the fairest sweep, and the +fastest running to be found among ships, is the route to and from +Australia. But the route which most tries a ship's prowess is the +outward-bound voyage to California. The voyage to Australia and back, +carries the clipper ship along a route which, for more than three +hundred degrees of longitude, runs with the "brave west winds" of the +southern hemisphere. With these winds alone, and with their bounding +seas which follow fast, the modern clipper, without auxiliary power, has +accomplished a greater distance in a day than any sea-steamer has ever +been known to reach. With these fine winds and heaving seas, those ships +have performed their voyages of circumnavigation in sixty days. + +[Footnote 62: Formerly an officer of the navy, eminent for his scientific +researches and writings on maritime subjects; a native of Virginia.] + + * * * * * + +=_251._= THE GULF STREAM. + +As a rule, the hottest water of the Gulf Stream is at, or near, the +surface; and as the deep-sea thermometer is sent down, it shows that +these waters, though still far warmer than the waters on either side +at corresponding depths, gradually become less and less warm until the +bottom of the current is reached. There is reason to believe that the +warm waters of the Gulf Stream are nowhere permitted, in the oceanic +economy, to touch the bottom of the sea. There is everywhere a cushion +of cool water, between them and the solid parts of the earth's crust. +This arrangement is suggestive, and strikingly beautiful. One of the +benign offices of the Gulf Stream is to convey heat from the Gulf of +Mexico, where otherwise it would become excessive, and to dispense it in +regions beyond the Atlantic, or the amelioration of the climates of the +British Islands and of all Western Europe. Now cold water is one of the +best non-conductors of heat, and if the warm water of the Gulf Stream +was sent across the Atlantic in contact with the solid crust of the +earth,--comparatively a good conductor of heat,--instead of being sent +across, as it is, in contact with a cold non-conducting cushion of cool +water to fend it from the bottom, much of its heat would be lost in the +first part of the way, and the soft climates of both France and England +would be, as that of Labrador, severe In the extreme, icebound, and +bitterly cold. + + * * * * * + + +=_Ormsby M. Mitchell,[63] 1810-1862._= + +=_252._= THE GREAT UNFINISHED PROBLEMS OF THE UNIVERSE. + +I do not pretend to indorse the theory of Maedler with reference to his +central sun. If I did indorse it, it would amount simply to nothing at +all, for he needs no indorsement of mine. But it is one of the great +unfinished problems of the universe, which remains yet to be solved. +Future generations yet are to take it up. Materials for its solution are +to accumulate from generation to generation, and possibly from century +to century. Nay, I know not but thousands of years will roll away before +the slow movements of these far distant orbs shall so accumulate as to +give us the data whereby the resolution may be absolutely accomplished. +But shall we fail to work because the end is far off? Had the old +astronomer that once stood upon the watch-tower in Babylon, and there +marked the coming of the dreaded eclipse, said. "I care not for this; +this is the business of posterity; let posterity take care of itself; I +will make no record"--and had, in succeeding ages, the sentinel in the +watch-tower of the skies said, "I will retire from my post; I have no +concern with these matters, which can do me no good; it is nothing +that I can do for the age in which I live,"--where should we have been +to-night? Shall we not do, for those who are to follow us, what has +been done for us by our predecessors? Let us not shrink from the +responsibility which comes down upon the age in which we live. The great +and mighty problem of the universe has been given to the whole human +family for its solution. Not by any clime, not by any age, not by any +nation, not by any individual man or mind, however great or grand, has +this wondrous solution been accomplished; but it is the problem of +humanity, and it will last as long as humanity shall inhabit the globe +on which we live and move. + + * * * * * + +No, here is the temple of our Divinity. Around us and above us rise sun +and system, cluster and universe. And I doubt not that in every region +of this vast empire of God, hymns of praise and anthems of glory are +rising and reverberating from sun to sun, and from, system to system, +heard by Omnipotence alone, across immensity, and through eternity. + +[Footnote 63: An astronomer, and a favorite lecturer on the science; a +native of Kentucky.] + + * * * * * + + + +WRITERS ON NATURAL HISTORY, SCENERY, &c. + + +=_William Bartram, 1739-1813._= (Manual, p. 490.) + +From the "Travels through the Carolinas," &c. + +=_253._= SCENES ON THE UPPER OCONEE. + +At this rural retirement were assembled a charming circle of mountain +vegetable beauties.... Some of these roving beauties stroll over the +mossy, shelving, humid rocks, or from off the expansive wavy boughs of +trees, bending over the floods, salute their delusive shade, playing on +the surface; some plunge their perfumed heads and bathe their flexile +limbs in the silver stream; whilst others by the mountain breezes +are tossed about, their blooming tuffts bespangled with pearly and +crystalline dew-drops collected from the falling mists, glistening in +the rainbow arch. Having collected some valuable specimens at this +friendly retreat, I continued my lonesome pilgrimage. My road for a +considerable time led me winding and turning about the steep rocky +hills: the descent of some of which was very rough and troublesome, by +means of fragments of rocks, slippery clay and talc: but after this I +entered a spacious forest, the land having gradually acquired a more +level surface: a pretty grassy vale appears on my right, through which +my wandering path led me, close by the banks of a delightful creek, +which sometimes falling over steps of rocks, glides gently with +serpentine meanders through the meadows. + +After crossing this delightful brook and mead, the land rises again with +sublime magnificence, and I am led over hills and vales, groves and +high forests, vocal with the melody of the feathered songsters; the +snow-white cascades glittering on the sides of the distant hills. + +It was now afternoon; I approached a charming vale, amidst sublimely +high forests, awful shades! Darkness gathers around; far distant thunder +rolls over the trembling hills: the black clouds with august majesty +and power move slowly forwards, shading regions of towering hills, and +threatening all the destruction of a thunder-storm: all around is now +still as death, not a whisper is heard, but a total inactivity and +silence seem to pervade the earth; the birds afraid to utter a chirrup, +in low tremulous voices take leave of each other, seeking covert and +safety: every insect is silenced, and nothing heard but the roaring of +the approaching hurricane. The mighty cloud now expands its sable wings, +extending from north to south, and is driven irresistibly on by the +tumultuous winds, spreading its livid wings around the gloomy concave, +armed with terrors of thunder and fiery shafts of lightning. Now the +lofty forests bend low beneath its fury; their limbs and wavy boughs are +tossed about and catch hold of each other; the mountains tremble +and seem to reel about, and the ancient hills to be shaken to their +foundations: the furious storm sweeps along, smoking through the vale +and over the resounding hills: the face of the earth is obscured by the +deluge descending from the firmament, and I am deafened by the din of +the thunder. The tempestuous scene damps my spirits, and my horse sinks +under me at the tremendous peals, as I hasten on for the plain. + + * * * * * + +From his "Travels in the Carolinas, Florida," &c. + +=_254._= THE WOOD PELICAN OF FLORIDA. + +This solitary bird does not associate in flocks, but is generally seen +alone, commonly near the banks of great rivers, in vast marshes or +meadows, especially such as are caused by inundations, and also in the +vast deserted rice plantations: he stands alone on the topmost limb +of tall dead cypress trees, his neck contracted or drawn in upon his +shoulders, and beak resting like a long scythe upon his breast: in +this pensive posture and solitary situation, it looks extremely grave, +sorrowful, and melancholy, as if in the deepest thought. + + * * * * * + + +=_Alexander Wilson, 1766-1813._= (Manual, p. 504.) + +From the "American Ornithology." + +=_255._= NEST OF THE RED-HEADED WOODPECKER. + +Notwithstanding the care which this bird, in common with the rest of its +genus, takes to place its young beyond the reach of enemies, within +the hollows of trees, yet there is one deadly foe, against whose +depredations neither the height of the tree nor the depth of the cavity +is the least security. This is the blade snake, who frequently glides +up the trunk of the tree, and, like a skulking savage, enters the +woodpecker's peaceful apartment, devours the eggs or helpless young, in +spite of the cries and flutterings of the parents, and if the place be +large enough, coils himself up in the spot they occupied, where he will +sometimes remain for several days. The eager school-boy, after hazarding +his neck to reach the woodpecker's hole, at the triumphant moment when +he thinks the nestlings his own, and strips his arm, launching it down +into the cavity, and grasping what he conceives to be the callow young, +starts with horror at the sight of a hideous snake, and almost drops +from his giddy pinnacle, retreating down the tree with terror and +precipitation. Several adventures of this kind have come to my +knowledge; and one of them was attended with serious consequences, where +both snake and boy fell to the ground, and a broken thigh, and long +confinement, cured the adventurer completely of his ambition for robbing +woodpeckers' nests. + + * * * * * + +=_256._= THE WHITE-HEADED, OR BALD, EAGLE. + +Elevated on the high dead limb of some gigantic tree that commands +a wide view of the neighboring shore and ocean, he seems calmly to +contemplate the motions of the various feathered tribes that pursue +their busy avocations below,--the snow-white Gulls slowly winnowing +the air; the busy _Tringoe_ coursing along the sands; trains of Ducks +streaming over the surface; silent and watchful Cranes, intent and +wading; clamorous crows; and all the winged multitudes that subsist by +the bounty of this vast liquid magazine of nature. High over all these +hovers one, whose action instantly arrests his whole attention. By his +wide curvature of wing, and sudden suspension in air, he knows him to be +the Fish Hawk, settling over some devoted victim of the deep. His eye +kindles at the sight, and balancing himself with half-opened wings, on +the branch, he watches the result. Down, rapid as an arrow from heaven, +descends the distant object of his attention, the roar of its wings +reaching the ear as it disappears in the deep, making the surges foam +around. At this moment, the eager looks of the Eagle are all ardor; and +levelling his neck for flight, he sees the Fish Hawk once more emerge, +struggling with his prey, and mounting in the air with screams of +exultation. These are the signal for our hero, who launching into the +air, instantly gives chase, and soon gains on the Fish Hawk; each exerts +his utmost to mount above the other, displaying in these rencontres +the most elegant and sublime aerial evolutions. The unincumbered Eagle +rapidly advances, and is just on the point of reaching his opponent, +when, with a sudden scream, probably of despair and honest execration, +the latter drops his fish; the Eagle poising himself for a moment, as if +to take a more certain aim, descends like a whirlwind, snatches it in +his grasp ere it reaches the water, and bears his ill-gotten booty +silently away to the woods. + + * * * * * + + +=_Stephen Elliott,[64] 1771-1830._= + +From "Views of Nature." + +=_257._= COMPLETENESS AND VARIETY OF NATURE. + +What is there that will not be included in the history of nature? The +earth on which we tread, the air we breathe, the waters around the +earth, the material forms that inhabit its surface, the mind of man, +with all its magical illusions and all its inherent energy, the planets +that move around our system, the firmament of heaven--the smallest of +the invisible atoms which float around our globe, and the most majestic +of the orbs that roll through the immeasurable fields of space--all +are parts of one system, productions of one power, creations of one +intellect, the offspring of Him, by whom all that is inert and inorganic +in creation was formed, and from whom all that have life derive their +being. + +Of this immense system,--all that we can examine,--this little globe +that we inherit, is full of animation, and crowded with forms, +organized, glowing with life, and generally sentient. No space is +unoccupied; the exposed surface of the rock is incrusted with living +substances; plants occupy the bark, and decaying limbs, of other plants; +animals live on the surface, and in the bodies, of other animals: +inhabitants are fashioned and adapted to equatorial heats, and polar +ice;--air, earth, and ocean teem with life;--and if to other worlds the +same proportion of life and of enjoyment has been distributed which has +been allotted to ours, if creative benevolence has equally filled every +other planet of every other system, nay, even the suns themselves, with +beings, organized, animated, and intelligent, how countless must be +the generations of the living! What voices which we cannot hear, what +languages that we cannot understand, what multitudes that we cannot see, +may, as they roll along the stream of time, be employed hourly, daily, +and forever, in choral songs of praise, hymning their great Creator! + +And when, in this almost prodigal waste of life, we perceive that every +being, from the puny insect which flutters in the evening ray; from the +lichen which we can scarcely distinguish on the mouldering rock; +from the fungus that springs up and re-animates the mass of dead and +decomposing substances; that every living form possesses a structure as +perfect in its sphere, an organization sometimes as complex, always as +truly and completely adapted to its purposes and modes of existence +as that of the most perfect animal; when we discover them all to be +governed by laws as definite, as immutable, as those which regulate the +planetary movements, great must be our admiration of the wisdom which +has arrayed, and the power which has perfected this stupendous fabric. + +Nor does creation here cease. There are beyond the limits of our system, +beyond the visible forms of matter, other principles, other powers, +higher orders of beings, an immaterial world which we cannot yet know; +other modes of existence which we cannot comprehend; yet however +inscrutable to us, this spiritual world must be guided by its own +unerring laws, and the harmonious order which reigns in all we can see +and understand, ascending through the series of immortal and invisible +existence, must govern even the powers and dominions, the seraphim and +cherubim, that surround the throne of God himself. + +[Footnote 64: Distinguished as a writer and scholar, and especially for +his work on the Botany of South Carolina and Georgia; a native of South +Carolina.] + + * * * * * + + +=_John James Audubon, 1776-1851._= (Manual, p. 504.) + +From the "Ornithological Biography." + +=_258._= THE PASSENGER PIGEON. + +I cannot describe to you the extreme beauty of their aerial evolutions, +when a hawk chanced to press upon the rear of a flock. At once, like a +torrent, and with a noise like thunder, they rushed into a compact mass, +pressing upon each other towards the centre. In these almost solid +masses, they darted forward in undulating and angular lines, descended +and swept close over the earth with inconceivable velocity, mounted +perpendicularly so as to resemble a vast column, and when high, were +seen wheeling and twisting within their continued lines, which then +resembled the coils of a gigantic serpent. + +It is extremely interesting to see flock after flock performing exactly +the same evolutions which had been traced as it were, in the air, by a +preceding flock. Thus should a hawk have charged on a group at a certain +spot, the angles, curves, and undulations that have been described by +the birds, in their efforts to escape from the dreaded talons of the +plunderer, are undeviatingly followed by the next group that comes up. +Should the by-stander happen to witness one of these affrays, and, +struck with the rapidity and elegance of the motions exhibited, feel +desirous of seeing them repeated, his wishes will be gratified, if he +only remain in the place until the next group comes up. + +As soon as the pigeons discover a sufficiency of food to entice them to +alight, they fly around in circles, reviewing the country below. During +their evolutions, on such occasions, the dense mass which they form, +exhibits a beautiful appearance, as it changes its direction, now +displaying a glistening sheet of azure, when the backs of the birds come +simultaneously into view, and anon, suddenly presenting a mass of rich +purple. They then pass lower, over the woods, and for a moment are lost +among the foliage, but again emerge, and are seen gliding aloft. They +now alight, but the next moment, as if suddenly alarmed, they take to +wing, producing by the flapping of their wings a noise like the roar of +distant thunder, and sweep through the forests to see if danger is near. +Hunger, however, soon brings them to the ground. When alighted, they +are seen industriously throwing up the withered leaves in quest of the +falling mast. The rear ranks are continually rising, passing over the +main body, and alighting in front, in such rapid succession, that the +whole flock seems still on wing. The quantity of ground thus swept is +astonishing, and so completely has it been cleared, that the gleaner who +might follow in their rear, would find his labor completely lost. + + * * * * * + +=_259._= EMIGRANTS REMOVING WESTWARD. + +I think I see them at this moment harnessing their horses and attaching +them to their wagons, which are already filled with bedding, +provisions, and the younger children; while on the outside are fastened +spinning-wheels and looms, and a bucket filled with tar and tallow +swings between the hind wheels. Several axes are secured to the bolster, +and the feeding-trough of the horses contains pots, kettles, and pans. +The servant, now become a driver, rides the near saddled horse; the wife +is mounted on another; the worthy husband shoulders his gun; and his +sons, clad in plain, substantial homespun, drive the cattle ahead, and +lead the procession, followed by the hounds and other dogs. + + * * * * * + +=_260._= INTEREST OF EXPLORATION IN THE REMOTE WEST. + +How delightful, I have often exclaimed, must have been the feelings of +those enthusiastic naturalists, my friends Nuttall and Townsend, while +traversing the ridges of the Rocky Mountains! How grand and impressive +the scenery presented to their admiring gaze, when from an elevated +station they saw the mountain torrent hurling its foamy waters over the +black crags of the rugged ravine, while on wide-spread wings the Great +Vulture sailed overhead watching the departure of the travellers, that +he might feast on the Salmon which in striving to ascend the cataract +had been thrown on the stony beach! Now the weary travellers are resting +on the bank of a brawling brook, along which they are delighted to see +the lively Dipper frisking wren-like from stone to stone. On the stunted +bushes above them some curious Jays are chattering, and as my friends +are looking upon the gay and restless birds, they are involuntarily led +to extend their gaze to the green slope beneath the more distant +crags, where they spy a mountain sheep, watching the movements of the +travellers as well as those of yon wolves stealing silently toward the +fleet-footed animal. Again the pilgrims are in motion; they wind their +pathless way round rocks and fissures; they have reached the greatest +height of the sterile platform; and as they gaze on the valleys whose +waters hasten to join the Pacific Ocean, and bid adieu, perhaps for the +last time, to the dear friends they have left in the distant east, how +intense must be their feelings, as thoughts of the past and the +future blend themselves in their anxious minds! But now I see them, +brother-like, with lighter steps, descending toward the head waters +of the famed Oregon. They have reached the great stream, and seating +themselves in a canoe, shoot adown the current, gazing on the beautiful +shrubs and flowers that ornament the banks, and the majestic trees that +cover the sides of the valley, all new to them, and presenting a wide +field of discovery. The melodies of unknown songsters enliven their +spirits, and glimpses of gaudily plumed birds excite their desire to +search those beautiful thickets; but time is urgent, and onward they +must speed. A deer crosses the stream, they pursue and capture it; +and it being now evening, they land and soon form a camp, carefully +concealed from the prying eyes of the lurking savage. The night is past, +the dawn smiles upon the refreshed travellers, who launch their frail +bark; and, as they slowly float on the stream, both listen attentively +to the notes of the Red-and-White-winged Troopial, and wonder how +similar they are to those of the "Red-winged Starling;" they think of +the affinities of species, and especially of those of the lively birds +composing this beautiful group. + + * * * * * + + +=_Daniel Drake,[65] 1785-1852._= + +From a "Picture of Cincinnati, &c." + +=_261._= OBJECTS OF THE WESTERN MOUND-BUILDERS. + +No objects in the State of Ohio seem to have more forcibly arrested the +attention of travellers, nor employed a greater number of pens, than +its antiquities. It is to be regretted, however, that so hastily and +superficially have they been examined by strangers, and so generally +neglected by ourselves, that the materials for a full description have +not yet been collected.... + +The forests over these remains exhibit no appearances of more recent +growth than in other parts. Trees, several hundred years old, are in +many places seen growing out of the ruins of others, which appear to +have been of equal size.... + +Those at Cincinnati, for example, exhibit so few of the characters of a +defensive work, that General Wayne, upon attentively surveying them in +1794, was of opinion that they were not designed for that purpose. It +was from the examination of valley-works only, that Bishop Madison was +led to deny that the remains of the western country were ever intended +for defence, and to conclude that they were enclosures for permanent +residence. It would be precipitate to assert that the relics found in +the valleys were for this purpose, and those of the uplands for defence. +But while it is certain that the latter were military posts, it seems +highly probable that the former were for ordinary abode in times of +peace. They were towns and the seats of chiefs, whose perishable parts +have crumbled into earth, and disappeared with the generations which +formed them. Many of them might have been calculated for defence, as +well as for habitations; but the latter must have been the chief purpose +for which they were erected. On the contrary, the hill-constructions, +which are generally in the strongest military positions of the country, +were designed solely for defence, in open and vigorous war. + +[Footnote 65: A native of New Jersey, who was taken when very young, +to the West, where he became distinguished as a medical professor and +practitioner. His recollections and sketches are very valuable.] + + * * * * * + + +=_John Bachman,[66] 1790-1873._= + +From "The Quadrupeds of North America." + +=_262._= THE OPOSSUM. + +We can imagine to ourselves the surprise with which the opossum was +regarded by Europeans, when they first saw it. Scarcely anything was +known of the marsupial animals, as New Holland had not as yet opened its +unrivalled stores of singularities to astonish the world. Here was a +strange animal, with the head and ears of the pig, sometimes hanging on +the limb of a tree, and occasionally swinging like the monkey by the +tail. Around that prehensile appendage a dozen sharp-nosed, sleek-headed +young had entwined their own tails, and were sitting on the mother's +back. The astonished traveller approaches this extraordinary compound of +an animal, and touches it cautiously with a stick. Instantly it seems +to be struck with some mortal disease: its eyes close, it falls to the +ground, ceases to move, and appears to be dead. He turns it on its back, +and perceives on its stomach a strange, apparently artificial opening. +He puts his fingers into the extraordinary pocket, and lo, another brood +of a dozen or more young, scarcely larger than a pea, are hanging +in clusters on the teats. In pulling the creature about, in great +amazement, he suddenly receives a gripe on the hand; the twinkling of +the half-closed eye, and the breathing of the creature, evince that it +is not dead: and he adds a new term to the vocabulary of his language, +that of "playing possum." + +... When the young are four weeks old, they begin from time to time to +relax their hold on the teats, and may now be seen with their heads +occasionally out of the pouch. A week later, and they venture to steal +occasionally from their snug retreat in the pouch, and are often seen on +the mother's back, securing themselves by entwining their tails around +hers. In this situation she moves from place to place in search of food, +carrying her whole family along with her, to which she is much attached, +and in whose defence she exhibits a considerable degree of courage, +growling at any intruder, and ready to use her teeth with great severity +on man or dog. In travelling, it is amusing to see this large family +moving about. Some of the young, nearly the size of rats, have their +tails entwined around the legs of the mother, and some around her +neck,--thus they are dragged along. They have a mild and innocent look, +and are sleek, and in fine condition, and this is the only age in which +the word pretty can be applied to the Opossum. At this period, the +mother in giving sustenance to so large a family, becomes thin, and is +reduced to one-half of her previous weight. The whole family of young +remain with her about two months, and continue in the vicinity till +autumn. In the meantime, a second, and often a third brood, is produced, +and thus two or more broods of different ages may be seen, sometimes +with the mother, and at other times not far off. + +... Hunting the Opossum is a very favorite amusement among domestics and +field laborers on our Southern plantations, of lads broke loose from +school in the holidays, and even of gentlemen, who are sometimes more +fond of this sport than of the less profitable and more dangerous and +fatiguing one of hunting the gray fox by moonlight. Although we have +never participated in an Opossum hunt, yet we have observed that it +afforded much amusement to the sable group that in the majority of +instances make up the hunting party, and we have on two or three +occasions been the silent and gratified observers of the preparations +that were going on, the anticipations indulged in, and the excitement +apparent around us. + +[Footnote 66: A clergyman of the Lutheran church, for many years a +citizen of Charleston, South Carolina, out originally from New York; +eminent for his attainments and writings in natural history and +science.] + + * * * * * + + +=_J. A. Lapham.[67]_= + +From "Wisconsin, its Geography," &c. + +=_263._= THE SMALLER LAKES. + +BESIDES these immense lakes, Wisconsin abounds in those of smaller size, +scattered profusely over her whole surface. They are from one to twenty +or thirty miles in extent. Many of them are the most beautiful that +can be imagined--the water deep, and of crystal purity and clearness, +surrounded by sloping hills and promontories, covered with scattered +groves and clumps of trees. Some are of a more picturesque kind, being +more rugged in their appearance, with steep, rocky bluffs, crowned +with cedar, hemlock, spruce, and other evergreen trees of a similar +character. Perhaps a small rocky island will vary the scene, covered +with a conical mass of vegetation, the low shrubs and bushes being +arranged around the margin, and the tall trees in the centre. These +lakes usually abound in fish of various kinds, affording food for the +pioneer settler; and among the pebbles on their shores may occasionally +be found fine specimens of agate, carnelian, and other precious stones. +In the bays, where the water is shallow, and but little affected by the +winds, the wild rice grows in abundance, affording subsistence for the +Indian, and attracting innumerable water-birds to these lakes. + +[Footnote 67: The age of this meritorious and industrious writer we have +not been able to learn. The second edition of his book on Wisconsin +appeared in 1846.] + + * * * * * + +=_264._= ANCIENT EARTHWORKS. + +There is a class of ancient earthworks in Wisconsin, not before found +in any other country.... Some have a resemblance to the buffalo, the +eagle, or crane, or to the turtle or lizard. One, representing the human +form, near the Blue Mounds, is, according to R.C. Taylor, Esq., +one hundred and twenty feet in length: it lies in an east and west +direction, the head towards the west, with the arms and legs extended. +The body or trunk is thirty feet in breadth, the head twenty-five, and +its elevation above the general surface of the prairie is about six +feet. Its conformation is so distinct, that there can be no possibility +of mistake in assigning it to the human figure. + + * * * * * + + +=_Charles Wilkins Webber, 1819-1856._= (Manual, p. 505.) + +From "Wild Scenes and Song-birds." + +=_265._= THE MOCKING-BIRD. + +THE next spring a new melody filled the air. A melody such as I had +never heard before burst in clear and overwhelming raptures from +the meadows where I had first seen the graceful stranger with the +white-barred wings, last year.... I saw it now leaping up from its +favorite perch on a tree-top much in the manner I had observed before, +but now it was in a different mood and seemed to mount thus spirit-like +upon the wilder ecstasies, and floating fall upon the subsiding cadence, +of that passionate song it poured into the listening ear of love, for I +could see his mate, with fainter bars across her wings, where she sat +upon a thornbush near, and listened. When this magnificent creature +commenced to sing, the very air was burdened with a thousand different +notes; but his voice rose clear and melodiously loud above them all. +As I listened, one song after another ceased suddenly, until, in a few +minutes, and before I could realize that it was so, I found myself +hearkening to that solitary voice. This is a positive fact. I looked +around me in astonishment. What! Are they awed? But his song only now +grew more exulting, and, as if feeling his triumph, he bounded yet +higher, with each new gush, and in swift and quivering raptures dived, +skimmed, and floated round--round--then rose to fall again more boldly +on the billowy storm of sound. + +... This curious phenomenon I have witnessed many times since. Even in +the morning choir, when every little throat seems strained in emulation, +if the mocking-bird breathes forth in one of its mad, bewildered, and +bewildering extravaganzas, the other birds pause almost invariably, and +remain silent until his song is done. This, I assure you, is no figment +of the imagination, or illusion of an excited fancy; it is just as +substantial a fact as any other one in natural history. Whether the +other birds stop from envy, as has been said, or from awe, cannot be so +well ascertained, but I believe it is from the sentiment of awe, for as +I certainly have felt it myself in listening to the mocking-bird, I do +not know why these inferior creatures should not also. + + * * * * * + + +=_Charles Lanman, 1819-._= (Manual, p. 505.) + +From "Haw-ho-noo." + +=_266._= MAPLE-SUGAR-MAKING AMONG THE INDIANS. + +It is in the month of April, and the hunting season is at an end. +Albeit, the ground is covered with snow, the noonday sun has become +quite powerful; and the annual offering has been made to the Great +Spirit, by the medicine-men, of the first product of one of the earliest +trees in the district. This being the preparatory signal for extensive +business, the women of the encampment proceed to make a large number of +wooden troughs (to receive the liquid treasure), and after these are +finished, the various trees in the neighborhood are tapped, and the +juice begins to run. In the mean time the men of the party have built +the necessary fires, and suspended over them their earthen, brass, or +iron kettles. The sap is now flowing in copious streams, and from one +end of the camp to the other is at once presented an animated and +romantic scene, which continues day and night, until the end of +the sugar season. The principal employment to which the men devote +themselves, is that of lounging about the encampment, shooting at marks, +and playing the moccasin game; while the main part of the labor is +performed by the women, who not only attend to the kettles, but employ +all their leisure time in making the beautiful birchen mocucks, for the +preservation and transportation of the sugar when made; the sap being +brought from the troughs to the kettles, by the boys and girls. Less +attention than usual is paid by the Indians at such times to their +meals; and unless game is very easily obtained, they are quite content +to depend upon the sugar alone. + +It was now about the middle of June, and some fifty birchen canoes have +just been launched upon the waters of Green Bay. They are occupied by +our Ottawa sugar-makers, who have started upon a pilgrimage to Mackinaw. +The distance is near two hundred miles, and as the canoes are heavily +laden not only with mocucks of sugar, but with furs collected by the +hunters during the past winter, and the Indians are travelling at their +leisure, the party will probably reach their desired haven in the course +of ten days. Well content with their accumulated treasures, both the +women and the men are in a particularly happy mood, and many a wild song +is heard to echo over the placid lake. As the evening approaches, day +after day they seek out some convenient landing place, and, pitching the +wigwams on the beach, spend a goodly portion of the night carousing and +telling stories around their camp fires, resuming their voyage after a +morning sleep, long alter the sun has risen above the blue waters of +the east. Another sunset hour, and the cavalcade of canoes is quietly +gliding into the crescent bay of Mackinaw, and, reaching a beautiful +beach at the foot of a lofty bluff, the Indians again draw up their +canoes,--again erect their wigwams. And, as the Indian traders have +assembled on the spot, the more improvident of the party immediately +proceed to exhibit their sugar and furs, which are usually disposed of +for flour and pork, blankets and knives, guns, ammunition, and a great +variety of trinkets, long before the hour of midnight. + + * * * * * + + +=_Ephraim C. Squier, 1821-._= (Manual, p. 504.) + +From "Aboriginal Monuments of the West." + +=_267._= INDIAN POTTERY. + +The site of every Indian town throughout the west is marked by the +fragments of pottery scattered around it; and the cemeteries of the +various tribes abound with rude vessels of clay, piously deposited with +the dead. Previous to the discovery, the art of the potter was much more +important, and its practice more general than it afterwards became, upon +the introduction of metallic vessels. The mode of preparing and moulding +the materials is minutely described by the early observers, and seems to +have been common to all the tribes, and not to have varied materially +from that day to this. The work devolved almost exclusively upon the +women, who kneaded the clay and formed the vessels. Experience seems to +have suggested the means of so tempering the material as to resist +the action of fire; accordingly we find pounded shells, quartz, and +sometimes simple coarse sand from the streams mixed with the clay. +None of the pottery of the present races, found in the Ohio valley, +is destitute of this feature; and it is not uncommon, in certain +localities, where from the abundance of fragments, and from other +circumstances, it is supposed the manufacture was specially carried on, +to find quantities of the decayed shells of the fresh water molluscs, +intermixed with the earth, probably brought to the spot to be used in +the process. Amongst the Indians along the Gulf, a greater degree +of skill was displayed than with those on the upper waters of the +Mississippi, and on the lakes. Their vessels were generally larger and +more symmetrical, and of a superior finish. They moulded them over +gourds and models, and baked them in ovens. In the construction of those +of large size, it was customary to model them in baskets of willow or +splints, which, at the proper period, were burned off, leaving the +vessel perfect in form, and retaining the somewhat ornamental markings +of their moulds. Some of those found on the Ohio seem to have been +modelled in bags or nettings of coarse thread or twisted bark. These +practices are still retained by some of the remote western tribes. + + * * * * * + + +=_Benjamin Silliman, 1779-1864._= (Manual, p. 505.) + +From "A Tour to Canada." + +=_268._= THE FALLS OF MONTMORENCI. + +... The Montmorenci, after a gentle previous declivity, which, greatly +increases its velocity, takes its stupendous leap of two hundred and +forty feet, into a chasm among the rocks, where it boils and foams in a +natural rocky basin, from which, after its force is in some measure +exhausted in its own whirlpools and eddies, it flows away in a gentle +stream towards the St. Lawrence. The fall is nearly perpendicular, and +appears not to deviate more than three or four degrees from it. This +deviation is caused by the ledges of rock below, and is just sufficient +to break the water completely into foam and spray. + +The effect on the beholder is most delightful. The river, at some +distance, seems suspended in a sheet of billowy foam, and contrasted +as it is, with the black frowning abyss into which it falls, it is an +object of the highest interest. As we approached nearer to its foot, the +impressions of grandeur and sublimity were, in the most perfect manner +imaginable, blended with those of extreme beauty. + +This river is of so considerable a magnitude, that, precipitated as it +is from this amazing height, the thundering noise, and mighty rush +of waters, and the never-ceasing wind and rain produced by the fall, +powerfully arrest the attention: the spectator stands in profound awe, +mingled with delight, especially when he contrasts the magnitude of +the fall, with that of a villa, on the edge of the dark precipices +of frowning rock which form the western bank, and with the casual +spectators looking down from the same elevation. + +The sheet of foam which breaks over the ridge, is more and more divided +as it is dashed against the successive layers of rocks, which it +almost completely veils from view; the spray becomes very delicate and +abundant, from top to bottom, hanging over, and revolving around the +torrent, till it becomes lighter and more evanescent than the whitest +fleecy clouds of summer, than the finest attenuated web, than the +lightest gossamer, constituting the most airy and sumptuous drapery that +can be imagined. Yet, like the drapery of some of the Grecian statues, +which, while it veils, exhibits more forcibly the form beneath, this +does not hide, but exalts the effect produced by this noble cataract. + +The rainbow we saw in great perfection; bow within bow, and (what I +never saw elsewhere so perfectly), as I advanced into the spray, the +bow became complete, myself being a part of its circumference, and its +transcendent glories moving with every change of position. + +This beautiful and splendid sight was to be enjoyed only by advancing +quite into the shower of spray; as if, in the language of ancient +poetry, and fable, the genii of the place, pleased with the beholder's +near