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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12285 ***
+
+THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY
+
+A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS.
+
+VOL. VII.--JUNE, 1861.--NO. XLIV.
+
+
+
+
+AGNES OF SORRENTO.
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+IL PADRE FRANCESCO.
+
+
+The next morning Elsie awoke, as was her custom,--when the very faintest
+hue of dawn streaked the horizon. A hen who has seen a hawk balancing
+his wings and cawing in mid-air over her downy family could not have
+awakened with her feathers, metaphorically speaking, in a more bristling
+state of caution.
+
+"Spirits in the gorge, quotha?" said she to herself, as she vigorously
+adjusted her dress. "I believe so,--spirits in good sound bodies,
+I believe; and next we shall hear, there will be rope-ladders, and
+climbings, and the Lord knows what. I shall go to confession this very
+morning, and tell Father Francesco the danger; and instead of taking her
+down to sell oranges, suppose I send her to the sisters to carry the
+ring and a basket of oranges?"
+
+"Ah, ah!" she said, pausing, after she was dressed, and addressing a
+coarse print of Saint Agnes pasted against the wall,--"you look very
+meek there, and it was a great thing no doubt to die as you did; but if
+you'd lived to be married and bring up a family of girls, you'd have
+known something greater. Please, don't take offence with a poor old
+woman who has got into the way of speaking her mind freely! I'm foolish,
+and don't know much,--so, dear lady, pray for me!" And old Elsie bent
+her knee and crossed herself reverently, and then went out, leaving her
+young charge still sleeping.
+
+It was yet dusky dawn when she might have been seen kneeling, with her
+sharp, clear-cut profile, at the grate of a confession-box in a church
+in Sorrento. Within was seated a personage who will have some influence
+on our story, and who must therefore be somewhat minutely introduced to
+the reader.
+
+Il Padre Francesco had only within the last year arrived in the
+neighborhood, having been sent as superior of a brotherhood of
+Capuchins, whose convent was perched on a crag in the vicinity. With
+this situation came a pastoral care of the district; and Elsie and her
+grand-daughter found in him a spiritual pastor very different from the
+fat, jolly, easy Brother Girolamo, to whose place he had been appointed.
+The latter had been one of those numerous priests taken from the
+peasantry, who never rise above the average level of thought of the body
+from which they are drawn. Easy, gossipy, fond of good living and good
+stories, sympathetic in troubles and in joys, he had been a general
+favorite in the neighborhood, without exerting any particularly
+spiritualizing influence.
+
+It required but a glance at Father Francesco to see that he was in all
+respects the opposite of this. It was evident that he came from one of
+the higher classes, by that indefinable air of birth and breeding which
+makes itself felt under every change of costume. Who he might be, what
+might have been his past history, what rank he might have borne, what
+part played in the great warfare of life, was all of course sunk in the
+oblivion of his religious profession, where, as at the grave, a man laid
+down name and fame and past history and worldly goods, and took up a
+coarse garb and a name chosen from the roll of the saints, in sign that
+the world that had known him should know him no more.
+
+Imagine a man between thirty and forty, with that round, full, evenly
+developed head, and those chiselled features, which one sees on ancient
+busts and coins no less than in the streets of modern Rome. The checks
+were sunken and sallow; the large, black, melancholy eyes had a wistful,
+anxious, penetrative expression, that spoke a stringent, earnest spirit,
+which, however deep might be the grave in which it lay buried, had not
+yet found repose. The long, thin, delicately formed hands were emaciated
+and bloodless; they clasped with a nervous eagerness a rosary and
+crucifix of ebony and silver,--the only mark of luxury that could be
+discerned in a costume unusually threadbare and squalid. The whole
+picture of the man, as he sat there, had it been painted and hung in a
+gallery, was such as must have stopped every person of a certain amount
+of sensibility before it with the conviction that behind that strong,
+melancholy, earnest figure and face lay one of those hidden histories of
+human passion in which the vivid life of medieval Italy was so fertile.
+
+He was listening to Elsie, as she kneeled, with that easy air of
+superiority which marks a practised man of the world, yet with a grave
+attention which showed that her communication had awakened the deepest
+interest in his mind. Every few moments he moved slightly in his seat,
+and interrupted the flow of the narrative by an inquiry concisely put,
+in tones which, clear and low, had a solemn and severe distinctness,
+producing, in the still, dusky twilight of the church, an almost ghostly
+effect.
+
+When the communication was over, he stepped out of the confessional and
+said to Elsie in parting,--"My daughter, you have done well to take this
+in time. The devices of Satan in our corrupt times are numerous and
+artful, and they who keep the Lord's sheep must not sleep. Before
+many days I will call and examine the child; meanwhile I approve your
+course."
+
+It was curious to see the awe-struck, trembling manner in which old
+Elsie, generally so intrepid and commanding, stood before this man in
+his brown rough woollen gown with his corded waist; but she had an
+instinctive perception of the presence of the man of superior birth no
+less than a reverence for the man of religion.
+
+After she had departed from the church, the Capuchin stood lost in
+thought; and to explain his reverie, we must throw some further light on
+his history.
+
+Il Padre Francesco, as his appearance and manner intimated, was in truth
+from one of the most distinguished families of Florence. He was one of
+those whom an ancient writer characterizes as "men of longing desire."
+Born with a nature of restless stringency that seemed to doom him never
+to know repose, excessive in all things, he had made early trial
+of ambition, of war, and of what the gallants of his time called
+love,--plunging into all the dissipated excesses of a most dissolute
+age, and outdoing in luxury and extravagance the foremost of his
+companions.
+
+The wave of a great religious impulse--which in our times would have
+been called a revival--swept over the city of Florence, and bore him,
+with multitudes of others, to listen to the fervid preaching of the
+Dominican monk, Jerome Savonarola; and amid the crowd that trembled,
+wept, and beat their breasts under his awful denunciations, he, too,
+felt within himself a heavenly call,--the death of an old life, and the
+uprising of a new purpose.
+
+The colder manners and more repressed habits of modern times can give
+no idea of the wild fervor of a religious revival among a people so
+passionate and susceptible to impressions as the Italians. It swept
+society like a spring torrent from the sides of the Apennines, bearing
+all before it. Houses were sacked with religious fervor by penitent
+owners, and licentious pictures and statuary and books, and all the
+thousand temptations and appliances of a luxurious age, were burned in
+the great public square. Artists convicted of impure and licentious
+designs threw their palettes and brushes into the expiatory flames, and
+retired to convents, till called forth by the voice of the preacher,
+and bid to turn their art into higher channels. Since the days of Saint
+Francis no such profound religious impulse had agitated the Italian
+community.
+
+In our times a conversion is signalized by few outward changes, however
+deep the inner life; but the life of the Middle Ages was profoundly
+symbolical, and always required the help of material images in its
+expression.
+
+The gay and dissolute young Lorenzo Sforza took leave of the world with
+rites of awful solemnity. He made his will and disposed of all his
+worldly property, and assembling his friends, bade them the farewell of
+a dying man. Arrayed as for the grave, he was laid in his coffin,
+and thus carried from his stately dwelling by the brethren of the
+Misericordia, who, in their ghostly costume, with mournful chants and
+lighted candles, bore him to the tomb of his ancestors, where the coffin
+was deposited in the vault, and its occupant passed the awful hours of
+the night in darkness and solitude. Thence he was carried, the next day,
+almost in a state of insensibility, to a neighboring convent of the
+severest order, where, for some weeks, he observed a penitential retreat
+of silence and prayer, neither seeing nor hearing any living being but
+his spiritual director.
+
+The effect of all this on an ardent and sensitive temperament can
+scarcely be conceived; and it is not to be wondered at that the once
+gay and luxurious Lorenzo Sforza, when emerging from this tremendous
+discipline, was so wholly lost in the worn and weary Padre Francesco
+that it seemed as if in fact he had died and another had stepped into
+his place. The face was ploughed deep with haggard furrows, and the eyes
+were as those of a man who has seen the fearful secrets of another life.
+He voluntarily sought a post as far removed as possible from the scenes
+of his early days, so as more completely to destroy his identity
+with the past; and he devoted himself with enthusiasm to the task of
+awakening to a higher spiritual life the indolent, self-indulgent monks
+of his order, and the ignorant peasantry of the vicinity.
+
+But he soon discovered, what every earnest soul learns who has been
+baptized into a sense of things invisible, how utterly powerless and
+inert any mortal man is to inspire others with his own insights and
+convictions. With bitter discouragement and chagrin, he saw that the
+spiritual man must forever lift the dead weight of all the indolence and
+indifference and animal sensuality that surround him,--that the curse of
+Cassandra is upon him, forever to burn and writhe under awful visions of
+truths which no one around him will regard. In early life the associate
+only of the cultivated and the refined, Father Francesco could not
+but experience at times an insupportable _ennui_ in listening to the
+confessions of people who had never learned either to think or to feel
+with any degree of distinctness, and whom his most fervent exhortations
+could not lift above the most trivial interests of a mere animal life.
+He was weary of the childish quarrels and bickerings of the monks, of
+their puerility, of their selfishness and self-indulgence, of their
+hopeless vulgarity of mind, and utterly discouraged with their
+inextricable labyrinths of deception. A melancholy deep as the grave
+seized on him, and he redoubled his austerities, in the hope that by
+making life painful he might make it also short.
+
+But the first time that the clear, sweet tones of Agnes rang in his
+ears at the confessional, and her words, so full of unconscious poetry
+and repressed genius, came like a strain of sweet music through the
+grate, he felt at his heart a thrill to which it had long been a
+stranger, and which seemed to lift the weary, aching load from off his
+soul, as if some invisible angel had borne it up on his wings.
+
+In his worldly days he had known women as the gallants in Boccaccio's
+romances knew them, and among them one enchantress whose sorceries had
+kindled in his heart one of those fatal passions which burn out the
+whole of a man's nature, and leave it, like a sacked city, only a
+smouldering heap of ashes. Deepest, therefore, among his vows of
+renunciation had been those which divided him from all womankind. The
+gulf that parted him and them was in his mind deep as hell, and he
+thought of the sex only in the light of temptation and danger. For the
+first time in his life, an influence serene, natural, healthy, and sweet
+breathed over him from the mind of a woman,--an influence so heavenly
+and peaceful that he did not challenge or suspect it, but rather opened
+his worn heart insensibly to it, as one in a fetid chamber naturally
+breathes freer when the fresh air is admitted.
+
+How charming it was to find his most spiritual exhortations seized upon
+with the eager comprehension of a nature innately poetic and ideal: Nay,
+it sometimes seemed to him as if the suggestions which he gave her dry
+and leafless she brought again to him in miraculous clusters of flowers,
+like the barren rod of Joseph, which broke into blossoms when he was
+betrothed to the spotless Mary; and yet, withal, she was so humbly
+unconscious, so absolutely ignorant of the beauty of all she said and
+thought, that she impressed him less as a mortal woman than as one of
+those divine miracles in feminine form of which he had heard in the
+legends of the saints.
+
+Thenceforward his barren, discouraged life began to blossom with wayside
+flowers,--and he mistrusted not the miracle, because the flowers were
+all heavenly The pious thought or holy admonition that he saw trodden
+under the swinish feet of the monks he gathered up again in hope,--she
+would understand it; and gradually all his thoughts became like
+carrier-doves, which, having once learned the way to a favorite haunt,
+are ever fluttering to return thither.
+
+Such is the wonderful power of human sympathy, that the discovery even
+of the existence of a soul capable of understanding our inner life often
+operates as a perfect charm; every thought, and feeling, and aspiration
+carries with it a new value, from the interwoven consciousness that
+attends it of the worth it would bear to that other mind; so that, while
+that person lives, our existence is doubled in value, even though oceans
+divide us.
+
+The cloud of hopeless melancholy which had brooded over the mind of
+Father Francesco lifted and sailed away, he knew not why, he knew not
+when. A secret joyfulness and alacrity possessed his spirits; his
+prayers became more fervent and his praises more frequent. Until now,
+his meditations had been most frequently those of fear and wrath,--the
+awful majesty of God, the terrible punishment of sinners, which he
+conceived with all that haggard, dreadful sincerity of vigor which
+characterized the modern Etruscan phase of religion of which the
+"Inferno" of Dante was the exponent and the out-come. His preachings
+and his exhortations had dwelt on that lurid world seen by the severe
+Florentine, at whose threshold hope forever departs, and around whose
+eternal circles of living torture the shivering spirit wanders dismayed
+and blasted by terror.
+
+He had been, shocked and discouraged to find how utterly vain had been
+his most intense efforts to stem the course of sin by presenting these
+images of terror: how hard natures had listened to them with only a
+coarse and cruel appetite, which seemed to increase their hardness and
+brutality; and how timid ones had been withered by them, like flowers
+scorched by the blast of a furnace; how, in fact, as in the case of
+those cruel executions and bloody tortures then universal in the
+jurisprudence of Europe, these pictures of eternal torture seemed to
+exert a morbid demoralizing influence which hurried on the growth of
+iniquity.
+
+But since his acquaintance with Agnes, without his knowing exactly why,
+thoughts of the Divine Love had floated into his soul, filling it with a
+golden cloud like that which of old rested over the mercy-seat in that
+sacred inner temple where the priest was admitted alone. He became more
+affable and tender, more tolerant to the erring, more fond of little
+children; would stop sometimes to lay his hand on the head of a child,
+or to raise up one who lay overthrown in the street. The song of little
+birds and the voices of animal life became to him full of tenderness;
+and his prayers by the sick and dying seemed to have a melting power,
+such as he had never known before. It was spring in his soul,--soft,
+Italian spring,--such as brings out the musky breath of the cyclamen,
+and the faint, tender perfume of the primrose, in every moist dell of
+the Apennines.
+
+A year passed in this way, perhaps the best and happiest of his troubled
+life,--a year in which, insensibly to himself, the weekly interviews
+with Agnes at the confessional became the rallying-points around which
+the whole of his life was formed, and she the unsuspected spring of his
+inner being.
+
+It was his duty, he said to himself, to give more than usual time and
+thought to the working and polishing of this wondrous jewel which had
+so unexpectedly been intrusted to him for the adorning of his Master's
+crown; and so long as he conducted with the strictest circumspection of
+his office, what had he to fear in the way of so delightful a duty? He
+had never touched her hand; never had even the folds of her passing
+drapery brushed against his garments of mortification and renunciation;
+never, even in pastoral benediction, had he dared lay his hand on that
+beautiful head. It is true, he had not forbidden himself to raise his
+glance sometimes when he saw her coming in at the church-door and
+gliding up the aisle with downcast eyes, and thoughts evidently so far
+above earth, that she seemed, like one of Frà Angelico's angels, to be
+moving on a cloud, so encompassed with stillness and sanctity that he
+held his breath as she passed.
+
+But in the confession of Dame Elsie that morning he had received a shock
+which threw his whole interior being into a passionate agitation which
+dismayed and astonished him.
+
+The thought of Agnes, his spotless lamb, exposed to lawless and
+licentious pursuit, of whose nature and probabilities his past life
+gave him only too clear an idea, was of itself a very natural source of
+anxiety. But Elsie had unveiled to him her plans for her marriage, and
+consulted him on the propriety of placing Agnes immediately under the
+protection of the husband she had chosen for her; and it was this part
+of her communication which had awakened the severest internal recoil,
+and raised a tumult of passions which the priest vainly sought either to
+assuage or understand.
+
+As soon as his morning duties were over, he repaired to his convent,
+sought his cell, and, prostrate on his face before the crucifix, began
+his internal reckoning with himself. The day passed in fasting and
+solitude.
+
+It is now golden evening, and on the square, flat roof of the convent,
+which, high-perched on a crag, overlooks the bay, one might observe a
+dark figure slowly pacing backward and forward. It is Father Francesco;
+and as he walks up and down, one could see by his large, bright, dilated
+eye, by the vivid red spot on either sunken cheek, and by the nervous
+energy of his movements, that he is in the very height of some mental
+crisis,--in that state of placid _extase_ in which the subject supposes
+himself perfectly calm, because every nerve is screwed to the highest
+point of tension and can vibrate no more.
+
+What oceans had that day rolled over him and swept him, as one may see a
+little boat rocked on the capricious surges of the Mediterranean! Were,
+then, all his strivings and agonies in vain? Did he love this woman with
+any earthly love? Was he jealous of the thought of a future husband?
+Was it a tempting demon that said to him, "Lorenzo Sforza might have
+shielded this treasure from the profanation of lawless violence, from
+the brute grasp of an inappreciative peasant, but Father Francesco
+cannot"? There was a moment when his whole being vibrated with a
+perception of what a marriage bond might have been that was indeed a
+sacrament, and that bound together two pure and loyal souls who gave
+life and courage to each other in all holy purposes and heroic deeds;
+and he almost feared that he had cursed his vows,--those awful vows, at
+whose remembrance his inmost soul shivered through every nerve.
+
+But after hours of prayer and struggle, and wave after wave of agonizing
+convulsion, he gained one of those high points in human possibility
+where souls can stand a little while at a time, and where all things
+seem so transfigured and pure that they fancy themselves thenceforward
+forever victorious over evil.
+
+As he walks up and down in the gold-and-purple evening twilight, his
+mind seems to him calm as that glowing sea that reflects the purple
+shores of Ischia, and the quaint, fantastic grottos and cliff's of
+Capri. All is golden and glowing; he sees all clear; he is delivered
+from his spiritual enemies; he treads them under his feet.
+
+Yes, he says to himself, he loves Agnes,--loves her all-sacredly as
+her guardian angel does, who ever beholdeth the face of her Father in
+Heaven. Why, then, does he shrink from her marriage? Is it not evident?
+Has that tender soul, that poetic nature, that aspiring genius, anything
+in common with the vulgar, coarse details of a peasant's life? Will not
+her beauty always draw the eye of the licentious, expose her artless
+innocence to solicitation which will annoy her and bring upon her head
+the inconsiderate jealousy of her husband? Think of Agnes made subject
+to the rude authority, to the stripes and correction, which men of the
+lower class, under the promptings of jealousy, do not scruple to inflict
+on their wives! What career did society, as then organized, present to
+such a nature, so perilously gifted in body and mind? He has the answer.
+The Church has opened a career to woman which all the world denies her.
+
+He remembers the story of the dyer's daughter of Siena, the fair Saint
+Catharine. In his youth he had often visited the convent where one
+of the first artists of Italy has immortalized her conflicts and her
+victories, and knelt with his mother at the altar where she now communes
+with the faithful. He remembered how, by her sanctity, her humility, and
+her holy inspirations of soul, she had risen to the courts of princes,
+whither she had been sent as ambassadress to arrange for the interests
+of the Church; and then rose before his mind's eye the gorgeous picture
+of Pinturicchio, where, borne in celestial repose and purity amid all
+the powers and dignitaries of the Church, she is canonized as one of
+those that shall reign and intercede with Christ in heaven.
+
+Was it wrong, therefore, in him, though severed from all womankind by a
+gulf of irrevocable vows, that he should feel a kind of jealous property
+in this gifted and beautiful creature? and though he might not, even in
+thought, dream of possessing her himself, was there sin in the vehement
+energy with which his whole nature rose up in him to say that no other
+man should,--that she should be the bride of Heaven alone?
+
+Certainly, if there were, it lurked far out of sight; and the priest had
+a case that might have satisfied a conscience even more fastidious;--and
+he felt a sort of triumph in the results of his mental scrutiny.
+
+Yes, she should ascend from glory to glory,--but _his_ should be the
+hand that should lead her upward. _He_ would lead her within the
+consecrated grate,--he would pronounce the awful words that should make
+it sacrilege for all other men to approach her; and yet through life
+_he_ should be the guardian and director of her soul, the one being to
+whom she should render an obedience as unlimited as that which belongs
+to Christ alone.
+
+Such were the thoughts of this victorious hour,--which, alas! were
+destined to fade as those purple skies and golden fires gradually went
+out, leaving, in place of their light and glory, only the lurid glow of
+Vesuvius.
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+THE WALK TO THE CONVENT.
+
+
+Elsie returned from the confessional a little after sunrise, much
+relieved and satisfied. Padre Francesco had shown such a deep interest
+in her narrative that she was highly gratified. Then he had given her
+advice which exactly accorded with her own views; and such advice is
+always regarded as an eminent proof of sagacity in the giver.
+
+On the point of the marriage he had recommended delay,--a course quite
+in accordance with Elsie's desire, who, curiously enough, ever since her
+treaty of marriage with Antonio had been commenced, had cherished the
+most whimsical, jealous dislike of him, as if he were about to get away
+her grandchild from her; and this rose at times so high that she could
+scarcely speak peaceably to him,--a course of things which caused
+Antonio to open wide his great soft ox-eyes, and wonder at the ways of
+woman-kind; but he waited the event in philosophic tranquillity.
+
+The morning sunbeams were shooting many a golden shaft among the
+orange-trees when Elsie returned and found Agnes yet kneeling at her
+prayers.
+
+"Now, my little heart," said the old woman, when their morning meal was
+done, "I am going to give you a holiday to-day. I will go with you to
+the Convent, and you shall spend the day with the sisters, and so carry
+Saint Agnes her ring."
+
+"Oh, thank you, grandmamma! how good you are! May I stop a little on the
+way, and pick some cyclamen and myrtles and daisies for her shrine?"
+
+"Just as you like, child; but if you are going to do that, we must be
+off soon, for I must be at my stand betimes to sell oranges: I had them
+all picked this morning while my little darling was asleep."
+
+"You always do everything, grandmamma, and leave me nothing to do: it is
+not fair. But, grandmamma, if we are going to get flowers by the
+way, let us follow down the stream, through the gorge, out upon the
+sea-beach, and so walk along the sands, and go by the back path up the
+rocks to the Convent: that walk is so shady and lovely at this time in
+the morning, and it is so fresh along by the sea-side!"
+
+"As you please, dearie; but first fill a little basket with our best
+oranges for the sisters."
+
+"Trust me for that!" And the girl ran eagerly to the house, and drew
+from her treasures a little white wicker basket, which she proceeded
+to line curiously with orange-leaves, sticking sprays of blossoms in a
+wreath round the border.