approach to the seat of their empire, decked the devotee with the +appropriate robes of the cataract, the vestal veil of fleecy spray, and +the heavenly splendors of the bow. + + * * * * * + + +=_John L. Stephens, 1808-1852._= (Manual, p. 504.) + +From the "Travels in Central America." + +=_269._= DISCOVERY OF A RUINED CITY IN THE WOODS + +The sight of this unexpected monument put at rest, at once and forever, +in our minds, all uncertainty in regard to the character of American +antiquities, and gave as the assurance that the objects we were in +search of were interesting, not only as the remains of an unknown +people, but as works of art, proving, like newly-discovered historical +records, that the people who once occupied the continent of America were +not savages. With an interest perhaps stronger than we had ever felt +in wandering among the ruins of Egypt, we followed our guide, who, +sometimes missing his way, with a constant and vigorous use of his +machete, conducted us through the thick forest, among half-buried +fragments, to fourteen monuments of the same character and appearance, +some with more elegant designs, and some in workmanship equal to the +finest monuments of the Egyptians; one displaced from its pedestal by +enormous roots; another locked in the close embrace of branches of +trees, and almost lifted out of the earth; another hurled to the ground, +and bound down by huge vines and creepers; and one standing, with its +altar before it, in a grove of trees which grew around it, seemingly to +shade and shroud it as a sacred thing; in the solemn stillness of the +woods it seemed a divinity mourning over a fallen people. The only +sounds that disturbed the quiet of this buried city, were the noise of +monkeys moving among the tops of the trees, and the cracking of dry +branches broken by their weight. They moved over our heads in long and +swift processions, forty or fifty at a time; some, with little ones +wound in their long arms, walking out to the end of boughs, and holding +on with their hind feet, or a curl of the tail, sprang to a branch of +the next tree, and with a noise like a current of wind, passed on into +the depths of the forest. It was the first time we had seen these +mockeries of humanity, and with the strange monuments around us, they +seemed like wandering spirits of the departed race, guarding the ruins +of their former habitations. + +... We sat down on the very edge of the wall, and strove in vain to +penetrate the mystery by which we were surrounded. Who were the people +that built this city? In the ruined cities of Egypt,--even in the long +lost Petra, the stranger knows the story of the people whose vestiges +are around him. America, say historians, was peopled by savages; but +savages never reared these structures, savages never carved these +stones. + + * * * * * + + +=_John Charles Fremont, 1813-._= (Manual, p. 505.) + +From "Report of an Exploring Expedition." + +=_270._= ASCENT OF A PEAK OF THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS. + +We continued climbing, and in a short time reached the crest. I sprang +upon the summit, and another step would have precipitated me into an +immense snow field five hundred feet below. To the edge of this field +was a sheer icy precipice; and then, with a gradual fall, the field +sloped off for about a mile, until it struck the foot of another lower +ridge. I stood on a narrow crest, about three feet in width, with an +inclination of about 20 deg. N., 51 deg. E. As soon as I had gratified the first +feelings of curiosity, I descended, and each man ascended in his +turn; for I would only allow one at a time to mount the unstable and +precarious slab, which it seemed a breath would hurl into the abyss +below. We mounted the barometer in the snow of the summit, and fixing a +ramrod in a crevice, unfurled the national flag to wave in the breeze, +where never flag waved before. During our morning's ascent, we had met +no sign of animal life, except the small sparrow-like bird already +mentioned. A stillness the most profound, and a terrible solitude forced +themselves constantly on the mind, as the great features of the place. +Here, on the summit, where the stillness was absolute, unbroken by any +sound, and the solitude complete, we thought ourselves beyond the region +of animated life; but while we were sitting on the rock, a solitary bee +(_bromus_, the bumble bee) came winging his flight from the eastern +valley, and lit on the knee of one of the men. + + * * * * * + +=_271._= THE COLUMBIA RIVER, OREGON. + +The Columbia is the only river which traverses the whole breadth of the +country, breaking through all the ranges, and entering the sea. Drawing +its waters from a section of ten degrees of latitude in the Rocky +Mountains, which are collected into one stream by three main forks +(Lewis', Clark's, and the North Fork) near the center of the Oregon +valley, this great river thence proceeds by a single channel to the sea, +while its three forks lead each to a pass in the mountains which opens +the way into the interior of the continent. This fact in relation to the +rivers of this region, gives an immense value to the Columbia. Its mouth +is the only inlet and outlet, to and from the sea; its three forks +lead to the passes in the mountains; it is therefore the only line of +communication between the Pacific and the interior of North America; and +all operations of war or commerce, of national or social intercourse, +must be conducted upon it. This gives it a value beyond estimation, +and would involve irreparable injury if lost. In this unity and +concentration of its waters, the Pacific side of our continent differs +entirely from the Atlantic side, where the waters of the Alleghany +mountains are dispersed into many rivers, having their different +entrances into the sea, and opening many lines of communication with the +interior. + + * * * * * + +=_Elisha Kent Kane,[68] 1822-1857._= + +From "Arctic Explorations." + +=_272._= THE DISCOVERY OF AN OPEN SEA. + +As Morton, leaving Hans and his dogs, passed between Sir John Franklin +Island and the narrow beach-line, the coast became more wall-like, and +dark masses of porphyritic rock abutted into the sea. With growing +difficulty, he managed to climb from rock to rock, in hopes of doubling +the promontory and sighting the coasts beyond, but the water kept +encroaching more and more on his track. + +It must have been an imposing sight, as he stood at this termination of +his journey, looking out upon the great waste of waters before him. Not +a "speck of ice," to use his own words, could be seen. There, from a +height of four hundred and eighty feet, which commanded a horizon of +almost forty miles, his ears were gladdened with the novel music of +dashing waves; and a surf, breaking in among the rocks at his feet, +stayed his farther progress. + +Beyond this cape all is surmise. The high ridges to the north-west +dwindled off into low blue knobs, which blended finally with the air. +Morton called the cape, which baffled his labors, after his commander; +but I have given it the more enduring name of Cape Constitution. + +... I am reluctant to close my notice of this discovery of an open sea +without adding that the details of Mr. Morton's narrative harmonized +with the observations of all our party. I do not propose to discuss here +the causes or conditions of this phenomenon. How far it may +extend--whether it exist simply as a feature of the immediate region, or +as part of a great and unexplored area communicating with the Polar +basin, and what may be the argument in favor of one or the other +hypothesis, or the explanation which reconciles it with established +laws--may be questions for men skilled in scientific deductions. Mine +has been the more humble duty of recording what we saw. Coming as it +did, a mysterious fluidity in the midst of vast plains of solid ice, it +was well calculated to arouse emotions of the highest order; and I do +not believe there was a man among us who did not long for the means of +embarking upon its bright and lonely waters. + +[Footnote 68: A traveller, explorer, and writer of high merit; a native +of Philadelphia, and a Surgeon in the Navy. His early death was much +deplored.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Bayard Taylor, 1825-._= (Manual, pp. 505, 523, 531.) + +From "Eldorado." + +=_273._= MONTEREY, CALIFORNIA. + +No one can be in Monterey a single night, without being startled and +awed by the deep, solemn crashes of the surf, as it breaks along the +shore. There is no continuous roar of the plunging waves, as we hear on +the Atlantic seaboard; the slow, regular swells--quiet pulsations of +the great Pacific's heart--roll inward in unbroken lines, and fall with +single grand crashes, with intervals of dead silence between. They may +be heard through the day, if one listens, like a solemn undertone to all +the shallow noises of the town; but at midnight, when all else is +still, those successive shocks fall upon the ear with a sensation of +inexpressible solemnity. All the air, from the pine forests to the sea, +is filled with a light tremor, and the intermitting beats of sound are +strong enough to jar a delicate ear. Their constant repetition at last +produces a feeling something like terror. A spirit worn and weakened by +some scathing sorrow could scarcely bear the reverberation. + + * * * * * + +=_274._= APPROACH TO SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA. + +Sunset came on as we approached the strait opening from Pablo Bay into +the Bay of San Francisco. The cloudless sky became gradually suffused +with a soft rose-tint, which covered its whole surface, painting alike +the glassy sheet of the bay, and glowing most vividly on the mountains +to the eastward. The color deepened every moment, and the peaks of the +Coast Range burned with a rich vermilion light, like that of a live +coal. This faded gradually into as glowing a purple, and at last into a +blue as intense as that of the sea at noon-day. The first effect of the +light was most wonderful; the mountains stretched around the horizon +like a belt of varying fire and amethyst, between the two roseate deeps +of air and water; the shores were transmuted into solid, the air into +fluid gems. Could the pencil faithfully represent this magnificent +transfiguration of Nature, it would appear utterly unreal and impossible +to eyes which never beheld the reality.... It lingered, and lingered, +changing almost imperceptibly and with so beautiful a decay, that one +lost himself in the enjoyment of each successive charm, without regret +for those which were over. The dark blue of the mountains deepened into +their night-garb of dusky shadow without any interfusion of dead, ashy +color, and the heaven overhead was spangled with all its stars long +before the brilliant arch of orange in the west had sunk below the +horizon. I have seen the dazzling sunsets of the Mediterranean flush +the beauty of its shores, and the mellow skies which Claude used to +contemplate from the Pincian Hill; but lovely as they are in my memory, +they seem cold and pale when I think of the splendor of such a scene, on +the Bay of San Francisco. + + * * * * * + +The Little Land of Appenzell. + +=_275._= SWISS SCENERY,--A BATTLEFIELD; PICTURESQUE DWELLINGS. + +On the right lay the land of Appenzell,--not a table-land, but a region +of mountain, ridge, and summit, of valley and deep, dark gorge, green as +emerald, up to the line of snow, and so thickly studded with dwellings, +grouped or isolated, that there seemed to be one scattered village as +far as the eye could reach. To the south, over forests of fir, the +Sentis lifted his huge towers of rock, crowned with white, wintry +pyramids. + +Here, where we are, said the postillion, "was the first battle; but +there was another, two years afterwards, over there, the other side of +Trogen, where the road goes down to the Rhine. Stoss is the place, and +there's a chapel built on the very spot. Duke Frederick of Austria came +to help the Abbott Runo, and the Appenzellers were only one to ten +against them. It was a great fight, they say, and the women helped,--not +with pikes and guns, but in this way: they put on white shirts, and came +out of the woods, above where the lighting was going on. Now when the +Austrians and the Abbot's people saw them, they thought there were +spirits helping the Appenzellers, (the women were all white you see, +and too far off to show plainly,) and so they gave up the fight, after +losing nine hundred knights and troopers. After that, it was ordered, +that the women should go first to the sacrament, so that no man might +forget the help they gave in that battle. And the people go every year +to the chapel, on the same day when it took place." + +If one could only transport--a few of these houses to the United +States! Our country architecture is not only hideous, but frequently +unpractical, being at worst, shanties, and at best, city residences set +in the fields. An Appenzell farmer lives in a house from forty to sixty +feet square, and rarely less than four stories in height. The two upper +stories, however, are narrowed by the high, steep roof, so that the true +front of the house is one of the gables. The roof projects at least four +feet on all sides, giving shelter to balconies of carved wood, which +cross the front under each row of windows. The outer walls are covered +with upright, overlapping shingles, not more than two or three inches +broad, and rounded at the ends, suggesting the scale armor of ancient +times. This covering secures the greatest warmth; and when the shingles +have acquired from age that rich burnt-sienna tint--which no paint could +exactly imitate, the effect is exceedingly beautiful. The lowest story +is generally of stone, plastered and whitewashed. The stories are low, +(seven to eight feet) but the windows are placed side by side, and each +room is thoroughly lighted. Such a house is very warm, very durable, +and, without any apparent expenditure of ornament, is externally so +picturesque that no ornament could improve it.... + +The view of a broad Alpine landscape dotted all over with such beautiful +homes, from the little shelf of green hanging on the sides of a rocky +gorge, and the strips of sunny pasture between the ascending forests, to +the very summits of the lower heights and the saddles between them, was +something quite new in my experience. + + * * * * * + + + +NOVELISTS AND WRITERS OF FICTION. + + +=_Charles Brockden Brown, 1771-1810._= (Manual, pp. 478, 505.) + +From "Ormond." + +=_276._= THE YELLOW FEVER IN PHILADELPHIA. + +As she approached the house to which she was going, her reluctance to +proceed increased. Frequently she paused to recollect the motives that +had prescribed this task, and to re-enforce her purposes. At length she +arrived at the house. Now, for the first time, her attention was excited +by the silence and desolation that surrounded her. This evidence of fear +and of danger struck upon her heart. All appeared to have fled from the +presence of this unseen and terrible foe. The temerity of adventuring +thus into the jaws of the pest, now appeared to her in glaring colors. + +... She cast her eye towards the house opposite to where she now stood. +Her heart drooped on perceiving proofs that the dwelling was still +inhabited. The door was open, and the windows in the second and third +story were raised. Near the entrance, in the street, stood a cart. The +horse attached to it, in his form, and furniture, and attitude, was an +emblem of torpor and decay. His gaunt sides, motionless limbs, his gummy +and dead eyes, and his head hanging to the ground, were in unison with +the craziness of the vehicle to which he belonged, and the paltry and +bedusted harness which covered him. No attendant nor any human face was +visible. The stillness, though at an hour customarily busy, was +uninterrupted, except by the sound of wheels moving at an almost +indistinguishable distance. + +She paused for a moment to contemplate this unwonted spectacle. Her +trepidations were mingled with emotions not unakin to sublimity; but the +consciousness of danger speedily prevailed, and she hastened to acquit +herself of her engagement. She approached the door for this purpose, but +before she could draw the bell, her motions were arrested by sounds +from within. The staircase was opposite the door. Two persons were now +discovered descending the stair. They lifted between them a heavy mass, +which was presently discerned to be a coffin. Shocked by this discovery, +and trembling, she withdrew from the entrance. + + * * * * * + + +=_Washington Allston, 1779-1843._= (Manual, pp. 504, 510.) + +From "Monaldi." + +=_277._= IMPERSONATION OF THE POWER OF EVIL. + +The light (which descended from above) was so powerful, that for nearly +a minute I could distinguish nothing, and I rested on a form attached +to the wainscoting. I then put up my hand to shade my eyes, when--the +fearful vision is even now before me--I seemed to be standing before +an abyss in space, boundless and black. In the midst of this permeable +pitch stood a colossal mass of gold, in shape like an altar, and girdled +about by a huge serpent, gorgeous and terrible; his body flecked with +diamonds, and his head, an enormous carbuncle, floating like a meteor +on the air above. Such was the Throne. But no words can describe +the gigantic Being that sat thereon--the grace, the majesty, its +transcendent form--and yet I shuddered as I looked, for its superhuman +countenance seemed, as it were, to radiate falsehood; every feature was +in contradiction--the eye, the mouth, even to the nostril--whilst the +expression of the whole was of that unnatural softness which can only be +conceived of malignant blandishment. It was the appalling beauty of the +King of Hell. The frightful discord vibrated through my whole frame, and +I turned for relief to the figure below.... But I had turned from the +first, only to witness in the second object, its withering fascination. +I beheld the mortal conflict between the conscience and the will--the +visible struggle of a soul in the toils of sin. + + * * * * * + +From his "Letters." + +=_278._= ON A PICTURE BY CARRACCI. + +The subject was the body of the virgin borne for interment by four +apostles. The figures are colossal; the tone dark, and of tremendous +color. It seemed, as I looked at it, as if the ground shook at their +tread, and the air was darkened by their grief. + + * * * * * + +=_279._= ORIGINALITY OF MIND. + +An original mind is rarely understood until it has been _reflected_ from +some half dozen congenial with it; so averse are men to admitting the +true in an unusual form; whilst any novelty, however fantastic, however +false, is greedily swallowed. + + * * * * * + + +=_James K. Paulding, 1779-1860._= (Manual, p. 510.) + +From "Letters from the South." + +=_280._= CHARACTER OF THE DUTCH AND GERMAN SETTLERS. + +In almost every part of the United States where I have chanced to be, +except among the Dutch, the Germans, and the Quakers, people seem to +build everything extempore and pro tempore, as if they looked forward +to a speedy removal or did not expect to want it long. Nowhere else, it +seems to me, do people work more for the present, less for the future, +or live so commonly up to the extent of their means. If we build houses, +they are generally of wood, and hardly calculated to outlast the +builder. If we plant trees, they are generally Lombardy poplars, that +spring up of a sudden, give no more shade than a broom stuck on end, and +grow old with their planters. Still, however, I believe all this has +a salutary and quickening influence on the character of the people, +because it offers another spur to activity, stimulating it not only +by the hope of gain, but the necessity of exertion to remedy passing +inconveniences. Thus the young heir, instead of stepping into the +possession of a house completely finished, and replete with every +convenience--an estate requiring no labor or exertion to repair its +dilapidations, finds it absolutely necessary to bestir himself to +complete what his ancestor had only begun, and thus is relieved from the +tedium and temptations of idleness. + +But you can always tell when you get among the Dutch and the Quakers, +for there you perceive that something has been done for posterity. Their +houses are of stone, and built for duration, not for show. If a German +builds a house, its walls are twice as thick as others--if he puts down +a gate-post, it is sure to be nearly as thick as it is long. Every +thing about him, animate and inanimate, partakes of this character of +solidity. His wife even is a jolly, portly dame, his children +chubby rogues, with legs shaped like little old-fashioned mahogany +bannisters--his barns as big as fortresses--his horses like +mammoths--his cattle enormous--and his breeches surprisingly redundant in +linseywoolsey. It matters not to him, whether the form of sideboards or +bureaus changes, or whether other people wear tight breeches or cossack +pantaloons in the shape of meal-bags. Let fashion change as it may, +his low, round-crowned, broad-brimmed hat, keeps its ground, his +galligaskins support the same liberal dimensions, and his old oaken +chest and clothes-press of curled maple, with the Anno Domini of their +construction upon them, together with the dresser glistening with +pewter-plates, still stand their ground, while the baseless fabrics +of fashion fade away, without leaving a wreck behind. Ceaseless and +unwearied industry is his delight, and enterprise and speculation his +abhorrence. Riches do not corrupt, nor poverty depress him; for his +mind is a sort of Pacific ocean, such as the first navigators described +it--unmoved by tempests, and only intolerable from its dead and tedious +calms. Thus he moves on, and when he dies his son moves on in the +same pace, till generations have passed away, without one of the name +becoming distinguished by his exploits or his crimes. These are useful +citizens, for they bless a country with useful works, and add to its +riches. But still, though industry, prudence, and economy are useful +habits, they are selfish after all, and can hardly aspire to the dignity +of virtues, except as they are preservatives against active vices. + + * * * * * + +From "Westward Ho." + +=_281._= ABORTIVE TOWNS. + +Zeno Paddock and his wife Mrs. Judith, departed from the village, never +to return. Such was the reputation of the proprietor of the Western Sun, +that a distinguished speculator, who was going to found a great city +at the junction of Big Dry, and Little Dry, Rivers, made him the most +advantageous offers to come and establish himself there, and puff the +embryo bantling into existence as fast as possible. He offered him a +whole square next to that where the college, the courthouse, the +church, the library, the athenaeum, and all the public buildings were +situated.... Truth obliges us to say, that on his arrival at the city of +New Pekin, as it was called, he found it covered with a forest of trees, +each of which would take a man half a day to walk round; and that on +discovering the square in which all the public buildings were situated, +he found, to his no small astonishment, on the very spot where the +court-house stood on the map, a flock of wild turkeys gobbling like so +many lawyers, and two or three white-headed owls sitting on the high +trees listening with most commendable gravity.... Zeno set himself down, +began to print his paper in a great hollow sycamore, and to live on +anticipation, as many great speculators had done before him. + + * * * * * + + +=_James Fenimore Cooper, 1789-1851._= (Manual, pp. 478, 495, 506.) + +From "The Pioneers." + +=_282._= THE SHOOTING MATCH. + +In the mean while, as Billy Kirby was preparing himself for another +shot, Natty left the goal, with an extremely dissatisfied manner, +muttering to himself, and speaking aloud.-- + +"There hasn't been such a thing as a good flint sold at the foot of +the lake, since the time when the Indian traders used to come into the +country;--and if a body should go into the flats along the streams in +the hills, to hunt, for such a thing, it's ten to one but they will be +all covered up with the plough. Heigho! its seems to me, that just as +the game grows scarce, and a body wants the best of ammunition, to get +a livelihood, everything that's bad falls on him, like a judgment. But +I'll change the stone, for Billy Kirby hasn't the eye for such a mark, I +know." + +The wood-chopper seemed now entirely sensible that his reputation in +a great measure depended on his care; nor did he neglect any means to +ensure his success. He drew up his rifle, and renewed his aim, again and +again, still appearing reluctant to fire. No sound was heard from even +Brom, during these portentous movements, until Kirby discharged his +piece, with the same want of success as before. Then, indeed, the shouts +of the negro rung through the bushes, and sounded among the trees of the +neighboring forest, like the outcries of a tribe of Indians. He laughed, +rolling his head, first on one side, then on the other, until nature +seemed exhausted with mirth. He danced, until his legs were wearied with +motion, in the snow; and in short, he exhibited all that violence of joy +that characterizes the mirth of a thoughtless negro. + +The wood-chopper had exerted his art, and felt a proportionate degree +of disappointment at his failure. He first examined the bird with the +utmost attention, and more than once suggested that he had touched its +feathers, but the voice of the multitude was against him, for it felt +disposed to listen to the often-repeated cries of the black, to "gib a +nigger fair play." + +Finding it impossible to make out a title to the bird, Kirby turned +fiercely to the black, and said-- + +"Shut your oven, you crow! Where is the man that can hit a turkey's head +at a hundred yards? I was a fool for trying. You needn't make an uproar +like a falling pine-tree about it. Show me the man who can do it." + +"Look this a-way, Billy Kirby," said Leather-Stocking, "and let them +clear the mark, and I'll show you a man who's made better shots afore +now, and that when he's been hard pressed by the savages and wild +beasts." + + * * * * * + +Although Natty Bumppo[69] had certainly made hundreds of more momentous +shots, at his enemies or his game, yet he never exerted himself more to +excel. He raised his piece three several times; once to get his range; +once to calculate his distance; and once because the bird, alarmed by +the deathlike stillness that prevailed, turned its head quickly to +examine its foes. But the fourth time he fired. The smoke, the report, +and the momentary shock, prevented most of the spectators from instantly +knowing the result; but Elizabeth, when she saw her champion drop the +end of his rifle in the snow, and open his mouth in one of its silent +laughs, and then proceed very coolly to recharge his piece, knew that he +had been successful. The boys rushed to the mark, and lifted the turkey +on high, lifeless, and with nothing but the remnant of a head. + +"Bring in the critter," said Leather-Stocking, "and put it at the +feet of the lady. I was her deputy in the matter, and the bird is +her property." ... Elizabeth handed the black a piece of silver as a +remuneration for his loss, which had some effect in again unbending his +muscles, and then expressed to her companion her readiness to return +homeward. + +[Footnote 69: Another name of Leather-Stocking.] + + * * * * * + +From "The Pilot." + +=_283._= LONG TOM COFFIN. + +The seaman who was addressed by this dire appellation arose slowly from +the place where he was stationed as cockswain of the boat, and seemed to +ascend high in air by the gradual evolution of numberless folds in his +body. When erect, he stood nearly six feet and as many inches in his +shoes, though, when elevated in his most perpendicular attitude, there +was a forward inclination about his head and shoulders, that appeared to +be the consequence of habitual confinement in limited lodgings.... One +of his hands grasped, with a sort of instinct, the staff of a bright +harpoon, the lower end of which he placed firmly on the rock, as, in +obedience to the order of his commander, he left the place, where, +considering his vast dimensions, he had been established in an +incredibly small space. + +... The hardy old seaman, thus addressed, turned his grave visage on his +commander, and replied with a becoming gravity,-- + +"Give me a plenty of sea-room, and good canvas, where there is no +occasion for pilots at all, sir. For my part, I was born on board a +chebacco-man, and never could see the use of more land than now and then +a small island, to raise a few vegetables, and to dry your fish--I'm +sure the sight of it always makes me feel uncomfortable, unless we have +the wind dead off shore." + +... "I am more than half of your mind, that an island now and then is +all the terra firma that a seaman needs." + +"It's reason and philosophy, sir," returned the sedate cock-swain; "and +what land there is, should always be a soft mud, or a sandy ooze, in +order that an anchor might hold, and to make soundings sartin. I have +lost many a deep-sea, besides hand-leads by the dozens, on rocky +bottoms; but give me the roadstead where a lead comes up light, and an +anchor heavy. There's a boat pulling athwart our fore-foot, Captain +Barnstable; shall I run her aboard, or give her a berth, sir." + + * * * * * + +From "The Prairie." + +=284.= DEATH OF THE AGED TRAPPER, IN THE PAWNEE VILLAGE. + +The trapper had remained nearly motionless for an hour. His eyes alone +had occasionally opened and shut. When opened, his gaze seemed fastened +on the clouds which hung around the western horizon, reflecting the +bright colors, and giving form and loveliness to the glorious tints +of an American sunset. The hour, the calm beauty of the season, the +occasion, all conspired to fill the spectators with solemn awe. +Suddenly, while musing on the remarkable position in which he was +placed, Middleton felt the hand which he held grasp his own with +incredible power, and the old man, supported on either side by his +friends, rose upright to his feet. For a moment he looked about him, as +if to invite all in presence to listen (the lingering remnant of human +frailty), and then, with a fine military elevation of the head, and with +a voice that might be heard in every part of that numerous assembly, he +pronounced the word "Here!" + +A movement so entirely unexpected, and the air of grandeur and humility +which were so remarkably united in the mien of the trapper, together +with the clear and uncommon force of his utterance, produced a short +period of confusion in the faculties of all present. When Middleton and +Hard-Heart, each of whom had involuntarily extended a hand to support +the form of the old man, turned to him again, they found that the +subject of their interest was removed forever beyond the necessity of +their care. + + * * * * * + +From "The Red Rover." + +=_285._= ESCAPE FROM THE WRECK. + +... The boat was soon cleared of what, under their circumstances, was +literally lumber; leaving, however, far more than enough to meet all +their wants, and not a few of their comforts, in the event that the +elements should accord the permission to use them. + +Then, and not till then, did Wilder relax in his exertions. He had +arranged his sails ready to be hoisted in an instant; he had carefully +examined that no straggling rope connected the boat to the wreck, to +draw them under with the foundering mass; and he had assured himself +that food, water, compass, and the imperfect instruments that were there +then in use to ascertain the position of a ship, were all perfectly +disposed of in their several places, and ready to his hand. When all was +in this state of preparation, he disposed of himself in the stern of the +boat, and endeavored by the composure of his manner, to inspire his less +resolute companions with a portion of his own firmness. + +The bright sunshine was sleeping in a thousand places on every side of +the silent and deserted wreck. The sea had subsided to such a state of +utter rest that it was only at long intervals that the huge and helpless +mass, on which the ark of the expectants lay, was lifted from its dull +quietude, to roll heavily, for a moment in the washing waters, and +then to settle lower into the greedy and absorbing element. Still the +disappearance of the hull was slow, and even tedious, to those who +looked forward with such impatience to its total immersion, as to the +crisis of their own fortunes. + + * * * * * + +Then came the moon, with its mild and deceptive light, to throw the +delusion of its glow on the varying but ever frightful scene. + +"See," said Wilder, as the luminary lifted its pale and melancholy orb +out of the bed of the ocean; "we shall have light for our hazardous +launch!" + +"Is it at hand?" demanded Mrs. Wyllis, with all the resolution of manner +she could assume in so trying a situation. + +"It is--the ship has already brought her scuppers to the water. +Sometimes a vessel will float until saturated with the brine. If ours +sink at all, it will be soon." "If at all! Is there then hope that she +can float?" + +"None!" said Wilder, pausing to listen to the hollow and threatening +sounds which issued from the depths of the vessel, as the water broke +through her divisions, in passing from side to side, and which sounded +like the groaning of some heavy monster in the last agony of nature. +"None; she is already losing her level!" + +His companions saw the change; but not for the empire of the world, +could either of them have uttered a syllable. Another low, threatening, +rumbling sound was heard, and then the pent air beneath blew up the +forward part of the deck, with an explosion like that of a gun. + +"Now grasp the ropes I have given you" cried Wilder, breathless with his +eagerness to speak. + +His words were smothered by the rushing and gurgling of waters. The +vessel made a plunge like a dying whale; and raising its stern high into +the air, glided into the depths of the sea, like the leviathan seeking +his secret places. The motionless boat was lifted with the ship, until +it stood in an attitude fearfully approaching to the perpendicular. As +the wreck descended, the bows of the launch met the element, burying +themselves nearly to filling; but buoyant and light, it rose again, and, +struck powerfully on the stern by the settling mass, the little ark shot +ahead, as though it had been driven by the hand of man. Still, as the +water rushed into the vortex, every thing within its influence yielded +to the suction; and at the next instant, the launch was seen darting +down the declivity, as if eager to follow the vast machine, of which it +had so long formed a dependant, through the same gaping whirlpool, to +the bottom. Then it rose, rocking to the surface, and for a moment, was +tossed and whirled like a bubble circling in the eddies of a pool. After +which, the ocean moaned, and slept again; the moon-beams playing across +its treacherous bosom, sweetly and calm, as the rays are seen to quiver +on a lake that is embedded in sheltering mountains. + + * * * * * + +From "The History of the United States Navy." + +=_286._= NAVAL RESULTS OF THE WAR OF 1812. + +Thus terminated the war of 1812, so far as it was connected with the +American marine. The navy came out of this struggle with a vast increase +of reputation. The brilliant style in which the ships had been carried +into action, the steadiness and rapidity with which they had been +handled, and the fatal accuracy of their fire, on nearly every occasion, +produced a new era in naval warfare. Most of the frigate actions had +been as soon decided as circumstances would at all allow, and in no +instance was it found necessary to keep up the fire of a sloop-of-war an +hour, when singly engaged. Most of the combats of the latter, indeed, +were decided in about half that time. The execution done in these short +conflicts was often equal to that made by the largest vessels of +Europe in general actions, and, in some of them, the slain and wounded +comprised a very large proportion of the crews. + +It is not easy to say in which nation this unlooked-for result created +the most surprise, America or England. In the first it produced a +confidence in itself that had been greatly wanted, but which, in the +end, perhaps, degenerated to a feeling of self-esteem and security that +were not without danger, or entirely without exaggeration.... The ablest +and bravest captains of the English fleet were ready to admit that a new +power was about to appear on the ocean, and that it was not improbable +the battle for the mastery of the seas would have to be fought over +again. + +That the tone and discipline of the service were high, is true; but it +must be ascribed to moral, and not to physical, causes, to that aptitude +in the American character for the sea which has been so constantly +manifested, from the day the first pinnace sailed along the coast, on +the trading voyages of the seventeenth century, down to the present +moment. + +Many false modes of accounting for the novel character that had been +given to naval battles were resorted to, and among other reasons, it was +affirmed that the American vessels of war sailed with crews of picked +seamen. That a nation which practiced impressment should imagine that +another in which enlistments were voluntary, could possess an advantage +of this nature, infers a strong disposition to listen to any means but +the right one to account for an unpleasant truth. It is not known that a +single vessel left the country, the case of the Constitution on her two +last cruises excepted, with a crew that could he deemed extraordinary +in this respect. No American man-of-war ever sailed with a complement +composed of nothing but able seamen; and some of the hardest fought +battles that occurred during this war, were fought by ships' companies +that were materially worse than common. The people that manned the +vessels on Lake Champlain, in particular, were of a quality much +inferior to those usually found in ships of war. Neither were the +officers, in general, old or very experienced. The navy itself dated but +fourteen years back, when the war commenced; and some of the commanders +began their professional careers several years after the first +appointments had been made. Perhaps one half of the lieutenants in the +service at the peace of 1815, had first gone on board ship within six +years from the declaration of the war, and very many of them within +three or four. So far from the midshipmen having been masters and mates +of merchantmen, as was reported at the time, they were generally youths +that first went from the ease and comforts of the paternal home, when +they appeared on the quarter-deck of a man-of-war. + + * * * * * + + +=_Catharine M. Sedgwick, 1789-1867._= (Manual, p. 484.) + +From "Hope Leslie." + +=_287._= THE MINISTER CONDEMNING VAIN APPAREL. + +Mr. Cotton, the regular pastor, rose to remind his brethren of the +decree "that private members should be very sparing in their questions +and observations after public sermons," and to say that he should +postpone any further discussion of the precious points before them, as +it was now near nine o'clock, after which it was not suitable for any +Christian family to be unnecessarily abroad. + +Hope now, and many others, instinctively rose, in anticipation of the +dismissing benediction; but Mr. Cotton waved his hand for them to sit +down till he could communicate to the congregation the decision to +which the ruling elders and himself had come on the subject of the last +Sabbath sermon. "He would not repeat what he had before said upon that +lust of costly apparel which was fast gaining ground, and had already, +as was well known, crept into godly families. He was pleased that there +were among them gracious women, ready to turn at a rebuke, as was +manifested in many veils being left at home that were floating over the +congregation like so many butterflies' wings in the morning. Economy," +he justly observed, "was, as well as simplicity, a Christian grace; and, +therefore, the rulers had determined that those persons who had run into +the excess of immoderate veils and sleeves, embroidered caps, and gold +and silver lace, should be permitted to wear them out, but new ones +should be forfeited." + +This sumptuary regulation announced, the meeting was dismissed. + +Madame Winthrop whispered to Everell that she was going, with his +father, to look in upon a sick neighbor, and