+
+"Now for some of our best blood-oranges!" she said;--"old Jocunda says
+they put her in mind of pomegranates. And here are some of these little
+ones,--see here, grandmamma!" she exclaimed, as she turned and held up
+a branch just broken, where five small golden balls grew together with a
+pearly spray of white buds just beyond them.
+
+The exercise of springing up for the branch had sent a vivid glow into
+her clear brown cheek, and her eyes were dilated with excitement and
+pleasure; and as she stood joyously holding the branch, while the
+flickering shadows fell on her beautiful face, she seemed more like a
+painter's dream than a reality.
+
+Her grandmother stood a moment admiring her.
+
+"She's too good and too pretty for Antonio or any other man: she ought
+to be kept to look at," she said to herself. "If I could keep her
+always, no man should have her; but death will come, and youth and
+beauty go, and so somebody must care for her."
+
+When the basket was filled and trimmed, Agnes took it on her arm. Elsie
+raised and poised on her head the great square basket that contained her
+merchandise, and began walking erect and straight down the narrow rocky
+stairs that led into the gorge, holding her distaff with its white flax
+in her hands, and stepping as easily as if she bore no burden.
+
+Agnes followed her with light, irregular movements, glancing aside
+from time to time, as a tuft of flowers or a feathery spray of leaves
+attracted her fancy. In a few moments her hands were too full, and her
+woollen apron of many-colored stripes was raised over one arm to hold
+her treasures, while a hymn to Saint Agnes, which she constantly
+murmured to herself, came in little ripples of sound, now from behind a
+rock, and now out of a tuft of bushes, to show where the wanderer was
+hid. The song, like many Italian ones, would be nothing in English,
+--only a musical repetition of sweet words to a very simple and
+childlike idea, the _bella, bella, bella_ ringing out in every verse
+with a tender joyousness that seemed in harmony with the waving ferns
+and pendent flowers and long ivy-wreaths from among which its notes
+issued. "Beautiful and sweet Agnes," it said, in a thousand tender
+repetitions, "make me like thy little white lamb! Beautiful Agnes, take
+me to the green fields where Christ's lambs are feeding! Sweeter than
+the rose, fairer than the lily, take me where thou art!"
+
+At the bottom of the ravine a little stream tinkles its way among stones
+so mossy in their deep, cool shadow as to appear all verdure; for seldom
+the light of the sun can reach the darkness where they lie. A little
+bridge, hewn from solid rock, throws across the shrunken stream an arch
+much wider than its waters seem to demand; for in spring and autumn,
+when the torrents wash down from the mountains, its volume is often
+suddenly increased.
+
+This bridge was so entirely and evenly grown over with short thick moss
+that it might seem cut of some strange kind of living green velvet, and
+here and there it was quaintly embroidered with small blossoming tufts
+of white alyssum, or feathers of ferns and maiden's-hair which shook
+and trembled to every breeze. Nothing could be lovelier than this mossy
+bridge, when some stray sunbeam, slanting up the gorge, took a fancy
+to light it up with golden hues, and give transparent greenness to the
+tremulous thin leaves that waved upon it.
+
+On this spot Elsie paused a moment, and called back after Agnes, who had
+disappeared into one of those deep grottos with which the sides of
+the gorge are perforated, and which are almost entirely veiled by the
+pendent ivy-wreaths.
+
+"Agnes! Agnes! wild girl! come quick!"
+
+Only the sound of "_Bella, bella Agnella_" came out of the ivy-leaves to
+answer her; but it sounded so happy and innocent that Elsie could not
+forbear a smile, and in a moment Agnes came springing down with a
+quantity of the feathery lycopodium in her hands, which grows nowhere so
+well as in moist and dripping places.
+
+Out of her apron were hanging festoons of golden broom, crimson
+gladiolus, and long, trailing sprays of ivy; while she held aloft in
+triumph a handful of the most superb cyclamen, whose rosy crowns rise so
+beautifully above their dark quaint leaves in moist and shady places.
+
+"See, see, grandmother, what an offering I have! Saint Agnes will be
+pleased with me to-day; for I believe in her heart she loves flowers
+better than gems."
+
+"Well, well, wild one,--time flies, we must hurry." And crossing the
+bridge quickly, the grandmother struck into a mossy foot-path that led
+them, after some walking, under the old Roman bridge at the gateway of
+Sorrento. Two hundred feet above their heads rose the mighty arches,
+enamelled with moss and feathered with ferns all the way; and below this
+bridge the gorge grew somewhat wider, its sides gradually receding
+and leaving a beautiful flat tract of land, which was laid out as an
+orange-orchard. The golden fruit was shut in by rocky walls on either
+side which here formed a perfect hot-bed, and no oranges were earlier or
+finer.
+
+Through this beautiful orchard the two at length emerged from the gorge
+upon the sea-sands, where lay the blue Mediterranean swathed in bands
+of morning mist, its many-colored waters shimmering with a thousand
+reflected lights, and old Capri panting through sultry blue mists, and
+Vesuvius with his cloud-spotted sides and smoke-wreathed top burst into
+view. At a little distance a boatload of bronzed fishermen had just
+drawn in a net, from which they were throwing out a quantity of
+sardines, which flapped and fluttered in the sunshine like scales of
+silver. The wind blowing freshly bore thousands of little purple waves
+to break one after another at the foamy line which lay on the sand.
+
+Agnes ran gayly along the beach with her flowers and vines fluttering
+from her gay striped apron, and her cheeks flushed with exercise
+and pleasure,--sometimes stopping and turning with animation to her
+grandmother to point out the various floral treasures that enamelled
+every crevice and rift of the steep wall of rock which rose
+perpendicularly above their heads in that whole line of the shore which
+is crowned with the old city of Sorrento: and surely never did rocky
+wall show to the open sea a face more picturesque and flowery. The deep
+red cliff was hollowed here and there into fanciful grottos, draped with
+every varied hue and form of vegetable beauty. Here a crevice high in
+air was all abloom with purple gillyflower, and depending in festoons
+above it the golden blossoms of the broom; here a cleft seemed to be a
+nestling-place for a colony of gladiolus, with its crimson flowers
+and blade-like leaves; here the silver-frosted foliage of the
+miller-geranium, or of the wormwood, toned down the extravagant
+brightness of other blooms by its cooler tints. In some places it seemed
+as if a sort of floral cascade were tumbling confusedly over the rocks,
+mingling all hues and all forms in a tangled mass of beauty.
+
+"Well, well," said old Elsie, as Agnes pointed to some superb
+gillyflowers which grew nearly half-way up the precipice,--"is the
+child possessed? You have all the gorge in your apron already. Stop
+looking, and let us hurry on."
+
+After a half-hour's walk, they came to a winding staircase cut in the
+rock, which led them a zigzag course up through galleries and grottos
+looking out through curious windows and loop-holes upon the sea, till
+finally they emerged at the old sculptured portal of a shady garden
+which was surrounded by the cloistered arcades of the Convent of Saint
+Agnes.
+
+The Convent of Saint Agnes was one of those monuments in which the piety
+of the Middle Ages delighted to commemorate the triumphs of the new
+Christianity over the old Heathenism.
+
+The balmy climate and paradisiacal charms of Sorrento and the adjacent
+shores of Naples had made them favorite resorts during the latter period
+of the Roman Empire,--a period when the whole civilized world seemed
+to human view about to be dissolved in the corruption of universal
+sensuality. The shores of Baiae were witnesses of the orgies and
+cruelties of Nero and a court made in his likeness, and the palpitating
+loveliness of Capri became the hot-bed of the unnatural vices of
+Tiberius. The whole of Southern Italy was sunk in a debasement of
+animalism and ferocity which seemed irrecoverable, and would have been
+so, had it not been for the handful of salt which a Galilean peasant had
+about that time cast into the putrid, fermenting mass of human society.
+
+We must not wonder at the zeal which caused the artistic Italian nature
+to love to celebrate the passing away of an era of unnatural vice and
+demoniac cruelty by visible images of the purity, the tenderness, the
+universal benevolence which Jesus had brought into the world.
+
+Some time about the middle of the thirteenth century, it had been a
+favorite enterprise of a princess of a royal family in Naples to erect a
+convent to Saint Agnes, the guardian of female purity, out of the wrecks
+and remains of an ancient temple of Venus, whose white pillars and
+graceful acanthus-leaves once crowned a portion of the precipice on
+which the town was built, and were reflected from the glassy blue of
+the sea at its feet. It was said that this princess was the first lady
+abbess. Be that as it may, it proved to be a favorite retreat for many
+ladies of rank and religious aspiration, whom ill-fortune in some of its
+varying forms led to seek its quiet shades, and it was well and richly
+endowed by its royal patrons.
+
+It was built after the manner of conventual buildings generally,--in a
+hollow square, with a cloistered walk around the inside looking upon a
+garden.
+
+The portal at which Agnes and her grandmother knocked, after ascending
+the winding staircase cut in the precipice, opened through an arched
+passage into this garden.
+
+As the ponderous door swung open, it was pleasant to hear the lulling
+sound of a fountain, which came forth with a gentle patter, like that
+of soft summer rain, and to see the waving of rose-bushes and golden
+jessamines, and smell the perfumes of orange-blossoms mingling with
+those of a thousand other flowers.
+
+The door was opened by an odd-looking portress. She might be
+seventy-five or eighty; her cheeks were of the color of very yellow
+parchment drawn in dry wrinkles; her eyes were those large, dark,
+lustrous ones so common in her country, but seemed, in the general decay
+and shrinking of every other part of her face, to have acquired a wild,
+unnatural appearance; while the falling away of her teeth left nothing
+to impede the meeting of her hooked nose with her chin. Add to this, she
+was hump-backed, and twisted in her figure; and one needs all the force
+of her very good-natured, kindly smile to redeem the image of poor old
+Jocunda from association with that of some Thracian witch, and cause one
+to see in her the appropriate portress of a Christian institution.
+
+Nevertheless, Agnes fell upon her neck and imprinted a very fervent kiss
+upon what was left of her withered cheek, and was repaid by a shower of
+those epithets of endearment which in the language of Italy fly thick
+and fast as the petals of the orange-blossom from her groves.
+
+"Well, well," said old Elsie,--"I'm going to leave her here to-day.
+You've no objections, I suppose?"
+
+"Bless the sweet lamb, no! She belongs here of good right. I believe
+blessed Saint Agnes has adopted her; for I've seen her smile, plain as
+could be, when the little one brought her flowers."
+
+"Well, Agnes," said the old woman, "I shall come for you after the Ave
+Maria." Saying which, she lifted her basket and departed.
+
+The garden where the two were left was one of the most peaceful retreats
+that the imagination of a poet could create.
+
+Around it ran on all sides the Byzantine arches of a cloistered walk,
+which, according to the quaint, rich fashion of that style, had been
+painted with vermilion, blue, and gold. The vaulted roof was spangled
+with gold stars on a blue ground, and along the sides was a series of
+fresco pictures representing the various scenes in the life of Saint
+Agnes; and as the foundress of the Convent was royal in her means, there
+was no lack either of gold or gems or of gorgeous painting.
+
+Full justice was done in the first picture to the princely wealth and
+estate of the fair Agnes, who was represented as a pure-looking, pensive
+child, standing in a thoughtful attitude, with long ripples of golden
+hair flowing down over a simple white tunic, and her small hands
+clasping a cross on her bosom, while, kneeling at her feet, obsequious
+slaves and tire-women were offering the richest gems and the most
+gorgeous robes to her serious and abstracted gaze.
+
+In another, she was represented as walking modestly to school, and
+winning the admiration of the son of the Roman Praetor, who fell
+sick--so says the legend--for the love of her.
+
+Then there was the demand of her hand in marriage by the princely father
+of the young man, and her calm rejection of the gorgeous gifts and
+splendid gems which he had brought to purchase her consent.
+
+Then followed in order her accusation before the tribunals as a
+Christian, her trial, and the various scenes of her martyrdom.
+
+Although the drawing of the figures and the treatment of the subjects
+had the quaint stiffness of the thirteenth century, their general
+effect, as seen from the shady bowers of the garden, was of a solemn
+brightness, a strange and fanciful richness, which was poetical and
+impressive.
+
+In the centre of the garden was a fountain of white marble, which
+evidently was the wreck of something that had belonged to the old Greek
+temple. The statue of a nymph sat on a green mossy pedestal in the midst
+of a sculptured basin, and from a partially reversed urn on which she
+was leaning a clear stream of water dashed down from one mossy fragment
+to another, till it lost itself in the placid pool.
+
+The figure and face of this nymph, in their classic finish of outline,
+formed a striking contract to the drawing of the Byzantine pairings
+within the cloisters, and their juxtaposition in the same inclosure
+seemed a presentation of the spirit of a past and present era: the past
+so graceful in line, so perfect and airy in conception, so utterly
+without spiritual aspiration or life; the present limited in artistic
+power, but so earnest, so intense, seeming to struggle and burn, amid
+its stiff and restricted boundaries, for the expression of some diviner
+phase of humanity.
+
+Nevertheless, the nymph of the fountain, different in style and
+execution as it was, was so fair a creature, that it was thought best,
+after the spirit of those days, to purge her from all heathen and
+improper histories by baptizing her in the waters of her own fountain,
+and bestowing on her the name of the saint to whose convent she was
+devoted. The simple sisterhood, little conversant in nice points of
+antiquity, regarded her as Saint Agnes dispensing the waters of purity
+to her convent; and marvellous and sacred properties were ascribed to
+the water, when taken fasting with a sufficient number of prayers and
+other religious exercises. All around the neighborhood of this fountain
+the ground was one bed of blue and white violets, whose fragrance filled
+the air, and which were deemed by the nuns to have come up there
+in especial token of the favor with which Saint Agnes regarded the
+conversion of this heathen relic to pious and Christian uses.
+
+This nymph had been an especial favorite of the childhood of Agnes, and
+she had always had a pleasure which she could not exactly account for in
+gazing upon it. It is seldom that one sees in the antique conception of
+the immortals any trace of human feeling. Passionless perfection and
+repose seem to be their uniform character. But now and then from the
+ruins of Southern Italy fragments have been dug, not only pure in
+outline, but invested with a strange pathetic charm, as if the calm,
+inviolable circle of divinity had been touched by some sorrowing sense
+of that unexplained anguish with which the whole lower creation groans.
+One sees this mystery of expression in the face of that strange and
+beautiful Psyche which still enchants the Museum of Naples. Something of
+this charm of mournful pathos lingered on the beautiful features of this
+nymph,--an expression so delicate and shadowy that it seemed to address
+itself only to finer natures. It was as if all the silent, patient woe
+and discouragement of a dumb antiquity had been congealed into this
+memorial. Agnes was often conscious, when a child, of being saddened by
+it, and yet drawn towards it with a mysterious attraction.
+
+About this fountain, under the shadow of bending rose-trees and yellow
+jessamines, was a circle of garden-seats, adopted also from the ruins
+of the past. Here a graceful Corinthian capital, with every white
+acanthus-leaf perfect, stood in a mat of acanthus-leaves of Nature's own
+making, glossy green and sharply cut; and there was a long portion of a
+frieze sculptured with graceful dancing figures; and in another place a
+fragment of a fluted column, with lycopodium and colosseum vine hanging
+from its fissures in graceful draping. On these seats Agnes had dreamed
+away many a tranquil hour, making garlands of violets, and listening to
+the marvellous legends of old Jocunda.
+
+In order to understand anything of the true idea of conventual life in
+those days, we must consider that books were as yet unknown, except
+as literary rarities, and reading and writing were among the rare
+accomplishments of the higher classes; and that Italy, from the time
+that the great Roman Empire fell and broke into a thousand shivers, had
+been subject to a continual series of conflicts and struggles, which
+took from life all security. Norman, Dane, Sicilian, Spaniard,
+Frenchman, and German mingled and struggled, now up and now down; and
+every struggle was attended by the little ceremonies of sacking towns,
+burning villages, and routing out entire populations to utter misery and
+wretchedness. During these tumultuous ages, those buildings consecrated
+by a religion recognized alike by all parties afforded to misfortune the
+only inviolable asylum, and to feeble and discouraged spirits the only
+home safe from the prospect of reverses.
+
+If the destiny of woman is a problem that calls for grave attention even
+in our enlightened times, and if she is too often a sufferer from the
+inevitable movements of society, what must have been her position and
+needs in those ruder ages, unless the genius of Christianity had opened
+refuges for her weakness, made inviolable by the awful sanctions of
+religion?
+
+What could they do, all these girls and women together, with the
+twenty-four long hours of every day, without reading or writing, and
+without the care of children? Enough: with their multiplied diurnal
+prayer periods, with each its chants and ritual of observances,--with
+the preparation for meals, and the clearing away thereafter,--with the
+care of the chapel, shrine, sacred gifts, drapery, and ornaments,--with
+embroidering altar-cloths and making sacred tapers,--with preparing
+conserves of rose-leaves and curious spiceries,--with mixing drugs for
+the sick,--with all those mutual offices and services to each other
+which their relations in one family gave rise to,--and with divers
+feminine gossipries and harmless chatterings and cooings, one can
+conceive that these dove-cots of the Church presented often some of the
+most tranquil scenes of those convulsive and disturbed periods.
+
+Human nature probably had its varieties there as otherwhere. There were
+there the domineering and the weak, the ignorant and the vulgar and the
+patrician and the princess, and though professedly all brought on the
+footing of sisterly equality, we are not to suppose any Utopian degree
+of perfection among them. The way of pure spirituality was probably, in
+the convent as well as out, that strait and narrow one which there be
+few to find. There, as elsewhere, the devotee who sought to progress
+faster toward heaven than suited the paces of her fellow--travellers was
+reckoned a troublesome enthusiast, till she got far enough in advance to
+be worshipped as a saint.
+
+Sister Theresa, the abbess of this convent, was the youngest daughter in
+a princely Neapolitan family, who from her cradle had been destined to
+the cloister, in order that her brother and sister might inherit more
+splendid fortunes and form more splendid connections. She had been sent
+to this place too early to have much recollection of any other mode of
+life; and when the time came to take the irrevocable step, she renounced
+with composure a world she had never known.
+
+Her brother had endowed her with a _livre des heures_, illuminated with
+all the wealth of blue and gold and divers colors which the art of those
+times afforded,--a work executed by a pupil of the celebrated Frà
+Angelico; and the possession of this treasure was regarded by her as
+a far richer inheritance than that princely state of which she knew
+nothing. Her neat little cell had a window that looked down on the
+sea,--on Capri, with its fantastic grottos,--on Vesuvius, with its
+weird daily and nightly changes. The light that came in from the joint
+reflection of sea and sky gave a golden and picturesque coloring to the
+simple and bare furniture, and in sunny weather she often sat there,
+just as a lizard lies upon a wall, with the simple, warm, delightful
+sense of living and being amid, scenes of so much beauty. Of the life
+that people lived in the outer world, the struggle, the hope, the fear,
+the vivid joy, the bitter sorrow, Sister Theresa knew nothing. She could
+form no judgment and give no advice founded on any such experience.
+
+The only life she knew was a certain ideal one, drawn from, the legends
+of the saints; and her piety was a calm, pure enthusiasm which had never
+been disturbed by a temptation or a struggle. Her rule in the Convent
+was even and serene; but those who came to her flock from the real
+world, from the trials and temptations of a real experience, were always
+enigmas to her, and she could scarcely comprehend or aid them.
+
+In fact, since in the cloister, as everywhere else, character will find
+its level, it was old Jocunda who was the real governess of the Convent.
+Jocunda was originally a peasant woman, whose husband had been drafted
+to some of the wars of his betters, and she had followed his fortunes in
+the camp. In the sack of a fortress, she lost her husband and four sons,
+all the children she had, and herself received an injury which distorted
+her form, and so she took refuge in the Convent. Here her energy and
+_savoir-faire_ rendered her indispensable in every department. She made
+the bargains, bought the provisions, (being allowed to sally forth for
+these purposes,) and formed the medium by which the timid, abstract,
+defenceless nuns accomplished those material relations with the world
+with which the utmost saintliness cannot afford to dispense. Besides and
+above all this, Jocunda's wide experience and endless capabilities of
+narrative made her an invaluable resource for enlivening any dull
+hours that might be upon the hands of the sisterhood; and all these
+recommendations, together with a strong mother-wit and native sense,
+soon made her so much the leading spirit in the Convent that Mother
+Theresa herself might be said to be under her dominion.
+
+"So, so," she said to Agnes, when she had closed the gate after
+Elsie,--"you never come empty-handed. What lovely oranges!--worth double
+any that one can buy of anybody else but your grandmother."
+
+"Yes, and these flowers I brought to dress the altar."
+
+"Ah, yes! Saint Agnes has given you a particular grace for that," said
+Jocunda.
+
+"And I have brought a ring for her treasury," said Agnes, taking out the
+gift of the Cavalier.
+
+"Holy Mother! here is something, to be sure!" said Jocunda, catching it
+eagerly. "Why, Agnes, this is a diamond,--and as pretty a one as ever
+I saw. How it shines!" she added, holding it up. "That's a prince's
+present. How did you get it?"
+
+"I want to tell our mother about it," said Agnes.
+
+"You do?" said Jocunda. "You'd better tell me. I know fifty times as
+much about such things as she."
+
+"Dear Jocunda, I will tell you, too; but I love Mother Theresa, and I
+ought to give it to her first."
+
+"As you please, then," said Jocunda. "Well, put your flowers here by the
+fountain, where the spray will keep them cool, and we will go to her."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+GREEK LINES.
+
+
+Blessed are the shadows of porches and cloisters! Blessed the walls that
+shut us out from the dusty, dazzling world, and shed upon us the repose
+and consolation of our own serene humanity! We, harassed among the base
+utilities of life, made weary and sore by the ceaseless struggles of
+emulation and daily warfare, turn wistfully to the Peripatetic among the
+shady groves of Athens,--dream of quiet Saracenic courts, echoing with
+plashy fountains,--of hooded monks, pacing away their cloistered lives
+beneath storied vaults and little patches of sky,--knowing, while we
+dream, that out of these came of yore the happiness of the old _eurekas_
+and the deep sweetness of ancient knowledge. And then, away from the
+city of our toil, the tumult of our ambitions, we gratefully find
+Vallombrosas of our own, where we walk not alone, but in the pleasant
+companionship of elevated thoughts, and of old sages and masters, long
+passed away, but still wise and gentle to those who approach them with
+faith and simplicity. Here, like those chimes which wander unheeded over
+the house-tops of the roaring town, till they drop down blessed dews of
+Heaven into still, grass-grown courts and deserted by-ways, the great
+universal human heart beats closer to our own, and our whole being
+palpitates with almost ethereal sympathies. Voices of old minstrels,
+wandering down to us on loving lips through the generations, murmur in
+our ears the dear burden of human, affection for men and things; and
+the same tale is poured abundantly into our hearts by all those great
+masters who, through their Art, have become to us oracles of Beauty and
+eloquent interpreters of the Love of God.
+
+There are few persons so hardened in the practical life as not to have
+recognized that in these moments of large and spiritual stillness all
+the processes of the mind seem to be instinctively attuned to harmonies
+almost celestial. Experience and memory present their pictures softened
+and made gentle by some mysterious power. The imagination is swayed by
+the sweetest impulses of humanity; and the whole man is changed. The
+mere instincts of affinity are purified and deepened into tenderest
+affection, and all the external relations of existence
+
+  "come apparelled in more precious habit,
+  More moving delicate and full of life,
+  Into the eye and prospect of the soul,"
+
+than when they offered themselves to the ordinary waking senses. This is
+a wonder and a mystery. I sometimes believe, thinking on these things,
+that we have inherited from our father Adam a habit of day-dreaming;
+that in this exile of coarse and work-day life our heated brows are
+sometimes fanned with breezes from some half-remembered Araby the Blest,
+and there instinctively come over us such visions of beatitude that the
+Paradise we have lost is recalled to us, and we live once more among the
+dreamy and grateful splendors of Eden. These moods come upon us so like
+memories! But you, graybeard travellers in the Desert of Life, you are
+not to be deceived by the trickery of the elements; you know the moist
+_mirage_; you are not to be beguiled by it from your track; let the
+unwary dream dreams of bubbling wellsprings and pleasant shade, of palmy
+oases and tranquil repose; as for you, you must goad your camels and
+press onward for Jerusalem.
+
+But I like to chase phantoms; I hate the plodding of the caravans. I
+turn aside and spread my own tent apart. Will you tarry awhile under its
+shadow, O serious and gentle stranger, and listen to some poor words of
+mine?
+
+These memories of Eden! Let us cherish them, for they are not worthless
+or deceitful. We, who, when we can, carry our hearts in our eyes, know
+very well, and have often said it before, that Eden is not so many days'
+journey away from our feet that we may not inhale its perfumes and press
+our brows against its sod whenever we wish. It is not cant, I hope, to
+say that Eden is not lost entirely. There stands no angel at its gates
+with flaming sword; nor did it fade away with all its legendary beauties,
+drop its leaves into the melancholy streams, leaving no trace behind of
+its glades and winding alleys, its stretches of flowery mead, its sunny
+hill-sides, and valleys of happiness and peace. But Eden still blooms
+wherever Beauty is in Nature; and Beauty, we know, is everywhere. We
+cannot escape from it, if we would. It is ever knocking at the door of
+our hearts in sweet and unexpected missions of grace and tenderness. We
+are haunted by it in our loneliest walks. Almost unconsciously, out of
+flowers and trees, earth and sky, sunrises and sunsets,--out of mosses
+under the feet, mosses and pebbles and grasses,--out of the loveliness
+of moon and stars, their harmonies and changes,--out of sea-foam, and
+what sea-foam reveals to us of the rich and strange things beneath the
+waters far down,--out of sweet human eyes,--out of all these things
+creeps into our spirits the knowledge that God is Love, and His
+handiwork the expression of ineffable tenderness and affection. I
+believe, indeed, that the principle of Beauty, philosophically speaking,
+pervades all material objects, all motions and sounds in Nature,--that
+it enters intimately into the very idea of Creation. But we, poor finite
+beings, do not seek for it, as we do for gold and gems. We remain
+content with those conventional manifestations of it which are
+continually and instinctively touching our senses as we walk the earth.
+Fearfully and wonderfully as we are made, there is no quality in our
+being so blessed as this sensitiveness to Beauty. All the organs of our
+life are attuned by it to that vast universal symphony which, in spite
+of the warring elements of passion and prejudice, unites us in friendly
+sympathies with all mankind. If
+
+  "the meanest flower that blows can bring
+  Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears,"--
+
+if it can so move some of us, who have cared to open the portals of our
+hearts to receive and cherish the little waif,--why, verily, the simple
+violet that blooms alike under every sky, the passing cloud that floats
+changing ever over every land, gathering equal glories from the sunsets
+of Italy and Labrador, are more potent missionaries of peace and
+good-will to all the earth than the most persuasive accents of human
+eloquence.
+
+These are familiar truths. Like
+
+  "The stretchèd metre of an antique song,"
+
+they flow from our grateful lips in ready words. But we do not suspect
+how these manifestations of material Beauty are received by the
+mysterious alembic of the soul,--how they are worked up there by
+exquisite and subtile processes of moral chemistry, humanized,
+spiritualized, and appropriated unconsciously to sweet uses of piety and
+affection. We do not know how the star, the flower, the dear human face,
+the movement of a wave, the song of a bird,--we do not know how these
+things enter into the heart, become ideal, mingle with human emotions,
+consecrate and are consecrated, and come forth once more into light, but
+transfigured into tenderest sympathies and the gentle offices of charity
+and grace. There was Wordsworth,--he knew something of this still
+machinery, this "kiss of toothèd wheels" within the soul of man. Listen
+to him,--he had been to Tintern Abbey and heard once more the "soft
+inland murmur" of the Wye;--
+
+            "These beauteous forms,
+  Through a long absence, have not been to me
+  As is a landscape to a blind man's eye:
+  But oft, in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din
+  Of towns and cities, I have owed to them,
+  In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
+  Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart,
+  And passing even into my purer mind,
+  With tranquil restoration:--_feelings, too,
+  Of unremembered pleasure:_ such, perhaps,
+  As have no slight or trivial influence
+  On that best portion of a good man's life,
+  His little, nameless, unremembered acts
+  Of kindness and of love."
+
+And then who that has ever read it can forget his exquisite picture in
+the "Education of a little Child"?--
+
+  "And she shall lean her ear
+  In many a secret place,
+  Where rivulets dance their wayward round,
+  _And beauty burn of murmuring sound
+  Shall pass into her face!_"
+
+The material Beauty of the world, as exhibited in the manifold objects,
+sounds, perfumes, motions of Nature, is created for a nobler purpose
+than only to delight the senses and please the aesthetic faculties.
+I believe it is the distant source whence flow all our dear daily
+affections. We know, that, according to the suggestions of our merely
+human passions and instincts, we ease our hearts of Love by heaping
+treasures and the choicest gifts of fancy in the laps of those whom we
+most dearly cherish. We take no credit to ourselves for such precious
+prodigalities; for they are the inevitable and disinterested outpourings
+of affection. They are received as such. And when we cast our eyes
+abroad and behold the loving prodigality of a divine hand, we accept the
+manifestation, are made happy in the consciousness of being beloved,
+and, constituted as we are in the image and likeness of God, express our
+instinctive gratitude in those fine human sympathies which impress the
+seal of Truth on the primary idea of our creation.
+
+And so, blessed are the shadows of porches and cloisters! Blessed the
+hours of serene meditation, when the "tender grace of days that are
+dead," of flowers that have faded, of scenes "gone glimmering through
+the dream of things that were," comes back to us with a new meaning,
+softening and refining the heart to unexpected capacities of affection.
+But how they fade away, these ghostly and unsubstantial pageants, when
+they "scent the morning air"! How they leave in our hearts nought but
+the dim consciousness that we are capable of an existence ineffably
+deeper and vaster than that which we lead in the visible world! Nought
+but this? Alas, poor human nature! do we leave the casket of Pandora
+open in wanton carelessness, and let all escape but the mere scent of
+the roses? Or does there not remain, behind an indefinable presence to
+comfort and console us,--the precious _Ideal of Beauty_,--
+
+  "The light that never was on sea or land,
+  The inspiration and the poet's dream"?
+
+The human heart forever yearns _to create_,--this is the pure antique
+word for it,--to give expression and life to an evasive loveliness that
+haunts the soul in those moments when the body is laid asleep and the
+spirit walks. There is a continual and godlike longing to embody these
+elusive phantoms of Beauty. But the immortal songs which remain unsung,
+the exquisite idyls which gasp for words, the bewildering and restless
+imagery which seeks in vain the eternal repose of marble or of
+canvas,--while these confess the affectionate and divine desires of
+humanity, they prove how few there are to whom it is given to learn the
+great lesson of Creation. When one arises among us, who, like Pygmalion,
+makes no useless appeal to the Goddess of Beauty for the gift of life
+for his Ideal, and who creates as he was created, we cherish him as a
+great interpreter of human love. We call him poet, composer, artist, and
+speak of him reverently as _Master_. We say that his lips have been wet
+with dews of Hybla,--that, like the sage of Crotona, he has heard the
+music of the spheres,--that he comes to us, another Numa, radiant and
+inspired from the kisses of Egeria.
+
+Thus, as infinite Love begets infinite Beauty, so does infinite Beauty
+reflect into finite perceptions that image of its divine parentage which
+the antique world worshipped under the personification of Astarte,
+Aphrodite, Venus, and recognized as the _great creative principle_ lying
+at the root of all high Art.
+
+There is a curious passage in Boehme, which relates how Satan, when
+asked the cause of the enmity of God and his own consequent downfall,
+replied,--"I wished to be an Artist." So, according to antique
+tradition, Prometheus manufactured a man and woman of clay, animated
+them with fire stolen from the chariot of the Sun, and was punished for
+the crime of Creation; Titans chained him to the rocks of the Indian
+Caucasus for thirty thousand years!
+
+This Ideal, this Aphrodite of old mythologies, still reigns over the
+world of Art, and every truly noble effort of the artist is saturated
+with her spirit, as with a religion. It is impossible for a true work of
+Art to exist, unless this great creative principle of Love be present in
+its inception, in its execution, in its detail. It must be pervaded with
+the warmth of human, passionate affection. The skill which we are so apt
+to worship is but the instrument in the hands of Love. It is the means
+by which this humanity is transferred to the work, and there idealized
+in the forms of Nature. Thus the test of Art is in our own hearts. It
+is not something far away from us, throwing into our presence gleaming
+reflections from some supernal source of Light and Beauty; but it is
+very near to us,--so near, that, like the other blessings which lie
+at our feet, we overlook it in our far-reaching searches after the
+imaginary good. We, poor underlings, have been taught in the school of
+sad experience the mortal agony of Love without Skill,--the power of
+perception, without the power of utterance. We know how dumb are the
+sweet melodies of our souls,--how fleeting their opulent and dreamy
+pageantries. But we have not fully learned the utter emptiness and
+desolation of Skill without Love. We accept its sounding brass and
+tinkling cymbals for immortal harmonies. We look reverently upon its
+tortured marbles and its canvases stained with academic knowledge as
+revelations of higher intelligence; forgetting, that, if we go down to
+the quiet places of our own souls, we shall find there the universe
+reflected, like a microcosm, in the dark well-springs, and that out
+of these well-springs in the deep silence rises the beautiful Ideal,
+Anadyomene, to compensate and comfort us for the vacancy of Life. If we
+know ourselves, it is not to the dogmas of critics, the artificial rules
+of aesthetics, that we most wisely resort for judgments concerning works
+of Art. Though technical externals and the address of manipulation
+naturally take possession of our senses and warp our opinions, there are
+depths of immortal Truth within us, rarely sounded, indeed, but which
+can afford a standard and a criterion far nobler than the schools can
+give us.
+
+The broken statues and columns and traditions and fragmentary classics
+which Greece has left us are so still and tranquil to the eye and ear,
+that we search in vain for the Delphic wisdom they contain, till we find
+it echoed in the sympathetic depths of our souls, and repeated in the
+half-impalpable Ideals there. It is to Greece that we must look for
+the external type of these Ideals, whose existence we but half suspect
+within us. It is not pleasant, perhaps, to think that we were nearly
+unconscious of the highest capacities of our humanity, till we
+recognized their full expression in the ashes of a distant and dead
+civilization,--that we did not know ourselves, till
+
+  "The airy tongues that syllable men's names
+  In pathless wildernesses"
+
+uttered knowledge to us among the ghastly ruins of Hellas. It is good
+for us to lend a spiritual ear to these ancient whisperings, and hear
+nymph calling to nymph and faun to faun, as they caper merrily with
+the god Pan through the silence. It is good for us to listen to that
+"inextinguishable laughter" of the happy immortals of Olympus, ever
+mingling with all the voices of Nature and setting them to the still
+sweet music of humanity,--good, because so we are reminded how close we
+are to the outward world, and how all its developments are figurative
+expressions of our near relationships with the visible Beauty of things.
+Thus it is that the poetic truths of old religions exquisitely vindicate
+themselves; thus we find, even we moderns, with our downward eyes and
+our wrinkled brows, that we still worship at the mythological altars
+of childlike divinities; and when we can get away from the distracting
+Bedlam of steam-shrieks and machinery, we behold the secrets of our own
+hearts, the Lares and Penates of our own households, reflected in the
+"white ideals" on antique vases and medallions.
+
+
+Abstract lines are the most concentrated expressions of human ideas,
+and, as such, are peculiarly sensitive to the critical tests of all
+theories of the Beautiful. Distinguished from the more usual and direct
+means by which artists express their inspirations and appeal to the
+sympathies of men, distinct from the common language of Art, which
+contents itself with conveying merely local and individual ideas,
+abstract lines are recognized as the grand hieroglyphic symbolism of the
+aggregate of human thought, the artistic manifestations of the great
+human Cosmos. The natural world, passing through the mind of man, is
+immediately interpreted and humanized by his creative power, and assumes
+the colors, forms, and harmonies of Painting, Sculpture, and Music. But
+abstract lines, as we find them in Architecture and in the ceramic arts,
+are the independent developments of this creative power, coming directly
+from humanity itself, and obtaining from the outward world only the most
+distant motives of composition. Thus it is an inevitable deduction that
+Architecture is the most _human_ of all arts, and its lines the most
+_human_ of all lines.
+
+  "A thing of beauty is a joy forever";
+
+and the affectionate devotion with which this gift is received by
+finite intelligences from the hand of God is expressed in Art, when its
+infinite depth _can_ be so expressed at all, in a twofold language,--
+the one objective, the other subjective; the one recalling the immediate
+source of the emotion, and presenting it palpably to the senses, arrayed
+in all the ineffable tenderness of Art, which is Love,--the other,
+portraying rather the emotion than the cause of it, and by an
+instinctive and universal symbolism expressing the deep and serious joy
+with which the "thing of beauty" is welcomed to the heart. Hence come
+those lines which aesthetic writers term "Lines of Beauty," so eloquent
+to us with an uncomprehended meaning,--so near, and yet so far,--so
+simple, and yet so mysterious,--so animated with life and thought and
+musical motion, and yet so still and serene and spiritual. Links which
+bind us fraternally to old intelligences, tendrils by which the soul
+climbs up to a wider view of the glimmering landscape, they are grateful
+and consoling to us. We look with cognizant eyes at their subtile
+affinities with some unexpressed part of human life, and, turning one to
+another, are apt to murmur,
+
+  "We cannot understand: we love."
+
+The mysteries of orb and cycle, with which old astrologers girded human
+life, and sought to define from celestial phenomena the horoscope
+of man, have been brought down to modern applications by learned
+philosophers and mathematicians. These have labored with a godlike
+energy and skill to trace the interior relationships existing between
+the recondite revelations of their Geometry, their wonderful laws of
+mathematical harmonies and unities, and those lines which by common
+consent are understood to be exponential of certain phases of our own
+existence. No well-organized intellect can fail to perceive that a
+sublime and immortal Truth underlies these speculations. Undoubtedly, in
+the straight line, in the conic sections, in the innumerable composite
+curves of the mathematician, lie the germs of all these symbolic
+expressions. But the artist, whose lines of Beauty vary continually with
+the emotions which produce them, who feels in his own human heart the
+irresistible impulse which gives an exquisite balance and poise to those
+lines, cannot allow that the _spirit_ of his compositions is governed by
+the exact and rigid formula; of the philosopher to any greater extent
+or in any other manner than as the numbers of the poet are ruled by the
+grammar of his language. These formulae may be applied as a curious test
+to ascertain what strange sympathies there may be between such lines and
+the vast organic harmonies of Nature and the Universe; but they do not
+enter into the soul of their creation any more than the limitations of
+counterpoint and rhythm laid their incubus on the lyre of Apollo. The
+porches where Callicrates, Hermogenes, and Callimachus walked were
+guarded by no such Cerberus as the disciples of Plato encountered at the
+entrance of the groves of the Academy,--
+
+  "[Greek: Oudeis ageometraetos eisito],"
+
+  "Let no one ignorant of Geometry enter here";
+
+but the divine Aphrodite welcomed all mankind to the tender teachings of
+the Wild Acanthus, the Honeysuckle, and the Sea-Shell, and all the deep
+utterances of boundless Beauty.
+
+Truly, it is sad and dispiriting to the artist to find that all modern
+aesthetical writings limit and straiten the free walks of highest
+Art with strict laws deduced from rigid science, with mathematical
+proportions and the formal restrictions of fixed lines and curves,
+nicely adapted from the frigidities of Euclid. The line A B must equal
+the line C D; somewhere in space must be found the centre or the focus
+of every curve; and every angle must subtend a certain arc, to be easily
+found on reference to the tables of the text-books. "The melancholy
+days have come" for Art, when the meditative student finds his early
+footsteps loud among these dry, withered, and sapless leaves, instead of
+brushing away the dews by the fountains of perpetual youth. I am aware
+of no extant English work on Greek Lines which does not aim to reduce
+that magnificent old Hellenic poetry to the cold, hard limitations of
+Geometry. Modern Pharisees nail that antique Ideal of loveliness and
+purity to a mathematical cross.
+
+Now it is capable of distinct proof, that abstract Lines of Beauty, even
+in a greater degree than any other expressions of Art, are born and
+baptized in Love. Because parabolic curves frequently _coincide_ with
+these lines, it is no proof that they _created_ them.
+
+The Water-Lily, or Lotus, perpetually occurs in Oriental mythology as
+the sublime and hallowed symbol of the productive power in Nature,--the
+emblem of that great life-giving principle which the Hindu and the
+Egyptian and all early nations instinctively elevated to the highest and
+most cherished place in their Pantheons. Payne Knight, quoted in Mr.
+Squier's work on the "Antiquities of America," ingeniously attributes
+the adoption of this symbol to the fact, that the Lotus, instead
+of rejecting its seeds from the vessels where they are germinated,
+nourishes them in its bosom till they have become perfect plants, when,
+arrayed in all the irresistible panoply of grace and beauty, they spring
+forth, Minerva-like, float down the current, and take root wherever
+deposited. And so it was used by nearly all the early peoples to express
+the creative spirit which gives life and vegetation to matter. Lacshmi,
+the beautiful Hindu goddess of abundance, corresponding to the Venus
+Aphrodite of the Greeks, was called "the Lotus-born," as having
+ascended from the ocean in this flower. Here, again, is the inevitable
+intermingling of the eternal principles of Beauty, Love, and the
+Creative Power in that pure triune medallion image which the ancients so
+tenderly cherished and so exquisitely worshipped with vestal fires and
+continual sacrifices of Art. Old Father Nile, reflecting in his deep,
+mysterious breast the monstrous temples of Nubia and Pylae, bears
+eloquent witness to the earnestness and sincerity of the old votive
+homage to Isis, "the Lotus-crowned" Venus of Egypt. For the symbolic
+Water-Lily, _recreated_ by human Art, blooms forever in the capitals of
+Karnac and Thebes, and wherever columns were reared and lintels laid
+throughout the length and breadth of the "Land of Bondage." It is the
+key-note of all that architecture; and a brief examination into
+the principles of this, new birth of the Lotus, of the monumental
+straightening and stiffening of its graceful and easy lines, will afford
+some insight into the strange processes of the human mind, when it
+follows the grandest impulse of Love, and out of the material beauties
+of Nature creates a work of Art.
+
+It is well known that the religion of the old Egyptians led them to
+regard this life as a mere temporary incident, an unimportant phase of
+their progress toward that larger and grander state imaged to them with
+mysterious sublimity in the idea of Death or Eternity. In accordance
+with this belief, they expressed in their dwellings the sentiment of
+transitoriness and vicissitude, and in their tombs the immortality of
+calm repose. And so their houses have crumbled into dust ages ago, but
+their tombs are eternal. In all the relations of Life the sentiment of
+Death was present in some form or other. The hallowed mummies of their
+ancestors were the most sacred mortgages of their debts, and to redeem
+them speedily was a point of the highest honor. They had corpses at
+their feasts to remind them how transitory were the glory and happiness
+of the world, how eternal the tranquillity of Death.
+
+Now, how was this prevailing idea expressed in their Art? They looked
+around them and saw that all Organic Life was full of movement and wavy
+lines; their much-loved Lotus undulated and bent playfully to the solemn
+flow of the great Nile; the Ibis fluttered with continual motion; their
+own bodies were full of ever-changing curves; and their whole visible
+existence was unsteady, like the waves of the sea. But when the
+temporary Life was changed, and "this mortal put on immortality," their
+eyes and souls were filled with the utter stillness and repose of its
+external aspects; its features became rigid and fixed, and were settled
+to an everlasting and immutable calm; the vibrating grace of its lines
+departed, and their ever-varying complexity became simplified, and
+assumed the straightness and stiffness of Death. So the straight line,
+the natural expression of eternal repose, in contradistinction to the
+wavy line, which represents the animal movements of Life, became the
+motive and spirit of their Art. The anomaly of Death in Life was present
+in every development of the creative faculty, and no architectural
+feature could be so slight and unimportant as not to be thoroughly
+permeated with this sentiment. The tender and graceful lines of the
+Lotus became sublime and monumental under the religious loyalty of
+Egyptian chisels; and these lines, whether grouped or single, in the
+severity of their fateful repose, in their stateliness and immobility,
+wherever found, are awful with the presence of a grand serious humanity
+long passed away from any other contact with living creatures. The
+rendering of the human form, under this impulse of Art, produced results
+in which the idea of mutability was so overwhelmed in this grandeur of
+immortality, that we cry
+
+                   "O melancholy eyes!