would thank him to see her +niece home. Everell stole a glance at Hope, and dutifully offered his +arm to Miss Downing. + +Hope, intent only on one object, was hurrying out of the pew, intending, +in the jostling of the crowd, to escape alone; but she was arrested by +Madame Winthrop's saying, "Miss Leslie, Sir Philip offers you his arm;" +and at the same moment, her aunt stooped forward to beg her to wait a +moment, till she could send a message to Deacon Knowles' wife, that she +might wear her new gown with the Turkish sleeves, the next day.... "It +is but doing as a body would be done by, to let Mistress Knowles know +she may come out in her new gown to-morrow." + + * * * * * + +From "The Linwoods." + +=_288._= KOSCIUSKO'S GARDEN AT WEST POINT. + +The harmonies of Nature's orchestra were the only and the fitting sounds +in this seclusion; the early wooing of the birds; the water from the +fountains of the heights, that, filtering through the rocks, dropped +from ledge to ledge with the regularity of a water-clock; the ripple of +the waves, as they broke upon the rocky points of the shore, or softly +kissed its pebbly margin; and the voice of the tiny stream, that, +gliding down a dark, deep, and almost hidden channel in the rocks, +disappeared and welled up again in the center of the turfy slope, stole +over it, and trickled down the lower ledge of granite to the river. +Tradition has named this little, green shelf on the rocks, "Kosciusko's +Garden;" but, as no traces have been discovered of any other than +Nature's plantings, it was probably merely his favorite retreat, and, as +such, is a monument of his taste and love of nature. + + * * * * * + + +=_John Neal, 1793-._= (Manual, p. 510.) + +From "Randolph." + +=_289._= THE NATURE OF TRUE POETRY. + +Poetry is the naked expression of power and eloquence; but, for many +hundred years, poetry has been confounded with false music, measure, +and cadence, the soul with the body, the thought with the language, the +manner of speaking with the mode of thinking.... What I call poetry, +has nothing to do with art or learning. It is a natural music, the +music of woods and waters, not that of the orchestra.... Poetry is +a religion, as well as a music. Nay, it is eloquence. It is whatever +affects, touches, or disturbs the animal or moral sense of man. I care +not how poetry may be expressed, nor in what language; it is still +poetry; as the melody of the waters, wherever they may run, in the +desert or the wilderness, among the rocks or the grass, will always be +melody.... It is not the composition of a master, the language of art, +painfully and entirely exact, but is the wild, capricious melody of +nature, pathetic or brilliant, like the roundelay of innumerable birds +whistling all about you, in the wind and water, sky and air, or the +coquetting of a river breeze over the fine string's of an Aeolian harp, +concealed among green, leaves and apple blossoms. + + * * * * * + + +=_John Pendleton Kennedy, 1795-1870._= (Manual, pp. 490, 510.) + +From "Swallow Barn." + +=_290._= THE MANSION AND THE BARN. + + +Swallow Barn is an aristocratical old edifice, which sits, like a +brooding hen, on the southern bank of the James River. It looks down +upon a shady pocket, or nook, formed by an indentation of the shore, +from a gentle acclivity, thinly sprinkled with oaks, whose magnificent +branches afford habitation to sundry friendly colonies of squirrels and +woodpeckers. + +This time-honored mansion was the residence of the family of Hazards.... + +The main building is more than a century old. It is built with thick +brick walls, but one story in height, and surmounted by a double-faced +or hipped roof, which gives the idea of a ship, bottom upwards. Later +buildings have been added to this, as the wants or ambition of the +family have expanded. These are all constructed of wood, and seem +to have been built in defiance of all laws of congruity, just as +convenience required.... + +... Beyond the bridge, at some distance, stands a prominent object in +the perspective of this picture,--the most venerable appendage to the +establishment,--a huge barn, with an immense roof hanging almost to the +ground, and thatched a foot thick with sun-burnt straw, which reaches +below the eaves in ragged flakes. It has a singularly drowsy and +decrepit aspect. + + * * * * * + +=_291._= A DISAPPOINTED POLITICIAN. + + +"Things are getting worse and worse," replied the other. "I can see how +it's going. Here, the first thing General Jackson did, when he came in, +he wanted to have the president elected for six years; and, by and by, +they will want him for ten; and now they want to cut up our orchards and +meadows, whether or no. That's just the way Bonaparte went on. What's +the use of states, if they are all to be cut up with canals, and +railroads, and tariffs? No, no, gentlemen; you may depend Old Virginny's +not going to let Congress carry on in her day." + +"How can they help it?" asked Sandy. + +"We haven't _fout_ and bled," rejoined the other, taking out of his +pocket a large piece of tobacco, and cutting off a quid, as he spoke in +a somewhat subdued tone,--"we haven't _fout_ and bled for our liberties +to have our posterity and their land circumcised after this rate, to +suit the figaries of Congress. So let them try it when they will." + +"Mr. Ned Hazard, what do you call state rights?" demanded Sandy. + +"It's a sort of a law," said the other speaker, taking the answer to +himself, "against cotton and wool." + + * * * * * + +From his "Life of William Wirt." + +=_292._= WIRT'S STYLE OF ORATORY. + + +He became, in the maturity of his career, one of the most philosophic +and accomplished lawyers of his time. In earlier life, he was remarked +for a florid imagination, and a power of vivid declamation,--faculties +which are but too apt to seduce their possessor to waste his strength +in that flimsier eloquence, which more captivates the crowd without +the bar, than the Judge upon the bench, and whose fatal facility often +ensnares ambitious youth capable of better things, by its cheap applause +and temptation to that indolence which may be indulged without loss of +popularity. The public seem to have ascribed to Mr. Wirt some such, +reputation as this, when he first attracted notice. He came upon the +broader theater of his fame under this disadvantage. He was aware of +it himself, and labored with matchless perseverance to disabuse the +tribunals, with which he was familiar, of this disparaging opinion. How +he succeeded, his compeers at the bar have often testified. None amongst +them ever brought to the judgment-seat a more complete preparation for +trial--none ever more thoroughly argued a case through minute analysis +and nice discrimination of principles. In logical precision of mind, +clearness of statement, full investigation of complicated points, and +close comparison of precedents, he had no superior at the bar of the +Supreme Court. He often relieved the tedium of argument with playful +sallies of wit and humor. He had a prompt and effective talent for +this exercise, to which his extensive and various reading administered +abundant resource; and he indulged it not less to the gratification of +his auditory than to the aid of his cause. In such tactics, Mr. Wirt was +well versed. In sarcasm and invective he was often exceedingly strong, +and denounced with a power that made transgressors tremble; but the bent +of his nature being kindly and tolerant of error, he took more pleasure +in exciting the laugh, than in conjuring the spirit of censure or +rebuke. + +His manner in speaking was singularly attractive. His manly form, +his intellectual countenance and musical voice, set off by a rare +gracefulness of gesture, won, in advance, the favor of his auditory. He +was calm, deliberate, and distinct in his enunciation, not often rising +into any high exhibition of passion, and never sinking into tameness. +His key was that of earnest and animated argument, frequently alternated +with that of a playful and sprightly humor. His language was neat, well +chosen, and uttered without impediment or slovenly repetition. The tones +of his voice played, with a natural skill, through the various cadences +most appropriate to express the flitting emotions of his mind, and the +changes of his thought. To these external properties of his elocution, +we may ascribe the pleasure which persons of all conditions found in +listening to him. Women often crowded the court-rooms to hear him, and +as often astonished him, not only by the patience, but the visible +enjoyment with which they were wont to sit out his argument to the +end,--even when the topic was too dry to interest them, or too abstruse +for them to understand his discourse.... His oratory was not of +that strong, bold, and impetuous nature which is often the chief +characteristic of the highest eloquence, and which is said to sway the +Senate with absolute dominion, and to imprison or set free the storm of +human passion, in the multitude, according to the speaker's will. It was +smooth, polished, scholar-like, sparkling with pleasant fancies, +and beguiling the listener by its varied graces, out of all note or +consciousness of time. + + * * * * * + + +=_William Ware, 1797-1852._= (Manual, p. 510.) + +From "Aurelian, or Rome in the Third Century." + +=_293._= THE CHRISTIAN MARTYR. + +When now he had stood there not many minutes, one of the doors of the +vivaria was suddenly thrown back, and bounding forth with a roar that +seemed to shake the walls of the theatre, a lion of huge dimensions +leaped upon the arena. Majesty and power were inscribed upon his lordly +limbs; and, as he stood there where he had first sprung, and looked +round upon the multitude, how did his gentle eye and noble carriage, +with which no one for a moment could associate meanness, or cruelty, +or revenge, cast shame upon the human monsters assembled to behold a +solitary, unarmed man torn limb from limb! When he had in this way +looked upon that cloud of faces, he then turned, and moved round the +arena through its whole circumference, still looking upwards upon those +who filled the seats, not till he had come again to the point from which +he started so much as noticing him who stood his victim in the midst. +Then, as if apparently for the first time becoming conscious of his +presence, he caught the form of Probus, and, moving slowly towards him, +looked steadfastly upon him, receiving in return the settled gaze of the +Christian. Standing there still a while, each looking upon the other, he +then walked round him, then approached nearer, making suddenly, and for +a moment, those motions which indicated the roused appetite; but, as +it were, in the spirit of self-rebuke, he immediately retreated a few +paces, and lay down in the sand, stretching out his head towards Probus, +and closing his eyes, as if for sleep. + + * * * * * + + +=_Lydia Maria Child, 1802-._= (Manual, p. 434.) + +From "Autumnal Leaves." + +=_294._= ILL TEMPER CONTAGIOUS. + +It is curious to observe how a man's spiritual state reflects itself in +the people and animals around him; nay, in the very garments, trees, and +stones. + +Reuben Black was an infestation in the neighborhood where he resided. +The very sight of him produced effects similar to the Hindoo magical +tune called Raug, which is said to bring on clouds, storms, and +earthquakes. His wife seemed lean, sharp, and uncomfortable. The heads +of his boys had a bristling aspect, as if each individual hair stood on +end with perpetual fear. The cows poked out their horns horizontally, as +soon as he opened the barn-yard gate. The dog dropped his tail between +his legs, and eyed him askance, to see what humor he was in. The cat +looked wild and scraggy, and had been known to rush straight up the +chimney when he moved towards her. Fanny Kemble's expressive description +of the Pennsylvania stage-horses was exactly suited to Reuben's poor +old nag. "His hide resembled an old hair-trunk." Continual whipping and +kicking had made him such a stoic, that no amount of blows could quicken +his pace, and no chirruping could change the dejected drooping of his +head. All his natural language said, as plainly as a horse _could_ +say it, that he was a most unhappy beast. Even the trees on Reuben's +premises had a gnarled and knotted appearance. The bark wept little +sickly tears of gum, and the branches grew awry, as if they felt the +continual discord, and made sorry faces at each other behind their +owner's back. His fields were red with sorrel, or run over with mullein. +Every thing seemed as hard and arid as his own visage. Every day, he +cursed the town and the neighborhood, because they poisoned his dogs, +and stoned his hens, and shot his cats. Continual law-suits involved him +in so much expense, that he had neither time nor money to spend on the +improvement of his farm. + +Against Joe Smith, a poor laborer in the neighborhood, he had brought +three suits in succession. Joe said he had returned a spade he borrowed, +and Reuben swore he had not. He sued Joe, and recovered damages, for +which he ordered the sheriff to seize his pig. Joe, in his wrath, called +him an old swindler, and a curse to the neighborhood. These remarks were +soon repeated to Reuben. He brought an action for slander, and recovered +twenty-five cents. Provoked at the laugh this occasioned, he watched for +Joe to pass by, and set his big dog upon him, screaming furiously, "Call +me an old swindler again, will you." An evil spirit is more contagious +than the plague. Joe went home and scolded his wife, and boxed little +Joe's ears, and kicked the cat; and not one of them knew what it was +all for. A fortnight after, Reuben's big dog was found dead by poison. +Whereupon he brought another action against Joe Smith, and not being +able to prove him guilty of the charge of dog-murder, he took his +revenge by poisoning a pet lamb belonging to Mrs. Smith. Thus the bad +game went on, with mutual worriment and loss. Joe's temper grew more +and more vindictive, and the love of talking over his troubles at the +grog-shop increased on him. Poor Mrs. Smith cried, and said it was all +owing to Reuben Black; for a better hearted man never lived than her +Joe, when she first married him. + + * * * * * + + +=_Robert M. Bird, 1803-1854._= (Manual, p. 510.) + +From "Nick of the Woods: a Tale of Kentucky." + +=_295._= THE QUAKER HUNTSMAN. + +"I have a thing to say to thee, which it concerns thee and the fair +maid, thee cousin, to know. There was a will, friend, a true and lawful +last will and testament of thee deceased uncle, in which theeself and +thee cousin was made the sole heirs of the same. Truly, friend, I did +take it from the breast of the villain that plotted thee ruin; but, +truly, it was taken from me again, I know not how." + +"I have it safe," said Roland, displaying it, for a moment, with great +satisfaction, to Nathan's eyes. "It makes me master of wealth, which +you, Nathan, shall be the first to share. You must leave this wild life +of the border, go with me to Virginia--" + +"I, friend!" exclaimed Nathan, with a melancholy shake of the head; +"thee would not have me back in the Settlements, to scandalize them that +is of my faith? No, friend; my lot is cast in the woods, and thee must +not ask me again to leave them. And, friend, thee must not think I have +served thee for the lucre of money or gain; for truly these things are +now to me as nothing. The meat that feeds me, the skins that cover, the +leaves that make my bed, are all in the forest around me, to be mine +when I want them; and what more can I desire? Yet, friend, if thee +thinks theeself obliged by whatever I have done for thee, I would ask of +thee one favor that thee can grant." + +"A hundred!" said the Virginian, warmly. + +"Nay, friend," muttered Nathan, with both a warning and beseeching +look, "all that I ask is, that thee shall say nothing of me that should +scandalize and disparage the faith to which I was born." + +"I understand you," said Roland, "and will remember your wish.... Come +with us, Nathan; come with us." + +But Nathan, ashamed of the weakness which he could not resist, had +turned away to conceal his emotion, and, stalking silently off, with the +ever-faithful Peter at his heels, was soon hidden from their eyes. + + * * * * * + + +=_Nathaniel Hawthorne,_= about =_1805-1864._= (Manual, pp. 505, 508.) + +From the "Twice-Told Tales." + +=_296._= PORTRAIT OF EDWARD RANDOLPH. + +Within the antique frame which so recently had enclosed a sable waste of +canvas, now appeared a visible picture--still dark, indeed, in its hues +and shadings, but thrown forward in strong relief.... The whole portrait +started so distinctly out of the background, that it had the effect of +a person looking down from the wall at the astonished and awe-stricken +spectators. The expression of the face, if any words can convey an idea +of it, was that of a wretch detected in some hideous guilt, and exposed +to the bitter hatred, and laughter, and withering scorn of a vast, +surrounding multitude. There was the struggle of defiance, beaten down +and overwhelmed by the crushing weight of ignominy. The torture of the +soul had come forth upon the countenance. It seemed as if the picture, +while hidden behind the cloud of immemorial years, had been all the time +acquiring an intenser depth and darkness of expression, till now it +gloomed forth again, and threw its evil omen over the present hour. +Such, if the wild legend may be credited, was the portrait of Edward +Randolph, as he appeared when a people's curse had wrought its influence +upon his nature. + + * * * * * + +=_297._= DESCRIPTION OF AN OLD SAILOR. + +Many such a day did I sit snugly in Mr. Bartlett's store, attentive +to the yarns of Uncle Parker--uncle to the whole village by right of +seniority, but of southern blood, with no kindred in New England. His +figure is before me now, enthroned upon a mackerel barrel--a lean, old +man, of great height, but bent with years, and twisted into an uncouth, +shape by seven broken limbs; furrowed, also, and weather-worn, as if +every gale, for the better part of a century, had caught him somewhere +on the sea. He looked like a harbinger of tempest, a shipmate of the +Flying Dutchman.... One of Uncle Parker's eyes had been blown out with +gunpowder, and the other did but glimmer in its socket. Turning it +upward as he spoke, it was his delight to tell of cruises against the +French, and battles with his own ship-mates, when he and an antagonist +used to be seated astride of a sailor's chest, each fastened down, by a +spike-nail through his trousers, and there to fight it out. + + * * * * * + +From the "Blithedale Romance." + +=_298._= A PICTURE OF GIRLHOOD. + +Priscilla had now grown to be a very pretty girl, and still kept budding +and blossoming, and daily putting on some new charm, which you no sooner +became sensible of than you thought it worth all she had previously +possessed. So unformed, vague, and without substance, as she had come to +us, it seemed as if we could see Nature shaping out a woman before our +very eyes, and yet had only a more reverential sense of the mystery of a +woman's soul and frame. Yesterday, her cheek was pale,--to-day it had +a bloom. Priscilla's smile, like a baby's first one, was a wondrous +novelty. Her imperfections and short-comings affected me with a kind of +playful pathos, which was as absolutely bewitching a sensation as ever I +experienced. After she had been a month or two at Blithedale, her animal +spirits waxed high, and kept her pretty constantly in a state of bubble +and ferment, impelling her to far more bodily activity than she had yet +strength to endure. She was very fond of playing with the other girls +out of doors. There is hardly another sight in the world so pretty as +that of a company of young girls, almost women grown, at play, and so +giving themselves up to their airy impulse that their tiptoes barely +touch the ground. + +Girls are incomparably wilder and more effervescent than boys, more +untamable, and regardless of rule and limit, with an ever-shifting +variety, breaking continually into new modes of fun, yet with a +harmonious propriety through all. Their steps, their voices, appear free +as the wind, but keep consonance with a strain of music inaudible to us. +Young men and boys, on the other hand, play according to recognized law, +old, traditionary games, permitting no caprioles of fancy, but with +scope enough for the outbreak of savage instincts.... + +Especially it is delightful to see a vigorous young girl run a race, +with her head thrown back, her limbs moving more friskily than +they need, and an air between that of a bird and a young colt. But +Priscilla's peculiar, charm, in a foot-race, was the weakness and +irregularity with which she ran.... + +When she had come to be quite at home among us, I used to fancy that +Priscilla played more pranks, and perpetrated more mischief, than any +other girl in the community. For example, I once heard Silas Foster, +in a very gruff voice, threatening to rivet three horse-shoes round +Priscilla's neck, and chain her to a post, because she, with some other +young people, had clambered upon a load of hay, and caused it to slide +off the cart. How she made her peace I never knew; but very soon +afterwards I saw old Silas, with his brawny hands round Priscilla's +waist, swinging her to and fro, and finally depositing her on one of the +oxen, to take her first lessons in riding. She met with terrible mishaps +in her efforts to milk a cow; she let the poultry into the garden; she +generally spoilt whatever part of the dinner she took in charge; +she broke crockery; she dropped our biggest pitcher into the well; +and--except with her needle and those little wooden instruments for +purse-making--was as unserviceable a member of society as any young +lady in the land. There was no other sort of efficiency about her. Yet +everybody was kind to Priscilla; everybody loved her and laughed at her +to her face, and did not laugh behind her back; everybody would have +given her half of his last crust, or the bigger share of his plum-cake. +These were pretty certain indications that we were all conscious of a +pleasant weakness in the girl, and considered her not quite able to look +after her own interests, or fight her battle with the world. + + * * * * * + +From "The Marble Faun." + +=_299._= SCULPTURE: ART AND ARTISTS. + +A sculptor, indeed, to meet the demands which our preconceptions make +upon him, should be even more indispensably a poet than those who deal +in measured verse and rhyme. His material, or instrument, which serves +him in the stead of shifting and transitory language, is a pure, white, +undecaying substance. It insures immortality to whatever is wrought in +it, and therefore makes it a religious obligation to commit no idea +to its mighty guardianship, save such as may repay the marble for +its faithful care, its incorruptible fidelity, by warming it with an +etherial life. Under this aspect, marble assumes a sacred character; and +no man should dare to touch it unless he feels within himself a certain +consecration and a priesthood, the only evidence of which, for the +public eye, will be the high treatment of heroic subjects, or the +delicate evolution of spiritual, through material beauty.... + +No ideas such as the foregoing--no misgivings suggested by +them--probably troubled the self complacency of most of these clever +sculptors. Marble, in their view, had no such sanctity as we impute to +it.... + +Yet we love the artists, in every kind; even these, whose merits we are +not quite able to appreciate. Sculptors, painters, crayon sketchers, or +whatever branch of aesthetics they adopted, were certainly pleasanter +people, as we saw them that evening, than the average whom we meet +in ordinary society. They were not wholly confined within the sordid +compass of practical life; they had a pursuit which, if followed +faithfully out, would lead them to the beautiful, and always had a +tendency thitherward, even if they lingered to gather up golden drops +by the wayside. Their actual business (though they talked about it very +much as other men talk of cotton, politics, flour barrels, and sugar) +necessarily illuminated their conversation with something akin to the +ideal.... + +As interesting as any of these relics was a large portfolio of old +drawings, some of which, in the opinion of their possessor, bore +evidence on their faces of the touch of master-hands. + +... According to the judgment of several connoisseurs, Raphael's own +hand had communicated its magnetism to one of these sketches; and if +genuine, it was evidently his first conception of a favorite Madonna, +now hanging in the private apartment of the Grand Duke, at Florence.... +There were at least half a dozen others, to which the owner assigned as +high an origin. It was delightful to believe in their authenticity, at +all events; for these things make the spectator, more vividly sensible +of a great painter's power, than the final glow and perfected art of the +most consummate picture that may have been elaborated from them. There +is an effluence of divinity in the first sketch; and there, if any +where, you find the pure light of inspiration, which the subsequent toil +of the artist serves to bring out in stronger lustre, indeed, but +likewise adulterates it with what belongs to an inferior mood. The aroma +and fragrance of new thought were perceptible in these designs, after +three centuries of wear and tear. The charm lay partly in their very +imperfection; for this is suggestive, and sets the imagination at work; +whereas, the finished picture, if a good one, leaves the spectator +nothing to do, and if bad, confuses, stupefies, disenchants, and +disheartens him. + + * * * * * + +From the "English Note Books." + +=_300._= RUINS OF FURNESS ABBEY. + +The most interesting part is that which was formerly the church, and +which, though now roofless, is still surrounded by walls, and retains +the remnants of the pillars that formerly supported the intermingling +curves of the arches. The floor is all overgrown with grass strewn with +fragments and capitals of pillars. It was a great and stately edifice, +the length of the nave and choir having been nearly three hundred feet, +and that of the transept more than half as much. The pillars along the +nave were alternately, a round solid one, and a clustered one. Now, what +remains of some of them is even with the ground: others present a stump +just high enough to form a seat; and others are perhaps a man's height +from the ground; and all are mossy, and with grass and weeds rooted into +their chinks, and here and there a tuft of flowers giving its tender +little beauty to their decay. The material of the edifice is a soft red +stone, and it is now extensively overgrown with a lichen of a very light +gray hue, which at a little distance makes the walls look as if they +had long ago been whitewashed and now had partially returned to their +original color. The arches of the nave and transept were noble and +immense; there were four of them together, supporting a tower which has +long since disappeared,--arches loftier than I ever conceived to have +been made by man. Very possibly, in some cathedral that I have seen, +or am yet to see, there may be arches as stately as these, but I doubt +whether they can ever show to such advantage in a perfect edifice as +they do in this ruin,--most of them broken, only one, as far as I +recollect, still completing its sweep. In this state they suggest a +greater majesty and beauty than any finished human work can show; the +crumbling traces of the half-obliterated design producing somewhat of +the effect of the first idea of any thing admirable, when it dawns upon +the mind of an artist or a poet,--an idea which, do what he may, he is +sure to fall short of in his attempt to embody it.... + +Conceive all these shattered walls, with here and there an arched +door, or the great arched vacancy of a window; these broken stones and +monuments scattered about; these rows of pillars up and down the nave, +these arches, through which a giant might have stepped, and not +needed to bow his head, unless in reverence to the sanctity of the +place,--conceive it all, with such verdure and embroidery of flowers as +the gentle, kindly moisture of the English climate procreates on all old +things, making them more beautiful than new, conceive it with the grass +for sole pavement of the long and spacious aisle, and the sky above for +the only roof. The sky, to be sure, is more majestic than the tallest +of those arches; and yet these latter, perhaps, make the stronger +impression of sublimity, because they translate the sweep of the sky to +our finite comprehension. It was a most beautiful, warm, sunny day, and +the ruins had all the pictorial advantage of bright light, and deep +shadows. I must not forget that birds flew in and out among the +recesses, and chirped and warbled, and made themselves at home there. +Doubtless, the birds of the present generation are the posterity of +those who first settled in the ruins, after the Reformation; and perhaps +the old monks of a still earlier day may have watched them building +about the abbey, before it was a ruin at all. + + * * * * * + +From the "American Note Books." + +=_301._= SCENERY OF THE MERRIMAC. + +I never could have conceived that there was so beautiful a river-scene +in Concord as this of the North Branch. The stream flows through the +midmost privacy and deepest heart of a wood, which, as if but half +satisfied with its presence, calm, gentle and unobtrusive as it is, +seems to crowd upon it, and barely to allow it passage, for the trees +are rooted on the very verge of the water, and dip their pendent +branches into it. On one side there is a high bank forming the side of a +hill, the Indian name of which I have forgotten, though Mr. Thoreau told +it to me; and here in some instances the trees stand leaning over the +river, stretching out their arms as if about to plunge in headlong. On +the other side, the bank is almost on a level with the water, and there +the quiet congregation of trees stood with feet in the flood, and +fringed with foliage down to its very surface. Vines here and there +twine themselves about bushes or aspens or alder-trees, and hang their +clusters, though scanty and infrequent this season, so that I can reach +them from my boat, I scarcely remember a scene of more complete and +lovely seclusion than the passage of the river through this wood. Even +an Indian canoe in olden times, could not have floated onward in deeper +solitude than my boat. I have never elsewhere had such an opportunity to +observe how much more beautiful reflection is than what we call reality. +The sky and the clustering foliage on either hand, and the effect of +sunlight as it found its way through the shade, giving lightsome hues in +contrast with the quiet depth of the prevailing tints, all these +seemed unsurpassably beautiful when beheld in upper air. But on gazing +downward, there they were, the same even to the minutest particular, yet +arrayed in ideal beauty which satisfied the spirit incomparably more +than the actual scene. I am half convinced that the reflection is indeed +the reality, the real thing which Nature imperfectly images to our +grosser sense. At any rate the disembodied shadow is nearest to the +soul. + + * * * * * + +From the "French and Italian Note Books." + +=_302._= A DUNGEON OF ANCIENT ROME. + +We were now in the deepest and ugliest part of the old Mamertine Prison, +one of the few remains of the kingly period of Rome, and which served +the Romans as a state prison for hundreds of years before the Christian +era. A multitude of criminals or innocent persons, no doubt, have +languished here in misery, and perished in darkness. Here Jugurtha +starved; here Catiline's adherents were strangled; and methinks, there +can not be in the world another such an evil den, so haunted with black +memories and indistinct surmises of guilt and suffering. In old Rome, I +suppose, the citizens never spoke of this dungeon above their breath. +It looks just as bad as it is; round, only seven paces across, yet so +obscure that our tapers could not illuminate it from side to side,--the +stones of which it is constructed being as black as midnight. The +custode showed us a stone post at the side of the cell, with the hole in +the top of it, into which, he said, St. Peter's chain had been fastened; +and he uncovered a spring of water, in the middle of the stone floor, +which he told us had miraculously gushed up to enable the Saint to +baptize his jailor. The miracle was perhaps the more easily wrought, +inasmuch as Jugurtha had found the floor of the dungeon oozy with wet. +However, it is best to be as simple and childlike as we can in these +matters; and whether St. Peter stamped his visage into the stone, and +wrought this other miracle or no, and whether or no he ever was in the +prison at all, still the belief of a thousand years and more, gives a +sort of reality and substance to such traditions. The custode dipped an +iron ladle into the miraculous water, and we each of us drank a sip; +and, what is very, remarkable, to me it seemed hard water and almost +brackish, while many persons think it the sweetest in Rome. I suspect +that St. Peter still dabbles in this water, and tempers its qualities +according to the faith of those who drink it. + + * * * * * + + +=_William Gilmore Simms, 1806-1870._= (Manual, pp. 490, 510.) + +From "Eutaw, a Sequel to The Foragers." + +=_303._= THE BATTLE OF EUTAW. + +Up to this moment nothing had seemed more certain than the victory of +the Americans. The consternation in the British camp was complete. +Everything was given up for lost by a considerable portion of the army. +The commissaries destroyed their stores, the loyalists and American +deserters, dreading the rope, seizing every horse which they could +command, fled incontinently for Charleston, whither they carried such +an alarm that the stores along the road were destroyed, and the trees +felled across it for the obstruction of the victorious Americans, who +were supposed to be pressing down upon the city with all their might. + +Equally deceived were the conquerors. Flushed with success, the infantry +scattered themselves about the British camp, which, as all the tents had +been left standing, presented a thousand objects to tempt the appetites +of a half-starved and half-naked soldiery. Insubordination followed +disorder.... + +No more could be done. The laurels won in the first act of this exciting +drama, were all withered in the second. Both parties claimed a victory. +It belonged to neither. The British were beaten from the field at the +point of the bayonet, sought shelter in a fortress, and repulsed their +assailants from that fortress. It is to the shame and discredit of the +Americans that they were repulsed. The victory was in their hands. + + * * * * * + +From the "Life of Francis Marion." + +=_304._= CHARACTER AND SERVICES OF GENERAL MARION. + +No commander had ever been more solicitous of the safety and comfort of +his men. It was this which had rendered him so sure of their fidelity, +which had enabled him to extract from them such admirable service. This +simple entreaty stayed their quarrels; ... No duel took place among his +officers during the whole of his command. + +The province which was assigned to his control by Governor Rutledge, was +the constant theatre of war. He was required to cover an immense extent +of country. With a force constantly unequal and constantly fluctuating, +he contrived to supply its deficiencies by the resources of his own +vigilance and skill. His personal bravery was frequently shown, and the +fact that he himself conducted an enterprise, was enough to convince his +men that they were certain to be led to victory.... He had no lives to +waste, and the game he played was that which enabled him to secure the +greatest results, with the smallest amount of hazard. Yet, when the +occasion seemed to require it, he could advance and strike with an +audacity, which in the ordinary relations of the leader with the +soldier, might well be thought inexcusable rashness.... The reader will +perceive a singular discrepancy between the actual events detailed in +the life of every popular hero, and the peculiar fame which he holds in +the minds of his countrymen. Thus, while Marion is every where regarded +as the peculiar representative in the southern States, of the genius of +partizan warfare, we are surprised, when we would trace, in the pages of +the annalist, the sources of this fame, to find the details so meagre +and so unsatisfactory. Tradition mumbles over his broken memories, which +we vainly strive to pluck from his lips, and bind together in coherent +and satisfactory records. The spirited surprise, the happy ambush, the +daring onslaught, the fortunate escape,--these, as they involve no +monstrous slaughter,--no murderous strife of masses,--no rending of +walled towns and sack of cities, the ordinary historian disdains. The +military reputation of Marion consists in the frequent performance of +deeds, unexpectedly, with inferior means, by which the enemy was annoyed +and dispirited, and the hearts and courage of his countrymen warmed into +corresponding exertions with his own. To him we owe that the fires of +patriotism were never extinguished, even in the most disastrous hours, +in the low country of South Carolina. He made our swamps and forests +sacred, as well because of the refuge which they gave to the fugitive +patriot, as for the frequent sacrifices which they enabled him to make, +on the altars of liberty and a befitting vengeance.... It is enough +that his fame has entered largely into that of his country, forming a +valuable portion of its national stock of character. His memory is in +the very hearts of our people. + + * * * * * + + +=_Harriet Beecher Stowe, 1812-._= (Manual, p. 484.) + +From "Uncle Tom's Cabin." + +=_305._= MEMORIALS OF A DEAD CHILD. + +At the door, however, he stopped a moment, and then coming back, he +said, with some hesitation,-- + +"Mary, I don't know how you'd feel about it, but there's that drawer +full of things-of-of-poor little Henry's." So saying, he turned quickly +on his heel, and shut the door after him. + +His wife opened the little bedroom door adjoining her room, and taking +the candle, set it down on the top of a bureau there; then from a small +recess she took a key, and put it thoughtfully in the lock of a drawer, +and made a sudden pause, while two boys, who, boy-like, had followed +close on her heels, stood looking, with silent, significant glances, at +their mother. And O, mother that reads this, has there never been in +your house a drawer, or a closet, the opening of which has been to you +like the opening again of a little grave? Ah! happy mother that you are, +if it has not been so. + +Mrs. Bird slowly opened the drawer. There were little coats, of many a +form and pattern, piles of aprons, and rows of small stockings; and even +a pair of little shoes, worn and rubbed at the toes, were peeping +from the folds of a paper. There was a toy horse and wagon, a top, a +ball,--memorials gathered with many a tear and many a heart-break! She +sat down by the drawer, and leaning her head on her hands over it, wept +till the tears fell through her fingers into the drawer; then, suddenly +raising her head, she began, with nervous haste, selecting the plainest +and most substantial articles, and gathering them into a bundle. + +"Mamma," said one of the boys, gently touching her arm, "are you going +to give away those things?" + +"My dear boys," she said, softly and earnestly, "if our dear loving +little Henry looks down from heaven, he would be glad to have us do +this. I could not find it in my heart to give them away to any common +person--to anybody that was happy; but I give them to a mother more +heart-broken and sorrowful than I am; and I hope God will send his +blessing with, them!" + + * * * * * + +From "Old-Town Folks." + +=_306._= THE OLD MEETING HOUSE. + +Going to meeting, in that state of society into which I was born, was as +necessary and inevitable a consequence of waking up on Sunday morning, +as eating one's breakfast. Nobody thought of staying away,--and, for +that matter, nobody wanted to stay away. Our weekly life was simple, +monotonous, and laborious; and the chance of seeing the whole +neighborhood together in their best clothes on Sunday, was a thing +which, in the dearth of all other sources of amusement, appealed to the +idlest and most unspiritual of loafers. They who did not care