+  O vacant eyes! from which the soul has gone
+  To gaze in other lands,"
+
+bend not upon us, living and loving mortals, that stony stare of
+death,--lest we too, as smit with the basilisk, be turned into
+monumental stone, and all the dear grace and movement of life be lost
+forever!
+
+                      "Solid-set,
+  And moulded in colossal calm,"
+
+all the lines of this lost Art thus recall the sentiment of endless
+repose, and even the necessary curves of its mouldings are dead with
+straightness. The Love which produced these lines was not the passionate
+Love which we understand and feel; they were not the result of a
+sensuous impulse; but the Egyptian artist seemed ever to be standing
+alone in the midst of a trackless and limitless desert,--around him
+earth and sky meeting with no kiss of affection, no palpitating embrace
+of mutual sympathy; he felt himself encircled by a calm and pitiless
+Destiny, the cold expression of a Fate from which he could not flee, and
+in himself the centre and soul of it all. Oppressed thus with a vast
+sense of spiritual loneliness, when he uttered the inspirations of Art,
+the memories of playful palms and floating lilies and fluttering wings,
+though they came warm to the Love of his heart, were attuned in the
+outward expression to the deep, solemn, prevailing monotone of his
+humanity. His Love for the Lotus and the Ibis, more profound than the
+passion of the senses, dwelt serene in the bottom of his soul, and
+thence came forth transfigured and dedicated to the very noblest uses of
+Life. And this is the Art of Egypt.
+
+But among all the old nations which have perished with their gods,
+Greece appeals to our closest sympathies. She looks upon us with
+the smile of childhood, free, contented, and happy, with no ascetic
+self-denials to check her wild-flower growth, no stern religion to bind
+the liberty of her actions. All her external aspects are in harmony with
+the weakness and the strength of human nature. We recognize ourselves
+in her, and find all the characteristics of our own humanity there
+developed into a theism so divine, clothed with a personification so
+exquisite and poetical, that the Hellenic mythology seems still to live
+in our hearts, a silent and shadowy religion without ceremonies or
+altars or sacrifices. The festive gods of the "Iliad" made man a deity
+to himself, and his soul the dwelling-place of Ideal Beauty. In this
+Ideal they lived, and moved and had their being, and came forth thence,
+bronze, marble, chryselephantine, a statuesque and naked humanity,
+chaste in uncomprehended sin and glorified in antique virtue. The Beauty
+of this natural Life and the Love of it was the soul of the Greek Ideal;
+and the nation continually cherished and cultivated and refined this
+Ideal with impulses from groves of Arcadia, vales of Tempe, and flowery
+slopes of Attica, from the manliness of Olympic Games and the loveliness
+of Spartan Helens. They cherished and cultivated and refined it, because
+here they set up their altars to known gods and worshipped attributes
+which they could understand. The Ideal was their religion, and the Art
+which came from it the expression of their highest aspiration.
+
+Lines of Beauty, produced in such a soil, were not, as might at first
+be supposed, tropic growths of wanton and luxurious curves, wild,
+spontaneous utterances of superabundant Life. The finely-studied
+perception of the Greek artist admitted no merely animal, vegetable,
+instinctive, licentious renderings of what Nature was ever giving him
+with a liberal hand in the whorls of shells, the veins of leaves, the
+life of flames, the convolutions of serpents, the curly tresses of
+woman, the lazy grace of clouds, the easy sway of tendrils, flowers, and
+human motion. He was no literal interpreter of her whispered secrets.
+But the Grace of his Art was a _deliberate grace_,--a grace of
+thought and study. His lines were _creations_, and not _instincts_ or
+_imitations_. They came from the depth of his Love, and it was his
+religion so to nurture and educate his sensitiveness to Beauty and his
+power to love and create it, that his works of Art should be deeds of
+passionate worship and expressions of a godlike humanity. Unlike the
+Egyptian's, there was nothing in _his_ creed to check the sweet excess
+of Life, and no grim shadow, "feared of man," scared him in his walks,
+or preached to him sermons of mortality in the stones and violets of the
+wayside. Life was hallowed and dear to him for its own sake. He saw
+it was lovable, and he made it the theme of his noblest poems, his
+subtilest philosophies, and his highest Art. Hence the infinite joy and
+endless laughter on Olympus, the day-long feasting, _the silver stir of
+strings_ in the hollow shell of the exquisite Phoebus, "the soft song of
+the Muse with voices sweetly replying."
+
+I believe that all true Lines of Grace and Beauty, in their highest,
+_intellectual, human_ significance, may be concentrated and expressed in
+one; not a _precise_ and _exact_ line, like a formula of mathematics,
+to which the neophyte can refer for deductions of Grace to suit any
+premises or conditions. This, of course, is contrary to the spirit
+of beautiful design; and the ingenious Hay,--who maintains that his
+"composite ellipse" is capable of universal application in the arts
+of ornamental composition, and that by its use any desirable lines in
+mouldings or vases can be mechanically produced, especially Greek lines,
+falls into the grave error of endeavoring to materialize and fix that
+_animula vagula, blandula_, that coy and evasive spirit of Art, which
+is its peculiar characteristic, and gives to its works inspiration,
+harmony, and poetic sentiment. Ideal Beauty can be hatched from no
+geometrical eggs. But the line which I refer to, as the expression of
+most subtile Grace, pretends to be merely a type of that large language
+of forms with which the most refined intellects of antiquity uttered
+their Love, and their joyful worship of Aphrodite. This line, of course,
+is Greek.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+The three great distinctive eras of Art, in a purely
+psychological sense, have been the Egyptian, the Grecian, and the
+Romanesque,--including in the latter term both Roman Art itself and all
+subsequent Art, whether derived directly or indirectly from Rome, as the
+Byzantine, the Moresque, the Mediaeval, and the Renaissance. Selecting
+the most characteristic works to which these great eras respectively
+gave birth, it is not difficult, by comparison, to ascertain the
+master-spirit, or type, to which each of these three families may be
+reduced. If we place these types side by side, the result will be as in
+the diagram, presenting to the eye, at one view, the concentration
+of three civilizations, DESTINY, LOVE, and LIFE;--Destiny, finding
+utterance in the stern and inflexible simplicity of the tombs and
+obelisks of Egypt; Love, expressing itself in the statuesque and
+thoughtful grace of Grecian temples, statues, and urns; Life, in the
+sensuous and impulsive change, evident in all the developments of Art,
+since Greece became Achaia, a province of the Roman Empire. Here we
+behold the perpetual youth, the immortal genius of Hellas, tempering the
+solid repose of Egypt with the passion of Life. This intermediate Beauty
+is the essence of the age of Pericles; and in it "the capable eye" may
+discover the pose of the Cnidian Venus of Praxiteles, of the Jupiter
+Olympius of Phidias, and the other lost wonders of ancient chisels, and,
+more directly, the tender severity of Doric capitals, and the secret
+grace of the shafts of the Parthenon.
+
+You remember Pliny's account of the visit of Apelles to the great
+painter Protogenes, at Rhodes;--how, not finding him at home, Apelles
+inscribed a line upon a board, assuring the slave that this line would
+signify to the master who had been to see him. Whatever the line was,
+Protogenes, we hear, recognized in it the hand of the greatest limner of
+Greece. It was the signature of that Ideal, known to the antique
+world by its wider developments in the famous pictures of the Venus
+Anadyomene, and Alexander with the Thunderbolt, hung in the temple of
+Diana at Ephesus.
+
+The gravity with which this apparently trifling anecdote is given us
+from antiquity evidently proves that it was one of the household tales
+of old Greece. It did not seem absurd in those times, when Art was
+recognized as a great Unity, an elaborate system of infinite language
+founded on the simplest elements of Life, and in its grandest and widest
+flowings bearing ever in its bosom, like a great river, the memory
+of the little weeping Naiad far up among the mountains with her
+"impoverished urn." And so every great national Art, growing up
+naturally out of the necessities of an earnest people, expressing the
+grand motives of their Life, as that of the Greeks and the Egyptians and
+the mediaeval nations of Europe, is founded on the simplest laws. So
+long as these laws are obeyed in simplicity and Love, Art is good
+and true; so long as it remembers the purity and earnestness of its
+childhood, the strength that is ordained out of the mouth of babes is
+present in all its expressions; but when it spreads itself abroad in the
+fens and marshes of humanity, it has lost the purity of its aim, the
+singleness and unity of its action,--it becomes stagnant, and sleeps in
+the Death of Idleness.
+
+Therefore I believe in the expressiveness of single lines as symbols of
+the grandest phases of human Life. And when one studies Greek Art, the
+whole motive of it seems so childlike and so simple that the impulse to
+seek for that little Naiad which is the fountain and source of it all is
+irresistible. Look at the line I have traced, and see if there is not a
+curious humanity about it. It is impossible to produce it with a wanton
+flourish of the pencil, as I have done in that wavy, licentious curve,
+which Hogarth, in his quaint "Analysis of Beauty," assumes as the line
+of true Grace; nor yet are its infinite motions governed by any cold
+mathematical laws. In it is the earnest and deliberate labor of Love.
+There are thought and tenderness in every instant of it; but this
+thought is grave and almost solemn, and this tenderness is chastened and
+purified by wise reserve. Measure it by time, and you will find it
+no momentary delight, no voluptuous excess which comes and goes in a
+breath; but there is a whole cycle of deep human feeling in it. It is
+the serene joy of a nation, and not the passionate impulse of a man.
+Observe, from beginning to end, its intention is to give expression by
+the serpentine line to that sentiment of beautiful Life which was the
+worship of the Greeks; but they did not toss it off, like a wine-cup at
+a feast. They prolonged it through all the varied emotions of a lifetime
+with exquisite art, making it the path of their education in childhood
+and of their wider experience as men. All the impulses of humanity they
+bent to a kindly parallelism with it. This is that famous principle of
+Variety in Unity which St. Augustine and hosts of other philosophers
+considered the true Ideal of Beauty. Start with this line from the top
+upon its journeying: look at the hesitation of it, ere it launches into
+action; how it cherishes its resources, and gathers up its strength!--
+with a confidence in its beautiful Destiny, and yet a chaste shrinking
+from the full enjoyment of it, how inevitably, but how purely, it yields
+itself up to the sudden curve! It does not embrace this curve with
+a sensuous sweep, nor does it, like Sappho, throw itself with quick
+passion into the tide. It enters with maidenly and dignified reserve
+into its new Life; and then how is this new Life spent? As you glance at
+it, it seems almost ascetic, and reminds you of the rigid fatalism of
+Egypt. Its grace is almost strangled, as those other serpents were in
+the grasp of the child Hercules. But if you watch it attentively, you
+will find it ever changing, though with subtilest refinement, ever
+human, and true to the great laws of emotion. There is no straight
+line here,--no Death in Life,--but the severity and composure of
+intellectual meditation,--meditation, moving with serious pleasure
+along the grooves of happy change,--
+
+    "As all the motions of its
+    Were governed by a strain
+  Of music, audible to it alone!"
+
+As the eye is cheated out of its rectitude, following this grave
+delight, and seems to dilate and grow dreamy in the cool shade of
+imaginative cloisters and groves, the wanton joyousness of Life, with
+its long waving lily-stems and the luscious pending of vines, comes with
+dim recollections into the mind, but modified by a certain habitual
+chastity of thought. Follow the line still farther, and you will find
+it grateful to the sight, neither fatiguing with excess of monotony nor
+cloying the appetite with change. And when the round hour is full and
+the end comes, this end is met by a Fate, which does not clip with
+the shears of Atropos and leave an aching void, but fulfils itself in
+gentleness and peace. The line bends quietly and unconsciously towards
+the beautiful consummation, and then dies, because its work is done.
+
+This is the way the Greeks made that Line which represents to "the
+capable eye" the true Attic civilization. And when we examine the
+innumerable lines of Grecian architecture, we find that they never
+for an instant lost sight of this Ideal. The fine humanity of it was
+everywhere present, and mingled not only with such grand and heroic
+lines as those of the sloping pediments and long-drawn entablatures
+of the Parthenon and Theseion, bending them into curves so subtilely
+modulated that our coarse perceptions did not perceive the variations
+from the dead straight lines till the careful admeasurements of
+Penrose and Cockerel and their _confrères_ of France assured us of the
+fact,--not only did it make these enormous harp-strings vibrate with
+deep human soul-music, but there is not an abstract line in moulding,
+column, or vase, belonging to old Greece or the islands of the Aegean or
+Ionia or the colonies of Italy, which does not have the same intensity
+of meaning, the same statuesque Life of thought. Besides, I very much
+doubt if the same line, in all its parts and proportions, is ever
+repeated twice,--certainly not with any emphasis; and this is following
+out the great law of our existence, which varies the emotion infinitely
+with the occasion which produced it. Let us suppose, for example, that a
+moulding was needed to crown a column with fitting glory and grace.
+Now the capital of a column may fairly be called the throne of Ideal
+expression; it is the _cour d'honneur_ of Art. The architect in
+this emergency did not set himself at "the antique," and seek for
+authorities, and reproduce and copy; for he desired not only an abstract
+line of Beauty there, but a line which in every respect should answer
+all the requirements of its peculiar position, a line which should have
+its individual and essential relationships with the other lines around
+it, those of shaft, architrave, frieze, and cornice, should swell its
+fitting melody into the great _fugue_. And so, between the summit of the
+long shaft and that square block, the abacus, on which reposes the dead
+weight of the lintel of Greece, the Doric _echinus_ was fashioned,
+crowning the serene Atlas-labor of the column with exquisite glory, and
+uniting the upright and horizontal masses of the order with a marriage
+ring, whose beauty is its perfect fitness. The profile of this moulding
+may be rudely likened to the upper and middle parts of the line assumed
+as the representative of the Greek Ideal. But it varied ever with the
+exigency of circumstances. Over the short and solid shafts of Paestum,
+it became flat and almost horizontal; they needed there an expression
+of emphatic and sudden grace; they meet the _abacus_ with a moulding of
+passionate energy, in which the soft undulations of Beauty are nearly
+lost in a masculine earnestness of purpose. On the other hand, the more
+slender and feminine columns of the Parthenon glide into the _echinus_
+with gentleness and sweetness, crown themselves with a diadem of
+chastity, as if it grew there by Fate, preordained from the base of the
+shaft, like a flower from the root. It was created as with "the Dorian
+mood of soft recorders." Between these two extremes there is an
+infinity of change, everywhere modified and governed by "the study of
+imagination."
+
+The same characteristics of nervous grace and severe intellectual
+restraint are found wherever the true Greek artist put his hand and his
+heart to work. Every moulding bears the impress of utter refinement, and
+modulates the light which falls upon it with exquisite and harmonious
+gradations of shade. The sun, as it touches it, makes visible music
+there, as if it were the harp of Memnon,--now giving us a shadow-line
+sharp, strict, and defined, now drawing along a beam of quick and
+dazzling light, and now dying away softly and insensibly into cool shade
+again. All the phenomena of reflected lights, half lights, and broken
+lights are brought in and attuned to the great daedal melody of
+the edifice. The antiquities of Attica afford nothing frivolous or
+capricious or merely fanciful, no playful extravagances or wanton
+meanderings of line; but ever loyal to the purity of a high Ideal, they
+present to us, even from their ruins, a wonderful and very evident Unity
+of expression, pervading and governing every possible mood and manner of
+thought. No phase of Art that ever existed gives us a line so very human
+and simple in itself as this Greek type, and so pliable to all the uses
+of monumental language. If this type were a mere mathematical type, its
+applicability to the expression of human emotions would be limited to a
+formalism absolutely fatal to the freedom of thought in Art. But because
+it has its birth in intense Love, in refined appreciation of all the
+movements of Life and all the utterances of Creation, because it is the
+humanized essence of these motions and developments, it becomes thus an
+inestimable Unity, containing within itself the germs of a new world of
+ever new delight.
+
+When this type in Greek Art was brought to bear on the interpretation of
+natural forms into architectural language, we shall curiously discover
+that the creative pride of the artist and his reverence for the
+integrity of his Ideal were so great, that he not only subjected these
+forms to a rigid subservience to the abstract line till Nature was
+nearly lost in Art, but the immediate adoption of these forms under any
+circumstances was limited to some three or four of the most ordinary
+vegetable productions of Greece and to one sea-shell. This wise reserve
+and self-restraint, among the boundless riches of a delicious climate
+and a soil teeming with fertility, present to us the best proof of the
+fastidious purity of artistic intentions. Nature poured out at the feet
+of the Greek artist a most plenteous offering, and the lap of Flora
+overflowed for him with tempting garlands of Beauty; but he did not
+gather these up with any greedy and indiscriminate hand, he did not
+intoxicate himself at the harvest of the vineyard. Full of the divinity
+of high purpose, and intent upon the nobler aim of creating a pure work
+of Art, he considered serenely what were his needs for decoration, took
+lovingly a few of the most ordinary forms, and, studying the creative
+sentiment of them, breathed a new and immortal life into them, and
+tenderly and hesitatingly applied them to the work of illustrating his
+grand Ideal. These leaves and flowers were selected not for their own
+sake, though he felt them to be beautiful, but for the decorative motive
+they suggested, the humanity there was in them, and the harmony they
+had with the emergencies of his design. The design was not bent to
+accommodate them, but they were translated and lifted up into the sphere
+of Art.
+
+A drawing of the Ionic capitals of the temple of Minerva Polias in the
+Erechtheum is accessible to nearly everybody. It is well to turn to
+it and see what use the Greeks, under such impulses, made of the Wild
+Honeysuckle and of Sea-Shells. Perhaps this capital affords one of the
+most instructive epitomes of Greek Art, inasmuch as in its composition
+use is made of so much that Nature gave, and those gifts are so tenderly
+modelled and wrought into such exquisite harmony and eloquent repose.
+Examine the volute: this is the nearest approach to a mathematical
+result that can be found in Grecian architecture; yet this very
+approximation is one of the greatest triumphs of Art. No geometrical
+rule has been discovered which can exactly produce the spirals of the
+Erechtheum, nor can they be found in shells. In avoiding the exuberance
+of the latter and the rigid formalism of the former, a work of human
+thought and Love has been evolved. Follow one of these volutes with your
+eye from its centre outwards, taking all its congeries of lines into
+companionship; you find your sympathies at once strangely engaged. There
+is an intoxication in the gradual and melodious expansion of these
+curves. They seem to be full of destiny, bearing you along, as upon an
+inevitable tide, towards some larger sphere of action. Ere you have
+grown weary with the monotony of the spiral, you find that the system
+of lines which compose it gradually leave their obedience to the
+centrifugal forces of the volute, and, assuming new relationships of
+parts, sweep gracefully across the summit of the shaft, and become
+presently entangled in the reversed motion of the other volute, at whose
+centre Ariadne seems to stand, gathering together all the clues of this
+labyrinth of Beauty. This may seem fanciful to one who regards these
+things as matters of formalism. But inasmuch as, to the studious eye of
+affection, they suggest human action and human sympathies, this is a
+proof that they had their birth in some corresponding affection. It is
+the inanimate body of Geometry made spiritual and living by the Love of
+the human heart. And when a later generation reduced the Ionic volutes
+to rule, and endeavored to inscribe them with the gyrations of the
+compass, they have no further interest for us, save as a mathematical
+problem with an unknown value equal to a mysterious symbol _x_, in which
+the soul takes no comfort. But true Art, using the volute, inevitably
+makes it eloquent with an intensity of meaning, a delicacy of
+expression, which awaken certain very inward and very poetic sentiments,
+akin to those from which it was evolved in the process of creation. When
+we reasonably regard the printed words of an author, we not only behold
+an ingenious collection of alphabetical symbols, but are placed by them
+in direct contact with the mind which brought them together, and, for
+the moment, our train of thought so entirely coincides with that of the
+writer, that, though perhaps he died centuries ago, he may be said to
+live again in us. This great work of architectural Art has the same
+immortal life; and though it may not so often find a heart capable of
+discerning the sentiment and intention of it under the outward lines,
+yet that heart, when found, is touched very deeply and very tenderly. We
+imbibe the creative impulse of the artist, and the beautiful thing has a
+new life in our affections. Studying it, we become artists and poets ere
+we are aware. The alphabet becomes a living soul.
+
+Under the volutes of this capital, and belting the top of the shaft, is
+a broad band of ornamentation, so happy and effectual in its uses, and
+so pure and perfect in its details, that a careful examination of it
+will, perhaps, afford us some knowledge of that spiritual essence in the
+antique Ideal out of which arose the silent and motionless Beauty of
+Greek marbles.
+
+Here are brought together the _sentiments_ of certain vegetable
+productions of Greece, but sentiments so entirely subordinated to the
+flexure of the abstract line, that their natural significance is almost
+lost in a new and more human meaning. Here is the Honeysuckle, the
+wildest, the most elastic and undulating of plants, under the severe
+discipline of order and artistic symmetry, assuming a strict and chaste
+propriety, a formal elegance, which render it at once monumental and
+dignified. The harmonious succession and repetition of parts, the
+graceful contrasts of curves and the strict poise and balance of them,
+their unity in variety, their entire subjection to aesthetic laws, their
+serious and emphatic earnestness of purpose,--these qualities combine
+in the creation of one of the purest works of Art ever conceived by the
+human mind. It is called the Ionic _Anthemion_, and suggests in its
+composition all the creative powers of Greece. Its value is not alone in
+the sensuous gratification of the eye, as with the Arabesque tangles of
+the Alhambra, but it is more especially in its complete intellectual
+expression, the evidence there is in it of thoughtfulness and judgment
+and deliberate care. The inventor studied not alone the plant, but his
+own spiritual relationships with it; and ere he made his interpretation,
+he considered how, in mythological traditions, each flower once bore
+a human shape, and how Daphne and Syrinx, Narcissus and Philemon, and
+those other idyllic beings, were eased of the stress of human emotions
+by becoming Laurels and Reeds and Daffodils and sturdy Oaks, and how
+human nature was thus diffused through all created things and was
+epigrammatically expressed in them.
+
+   "And he, with many feelings, many thoughts,
+    Made up a meditative joy, and found
+    Religious meanings in the forms of Nature."
+
+Like Faustus, he was permitted to look into her deep bosom, as into the
+bosom of a friend,--to find his brothers in the still wood, in the air,
+and in the water,--to see himself and the mysterious wonders of his own
+breast in the movements of the elements. And so he took Nature as a
+figurative exponent of humanity, and extracted the symbolic truths from
+her productions, and used them nobly in his Art.
+
+Garbett, an English aesthetical writer, assures us that the _Anthemion_
+bears not the slightest resemblance to the Honeysuckle or any other
+plant, "being no representation of anything in Nature, but simply the
+necessary result of the complete and systematic attempt to combine unity
+and variety by the principle of _gradation_." But here he speaks like a
+geometer, and not like an artist. He seeks rather for the resemblance of
+form than the resemblance of spirit, and, failing to realize the object
+of his search, he endeavors to find a cause for this exquisite effect
+in pure reason. With equal perversity, Poe endeavored to persuade the
+public that his "Raven" was the result of mere aesthetical deductions!
+
+And here the old burden of our song must once again be heard: If we
+would know the golden secret of the Greek Ideal, we must ourselves
+first learn how to _love_ with the wisdom and chastity of old Hellenic
+passion. We must sacrifice Taste and Fancy and Prejudice, whose specious
+superficialities are embodied in the errors of modern Art,--we must
+sacrifice these at the shrine of the true Aphrodite; else the modern
+Procrustes will continue to stretch and torture Greek Lines on
+geometrical beds, and the aesthetic Pharisees around us will still
+crucify the Greek Ideal.
+
+[To be continued.]
+
+
+
+
+THE ROSE ENTHRONED.
+
+
+  It melts and seethes, the chaos that shall grow
+    To adamant beneath the house of life:
+  In hissing hatred atoms clash, and go
+      To meet intenser strife.
+
+  And ere that fever leaves the granite veins,
+    Down thunders o'er the waste a torrid sea:
+  Now Flood, now Fire, alternate despot reigns,--
+      Immortal foes to be.
+
+  Built by the warring elements, they rise,
+    The massive earth-foundations, tier on tier,
+  Where slimy monsters with unhuman eyes
+      Their hideous heads uprear.
+
+  The building of the world is not for you
+    That glare upon each other, and devour:
+  Race floating after race fades out of view,
+      Till beauty springs from power
+
+  Meanwhile from crumbling rocks and shoals of death
+    Shoots up rank verdure to the hidden sun;
+  The gulfs are eddying to the vague, sweet breath
+      Of richer life begun,--
+
+  Richer and sweeter far than aught before,
+    Though rooted in the grave of what has been.
+  Unnumbered burials yet must heap Earth's floor,
+      Ere she her heir shall win;
+
+  And ever nobler lives and deaths more grand
+    For nourishment of that which is to come:
+  While 'mid the ruins of the work she planned
+      Sits Nature, blind and dumb.
+
+  For whom or what she plans, she knows no more
+    Than any mother of her unborn child;
+  Yet beautiful forewarnings murmur o'er
+      Her desolations wild.
+
+  Slowly the clamor and the clash subside:
+    Earth's restlessness her patient hopes subdue:
+  Mild oceans shoreward heave a pulse-like tide:
+      The skies are veined with blue.
+
+  And life works through the growing quietness
+    To bring some darling mystery into form:
+  Beauty her fairest Possible would dress
+      In colors pure and warm.
+
+  Within the depths of palpitating seas
+    A tender tint;--anon a line of grace
+  Some lovely thought from its dull atom frees,
+             The coming joy to trace;--
+
+  A pencilled moss on tablets of the sand,
+    Such as shall veil the unbudded maiden-blush
+  Of beauty yet to gladden the green land;--
+             A breathing, through the hush,
+
+  Of some sealed perfume longing to burst out
+    And give its prisoned rapture to the air;--
+  A brooding hope, a promise through a doubt
+             Is whispered everywhere.
+
+  And, every dawn a shade more clear, the skies
+    A flush as from the heart of heaven disclose:
+  Through earth and sea and air a message flies,
+             Prophetic of the Rose.
+
+  At last a morning comes of sunshine still,
+    When not a dew-drop trembles on the grass;
+  When all winds sleep, and every pool and rill
+             Is like a burnished glass
+
+  Where a long-looked-for guest may lean to gaze;
+    When day on earth rests royally,--a crown
+  Of molten glory, flashing diamond rays,
+             From heaven let lightly down.
+
+  In golden silence, breathless, all things stand.
+    What answer meets this questioning repose?
+  A sudden gush of light and odors bland,
+             And, lo! the Rose! the Rose!
+
+  The birds break into canticles around;
+    The winds lift Jubilate to the skies:
+  For, twin-born with the rose on Eden-ground,
+             Love blooms in human eyes.
+
+  Life's marvellous queen-flower blossoms only so,
+    In dust of low ideals rooted fast.
+  Ever the Beautiful is moulded slow
+             From truth in errors past.
+
+  What fiery fields of Chaos must be won,
+    What battling Titans rear themselves a tomb,
+  What births and resurrections greet the sun,
+             Before the rose can bloom!
+
+  And of some wonder-blossom yet we dream,
+    Whereof the time that is infolds the seed,--
+  Some flower of light, to which the rose shall seem
+             A fair and fragile weed.
+
+
+
+
+A BAG OF MEAL.
+
+
+I often wonder what was the appearance of Saul's mother, when she walked
+up the narrow aisle of the meeting-house and presented her boy's brow
+for the mystic drops that sealed him with the name of Saul.
+
+Saul isn't a common name. It is well,--for Saul is not an ordinary
+man,--and--Saul is my husband.
+
+We came in the cool of an evening upon the brink of the swift river that
+flows past the village of Skylight.
+
+The silence of a nearing experience brooded over my spirit; for Saul's
+home was a vast unknown to me, and I fain would have delayed awhile its
+coming.
+
+I wonder if the primal motion of unknown powers, like electricity, for
+instance, is spiral. Have you ever seen it winding out of a pair of
+human eyes, knowing that every fresh coil was a spring of the soul, and
+felt it fixing itself deeper and deeper in your own, until you knew that
+you were held by it?
+
+Perhaps not. I have: as when Saul turned to me in the cool of that
+evening, and drew my eyes away, by the power I have spoken of, from the
+West, where the orange of sunset was fading into twilight.
+
+I have felt it otherwise. A horse was standing, surrounded by snow; the
+biting winds were cutting across the common, and the blanket with which
+he had been covered had fallen from him, and lay on the snow. He had
+turned his head toward the place where it lay, and his eyes were fixed
+upon it with such power, that, if that blanket had been endowed with one
+particle of sensation, it would have got up, and folded itself, without
+a murmur, around the shivering animal. Such a picture as it was! Just
+then, I would have been Rosa Bonheur; but being as I was, I couldn't be
+expected to blanket a horse in a crowded street, could I?
+
+We were on the brink of the river. Saul drew my eyes away, and said,--
+
+"You are unhappy, Lucy."
+
+"No," I answered,--"not that."
+
+"That does not content me. May I ask what troubles you?"
+
+I aroused myself to reason. Saul is never satisfied, unless I assign a
+reason for any mood I am in.
+
+"Saul!" I questioned, "why do the mortals that we call Poets write,
+and why do non-Poets, like ourselves, sigh over the melancholy days of
+autumn, and why are we silent and thoughtful every time we think enough
+of the setting sun to watch its going down?"
+
+"Simply because the winter coming is cold and dreary, in the one
+case,--and in the other, there are several reasons. Some natures dread
+the darkness; others have not accomplished the wishes or the work of the
+day."
+
+"I don't think you go below the surface," I ventured. "It seems to me
+that the entire reason is simple want of faith, a vague uncertainty as
+to the coming back of the dried-up leaf and flower, when they perish,
+and a fear, though unexpressed, that the sun is going down out of your
+sight for the last time, and you would hold it a little longer."
+
+"Would you now to-night, Lucy?"
+
+"If I could."
+
+My husband did not speak again for a long time, and gradually I went
+back into my individuality.
+
+We came upon an eminence outside the river-valley, and within sight of
+the village.
+
+"Is it well? do you like it?" asked Saul.
+
+The village was nested in among the elms to such a degree that I could
+only reply,--
+
+"I am certain that I shall, when I find out what it is."
+
+Saul stayed the impatient horse at the point where we then were, and,
+indicating a height above and a depth below, told me the legend of the
+naming of his village.
+
+It was given thus:--
+
+"A long time ago, when the soundless tread of the moccason walked
+fearlessly over the bed of echoes in this valley, two warriors, Wabausee
+and Waubeeneemah, came one day upon the river, at its opposite sides.
+Both were, weary with the march; both wore the glory of many scalps.
+Their belts were heavy with wampum, their hearts were heavy with hate.
+Wabausee was down amid the dark pines that grew beside the river's
+brink. Waubeeneemah was upon the high land above the river. With folded
+arms and unmoved faces they stood, whilst in successive flashes across
+the stream their eyes met, until Wabausee slowly opened out his
+arms, and, clasping a towering tree, cried out, 'I see sky!' and he
+steadfastly fixed his gaze upon the crevices of brightness that urged
+their way down amid the pines over his head.
+
+"Waubeeneemah turned his eyes over the broad valley, and answered the
+cry with, 'I see light!'
+
+"Thus they stood, one with his eyes downward, the other with his intent
+on the sky, and fast and furious ran the river, swollen with the
+meltings of many snows, and fierce and quick rang the battle-cries of 'I
+see sky!' 'I see light!'
+
+"A white man was near; his cabin lay just below; he had climbed a tree
+above Waubeeneemah and remained a silent witness of this wordy war,
+until, looking up the river, he saw a canoe that had broken from its
+fastenings and was rushing down to the rapids below. It contained the
+families of the two warriors, who were helplessly striving against the
+swift flow of waters.
+
+"The white man spoke, and the warriors listened. He cried, 'Look to your
+canoe! and see Skylight!'
+
+"Through the pines rushed Wabausee, and down the river-bank
+Waubeeneemah, and into the tide, until they met the coming canoe, across
+whose birchen bow they gave the grasp of peace, and ever since that time
+Indian and white man have called this place Skylight."
+
+"Where are the Indians now?" I could not help asking,--and yet with no
+purpose, beyond expression of the thought question.
+
+The shadows were gathering, the eyelids of the day were closing. Saul
+caught me up again through the shadows into those eyes of his, and
+answered,--
+
+"Here, Lucy! I am a pale form of Waubeeneemah! I know it! I feel it now!
+I sometimes ache for foemen and the wilds."
+
+Why do I think of that time to-night on the Big Blue, far away from
+Skylight, and imagine that the prairie airs are ringing with the echoes
+of the great cries that are heard in my native land, "I see North!" and
+"I see South!" and there is no white man of them all high enough to see
+the United States?
+
+I've wandered! Let me think,--yes, I have it! My thought began with
+trying to fancy Saul's mother taking him to baptism.
+
+She was dead, when I went to Skylight, her son's wife.
+
+She went into the higher life at thirty-three of the threescore-and-ten
+cycle of the human period. How young to die!
+
+The longer we live, the stronger grows the wish to live. And why
+not? When the circle is almost ended, and all the momentum of
+threescore-and-ten is gained, why not pass the line and enter into
+second childhood? What more beautiful truth in Nature's I Am, than
+obedience to this law?
+
+I've another fancy on the Big Blue to-night. It is a place for fancies.
+I remember--a long time ago it seems, and yet I am not so old as Saul's
+mother--the first knowledge that I had of life. I saw the sun come up
+one morning out of the sea, and with it there came out of the night of
+my past a consciousness. I was a soul, and held relations separate from
+other souls to that risen sun and that sea. From that hour I grew into
+life. A growth from the Unseen came to me with every day, born I knew
+not how into my soul. I sent out nothing to people the future. All came
+to me.
+
+Is this true, this faith or fancy that God sends a tidal wave through
+man, bringing with it from Heaven's ocean fragments set afloat from its
+shore to lodge in our lives, until there comes an ebb, and then begin
+our hopes and desires all to tend heavenward, or _elsewhere?_ Have
+you never felt, do you not now feel, that there is more of yourself
+_somewhere else_ than there is upon the Earth?
+
+I like to think thus, when I see a person ill, or in sorrow, or weighed
+down with weary griefs. I like to think that that which is ebbing here
+is flowing and ripening into fitness for the freed soul in that land
+where there shall be "no more sea."
+
+In insanity, does the kind Lord remove _all_ from this world in order
+to fit up the new life more gloriously? and are those whom most we pity
+clasped the closest in the Living Arms?
+
+It may be,--there is such comfort in possibilities.
+
+Will Saul come to-night? I am all alone on the Big Blue. There's not
+another settled claim for miles away.
+
+The August sun drank up the moisture from our corn-fields, took out the
+blood of our prairie-grasses, and God sent no cooling rains. Why?
+
+Skylight was charmful for a while. I had forgotten Saul's assertion that
+he was a pale shadow of Waubeeneemah, as we forget a dream of our latest
+sleep.
+
+At my home Aunt Carter appeared one day, and said she had "come to spend
+the afternoon and stay to tea"; and she seated her amplitude of being in
+Saul's favorite chair, and began to count the stitches in the heel of
+the twenty-fourth stocking that she assured me "she had knit every
+stitch of since the night she saw my husband lift me down at the gate
+just outside the window." Her blue eyes went down deeper and deeper
+into the bluer yarn her fingers were threading; and after a long pause,
+during which I had forgotten her presence, and was counting out the
+hours on the face of the clock which the slow hands must travel over
+before Saul would be at home, suddenly she looked up and began with,--
+
+"Mrs. Monten!"
+
+There was something startling in her voice. I knew it was the first drop
+of a coming flood, and I fortified myself. She went on repeating,--
+
+"Mrs. Monten! I've been thinking, for a great long while, that it isn't
+right for you to go on living with that man, without knowing what he is.
+And I for one have got up to the point of coming right over here and
+telling you of it to once."
+
+I could not help the involuntary question of--
+
+"Is my husband an evil man?"
+
+"Evil! I should think he might be, when he has got"----
+
+"Stay, Mrs. Carter!" I interrupted. "I will hear no news of my husband
+that he does not choose to give me. Only one question,--Do you know of
+any action that my husband has done that is wrong or wicked?"
+
+Aunt Carter forgot her blue eyes and her bluer yarn, for she stopped her
+knitting, and her eyes changed to gray in my sight, as she ejaculated,--
+
+"He's got Indian blood in him! I should think you'd be afraid he'd scalp
+you, if you didn't do just as he told you to. Everybody in Skylight is
+just as sorry for you as ever they can be."
+
+Aunt Carter paused. An open door announced my husband's unexpected
+presence.
+
+Aunt Carter rolled up her twenty-fourth twin of a stocking, and, hastily
+declaring that "she'd always noticed that 't was better to visit people
+when they was alone," she made all possible effort to escape before Saul
+came in.
+
+My husband an Indian! I looked at him anew. He wore the same presence
+that he did when first I saw him, a twelve-month before. There was no
+outward trace of the savage, as he came to welcome me; and I forgot my
+thought presently, as I listened to his words.
+
+"I am tired of this life," he said; "let us go."
+
+"Where, Saul?"
+
+"Anywhere, where we can breathe. I feel pent up here. I long to hunt
+something wild and free as I would be. Shall it be to the prairies,
+Lucy?"
+
+"Will you live on the hunt?" I asked.
+
+"I had not thought of that. No; I'll build you a"----And he paused.
+
+I laughed, and added,--
+
+"Let us have it, Saul. A wigwam?"
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Why not, indeed, Saul? I am content,--let us go."
+
+On the morrow I began the work of preparation. I was sitting upon the
+carpet, where I had cast all our treasures of knowledge, in the various
+guises of the printer's and binder's art, and was selecting the books
+that I fondly thought would be essential to my existence, when Saul came
+in.
+
+He looked down upon me with that look that always drinks up my sight
+into his, and said,--
+
+"You are sorry to go, Lucy. I will stay."
+
+"No, Saul, I wish to go. You shall teach me the pleasures of wild
+life; and who knows but I shall like it so well that we will give up
+civilization for it? Where shall I pack all these books?"
+
+"Leave them all," he said. "We will close the house as it is, until we
+come back." And I left them all at home.
+
+In the heart of these preparations an insane desire came into my mind to
+know something of Saul's ancestors, and there was but one way to know,
+namely, by asking, which I would not do of human soul. Thus it came to
+pass that I was driven out, between this would of my mind and wouldn't
+of my soul, to search for some knowledge from inanimate things. The
+last night before our departure I became particularly restless and
+unsatisfied. I went to the place of burial of the villagers, where I
+found duly recorded on two stones the names of Saul's parents, Richard
+Monten and Agnes Monten, his wife.
+
+There was nothing Indian there, and I went home once more to the place
+that had been so happy until the spirit of inquiry grew stronger than I.
+That night I watched Saul, until he grew restless, and asked me why I
+did so.
+
+I evaded direct reply, and on the morrow we were wheeling westward.
+
+From the instant we left the line of man's art, Saul became another
+person. All the romance and the glory in his nature blossomed out
+gorgeously, and I grew glad and gay with him. We crossed the Missouri.
+We traversed the river-land to Fort Leavenworth, amid cottonwoods, oaks,
+and elms which it would have done Dr. Holmes's heart and arms good to
+see and measure.
+
+"Will you ride, Lucy? will you try the prairie?" asked Saul, the morning
+following our arrival in Fort Leavenworth.
+
+I signified my pleasure, and mounted a brave black mustang, written all
+over with liberty. We had ridden out the dew of the morning, and for
+miles not one word had been spoken, the only sound in the stillness
+having been the hoofs' echo on the prairie-grass, when Saul rode close
+to me, and, laying his hand on my pony's head, spoke in a deep, strange
+voice that put my soul into expectancy, for I had heard the same once
+before in my life.
+
+"Lucy," he said, "I sometimes think that I have done a great wrong in
+taking you into my keeping; for I _must_ accept these calls to wildness
+that come over me at intervals."
+
+"Have you ever been here before?" I asked.
+
+"Twice, Lucy, I have crossed the American Desert, and lain down to sleep
+at the foot of the Rocky Mountains."
+
+"You are not going there now?" I almost gasped.
+
+"Why not? Can't you go with me?"
+
+Oh, how my spirit recoiled at the thought of the Desert! Wild animals
+processioned through my brain in endless circles. All the stories of
+Indian ferocity that ever I had heard came into my consciousness, as it
+is said all the past events of life do in the drowning, and I had
+no time to hesitate. The decision of my lifetime gathered into that
+instant. Saul or nothing; and bravely I answered,--did I not?--when,
+with brightening eyes, I said, "Let us on!"--and shaking the hand from
+my saddle-bow, I gave my prairie friend leave to fly.
+
+"Lucy! Lucy!" cried Saul, and he soon overtook me,--"Lucy, I sought you
+as the thirsting man seeks water on the desert; and I _have_ sought to
+bless you, almost as Hagar blessed the Angel,--almost as the devout soul
+blesses God, when it finds a spring that He has made to rise out of the
+sands. Having found you, I was content. I thought that I could live
+always, as other men do, in the tameness of Town and Law; but I could
+not, unless you refused to go with me into the Nature that my spirit
+demands as a part of its own life."
+
+"Saul, you know that you _can_ go without me,--else I should not wish
+to go. I go, not because I am a necessity to you, but a free-born soul,
+that wills to go where you go."
+
+The grave Professor (for I whisper it here to-night, with only the wind
+to hear, that Saul _is_ a Professor in a famed seat of learning not many
+leagues away from the Atlantic coast) looked down at me with a vague,
+puzzled air, for an instant, then said,--
+
+"I see! It is so, Lucy. You have divined the secret. I am not to let you
+know that I cannot live without you,--and, if you can, you are to make
+me think that you only tolerate me."
+
+"What of it? Isn't it almost true? I sometimes think, that, if ever we
+are in heaven, effort to remain there will be necessary to its full joy.
+We are always crying for rest, when effort is the only pleasure worth
+possessing."
+
+"You are right, and you are wrong. Let us leave mental philosophy with
+mankind, who have to do with it. Just now, I am willing to confess that
+I need you, and you are to do as you will. Come! let us look into this
+thicket."
+
+And leading the way, Saul rode presently under a tall cotton wood-tree,
+and, lifting for me the low-hanging branches of a black-jack, I entered
+an amphitheatre whose walls were leaves of living green domed in blue,
+with a river-aisle winding through.
+
+I had not time to take in all the joy of the circle, before it was
+evidenced that Saul had premeditated the scene. A fire of twigs sent up
+a spicy perfume. A camp-kettle stood beside the fire, and a creature
+stood beside it. A yellow savage I should have said, but for my
+husband's welcome. Never in our home library did brother-professor ever
+receive warmer grasp of hand than I knew this Indian met. They used
+words, in speaking, that were unknown to me. Presently I perceived that
+an introduction was pending. That being over, the Indian, Meotona,
+pointed to a swinging-chair, built for me out of the wealth of
+grapevine. It was cushioned with the velvet of the buffalo-grass.
+
+"Tell me how to thank him," I said to Saul.
+
+Meotona immediately replied,--"Me no thank,--him," pointing to Saul.
+
+I laid my sun-wearied head against the vine, and through half-closed
+eyes watched in delicious rest the preparations for dinner. My
+prairie-horse mistook my comfort for his own. I found his length of
+liberty included my chair-cushion, and I gave him tuft after tuft,
+until something like justice seemed to penetrate into his soul,--for he
+heroically refused the last morsel, and wandered away into the next arc
+of his liberty.