for the +sermon or the prayers, wanted to see Major Broad's scarlet coat and +laced ruffles, and his wife's brocade dress, and the new bonnet which +Lady Lothrop had just had sent up from Boston. Whoever had not seen +these would be out of society for a week to come, and not be able to +converse understandingly on the topics of the day. + +The meeting on Sunday united in those days, as nearly as possible, the +whole population of a town,--men, women, and children. There was then +in a village but one fold and one shepherd, and long habit had made the +tendency to this one central point so much a necessity to every one, +that to stay away from "meetin," for any reason whatever, was always a +secret source of uneasiness. I remember in my early days, sometimes when +I had been left at home by reason of some of the transient ailments of +childhood, how ghostly and supernatural the stillness of the whole house +and village outside the meeting-house used to appear to me, how loudly +the clock ticked and the flies buzzed down the window-pane, and how I +listened in the breathless stillness to the distant psalm-singing, the +solemn tones of the long prayer, and then to the monotone of the sermon, +and then again to the closing echoes of the last hymn, and thought +sadly, what if some day I should be left out, when all my relations and +friends had gone to meeting in the New Jerusalem, and hear afar the +music from the crystal walls. + +The arrangement of our house of worship in Oldtown was somewhat +peculiar, owing to the fact of its having originally been built as a +missionary church for the Indians. The central portion of the house, +usually appropriated to the best pews, was in ours devoted to them; and +here were arranged benches of the simplest and most primitive form; on +which were collected every Sunday, the thin and wasted remnants of +what once was a numerous and powerful tribe. There were four or five +respectable Indian families, who owned comfortable farms in the +neighborhood, and came to meeting in their farm-wagons, like any of +their white neighbors. + +... Besides our Indian population, we had also a few negroes, and a side +gallery was appropriated to them. One of them was that of Aunt Nancy +Prime, famous for making election-cake and ginger-pop, and who was sent +for at all the great houses on occasions of high festivity, as learned +in all mysteries relating to the confection of cakes and pies. A tight, +trig, bustling body she, black and polished as ebony, smooth-spoken +and respectful, and quite a favorite with everybody. Nancy had treated +herself to an expensive luxury in the shape of a husband,--an idle, +worthless mulatto man, who was owned as a slave in Boston. Nancy bought +him, by intense labors in spinning flax, but found him an undesirable +acquisition, and was often heard to declare, in the bitterness of her +soul, when her husband returned from his drinking bouts, that she should +never buy another nigger, she knew. Prominent there was the stately form +of old Boston Foodah, an African Prince, who had been stolen from the +coast of Guinea in early youth, and sold in Boston at some period of +antiquity whereto the memory of man runneth not. + + * * * * * + + +=_Maria J. McIntosh, 1815-._= (Manual, p. 484.) + +From "Two Pictures." + +=_307._= DEBATE BETWEEN WEBSTER AND HAYNE. + +... Webster, Clay, Calhoun--the triumvirate to which, it is to be +feared, we shall long have to look back as to our last, were still +living; and as Augusta Moray gazed on the dark, melancholy eyes of the +first, shadowed by that wonderful brow, or looked into the face of the +second, where if prescient thought sometimes rose as a flitting cloud, +it was chased away before the glow of the warm heart and the quick +kindling fancy, or turned to the sharp angular lines and firmly +compressed lips that marked the iron strength of the third, she felt +that she stood in the midst of her dream fulfilment. The session was one +of peculiar interest. Great questions agitated the public mind, and were +treated greatly. Two great parties, springing from the very foundations +of our civil polity, strove for supremacy in our legislative halls. The +one, looking into the depths of our colonial history, took its stand on +the unquestionable truth, that each state of the Union was sovereign +over herself, from which was drawn the corollary, that she was as free +to leave as she had been to enter the Union. The other contended that +the present constitution of these United States defined the boundary of +the powers of each state, as well as of the great whole into which they +had been voluntarily fused; that to look behind that, was such a resort +to first principles or natural rights, as is involved in revolution, and +must be decided as revolution ever is, by the relative strength of the +ruling and the revolting forces. + +On neither side was there any trickery, any bullying, any flimsy display +of rhetorical power. All was grand as the subject for which they +contended, solemn as the doom to which they seemed, approaching. In the +chief magistrate of that time all saw the unflinching executor of the +nation's will--a man whose words were the sure prefigurements of his +deeds. Their verdict must be carefully weighed, for it would be surely +executed. In stern silence each sat to hear, to deliberate, to judge. +The sharp logic and fiery vehemence of Hayne called up no angry flash, +roused no personal vindictiveness; and the deep tones of Webster found +as ready an entrance to southern as to northern hearts, while in those +powerful, words which seemed the fit weapons of a nation's champion, his +mighty mind swept away all that opposed it, save that principle which +lay imbedded in the very deepest stratum of the life of his opponents, +and which could not be torn away from them till feeling and life were +extinct. + +It was in the capital, and in the presence of these great men, that +Augusta liked best to find herself. We are afraid she did not always +listen when men of more ordinary power occupied the floor,--the gallery +was an excellent dreaming place at such times. + + * * * * * + + +=_Catharine Anne Warfield,[70] 1817-._= + +From "The Romance of Beauseincourt." + +=_308._= VIEW OF THE SKY BY NIGHT. + +I had derived great and constant pleasure from the undisturbed +possession of this place of promenade during my whole sojourn.... Often, +when my mind had been distracted with anxious cares, I had literally +waited down its excitement and anguish in my fierce and rapid movements +to and fro, over its smooth painted floor, the daily care of Sylphy, who +might be heard in the hot season busily employed in refreshing it with +mop and broom and water during the first hours of the morning, the +pleasant, dewy freshness of which operation might be felt gratefully in +the atmosphere of our heated chamber. + +The long gallery was very solitary, of course, at an hour like this, and +it was with a feeling of calm relief that I paced its lonely length, +stopping at intervals to look out upon the night; one of cloudy +sultriness, occasionally relieved by gusts of warm, damp wind, that bore +the distant odors of swamp and forest on its wings, and promised speedy +rain. Here and there in the dappled heavens were liquid purple spaces, +like the open sea described by Arctic voyagers, around which hung masses +of silvery clouds, projecting like ice cliffs; and into these patches of +sky the large yellow moon would now and then sail majestically, suddenly +emerging, like a ship from a fog, from the fleecy screen that veiled her +light, to cross these spaces, and plunge into mist and shadow again. + +There was something in the whole effect calculated to absorb the mind of +an absent dreamer, intent on the future, and for the first time for many +weeks putting aside all foreign considerations, in favor of self too +long merged in others and neglected. + +[Footnote 70: One of our most accomplished female writers; a native of +Mississippi, but long resident in Kentucky.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Herman Melville, 1819-._= (Manual, p. 505.) + +From "Moby Dick." + +=_309._= SPERM WHALE FISHING. + +It was a sight full of quick wonder and awe! The vast swells of the +omnipotent sea; the surging, hollow roar they made as they rolled along +the eight gunwales, like gigantic bowls in a boundless bowling-green; +the brief suspended agony of the boat, as it would tip for an instant on +the knife-like edge of the sharper waves, that almost seemed threatening +to cut it in two; the sudden profound dip into the watery glens and +hollows; the keen spurrings and goadings to gain the top of the opposite +hill; the headlong, sled-like slide down its other side; all these, with +the cries of the headsmen and harpooners, and the shuddering gasps of +the oarsmen, with the wondrous sight of the ivory Pequod bearing down +upon her boats, with outstretched sails, like a wild hen after her +screaming brood; all this was thrilling. Not the raw recruit, marching +from the bosom of his wife into the fever heat of his first battle; not +the dead man's ghost, encountering the first unknown phantom in the +other world; neither of these can feel stranger and stronger emotions +than that man does, who for the first time finds himself pulling into +the charmed, churned circle of the hunted sperm whale. + +Soon we were running through a suffusing wide veil of mist; neither ship +nor boat to be seen. + +"Give way, men," whispered Starbuck, drawing still further aft the sheet +of his sail; "there is time to kill a fish yet before the squall comes. +There's white water again! close to! Spring!" Though not one of the +oarsmen was then facing the life and death peril so close to them ahead, +yet with their eyes on the intense countenance of the mate in the stern +of the boat, they knew that the imminent instant had come; they heard, +too, an enormous wallowing sound as of fifty elephants stirring in their +litter. Meanwhile the boat was still booming through the mist, the +waves curling and hissing around us like the erected crests of enraged +serpents. + +"That's his hump. _There, there_, give it to him!" whispered Starbuck. + +A short rushing sound leaped out of the boat; it was the darted iron of +Queequeg. Then all in one welded commotion, came an invisible push from +astern, while forward the boat seemed striking on a ledge; the sail +collapsed and exploded; a gush of scalding vapor shot up near by; +something rolled and tumbled like an earthquake beneath us. The whole +crew were half suffocated as they were tossed helter-skelter into the +white curdling cream of the squall. Squall, whale, and harpoon had all +blended together and the whale, merely grazed by the iron, escaped. + +Though completely swamped, the boat was nearly unharmed. Swimming round +it we picked up the floating oars, and lashing them across the gunwale, +tumbled back to our places. There we sat up to our knees in the sea, the +water covering every rib and plank, so that to our downward gazing eyes, +the suspended craft seemed a coral boat grown up to us from the bottom +of the ocean. + + * * * * * + + +=_Josiah Gilbert Holland, 1819-._= + +From The Bay Path. + +=_310._= THE WEDDING-PRESENT. + +John Woodcock was the first to break the silence. Rising from his seat, +and making his way out of the crowd around him, he crossed the room to +where his daughter was standing absorbed in, and half bewildered by the +scene, and whispering a few words in her ear, took her by the hand, and +led her before the married pair. Mary extended her hand to him instantly +and cordially, and exclaimed, "I knew that you would come to me and +congratulate me." + +"That wan't my arrant any way," said Woodcock bluntly, "and I shouldn't +begin with you if it was." + +"Why John! I am astonished!" exclaimed the bride; "I thought you was one +of the best friends I had in the world." + +But Mary was somewhat affected with Woodcock's seriousness, and, with no +reply to Holyoke, beyond a smile, she asked Woodcock's reasons for the +statement he had made. + +"I didn't come up here to talk about this, and p'raps it ain't the right +time to do it, but there's no use backin' down when you begin. I've got +a consait that men and women ain't built out of the same kind of timber. +Look at my hand--a great pile o' bones covered with brown luther, with +the hair on,--and then look at yourn. White oak ain't bass, is it? Every +man's hand ain't so black as mine, and every woman's ain't so white as +yourn, but there's always difference enough to show, and there's just as +much odds in their doin's and dispositions as there is in their hands. I +know what women be. I've wintered and summered with 'em, and take 'em by +and large, they're better'n men. Now and then a feller gets hitched to a +hedgehog, but most of 'em get a woman that's too good for 'em. They're +gentle and kind, and runnin' over with good feelin's, and will stick to +a fellow a mighty sight longer'n he'll stick to himself. My woman's dead +and gone, but if there wan't any women in the world, and I owned it, I'd +sell out for three shillin's, and throw in stars enough to make it an +object for somebody to take it off my hands. + +"Some time ago," resumed Woodcock. "I heerd the little ones and some of +the old ones tellin' what they was goin' to give Mary Pynchon when she +got married; and it set me to thinkin' what I could give her, for I +knew if anybody ought to give her anything, it was me. But I hadn't any +money, and I couldn't send to the Bay for anything, and I shouldn't 'a +known what to get if I could, I might have shot a buck, but I couldn't +'a brought it to the weddin', and it didn't seem exactly ship-shape to +give her anything she could eat up and forget. So I thought I'd give her +a keepsake my wife left me when she died. It's all I've got of any vally +to me, and it's somethin' that'll grow better every day it is kep', if +you'll take care of it. I don't know what'll come of me, and I want to +leave it in good hands." + +The bride began to grow curious, and despite their late repulse the +group began to collect again. + +"It's a queer thing for a present, perhaps, (and Woodcock's lip began to +quiver and his eye to moisten,) but I hope it'll do you some service. +'Taint anything't you can wear in your hair, or throw over your +shoulders. It's--it's--" + +"It's what?" inquired Mary, with an encouraging smile. + +Woodcock took hold of the hand of his child, and placing it in that of +the questioner, burst out with, "God knows that's the handle to it," and +retreated to the window, where he spent several minutes looking out into +the night, and endeavoring to repress the spasms of a choking throat. +Neither Mary Holyoke nor her husband could disguise their emotions, as +they saw before them the living testimonial of Woodcock's gratitude and +trust. Mary stooped and kissed the gift-child, who clung to her as +if, contrary to her father's statement, she was an article of wearing +apparel. + + * * * * * + + +=_John Esten Cooke,[71] 1830-._= + +From "Estcourt, or the Memoirs of a Virginia Gentleman." + +=_311._= THE PORTRAIT. + +"I see you are prepared now," said the painter; "the thought I +endeavored to suggest has entered your mind, for I read the expression +in your face like an open book. Well, see if I have deceived you--look!" + +And as he spoke, the painter removed a green curtain from the frame of a +picture, so arranged that the full light of the middle window fell upon +it. + +Estcourt almost cried out with astonishment. Here, before him, as +though ready to start from the canvas, was the woman who had been, his +fate--who had died long years before; there in the full blaze of light, +he saw her who had thrown the shadow upon his existence, which still +clouded it, fresh, softly smiling, alive almost on the speaking and +eloquent canvas. The blue eyes beamed with a tender and subdued +sweetness, the delicate forehead, with its soft brown curls, rose airily +above the perfectly arched brows, the innocent lips were half parted, +and the portrait seemed almost ready to move from its frame, and +descend, a living woman, into the apartment. + +[Footnote 71: Conspicuous among the younger writers of Virginia, of which +State he is a native; author of many novels.] + + * * * * * + +=_312._= ASPECTS OF SUMMER. + +The glory of the summer deepened and grew more intense, the foliage +assumed a darker tint of emerald, the sky glowed with a more dazzling +blue, and the songs of the busy harvesters came sad and slow, like the +long, melancholy swell of pensive sighs across the hills and fields, +dying away finally into the "harvest home," which told that the golden +grain would wave no more in the wind until another year. The "harvest +moon" looked down on bare fields now, and June was dead. At last came +August, the month of great white clouds and imperial sunsets, the +crowning hours of the rich summer, soon to fade away into the yellow +autumn, the month of reveries and dreams on the banks of shadowy +streams, or beneath, the old majestic trees of silent forests. + + * * * * * + + +=_Sarah A. Dorsey,[72] about 1835-._= + +From "Lucia Dare." + +=_313._= SCENERY AND SOCIETY AT NATCHEZ, MISSISSIPPI. + +The village of Natchez, under the hill, was clustered close to the +water's edge; the bluffs rose precipitously, garnished with pine trees, +and locusts, and tufted grasses; the vista here terminated in Brown's +beautiful gardens, gay with flower-beds and closely-clipped hedges. Far +away over the river stretched the broad emerald plain of Louisiana, +level with the stream, extending for many, many miles, its champaign +checkered with groups of white plantation-houses, spotted with groves of +trees, rich in autumnal beauty, glowing with crimson, gold, and green, +softened by veils of long, gray moss. This plain was dotted with lovely +lakes, whose waters shone in the slanting rays of the declining sun.... +The sun went down quickly, as he does at sea, a round, red fire-ball, +while light, splendid clouds of purple, pink, lilac, and gray, on the +blue, blue heavens, refracted the ascending, slender, quivering rays of +the disappearing orb, the type of Deity in all natural religions, the +Totem of the Natchez Indians. Beloved city--bright "city of the Sun"! +How often have I paced with restless child's feet, the road that Lucian +was now traveling over, and listened, as he did, but more lingeringly, +to the sounds of gentle human life, stirring within thy peaceful homes! +How often have I thanked God for my beautiful childhood's home--for my +precious Southern Land--for its sunshine, its verdure, its forests, +its flowers, its perfume; but oh! above all, for the loving, refined, +intelligent, gentle race of people it was my great, my priceless +privilege, to be born amongst--a people worthy to live with, yes, +_worthy to die for_! The stern besom of war has wept over you, beloved +Natchez--your fairest homes have been desolated, your lovely gardens are +now only remembrances--your family circles are broken up--your bravest +sons are sleeping in the dust of death, or weeping tears of bitterness +in exile--your daughters, bowed down with penury and grief, are mourning +beside their darkened firesides--your joyous households transferred to +other and kindlier lands. The forms of my kindred faded into phantoms of +the past--strangers sit now in the place that once was mine; but yet, +thou art lovely, still beloved in thy ruin, in thy desolation--city of +my heart--city of my love--city of my childish joy! Oh! city of my dead! + +[Footnote 72: Prominent among the living authors of Louisiana.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Anne Moncure Crane.[73]_= + +From "Opportunity;" a Novel. + +=_314._= IMPRESSION OF A SEA SCENE. + +The tide had been out, but it was now rising; and they stood silently +watching the long, low waves dissolve in foam, whose white edges each +time crept nearer and nearer their feet. No one was conscious of the +duration of the silence. The sea's monotony of motion and sound seemed +to fill the void, and lull them to quietude. But beautiful as was the +scene that lay before her, Harvey gradually forgot it ... + +The two women had been nearly facing each other; and in a moment or two +Harvey put his hand upon Rose's shoulder, and with the other, motioned +her to look out upon the sea at her side. As she obeyed, her faint, +inarticulate expression of surprise and pleasure made both men follow +her example. It was only a coasting vessel, which had come rather close +to the shore, and was sailing swiftly by, before the freshening breeze; +but Its broad, white sails, with the moonlight upon them, and its +gliding, soundless motion, gave it an unearthly effect, as of a phantom +of light floating between the dark sea and sky, or a great white-winged +spirit sweeping past. When it had vanished into the distance and +darkness, Rose turned, and looked up at Harvey with mute but half-parted +lips, with eyes dilating with light, only this for a moment, but Miss +Barney knew she had accomplished her wish. + +The others also did not speak. But Grahame made an involuntary angry +movement of his foot upon the sand. + +[Footnote 73: A young authoress of Maryland: has written two novels of +unusual promise.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Mary Clemmer Ames,[74] about 1837-._= + +From "A Woman's Right." + +=_315._= A RAILWAY DEPOT IN THE COUNTRY. + +... Yet this depot was the centre of attraction for miles around. It was +the grand hall of re-union for all the people of the scattered town, +not second in importance even to the meeting-house. Here, twice a day, +stopped the great Western and Eastern trains, the two fiery arteries +through which flowed all the tumultuous life of the vast outer world +that had ever come to this secluded hamlet. Its primitive inhabitants +in their isolated farm-houses, under the hills and on the stony +mountain-moors, could never have realized the existence of another world +than the green, grand world of nature around them and above them, and +would have been as oblivious of the great god "News" as the denizens of +Greenland, if it had not been for the daily visits of this Cyclops with +the burning eye. Now twice a day, the shriek of his diabolical whistle +pierced the umbrageous woods and hilly gorges for miles away, and its +cry to many a solitary household was the epoch of the day. Hearing it, +John mounted his nag and scampered away to the station for the Boston +journals of yesterday. Seth harnessed Peggy, and drove off in the buggy +in all possible haste, to see if the mail had brought a letter from Amzi +who was in New York, or from Nimrod who had gone to work in "Bosting," +or if the train had brought Sally and her children from the city, who +were expected home on a visit. Here, under pretext of waiting for the +cars, congregated the drones and supernumeraries of the different +neighborhoods, lounging on the steps, hacking the benches with their +jack-knives for hours together, while they discussed politics, and +talked over their own and their neighbors' affairs. + +A walk to the station on a summer evening, was more to the boys and +girls of this rural region, than a Broadway promenade to a metropolitan +belle. Their day's task done, here they met in pairs, comparing finery +and indulging in flirtations, with an impunity which would not have been +tolerated by their elders at the Sunday recess in the meeting-house. +Then, besides, it was such an exciting sight to see the cars come in, +to see the long rows of strange faces, and to catch glimpses of the new +fashions at their open windows. Besides, at rare intervals, a real city +lady would actually alight at the rustic station of Hilltop, followed +by an avalanche of trunks, "larger than hen-houses," the girls would +afterwards affirm to their astonished mothers, when it was discovered +that the city-lady, in her languishing necessity for country-air, had +really condescended to come in search of a remote country-cousin. +Besides the fine lady, sometimes small companies of dashing young +gentlemen, with fishing-rods and retinues of long-eared dogs, or a +long-haired artist with a portfolio under his arm, all lured by the +mountains and woods and streams, to seek pleasure in far different ways, +would alight at the station, and ask of some staring rustic where they +could find the hotel. + +[Footnote 74: An active writer, chiefly known as a newspaper +correspondent from Washington; a native of Vermont, has published a +novel of much descriptive vigor.] + + + + +CHAPTER IV + + + +POETS. + + +=_Francis Hopkinson,[75] 1737-1791._= + +From "The Battle of the Kegs.[76]" + +=_316._= + + Gallants, attend, and hear a friend + Trill forth harmonious ditty; + Strange things I'll tell, which late befell + In Philadelphia city. + + 'Twas early day, as poets say, + Just when the sun was rising, + A soldier stood on a log of wood, + And saw a thing surprising. + + As in amaze he stood to gaze,-- + The truth can't be denied, sir,-- + He spied a score of kegs, or more, + Come floating down the tide, sir. + + A sailor, too, in jerkin blue, + This strange appearance viewing, + First rubbed his eyes, in great surprise, + Then said some mischief's brewing. + + * * * * * + + Some fire cried, which some denied, + But said the earth had quaked; + And girls and boys, with hideous noise, + Ran through the streets half naked. + + * * * * * + + The royal band now ready stand, + All ranged in dread array, sir, + With stomach stout, to see it out, + And make a bloody day, sir. + + The cannons roar from shore to shore; + The small arms make a rattle; + Since wars began, I'm sure no man + E'er saw so strange a battle. + + A hundred men, with each a pen, + Or more,--upon my word, sir, + It is most true,--would be too few + Their valor to record, sir. + +[Footnote 75: A prominent author of the revolutionary era.] + +[Footnote 76: In the revolutionary war, while the British held +Philadelphia, some floating torpedoes were one day sent down the river +to destroy their vessels, and this novel mode of attack caused the alarm +described by the poet.] + + * * * * * + + +=_John Trumbull, 1750-1831._= (Manual, pp. 490, 512.) + +From "McFingal." + +=_317._= + + Though this, not all his time was lost on, + He fortified the town of Boston, + Built breastworks that might lend assistance + To keep the patriots at a distance; + For, howsoe'er the rogues might scoff, + He liked them best the farthest off; + Works of important use to aid + His courage when he felt afraid. + + * * * * * + + For Providence, disposed to tease us, + Can use what instruments it pleases; + To pay a tax, at Peter's wish, + His chief cashier was once a fish. + + * * * * * + + An English bishop's cur of late + Disclosed rebellions 'gainst the State; + So frogs croaked Pharaoh to repentance, + And lice delayed the fatal sentence: + And Heaven can rain you at pleasure, + By Gage, as soon as by a Caesar. + Yet did our hero in these days + Pick up some laurel-wreaths of praise; + And as the statuary of Seville + Made his cracked saint an excellent devil. + So, though our war small triumph brings, + We gained great fame in other things. + Did not our troops show great discerning, + And skill, your various arts in learning? + Outwent they not each native noodle + By far, in playing Yankee-doodle? + Which, as 'twas your New England tune, + 'Twas marvellous they took so soon. + And ere the year was fully through, + Did they not learn to foot it too, + And such a dance as ne'er was known + For twenty miles on end lead down? + Did they not lay their heads together, + And gain your art to tar and feather, + When Colonel Nesbitt, thro' the town, + In triumph bore the country-clown? + Oh! what a glorious work to sing + The veteran troops of Britain's king, + Adventuring for th'heroic laurel + With bag of feathers and tar-barrel! + To paint the cart where culprits ride, + And Nesbitt marching at its side. + Great executioner and proud, + Like hangman high, on Holborn road; + And o'er the slow-drawn rumbling car, + The waving ensigns of the war! + + * * * * * + + +=_Philip Freneau, 1752-1832._= (Manual, pp. 486, 511.) + +From "An Indian Burying-ground." + +=_318._= + + In spite of all the learned have said, + I still my old opinion keep; + The posture that we give the dead, + Points out the soul's eternal sleep. + + Not so the ancients of these lands;-- + The Indian, when from life released, + Again is seated with his friends, + And shares again the joyous feast. + + His imaged birds, and painted bowl, + And venison, for a journey dressed, + Bespeak the nature of the soul,-- + Activity, that wants no rest. + + His bow, for action ready bent, + And arrows, with a head of bone, + Can only mean that life is spent, + And not the finer essence gone. + + * * * * * + + Here still a lofty rock remains, + On which the curious eye may trace, + Now wasted half by wearing rains, + The fancies of a ruder race. + + * * * * * + + By midnight moons, o'er moistening dews, + In vestments for the chase arrayed. + The hunter still the deer pursues, + The hunter and the deer--a shade. + + * * * * * + +=_David Humphreys, 1783-1818._= (Manual, p. 512.) + +From "The Happiness of America." + +=_319._= RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. + + I too, perhaps, should Heaven prolong my date, + The oft-repeated tale shall oft relate; + Shall tell the feelings in the first alarms, + Of some bold enterprise the unequalled charms; + Shall tell from whom I learnt the martial art, + With what high chiefs I played my early part-- + With Parsons first-- + + * * * * * + Death-daring Putnam--then immortal Greene-- + Then how great Washington my youth approved, + In rank preferred, and as a parent loved. + With him what hours on warlike plains I spent, + Beneath the shadow of th' imperial tent; + With him how oft I went the nightly round + Through moving hosts, or slept on tented ground; + From him how oft--(nor far below the first, + In high behests and confidential trust)-- + From him how oft I bore the dread commands, + Which destined for the fight the eager bands; + With him how oft I passed the eventful day, + Bode by his side, as down the long array + His awful voice the columns taught to form, + To point the thunders and direct the storm. + But, thanks to Heaven! those days of blood are o'er; + The trumpet's clangor, the loud cannon's roar. + + * * * * * + + No more this hand, since happier days succeed, + Waves the bright blade, or reins the fiery steed. + No more for martial fame this bosom burns; + Now white-robed Peace to bless a world returns; + Now fostering Freedom all her bliss bestows, + Unnumbered blessings for unnumbered woes. + + * * * * * + + +=_Samuel J. Smith,[77] 1771-1835._= + +=_320._= PEACE, BE STILL. + + When, on his mission from his home in heaven, + In the frail bark the Saviour deigned to sleep, + The tempest rose--with headlong fury driven, + The wave-tossed vessel whirled along the deep: + Wild shrieked the storm amid the parting shrouds, + And the vexed billows dashed the darkening clouds. + + Ah! then how futile human skill and power,-- + "Save us! we perish in the o'erwhelming wave!" + They cried, and found in that tremendous hour, + "An eye to pity, and an arm to save." + He spoke, and lo! obedient to His will, + The raging waters, and the winds were still. + + And thou, poor trembler on life's stormy sea, + Where dark the waves of sin and sorrow roll, + To Him for refuge from the tempest flee,-- + To Him, confiding, trust the sinking soul; + For O, He came to calm the tempest-tossed, + To seek the wandering, and to save the lost. + + For thee, and such as thee, impelled by love, + He left the mansions of the blessed on high; + Mid sin, and pain, and grief, and fear, to move, + With lingering anguish, and with shame to die. + The debt to Justice, boundless Mercy paid, + For hopeless guilt, complete atonement made. + + O, in return for such surpassing grace, + Poor, blind, and naked, what canst thou impart? + Canst thou no offering on his altar place? + Yes, lowly mourner; give him all thy heart: + That simple offering he will not disown,-- + That living incense may approach his throne. + +[Footnote 77: A gentleman of fortune and literary culture; a life-long +resident in the country, in his native State, New Jersey.] + + * * * * * + + +=_William Clifton, 1772-1790._= (Manual, p. 512.) + +From lines "To Fancy." + +=_321._= PLEASURES OF IMAGINATION. + + Is my lonely pittance past? + Fleeting good too light to last? + Lifts my friend the latch no more? + Fancy, thou canst all restore; + Thou canst, with thy airy shell, + To a palace raise my cell. + + * * * * * + + With thee to guide my steps, I'll creep + In some old haunted nook to sleep, + Lulled by the dreary night-bird's scream, + That flits along the wizard stream, + And there, till morning 'gins appear, + The tales of troubled spirits hear. + + Sweet's the dawn's ambiguous light, + Quiet pause 'tween day and night, + When afar the mellow horn + Chides the tardy gaited morn, + And asleep is yet the gale + On sea-beat mount, and rivered vale. + But the morn, though sweet and fair; + Sweeter is when thou art there; + Hymning stars successive fade, + Fairies hurtle through the shade, + Lovelorn flowers I weeping see, + If the scene is touched by thee. + + * * * * * + Thus through life with thee I'll glide, + Happy still what'er betide, + And while plodding sots complain + Of ceaseless toil and slender gain, + Every passing hour shall be + Worth a golden age to me. + + * * * * * + +=_Robert Treat Paine, 1773-1811._= (Manual, p. 512.) + +From "The Ruling Passion." + +=_322._= THE MISER. + + Next comes the miser; palsied, jealous, lean, + He looks the very skeleton of Spleen! + 'Mid forests drear, he haunts, in spectred gloom, + Some desert abbey or some druid's tomb; + Where hearsed in earth, his occult riches lay, + Fleeced from the world, and buried from the day. + With crutch in hand, he points his mineral rod, + Limps to the spot, and turns the well-known sod. + While there, involved in night, he counts his store + By the soft tinklings of the golden ore, + He shakes with terror lest the moon should spy, + And the breeze whisper, where his treasures lie. + + This wretch, who, dying, would not take one pill, + If, living, he must pay a doctor's bill, + Still clings to life, of every joy bereft; + His God is gold, and his religion theft! + And, as of yore, when modern vice was strange, + Could leathern money current pass on 'change, + His reptile soul, whose reasoning powers are pent + Within the logic bounds of cent per cent, + Would sooner coin his ears than stocks should fall, + And cheat the pillory, than not cheat at all! + + * * * * * + + +=_John Blair Linn,[78] 1777-1804._= + +From "The Powers of Genius." + +=_323._= WRETCHEDNESS OF SAVAGE LIFE. + + The human fabric early from its birth, + Feels some fond influence from its parent earth; + In different regions different forms we trace, + Here dwells a feeble, there an iron race; + Here genius lives, and wakeful fancies play, + Here noiseless stupor sleeps its life away. + * * * * * + Chill through his trackless pines the hunter passed, + His yell arose upon the howling blast; + Before him fled, with all the speed of fear, + His wealth--and victim, yonder helpless deer. + Saw you the savage man, how fell and wild, + With what grim pleasure, as he passed, he smiled? + Unhappy man! a wretched wigwam's shed + Is his poor shelter, some dry skins his bed; + Sometimes alone upon the woodless height + He strikes his fire, and spends his watchful night; + His dog with howling bays the moon's red beam, + And starts the wild deer in his nightly dream. + Poor savage man! for him no yellow grain + Waves its bright billows o'er the fruitful plain; + For him no harvest yields its full supply, + When winter hurls his tempest through the sky. + No joys he knows but those which spring from strife, + Unknown to him the charms of social life. + Rage, malice, envy, all his thoughts control, + And every dreadful passion burns his soul. + Should culture meliorate his darksome home, + And cheer those wilds where he is wont to roam; + * * * * * + Should fields of tillage yield their rich increase, + And through his wastes walk forth the arts of peace, + His sullen soul would feel a genial glow, + Joy would break in upon the night of woe; + Knowledge would spread her mild, reviving ray, + And on his wigwam rise the dawn of day. + +[Footnote 78: A Presbyterian clergyman, who died prematurely; an +associate and connection of Charles Brockden Brown. Has left several +poems of merit. A native of Pennsylvania.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Francis S. Key, 1779-1843._= (Manual, p. 523.) + +=_324._= THE STAR-SPANGLED BANNER. + + O say, can you see, by the dawn's early light, + What so proudly we hailed, at the twilight's last gleaming? + Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the perilous fight, + O'er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming; + And the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air, + Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there: + + On that shore, dimly seen through the mist of the deep, + Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes, + What is that which the breeze, o'er the towering steep, + As it fitfully blows, now conceals, now discloses? + Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam, + In full glory reflected now shines in the stream: + 'Tis the Star-Spangled Banner; O, long may it wave + O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave! + + And where are the foes who so vauntingly swore + That the havoc of war, and the battle's confusion, + A home and a country should leave us no more? + Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps' pollution. + No refuge could save the hireling and slave + From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave; + And the Star-Spangled Banner in triumph doth wave + O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave! + + O thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand + Between their loved homes and the war's desolation; + Blest with victory and peace, may the heav'n-rescued land + Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation! + Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just; + And this be our motto, "In God is our trust;" + And the Star-Spangled Banner in triumph shall wave + O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave! + + * * * * * + + +=_Washington Alston, 1779-1843._= (Manual, pp. 504. 510.) + +From the "Sylphs of the Seasons." + +=_325._= + + Methought, within a desert cave, + Cold, dark, and solemn as the grave, + I suddenly awoke. + It seemed of sable night the cell + Where, save when from the ceiling fell + An oozing drop, her silent spell + No sound had ever broke. + + There motionless I stood alone, + Like some strange monument of stone + Upon a barren wild; + Or like (so solid and profound + The darkness seemed that walled me round) + A man that's buried under ground, + Where pyramids are piled. + + * * * * * + + Then spake the Sylph of Spring serene, + "'Tis I thy joyous heart, I ween. + With sympathy shall move: + For I with living melody + Of birds in choral symphony, + First waked thy soul to poesy, + To piety and love. + + "When thou, at call of vernal breeze, + And beckoning bough of budding trees, + Hast left thy sullen fire; + And stretched thee in some mossy dell, + And heard the browsing wether's bell, + Blithe echoes rousing from their cell + To swell the tinkling choir: + + "Or lured by some fresh-scented gale + That wooed the moored fisher's sail + To tempt the mighty main, + Hast watched the dim, receding shore, + Now faintly seen the ocean o'er, + Like hanging cloud, and now no more + To bound the sapphire plain. + + "Then, wrapped in night, the scudding bark, + (That seemed, self-poised amid the dark, + Through upper air to leap,) + Beheld, from thy most fearful height, + The rapid dolphin's azure light + Cleave, like a living meteor bright, + The darkness of the deep." + + * * * * * + + +=_John Pierpont, 1785-1866._= (Manual, p. 513.) + +=_326._= A TEMPERANCE SONG. + + In Eden's green retreats, + A water-brook--that played + Between soft, mossy seats, + Beneath a plane tree's shade, + Whose rustling leaves + Danced o'er its brink-- + Was Adam's drink, + And also Eve's. + + * * * * * + + And, when the man of God + From Egypt led his flock, + They thirsted, and his rod + Smote the Arabian rock, + And forth a rill + Of water gushed, + And on they rushed, + And drank their fill. + + Had Moses built a still, + And dealt out to that host + To every man his gill, + And pledged him in a toast, + Would cooler brains, + Or stronger hands, + Have braved the sands + Of those hot plains? + + If Eden's strength and bloom, + Gold water thus hath given, + If e'en beyond the tomb, + It is the drink of heaven, + Are not good wells + And crystal springs + _The very things + for our Hotels?