+
+"If all the days are to be like this, how delicious it will be!" I said,
+as Saul came to me with choice bits of prairie fare.
+
+"Not this," he said. "Wait until we hunt the buffalo!--that wakes up the
+spirit of man!"
+
+"But I am not a man, and you must excuse me from hunting buffalo," I
+could not help saying, as I slid out of the grapevine chair to the
+grass, beside Saul; for verily, I believed that he had forgotten that I
+was a woman, and a child of the Puritans.
+
+No more words were spoken until our repast was over. Meotona gathered
+up the furniture of our dining-room, and with us returned toward Fort
+Leavenworth. The summer sun was setting when we drew near the Missouri.
+I thought I had disappointed Saul. At the last moment I ventured to
+ask,--
+
+"Why did you return? I would have gone on. I wished it."
+
+My husband's face lit into a quick smile, then gloomed as quickly, and
+he said,--
+
+"I smile at your simplicity in imagining that I ventured out, without
+consulting you, for the Rocky Mountains. I frown to think that my wife
+believes that I could go into danger with her, and only one right arm to
+defend her. No! I went to-day to try you. I couldn't ask you within any
+four-walled shelter. I wanted the wide expanse to be your only shield
+before I could trust you. I wanted you to face the foe. Again I ask,
+Shall we go? Answer from your own individuality, not mine."
+
+"I will go."
+
+It was the spirit that spoke; for neither heart nor flesh could have
+braved the fancied dangers.
+
+A week went by, and every moment of the time Saul was elate and busy,
+providing for me in every possible way, devising comforts that exceeded
+my imagination, remembering every idiosyncrasy that I had given
+expression to in his hearing. Under the guard of the United States mail,
+we left Fort Leavenworth. Meotona, the yellow savage, went with us. Oh,
+the delight of those days! it comes to me now, and I almost forget that
+I am alone on the Big Blue, and that those hours have gone down among
+"the froth and rainbows" of the past, bearing with them a part of my
+life. There were nights when I was afloat in the bark of my spirit, and
+wandering up and on, until I met Half-Way Angels that bade me back to
+Earth; and then I would wander away into dreams, watched by the stars
+and Saul,--for in those first days he never wearied in his care. By
+day I wandered through a garden of flowers untended by man, whose only
+keepers were butterflies and birds. Indian faces and forms no longer
+made me tremble. I grew to see beauty in them, as they dashed by the
+train, intent on the hunt.
+
+We encamped beside Stranger Creek, on the banks of the Wakarusa, and on
+the Great Divide separating the Osage from the Wakarusa Valley.
+
+After we left Council Grove, Meotona, I noticed, was on the watch,
+constantly peering off into the illimitable distance. One day I learned
+the cause. An exclamation from the Indian led me to look at him. For
+once, fire flashed out of his eyes,--he had forgotten himself. He was in
+ecstasy as he saw a party advancing over the prairie.
+
+"Here they come! Now for the heart of the wilderness!" exclaimed my
+husband, as they rode up.
+
+"We are not going away from the guard?" I ventured to suggest, as chief
+after chief came up. I knew them in their wild orders, having by this
+time learned something of Indian customs. They were equipped for the
+Plains, and among their number I distinguished two white men.
+
+"I know them,--they are safe and true, Lucy,--fear nothing!" whispered
+Saul close to my whitening cheek; and afterwards we turned aside from
+the Santa Fe trail to the north of the American Desert.
+
+My husband did not leave me for an instant that afternoon; and I,
+simple-minded woman, tried to look as happy--well, as a woman and a
+professor's wife could look under the circumstances. The wings of my
+tent that night were spread to the breeze that swept low and cool across
+the Divide.
+
+The next day we came to the lodges of the Indians. Swarthy-faced girls
+and women came to greet us. It was evident that many of them had never
+before seen a white woman. As evening came on, I noticed in one group
+outside the principal lodge an unusual amount of grimace that was
+incomprehensible, until, very timidly, a little girl left the crowd.
+Half-way toward me she stopped and turned back, but again the violent
+gesticulations were enacted, when the child made a sudden evolution in
+my direction, and with one hard finger rubbed the back of my hand,
+until I thought myself quite a Spartan; then looking at her own finger,
+doubtfully at first, she ran back, and went from one to another, showing
+her finger. The design was evident. Indians (the women, at least) have
+some curiosity;--they thought _me painted white_. I forgave them.
+
+We went five hundred miles from this lodge into the wilderness,--two of
+the squaws accompanying us, for my comfort.
+
+At last came the sight of buffaloes, feeding on the short tufts of grass
+on the Grand Prairie. My heart grew sick with the shout that rang from a
+hundred Indian throats, and--must I write it?--from Saul's.
+
+"Stay!" said Saul, and he left me a guard, and was away without one word
+of farewell.
+
+Night came down, and he was not returned. The stars shone out of the
+vault like "red-hot diamonds," and on the sight no vision, to the ear no
+sound.
+
+The women pitched my tent. The guard lit the fire. They brought me
+savory bits of food, and coffee. My throat was tightened, I could not
+eat, and I arose and went out into the night alone. I lost all sense of
+fear, as I wandered away. The prairie had just been burned, and I knew
+must be free from serpents and other reptiles: beyond these I had no
+thought. I turned once to see the little dot of fire-light, to see the
+one point of canvas, my shelter and my home. At last I grew very weary,
+and remember having lain down, and having thought that the stars were
+raining down upon me, so near did they seem,--and one after one,
+constellation mingled with constellation, until I fancied a storm of
+stars was circling over my head.
+
+I started with a sudden spasm, as a sound burst upon me, wild, ringing,
+dreadful. A hundred Indians were uttering a war-cry, and, as I lay
+there, with my head pressed to the burnt sod, I felt the shudder of
+earth from many hoofs. I turned in the direction whence they were
+coming;--raise my head from the ground I dared not. All was darkness.
+Could I possibly escape? Not if I moved. Where I was, there might be a
+chance that they would pass to the right or the left. On, on they came,
+and I knew the cry,--it was for vengeance. Feebly, like a setting star,
+gleamed the watch-fire of my guard in the distance. Suddenly it went
+down. They had heard the alarm. How awfully my heart kept time to the
+nearing echo of the many footfalls! My eyes must have been fastened on
+the West. I saw dark heads rise first above the earth-line, then the
+moving arms of the horsemen. I heard the ring of weapons, and saw them
+coming directly over the place where I lay; but I did not stir,--it was
+as if I had been bound with an equator to the ground. Something struck
+my arm and was gone. The troop passed by.
+
+It was morning. A low, deep breathing betokened something near me. I
+opened my eyes, and saw the face of my husband,--but, oh, how changed! I
+heard him say, "The Lord hear my vow, and record my prayer!"
+
+All that day I lay there, on the prairie, Saul sitting beside me,
+shielding me from, the sun, and giving me drops of coolness, which the
+Indians pressed from herbs and shrubs that grew not far away. I was in
+a dream, and when the stars arose they lifted me up and bore me away.
+I knew it was to the eastward. I felt no resistance in my nature, as I
+always do when going to the west, either voluntarily or otherwise. We
+came, after many days, to the Indian lodge. I never saw the guard again,
+that I left in peace, when I was _driven_ out to wander, because I felt
+wretched and lonely to be deserted for the chase by my husband. They
+were carried into captivity by the hostile Sioux. There was mourning in
+the lodge. An Indian mother, whose daughter had gone with me, sat down
+in the ashes of sorrow, and moved not for two days; then she arose, and,
+scattering dust from the earth toward the setting sun, she went into her
+wigwam and they gave her food.
+
+It was September before I was able to leave the place whither they
+carried me. My arm was cut with the hoof of the flying horse, and when
+Saul found me, I had fainted; I was dying from loss of blood, which his
+coming only had stayed. After I grew stronger, I closely observed my
+husband.
+
+I never saw such an ache, such a strife, as week after week
+hunting-parties went out in the morning and returned at evening with
+their game. Saul grew reserved and silent when I begged him to go, to
+leave me for a day.
+
+"It is of no use, Lucy; I made a vow, and I must keep it. This Indian
+blood within me must be subdued; it has met a stronger current on the
+way, and _must_ mingle with it."
+
+He said no more on the subject, and I would not question him. We took
+our last walk on the prairie. Everything was in readiness for our
+departure to meet the expected United States mail-train. We returned
+to the lodge, and Saul left me for a few minutes to make some last
+arrangements with Meotona. An old Indian woman, whose eyes I had often
+noticed on me, crept stealthily in at my tent-door, and said to me in
+English,--
+
+"Let me be welcome; I come to teach you."
+
+I knew that among her tribe she had the reputation of a prophetess, but
+I had never heard her speak English.
+
+"I am waiting to hear," I said; and this woman fixed her sad, solemn
+eyes on me and said,--
+
+"Child of the pale man, a great many moons ago, when my eyes were bright
+like the little quiver-flower, and the young warriors sought me in my
+father's wigwam, I had a sister. Her name _he_ called Luella. The
+chiefs of the tribe were going for a grand hunt on the Huron. Some
+pale men from across the lake came to join them. One of them looked on
+Luella, and her eyes grew soft and sad. She wrapped her blanket about
+her, and walked often under the stars at night. Through the winter, she
+would not talk with the young chiefs; and when the leaves grew again,
+the pale men came back, and Luella walked again under the stars. She
+learned English, and no one knew who taught her.
+
+"The hunt went on again until the snow came; and when the pale men
+left the lodge, Luella was lost from the wigwam. The warriors went
+in pursuit, but they came back without Luella. She was not with the
+pale-faces. Many moons came and went, and one night I heard a voice
+singing in the distance. I knew it was Luella, and she led a child by
+her side, and he said soft English words. She would not come into the
+lodge. She only came to tell me that she was with the white man who
+loved her, that she was content, and to show me her boy; and Luella
+walked away into the night again, and I told no one.
+
+"I made many moccasons, and wove baskets of twigs; and when Uncas, the
+chief of the tribe, my father, went to the great hunting-ground beyond
+the Sun, then I gathered up my moccasons, and went out before the gate
+opened to let the light through. I left the wigwam for Luella. I hated
+white people; I hated the white man who stole Luella from me; but the
+pale-faces took my moccasons, and gave me white wampum, and with that I
+crossed the lake, and went from town to town, and everywhere I showed
+the people this,"--and the wrinkled woman extended her hand to me; but,
+at the instant, Saul lifted the tent-curtain and came in. She hid her
+hand under her blanket, and, wrapping it closely about her, walked out
+without a glance to testify that ever she had spoken.
+
+Saul asked me the cause of this visit, and I was about to tell him, when
+there arose in the lodges without such screams and cries as brought all
+the population into the air. The Indian woman who so lately had left my
+tent lay on the ground, in the apparent extreme of agony.
+
+"Let the pale-face come," said the knot of savages around her; "it is
+for her she calls."
+
+My husband interpreted the words for me, and in doubt and fear I went to
+her. Her screams had ceased; she held her hands tightly over her heart,
+as if there had been the spasms of pain. She rolled her eyes around to
+see if any one was within hearing, and then said,--
+
+"I had fear that you would tell him; stay a little, and let me tell you
+now. I went on after Luella until I found her. I had the name of the
+white man to guide me. She was living as the pale-faces live, in a great
+town of many lodges.
+
+"I saw with my eyes that she was happy, and then I walked many moons
+back to the Huron, and rowed across the lake in a canoe that I found in
+the woods.
+
+"Luella came back again. I don't know how she found the way alone, but
+she came into the wigwam when the leaves were falling, and before the
+buds grew again she went to Uncas in the West. I asked her about the
+white man, and she shook her head and hid her eyes. I asked her for the
+boy, and she threw open her arms wide, to show me he was not there.
+Look!" said the woman, "I am dying; I'm very old; I ought to have walked
+with Luella this long time. Listen,--let me teach you. The pale face
+that you look into has eyes like my Luella. Take care! When he would
+walk under the stars alone, go not with him. When he would hunt bison,
+give him all the prairie; don't stand at the wigwam-door to keep him
+in. And when you are far away beyond my people, you may see this,"--and
+she handed to me the small parcel from close to her wild heart. I took
+it.
+
+"You'll keep it for Luella's sake. She held it close when she went away;
+now I'm going, there's no one else to care. Bring it with you, when the
+Great Spirit calls."
+
+I could win no more words from the woman. She spoke to those who came to
+her, and Saul said she told them that I had "taken away the torment."
+
+"I shall think my Lucy witches somebody beside poor Saul," said my
+husband; and he gave a sigh as he stood in the tent-door, and watched
+the westering moon for the last time.
+
+In the morning they told us that the Prophetess had gone into the light
+beyond the Sun.
+
+Saul went in to see her, and as he came back to me I saw that he was not
+in a mood for words. Our farewell was very silent. Meotona went with us.
+Once again, bounding over the prairie, my heart grew lighter than it
+had been for many days; but I had no opportunity to examine Luella's
+treasure.
+
+We met the long caravan of wagons on the summit of the Great Divide, and
+it was joy to unite my fate once more with that of my countrymen. Saul
+saw this, and said,--
+
+"Know now, Lucy, that you have the portion meted out to me, when I saw
+the freemen of the wild coming. Your pleasure is that of civilization;
+mine was that of barbaric life. I bid adieu to it henceforth,"--and my
+brave husband, at this instant, looked out upon the head-waters of the
+Neosho, where Nature, when she built up the world, must have made a
+storehouse of material, and never came back for her treasures, they lie
+so magnificently rolled over the land.
+
+Saul's eyes gathered up the view, as if they were, what they are,
+memory's absorbents, and said, sadly,--
+
+"It is for the last time, Lucy!"
+
+We went into corral the next evening by the side of a grassy mound
+covered with low-growing shrubs.
+
+Afterwards Saul wandered out alone. I would have gone with him; but
+at the instant I put my face outside the tent-door, the memory of the
+Indian woman's caution came to me, and with it the opportunity to
+examine Luella's secret.
+
+I entered my tent, lighted the little lamp that had travelled a thousand
+miles and never done service till now, and opened Luella's treasure. It
+was wrapped in soft white fur, bound about with the long, dried grass
+that grows beside the Huron. A scroll of parchment was rolled within
+it, faded, yellow, and old. I opened it, with a smile at my strange
+inheritance.
+
+At the first glance, I thought I had before me some Indian
+hieroglyphics; but bringing back from the place of its long obscurity
+the little knowledge of the French language that I held in possession, I
+deciphered, that, "fourscore years before, beside the froth of the Huron
+Water, Father Kino had performed the marriage-rite upon Luella, daughter
+of Uncas, of the Dacotahs, and Richard Monten, of Montreal." Below the
+certificate of the priest of the Church were strange characters beyond
+my power to decipher.
+
+With trembling I looked out for Saul's return. Here, upon the banks
+of the Neosho, I had learned the secret which my life in the East had
+hidden so long.
+
+A certain kind, of guiltiness came over me, as Saul drew near, breaking
+down with every tread the sun-cured grass,--a sense of unworthiness, to
+hold in my hand a possession which essentially was his, and which he had
+not freely given me.
+
+"I will not look into his eyes with a veil lying in the air," I said,
+very quietly to myself; and so, when my husband saw the burning of the
+little lamp and asked the cause, I told him all the story of the
+Indian woman, and put into his hand her gift to me. Saul's mind was
+preoccupied; he paid very little attention to the story; but when I
+gave him the white-furred scroll, and he opened it, then the grave
+professor----Well, it is better that I do not put into words what
+followed, even here, on the Big Blue.
+
+An hour afterwards Saul spoke. He said,--
+
+"Lucy, you have given me the key of my life, I knew my Indian blood, but
+I knew not whence it came; therefore I said nothing to you. I remember
+being tormented by it, when a boy, but never knew by what right. Let me
+translate for you this Indian register of--let me see--my grandmother's
+marriage. 'Ten moons from the lost moon, and many sleeps from the life
+of the big Huron Water, the Great Spirit called Luella to walk with a
+son of the Pale-Faces. The mystery [the priest] met them, and told them
+to go on to the Sun. They are gone in the path of the lost moons.'"
+
+"Let us go to Skylight by the way of Montreal," I suggested.
+
+Saul said, "It is well."
+
+At the Missouri I laid aside my prairie costume, and assumed the raiment
+of fashion.
+
+We found in Canada pleasant people bearing our name, and they welcomed
+us as relatives.
+
+Richard Monten lay beside a fixed cloud of marble; and although Luella's
+sister had said she died far away, yet her name was beneath her
+husband's.
+
+Tradition told us of the beautiful Indian wife with eyes like
+light,--and how her husband took her, every year, alone with him into
+the wilds,--and how, when they came back, and the winter snows fell,
+she would sit all day beside him, with her eyes on figures and letters,
+whilst her impatient fingers were threading her long hair, and memory
+shook her head at the attempted education, perhaps wisely and well.
+
+When Mr. Monten died, and left her houses and lands, she turned away
+from them all, and, leading her boy by the hand, went out of her home
+and was seen no more until long after, when Father Kino, a kind old
+priest, going home late one night from a dying soul, in passing the
+cloud of marble, heard faint moans coming out of it, and, going near,
+found an Indian woman, in festive dress, like a chief's daughter,
+kneeling there. A few minutes afterwards, when Father Kino came back
+with an assistant, there were no more moans, for Luella had "gone on to
+the Sun."
+
+The fate of the little boy was never known until then, and then it was
+only known that he had lived and died and was buried in Skylight.
+
+We found houses and lands, but no record that they were ours. So we left
+them under British rule, and returned to Skylight, to our cottage and
+duty.
+
+Aunt Carter came in before we had been an hour at home. I think she
+watched the opportunity of Saul's absence to find me alone.
+
+"See!" she exclaimed, holding up to my view a small eminence of
+stockings, "see what I have done, while you've just been going about the
+world doing nothing at all!" And with a really warm shake of my hand,
+Aunt Carter seated herself, for the second time, in Saul's chair.
+
+"Why, I've been knitting too!" I said, in extenuation.
+
+"What?" asked Aunt Carter. "Some new-fashioned thing or other, I'll
+warrant."
+
+"No,--something that is as old as Eve."
+
+"Who ever heard of Eve's knitting? The Bible doesn't say one word about
+it, Mrs. Monten. Besides, I don't think little Cain and Abel wore
+stockings at all."
+
+"I did not say that Eve knit in Paradise. I only said I'd been knitting
+at something as old as Eve. I meant the thread of life. Here comes my
+husband to tell you how industrious I have been."
+
+Saul led Aunt Carter on to talk of her youth, and gradually of his
+father, until he had learned all that she knew of his history. It was
+very little: only that a fur-trader and a party of Dacotahs came to the
+village, she had heard her father say, to sell their skins, bringing a
+brown little boy with them; that the child fell sick with scarlet fever,
+and they left him to the mercy of the village people, and never came
+back for him, although they had said they would.
+
+Did Luella give her boy away?--Never, I was convinced, and Saul
+likewise.
+
+Saul went back into his round of professional duties, and with much
+heart for a while.
+
+Delighted with civilization, and peopled with memories, and joyous with
+the divine plumage ever hovering around me, my life ran on. I watched
+Saul narrowly. He would often take up his hat, after hours of
+application to science, and rush out of the house, as if a mission lay
+before him. He would come back, and devote himself to me, as if he were
+conscious of some neglect in his absence. I planned short excursions all
+over the adjacent country. I became addicted to angling, because I saw
+Saul liked it. There were many righteous eyeballs that reproved me
+for wandering in places not fit for a woman, and Aunt Carter became
+exceedingly disturbed, even to the point of remonstrance.
+
+"You're spoiling your husband," she would say,--"he'll not know but what
+you are a squaw," she said to me one day, in true distress.
+
+However, I endured it delightfully for three years. Saul received in one
+week four letters, each containing the offer of a professor's chair in a
+desirable institution.
+
+For many months I had seen the spell weaving around my good husband;
+I had seen it flash out of his eyes; I had heard its undertone in his
+voice; I had felt it in his whole manner, and I knew the hour of battle
+was near.
+
+I was strong, and I came to the rescue. It was on this wise. Hearken! is
+he coming? No, it is only the wind coming up the Big Blue.
+
+We sat in our Skylight door in an April evening,--unwise, perhaps,--but
+we were there. Saul had taken down that wild warble of Longfellow's,
+"Hiawatha." He read to me until the moon came up; then he threw down the
+book, and said, "Pshaw!"
+
+"What is that for, Saul?" I asked, in some surprise.
+
+"It is not for the book,--for myself, Lucy. I had better not have opened
+it Let us go and talk with the Doctor." And we went.
+
+Saul had not answered his letters on the chair question, and I put up a
+petition.
+
+"I think I never felt so well as when I was in Kansas," I said. "Really,
+Saul, I've felt a strong inclination to cough for some time, every
+morning. The climate of Kansas is wonderfully curative for pulmonary
+difficulties. I wish you would go out there now, and build a log cabin,
+plant a few miles of maize, gather it in, and then, when the season is
+over, come back and go to ----. You know they value you too highly not
+to wait your time."
+
+I saw a slow kindling up in Saul's eyes, but an instant later it had
+gone down, and he said, looking into mine,--
+
+"Do you really and truly wish this, Lucy?"
+
+And Lucy answered,--
+
+"I really and truly wish it, Saul."
+
+We came hither with the violets and bluebirds. My wigwam points to the
+sky. We have roamed on the prairies, and wandered in the timber-lands.
+Under the heavens of the Big Blue we have drunk "the wine of life all
+day," and "been lighted off" to hemlock-boughs "by the jewels in the
+cup."
+
+Oh, this life that is passing, passing in unseen marches on to the Great
+Plains where we shall corral forever! I've just opened my cabin-door
+to look for Saul; he's been gone ten days. The drought came; our maize
+withered and died. Ten miles away, there is a town; two houses are
+there. We left our vast-wilderness lodge to Nature in October, and
+turned our faces eastward. Reaching the town, we found Azrael hovering
+there. It was impossible to go on and leave such suffering, and we
+stayed. While we waited, winter came along, tossing her white mail
+over the prairie, and we were prisoned. Azrael folded his pinions, and
+carried in them two souls out of the town of two houses. Afterward, Saul
+and I came back to our home. I kindled the fire, and Saul went forth to
+earn our daily food. Life began to grow painfully earnest. The supply of
+wheaten flour waxed less and less, and I sometimes wished--no, I _did
+not wish_ that I was a widow, I only wished for flour.