_ + + * * * * * + +=_327._= THE PILGRIM FATHERS. + + The Pilgrim Fathers,--where are they? + The waves that brought them o'er + Still roll in the bay, and throw their spray, + As they break along the shore: + Still roll in the bay, as they roll'd that day + When the Mayflower moor'd below, + When the sea around was black with storms, + And white the shore with snow. + + The mists, that wrapp'd the Pilgrim's sleep, + Still brood upon the tide; + And his rocks yet keep their watch by the deep, + To stay its waves of pride. + But the snow-white sail, that he gave to the gale + When the heavens look'd dark, is gone;-- + As an angel's wing, through an opening cloud, + Is seen, and then withdrawn. + + The Pilgrim exile,--sainted name! + The hill, whose icy brow + Rejoiced when he came, in the morning's flame, + In the morning's flame burns now. + And the moon's cold light, as it lay that night + On the hill-side and the sea, + Still lies where he laid his houseless head;-- + But the Pilgrim,--where is he? + + The Pilgrim Fathers are at rest. + When summer's throned on high, + And the world's warm breast is in verdure dress'd + Go, stand on the hill where they lie. + The earliest ray of the golden day + On that hallow'd spot is cast; + And the evening sun, as he leaves the world, + Looks kindly on that spot last. + + The Pilgrim _spirit_ has not fled; + It walks in the noon's broad light; + And it watches the bed of the glorious dead, + With their holy stars, by night. + It watches the bed of the brave who have bled, + And shall guard this ice-bound shore, + Till the waves of the bay, where the Mayflower lay, + Shall foam and freeze no more. + + * * * * * + + +=_James G. Percival, 1786-1856._= (Manual, p. 515.) + +=_328._= THE CORAL GROVE. + + Deep in the wave is a coral grove, + Where the purple mullet and gold-fish rove; + Where the sea-flower spreads its leaves of blue, + That never are wet with the falling dew, + But in bright and changeful beauty shine, + Far down in the green and glassy brine. + The floor is of sand, like the mountain drift, + And the pearl-shells spangle the flinty snow; + From coral rocks, the sea-plants lift + Their boughs, where the tides and billows flow; + The water is calm and still below, + For the winds and waves are absent there, + And the sands are bright as the stars that glow + In the motionless fields of upper air. + There, with its waving blade of green, + The sea-flag streams through the silent water, + And the crimson leaf of the dulse is seen + To blush like a banner bathed in slaughter. + There, with a light and easy motion, + The fan-coral sweeps through the clear, deep sea, + And the yellow and scarlet tufts of ocean + Are bending like corn on the upland lea, + And life, in rare and beautiful forms, + Is sporting amid those bowers of stone. + + * * * * * + + +=_Richard H. Dana, 1787-._= (Manual, pp. 501, 504, 514.) + +From "The Buccaneer." + +=_329._= + + A sweet, low voice, in starry nights, + Chants to his ear a 'plaining song; + Its tones come winding up the heights, + Telling of woe and wrong; + And he must listen, till the stars grow dim, + The song that gentle voice doth sing to him. + + O, it is sad that aught so mild + Should bind the soul with bands of fear; + That strains to soothe a little child + The man should dread to hear! + But sin hath broke the world's sweet peace, unstrung + The harmonious chords to which the angels sung. + + * * * * * + + But he no more shall haunt the beach, + Nor sit upon the tall cliff's crown, + Nor go the round of all that reach, + Nor feebly sit him down, + Watching the swaying weeds; another day, + And he'll have gone far hence that dreadful way. + + To-night the charmed number's told. + "Twice have I come for thee," it said. + "Once more, and none shall thee behold. + Come, live one, to the dead!" + So hears his soul, and fears the coming night, + Yet sick and weary of the soft, calm light. + + Again he sits within that room; + All day he leans at that still board; + None to bring comfort to his gloom, + Or speak a friendly word. + Weakened with fear, lone, haunted by remorse, + Poor, shattered wretch, there waits he that pale horse. + + * * * * * + + +=_Richard Henry Wilde, 1789-._= (Manual, pp. 521, 501.) + +=_330._= MY LIFE IS LIKE THE SUMMER ROSE. + + My life is like the summer rose + That opens to the morning sky, + But, ere the shades of evening close, + Is scattered on the ground to die; + Yet on that rose's humble bed + The softest dews, of night are shed, + As if she wept such waste to see; + But none shall drop a tear for me. + + My life is like the autumn leaf + That trembles in the moon's pale ray; + Its hold is frail, its state is brief, + Restless, and soon to pass away; + But when that leaf shall fall and fade, + The parent tree will mourn its shade, + The winds bewail the leafless tree; + But none shall breathe a sigh, for me. + + My life is like the print which feet + Have left on Tampa's desert strand; + Soon as the rising tide shall beat, + Their track will vanish from the sand; + Yet, as if grieving to efface + All vestige of the human race, + On that lone shore loud moans the sea; + But none shall thus lament for me. + + * * * * * + + +=_James A. Hillhouse, 1789-1844._= (Manual, p. 487.) + +From "Hadad." + +=_331._= + + _Hadad._ Confide in me. + I can transport thee, O, to a paradise + To which this Canaan is a darksome span. + Beings shall welcome, serve thee, lovely as angels; + The elemental powers shall stoop, the sea + Disclose her wonders, and receive thy feet + Into her sapphire chambers; orbed clouds + Shall chariot thee from zone to zone, while earth, + A dwindled, islet, floats beneath thee. Every + Season and clime shall blend for thee the garland. + The Abyss of time shall cast its secrets, ere + The flood marred primal nature, ere this orb + Stood in her station. Thou shalt know the stars, + The houses of eternity, their names, + Their courses, destiny--all marvels high. + + _Tam._ Talk not so madly. + + * * * * * + +From "The Judgment." + +=_332._= + + As, when from some proud capital that crowns + Imperial Ganges, the reviving breeze + Sweeps the dank mist, or hoary river fog + Impervious mantled o'er her highest towers, + Bright on the eye rush Bramah's temples, capp'd + With spiry tops, gay-trellised minarets, + Pagods of gold, and mosques with burnish'd domes, + Gilded, and glistening in the morning sun, + So from the hill the cloudy curtains roll'd, + And, in the lingering lustre of the eve, + Again the Saviour and his seraphs shone. + Emitted sudden in his rising, flash'd + Intenser light, as toward the right hand host + Mild turning, with a look ineffable, + The invitation he proclaim'd in accents + Which on their ravish'd ears pour'd thrilling, like + The silver sound of many trumpets, heard + Afar in sweetest jubilee: then, swift + Stretching his dreadful sceptre to the left, + That shot forth horrid lightnings, in a voice + Clothed but in half its terrors, yet to them + Seem'd like the crush of heaven, pronounced the doom. + The sentence utter'd as with life instinct, + The throne uprose majestically slow; + Each angel spread his wings; in one dread swell + Of triumph mingling as they mounted, trumpets + And harps, and golden lyres, and timbrels sweet, + And many a strange and deep-toned instrument + Of heavenly minstrelsy unknown on earth, + And angels' voices, and the loud acclaim + Of all the ransom'd like a thunder shout, + Far through the skies melodious echoes roll'd + And faint hosannas distant climes return'd. + + * * * * * + + +=_John M. Harney,[79] 1789-1855._= + +From "Crystallina: a Fairy Tale." + +=_333._= + + On the stormy heath a ring they form; + They place therein the fearful maid, + And round her dance in the howling storm. + The winds beat hard on her lovely head: + But she clasped her hands, and nothing said. + + O, 'twas, I ween, a ghastly sight + To see their uncouth revelry. + The lightning was the taper bright, + The thunder was the melody, + To which they danced with horrid glee. + + The fierce-eyed owl did on them scowl, + The bat played round on leathern wing, + The coal-black wolf did at them howl, + The coal-black raven did croak and sing, + And o'er them flap his dusky wing. + + An earthquake heaved beneath their feet, + Pale meteors revelled in the sky, + The clouds sailed by like a routed fleet, + The night-winds shrieked as they passed by, + The dark-red moon was eclipsed on high. + +[Footnote 79: One of the earliest poets of the West, but a native of +Delaware.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Charles Sprague, 1791-._= (Manual, p. 514.) + +From "Curiosity." + +=_334._= THE NEWSPAPER. + + Turn to the Press--its teeming sheets survey, + Big with the wonders of each passing day; + Births, deaths, and weddings, forgeries, fires, and wrecks, + Harangues and hailstorms, brawls and broken necks; + Where half-fledged bards, on feeble pinions, seek + An immortality of near a week; + Where cruel eulogists the dead restore, + In maudlin praise, to martyr them once more; + Where ruffian slanderers wreak their coward spite, + And need no venomed dagger while they write. + + * * * * * + + Yet, sweet or bitter, hence what fountains burst, + While still the more we drink the more we thirst. + Trade hardly deems the busy day begun + Till his keen eye along the page has run; + The blooming daughter throws her needle by, + And reads her schoolmate's marriage with a sigh; + While the grave mother puts her glasses on, + And gives a tear to some old crony gone. + The preacher, too, his Sunday theme lays down. + To know what last new folly fills the town. + Lively or sad, life's meanest, mightiest things, + The fate of fighting cocks, or fighting kings-- + Nought comes amiss; we take the nauseous stuff, + Verjuice or oil, a libel or a puff. + + * * * * * + + +=_Lydia H. Sigourney, 1791-1865._= (Manual, pp. 484, 523.) + +=_335._= THE WIDOW AT HER DAUGHTER'S BRIDAL. + + Deal gently, thou whose hand hath won + The young bird from its nest away, + Where, careless, 'neath a vernal sun, + She gayly carolled day by day; + The haunt is lone, the heart must grieve, + From where her timid wing doth soar + They pensive lisp at hush of eve, + Yet hear her gushing song no more. + + Deal gently with her; thou art dear, + Beyond what vestal lips have told, + And, like a lamb from fountains clear, + She turns, confiding, to thy fold. + She round thy sweet, domestic bower + The wreath of changeless love shall twine, + Watch for thy step at vesper hour, + And blend her holiest prayer with thine. + + Deal gently, thou, when, far away, + 'Mid stranger scenes her foot shall rove, + Nor let thy tender care decay; + The soul of woman lives in love. + And shouldst thou, wondering, mark a tear, + Unconscious, from her eyelids break, + Be pitiful, and soothe the fear + That man's strong heart may ne'er partake. + + A mother yields her gem to thee, + On thy true breast to sparkle rare; + She places 'neath thy household tree + The idol of her fondest care; + And, by thy trust to be forgiven + When judgment wakes in terror wild, + By all thy treasured hopes of heaven, + Deal gently with the widow's child. + + * * * * * + + +=_William O. Sutler,[80] 1793-._= + +From "The Boatman's Horn." + +=_336._= + + O Boatman, wind that horn again; + For never did the listening air + Upon its lambent bosom bear + So wild, so soft, so sweet a strain. + What though thy notes are sad and few, + By, every simple boatman blown? + Yet is each pulse to nature true, + And melody in every tone. + How oft, in boyhood's joyous day, + Unmindful of the lapsing hours, + I've loitered on my homeward way, + By wild Ohio's bank of flowers, + While some lone boatman from the deck + Poured his soft numbers to that tide, + As if to charm from storm and wreck + The boat where all his fortunes ride! + Delighted Nature drank the sound, + Enchanted Echo bore it round + In whispers soft and softer still, + From hill to plain, and plain to hill. + +[Footnote 80: A native of Kentucky; a favorite Western poet; at one time +prominent as a politician.] + + * * * * * + +=_337._= THE BATTLE-FIELD OF RAISIN. + + The battle's o'er; the din is past; + Night's mantle on the field is cast; + The Indian yell is heard no more; + The silence broods o'er Erie's shore. + At this lone hour I go to tread + The field where valor vainly bled; + To raise the wounded warrior's crest, + Or warm with tears his icy breast; + To treasure up his last command, + And bear it to his native land. + It may one pulse of joy impart + To a fond mother's bleeding heart, + Or, for a moment, it may dry + The tear-drop in the widow's eye. + Vain hopes, away! The widow ne'er + Her warrior's dying wish shall hear. + The passing zephyr bears no sigh; + No wounded warrior meets the eye; + Death is his sleep by Erie's wave; + Of Raisin's snow we heap his grave. + How many hopes lie buried here-- + The mother's joy, the father's pride, + The country's boast, the foeman's fear, + In 'wildered havoc, side by side! + Lend me, thou silent queen of night, + Lend me a while thy waning light, + That I may see each well-loved form + That sank beneath the morning storm. + + * * * * * + + +=_William Cullen Bryant, 1794-._= (Manual, pp. 487, 524.) + +From his "Poems." + +=_338._= LINES TO A WATER FOWL. + + Whither, midst falling dew, + While glow the heavens with the last steps of day, + Far through their rosy depths dost thou pursue + Thy solitary way? + + Vainly the fowler's eye + Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong, + As, darkly seen against the crimson sky, + Thy figure floats along. + + Seek'st thou the plashy brink + Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide, + Or where the rocking billows rise and sink + On the chafed ocean side? + + There is a Power whose care + Teaches thy way along that pathless coast,-- + The desert and illimitable air,-- + Lone wandering, but not lost. + + All day thy wings have fanned, + At that far height, the cold, thin atmosphere, + Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land, + Though the dark night is near. + + And soon that toil shall end, + Soon shalt thou find a summer home and rest, + And scream among thy fellows; reeds shall bend + Soon, o'er thy sheltered nest. + + Thou'rt gone; the abyss of heaven + Hath swallowed up thy form; yet on my heart + Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given, + And shall not soon depart. + + He who, from zone to zone, + Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight, + In the long way that I must tread alone, + Will lead my steps aright. + + * * * * * + +From "The Antiquity of Freedom." + +=_339._= FREEDOM IRREPRESSIBLE. + + O Freedom, thou art not, as poets dream, + A fair, young girl, with light and delicate limbs, + And wavy tresses gushing from the cap + With which the Roman master crowned his slave + When he took off the gyves. A bearded man, + Armed to the teeth, art thou; one mailed hand + Grasps the broad shield, and one the sword; thy brow, + Glorious in beauty though it be, is scarred + With tokens of old wars; thy massive limbs + Are strong with struggling. Power at thee has launched + His bolts, and with his lightnings smitten thee. + They could not quench the life thou hast from heaven. + Merciless power has dug thy dungeon deep, + And his swart armorers, by a thousand fires, + Have forged thy chain; yet, while he deems thee bound, + The links are shivered, and the prison walls + Fall outward; terribly thou springest forth, + As springs the flame above a burning pile, + And shoutest to the nations, who return + Thy shoutings, while the pale oppressor flies. + + * * * * * + +From "Thanatopsis." + +=_340._= COMMUNION WITH NATURE, SOOTHING. + + To him who in the love of Nature holds + Communion with her visible forms, she speaks + A various language: for his gayer hours + She has a voice of gladness, and a smile, + An eloquence of beauty, and she glides + Into his darker musings, with a mild + And healing sympathy, that steals away + Their sharpness, ere he is aware. When thoughts + Of the last bitter hour come like a blight + Over thy spirit, and sad images + Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall, + And breathless darkness, and the narrow house. + Make thee to shudder, and grow sick at heart;-- + Go forth, under the open sky, and list + To Nature's teachings, while from all around-- + Earth and her waters, and the depths of air,-- + Comes a still voice. Yet a few days, and thee + The all-beholding sun shall see no more + In all his course; nor yet in the cold ground. + Where thy pale form was laid, with many tears, + Nor in the embrace of ocean, shall exist + Thy image. Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim + Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again, + And lost each human trace, surrendering up + Thine individual being, shalt thou go + To mix for ever with the elements, + To be a brother to the insensible rock, + And to the sluggish clod which the rude swain + Turns with his share, and treads upon. The oak + Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mould. + + * * * * * + + As the long train + Of ages glide away, the sons of men, + The youth in life's green spring, and he who goes + In the full strength of years, matron, and maid, + And the sweet babe, and the gray-headed man,-- + Shall one by one be gathered to thy side, + By those, who in their turn shall follow them. + So live, that when thy summons comes to join + The innumerable caravan, that moves + To that mysterious realm where each shall take + His chamber in the silent halls of death, + Thou go not like the quarry-slave at night, + Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed + By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave, + Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch + About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams. + + * * * * * + + =_341._= THE LIVING LOST. + + Matron! the children of whose love, + Each to his grave, in youth had passed, + and now the mould is heaped above + The dearest and the last! + Bride! who dost wear the widow's veil + Before the wedding flowers are pale! + Ye deem the human heart endures + No deeper, bitterer grief than yours. + + Yet there are pangs of keener wo, + Of which the sufferers never speak, + Nor to the world's cold pity show + The tears that scald the cheek, + Wrung from their eyelids by the shame + And guilt of those they shrink to name, + Whom once they loved with cheerful will, + And love, though fallen and branded, still. + + Weep, ye who sorrow for the dead; + Thus breaking hearts their pain relieve; + And reverenced are the tears ye shed. + And honored ye who grieve. + The praise of those who sleep in earth, + The pleasant memory of their worth, + The hope to meet when life is past, + Shall heal the tortured mind at last. + + But ye, who for the living lost + That agony in secret bear, + Who shall with soothing words accost + The strength of your despair? + Grief for your sake is scorn for them + Whom ye lament, and all condemn; + And o'er the world of spirits lies + A gloom from which ye turn your eyes. + + * * * * * + +=_342._= THE SONG OF THE SOWER. + + Brethren, the sower's task is done. + The seed is in its Winter bed. + Now let the dark-brown mould be spread, + To hide it from the sun, + And leave it to the kindly care + Of the still earth and brooding air. + As when the mother, from her breast, + Lays the hushed babe apart to rest, + And shades its eyes, and waits to see + How sweet its waking smile will be. + The tempest now may smite, the sleet + All night on the drowned furrow beat, + And winds that from the cloudy hold + Of winter, breathe the bitter cold, + Stiffen to stone the yellow-mould, + Yet safe shall lie the wheat; + Till, out of heaven's unmeasured blue, + Shall walk again the genial year, + To wake with warmth, and nurse with dew, + The germs we lay to slumber here. + O blessed harvest yet to be! + Abide thou with the love that keeps, + In its warm bosom tenderly, + The life which wakes, and that which sleeps. + The love that leads the willing spheres + Along the unending track of years, + And watches o'er the sparrow's nest, + Shall brood above thy winter rest, + And raise thee from the dust, to hold + Light whisperings with the winds of May; + And fill thy spikes with living gold, + From Summer's yellow ray. + Then, as thy garners give thee forth, + On what glad errands shalt thou go, + Wherever, o'er the waiting earth, + Roads wind, and rivers flow! + The ancient East shall welcome thee + To mighty marts beyond the sea; + And they who dwell where palm-groves sound + To summer winds the whole year round, + Shall watch, in gladness, from the shore, + The sails that bring thy glistening store. + + * * * * * + +=_343._= THE PLANTING OF THE APPLE-TREE. + + Come, let us plant the apple-tree! + Cleave the tough greensward with the spade; + Wide let its hollow bed be made; + There gently lay the roots, and there + Sift the dark mould with kindly care, + And press it o'er them tenderly, + As, round the sleeping infant's feet, + We softly fold the cradle-sheet: + So plant we the apple-tree. + + What plant we in the apple-tree? + Buds, which the breath of summer days + Shall lengthen into leafy sprays; + Boughs, where the thrush with crimson breast + Shall haunt and sing and hide her nest. + We plant upon the sunny lea + A shadow for the noontide hour, + A shelter from the summer shower, + When we plant the apple-tree. + + What plant we in the apple-tree? + Sweets for a hundred flowery springs, + To load the May-wind's restless wings, + When, from the orchard-row, he pours + Its fragrance through our open doors; + A world of blossoms for the bee; + Flowers for the sick girl's silent room; + For the glad infant, sprigs of bloom, + We plant with the apple-tree. + + What plant we in the apple-tree? + Fruits that shall swell in sunny June, + And redden in the August noon, + And drop as gentle airs come by + That fan the blue September sky; + While children, wild with noisy glee, + Shall scent their fragrance as they pass, + And search for them the tufted grass + At the foot of the apple-tree. + + And when above this apple-tree + The winter stars are quivering bright, + And winds go howling through the night, + Girls, whose young eyes o'erflow with mirth, + Shall peel its fruit by cottage-hearth, + And guests in prouder homes shall see, + Heaped with the orange and the grape, + As fair as they in tint and shape, + The fruit of the apple-tree. + + The fruitage of this apple-tree, + Winds, and our flag of stripe and star, + Shall bear to coasts that lie afar, + Where men shall wonder at the view, + And ask in what fair groves they grew; + And they who roam beyond the sea, + Shall look, and think of childhood's day, + And long hours passed in summer play + In the shade of the apple-tree. + + Each year shall give this apple-tree + A broader flush of roseate bloom, + A deeper maze of verdurous gloom, + And loosen, when the frost-clouds lower, + The crisp brown leaves in thicker shower; + The years shall come and pass, but we + Shall hear no longer, where we lie, + The summer's songs, the autumn's sigh, + In the boughs of the apple-tree. + + And time shall waste this apple tree. + Oh, when its aged branches throw + Thin shadows on the sward below, + Shall fraud and force and iron-will + Oppress the weak and helpless still? + What shall the tasks of mercy be, + Amid the toils, the strifes, the tears + Of those who live when length of years + Is wasting this apple-tree? + + "Who planted this old apple-tree?" + The children of that distant day + Thus to some aged man shall say; + And gazing on its mossy stem, + The gray-haired man shall answer them: + "A poet of the land was he. + Born in the rude, but good, old times; + 'Tis said he made some quaint old rhymes + On planting the apple-tree." + + * * * * * + + +=_Maria Brooks, 1795-1845._= (Manual, p. 523.) + +=_344._= MARRIAGE. + + The bard has sung, God never formed a soul + Without its own peculiar mate, to meet + Its wandering half, when ripe to crown the whole + Bright plan of bliss, most heavenly, most complete! + + But thousand evil things there are that hate + To look on happiness: these hurt, impede, + And, leagued with time, space, circumstance, and fate, + Keep kindred heart from heart, to pine, and pant, and bleed. + + And as the dove to far Palmyra flying, + From where her native founts of Antioch beam, + Weary, exhausted, longing, panting, sighing, + Lights sadly at the desert's bitter stream; + + So, many a soul, o'er life's drear desert faring, + Love's pure, congenial spring unfound, unquaffed, + Suffers, recoils, then thirsty and despairing + Of what it would, descends, and sips the nearest draught. + + * * * * * + + +=_Joseph Rodman Drake, 1795-1820._= (Manual, p. 517.) + +From "The Culprit Fay." + +=_345._= THE FAY'S DEPARTURE. + + * * * * * + + The moon looks down on old Crow-nest, + She mellows the shades, on his shaggy breast, + And seems his huge grey form to throw + In a silver cone on the wave below; + His sides are broken by spots of shade, + By the walnut bough and the cedar made, + And through their clustering branches dark + Glimmers and dies the fire-fly's spark-- + Like starry twinkles that momently break, + Through the rifts of the gathering tempest's rack. + + The stars are on the moving stream, + And fling, as its ripples gently flow, + A burnished length of wavy beam + In an eel-like, spiral line below; + The winds are whist, and the owl is still, + The bat in the shelvy rock is hid. + And naught is heard on the lonely hill + But the cricket's chirp, and the answer shrill + Of the gauze-winged katy-did; + And the plaint of the wailing whip-poor-will, + Who mourns unseen, and ceaseless sings, + Ever a note of wail and woe, + Till morning spreads her rosy wings, + And earth and sky in her glances grow. + + The moth-fly, as he shot in air, + Crept under the leaf, and hid her there; + The katy-did forgot its lay, + The prowling gnat fled fast away, + The fell mosquito checked his drone + And folded his wings till the Fay was gone, + And the wily beetle dropped his head, + And fell on the ground as if he were dead; + They crouched them close in the darksome shade, + They quaked all o'er with awe and fear, + For they had felt the blue-bent blade, + And writhed at the prick of the elfin spear; + Many a time on a summer's night. + When the sky was clear, and the moon was bright, + They had been roused from the haunted ground, + By the yelp and bay of the fairy hound; + They had heard the tiny bugle-horn, + They had heard the twang of the maize-silk string, + When the vine-twig bows were tightly drawn, + And the nettle shaft through air was borne, + Feathered with down of the hum-bird's wing. + And now they deemed the courier-ouphe, + Some hunter sprite of the elfin ground; + And they watched till they saw him mount the roof + That canopies the world around; + Then glad they left their covert lair, + And freaked about in the midnight air. + + * * * * * + + +=_Fitz-Greene Halleck, 1795-1869._= (Manual, p. 515.) + +=_346._= MARCO BOZZARIS. + + At midnight, in his guarded tent, + The Turk was dreaming of the hour + When Greece, her knee in suppliance bent, + Should tremble at his power; + In dreams, through camp and court he bore + The trophies of a conqueror; + In dreams his song of triumph heard; + Then wore his monarch's signet ring: + Then pressed that monarch's throne--a king; + As wild his thoughts, and gay of wing, + As Eden's garden bird. + + At midnight, in the forest shades, + Bozzaris ranged his Suliote band, + True as the steel of their tried blades, + Heroes in heart and hand. + There had the Persian thousands stood, + There had the glad earth drunk their blood + On old Platoea's day; + And now there breathed that haunted air + The sons of sires that conquer'd there, + With arm to strike and soul to dare, + As quick, as far as they. + + An hour pass'd on--the Turk awoke; + That bright dream was his last; + He woke to hear his sentries shriek, + "To arms! they come! the Greek! the Greek!" + He woke--to die, midst flame, and smoke, + And shout, and groan, and sabre-stroke, + And death-shots, falling thick and fast + As lightnings from the mountain-cloud; + And heard, with voice as trumpet loud, + Bozzaris cheer his band: + "Strike--till the last arm'd foe expires; + Strike--for your altars and your fires; + Strike--for the green graves of your sires: + God, and your native land!" + + They fought--like brave men, long and well; + They piled that ground with Moslem slain; + They conquer'd--but Bozzaris fell, + Bleeding at every vein. + His few surviving comrades saw-- + His smile when rang their proud hurrah, + And the red field was won: + Then saw in death his eyelids close + Calmly, as to a night's repose + Like flowers at set of sun. + + Come to the bridal chamber, Death! + Come to the mother's, when she feels, + For the first time, her first-born's breath; + Come when the blessed seals + That close the pestilence, are broke, + And crowded cities wail its stroke; + Come in consumption's ghastly form, + The earthquake shock, the ocean storm; + Come when the heart beats high and warm, + With banquet-song, and dance, and wine; + And thou art terrible: the tear, + The groan, the knell, the pall, the bier, + And all we know, or dream, or fear, + Of agony, are thine. + + But to the hero, when his sword + Has won the battle for the free, + Thy voice sounds like a prophet's word; + And in its hollow tones are heard + The thanks of millions yet to be. + Come, when his task of fame is wrought-- + Come, with her laurel-leaf blood-bought-- + Come, in her crowning hour--and then + Thy sunken eye's unearthly light + To him is welcome as the sight + Of sky and stars to prison'd men: + Thy grasp is welcome as the hand + Of brother in a foreign land; + Thy summons welcome as the cry + That told the Indian isles were nigh, + To the world-seeking Genoese; + When the land-wind from woods of palm, + And orange-groves, and fields of balm, + Blew o'er the Haytian seas. + + Bozzaris! with the storied brave + Greece nurtured in her glory's time, + Rest thee--there is no prouder grave, + E'en in her own proud clime. + Site wore no funeral weeds for thee, + Nor bade the dark hearse wave its plume, + Like torn branch, from death's leafless tree, + In sorrow's pomp and pageantry, + The heartless luxury of the tomb: + But she remembers thee as one + Long loved and for a season gone, + For thee her poet's lyre is wreathed, + Her marble wrought, her music breathed: + For thee she rings the birth-day bells; + Of thee her babes' first lisping tells, + For thine, her evening prayer is said + At palace couch, and cottage bed; + Her soldier, closing with the foe, + Gives for thy sake a deadlier blow; + His plighted maiden, when she fears + For him, the joy of her young years, + Thinks of thy fate, and checks her tears. + And she, the mother of thy boys, + Though in her eye and faded cheek + Is read the grief she will not speak, + The memory of her buried joys, + And even she who gave thee birth, + Will by their pilgrim-circled hearth, + Talk of thy doom without a sigh: + For thou art Freedom's now, and Fame's, + One of the few, the immortal names, + That were not born to die. + + * * * * * + +From "Fanny." + +=_347._= THE BROKEN MERCHANT. + + Fanny! 'twas with her name my song began; + 'Tis proper and polite her name should end it; + If in my story of her woes, or plan + Or moral can be traced, 'twas not intended; + And if I've wronged her, I can only tell her + I'm sorry for it--so is my bookseller. + + * * * * * + + Her father sent to Albany a prayer + For office, told how fortune had abused him, + And modestly requested to be mayor-- + The council very civilly refused him; + Because, however much they might desire it, + The "public good," it seems, did not require it. + + Some evenings since, he took a lonely stroll + Along Broadway, scene of past joys and evils; + He felt that withering bitterness of soul, + Quaintly denominated the "blue devils;" + And thought of Bonaparte and Belisarius, + Pompey, and Colonel Burr, and Caius Marius. + + And envying the loud playfulness and mirth. + Of those who passed him, gay in youth and hope, + He took at Jupiter a shilling's worth + Of gazing, through the showman's telescope; + Sounds as of far-off bells came on his ears, + He fancied 'twas the music of the spheres. + + He was mistaken, it was no such thing, + 'Twas Yankee Doodle, played by Scudder's band; + He muttered, as he lingered listening, + Something of freedom and our happy land; + Then sketched, as to his home he hurried fast, + This sentimental song--his saddest and his last. + + * * * * * + + +=_John G.C. Brainard, 1796-1828._= (Manual, p. 523.) + +From Lines "To the Connecticut River." + +=_348._= THE PAST AND THE PRESENT. + + From that lone lake, the sweetest of the chain, + That links the mountain to the mighty main, + Fresh from the rock and swelling by the tree, + Rushing to meet, and dare, and breast the sea-- + Fair, noble, glorious river! in thy wave + The sunniest slopes and sweetest pastures lave; + The mountain torrent, with its wintry roar, + Springs from its home and leaps upon thy shore: + The promontories love thee--and for this + Turn their rough cheeks, and stay thee for thy kiss. + + * * * * * + + Dark as the forest leaves that strew the ground, + The Indian hunter here his shelter found; + Here cut his bow and shaped his arrows true, + Here built his wigwam and his bark canoe, + Speared the quick salmon leaping up the fall, + And slew the deer without the rifle-ball. + + * * * * * + + What Art can execute, or Taste devise, + Decks thy fair course and gladdens in thine eyes-- + As broader sweep the bendings of thy stream, + To meet the southern sun's more constant beam. + Here cities rise, and sea-washed commerce hails + Thy shores and winds with all her flapping sails, + From Tropic isles, or from the torrid main-- + Where grows the grape, or sprouts the sugar-cane-- + Or from the haunts where the striped haddock play, + By each cold northern bank and frozen bay. + Here, safe returned from every stormy sea, + Waves the striped flag, the mantle of the free-- + That star-lit flag, by all the breezes curled + Of yon vast deep whose waters grasp the world. + + * * * * * + + +=_Robert C. Sands, 1799-1832._= (Manual, p. 504.) + +From "Weehawken." + +=_349._= HISTORICAL REMINISCENCES. + + Eve o'er our path is stealing fast: + Yon quivering splendors are the last + The sun will fling, to tremble o'er + The waves that kiss the opposing shore; + His latest glories fringe the height + Behind us, with their golden light. + + * * * * * + + Yet should the stranger ask what lore + Of by-gone days, this winding shore, + Yon cliffs, and fir-clad steeps, could tell + If vocal made by Fancy's spell, + The varying legend might rehearse + Fit themes for high romantic verse. + + O'er yon rough heights and moss-clad sod + Oft hath the stalwart warrior trod; + Or peered with hunter's gaze, to mark + The progress of the glancing bark. + Spoils, strangely won on distant waves. + Have lurked in yon obstructed caves. + + When the great strife for Freedom rose, + Here scouted oft her friends and foes, + Alternate, through the changeful war, + And beacon-fires flashed bright and far; + And here, when Freedom's strife was won, + Fell, in sad feud, her favored son;-- + + Her son,--the second of the band, + The Romans of the rescued land. + Where round yon capes the banks descend, + Long shall the pilgrim's footsteps bend; + There, mirthful hearts shall pause to sigh + There, tears shall dim the patriot's eye. + + There last he stood. Before his sight + Flowed the fair river, free and bright; + The rising Mart, and isles and bay, + Before him in their glory lay,-- + Scenes of his love and of his fame,-- + The instant ere the death-shot came. + + * * * * * + + +=_George W. Doane, 1799-1859._= (Manual, p. 523.) + +From "Evening." + +=_350._= + + Softly now the light of day + Fades upon my sight away; + Free from care, from labor free, + Lord, I would commune with thee. + + Thou, whose all-pervading eye + Nought escapes, without, within, + Pardon each infirmity, + Open fault, and secret sin. + + Soon for me the light of day + Shall forever pass away; + Then, from sin and sorrow free, + Take me, Lord, to dwell with thee! + + Thou who sinless, yet hast known + All of man's infirmity; + Then, from thy eternal throne, + Jesus, look with pitying eye. + + * * * * * + + +=_George P. Morris, 1801-1864._= (Manual, p. 523.) + +=_351._= HIGHLANDS OF THE HUDSON. + + Where Hudson's wave o'er silvery sands + Winds through the hills afar, + Old Crow-nest like a monarch stands, + Crowned with, a single star. + And there amid the billowy swells + Of rock-ribbed, cloud-capped earth, + My fair and gentle Ida dwells, + A nymph of mountain birth. + + The snow-flake that the cliff receives-- + The diamonds of the showers-- + Spring's tender blossoms, buds, and leaves-- + The sisterhood of flowers-- + Morn's early beam, eve's balmy breeze-- + Her purity define;-- + But Ida's dearer far than these + To this fond breast of mine. + + * * * * * + + +=_George D. Prentice, 1802-1869._= (Manual, p. 487.) + +From "The Mammoth Cave." + +=_352._= CONTRAST OF NATURE WITHOUT. + + All day, as day is reckoned on the earth, + I've wandered in these dim and awful aisles, + Shut from the blue and breezy dome of heaven, + ... And now + I'll sit me down upon yon broken rock, + To muse upon the strange and solemn things + Of this mysterious realm. + All day my steps + Have been amid the beautiful, the wild, + The gloomy, the terrific; crystal founts + Almost invisible in their serene + And pure transparency, high pillared domes + With stars and flowers, all fretted like the halls + Of Oriental monarchs--rivers dark, + And drear, and voiceless, as Oblivion's stream, + That flows through Death's dim vale of silence,--gulfs + All fathomless, down which the loosened rock + Plunges, until its far-off echoes come + Fainter and fainter, like the dying roll + Of thunders in the distance. + ... Beautiful + Are all the thousand snow-white gems that lie + In these mysterious chambers, gleaming out + Amid the melancholy gloom, and wild + These rocky hills and cliffs, and gulfs, but far + More beautiful and wild, the things that greet + The wanderer in our world of light--the stars + Floating on high, like islands of the blest,-- + The autumn sunsets glowing like the gate + Of far-off Paradise; the gorgeous clouds + On which the glories of the earth and sky + Meet, and commingle; earth's unnumbered flowers, + All turning up their gentle eyes to heaven; + The birds, with bright wings glancing in the sun, + Filling the air with rainbow miniatures; + The green old forests surging in the gale; + The everlasting mountains, on whose peaks + The setting sun burns like an altar-flame. + + * * * * * + + +=_Charles Constantine Pise, 1802-1866._= (Manual, p. 532.) + +From "The Pleasures of Religion." + +=_353._= THE RAINBOW. + + Mark, o'er yon wild, as melts the storm away, + The rainbow tints their various hues display; + Beauteous, though faint, though deeply shaded, bright, + They span the clearing heavens, and charm the sight. + Yes, as I gaze, methinks I view--the while, + Hope's radiant form, and Mercy's genial smile. + Who doth not see, in that sweet bow of heaven, + Circling around the twilight hills of even, + Religion's light, which o'er the wilds of life + Shoots its pure rays through misery and strife; + Soothes the lone bosom, as it pines in woe, + And turns to heaven this barren world below? + O, what were man, did not her hallowed ray + Disperse, the clouds that thicken on his way! + A weary pilgrim, left in cheerless gloom, + To grope his midnight journey to the tomb; + His life a tempest, death, a wreck forlorn, + In sorrow dying, as in sorrow born. + + * * * * * + +From "The Tourist" + +=_354._= VIEW AT GIBRALTAR. + + And from this height, how beauteous to survey + The neighboring shores, the bright cerulean bay: + Myriads of sails are swelling on the deep, + And oars, in myriads, through the waters sweep. + Behold, in peace, all nations here unite, + Their various pennons streaming to the sight: + The red cross glows, the Danish crown appears, + The half-moon rises, and the lion rears, + But mark, bold-towering o'er the conscious wave, + The starry banners of my country brave, + Stream like a meteor to the wooing breeze, + And float all-radiant o'er the sunny seas! + Hail, native flag! for ever mayst thou blow-- + Hope to the friend, and terror to the foe! + Again I hail thee, Calpe! on thy steep + I wandered high, and gazed upon the deep! + Nature's best fortress, which no warlike foe, + No martial scheme, can ever overthrow. + Art, too, had added strength, and given a grace + That smooths the rugged aspect of thy face. + What wondrous halls along the mountain made! + What trains of cannon in those halls arrayed! + They frown imperious from their lofty state, + Prepared around to deal the scourge of fate. + + * * * * * + + +=_Elijah P. Lovejoy,[81] 1802-1816._= + +From "Lines to my Mother." + +=_355._= + + There is a fire that burns on earth, + A pure and holy flame; + It came to men from heavenly birth, + And still it is the same + As when it burned the chords along + That bore the first-born seraph's song; + Sweet as the hymn of gratitude + That swelled to Heaven when "all was good." + No passion in the choirs above + Is purer than a mother's love. + * * * * * + My mother! I am far away + From home, and love, and thee; + And stranger hands may heap the clay + That soon may cover me; + Yet we shall meet--perhaps not here, + But in yon shining, azure sphere; + And if there's aught assures me more, + Ere yet my spirit fly, + That Heaven has mercy still in store + For such a wretch as I, + 'Tis that a heart so good as thine + Must bleed, must burst, along with mine. + + And life is short, at best, and time + Must soon prepare the tomb; + And there is sure a happier clime + Beyond this world of gloom. + And should it be my happy lot, + After a life of care and pain, + In sadness spent, or spent in vain, + To go where sighs and sin are not, + 'Twill make the half my heaven to be, + My mother, evermore with thee. + +[Footnote 81: Born in Maine, but lived at the West; was editor of a +religions newspaper, which early assailed slavery as wrong; lost his +life in defending his press against a mob at Alton, Illinois, July, +1836.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Edward Coate Pinkney, 1802-1828_.= (Manual, p. 521.) + +=356=. A HEALTH. + + I fill this cup to one made up of loveliness alone; + A woman, of her gentle sex the seeming paragon, + To whom the better elements and kindly stars have given + A form so fair, that, like the air, 'tis less of earth than heaven. + + Her every tone is music's own, like those of morning birds; + And something more than melody dwells ever in her words. + The coinage of her heart are they, and from her lips each flows, + As one may see the burdened bee forth issue from the rose. + + Affections are as thoughts to her, the measures of her hours; + Her feelings have the fragrance and the freshness of young flowers; + And lovely passions, changing oft, so fill her, she appears + The image of themselves by turns, the idol of past years. + + Of her bright face, one glance will trace a picture on the brain, + And of her voice, in echoing hearts a sound must long remain; + But memory such as mine of her, so very much, endears + When death is nigh, my latest sigh will not be life's, but hers. + + I fill this cup to one made up of loveliness alone, + A woman, of her gentle sex, the seeming paragon. + Her health! and would on earth there stood some more of such a frame, + That life might be all poetry, and weariness a name. + + * * * * * + + +=_Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803-._= (Manual, pp. 478, 503, 531.) + +=357.= HYMN SUNG AT THE COMPLETION OF THE CONCORD MONUMENT. + + By the rude bridge that arched the flood, + Their flag to April's breeze unfurled, + Here once the embattled farmers stood, + And fired the shot heard round the world. + + The foe long since in silence slept; + Alike the conqueror silent sleeps; + And Time the ruined bridge has swept + Down the dark stream which seaward creeps. + + On this green bank, by this soft stream, + We set to-day a votive stone, + That memory may their deed redeem, + When, like our sires, our sons are gone. + + Spirit, that made those heroes dare + To die, or leave their children free, + Bid Time and Nature gently spare + The shaft we raise to them and thee. + + * * * * * + +From "May Day." + +=_358._= DISAPPEARANCE OF WINTER. + + Not for a regiment's parade, + Nor evil laws or rulers made, + Blue Walden rolls its cannonade, + But for a lofty sign + Which the Zodiac threw, + That the bondage-days are told, + And waters free as winds shall flow. + Lo! how all the tribes combine + To rout the flying foe. + See, every patriot oak-leaf throws + His elfin length upon the snows, + Not idle, since the leaf all day + Draws to the spot the solar ray, + Ere sunset quarrying inches down, + And half-way to the mosses brown; + While the grass beneath the rime + Has hints of the propitious time, + And upward pries and perforates + Through the cold slab a thousand gates, + Till the green lances peering through + Bend happy in the welkin blue, + * * * * * + The ground-pines wash their rusty green, + The maple-tops their crimson tint, + On the soft path each track is seen, + The girl's foot leaves its neater print. + The pebble loosened from the frost + Asks of the urchin to be tost. + In flint and marble beats a heart, + The kind Earth takes her children's part, + The green lane is the school-boy's friend, + Low leaves his quarrel apprehend, + The fresh ground loves his top and ball, + The air rings jocund to his call, + The brimming brook invites a leap, + He dives the hollow, climbs the steep. + The youth reads omens where he goes, + And speaks all languages, the rose. + The wood-fly mocks with tiny noise + The far halloo of human voice; + The perfumed berry on the spray + Smacks of faint memories far away. + A subtle chain of countless rings + The next unto the farthest brings, + And, striving to be man, the worm + Mounts through all the spires of form. + + * * * * * + +From "Voluntaries II." + +=_359._= INSPIRATION OF DUTY. + + In an age of joys and toys, + Wanting wisdom, void of right, + Who shall nerve heroic boys + To hazard all in Freedom's fight,-- + Break shortly off their jolly games, + Forsake their comrades gay, + And quit proud homes and youthful dames, + For famine, toil, and fray? + Yet on the nimble air benign + Speed nimbler messages, + That waft the breath of grace divine + To hearts in sloth and ease. + So nigh is grandeur to our dust, + So near is God to man, + When duty whispers low, _Thou must_, + The youth replies, _I can_. + * * * * * + Stainless soldier on the walls, + Knowing this,--and knows no more,-- + Whoever fights, whoever falls + Justice conquers evermore, + Justice after as before.-- + + * * * * * + + +=_Thomas C. Upham,[82] 1799-1873._= + +=_360._= ON A SON LOST AT SEA. + + Boy of my earlier days and hopes! Once more, + Dear child of memory, of love, of tears! + I see thee, as I saw in days of yore, + As in thy young, and in thy lovely, years. + + The same in youthful look, the same in form; + The same the gentle voice I used to hear; + Though many a year hath passed, and many a storm + Hath dashed its foam around thy cruel bier. + + Deep in the stormy ocean's hidden cave + Buried, and lost to human care and sight, + What power hath interposed to rend thy grave? + What arm hath brought thee thus to life and light? + + I weep,--the tears my aged cheek that stain, + The throbs that once more swell my aching breast, + Embodying one of anxious thought and pain, + That wept and watched around that place of rest. + + O leave me not, my child! Or, if it be, + That coming thus, thou canst not longer stay, + Yet shall this kindly visit's mystery + Give rise to hopes that never can decay. + + Dear cherished image from thy stormy bed! + Child of my early woe, and early joy! + 'Tis thus at last the sea shall yield her dead, + And give again my loved, my buried boy. + +[Footnote 82: A philosophical and religious writer of much merit and +earnestness; author of a volume of poems; for a long time professor +of moral and mental philosophy in Bowdoin College. A native of New +Hampshire.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Jacob Leonard Martin,[83] 1803-1848._= + +=_361_=. THE CHURCH OF SANTA CROCE, FLORENCE. + + Tomb of the mighty dead,[84] illustrious shrine, + Where genius, in the majesty of death, + Reposes solemn, sepulchred beneath, + Temple o'er every other fane divine! + Dark Santa Croce, in whose dust recline + Their mouldering relics whose immortal wreath. + Blooms on, unfaded by Time's withering breath, + In these proud ashes what a prize is thine! + Sure it is holy ground I tread upon; + Nor do I breathe unconsecrated air, + As, rapt, I gaze on each undying name. + These monuments are fragments of the throne + Once reared by genius on this spot so fair, + When Florence was the seat of arts and early fame. + +[Footnote 83: A native of North Carolina; best known in political life, +but meritorious in literature.] + +[Footnote 84: In this church repose Galileo, Michael Angelo, Alfieri, and +other illustrious Italians.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Geo. W. Bethune, 1803-1862._= (Manual, p. 487.) + +Invocation. + +=_362._= MYTHOLOGY GIVES PLACE TO CHRISTIANITY. + + Hushed is their song; from long-frequented grove, + Pale Memory, are thy bright-eyed daughters gone; + No more in strains of melody and love, + Gush forth thy sacred waters, Helicon; + Prostrate on Egypt's plain, Aurora's son, + God of the sunbeam and the living lyre, + No more shall hail thee with mellifluous tone; + Nor shall thy Pythia, raving from thy fire, + Speak of the future sooth to those who would inquire. + + No more at Delos, or at Delphi now, + Or e'en at mighty Ammon's Lybian shrine, + The white-robed priests before the altar bow, + To slay the victim and to pour the wine, + While gifts of kingdoms round each pillar twine; + Scarce can the classic pilgrim, sweeping free + From fallen architrave the desert vine. + Trace the dim names of their divinity-- + Gods of the ruined temples, where, oh where! are ye? + + The Naiad bathing in her crystal spring, + The guardian Nymph of every leafy tree, + The rushing Aeolus on viewless wing, + The flower-crowned Queen of every cultured lea, + And he who walked, with monarch-tread, the sea, + The awful Thunderer, threatening them aloud, + God! were their vain imaginings of Thee, + Who saw Thee only through the illusive cloud + That sin had flung around their spirits, like a shroud. + + As fly the shadows of uncertain night, + On misty vapors of the early day, + When bursts o'er earth the sun's resplendent light-- + Fantastic visions! they have passed away, + Chased by the purer Gospel's orient ray. + My soul's bright waters flow from out thy throne, + And on my ardent breast thy sunbeam's play; + Fountain of thought! True Source of light! I own + In joyful strains of praise, thy sovereign power alone. + + O breathe upon my soul thy Spirit's fire, + That I may glow like seraphim on high, + Or rapt Isaiah kindling o'er his lyre; + And sent by Thee, let holy Hope be nigh, + To fill with prescient joy my ravished eye, + And gentle Love; to tune each jarring string + Accordant with the heavenly harmony; + Then upward borne, on Faith's aspiring wing, + The praises of my God to listening earth, I sing. + + * * * * * + + +=_Charles Fenno Hoffman, 1806-._= (Manual, pp. 487, 505, 519.) + +From "The Vigil of Faith." + +=_363._= THE RED MAN'S HEAVEN. + + White man! I say not that they lie + Who preach a faith so dark and drear, + That wedded hearts in yon cold sky + Meet not as they were mated here. + But scorning not thy faith, thou must + Stranger, in mine have equal trust,-- + The Red man's faith, by Him implanted, + Who souls to both our bodies granted. + Thou know'st in life we mingle not; + Death cannot change our different lot! + He who hath placed the White man's heaven + Where hymns in vapory clouds are chanted, + To harps by angel fingers play'd, + Not less on his Red children smiles, + To whom a land of souls is given, + Where in the ruddy West array'd. + Brighten our blessed hunting isles. + + * * * * * + + Those blissful ISLANDS OF THE WEST! + I've seen, myself, at sunset time, + The golden lake in which they rest; + Seen, too, the barks that bear The Blest, + Floating toward that fadeless clime: + First dark, just as they leave our shore, + Their sides then brightening more and more, + Till in a flood of crimson light + They melted from my straining sight. + And she who climb'd the storm-swept steep, + She who the foaming wave would dare, + So oft love's vigil here to keep,-- + Stranger, albeit thou think'st I dote, + I know, I know she watches there! + Watches upon that radiant strand, + Watches to see her lover's boat + Approach The Spirit-Land. + + He ceased, and spoke no more that night, + Though oft, when chillier blew the blast, + I saw him moving in the light + The fire, that he was feeding, cast; + While I, still wakeful, ponder'd o'er + His wondrous story more and more. + I thought, not wholly waste the mind + Where Faith so deep a root could find, + Faith which both love and life could save, + And keep the first, in age still fond. + Thus blossoming this side the grave + In steadfast trust of fruit beyond. + And when in after years I stood + By INCA-PAH-CHO'S haunted water, + Where long ago that hunter woo'd + In early youth its island daughter, + And traced the voiceless solitude + Once witness of his loved one's slaughter-- + At that same season of the leaf + In which I heard him tell his grief,-- + I thought some day I'd weave in rhyme, + That tale of mellow autumn time. + + * * * * * + + +=_William Gilmore Simms, 1806-1870._= (Manual, pp. 523, 490, 510.) + +From "The Cassique of Accabee." + +=_364._= NATURE INSPIRES SENTIMENT. + + It was a night of calm. O'er Ashley's waters + Crept the sweet billows to their own soft tune, + While she, most bright of Keawah's fair daughters, + Whose voice might spell the footsteps of the moon, + As slow we swept along, + Poured forth her own sweet song-- + A lay of rapture not forgotten soon. + + Hushed was our breathing, stayed the lifted oar, + Our spirits rapt, our souls no longer free, + While the boat, drifting softly to the shore, + Brought us within the shades of Accabee. + "Ah!" sudden cried the maid, + In the dim light afraid, + "'Tis here the ghost still walks of the old Yemassee." + + And sure the spot was haunted by a power + To fix the pulses in each youthful heart; + Never was moon more gracious in a bower, + Making delicious fancy-work for art, + Weaving so meekly bright + Her pictures of delight, + That, though afraid to stay, we sorrowed to depart. + + "If these old groves are haunted"--sudden then, + Said she, our sweet companion,--"it must be + By one who loved, and was beloved again, + And joy'd all forms of loveliness to see:-- + Here, in these groves they went, + Where love and worship, blent, + Still framed the proper God for each idolatry. + + "It could not be that love should here be stern, + Or beauty fail to sway with sov'reign might; + These from so blessed scenes should something learn, + And swell with tenderness, and shape delight: + These groves have had their power, + And bliss, in by-gone hour, + Hath charm'd with sight and song the passage of the night." + + "It were a bliss to think so;" made reply + Our Hubert--"yet the tale is something old, + That checks us with denial;--and our sky, + And these brown woods that, in its glittering fold, + Look like a fairy clime, + Still unsubdued by time, + Have evermore the tale of wrong'd devotion told." + + "Give us thy legend, Hubert;" cried the maid;-- + And, with down-dropping oars, our yielding prow + Shot to a still lagoon, whose ample shade + Droop'd from the gray moss of an old oak's brow: + The groves, meanwhile, lay bright, + Like the broad stream, in light, + Soft, sweet as ever yet the lunar loom display'd. + + * * * * * + + +=_Nathaniel Parker Willis, 1807-1867._= (Manual, pp. 504, 519.) + +From the "Sacred Poems." + +=_365._= HAGAR IN THE WILDERNESS. + + * * * * * + The morning pass'd, and Asia's sun rose up + In the clear heaven, and every beam was heat. + The cattle of the hills were in the shade, + And the bright plumage of the Orient lay + On beating bosoms in her spicy trees. + It was an hour of rest; but Hagar found + No shelter in the wilderness, and on + She kept her weary way, until the boy + Hung down his head, and open'd his parch'd lips + For water; but she could not give it him. + She laid him down beneath the sultry sky,-- + For it was better than the close, hot breath + Of the thick pines,--and tried to comfort him,-- + But he was sore athirst, and his blue eyes + Were dim and bloodshot, and he could not know + Why God denied him water in the wild. + + She sat a little longer, and he grew + Ghastly and faint, as if he would have died. + It was too much for her, she lifted him, + And bore him further on, and laid his head + Beneath the shadow of a desert shrub; + And, shrouding up her face, she went away, + And sat to watch where he could see her not, + Till he should die; and watching him, she mourned: + + "God stay thee in thine agony, my boy! + I cannot see thee die; I cannot brook + Upon thy brow to look, + And see death settle on my cradle-joy. + How have I drunk the light of thy blue eye! + And could I see thee die? + + "I did not dream of this when thou wert straying, + Like an unbound gazelle, among the flowers; + Or wearing rosy hours, + By the rich gush of water-sources playing, + Then sinking weary to thy smiling sleep, + So beautiful and deep. + + "O, no! and when I watch'd by thee the while, + And saw thy bright lip curling in thy dream, + And thought of the dark stream + In my own land of Egypt, the far Nile, + How pray'd I that my father's land might be + An heritage for thee! + + "And now the grave for its cold breast hath won thee, + And thy white, delicate limbs the earth will press; + And, O, my last caress + Must feel thee cold, for a chill hand is on thee. + How can I leave my boy, so pillow'd there + Upon his clustering hair!" + + She stood beside the well her God had given + To gush in that deep wilderness, and bathed + The forehead of her child until he laugh'd + In his reviving happiness, and lisp'd + His infant thought of gladness at the sight + Of the cool plashing of his mother's hand. + + * * * * * + +=_366._= UNSEEN SPIRITS. + + The shadows lay along Broadway,-- + 'Twas near the twilight tide,-- + And slowly there, a lady fair + Was waiting in her pride. + Alone walked she, yet viewlessly + Walked spirits at her side. + + Peace charmed the street beneath her feet, + And honor charmed the air, + And all astir looked kind on her, + And called her good as fair; + For all God ever gave to her, + She kept with chary care. + + She kept with care her beauties rare, + From lovers warm and true; + For her heart was cold to all but gold, + And the rich came not to woo. + Ah, honored well, are charms to sell, + When priests the selling do! + + Now, walking there, was one more fair-- + A slight girl, lily pale, + And she had unseen company + To make the spirit quail; + 'Twixt want and scorn, she walked forlorn, + And nothing could avail. + + No mercy now can clear her brow + For this world's peace to pray; + For, as love's wild prayer dissolved in air, + Her woman's heart gave way, + And the sin forgiven by Christ in heaven + By man is cursed alway. + + * * * * * + + +=_Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1807-._= (Manual, pp. 503, 505, 519, 531.) + +=_367._= LINES TO RESIGNATION. + + There is no flock, however watched and tended + But one dead lamb is there! + There is no fireside, howso'er defended, + But has one vacant chair! + + The air is full of farewells to the dying, + And mournings for the dead; + The heart of Rachel, for her children crying, + Will not be comforted! + + Let us be patient! these severe afflictions + Not from the ground arise, + But oftentimes celestial benedictions + Assume this dark disguise. + + We see but dimly through the mists and vapors; + Amid these earthly damps, + What seem to us but sad, funereal tapers + May be heaven's distant lamps. + + There is no Death! What seems so is transition. + This life of mortal breath + Is but a suburb of the life elysian, + Whose portal we call Death. + + She is not dead,--the child of our affection,-- + But gone unto that school + Where she no longer needs our poor protection, + And Christ himself doth rule. + + In that great cloister's stillness and seclusion, + By guardian angels led, + Safe from temptation, safe from sin's pollution, + She lives, whom we call dead. + + Day after day we think what she is doing + In those bright realms of air; + Year after year, her tender steps pursuing, + Behold her grown more fair. + + Thus do we walk with her, and keep unbroken + The bond which nature gives, + Thinking that our remembrance, though unspoken, + May reach her where she lives. + + Not as a child shall we again behold her; + For when with raptures wild + In our embraces we again enfold her, + She will not be a child; + + But a fair maiden, in her Father's mansion, + Clothed with celestial grace; + And beautiful with all the soul's expansion + Shall we behold her face. + + And though at times impetuous with emotion + And anguish long suppressed, + The swelling heart heaves, moaning like the ocean, + That cannot be at rest,-- + + We will be patient, and assuage the feeling + We may not wholly stay; + By silence sanctifying, not concealing, + The grief that must have way. + + * * * * * + +From "The Seaside and The Fireside." + +=_368._= THE WEDDING; THE LAUNCH; THE SHIP. + + The prayer is said, + The service read, + The joyous bridegroom bows his head; + And in tears the good old Master + Shakes the brown hand of his son, + Kisses his daughter's glowing cheek + In silence, for he cannot speak, + And ever faster + Down his own the tears begin to run. + The worthy pastor-- + The Shepherd of that wandering flock, + That has the ocean for its wold, + That has the vessel for its fold, + Leaping ever from rock to rock-- + Spake, with accents mild and clear, + Words of warning, words of cheer, + But tedious to the bridegroom's ear. + + * * * * * + + Then the Master, + With a gesture of command, + Waved his hand; + And at the word, + Loud and sudden there was heard, + All around them and below, + The sound of hammers, blow on blow, + Knocking away the shores and spurs. + And see! she stirs! + She starts,--she moves,--she seems to feel + The thrill of life along her keel, + And, spurning with her foot the ground, + With one exulting, joyous bound, + She leaps into the ocean's arms! + + And lo! from the assembled crowd + There rose a shout, prolonged and loud, + That to the ocean, seemed to say,-- + "Take her, O bridegroom, old and gray, + Take her to thy protecting arms, + With all her youth and all her charms!" + How beautiful she is! How fair + She lies within those arms, that press + Her form with many a soft caress + Of tenderness and watchful care! + Sail forth into the sea, O ship! + Through wind and wave, right onward steer! + The moistened eye, the trembling lip, + Are not the signs of doubt or fear. + + Sail forth into the sea of life, + O gentle, loving, trusting wife, + And safe from all adversity + Upon the bosom of that sea + Thy comings and thy goings be! + For gentleness and love and trust + Prevail o'er angry wave and gust; + And in the wreck of noble lives + Something immortal still survives! + + Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State! + Sail on, O Union strong and great! + Humanity with all its fears, + With all the hopes of future years, + Is hanging breathless on thy fate! + We know what master laid thy keel, + What workman wrought thy ribs of steel, + Who made each mast, and sail, and rope, + What anvils rang, what hammers beat, + In what a forge and what a heat + Were shaped the anchors of thy hope! + Fear not each sudden sound and shock, + 'Tis of the wave and not the rock; + 'Tis but the flapping of the sail, + And not a rent made by the gale! + In spite of rock and tempest-roar, + In spite of false lights on the shore, + Sail on, nor fear to breast the sea! + Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee, + Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears, + Our faith triumphant o'er our fears, + Are all with thee,--are all with thee. + + * * * * * + +From "Evangeline." + +=_369._= SONG OF THE MOCKING-BIRD, AT SUNSET. + + Softly the evening came. The sun, from the western horizon, + Like a magician, extended his golden wand o'er the landscape; + Twinkling vapors arose; and sky and water and forest + Seemed all on fire at the touch, and melted and mingled together. + Hanging between two skies, a cloud with edges of silver, + Floated the boat, with its dripping oars, on the motionless + water. + Filled was Evangeline's heart with inexpressible sweetness. + Touched by the magic spell, the sacred fountains of feeling + Glowed with the light of love, as the skies and waters around + her. + Then from a neighboring thicket the mocking-bird, wildest of + singers, + Swinging aloft on a willow spray that hung o'er the water, + Shook from his little throat such floods of delirious music, + That the whole air and the woods and the waves seemed silent + to listen. + Plaintive at first were the tones and sad; then soaring to madness, + Seemed they to follow or guide the revel of frenzied Bacchantes. + Single notes were then heard, in sorrowful, low lamentation; + Till, having gathered them all, he flung them abroad in derision, + As when, after a storm, a gust of wind through the tree-tops + Shakes down the rattling rain in a crystal shower on the + branches. + With such a prelude as this, and hearts that throbbed with + emotion, + Slowly they entered the Teche, where it flows through the green + Opelousas, + And through the amber air, above the crest of the woodland, + Saw the column of smoke that arose from a neighboring dwelling;-- + Sounds of a horn they heard, and the distant lowing of cattle. + + * * * * * + +From "The Song of Hiawatha." + +=_370._= HIAWATHA'S DEPARTURE. + + On the shore stood Hiawatha, + Turned and waved his hand at parting; + On the clear and luminous water + Launched his birch canoe for sailing, + From the pebbles of the margin + Shoved it forth into the water; + Whispered to it, "Westward! westward!" + And with speed it darted forward. + And the evening sun descending + Set the clouds on fire with redness, + Burned the broad sky, like a prairie, + Left upon the level water + One long track and trail of splendor, + Down whose streams, as down a river, + Westward, westward Hiawatha + Sailed into the fiery sunset, + Sailed into the purple vapors, + Sailed into the dusk of evening. + And the people from the margin + Watched him floating, rising, sinking, + Till the birch canoe seemed lifted + High into that sea of splendor, + Till it sank into the vapors + Like the new moon slowly, slowly + Sinking in the purple distance. + And they said, "Farewell for ever!" + Said, "Farewell, O Hiawatha!" + And the forests, dark and lonely, + Moved through all their depth of darkness, + Sighed, "Farewell, O Hiawatha!" + And the waves upon the margin + Rising, rippling on the pebbles, + Sobbed, "Farewell, O Hiawatha!" + And the heron, the Shu-shuh-gah, + From her haunts among the fen-lands, + Screamed, "Farewell, O Hiawatha!" + Thus departed Hiawatha, + Hiawatha the beloved, + In the glory of the sunset, + In the purple mists of evening, + To the regions of the home-wind, + Of the Northwest wind Keewaydin, + To the islands of the Blessed, + To the kingdom of Ponemah, + To the land of the Hereafter! + + * * * * * + + +=_William D. Gallagher, 1808-._= (Manual, p. 523.) + +=_371._= THE LABORER. + + Stand up--erect! Thou hast the form, + And likeness of thy God!--who more? + A soul as dauntless mid the storm + Of daily life, a heart as warm + And pure, as breast e'er bore. + + What then?--Thou art as true a Man + As moves the human mass among; + As much a part of the Great plan + That with creation's dawn began, + As any of the throng. + + Who is thine enemy? the high + In station, or in wealth the chief? + The great, who coldly pass thee by, + With proud step and averted eye? + Nay! nurse not such belief. + + * * * * * + + No:--uncurbed passions--low desires-- + Absence of noble self-respect-- + Death, in the breast's consuming fires, + To that high Nature which aspires + For ever, till thus checked: + + * * * * * + + True, wealth thou hast not: 'tis but dust! + Nor place; uncertain as the wind! + But that thou hast, which, with thy crust + And water, may despise the lust + Of both--a noble mind. + + With this and passions under ban, + True faith, and holy trust in God, + Thou art the peer of any man. + Look up, then--that thy little span + Of life, may be well trod! + + * * * * * + + +=_John G. Whittier, 1808-._= (Manual, pp. 490, 522.) + +=_372._= WHAT THE VOICE SAID. + + Maddened by Earth's wrong and evil, + "Lord," I cried in sudden ire, + "From thy right hand, clothed with thunder, + Shake the bolted fire! + + "Love is lost, and Faith is dying; + With the brute, the man is sold; + And the dropping blood of labor + Hardens into gold." + + * * * * * + + "Thou, the patient Heaven upbraiding," + Spake a solemn Voice within; + "Weary of our Lord's forbearance, + Art thou free from sin?" + + * * * * * + + "Earnest words must needs be spoken + When the warm heart bleeds or burns + With its scorn of wrong, or pity + For the wronged, by turns. + + "But, by all thy nature's weakness, + Hidden faults and follies known, + Be thou, in rebuking evil, + Conscious of thine own. + + "Not the less shall stern-eyed Duty + To thy lips her trumpet set, + But with harsher blasts shall mingle + Wailings of regret." + + Cease not, Voice of holy speaking, + Teacher sent of God, be near, + Whispering through the day's cool silence, + Let my spirit hear! + + So, when thoughts of evil doers + Waken scorn, or hatred move, + Shall a mournful fellow-feeling + Temper all with love. + + * * * * * + +From "The Tent on the Beach." + +=_373._= THE ATLANTIC TELEGRAPH. + + O lonely bay of Trinity, + O dreary shores, give ear! + Lean down unto the white-lipped sea + The voice of God to hear! + + From world to world his couriers fly, + Thought-winged, and shod with fire; + The angel of his stormy sky + Rides down the sunken wire. + + What saith the herald of the Lord? + "The world's long strife is done; + Close wedded by that mystic cord, + Its continents are one. + + "And one in heart, as one in blood, + Shall all her peoples be; + The hands of human brotherhood + Are clasped beneath the sea. + + "Through Orient seas, o'er Afric's plain + And Asian mountains borne, + The vigor of the Northern brain + Shall nerve the world outworn. + + "From clime to clime, from shore to shore, + Shall thrill the magic thread; + The new Prometheus steals once more + The fire that wakes the dead." + + Throb on, strong pulse of thunder! beat + From answering beach to beach; + Fuse nations in thy kindly heat, + And melt the chains of each! + + Wild terror of the sky above, + Glide tamed and dumb below! + Bear gently, Ocean's carrier-dove, + Thy errands to and fro. + + Weave on, swift shuttle of the Lord, + Beneath the deep so far, + The bridal robe of earth's accord, + The funeral shroud of war! + + For lo! the fall of Ocean's wall, + Space mocked, and time outrun; + And round the world the thought of all + Is as the thought of one! + + The poles unite, the zones agree, + The tongues of striving cease; + As on the sea of Galilee, + The Christ is whispering, Peace! + + * * * * * + +From Snow-Bound. + +=_374._= DESCRIPTION OF A SNOW STORM. + + The sun that brief December day + Rose cheerless over hills of gray, + And, darkly circled, gave at noon + A sadder light than waning moon, + Slow tracing down the thickening sky + Its mute and ominous prophecy, + A portent seeming less than threat, + It sank from sight before it set. + A chill no coat, however stout, + Of homespun stuff could quite shut out, + A hard, dull bitterness of cold, + That checked, mid-vein, the circling race + Of life-blood in the sharpened face, + The coming of the snow-storm told. + The wind blew east: we heard the roar + Of Ocean on his wintry shore, + And felt the strong pulse throbbing there + Beat with low rhythm our inland air. + + * * * * * + + Unwarmed by any sunset light + The gray day darkened into night, + A night made hoary with the swarm + And whirl-dance of the blinding storm, + A zigzag wavering to and fro + Crossed and recrossed the winged snow: + And ere the early bed-time came + The white drift piled the window-frame, + And, through the glass, the clothes-line posts + Looked in like tall and sheeted ghosts. + + So all night long the storm rolled on: + The morning broke without a sun; + In tiny spherule traced with lines + Of Nature's geometric signs, + In starry flake and pellicle, + All day the hoary meteor fell; + And, when the second morning shone, + We looked upon a world unknown, + On nothing we could call our own. + Around the glistening wonder bent + The blue walls of the firmament, + No cloud above, no earth below,-- + A universe of sky and snow! + + * * * * * + +From "The Pennsylvania Pilgrim." + +=_375._= THE QUAKER'S CREED. + + * * * * * + + Gathered from many sects, the Quaker brought + His old beliefs, adjusting to the thought + That moved his soul, the creed his fathers taught. + + One faith alone, so broad that all mankind + Within themselves its secret witness find, + The soul's communion with the Eternal Mind, + + The Spirit's law, the Inward Rule and Guide, + Scholar and peasant, lord and serf, allied, + The polished Penn, and Cromwell's Ironside. + + As still in Hemskerck's Quaker meeting, face + By face, in Flemish detail, we may trace + How loose-mouthed boor, and fine ancestral grace, + + Sat in close contrast,--the clipt-headed churl, + Broad market-dame, and simple serving-girl, + By skirt of silk and periwig in curl! + + For soul touched soul; the spiritual treasure-trove + Made all men equal, none could rise above, + Nor sink below, that level of God's love. + + So, with his rustic neighbors sitting down, + The homespun frock beside the scholar's gown, + Pastorius, to the manners of the town + + Added the freedom of the woods, and sought + The bookless wisdom by experience taught, + And learned to love his new-found home, while not + + Forgetful of the old; the seasons went + Their rounds, and somewhat to his spirit lent + Of their own calm and measureless content. + + Glad even to tears, he heard the robin sing + His song of welcome to the Western spring, + And bluebird borrowing from the sky his wing. + + And when the miracle of autumn came, + And all the woods with many-colored flame + Of splendor, making summer's greenness tame, + + Burned unconsumed, a voice without a sound + Spake to him from each kindled bush around + And made the strange, new landscape holy ground. + + * * * * * + + +=_Albert Pike, 1809-._= (Manual, p. 523.) + +From "Lines on the Rocky Mountains." + +=_376._= THE EVERLASTING HILLS. + + The deep, transparent sky is full + Of many thousand glittering lights-- + Unnumbered stars that calmly rule + The dark dominions of the night. + The mild, bright moon has upward risen, + Out of the gray and boundless plain, + And all around the white snows glisten, + Where frost, and ice, and silence, reign,-- + While ages roll away, and they unchanged remain. + + These mountains, piercing the blue sky + With their eternal cones of ice,-- + The torrents dashing from on high, + O'er rock, and crag, and precipice,-- + Change not, but still remain as ever, + Unwasting, deathless, and sublime, + And will remain while lightnings quiver, + Or stars the hoary summits climb, + Or rolls the thunder-chariot of eternal Time. + + * * * * * + + +=_Anne C. Lynch Botta._= + +From her "Poems." + +=_377._= THE DUMB CREATION. + + Deal kindly with those speechless ones, + That throng our gladsome earth; + Say not the bounteous gift of life + Alone is nothing worth. + + What though with mournful memories + They sigh not for the past? + What though their ever joyous now + No future overcast. + + No aspirations fill their breast + With longings undefined; + They live, they love, and they are blest + For what they seek they find. + + They see no mystery in the stars, + No wonder in the plain, + And Life's enigma wakes in them, + No questions dark and vain. + + To them earth is a final home, + A bright and blest abode; + Their lives unconsciously flow on + In harmony with God. + + To this fair world our human hearts + Their hopes and longings bring, + And o'er its beauty and its bloom, + Their own dark shadows fling. + + Between the future and the past + In wild unrest we stand, + And ever as our feet advance, + Retreats the promised land. + + And though Love, Fame, and Wealth, and Power + Bind in their gilded bond, + We pine to grasp the unattained-- + The _something_ still beyond. + + And, beating on their prison bars, + Our spirits ask more room, + And with unanswered questionings, + They pierce beyond the tomb. + + Then say thou not, oh, doubtful heart! + There is no life to come: + That in some tearless, cloudless land; + Thou shalt not find thy home. + + * * * * * + + +=_Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1809-._= (Manual, pp. 478, 520.) + +From his Poems. + +=_378._= THE LAST LEAF. + + I saw him once before, + As he passed by the door, + And again + The pavement stones resound, + As he totters o'er the ground + With his cane. + + + My grandmamma has said,-- + Poor old lady, she is dead + Long ago,-- + That he had a Roman nose, + And his cheek was like a rose + In the snow. + + But now his nose is thin, + And it rests upon his chin + Like a staff, + And a crook is in his back. + And a melancholy crack + In his laugh. + + I know it is a sin + For me to sit and grin + At him here; + But the old three-cornered hat, + And the breeches, and all that, + Are so queer! + + And if I should live to be + The last leaf upon the tree + In the spring,-- + Let them smile, as I do now, + At the old forsaken bough + Where I cling. + + * * * * * + +From "The Professor at the Breakfast Table." + +=_379._= A MOTHER'S SECRET. + + * * * * * + + They reach the holy place, fulfill the days + To solemn feasting given, and grateful praise. + At last they turn, and far Moriah's height + Melts into southern sky and fades from sight. + All day the dusky caravan has flowed + In devious trails along the winding road,-- + (For many a step their homeward path attends, + And all the sons of Abraham are as friends.) + Evening has come,--the hour of rest and joy;-- + Hush! hush! that whisper,--"Where is Mary's boy?" + O weary hour! O aching days that passed, + Filled with strange fears, each wilder than the last: + The soldier's lance,--the fierce centurion's sword,-- + The crushing wheels that whirl some Roman lord,-- + The midnight crypt that sucks the captive's breath,-- + The blistering sun on Hinnom's vale of death! + Thrice on his cheek had rained the morning light, + Thrice on his lips the mildewed kiss of night, + Crouched by some porphyry column's shining plinth, + Or stretched beneath the odorous terebinth. + At last, in desperate mood, they sought once more + The Temple's porches, searched in vain before; + They found him seated with the ancient men,-- + The grim old rufflers of the tongue and pen,-- + Their bald heads glistening as they clustered near, + Their gray beards slanting as they turned to hear, + Lost In half-envious wonder and surprise + That lips so fresh should utter words so wise. + And Mary said,--as one who, tried too long, + Tells all her grief and half her sense of wrong.