+
+I began to look for manna, and it came,--not "small and white, about
+the size of coriander-seed," but in the form of the flying life of
+yesterday.
+
+I have cried many tears over eyes that were shut for me, but I've never
+been sorry that I came hither.
+
+At last, no more wings came flying over the prairie. Saul came home
+without food. That was ten days ago. He carried me the next morning to
+the village, to leave me there, till he should return,--then retraced
+the ten miles through the snow, and went for food.
+
+I stayed until there was no more for the children to eat. I could not
+abide that, and this morning I stole away. I've come the ten miles
+through the snow to light the fire, that Saul may not pass by, and go on
+to the town this cold night. Where is he now? Not perishing, dying on
+the prairie, as I was once, when he found me? I'll walk and see. It
+is so lone outside, there is such an _awful sound_ in the _voice of
+stillness,_ and Saul is not in sight!
+
+Where is my life now? Since Saul went away, so much of it has gone, I
+feel as if more of myself were there than here. Why couldn't I go on
+thinking? It was such relief! The moon is up at last. A low rumble over
+the dried grass, like a great wave treading on sand. I am faint. I have
+tightened my dress, to keep out hunger, every hour of this day. Those
+starving children! God pity them! A higher wave of sound,--surely 'tis
+not fancy. I will look out. The moon shines on a prairie sail, a gleam
+of canvas. Another roll of the broad wheel, and Saul is here.
+
+"Send the man on quickly," I cried; "the children are starving in the
+town."
+
+"And you?" said Saul.
+
+The power of his eyes is almost gone. I scarcely heed them. I see--a bag
+of meal.
+
+
+
+
+NAPOLEON THE THIRD
+
+
+On the 6th of October, 1840, a young man was brought up for sentence in
+one of the highest courts of Europe, before which he had been tried, and
+by which he had been found guilty of one of the greatest crimes that can
+be charged upon any human being, though the world seldom visits it with
+moral condemnation. The young man was Prince Louis Napoleon Bonaparte,
+the court was the French Chamber of Peers, and the sentence was
+imprisonment for life. Had the French government of that day felt strong
+enough to act strongly, the condemned would have been treated as the
+Neapolitans treated Murat, and as the Mexicans treated Yturbide. He
+would have been perpetually imprisoned, but his prison would have been
+"that which the sexton makes." But the Orleans dynasty was never strong,
+and its head was seldom able to act boldly. To execute a Bonaparte,
+the undoubted heir of the Emperor, required nerve such as no French
+government had exhibited since that day on which Maréchal Ney had been
+shot; and there were seven hundred thousand foreign soldiers in France
+when that piece of judicial butchery was resolved upon. The army might
+not be ready to join a Bonaparte, but it could not be relied upon to
+guard the scaffold on which he should be sent to die. The people might
+not be ready to overthrow Louis Philippe, to give his place to Louis
+Napoleon, but it did not follow that they would have seen the latter's
+execution with satisfaction, because they desired peace, and he had
+fallen into the habit of breaking it. The enthusiasm that was created in
+France by the arrival in that country of the remains of Napoleon I.,
+not three months after the coming Napoleon III. had been sent to the
+fortress of Ham, showed how difficult a matter it would have been to
+proceed capitally against the Prince. Louis Philippe has been praised
+for sparing him; but the praise is undeserved. Certainly, the King of
+the French was not a cruel man, and it was with sincere regret that he
+signed the death-warrants of men who had sought his own life, and who
+had murdered his friends; but it would have been no act of cruelty, had
+he sent his rival to the guillotine. When a man makes a throw for a
+crown, he accepts what is staked, against it,--a coffin. Nothing is
+better established than this, that, when a sovereign is assailed, the
+intention of the assailant being his overthrow, that sovereign has a
+perfect right to put his rival to death, if he succeed in obtaining
+possession of his person. The most confirmed believer in Richard III.'s
+demoniac character would not think of adding the execution of Richmond
+to his crimes, had Plantagenet, and not Tudor, triumphed on Bosworth
+Field. James II. has never been blamed for causing Monmouth to be put to
+death, but for having complied with his nephew's request for a personal
+interview, at which he refused to grant his further request for a
+mitigation of punishment. Murat's death was an unnecessary act, but
+Ferdinand of Naples has never been censured for it. Had Louis Philippe
+followed these examples, and those of a hundred similar cases, he could
+not have been charged with undue severity in the exercise of his power
+for the conservation of his own rights, and the maintenance of the
+tranquillity, not of France alone, but of Europe, and of the world,
+which the triumph of a Bonaparte might have perilled. He spared the
+future Emperor's life, not from any considerations of a chivalric
+character, but because he durst not take it. He feared that the blood
+of the offender would more than atone for his offence, and he would
+not throw into the political caldron so rich a material, dreading the
+effects of its presence there. Then the Orléans party and the Imperial
+party not only marched with each other, but often crossed and ran into
+each other; and it was not safe to run the risk of offending the first
+by an attempt to punish its occasional ally. There was, too, something
+of the ludicrous in the Boulogne affair, which enabled government to
+regard the chief offender with cheap compassion. Louis Philippe is
+entitled to no credit, on the score of mercy, for his conduct in
+1840,--for the decision of the Court of Peers was his inspiration; but
+he acted wisely,--so wisely, that, if he had done as well in 1848, his
+grandson would at this moment have been King of the French, and the
+Emperor that is a wanderer, with nothing but a character for flightiness
+and a capacity for failure to distinguish him from the herd, while many
+would have regarded him as a madman. But the end was not then, and the
+hand of Fate was not even near that curtain which was to be raised for
+the disclosure of events destined to shake and to change the world.
+
+The defence of Louis Napoleon was conducted by M. Berryer, the great
+leader of the Legitimists, who, twenty-five years before, had aided
+in the defence of Ney, and who, nearly twenty years later, defended
+Montalembert, his client of 1840 being in this last case the prosecutor.
+In his speech in defence of the Prince, this first of French orators and
+advocates made use of language, the recollection of which in after-days
+must have been attended with very conflicting emotions. Addressing
+himself to the judges, he said,--"Standing where I do, I do not think
+that the claims of the name in which this project was attempted can
+possibly fall humiliated by the disdainful expressions of the _Procureur
+Général_. You make remarks upon the weakness of the means employed, of
+the poverty of the whole enterprise, which made all hope of success
+ridiculous. Well, if success is anything, I will say to you who are
+men,--you, who are the first men in the state,--you, who are members of
+a great political body,--there is an inevitable and eternal Arbitrator
+between every judge and every accused who stands before him;--before
+giving your judgment, now, being in presence of this Arbitrator, and in
+face of the country, which will hear your decrees, tell me this, without
+regard now to weakness of means, but with the rights of the case, the
+laws, and the institution before your eyes, and with your hands upon
+your hearts, as standing before your God, and in presence of us, who
+know you, will you say this:--'If he had succeeded, if his pretended
+right had triumphed, I would have denied him and it,--I would have
+refused all share in his power,--I would have denied and rejected him'?
+For my part, I accept the supreme arbitration I have mentioned; and
+whoever there may be amongst you, who, before their God, and before
+their country, will say to me,--'If he had succeeded, I would have
+denied him,'--such a one will I accept for judge in this case." In
+making this sweeping challenge, M. Berryer knew that he was hitting
+the Court of Peers hard, for it contained men who had been leading
+Napoleonists in the days of the Empire, and others who were ready to
+join any government which should be powerful enough to establish itself;
+while it left the Legitimists, the orator's own party, unharmed. They
+were the only men, according to M. Berryer's theory of defence, who
+would have furnished an impartial tribunal for the trial of his client;
+for they alone, with strict truth, could have said that they would deny
+his right, and refuse to share in his power, no matter at what time he
+should succeed in accomplishing his designs.
+
+Had the French Peers been gifted with that power of mental vision which
+enables men to see into the future, they would not have been disposed to
+condemn the man who stood before them in 1840. Could it have been made
+known to them that in eight years he would be elected President of the
+French Republic by nearly five and a half millions of votes,--that in
+twelve years he would become Emperor of the French,--that in fifteen
+years he would, as the ally of England, have struck down the Russian
+hegemony,--and that in twenty years he would be the conqueror of
+Austria, and have called the Kingdom of Italy into existence, while his
+enmity was dreaded and his friendship desired by all the nations of the
+earth, and the fate of the Popedom was in his hands,--had these things
+been so much as dreamed of by his judges, they would have formed the
+most lenient of tribunals, and have suffered him to depart in peace.
+They are not to be charged with a lack of wisdom in not foreseeing what
+must have appeared to be the ravings of lunacy, had it been deliberately
+set down by some inspired prophet. Neither the man nor his cause
+commanded much respect. We, who know that the French Emperor is the
+first man of the age, as well in intellect as in position, have no right
+to sneer at the men of 1840 because they looked upon him as a feeble
+pretender. He had made two attempts to place himself at the head of the
+French nation, and in each instance his failure had been so signal, and
+in some respects so ridiculous, that it was impossible to regard him as
+the representative of a living principle. Even those who thought him a
+man of talent could account for his want of success only by supposing
+that Imperialism was no longer powerful in France, and that his appeals
+were made to an extinct party. The soldiery, amongst whom the traditions
+of the Empire were supposed to be strong, had evinced no desire to
+substitute a Bonaparte for a Bourbon of the younger branch; and as to
+the peasantry, who showed themselves so fanatically Bonapartean in 1848,
+and in 1851-2, they were never thought of at all. France consisted of
+the government, the army, the _bourgeoisie_, and the skeleton colleges
+of electors; and so long as they were agreed, nothing was to be feared
+either from Prince Louis Napoleon or from the Comte de Chambord. We
+think this was a sound view of affairs, and that the French government
+of 1841 might have been the French government of 1861, had not the
+parties to the combination that ruled France in 1841 quarrelled. It was
+the loss of the support of the middle class that caused Louis Philippe
+to lose his throne in the most ignominious manner; and that support the
+monarch would not have forfeited, but for the persistence of M. Guizot
+in a policy which it would have been difficult to maintain under any
+circumstances, and which was enfeebled in 1847-8 by the gross corruption
+of some of its principal supporters. That the _bourgeoisie_ intended to
+subvert the throne they had established, for the benefit of either
+the Republicans or the Imperialists, is not to be supposed; but their
+natural disgust with the wickedness of the government as it was at the
+beginning of 1848, and with the refusal of the minister to allow even
+the peaceful discussion of the reform question, was the occasion of the
+kingdom's fall, and of the establishment, first of the shadowy Republic,
+and then of the solid Empire.
+
+The events of 1848 furnished to Louis Napoleon the place whereon to
+stand, whence to move the French world. He must have lived and died an
+exile, but for the Revolution of February. The ability with which he
+profited by events suffices to show that he is entitled to be considered
+a great man as well as a great sovereign. That he had been born in the
+purple, and that he bore a great name, and that through the occurrence
+of several deaths he had become the legitimate heir of Napoleon, were
+favorable circumstances, and helped not a little to promote his purpose;
+but they could not alone have made him Emperor of the French, and the
+world's arbiter. There must have been extraordinary talent in the man
+who aspired as he did, or he would have failed as completely in 1848 as
+he had failed in 1836 and in 1840. But the real power of the man came
+out as soon as he found a standing-place. Previously to 1848, he could
+act only as a criminal in seeking his proper place, as he believed it to
+be. He had first to conquer before he could attempt to govern,--and to
+conquer, too, with the means of his enemy. All this was changed in 1848.
+Then he was safe in France, as he had been in England, and began
+the political race on equal terms with such men as Cavaignac and
+Ledru-Rollin. That he soon passed far ahead of them was, perhaps, as
+much due to circumstances as to his political abilities. The name of
+Bonaparte was associated with the idea of the restoration of order
+and prosperity, and this helped him with that large class of persons,
+embracing both rich men and poor men, who not only believe that "order
+is Heaven's first law," but that under certain conditions it is the
+supreme law, for the maintenance of which all other laws are to be set
+aside and disregarded. These men, whose organ and exponent was M.
+César Romieu, who called so loudly for cannon to put down the
+revolutionists,--"even if it should come from Russia!"--and whose type
+of perfection is the churchyard, were all fanatical supporters of "the
+coming man," and they assisted him along the course with all their might
+and strength. No matter how swiftly he drove, his chariot-wheels seemed
+to them to tarry. The very arguments that were made use of to induce
+other men to act against the rising Bonaparte were those which had
+the most effect in binding them to his cause. He would establish a
+cannonarchy, would he? Well, a cannonarchy was exactly what they
+desired, provided its powers should be directed, not against foreign
+monarchs, but against domestic Republicans. That a government of which
+he should be the head would disregard the constitution, would shackle
+the press, would limit speech, and would suppress the Assembly, was an
+argument in his favor, that, to their minds, was irresistible. Had
+they thought of the Russian War, and of the Italian War, and of the
+extinction of the Pope's temporal power, and of the liberal home-policy
+that was adopted in 1860, as things possible to occur, Louis Napoleon
+would have remained Louis Napoleon to the end of his days, for all the
+support he would have received at their hands. They wished for a sort
+of high-constable, whose business it should be to maintain order by
+breaking the heads or seizing the persons of all who did not take their
+view of men's political duties. It is the custom to speak of this
+class of men as if they were peculiar to France, and to say that their
+existence there is one of the many reasons why that country can never
+long enjoy a period of constitutional liberty. This is not just to
+France. The French are a great people, who have their faults, but who
+are in no sense more servile than are Americans, or Englishmen, or
+Germans. Extreme disciples of order, men who are ready to sacrifice
+everything else for the privileges of making and spending or hoarding
+money in peace, are to be found in all countries; and nowhere are they
+more numerous, and nowhere is their influence greater or more noxious,
+than in the United States. The difference of populations considered,
+there are as many of them in Boston as in Paris; and our breed is
+ready to go as far in sacrificing freedom, and in treating right with
+contempt, as were their French brothers of 1848. The infirmity belongs,
+not to French nature, but to human nature.
+
+Louis Napoleon received not a little assistance, in the early part of
+his French career, from the strongest of his political enemies. The
+friends of both branches of the Bourbons were his friends--at that time,
+and for their own purposes. A restoration was what they desired, and
+they held that it would be easier to convert the Comte de Chambord or
+the Comte de Paris into a king as the consequence of another Bonapartean
+usurpation, than as the consequence of the Republic's continuance. Louis
+Napoleon was to destroy the Republic, and they were to destroy him, with
+the aid of foreign armies. The fate which Cicero wished for Octavius,
+that he should be elevated and then destroyed, was what they meant for
+him. They counted upon the effect of that reaction which so soon set in
+against the revolutions of 1848, and which they did not believe
+would spare any government which had grown out of any one of those
+revolutions. They also believed the Prince to be a fool, and thought
+he would be a much easier person to be disposed of, after he had been
+sufficiently used, than any one of his rivals. They overrated their own
+power as much as they underrated his abilities; and down to the last
+moment, and when the contest had become one for life or death, they bore
+themselves as if they were sure that they were acting against a man who
+had been elevated solely through the force of circumstances, and who
+could not maintain his position. The _coup d'état_ opened their eyes,
+but it was not until the event of the Russian War had secured for the
+Emperor the first place in Europe, that they became convinced that in
+the man who was the ruler of France they had a master. Even now, when
+the condition of every country within the circle of civilization bears
+evidence to the vast weight of Imperial France, it is not difficult to
+find Frenchmen who declare that the Emperor is a mere adventurer, and
+that he is only "a lucky fellow." If they are right, what shall we think
+of all France? Does the reign of Napoleon III. serve only to illustrate
+the proverb, that among the blind the one-eyed man is a king?
+
+The manner in which the French President became Emperor of the French
+has been much criticized. That some of his deeds, at the close of 1851,
+and in the early part of 1852, deserve censure, few of his intelligent
+admirers will be disposed to deny. His defence is, that it was
+impossible for him to act differently without forfeiting his life. The
+contest, in 1851, had assumed such a character, that it was evident
+that the one party or the other must be destroyed. We have M. Guizot's
+authority for saying that in French political contests no quarter is
+ever given, and that the vanquished become as the dead. French history
+shows that there is no exaggeration in this statement, and that every
+political leader in France must fight for his life as well as for his
+post, the loss of the latter placing the former in great peril. This is
+a characteristic of French politics to which sufficient attention has
+not been paid, in discussing the morality of French statesmen. In
+England, for many generations, and in the United States, down to the
+decision of the last Presidential election, a constitutional opposition
+was as much a political institution, and as completely a part of the
+machinery of government, as the administration itself. Formerly,
+opposition was not without its dangers in England, and, whichever party
+had possession of the government, it sought to crush out its opponents
+with all the vigor and venom of an American slavocrat. Charles I. sent
+Sir John Eliot to the Tower, by way of punishing him for the opposition
+he had made to unconstitutional government; and there he died, and there
+he was buried. The execution of Strafford, though as just a deed as ever
+was performed, must be allowed to have resulted from proceedings that
+belong to French politics rather than to those of England since the
+times of the Tudors. All through the reigns of the Stuart kings, and
+down to the Revolution, parties fought for safety as well as for spoils.
+A defeat was then often followed by a butchery. Hume, speaking of the
+political warfare that happened just before the Revolution of 1688, says
+that the "two parties, actuated by mutual rage, but cooped up within the
+narrow limits of the law, levelled with poisoned daggers the most
+deadly blows against each other's breast, and buried in their factious
+divisions all regard to truth, honor, and humanity." This evil was
+gradually, but surely, removed from English politics by the triumph of
+the constitutional party. It lingered, however, for half a century, and
+after the accession of the House of Hanover caused the impeachment of
+Oxford and the exile of Bolingbroke and Ormond. The last pronounced
+appearance of it was in 1742, when Sir Robert Walpole's enemies, not
+content with his political fall, sought his life. They failed utterly,
+and for one hundred and twenty years the course of English politics has
+been strictly constitutional, an opposition party being, as it were, the
+complement of the administration or ministry. The same party divisions
+that existed in England under George II. substantially exist under the
+grand-daughter of his grandson. So has it been in the United States,
+though it would not be difficult to show that none of our parties have
+been so free from approaching to the verge of illegality as English
+parties have been since 1714; and the conduct of the present American
+opposition is simply detestable, and has destroyed the national
+constitution.
+
+The French began their political imitation of the English in 1789. As
+in most imitations, caricature has largely predominated in it. The one
+thing that might advantageously have been imitated they have altogether
+neglected. They never have been able to comprehend the nature and the
+purpose of an opposition party, and hence every such party that has come
+into existence in France has been treated by the governing party as if
+it were composed of enemies of the State. When the Jacobins sent the
+Girondins to the scaffold, and when Robespierre and St. Just sent Danton
+and Desmoulins to the same place, and when the Thermidorians so disposed
+of Robespierre and St. Just, they did no more than has been done by
+other French political leaders, except that their measures were more
+trenchant than have been those of later statesmen of their country. The
+reason why the Revolution led to a military despotism was, that no
+party would tolerate its political foes, much less protect them in the
+exercise of the right of free discussion and legal action. The execution
+of Louis XVI. was but a solitary incident in the game that was played by
+the most excitable political gamblers that ever converted a nation into
+a card-table. He was slain, not so much because he was a king, or had
+been one, as because he was the natural chief of the Royal party, a
+party which the Republicans would not spare. Party after party rose and
+fell, the leaders perishing under the guillotine, or flying from their
+country, or being sent to Guiana. Despotism came as a relief to the
+people who were thus tormented by the bloody freaks of men who were
+energetic only as murderers. There probably never was a more popular
+government than Bonaparte's Consulship, in its first days. Soon,
+however, the old evil renewed itself in full force. A few men, the most
+conspicuous of whom was Carnot, confined their opposition to the policy
+of the government, and kept themselves within the limits of the law;
+but others were less scrupulous, and labored for the destruction of the
+government, and compassed the death of the governors. Jacobins were as
+bad as Royalists, and Royalists were no better than Jacobins. Confusion
+was as much the object of the party of order as it was that of the party
+of disorder. Men of all ranks, opinions, parties, and conditions were
+among the conspirators of those days, or in some way encouraged the
+conspirators, from Cadoudal, a hero of the Vendée, to Moreau, the hero
+of the Black Forest and Hohenlinden. The vigorous, and in some instances
+tyrannical, action of the government put a stop to this kind of
+opposition for some years. The seizure and execution of the Duc
+d'Enghien, though in itself not to be approved, was followed by a
+cessation of Royalist attempts against the person of the chief of the
+State. It was one of those terrible lessons by which constituted power
+sometimes teaches its enemies that the force of lawlessness is not
+necessarily confined to one side in a political controversy. Nothing
+contributed more to the establishment of the Empire than the violence
+of Bonaparte's enemies, as they favored the plan of establishing an
+hereditary monarchy, the existence of which should not be bound up with
+the existence of an individual. During the reign of Napoleon I. the
+opposition was quiet, but it was organized, and its conduct was from
+first to last illegal, as it corresponded with the banished princes, and
+with the foreign enemies of France. The Mallet affair, in 1812, which
+came so very near effecting the Emperor's dethronement when he was in
+the midst of his Russian disasters, shows how frail was his tenure
+of power when he was absent from Paris, and how extensive were the
+ramifications of the informal conspiracy that existed against him. "You
+have found the tail, but not the head," were the words in which the
+bold conspirator let his judges know that the danger was not over. The
+Legislative Body endeavored to act as an opposition party in France
+after the disasters of 1813, and the Emperor, after giving them a
+lecture, dismissed them. The Allies would never have dared to cross
+the French frontier, had they not been advised of the existence of
+disaffection, which was ready to become treason, in their enemy's
+country. The opposition to Louis XVIII.'s government was highly
+treasonable in its character; and so was that which Napoleon encountered
+during the Hundred Days. When the second Restoration had been effected,
+the French government found itself in a strange predicament. The
+extraordinary Chamber of Deputies which then met, "the Impracticable
+Chamber," was so intensely royalist in its sentiments, that it alarmed
+every reasonable friend of monarchy in Europe. It would have subjected
+the king himself to its will, in order that it might be free to punish
+the enemies of royalty with even more vigor and cruelty than the
+Jacobins had punished its friends. There was to be a revival of the
+Terror by the party which had suffered in 1793, and for the purpose of
+exterminating imperialists, republicans, and moderate monarchists. Lord
+Macaulay has compared this Chamber with the first English Parliament
+that was called after the restoration of the House of Stuart. The
+comparison is unfair to the Parliament. There had been a long and a
+bitter war between parties in England, and the Cavaliers remembered,
+because they were events of yesterday, the terrible series of defeats
+they had experienced, from Edgehill to Worcester. Between the date of
+the Battle of Worcester and the date of the Restoration there were less
+than nine years. The same generation that saw Charles I. beheaded saw
+Charles II. enter Whitehall. England had changed but little in the
+twenty years that elapsed between the meeting of the Long Parliament and
+the dissolution of the Convention Parliament. Very different was it in
+France. There parties had had no fighting in the field, save in Brittany
+and the Vendée. There the change had been as complete as if it had been
+half a century in the making. Twenty-three years had passed away since
+the fall of the monarchy, when the Impracticable Chamber met, to
+legislate for a new France in the spirit of the worst period of the
+reigns of the worst Bourbons. These ultra-royalists would have had their
+way, and the massacres of the Protestants would have been accompanied or
+followed by the destruction of all parties save the victors, but for the
+existence of circumstances which it is even now painful for Frenchmen
+to think of. The Allies occupied the country, and their influence was
+thrown in behalf of moderate counsels. The good-nature of Louis XVIII.