-- + "What is this thoughtless thing which thou hast done? + Lo, we have sought thee sorrowing, O my son!" + Few words he spake, and scarce of filial tone,-- + Strange words, their sense a mystery yet unknown; + Then turned with them and left the holy hill, + To all their mild commands obedient still. + The tale was told to Nazareth's sober men, + And Nazareth's matrons told it oft again; + The maids retold it at the fountain's side; + The youthful shepherds doubted or denied; + It passed around among the listening friends, + With all that fancy adds and fiction lends, + Till newer marvels dimmed the young renown + Of Joseph's son, who talked the Rabbies down. + But Mary, faithful to its lightest word, + Kept in her heart the sayings she had heard, + Till the dread morning rent the Temple's veil, + And shuddering Earth confirmed the wondrous tale. + + Youth fades; love droops; the leaves of friendship fall; + A mother's secret hope outlives them all. + + * * * * * + + +=_Willis Gaylord Clark, 1810-1841._= (Manual, pp. 503, 523.) + +From his "Literary Remains." + +=_380._= AN INVITATION TO EARLY PIETY. + + Come, while the morning of thy life is glowing-- + Ere the dim phantoms thou art chasing die; + Ere the gay spell which earth is round thee throwing, + Fade like the sunset of a summer sky; + Life hath but shadows, save a promise given, + Which lights the future with a fadeless ray; + O, touch the sceptre--win a hope in heaven-- + Come--turn thy spirit from the world away. + + Then will the crosses of this brief existence, + Seem airy nothings to thine ardent soul; + And shining brightly in the forward distance, + Will of thy patient race appear the goal; + Home of the weary! where in peace reposing, + The spirit lingers in unclouded bliss, + Though o'er its dust the curtained grave is closing-- + Who would not _early_ choose a lot like this? + + * * * * * + + +=_James Russell Lowell, 1819-._= (Manual, p. 520.) + +From his "Miscellaneous Poems," &c. + +=_381._= A SONG. + + Violet! sweet violet! + Thine eyes are full of tears; + Are they wet + Even yet, + With the thought of other years? + Or with gladness are they full, + For the night so beautiful, + And longing for those far-off spheres? + + Loved-one of my youth thou wast, + Of my merry youth, + And I see, + Tearfully, + All the fair and sunny past, + All its openness and truth, + Ever fresh and green in thee + As the moss is in the sea. + + Thy little heart, that hath with love + Grown colored like the sky above, + On which thou lookest ever,-- + Can it know + All the woe + Of hope for what returneth never, + All the sorrow and the longing + To these hearts of ours belonging? + + Out on it! no foolish pining + For the sky + Dims thine eye, + Or for the stars so calmly shining; + Like thee let this soul of mine + Take hue from that wherefor I long, + Self-stayed and high, serene and strong, + Not satisfied with hoping--but divine. + + Violet! dear violet! + Thy blue eyes are only wet + With joy and love of him who sent thee, + And for the fulfilling sense + Of that glad obedience + Which made thee all that Nature meant thee! + + * * * * * + +From "The Present Crisis." + +=_382._= IMPORTANCE OF A NOBLE DEED. + + When a deed is done for Freedom, through the broad earth's aching breast + Runs a thrill of joy prophetic, trembling on from east to west, + And the slave, where'er he cowers, feels the soul within him climb + To the awful verge of manhood, as the energy sublime + Of a century, bursts full-blossomed on the thorny stem of Time. + + * * * * * + + Once, to every man and nation, comes the moment to decide, + In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or evil side; + Some great cause, God's new Messiah, offering each the bloom or blight, + Parts the goats upon the left hand, and the sheep upon the right, + And the choice goes by for ever, twist that darkness and that light. + + * * * * * + + We see dimly in the Present what is small and what is great, + Slow of faith how weak an arm may turn the iron helm of fate, + But the soul is still oracular; amid the market's din, + List the ominous stern whisper from the Delphic cave within,-- + "They enslave their children's children, who make compromise with sin." + + * * * * * + +From The Atlantic Monthly. + +=_383._= THE SPANIARDS' GRAVES AT THE ISLES OF SHOALS. + + O sailors, did sweet eyes look after you, + The day you sailed away from sunny Spain? + Bright eyes that followed fading ship and crew, + Melting in tender rain? + + Did no one dream of that drear night to be, + Wild with the wind, fierce with the stinging snow, + When, on yon granite point that frets the sea, + The ship met her death-blow? + + Fifty long years ago these sailors died: + (None know how many sleep beneath the waves:) + Fourteen gray head-stones, rising side by side, + Point out their nameless graves,-- + + Lonely, unknown, deserted, but for me, + And the wild birds that flit with mournful cry, + And sadder winds, and voices of the sea + That moans perpetually. + + Wives, mothers, maidens, wistfully, in vain + Questioned the distance for the yearning sail, + That, leaning landward, should have stretched again + White arms wide on the gale, + + To bring back their beloved. Year by year, + Weary they watched, till youth and beauty passed, + And lustrous eyes grew dim, and age drew near, + And hope was dead at last. + + Still summer broods o'er that delicious land, + Rich, fragrant, warm with skies of golden glow: + Live any yet of that forsaken band + Who loved so long ago? + + O Spanish women, over the far seas, + Could I but show you where your dead repose! + Could I send tidings on this northern breeze, + That strong and steady blows! + + Dear dark-eyed sisters, you remember yet + These you have lost, but you can never know + One stands at their bleak graves whose eyes are wet + With thinking of your woe! + + * * * * * + + +=_Edgar Allen Poe._= (Manual, p. 510.) + +From his Works. + +=_384._= "THE RAVEN." + + Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, + Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,-- + While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, + As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door; + "'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door,-- + Only this, and nothing more." + + Ah! distinctly I remember, it was in the bleak December, + And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor. + Eagerly I wished the morrow;--vainly I had sought to borrow, + From my books, surcease of sorrow,--sorrow for the lost Lenore,-- + For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore,-- + Nameless here for evermore. + + And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain + Thrilled me--filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before; + So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating, + "'Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door-- + Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door; + This it is, and nothing more." + + Presently my soul grew stronger: hesitating then no longer, + "Sir," said I, "or madam, truly your forgiveness I implore; + But the fact is, I was napping, and so gently you came rapping, + And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door, + That I scarce was sure I heard you." Here I opened wide the door; + Darkness there,--and nothing more. + + Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing, + Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before; + But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token, + And the only word there spoken was the whisper'd word, "Lenore!" + This I whisper'd, and an echo murmur'd back the word, "Lenore!" + Merely this, and nothing more. + + Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning, + Soon again I heard a tapping, something louder than before. + "Surely," said I,--"surely that is something at my window-lattice; + Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore,-- + Let my heart be still a moment, and this mystery explore;-- + 'Tis the wind, and nothing more." + + Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter, + In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore. + Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or staid he; + But with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door,-- + Perched upon a bust of Pallas, just above my chamber door,-- + Perched, and sat, and nothing more. + + Then, this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling, + By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore, + "Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou," I said, "art sure no + craven, + Ghastly, grim, and ancient Raven wandering from the nightly shore-- + Tell me what thy lordly name is on the night's Plutonian shore!" + Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore." + + Much I marvell'd this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly, + Though its answer little meaning, little relevancy bore; + For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being + Ever yet was bless'd with seeing bird above his chamber door,-- + Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door,-- + With such name as "Nevermore." + + But the Raven, sitting lonely on that placid bust, spoke only + That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour. + Nothing further then he utter'd; not a feather then he flutter'd-- + Till I scarcely more than mutter'd, "Other friends have flown before-- + On the morrow _he_ will leave me, as my Hopes have flown before," + Then the bird said, "Nevermore." + + Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken, + "Doubtless," said I, "what it utters is its only stock and store, + Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful disaster + Follow'd fast and follow'd faster, till his songs one burden bore-- + Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy burden bore + Of 'Never--never--more!'" + + But the Raven still beguiling all my sad soul into smiling, + Straight I wheel'd a cushioned seat in front of bird, and bust, and + door; + Then upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking + Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore-- + What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore + Meant in croaking "Nevermore." + + This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing + To the fowl, whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom's core; + This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining + On the cushion's velvet lining that the lamp-light gloated o'er, + But whose velvet violet lining which the lamp-light gloated o'er + _She_ shall press, ah, never more! + + Then methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer + Swung by seraphim whose footfalls tinkled on the tufted floor. + "Wretch," I cried, "thy God hath lent thee--by these angels he hath sent + thee + Respite--respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore! + Quaff, O quaff, this kind nepenthe, and forget this lost Lenore!" + Quoth the Raven, "Never more." + + "Prophet," said I, "thing of evil! prophet still, if bird or devil!-- + Whether tempter sent, or whether tempest toss'd thee here ashore, + Desolate, though all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted-- + On this home by Horror haunted--tell me truly, I implore-- + Is there--is there balm in Gilead?--tell me--tell me, I implore!" + Quoth the Raven, "Never more." + + "Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil!--prophet still, if bird or devil! + By that heaven that bends above us--by that God we both adore-- + Tell this soul, with sorrow laden, if within the distant Aidenn, + It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore-- + Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore!" + Quoth the Raven, "Never more." + + "Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!" I shrieked, + upstarting-- + "Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian shore! + Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken! + Leave my loneliness unbroken!--quit the bust above my door! + Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!" + Quoth the Raven, "Never more." + + And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting, + On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door; + And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming, + And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor; + And my soul from out that shadow, that lies floating on the floor, + Shall be lifted--never more. + + * * * * * + + +=_Alfred B. Street, 1811-._= (Manual, pp. 522, 531.) + +From his "Poems." + +=_385._= AN AUTUMN LANDSCAPE. + + Overhead + There is a blending of cloud, haze, and sky; + A silvery sheet, with spaces of soft hue; + A trembling veil of gauze is stretched athwart + The shadowy hill-sides and dark forest-flanks; + A soothing quiet broods upon the air, + And the faint sunshine winks with drowsiness. + Far sounds melt mellow on the ear: the bark, + The bleat, the tinkle, whistle, blast of horn, + The rattle of the wagon-wheel, the low, + The fowler's shot, the twitter of the bird, + And even the hue of converse from the road. + + * * * * * + + The sunshine flashed on streams, + Sparkled on leaves, and laughed on fields and woods. + All, all was life and motion, as all now + Is sleep and quiet. Nature in her change + Varies each day, as in the world of man + She moulds the differing features. Yea, each leaf + Is variant from its fellow. Yet her works + Are blended in a glorious harmony, + For thus God made his earth. Perchance His breath + Was music when He spake it into life, + Adding thereby another instrument + To the innumerable choral orbs + Sending the tribute of their grateful praise + In ceaseless anthems towards His sacred throne. + + * * * * * + +From "Drawings and Tintings." + +=_386._= THE FALLS OF THE MONGAUP. + + Struggling along the mountain path, + We hear, amid the gloom, + Like a roused giant's voice of wrath, + A deep-toned, sullen boom: + Emerging on the platform high, + Burst sudden to the startled eye + Rocks, woods, and waters, wild and rude-- + A scene of savage solitude. + + Swift as an arrow from the bow; + Headlong the torrent leaps, + Then tumbling round, in dazzling snow + And dizzy whirls it sweeps; + Then, shooting through the narrow aisle + Of this sublime cathedral pile, + Amidst its vastness, dark and grim, + It peals its everlasting hymn. + + Pyramid on pyramid of rock + Towers upward, wild and riven, + As piled by Titan hand, to mock + The distant smiling heaven. + And where its blue streak is displayed, + Branches their emerald net-work braid + So high, the eagle in his flight + Seems but a dot upon the sight. + + Here column'd hemlocks point in air + Their cone-like fringes green; + Their trunks hang knotted, black and bare, + Like spectres o'er the scene; + Here lofty crag and deep abyss, + And awe-inspiring precipice; + There grottoes bright in wave-worn gloss, + And carpeted with velvet moss. + + No wandering ray e'er kissed with light + This rock-walled sable pool, + Spangled with foam-gems thick and white, + And slumbering deep and cool; + But where yon cataract roars down, + Set by the sun, a rainbow crown + Is dancing, o'er the dashing strife-- + Hope glittering o'er the storm of life. + + Beyond, the smooth and mirror'd sheet + So gently steals along, + The very ripples, murmuring sweet, + Scarce drown the wild bee's song; + The violet from the grassy side + Dips its blue chalice in the tide; + And, gliding o'er the leafy brink, + The deer, unfrightened, stoops to drink. + + Myriads of man's time-measured race + Have vanished from the earth, + Nor left a memory of their trace, + Since first this scene had birth; + These waters, thundering now along, + Joined in Creation's matin-song; + And only by their dial-trees + Have known the lapse of centuries! + + * * * * * + + +=_Laura M.H. Thurston, 1812-1842._= (Manual, P. 524.) + +=_387._= LINES ON CROSSING THE ALLEGHANIES. + + I hail thee, Valley of the West, + For what thou yet shalt be! + I hail thee for the hopes that rest + Upon thy destiny! + Here from this mountain height, I see + Thy bright waves floating rapidly, + Thine emerald fields outspread; + And feel that in the book of fame, + Proudly shall thy recorded name + In later days be read. + + Oh! brightly, brightly glow thy skies + In Summer's sunny hours! + The green earth seems a paradise + Arrayed in summer flowers! + But oh! there is a land afar, + Whose skies to me all brighter are, + Along the Atlantic shore! + For eyes beneath their radiant shrine + In kindlier glances answered mine: + Can these their light restore? + + Upon the lofty bound I stand, + That parts the East and West; + Before me lies a fairy land; + Behind--_a home of rest!_ + _Here_, Hope her wild enchantment flings, + Portrays all bright and lovely things, + My footsteps to allure-- + But _there_, in memory's light I see + All that was once most dear to me-- + My young heart's cynosure! + + * * * * * + + +=_Francis S. Osgood, 1812-1850_= (Manual, p. 523.) + +=_388._= "The Parting." + + I looked not, I sighed not, I dared not betray + The wild storm of feeling that strove to have way, + For I knew that each sign of the sorrow _I_ felt + _Her_ soul to fresh pity and passion would melt, + And calm was my voice, and averted my eyes, + As I parted from all that in being I prize. + + I pined but one moment that form to enfold. + Yet the hand that touched hers, like the marble was cold,-- + I heard her voice falter a timid farewell, + Nor trembled, though soft on my spirit it fell, + And she knew not, she dreamed not, the anguish of soul + Which only my pity for her could control. + + It is over--the loveliest dream of delight + That ever illumined a wanderer's night! + Yet one gleam of comfort will brighten my way, + Though mournful and desolate ever I stray: + It is this--that to her, to my idol, I spared + The pang that her love could have softened and shared! + + * * * * * + + +=_Harriet Beecher Stowe._= (Manual, p. 484.) + +From the "Religious Poems." + +=_389._= THE PEACE OF FAITH. + + When winds are raging o'er the upper ocean, + And billows wild contend with angry roar, + 'Tis said, far down, beneath the wild commotion, + That peaceful stillness reigneth evermore. + + Far, far beneath, the noise of tempests dieth, + And silver waves chime ever peacefully, + And no rude storm, how fierce soe'er it flieth, + Disturbs the Sabbath of that deeper sea. + + So to the heart that knows Thy love, O Purest! + There is a temple, sacred evermore, + And all the babble of life's angry voices + Dies in hushed stillness at its peaceful door. + + Far, far away, the roar of passion dieth, + And loving thoughts rise calm and peacefully, + And no rude storm, how fierce soe'er it flieth, + Disturbs that soul that dwells, O Lord, in Thee. + + O Rest of rests! O Peace, serene, eternal! + Thou ever livest, and Thou changest never; + And in the secret of Thy presence dwelleth + Fullness of joy, for ever and for ever. + + * * * * * + +=_390._= "ONLY A YEAR." + + One year ago,--a ringing voice, + A clear blue eye, + And clustering curls of sunny hair, + Too fair to die. + + Only a year,--no voice, no smile, + No glance of eye, + No clustering curls of golden hair, + Fair but to die! + + One year ago,--what loves, what schemes + Far into life! + What joyous hopes, what high, resolves, + What generous strife! + + The silent picture on the wall, + The burial stone, + Of all that beauty, life, and joy + Remain alone! + + One year,--one year,--one little year, + And so much gone! + And yet the even flow of life + Moves calmly on. + + The grave grows green, the flowers bloom fair, + Above that head; + No sorrowing tint of leaf or spray + Says he is dead. + + No pause or hush of merry birds + That sing above, + Tells us how coldly sleeps below + The form we love. + + Where hast thou been this year, beloved? + What hast thou seen? + What visions fair, what glorious life, + Where thou hast been? + + The veil! the veil! so thin, so strong! + 'Twixt us and thee; + The mystic veil! when shall it fall, + That we may see? + + Not dead, not sleeping, not even gone, + But present still, + And waiting for the coming hour + Of God's sweet will. + + Lord of the living and the dead, + Our Saviour dear! + We lay in silence at thy feet + This sad, sad year! + + * * * * * + + +=_Henry T. Tuckerman._= + +From his "Poems." + +=_391._= THE STATUE OF WASHINGTON. + + The quarry whence thy form majestic sprung, + Has peopled earth with grace, + Heroes and gods that elder bards have sung, + A bright and peerless race, + But from its sleeping veins ne'er rose before, + A shape of loftier name + Than his, who, Glory's wreath with meekness wore, + The noblest son of fame + Sheathed is the sword that Passion never stained; + His gaze around is cast, + As if the joys of Freedom, newly gained, + Before his vision passed; + As if a nation's shout of love and pride + With music filled the air, + And his calm soul was lifted on the tide + Of deep and grateful prayer; + As if the crystal mirror of his life + To fancy sweetly came, + With scenes of patient toil and noble strife, + Undimmed by doubt or shame; + As if the lofty purpose of his soul + Expression would betray-- + The high resolve Ambition to control, + And thrust her crown away! + O, it was well in marble, firm and white, + To carve our hero's form, + Whose angel guidance was our strength in fight, + Our star amid the storm; + Whose matchless truth has made his name divine, + And human freedom sure, + His country great, his tomb earth's dearest shrine, + While man and time endure! + And it is well to place his image there, + Beneath, the dome he blest; + Let meaner spirits who its councils share, + Revere that silent guest! + Let us go up with high and sacred love, + To look on his pure brow, + And as, with solemn grace, he points above, + Renew the patriot's vow! + + * * * * * + + +=_John G. Saxe, 1816-._= (Manual, p. 523, 531.) + +From "Early Rising." + +=_392._= THE BLESSING OF SLEEP. + + "God bless the man who first invented sleep!" + So Sancho Panza said, and so say I: + And bless him, also, that he didn't keep + His great discovery to himself; nor try + To make it--as the lucky fellow might-- + A close monopoly by patent-right! + + * * * * * + + 'Tis beautiful to leave the world a while + For the soft visions of the gentle night; + And free, at last, from mortal care or guile, + To live as only in the angels' sight, + In Sleep's sweet realm so cosily shut in, + Where, at the worst, we only dream of sin! + + So let us sleep, and give the Maker praise. + I like the lad, who, when his father thought + To clip his morning nap by hackneyed praise + Of vagrant worm by early songster caught, + Cried, "Served him right!--it's not at all surprising; + The worm was punished, sir, for early rising!" + + * * * * * + +=_393._= "YE TAILYOR-MAN; A CONTEMPLATIVE BALLAD." + + Right jollie is ye tailyor-man + As annie man may be; + And all ye daye, upon ye benche + He worketh merrilie. + + And oft, ye while in pleasante wise + He coileth up his lymbes, + He singeth songs ye like whereof + Are not in Watts his hymns. + + And yet he toileth all ye while + His merrie catches rolle; + As true unto ye needle as + Ye needle to ye pole. + + What cares ye valiant tailyor-man + For all ye cowarde fears? + Against ye scissors of ye Fates, + He points his mightie shears. + + He heedeth not ye anciente jests + That witless sinners use; + What feareth ye bolde tailyor-man + Ye hissinge of a goose? + + He pulleth at ye busie threade, + To feede his lovinge wife + And eke his childe; for unto them + It is the threade of life. + + He cutteth well ye rich man's coate, + And with unseemlie pride, + He sees ye little waistcoate In + Ye cabbage bye his side, + + Meanwhile ye tailyor-man his wife, + To labor nothing loth, + Sits bye with readie hande to baste + Ye urchin, and ye cloth. + + Full happie is ye tailyor-man + Yet is he often tried, + Lest he, from fullness of ye dimes, + Wax wanton in his pride. + + Full happie is ye tailyor-man, + And yet he hath a foe, + A cunning enemie that none + So well as tailyors knowe. + + It is ye slipperie customer + Who goes his wicked wayes, + And wears ye tailyor-man his coate, + But never, never payes! + + * * * * * + +From "The Money King." + +=_394._= ANCIENT AND MODERN GHOSTS CONTRASTED. + + In olden times,--if classic poets say + The simple truth, as poets do to-day,-- + When Charon's boat conveyed a spirit o'er + The Lethean water to the Hadean shore, + The fare was just a penny,--not too great, + The moderate, regular, Stygian statute rate. + _Now_, for a shilling, he will cross the stream, + (His paddles whirling to the force of steam!) + And bring, obedient to some wizard power, + Back to the Earth more spirits in an hour, + Than Brooklyn's famous ferry could convey, + Or thine, Hoboken, in the longest day! + Time was when men bereaved of vital breath, + Were calm and silent in the realms of Death; + When mortals dead and decently inurned + Were heard no more; no traveler returned, + Who once had crossed the dark Plutonian strand, + To whisper secrets of the spirit-land,-- + Save when perchance some sad, unquiet soul-- + Among the tombs might wander on parole,-- + A well-bred ghost, at night's bewitching noon, + Returned to catch some glimpses of the moon, + Wrapt in a mantle of unearthly white, + (The only rapping of an ancient sprite!) + Stalked round in silence till the break of day, + Then from the Earth passed unperceived away. + Now all is changed: the musty maxim fails, + And dead men _do_ repeat the queerest tales! + Alas, that here, as in the books, we see + The travelers clash, the doctors disagree! + Alas, that all, the further they explore, + For all their search are but confused the more! + Ye great departed!--men of mighty mark,-- + Bacon and Newton, Adams, Adam Clarke, + Edwards and Whitefield, Franklin, Robert Hall, + Calhoun, Clay, Channing, Daniel Webster,--all + Ye great quit-tenants of this earthly ball,-- + If in your new abodes ye cannot rest, + But must return, O, grant us this request: + Come with a noble and celestial air, + To prove your title to the names ye bear! + Give some clear token of your heavenly birth; + Write as good English as ye wrote on earth! + Show not to all, in ranting prose and verse, + The spirit's progress is from bad to worse; + And, what were once superfluous to advise, + Don't tell, I beg you, such, egregious lies!-- + Or if perchance your agents are to blame, + Don't let them trifle with your honest fame; + Let chairs and tables rest, and "rap" instead, + Ay, "knock" your slippery "Mediums" on the head! + + * * * * * + +=_395._= "Boys" + + "The proper study of mankind is man,"-- + The most perplexing one, no doubt, is woman, + The subtlest study that the mind can scan, + Of all deep problems, heavenly or human! + + But of all studies in the round of learning, + From nature's marvels down to human toys, + To minds well fitted for acute discerning, + The very queerest one is that of boys! + + If to ask questions that would puzzle Plato, + And all the schoolmen of the Middle Age,-- + If to make precepts worthy of old Cato, + Be deemed philosophy, your boy's a sage! + + If the possession of a teeming fancy, + (Although, forsooth, the younker doesn't know it,) + Which he can use in rarest necromancy, + Be thought poetical, your boy's a poet! + + If a strong will and most courageous bearing, + If to be cruel as the Roman Nero; + If all that's chivalrous, and all that's daring, + Can make a hero, then the boy's a hero! + + But changing soon with his increasing stature, + The boy is lost in manhood's riper age, + And with him goes his former triple nature,-- + No longer Poet, Hero, now, nor Sage! + + * * * * * + +=_396._= SONNET TO A CLAM. + + Inglorious friend! most confident I am + Thy life is one of very little ease; + Albeit men mock thee with their similes, + And prate of being "happy as a clam!" + What though thy shell protects thy fragile head + From the sharp bailiffs of the briny sea? + Thy valves are, sure, no safety-valves to thee, + While rakes are free to desecrate thy bed, + And bear thee off,--as foemen take their spoil,-- + Far from thy friends and family to roam; + Forced, like a Hessian, from thy native home, + To meet destruction in a foreign broil! + Though thou art tender, yet thy humble bard + Declares, O clam! thy case is shocking hard! + + * * * * * + + +=_Lucy Hooper, 1816-1841._= (Manual, p. 524.) + +=_397._= "THE DEATH-SUMMONS." + + A voice is on mine ear--a solemn voice: + I come, I come, it calls me to my rest; + Faint not, my yearning heart; rejoice, rejoice; + Soon shalt thou reach the gardens of the blest: + On the bright waters there, the living streams, + Soon shalt thou launch in peace thy weary bark, + Waked by rude waves no more from gentle dreams, + Sadly to feel that earth to thee is dark-- + Not bright as once; O, vain, vain memories, cease, + I cast your burden down--I strive for peace. + + I heed the warning voice: oh, spurn me not, + My early friend; let the bruised heart go free: + Mine were high fancies, but a wayward lot + Hath made my youthful dreams in sadness flee; + Then chide not, I would linger yet awhile, + Thinking o'er wasted hours, a weary train, + Cheered by the moon's soft light, the sun's glad smile, + Watching the blue sky o'er my path of pain, + Waiting nay summons: whose shall be the eye + To glance unkindly--I have come to die! + + Sweet words--to die! O, pleasant, pleasant sounds, + What bright revealings to my heart they bring; + What melody, unheard in earth's dull rounds, + And floating from the land of glorious Spring + The eternal home! my weary thoughts revive, + Fresh flowers my mind puts forth, and buds of love, + Gentle and kindly thoughts for all that live, + Fanned by soft breezes from the world above: + And pausing not, I hasten to my rest-- + Again, O, gentle summons, thou art blest! + + * * * * * + + +=_Catharine Ann Warfield._= + +=_398._= "THE RETURN TO ASHLAND.[85]" + + Unfold the silent gates, + The Lord of Ashland waits + Patient without, to enter his domain; + Tell not who sits within, + With sad and stricken mien, + That he, her soul's beloved, hath come again. + + Long hath she watched for him, + Till hope itself grew dim, + And sorrow ceased to wake the frequent tear; + But let these griefs depart, + Like shadows from her heart-- + Tell her, the long expected host is here. + + He comes--but not alone, + For darkly pressing on, + The people pass beneath his bending trees, + Not as they came of yore, + When torch and banner bore + Their part amid exulting harmonies. + + But still, and sad, they sweep + Amid the foliage deep, + Even to the threshold of that mansion gray, + Whither from life's unrest, + As an eagle seeks his nest, + It ever was his wont to flee away. + + And he once more hath come + To that accustomed home, + To taste a calm, life never offered yet; + To know a rest so deep, + That they who watch and weep, + In this vain world may well its peace regret. + +[Footnote 85: The home of Henry Clay.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Arthur Cleveland Coxe, 1818-._= (Manual, p. 523.) + +=_399._= THE HEART'S SONG. + + In the silent midnight watches, + List thy bosom door; + How it knocketh, knocketh, knocketh, + Knocketh evermore! + Say not 'tis thy pulse's beating; + 'Tis thy heart of sin; + 'Tis thy Saviour knocks, and crieth, + "Rise, and let me in." + + Death comes down with reckless footstep + To the hall and hut; + Think you Death will tarry knocking + Where the door is shut? + Jesus waiteth, waiteth, waiteth; + But thy door is fast. + Grieved, away thy Saviour goeth; + Death breaks in at last. + + Then 'tis thine to stand entreating + Christ to let thee in, + At the gate of heaven beating, + Wailing for thy sin. + Nay, alas! thou foolish virgin, + Hast thou then forgot? + Jesus waited long to know thee,-- + Now he knows thee not. + + * * * * * + + +=_William Ross Wallace, 1819-._= (Manual, p. 523.) + +=_400._= THE NORTH EDDA. + + Noble was the old North Edda, + Filling many a noble grave, + That for "man the one thing needful + In his world is to be brave." + + This, the Norland's blue-eyed mother + Nightly chanted to her child, + While the Sea-King, grim and stately, + Looked upon his boy and smiled. + + * * * * * + + Let us learn that old North Edda + Chanted grandly on the grave, + Still for man the one thing needful + In his world is to be brave. + + Valkyrs yet are forth and choosing + Who must be among the slain; + Let us, like that grim old Sea-King, + Smile at Death upon the plain,-- + + Smile at tyrants leagued with falsehood, + Knowing Truth, eternal, stands + With the book God wrote for Freedom + Always open in her hands,-- + + Smile at fear when in our duty, + Smile at Slander's Jotun-breath, + Smile upon our shrouds when summoned + Down the darkling deep of death. + + Valor only grows a manhood; + Only this upon our sod, + Keeps us in the golden shadow + Falling from the throne of God. + + * * * * * + + +=_Walter Whitman, 1819-.[86]_= + +From Leaves of Grass. + +=_401._= THE BROOKLYN FERRY AT TWILIGHT. + + I too, many and many a time cross'd the river, the sun half an hour + high; + I watched the Twelfth-month sea-gulls--I saw them high in + the air, floating with motionless wings, oscillating their + bodies, + I saw how the glistening yellow lit up parts of their bodies, + and left the rest in strong shadow, + I saw the slow-wheeling circles, and the gradual edging toward + the south. + + I too saw the reflection of the summer sky in the water, + Had my eyes dazzled by the shimmering track of beams, + Look'd at the fine centrifugal spokes of light round the shape + of my head, in the sun-lit water, + Look'd on the haze on the hills southward and south-westward, + Look'd on the vapor as it flew in fleeces tinged with violet, + Look'd towards the lower bay to notice the arriving ships, + Saw their approach, saw aboard those that were near me, + Saw the white sails of schooners and sloops, saw the ships at + anchor, + The sailors at work in the rigging, or out astride the spars, + The round masts, the swimming motion of the hulls, the slender + serpentine pennants, + The large and small steamers in motion, the pilots in their + pilot-houses, + The white wake left by the passage, the quick tremulous whirl + of the wheels, + The flags of all nations, the falling of them at sun-set, + The scallop-edged waves in the twilight, the ladled cups, the + frolicsome crests and glistening, + The stretch afar growing dimmer and dimmer, the gray walls + of the granite store-houses by the docks, + On the river the shadowy group, the big steam-tug closely + flank'd on each side by the barges--the hay-boat, the + belated lighter, + On the neighboring shore, the fires from the foundry chimneys + burning high and glaringly into the night. + Casting their flicker of black, contrasted with wild red and + yellow light, over the tops of houses, and down into the + clefts of streets. + + These and all else, were to me the same as they are to you; + I project myself a moment to tell you--also I return. + +[Footnote 86: Was born in New York in 1819, and has been printer, +teacher, and later, an official at Washington. His poetry, though +irregular in form, and often coarse in sentiment, is decidedly original +and vigorous.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Amelia B. Welby, 1819-1852._= (Manual, p. 523.) + +=_402._= "THE BEREAVED." + + It is a still and lovely spot + Where they have laid thee down to rest; + The white rose and forget-me-not + Bloom sweetly on thy breast, + And birds and streams with liquid lull + Have made the stillness beautiful. + + And softly through the forest bars + Light, lovely shapes, on glossy plumes, + Float ever in, like winged stars, + Amid the purpling glooms. + Their sweet songs, borne from tree to tree, + Thrill the light leaves with melody. + + Alas! too deep a weight of thought + Had filled thy heart in youth's sweet hour; + It seemed with love and bliss o'erfraught; + As fleeting passion-flower + Unfolding 'neath a southern sky, + To blossom soon, and soon to die. + + Alas! the very path I trace, + In happier hours thy footsteps made; + This spot was once thy resting place, + Within the silent shade. + Thy white hand trained the fragrant bough + That drops its blossoms o'er me now. + + * * * * * + + Yet in those calm and blooming bowers + I seem to feel thy presence still, + Thy breath seems floating o'er the flowers, + Thy whisper on the hill; + The clear, faint starlight, and the sea, + Are whispering to my heart of thee. + + No more thy smiles my heart rejoice, + Yet still I start to meet thy eye, + And call upon the low, sweet voice, + That gives me no reply-- + And list within my silent door + For the light feet that come no more. + + * * * * * + + +=_Rebecca S. Nichols,_= about =_1820-._= (Manual, pp. 503, 524.) + +From "Musings." + +=_403._= + + How like a conquerer the king of day + Folds back the curtains of his orient couch, + Bestrides the fleecy clouds, and speeds his way + Through skies made brighter by his burning touch; + For, as a warrior from the tented field + Victorious, hastes his wearied limbs to rest, + So doth the sun his brazen sceptre yield, + And sink, fair Night, upon thy gentle breast. + + * * * * * + + Fair Vesper, when thy golden tresses gleam + Amid the banners of the sunset sky, + Thy spirit floats on every radiant beam + That gilds with beauty thy sweet home on high; + Then hath my soul its hour of deepest bliss, + And gentle thoughts like angels round me throng, + Breathing of worlds (O, how unlike to this!) + Where dwell eternal melody and song. + + * * * * * + + +=_Alice Cary._= + +"The Old House." + +=_404._= ATTRACTIONS OF OUR EARLY HOME. + + My little birds, with backs as brown + As sand, and throats as white as frost, + I've searched the summer up and down, + And think the other birds have lost + The tunes, you sang so sweet, so low, + About the old house, long ago. + + My little flowers, that with your bloom + So hid the grass you grew upon, + A child's foot scarce had any room + Between you,--are you dead and gone? + I've searched through fields and gardens rare, + Nor found your likeness any where. + + My little hearts, that beat so high + With love to God, and trust in men, + Oh come to me, and say if I + But dream, or was I dreaming then, + What time we sat within the glow + Of the old house-hearth, long ago? + + My little hearts, so fond, so true, + I searched the world all far and wide, + And never found the like of you: + God grant we meet the other side + The darkness 'twixt us, now that stands, + In that new house not made with hands! + + * * * * * + + +=_Sidney Dyer,_=[87] about =_1820-._= + +=_405._= THE POWER OF SONG. + + However humble be the bard who sings, + If he can touch one chord of love that slumbers, + His name, above the proudest line of kings, + Shall live immortal in his truthful numbers. + + The name of him who sung of "Home, sweet home,[88]" + Is now enshrined with every holy feeling; + And though he sleeps beneath no sainted dome, + Each heart a pilgrim at his shrine is kneeling. + + The simple lays that wake no tear when sung, + Like chords of feeling from the music taken, + Are, in the bosom of the singer, strung, + Which every throbbing heart-pulse will awaken. + +[Footnote 87: A Baptist clergyman, who has lived for many years at +Indianapolis, Indiana; the author of numerous songs.] + +[Footnote 88: John Howard Payne.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Austin T. Earle,[89] 1821-._= + +From "Warm Hearts had We." + +=_406._= + + The autumn winds were damp and cold, + And dark the clouds that swept along, + As from the fields, the grains of gold + We gathered, with the husker's song. + Our hardy forms, though thinly clad, + Scarce felt the winds that swept us by, + For she a child, and I a lad, + Warm hearts had we, my Kate and I. + + We heaped the ears of yellow corn, + More worth than bars of gold to view: + The crispy covering from it torn, + The noblest grain that ever grew; + Nor heeded we, though thinly clad, + The chilly winds that swept us by; + For she a child, and I a lad, + Warm hearts had we, my Kate and I. + +[Footnote 89: Was born in Tennessee; a well-known Western writer of both +verse and prose.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Thomas Buchanan Read, 1822-1872._= (Manual, p. 523.) + +From "Sylvia, or the Last Shepherd." + +=_407._= THE MOURNFUL MOWERS. + + * * * * * + + Thus sang the shepherd crowned at noon + And every breast was heaved with sighs;-- + Attracted by the tree and tune, + The winged singers left the skies. + + Close to the minstrel sat the maid; + His song had drawn her fondly near: + Her large and dewy eyes betrayed + The secret to her bosom dear. + + The factory people through the fields, + Pale men and maids and children pale, + Listened, forgetful of the wheel, + Till the last summons woke the vale. + + And all the mowers rising said, + "The world has lost its dewy prime; + Alas! the Golden age is dead, + And we are of the Iron time! + + "The wheel and loom have left our homes,-- + Our maidens sit with empty hands, + Or toil beneath yon roaring domes, + And fill the factory's pallid bands, + + "The fields are swept as by a war, + Our harvests are no longer blythe; + Yonder the iron mower's-car, + Comes with his devastating scythe. + + "They lay us waste by fire and steel, + Besiege us to our very doors; + Our crops before the driving wheel + Fall captive to the conquerors. + + "The pastoral age is dead, is dead! + Of all the happy ages chief; + Let every mower bow his head, + In token of sincerest grief. + + "And let our brows be thickly bound + With every saddest flower that blows; + And all our scythes be deeply wound + With every mournful herb that grows." + + Thus sang the mowers; and they said, + "The world has lost its dewy prime; + Alas! the Golden age is dead, + And we are of the Iron time!" + + Each wreathed his scythe and twined his head; + They took their slow way through the plain: + The minstrel and the maiden led + Across the fields the solemn train. + + The air was rife with clamorous sounds, + Of clattering factory-thundering forge,-- + Conveyed from the remotest bounds + Of smoky plain and mountain gorge. + + Here, with a sudden shriek and roar, + The rattling engine thundered by; + A steamer past the neighboring shore + Convulsed the river and the sky. + + The brook that erewhile laughed abroad, + And o'er one light wheel loved to play, + Now, like a felon, groaning trod + Its hundred treadmills night and day. + + The fields were tilled with steeds of steam, + Whose fearful neighing shook the vales; + Along the road there rang no team,-- + The barns were loud, but not with flails. + + And still the mournful mowers said, + "The world has lost its dewy prime; + Alas! the Golden age is dead, + And we are of the Iron time!" + + * * * * * + +From "The Closing Scene." + +=_408._= + + All sights were mellowed, and all sounds subdued, + The hills seemed farther, and the streams sang low; + As in a dream, the distant woodman hewed + His winter log, with many a muffled blow. + + * * * * * + + The sentinel cock upon the hill-side crew, + Crew thrice, and all was stiller than before, + Silent, till some replying warder blew + His alien horn, and then was heard no more. + + Where erst the jay, within the elm's tall crest, + Made garrulous trouble round her unfledged young, + And where the oriole hung her swaying nest, + By every light wind, like a censer, swung. + + * * * * * + + Amid all this, the centre of the scene, + The white-haired matron, with monotonous tread, + Plied the swift wheel, and, with her joyless mien, + Sat like a Fate, and watched the flying thread. + + * * * * * + + While yet her cheek was bright with summer bloom, + Her country summoned, and she gave her all; + And twice war bowed to her his sable plume, + Re-gave the swords to rust upon the wall-- + + Re-gave the swords, but not the hand that drew, + And struck for Liberty its dying blow; + Nor him who, to his sire and country true, + Fell 'mid the ranks of the invading foe. + + Long, but not loud, the droning wheel went on, + Like the low murmur of a hive at noon; + Long, but not loud, the memory of the gone + Breathed through her lips a sad and tremulous tune. + + At last the thread was snapped; her head was bowed; + Life dropped the distaff through his hands serene; + And loving neighbors smoothed her careful shroud, + While death and winter closed the autumn scene. + + * * * * * + + +=_Margaret M. Davidson, 1823-1837._= (Manual, p. 523.) + +From Lines in Memory of her Sister Lucretia. + +=_409._= + + O thou, so early lost, so long deplored! + Pure spirit of my sister, be thou near; + And, while I touch this hallowed harp of thine, + Bend from the skies, sweet sister, bend and hear. + + For thee I pour this unaffected lay; + To thee these simple numbers all belong: + For though thine earthly form has passed away, + Thy memory still inspires my childish song. + + Take, then, this feeble tribute; 'tis thine own; + Thy fingers sweep my trembling heartstrings o'er, + Arouse to harmony each buried tone, + And bid its wakened music sleep no more. + + Long has thy voice been silent, and thy lyre + Hung o'er thy grave, in death's unbroken rest; + But when its last sweet tones were borne away, + One answering echo lingered in my breast. + + O thou pure spirit! if thou hoverest near, + Accept these lines, unworthy though they be, + Faint echoes from thy fount of song divine, + By thee inspired, and dedicate to thee. + + * * * * * + + +=_John R. Thompson,[90] 1823-1873._= + +=_410._= MUSIC IN CAMP. + + Two armies covered hill and plain, + Where Rappahannock's waters + Ran deeply crimsoned with the stain + Of battle's recent slaughters. + + The summer clouds lay pitched like tents + In meads of heavenly azure, + And each dread gun of the elements + Slept in its hid embrazure. + + The breeze so softly blew, it made + No forest leaf to quiver, + And the smoke of the random cannonade + Rolled slowly from the river. + + And now, where circling hills looked down, + With cannon grimly planted, + O'er listless camp and silent town + The golden sunset slanted. + + When on the fervid air there came + A strain--now rich and tender; + The music seemed itself aflame + With day's departing splendor. + + And yet once more the bugles sang + Above the stormy riot; + No shout upon the evening rang-- + There reigned a holy quiet, + + The sad, slow stream, its noiseless flood + Poured o'er the glistening pebbles; + All silent now the Yankees stood, + And silent stood the Rebels. + + No unresponsive soul had heard + That plaintive note's appealing, + So deeply "Home, Sweet Home" had stirred + The hidden founts of feeling. + + Or Blue, or Gray, the soldier sees, + As by the wand of fairy, + The cottage 'neath the live-oak trees, + The cabin by the prairie. + + Or cold or warm, his native skies + Bend in their beauty o'er him; + Seen through the tear-mist in his eyes, + His loved ones stand before him. + + As fades the iris after rain + In April's tearful weather, + The vision vanished, as the strain + And daylight died together. + + But memory, waked by music's art, + Expressed in simplest numbers, + Subdued the sternest Yankee's heart, + Made light the Rebel's slumbers. + + And fair the form of music shines, + That bright, celestial creature, + Who still 'mid war's embattled lines, + Gave this one touch of Nature. + +[Footnote 90: Received a liberal education and relinquishing his +profession--the law--for literature, was for some years editor of the +Southern Literary Messenger. Has written chiefly for the magazines and +for the newspapers. A native of Virginia.] + + * * * * * + + +=_George Henry Boker, 1824-._= (Manual, p. 520.) + +From the "Ode to a Mountain Oak." + +=_411._= THE OAK AN EMBLEM. + + Type of unbending Will! + Type of majestic self-sustaining Power! + Elate in sunshine, firm when tempests lower, + May thy calm strength my wavering spirit fill! + Oh! let me learn from thee, + Thou proud and steadfast tree, + To bear unmurmuring what stern Time may send; + Nor 'neath life's ruthless tempests bend: + But calmly stand like thee, + Though wrath and storm shake me, + Though vernal hopes in yellow Autumn end, + And, strong in truth, work out my destiny. + Type of long-suffering Power! + Type of unbending Will! + Strong in the tempest's hour, + Bright when the storm is still; + Rising from every contest with an unbroken heart, + Strengthen'd by every struggle, emblem of might thou art! + Sign of what man can compass, spite of an adverse state, + Still from thy rocky summit, teach us to war with Fate! + + * * * * * + +=_412._= DIRGE FOR A SAILOR. + + Slow, slow! toll it low, + As the sea-waves break and flow; + With the same dull slumberous motion. + As his ancient mother, Ocean, + Rocked him on, through storm and calm, + From the iceberg to the palm: + So his drowsy ears may deem + That the sound which breaks his dream + Is the ever-moaning tide + Washing on his vessel's side. + + Slow, slow! as we go. + Swing his coffin to and fro; + As of old the lusty billow + Swayed him on his heaving pillow: + So that he may fancy still, + Climbing up the watery hill, + Plunging in the watery vale, + With her wide-distended sail, + His good ship securely stands + Onward to the golden lands. + + Slow, slow! heave-a-ho!-- + Lower him to the mould below; + With the well-known sailor ballad, + Lest he grow more cold and pallid + At the thought that Ocean's child, + From his mother's arms beguiled. + Must repose for countless years, + Reft of all her briny tears, + All the rights he owned by birth, + In the dusty lap of earth. + + * * * * * + + +=_William Allen Butler, 1825-._= (Manual, p. 521.) + +From "Nothing to Wear." + +=_413._= + + O ladies, dear ladies, the next sunny day + Please trundle your hoops just out of Broadway, + From its whirl and its bustle, its fashion and pride, + And the temples of Trade which tower on each side, + To the alleys and lanes, where Misfortune and Guilt + Their children have gathered, their city have built; + Where Hunger and Vice, like twin beasts of prey, + Have hunted their victims to gloom and despair; + Raise the rich, dainty dress, and the fine broidered skirt, + Pick your delicate way through the dampness and dirt, + Grope through the dark dens, climb the rickety stair + To the garret, where wretches, the young and the old, + Half-starved, and half-naked, lie crouched from the cold. + See those skeleton limbs, and those frost-bitten feet, + All bleeding and bruised by the stones of the street; + Hear the sharp cry of childhood, the deep groans that swell + From the poor dying creature who writhes on the floor, + Hear the curses that sound like the echoes of Hell, + As you sicken and shudder and fly from the door; + Then home to your wardrobes, and say, if you dare, + Spoiled children of Fashion--you've nothing to wear! + + And O, if perchance there should be a sphere, + Where all is made right which so puzzles us here, + + * * * * * + + Where the soul, disenchanted of flesh and of sense, + Unscreened by its trappings, and shows, and pretence, + Must be clothed for the life and the service above, + With purity, truth, faith, meekness, and love; + O daughters of Earth! foolish virgins, beware! + Lest in that upper realm, you have nothing to wear! + + * * * * * + + +=_Bayard Taylor, 1825-._= (Manual, pp. 523, 531.) + +From "The Atlantic Monthly." + +=_414._= "THE BURDEN OF THE DAY." + + I. + + Who shall rise and cast away, + First, the Burden of the Day? + Who assert his place, and teach + Lighter labor, nobler speech, + Standing firm, erect, and strong, + Proud as Freedom, free as song? + + II. + + Lo! we groan beneath the weight + Our own weaknesses create; + Crook the knee and shut the lip, + All for tamer fellowship; + Load our slack, compliant clay + With the Burden of the Day! + + III. + + Higher paths there are to tread; + Fresher fields around us spread; + Other flames of sun and star + Flash at hand and lure afar; + Larger manhood might we share, + Surer fortune, did we dare! + + IV. + + In our mills of common thought + By the pattern all is wrought: + In our school of life, the man + Drills to suit the public plan, + And through labor, love and play, + Shifts the Burden of the Day. + + V. + + Power of all is right of none! + Right hath each beneath the sun + To the breadth and liberal space + Of the independent race,-- + To the chariot and the steed, + To the will, desire, and deed! + + VI. + + Ah, the gods of wood and stone + Can a single saint dethrone, + But the people who shall aid + 'Gainst the puppets they have made? + First they teach and then obey: + 'Tis the Burden of the Day. + + VII. + + Thunder shall we never hear + In this ordered atmosphere? + Never this monotony feel + Shattered by a trumpet's peal? + Never airs that burst and blow + From eternal summits, know? + + VIII. + + Though no man resent his wrong, + Still is free the poet's song: + Still, a stag, his thought may leap + O'er the herded swine and sheep, + And in pastures far away + Lose the burden of the Day! + + * * * * * + + +=_John Townsend Trowbridge,[91] 1827-._= + +From the Atlantic Monthly. + +=_415._= "DOROTHY IN THE GARRET." + + In the low-raftered garret, stooping + Carefully over the creaking boards, + Old Maid Dorothy goes a-groping + Among its dusty and cobwebbed hoards; + Seeking some bundle of patches, hid + Far under the eaves, or bunch of sage, + Or satchel hung on its nail, amid + The heir-looms of a by-gone age. + + There is the ancient family chest, + There the ancestral cards and hatchel; + Dorothy, sighing, sinks down to rest, + Forgetful of patches, sage, and satchel. + Ghosts of faces peer from the gloom + Of the chimney, where, with swifts and reel, + And the long-disused, dismantled loom, + Stands the old-fashioned spinning wheel. + + She sees it back in the clean-swept kitchen, + A part of her girlhood's little world; + Her mother is there by the window, stitching; + Spindle buzzes, and reel is whirled + With many a click; on her little stool + She sits, a child by the open door, + Watching, and dabbling her feet in the pool + Of sunshine spilled on the gilded floor. + + Her sisters are spinning all day long; + To her wakening sense, the first sweet warning + Of daylight come, is the cheerful song + To the hum of the wheel, in the early morning. + Benjie, the gentle, red-cheeked boy, + On his way to school, peeps in at the gate; + In neat, white pinafore, pleased and coy, + She reaches a hand to her bashful mate; + + And under the elms, a prattling pair, + Together they go, through glimmer and gloom + It all comes back to her, dreaming there + In the low-raftered garret room; + The hum of the wheel, and the summer weather + The heart's first trouble, and love's beginning, + Are all in her memory linked together; + And now it is she herself that is spinning. + + With the bloom of youth on cheek and lip, + Turning the spokes with the flashing pin, + Twisting the thread from the spindle-tip, + Stretching it out and winding it in, + To and fro, with a blithesome tread, + Singing she goes, and her heart is full, + And many a long-drawn golden thread + Of fancy, is spun with the shining wool. + +[Footnote 91: After struggling through many early discouragements has +attained high repute, both in prose and verse. Has written several +novels. New York is his native State.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Henry Timrod,[92] 1829-1867._= + +From his "Poems." + +=_416._= THE UNKNOWN DEAD. + + The rain is plashing on my sill, + But all the winds of Heaven are still; + And so it falls with that dull sound + Which thrills us in the church-yard ground, + When the first spadeful drops like lead + Upon the coffin of the dead. + Beyond my streaming window-pane, + I cannot see the neighboring vane, + Yet from its old familiar tower + The bell comes, muffled, through the shower + What strange and unsuspected link + Of feeling touched, has made me think-- + While with a vacant soul and eye + I watch that gray and stony sky-- + Of nameless graves on battle-plains + Washed by a single winter's rains, + Where--some beneath Virginian hills, + And some by green Atlantic rills, + Some by the waters of the West-- + A myriad unknown heroes rest? + Ah! not the chiefs, who, dying, see + Their flags in front of victory, + Or, at their life-blood's noble cost + Pay for a battle nobly lost, + Claim from their monumental beds + The bitterest tears a nation sheds. + Beneath yon lonely mound--the spot + By all save some fond few, forgot-- + Lie the true martyrs of the fight + Which strikes for freedom and for right. + Of them, their patriot zeal and pride, + The lofty faith that with them died, + No grateful page shall farther tell + Than that so many bravely fell; + And we can only dimly guess + What worlds of all this world's distress, + What utter woe, despair, and dearth, + Their fate has brought to many a hearth. + Just such a sky as this should weep + Above them, always, where they sleep; + Yet, haply, at this very hour + Their graves are like a lover's bower; + And Nature's self, with eyes unwet, + Oblivious of the crimson debt + To which she owes her April grace, + Laughs gayly o'er their burial-place. + +[Footnote 92: A native of South Carolina. He has a fine poetic sentiment, +with much beauty of expression, and is an especial favorite in the +South.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Susan A. Talley Von Weiss,_=[93] about =_1830-._= + +=_417._= THE SEA-SHELL. + + Sadly the murmur, stealing + Through the dim windings of the mazy shell, + Seemeth some ocean-mystery concealing + Within its cell. + + And ever sadly breathing, + As with the tone of far-off waves at play, + That dreamy murmur through the sea-shell wreathing + Ne'er dies away. + + It is no faint replying + Of far-off melodies of wind and wave, + No echo of the ocean billow, sighing + Through gem-lit cave. + + It is no dim retaining + Of sounds that through the dim sea-caverns swell + But some lone ocean spirit's sad complaining, + Within that cell. + + + * * * * * + + I languish for the ocean-- + I pine to view the billow's heaving crest; + I miss the music of its dream-like motion, + That lulled to rest. + + How like art thou, sad spirit, + To many a one, the lone ones of the earth! + Who in the beauty of their souls inherit + A purer birth; + + * * * * * + + Yet thou, lone child of ocean, + May'st never more behold thine ocean-foam, + While they shall rest from each wild, sad emotion, + And find their home! + +[Footnote 93: A native of Virginia; her poetical pieces have been much +admired.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Albert Sutliffe,[94] 1830-._= + +=_418._= "MAY NOON." + + The farmer tireth of his half-day toil, + He pauseth at the plough, + He gazeth o'er the furrow-lined soil, + Brown hand above his brow. + + He hears, like winds lone muffled 'mong the hills, + The lazy river run; + From shade of covert woods, the eager rills + Bound forth into the sun. + + The clustered clouds of snowy apple-blooms, + Scarce shivered by a breeze, + With odor faint, like flowers in feverish rooms, + Fall, flake by flake, in peace. + + 'Tis labor's ebb; a hush of gentle joy, + For man, and beast, and bird; + The quavering songster ceases its employ; + The aspen is not stirred. + + But Nature hath no pause; she toileth still; + Above the last-year leaves + Thrusts the lithe germ, and o'er the terraced hill + A fresher carpet weaves. + + From many veins she sends her gathered streams + To the huge-billowed main, + Then through the air, impalpable as dreams, + She calls them back again. + + She shakes the dew from her ambrosial locks, + She pours adown the steep + The thundering waters; in her palm, she rocks + The flower-throned bee to sleep. + + Smile in the tempest, faint and fragile man, + And tremble in the calm! + God plainest shows what great. Jehovah can, + In these fair days of balm. + +[Footnote 94: A native of Connecticut, but has lived for many years in +the West, and latterly in Minnesota.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Elijah E. Edwards,[95] 1831-._= + +=_419._= "LET ME REST." + + "Let me rest!" + It was the voice of one + Whose life-long journey was but just begun. + With genial radiance shone his morning sun; + The lark sprang up rejoicing from her nest, + To warble praises in her Maker's ear; + The fields were clad in flower-enamelled vest, + And air of balm, and sunshine clear, + Failed not to cheer + That yet unweary pilgrim; but his breast + Was harrowed with a strange, foreboding fear; + Deeming the life to come, at best, + But weariness, he murmured, "Let me rest." + + * * * * * + + "Let me rest!" + But not at morning's hour, + Nor yet when clouds above my pathway lower; + Let me bear up against affliction's power, + Till life's red sun has sought its quiet west, + Till o'er me spreads the solemn, silent night, + When, having passed the portals of the blessed, + I may repose upon the Infinite, + And learn aright + Why He, the wise, the ever-loving, traced + The path to heaven through a desert waste. + Courage, ye fainting ones! at His behest + Ye pass through labor unto endless rest. + +[Footnote 95: Born in Ohio; of late professor of ancient languages in +Minnesota; a contributor in prose and verse to various magazines.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Paul Hamilton Hayne,[96] 1831-._= + +=_420._= "OCTOBER." + + The passionate summer's dead! the sky's aglow + With roseate flushes of matured desire; + The winds at eve are musical and low + As sweeping chords of a lamenting lyre, + Far up among the pillared clouds of fire, + Whose pomp in grand procession upward grows, + With gorgeous blazonry of funereal shows, + To celebrate the summer's past renown. + Ah, me! how regally the heavens look down, + O'ershadowing beautiful autumnal woods, + And harvest-fields with hoarded incense brown, + And deep-toned majesty of golden floods, + That lift their solemn dirges to the sky, + To swell the purple pomp that floateth by. + +[Footnote 96: A poet and critic of much Note; a native of South +Carolina.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Rosa V. Johnson Jeffrey_=[97] about =_1832-._= + +=_421._= ANGEL WATCHERS. + + Angel faces watch my pillow, angel voices haunt my sleep,-- + And upon the winds of midnight, shining pinions round me sweep; + Floating downward on the starlight, two bright infant-forms I see-- + They are mine, my own bright darlings, come from heaven to visit me. + + Earthly children smile upon me, but those little ones' above, + Were the first to stir the fountains of a mother's deathless love, + And, as now they watch my slumber, while their soft eyes on me shine, + God forgive a mortal yearning still to call his angels mine. + + Earthly children fondly call me, but no mortal voice can seem + Sweet as those that whisper "Mother!" 'mid the glories of my dream; + Years will pass, and earthly prattlers cease perchance to lisp my name; + But my angel babies' accents shall be evermore the same. + + And the bright band now around me, from their home perchance will rove, + In their strength no more depending on my constant care and love; + But my first-born still shall wander, from the sky in dreams to rest + Their soft cheeks and shining tresses on an earthly mother's breast. + + Time may steal away the freshness, or some 'whelming grief destroy + All the hopes that erst had blossomed, in my summer-time of joy; + Earthly children may forsake me, earthly friends perhaps betray, + Every tie that now unites me to this life may pass away;-- + + But, unchanged, those angel watchers, from their blest immortal home, + Pure and fair, to cheer the sadness of my darkened dreams shall come; + And I cannot feel forsaken, for, though 'reft of earthly love, + Angel children call me "Mother," and my soul will look above. + +[Footnote 97: A native of Mississippi, but of late a resident of +Kentucky; the author of several novels, and of many poetical pieces.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Sarah J. Lippincott._= + +From Putnam's Magazine. + +=_422._= "ABSOLUTION." + + The long day waned, when spent with pain, I seemed + To drift on slowly toward the restful shore,-- + So near, I breathed in balm, and caught faint gleams + Of Lotus-blooms that fringe the waves of death, + And breathless Palms that crown the heights of God. + + Then I bethought me how dear hands would close + These wistful eyes in welcome night, and fold + These poor, tired hands in blameless idleness. + In tender mood I pictured forth the spot + Wherein I should be laid to take my rest. + + "It shall be in some paradise of graves, + Where Sun and Shade do hold alternate watch; + Where Willows sad trail low their tender green, + And pious Elms build arches worshipful, + O'ertowered by solemn Pines, in whose dark tops + Enchanted storm-winds sigh through summer-nights; + The stalwart exile from fair Lombardy, + And slender Aspens, whose quiet, watchful leaves + Give silver challenge to the passing breeze, + And softly flash and clash like fairy shields, + Shall sentinel that quiet camping ground; + The glow and grace of flowers will flood those mounds + An ever-widening sea of billowy bloom; + And not least lovely shall my grave-sod be, + With Myrtles blue, and nestling Violets, + And Star-flowers pale with watching--Pansies, dark, + With mourning thoughts, and Lilies saintly pure; + Deep-hearted Roses, sweet as buried love, + And Woodbine-blossoms dripping honeyed dew + Over a tablet and a sculptured name. + There little song-birds, careless of my sleep, + Shall shake fine raptures from their throats, and thrill + With life's triumphant joy the ear of Death; + And lovely, gauzy creatures of an hour + Preach immortality among the graves. + The chime of silvery waters shall be there-- + A pleasant stream that winds among the flowers, + But lingers not, for that it ever hears, + Through leagues of wood and field and towered town, + The great sea calling from his secret deeps." + + 'Twas here, methought or dreamed, an angel came + And stood beside my couch, and bent on me + A face of solemn questioning, still and stern, + But passing beautiful, and searched my soul + With steady eyes, the while he seemed to say. + + What hast thou done here, child, that thy poor dust + Should lie embosomed in such loveliness? + Why should the gracious trees stand guard o'er thee? + Hast thou aspired, like them, through all thy life, + And rest and healing with thy shadow cast? + Have deeds of thine brightened the world like flowers, + And sweetened it with holiest charities? + + * * * * * + + +=_Edmund Clarence Stedman,[98] 1833-._= + +From "The Blameless Prince and other Poems." + +=_423._= THE MOUNTAINS. + + Two thousand feet in air it stands + Betwixt the bright and shaded lands, + Above the regions it divides + And borders with its furrowed sides. + The seaward valley laughs with light + Till the round sun o'erhangs this height; + But then, the shadow of the crest + No more the plains that lengthen west + Enshrouds, yet slowly, surely creeps + Eastward, until the coolness steeps + A darkling league of tilth and wold, + And chills the flocks that seek their fold. + + Not like those ancient summits lone, + Mont Blanc on his eternal throne,-- + The city-gemmed Peruvian, peak,-- + The sunset portals landsmen seek, + Whose train, to reach the Golden Land, + Crawls slow and pathless through the sand,-- + Or that whose ice-lit beacon guides + The mariner on tropic tides, + And flames across the Gulf afar, + A torch by day, by night a star,-- + Not thus to cleave the outer skies. + Does my serener mountain rise. + Nor aye forget its gentle birth + Upon the dewey, pastoral earth. + + But ever, in the noonday light, + Are scenes whereof I love the sight,-- + Broad pictures of the lower world + Beneath my gladdened eyes unfurled. + Irradiate distances reveal + Fair nature wed to human weal; + The rolling valley made a plain; + Its chequered squares of grass and grain; + The silvery rye, the golden wheat, + The flowery elders where they meet,-- + Ay, even the springing corn I see, + And garden haunts of bird and bee; + And where, in daisied meadows, shines + The wandering river through its vines, + Move, specks at random, which I know + Are herds a-grazing to and fro. + +[Footnote 98: Was born in Connecticut but has long resided in New York, +where he has combined an active business life with literary pursuits--a +favorite contributor to that magazines.] + + * * * * * + + +=_John James Piatt,[99] 1835-._= + +From "Landmarks and other Poems." + +=_424._= LONG AGO. + + Though for the soul a lovely Heaven awaits, + Through years of woe, + The Paradise with angels in its gates + Is Long Ago. + + The heart's lost Home! Ah, thither winging ever, + In silence, show + Vanishing faces! but they vanish never + In Long Ago! + + Ye toil'd through desert sands to reach To-morrow, + With footsteps slow, + Poor Yesterdays! Immortal gleams ye borrow + In Long Ago. + + The world is dark: backward our thoughts are yearning, + Our eyes o'erflow: + Sweet Memories, angels to our tears returning, + Leave Long Ago. + + We climb: child-roses to our knees are climbing, + From valleys low; + To call us back, dear birds and brooks are rhyming + In Long Ago. + + Hands clasp'd, tears shed, sad songs are sung!--the fair + Beloved ones, lo! + Shine yonder, through the angel gates of air, + In Long Ago. + +[Footnote 99: Of Western birth and education. His verse though somewhat +crude, has a flow of tenderness and freshness.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Celia Thaxter,[100] 1835-._= + +From The Atlantic Monthly. + +=_425._= "REGRET." + + Softly Death touched her, and she passed away, + Out of this glad, bright world she made more fair; + Sweet as the apple blossoms, when in May, + The orchards flush, of summer grown aware. + + All that fresh delicate beauty gone from sight, + That gentle, gracious presence felt no more! + How must the house be emptied of delight! + What shadows on the threshold she passed o'er! + + She loved me. Surely I was grateful, yet + I could not give her back all she gave me,-- + Ever I think of it with vain regret, + Musing upon a summer by the sea: + + Remembering troops of merry girls who pressed + About me, clinging arms and tender eyes, + And love, light scent of roses. With the rest + She came to fill my heart with new surprise. + + The day I left them all and sailed away, + While o'er the calm sea, 'neath the soft gray sky + They waved farewell, she followed me to say + Yet once again her wistful, sweet "good by." + + At the boat's bow she drooped; her light green dress + Swept o'er the skiff in many a graceful fold, + Her glowing face, bright with a mute caress, + Crowned with her lovely hair of shadowy gold: + + And tears she dropped into the crystal brine + For me, unworthy, as we slowly swung + Free of the mooring. Her last look was mine, + Seeking me still the motley crowd among. + + O tender memory of the dead I hold + So precious through the fret and change of years! + Were I to live till Time itself grew old, + The sad sea would be sadder for those tears. + +[Footnote 100: A native of New Hampshire; long resident on the Isles of +Shoals, and remarkable for her vivid pictures of ocean life, in both +prose and verse.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Theophilus H. Hill.[101] 1836-._= + +From "The Song of the Butterfly." + +=_426._= + + When the shades of evening fall, + Like the foldings of a pall,-- + When the dew is on the flowers, + And the mute, unconscious hours, + Still pursue their noiseless flight + Through the dreamy realms of night, + In the shut or open rose + Ah, how sweetly I repose! + + * * * * * + + And Diana's starry train, + Sweetly scintillant again, + Never sleep while I repose + On the petals of the rose. + Sweeter couch hath who than I? + Quoth the brilliant Butterfly. + + Life is but a summer day, + Gliding languidly away; + Winter comes, alas! too soon,-- + Would it were forever June! + Yet though brief my flight may be, + Fun and frolic still for me! + When the summer leaves and flowers, + Now so beautiful and gay, + In the cold autumnal showers, + Droop and fade, and pine away, + Who would not prefer to die? + What were life to _such as I_? + Quoth the flaunting Butterfly. + +[Footnote 101: Born in North Carolina; in the intervals of his law +practice has published a volume of poems.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Thomas Hailey Aldrich.[102] 1836-._= + +From his "Poems." + +=_427._= THE CRESCENT AND THE CROSS. + + Kind was my friend who, in the Eastern land, + Remembered me with such a gracious hand, + And sent this Moorish Crescent which has been + Worn on the tawny bosom of a queen. + + No more it sinks and rises in unrest + To the soft music of her heathen breast; + No barbarous chief shall bow before it more, + No turbaned slave shall envy and adore! + + I place beside this relic of the Sun + A cross of Cedar brought from Lebanon, + Once 'borne, perchance, by some pale monk who trod + The desert to Jerusalem--and his God! + + Here do they lie, two symbols of two creeds, + Each meaning something to our human needs, + Both stained with blood, and sacred made by faith, + By tears, and prayers, and martyrdom, and death. + + That for the Moslem is, but this for me! + The waning Crescent lacks divinity: + It gives me dreams of battles, and the woes + Of women shut in hushed seraglios. + + But when this Cross of simple wood I see, + The Star of Bethlehem shines again for me, + And glorious visions break upon my gloom-- + The patient Christ, and Mary at the Tomb! + +[Footnote 102: Born in New Hampshire, but long connected with the press in +New York. Has produced several volumes of poetry of unusual beauty and +finish.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Francis Bret Harte._= + +From his "Poems." + +=_428._= DICKENS IN CAMP. + + Above the pines the moon was slowly drifting, + The river ran below; + The dim Sierras, far beyond, uplifting + Their minarets of snow. + + The roaring camp-fire, with rude humor, painted + The ruddy tints of health, + On haggard face, and form that drooped and fainted + In the fierce race for wealth; + + Till one arose, and from his pack's scant treasure + A hoarded volume drew, + And cards were dropped from hands of listless leisure, + To hear the tale anew; + + And then, while round them shadows gathered faster, + And as the firelight fell, + He read aloud the book wherein the Master + Had writ of "Little Nell." + + Perhaps 'twas boyish fancy,--for the reader + Was youngest of them all,-- + But, as he read, from clustering pine and cedar, + A silence seemed to fall. + + The fir-trees, gathering closer in the shadows, + Listened in every spray, + While the whole camp, with "Nell" on English meadows, + Wandered, and lost their way. + + And so in mountain solitudes--o'ertaken + As by some spell divine-- + Their cares dropped from them like the needles shaken + From out the gusty pine. + + Lost is that camp I and wasted all its fire: + And he who wrought that spell?-- + Ah, towering pine and stately Kentish spire, + Ye have one tale to tell! + + Lost is that camp! but let its fragrant story + Blend with the breath that thrills + With hop-vines' incense all the pensive glory + That fills the Kentish hills. + + And on that grave where English oak and holly + And laurel wreaths intwine, + Deem it not all a too presumptuous folly,-- + This spray of Western pine! + + * * * * * + +From "East and West Poems." + +=_429._= THE TWO SHIPS. + + As I stand by the cross on the lone mountain's crest, + Looking over the ultimate sea, + In the gloom of the mountain a ship lies at rest, + And one sails away from the lea: + One spreads its white wings on a far-reaching track, + With pennant and sheet flowing free; + One hides in the shadow with sails laid aback,-- + The ship that is waiting for me! + + But lo, in the distance the clouds break away! + The Gate's glowing portals I see; + And I hear from the outgoing ship in the bay + The song of the sailors in glee: + So I think of the luminous footprints that bore + The comfort o'er dark Galilee, + And wait for the signal to go to the shore, + To the ship that is waiting for me. + + * * * * * + + +=_Charles Dimitry,[103] 1838-._= + +=_430._= "THE SERGEANT'S STORY." + + Our army lay, + At break of day, + A full league from the foe away. + At set of sun, + The battle done, + We cheered our triumph, dearly won. + + * * * * * + + All night before, + We marked the roar + Of hostile guns that on us bore; + And 'here and there, + The sudden blare + Of fitful bugles smote the air. + + No idle word + The quiet stirred + Among us as the morning neared; + And brows were bent, + As silent went + Unto its post each regiment. + + Blank broke the day, + And wan and gray + The drifting clouds went on their way. + So sad the morn, + Our colors torn, + Upon the ramparts drooped forlorn! + + At early sun, + The vapors dun + Were lifted by a nearer gun; + At stroke of nine, + Auspicious sign + The sun shone out along the line. + + Then loud and clear, + From cannoneer + And rifleman arose a cheer; + For as the gray + Mists cleared away, + We saw the charging foe's array. + +[Footnote 103: Of a Louisiana family: is considered one of the most +promising of the young writers of the South. The present is a favorable +specimen of the poetry of the secession writers.] + + * * * * * + + +=_John Hay._=[104] + +From "Pike County Ballads." + +=_431._= THE PRAIRIE. + + The skies are blue above my head, + The prairie green below, + And flickering o'er the tufted grass + The shifting shadows go, + Vague-sailing, where the feathery clouds + Fleck white the tranquil skies, + Black javelins darting where aloft + The whirring pheasant flies. + + A glimmering plain in drowsy trance + The dim horizon bounds, + Where all the air is resonant + With sleepy summer sounds,-- + The life that sings among the flowers, + The lisping of the breeze, + The hot cicada's sultry cry, + The murmurous dream of bees. + + The butterfly--a flying flower-- + Wheels swift in flashing rings, + And flutters round his quiet kin + With brave flame-mottled wings. + The wild Pinks burst in crimson fire, + The Phlox' bright clusters shine, + And Prairie-cups are swinging free + To spill their airy wine. + + * * * * * + + Far in the East, like low-hung clouds + The waving woodlands lie; + Far in the West, the glowing plain + Melts warmly in the sky; + No accent wounds the reverent air, + No foot-print dints the sod,-- + Lone in the light the prairie lies, + Rapt in a dream of God. + +[Footnote 104: Born in Indiana. Gave up the practice of the law to become +Secretary and Aide-de-camp to President Lincoln. Served briefly in the +Rebellion war with the rank of Colonel, and was afterward Secretary of +Legation at Paris and Madrid, and for some months, Charge d'Affaires at +Vienna. Subsequently applied himself to literature and journalism.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Joaquin Miller._=[105] + +From "Songs of the Sierras." + +=_432._= THE FUTURE OF CALIFORNIA. + + Dared I but say a prophecy, + As sang the holy men of old, + Of rock-built cities yet to be + Along those shining shores of gold, + Crowding athirst into the sea, + What wondrous marvels might be told! + Enough to know that empire here + Shall burn her brightest, loftiest star; + Here art and eloquence shall reign, + As o'er the wolf-reared realm of old; + Here learn'd and famous from afar, + To pay their noble court, shall come, + And shall not seek or see in vain, + But look on all, with wonder dumb. + + Afar the bright Sierras lie, + A swaying line of snowy white, + A fringe of heaven hung in sight + Against the blue base of the sky. + + I look along each gaping gorge, + I near a thousand sounding strokes, + Like giants rending giant oaks, + Or brawny Vulcan at his forge; + I see pick-axes flash and shine, + And great wheels whirling in a mine. + Here winds a thick and yellow thread, + A moss'd and silver stream instead; + And trout that leap'd its rippled tide + Have turn'd upon their sides and died. + + Lo! when the last pick in the mine + Is rusting red with idleness, + And rot yon cabins in the mould, + And wheels no more croak in distress, + And tall pines reassert command, + Sweet bards along this sunset shore + Their mellow melodies will pour; + Will charm as charmers very wise, + Will strike the harp with master-hand, + Will sound unto the vaulted skies + The valor of these men of old-- + The mighty men of 'Forty-nine; + Will sweetly sing and proudly say, + Long, long agone, there was a day + When there were giants in the land. + +[Footnote 105: Cincinnatus Heine Miller, commonly known by his assumed +name of Joaquin Miller. Born in Indiana, but was taken when very young +to Oregon. After a wild career in Oregon and California, he at length +studied for the law. His poetry, like his life, is of an eccentric +cast.] + + * * * * * + + +=_Joel Chandler Harris,[106] 1846-._= + +=_433._= "AGNES." + + She has a tender, winning way, + And walks the earth with gentle grace, + And roses with the lily play + Amid the beauties of her face. + + When'er she tunes her voice to sing, + The song-birds list, with anxious looks, + For it combines the notes of spring + With all the music of the brooks. + + Her merry laughter, soft and low, + Is as the chimes of silver bells,-- + That like sweet anthems float, and flow + Through woodland groves and bosky dells, + + And when the violets see her eyes, + They flush and glow--with love and shame, + They meekly droop with sad surprise, + As though unworthy of the name. + + But still they bloom where'er she throws + Her dainty glance and smiles so sweet. + And e'en amid stern winter's snows + The daisies spring beneath her feet. + + She wears a crown of Purity, + Full set with woman's brightest gem,-- + A wreath of maiden modesty, + And Virtue is the diadem. + + And when the pansies bloom again, + And spring and summer intertwine. + Great joys will fall on me like rain, + For she will be for ever mine! + +[Footnote 106: A native of Georgia; is deemed one of the best of the +younger poets of the South.] + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Choice Specimens of American +Literature, And Literary Reader, by Benj. 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