+was supported by the sound common-sense of Wellington, and by the
+humanity of Alexander; and so but few persons were punished for
+political offences. The conduct of the Chamber showed that the Deputies
+had no just conception of the nature either of a ministry or of an
+opposition. So it was, though with less violence, throughout the period
+known as the Restoration; and the Polignac movement of 1830, which led
+to the fall of the elder Bourbons, was a _coup d'état_, the object being
+the destruction of the Charter. In Louis Philippe's reign, there were
+facts upon facts that establish the proposition that no French party
+then clearly comprehended the character of a political opposition; and
+it was the attempt of M. Guizot to prevent even the discussion of the
+reform question that was the occasion, though not the cause, of the
+Revolution of 1848. No sooner had the Republic been established than the
+Royalists began to conspire against its existence, while the Republicans
+themselves were far from being united, the _Reds_ hating the _Blues_
+quite as intensely as they hated the _Whites_, or old Royalists; and
+beyond even the _Reds_ were large numbers of men who, for the lack of a
+more definite name, have been called Socialists, who wanted something as
+vehemently as Brutus desired his purposes, but who would probably have
+been much puzzled to say what that something was, had the question been
+put to them by the agent of a power willing and able to gratify their
+wish.
+
+It was into such a political chaos as this that Louis Napoleon found
+himself plunged in 1848. He had a difficult part to fill; and that he
+did not succeed in satisfying most of those who had been most prominent
+in elevating him was inevitable from the discrepancy between his views
+of his position and their views of it. They had intended him to be a
+tool, and he was determined to be master of all the land. There was a
+contest for power, which ended in the _coup d'état_ of 1851. Victory
+waited on the heir of her old favorite. The contest was marked by many
+deeds, on both sides, not defensible on strict moral grounds, but which
+bear too close a resemblance to the ordinary course of French politics
+to admit of the actors being sweepingly condemned, as if they had
+poisoned a pure fountain. Neither party could afford to act with
+fairness, because each party was convinced that the other was seeking
+its destruction, according to the usual rule of Gallic political
+warfare. That the world should have heard much of the errors of the
+victor, while those of the vanquished have been charitably passed over,
+is but natural. Victors become objects of envy, while pity is the
+feeling that is created by thoughts of their foes. It is only in America
+that the beaten party is so insolent that the conquerors are fairly
+over-crowed by it. All the blunders, all the acts of violence of which
+the other side were guilty, have been forgotten, or are not alluded
+to, because parties are not held accountable for evils that never were
+perpetrated, though it was intended that they should take form and shape
+and bear fruit. It is charged against the Emperor, that he deliberately
+planned the destruction of the Republic, and that he ceased not to
+labor until his purpose had been effected. Admitting this charge to be
+strictly well founded, what is it more than can be brought against the
+very men who are so loud in preferring it? The Republic was doomed from
+the hour of its birth, and the final struggle between the Imperialists
+and the Royalists was made over its carcass. That struggle was neither a
+Pharsalia, in which two great men contended for supremacy in a republic,
+nor a Philippi, in which parties fought deliberately in support of
+certain principles, but an Actium; and the question to be decided was,
+With which of two energetic forms of force should the victory be? Louis
+Napoleon contended for the imperial form, for the rehabilitation of the
+scheme of his uncle, and for an opportunity to develop the Napoleonic
+ideas. The other side sought the restoration of the monarchy as it had
+been between 1814 and 1830, with Henry V. for their idol, as any attempt
+to make the Comte de Paris king must have failed, though in due time
+Henry V. might have been displaced, if not succeeded regularly, by the
+head of the Orléans family. Of the two parties to the struggle that
+followed the election of Louis Napoleon to the Presidency, that of the
+President was the more friendly to liberal institutions, and the most
+disposed to govern in accordance with modern sentiments. The President
+himself was attached to the liberal party, and leaned decidedly to
+the left wing of it. Circumstances had all tended to make him a
+Constitutionalist. His connections had been principally with those
+countries in which liberty is best understood, and whose histories are
+the histories of freedom. By birth he was a prince of Holland. He had
+lived much in Switzerland and in England, and he had visited the United
+States. That part of his youth in which the mind is formed he had passed
+in those years in which the Bonapartists and Liberals had been allies.
+His writings prove that he both understood and appreciated the
+constitutional system of government. Such a man was not likely to become
+a despot merely from choice, though circumstances might make him one
+for the time, as they made Fabius a dictator. His recent action, in
+extensively liberalizing the imperial system, and in providing for
+perfect freedom of discussion in the Senate and the Legislative Body,--a
+freedom of which the supporters of the Pope have thoroughly availed
+themselves,--confirms the belief that his original intention was to
+provide a free constitution for France. Had he done so, there would
+have been civil war in that country within a year from the time that he
+became master of it. He could not trust his enemies, who, could they
+have obtained power, would have granted him no mercy, and therefore had
+no right to expect it from him. Had they been successful, we should have
+heard much of their acts of usurpation and cruelty, and of the injustice
+with which the President and his party and policy had been treated.
+Severe criticism, often unfair both in matter and in manner, is that
+which every victorious party must experience, not only from those whom
+it has defeated, but from the world at large. This is one of the items
+in the details of the heavy price which the victors must pay for their
+victory, no matter where it is won, or what the character of the contest
+the issue of which it has decided. Men worship success, but they worship
+it much after the fashion that some savage tribes worship the gods
+created by their own hands, tearing and rending at one time the images
+that at another had been objects of their most abject devotion.
+
+If we judge the conduct of Louis Napoleon by reference only to Napoleon
+III., we shall not be inclined to condemn it. His rule has not been a
+perfect one, but it has been the best that France has known for fifty
+years, not only for the French themselves, but for foreign peoples. He
+has lifted France out of that slough in which she had floundered under
+both branches of the Bourbons, and he has done so without being guilty
+of any act of injustice toward other nations. The greatness of the
+France of Napoleon I. was unpleasingly associated with the idea of the
+degradation of neighboring countries, which implied the ultimate fall of
+the Empire, as it could not be expected that Russians and Germans would
+be governed from Paris. Independence is what every people strong enough
+to vindicate its rights will have; and hence the men at St. Petersburg
+and Vienna and Berlin were certain to act against the men of Paris
+at the first favorable opportunity that should present itself. Their
+dependent state was an unnatural state, and when the reaction came, the
+torrent swept all before it. The fall of Napoleon I. was the consequence
+of the manner in which he rose to the greatest height ever achieved by
+a man in modern days. Napoleon III., whose power is really greater than
+that of his uncle, has incurred the enmity of no foreign people. He
+has led his armies into no European capital city, and he has levied no
+foreign contributions. When it was in his power to dictate terms to
+Russia, he astonished men, and even made them angry, by the extent of
+his moderation. His abrupt pause in his career of Italian success, no
+matter what the motive of it, enabled Austria to retire from a war in
+which she had found nothing but defeat, with the air of a victor. The
+only additions he has made to the territory of France--Savoy, Nice, and
+Monaco--were obtained by the fair consent of all those who had any right
+to be consulted on the changes that were made. We find nothing in his
+conduct that betrays any desire to humiliate his contemporaries, and a
+superiority to vulgar ideas of what constitutes triumph that is
+almost without a parallel. No man was ever treated more insolently by
+hereditary sovereigns, from Czar and Kaiser and King to petty German
+princelings; and this insolence he has never repaid in kind, nor sought
+to repay in any manner. He has foregone occasions for vengeance that
+legitimate monarchs would have turned to the fullest account for the
+gratification of their hatred. He has, apparently, none of that vanity
+which led Napoleon I. to be pleased with having his antechamber full of
+kings whose hearts were brimful of hatred of their lord and master.
+If he were to have an Erfurt Congress, it would be as plain and
+unostentatious an affair as that of his uncle was superficially grand
+and striking. He seems perpetually to have before his mind's eye what
+the Greeks called _the envy of the gods_, the divine Nemesis, to which
+he daily makes sacrifice. He is the most prosperous of men, but he is
+determined not to be prosperity's spoiled child. If the truth were
+known, it would probably be found that he has not a single personal
+enemy among the monarchs, all of whom would, as politicians, be glad
+to witness his fall. In their secret hearts they say that "Monsieur
+Bonaparte is a well-behaved man, to whom they could wish well in any
+other part than that which he prefers to hold." Their predecessors hated
+Napoleon I. personally, and with intense bitterness, which accounts for
+the readiness with which they took parts in the hunting of the eagle,
+and for the rancor with which they treated him when his turn came to
+drain the cup of humiliation to the very dregs. The dislike felt for
+Napoleon III. is simply political, and such dislike is not incompatible
+with liberality in judgment and generosity of action. Should it be his
+fortune to fall, there would be no St. Helena provided for him.
+
+The domestic rule of the Emperor of the French will bear comparison
+with that of any monarch which that people have ever had. It is not
+faultless, but it is as little open to criticism of a just nature as
+that of any European sovereign, and with reference to the changed
+position of sovereigns. We are not to compare Napoleon III. with Louis
+XIV., that sublime and ridiculous egotist, who seems never to have had a
+human feeling, except those feelings which humanity would be the better
+without. The French Revolution banished that breed of kings from
+Christendom, if not from the world. He must be compared with monarchs
+who have felt the responsibilities of their trust very differently from
+the man who called himself the State, who thought that twenty millions
+of people had been made to minister to his vanity, and who gently
+reproached God with ingratitude because of the victories of Eugène
+and Marlborough. "God, it appears, is forgetting us," he said,
+"notwithstanding all that we have done for Him." A monarch of this class
+is now as extinct as the mammoth, and traces of his footsteps excite the
+wonder of the disciples of political science. In these days, a monarch
+must rule mostly for the people, and largely by the people. He is only
+the popular chief in a country which has not a well-defined constitution
+over which time has thrown the mantle of reverence. The course of
+Napoleon III. has been in accordance with this view of his position. He
+is not the State, but he is the first man in the State. Under his lead
+and direction the French have known much material prosperity, and have
+added not a little to that wealth which, when judiciously used as a
+means, and not worshipped as the end of human exertion, is the source of
+so much happiness. The readiness with which the people, the masses
+of his subjects, subscribed to the great war-loans, contending for
+subscriptions as for valuable privileges, establishes both their
+prosperity under his government, and their confidence in that
+government's strength and permanence. That he has not made use of his
+power to stifle the expression of thought is clear from the numerous
+works that have been published, some of which were written for the
+purpose of attacking his dynasty,--authors of eminence choosing to
+pervert history by converting its volumes into huge partisan pamphlets,
+in which the subject handled and the object aimed at are alike libelled.
+He has kept the press, meaning the journals, more sharply reined up than
+Englishmen and Americans have approved or can approve; but as French
+journalists, instead of confining their political warfare to its proper
+use, are in the habit, when free to publish what they please, of
+assailing the very existence of the government itself, he has some
+excuse for his conduct. An English journal which should recommend the
+dethronement of Victoria would be as summarily silenced as ever was
+a French White, Blue, or Red paper. The most determined advocate of
+freedom of discussion must find it hard to disapprove of the suppression
+of the "Univers," which, while availing itself of every possible license
+to advocate the extremest doctrines of despotism in Church and State,
+demanded the suppression of freedom of all kinds in every other quarter.
+It is an advantage to the enemies of free speech, that they can avail
+themselves of its existence to advocate restriction in its comprehensive
+sense, while their opponents cannot consistently demand that they shall
+be silenced. Under the liberal policy which has just been inaugurated
+in France, great advantages will be enjoyed by the enemies of the
+government, and of free principles generally; and the Emperor is
+reported to have said that he shall accept the logical consequences of
+that policy, let the result be what it may. What has thus far happened
+confirms this report; but it ought not to surprise us, if he should find
+himself compelled to have resort to measures of restriction not much
+different from those "warnings" that have been fatal to more than one
+journal in times past. The tendency in the French mind to illegal
+opposition, and of the French government to meet such opposition by
+harsh action, will not allow us to be very sanguine as to the workings
+of the experiment upon which the Emperor has entered. His chief object
+is to establish his dynasty, and he cannot tolerate attacks upon that;
+and attacks of that kind would form the staple of the opposition press,
+were it permitted to become as free as the press is in England and in
+the Northern States of America.
+
+One of the charges that have been made against the Imperial system is,
+that it is a stratocracy, a mere government by the sword, and that it
+must pass away with the Emperor himself, or be continued in the person
+of some military man; so that France must degenerate into a vast
+Algiers, and be ruled by a succession of Deys. There is something
+plausible in this view of the subject, which has imposed upon many
+persons, and which is all the more imposing because the Emperor is
+fifty-three years old, while his only son has but completed his fifth
+year; and Prince Napoleon is not popular with the army, and is an object
+of both fear and dislike to the members of several powerful interests.
+The Imperialists have themselves principally to blame for this state of
+things, as they have encouraged and promulgated opinions that favor
+its existence. Clever historical writers have discovered a remarkable
+resemblance between the France of to-day and the Roman Empire of the
+days of Augustus. Napoleon I. was the modern Julius Caesar, and Napoleon
+III. is Octavius. The Emperor is writing a Life of Julius Caesar, and it
+is believed that it is his purpose to establish the fact that his family
+is playing the part which the family of Caesar played more than eighteen
+centuries ago. If one were disposed to be critical, it would not be
+difficult to point out, that, as the first Roman imperial dynasty became
+Claudian rather than Julian in its blood and character, after the death
+of Augustus, so has the French imperial dynasty a better claim to be
+considered of the family of Beauharnais than of the family of Bonaparte.
+This Caesarian game is a foolish one, and may be played to an ultimate
+loss. Of the difference between France as she is and Rome as she was in
+the times of the first Caesars it is not necessary to say much, for
+it presents itself to every cultivated mind. The Roman Empire was an
+aggregation of various nations, including the highest and lowest forms
+of human development then known, and stretching from the Atlantic to the
+Euphrates, and from the forests of Germany to the deserts of Africa.
+Over that vast and various collection of peoples a portion of Italy bore
+sway; and it was to break down the tyranny of that Italian rule that the
+Julian rule was created, and that the Republic was made to give way to
+the Empire.
+
+The cause of the Caesars was the cause of the provincials against the
+Italians, of the masses in twenty lands against the aristocracy of but a
+part of one land, of many millions of sheep against a few select wolves.
+The revolution that was effected through the agency of Julius and
+Octavius was necessary for the continuance of civilization, which
+was threatened with extinction through the plundering processes of
+proprietors and proconsuls. The Roman Emperor was the shepherd,
+who, though he might shear his sheep close to their skins, and not
+unfrequently convert many of them into mutton, for his own profit or
+pleasure, would nevertheless protect them against the wolves. He stood
+between the imperial race, of which he was himself the first member,
+and all the other races that were to be found in his extensive and
+diversified dominions. The question that he settled was one of races,
+not merely one of parties and political principles. What resemblance,
+then, can there be between the French Emperor and the Roman Imperator,
+or between the quarrel decided by the Napoleons and that which was
+decided by the first two Caesars? There may be said to be some
+resemblance between them, from the fact that the French aristocracy, as
+a body, belong to the party that is hostile to the Bonapartes, and
+that it was the Roman aristocracy who were beaten at Pharsalia and
+politically destroyed at Philippi; but the nobility of France were
+ruined before the name of Bonaparte had been raised from obscurity, and
+the first Napoleon sought to please and to conciliate the remnants of
+that once brilliant order. There can be no comparison made between the
+two aristocracies; as the Roman was one of the ablest and most ferocious
+bodies of men that the world has ever seen, and made a long and
+desperate fight for the maintenance of its power,--while the French is
+effete, and it is difficult to believe that in the veins of its members
+runs the blood of the heroes of the days of the League, or even that of
+the _Frondeurs_. Their political action reminds us of nothing but the
+playing of children; and the best of the leaders of the opposition to
+the Imperial _régime_ are new men, most of whose names were never heard
+of until the present century. The Imperial family, too, unlike that of
+Rome, is a new family. The democratic revolution of Rome, which led
+to the fall of the Republic, was enabled to triumph only because the
+movement was headed by one of the noblest-born of Romans, a patrician of
+the bluest blood, who claimed descent from Venus, and from the last
+of the Trojan heroes. No Roman had a loftier lineage than "the mighty
+Julius"; and when the place of Augustus passed to Tiberius, the third
+Emperor represented the Claudian _gens_, the most arrogant, overbearing,
+haughty, and cruel of all those patrician _gentes_ that figure in the
+history of the republican times. He belonged, too, to the family of
+Nero, which was to the rest of the Claudian _gens_ what that _gens_ was
+to other men,--the representative of all that is peculiarly detestable
+in an oligarchical fraternity. The French Caesars are emphatically
+_novi homines_, the founder of their greatness not being in existence
+a century ago, and born of a poor family, which had never made any
+impression on history. There are abundant points of contrast to be
+found, when we examine the origin of Imperial Rome in connection with
+the origin of Imperial France, but few of resemblance.
+
+Even in the bad elements of the modern Imperial rule there is little
+imitation of that of the Caesars. "The ordinary notion of absolute
+government, derived from the form it assumes in Europe at the present
+day," says Merivale, "is that of a strict system of prevention, which,
+by means of a powerful army, an ubiquitous police, and a censorship
+of letters, anticipates every manifestation of freedom in thought or
+action, from whence inconvenience may arise to it. But this was not the
+system of the Caesarean Empire. Faithful to the traditions of the Free
+State, Augustus had quartered all his armies on the frontiers, and his
+successors were content with concentrating, cohort by cohort, a small,
+though trusty force, for their own protection in the capital. The
+legions were useful to the Emperor, not as instruments for the
+repression of discontent at home, but as faithful auxiliaries among whom
+the most dangerous of his nobles might be relegated, in posts which were
+really no more than honorable exiles. Nor was the regular police of the
+city an engine of tyranny. Volunteers might be found in every rank
+to perform the duty of spies; but it was apparently no part of the
+functions of the enlisted guardians of the streets to watch the
+countenances of the citizens, or beset their privacy. We hear of no
+intrusion into private assemblies, no dispersion of crowds in the
+streets...... They [the Emperors] made no effort to impose restraints
+upon thought. Freedom of thought may be checked in two ways, and modern
+despotism resorts in its restless jealousy to both. The one is, to guide
+ideas by seizing on the channels of education; the other, to subject
+their utterance to the control of a censorship. In neither one way nor
+the other did Augustus or Nero interfere at all. From the days of the
+Republic the system of education had been perfectly untrammelled. It was
+simply a matter of arrangement between the parties directly interested,
+the teacher and the learner. Neither State nor Church pretended to take
+any concern in it: neither priest nor magistrate regarded it with the
+slightest jealousy. Public opinion ranged, under ordinary circumstances,
+in perfect freedom, and under its unchecked influence both the aims and
+methods of education continued long to be admirably adapted to make
+intelligent men and useful citizens...... The same indulgence which
+was extended to education smiled upon the literature which flowed so
+copiously from it. There was no restriction upon writing or publication
+at Rome analogous to our censorships and licensing acts. The fact that
+books were copied by the hand, and not printed for general circulation,
+seems to present no real difficulty to the enforcement of such
+restrictions, had it been the wish of the government to enforce them.
+The noble Roman, indeed, surrounded by freedmen and clients of various
+ability, by rhetoricians and sophists, poets and declaimers, had within
+his own doors private aid for executing his literary projects; and when
+his work was compiled, he had in the slaves of his household the hands
+for multiplying copies, for dressing and binding them, and sending forth
+an edition, as we should say, of his work to the select public of his
+own class or society. The circulation of compositions thus manipulated
+might be to some extent surreptitious and secret. But such a mode of
+proceeding was necessarily confined to few. The ordinary writer must
+have had recourse to a professional publisher, who undertook, as a
+tradesman, to present his work for profit to the world. Upon these
+agents the government might have had all the hold it required: yet it
+never demanded the sight beforehand of any speech, essay, or satire
+which was advertised as about to appear. It was still content to punish
+after publication what it deemed to be censurable excesses. Severe and
+arbitrary as some of its proceedings were in this respect,... it must
+be allowed that these prosecutions of written works were rare and
+exceptional, and that the traces we discover of the freedom of letters,
+even under the worst of the Emperors, leave on the whole a strong
+impression of the general leniency of their policy in this
+particular."[A] This correct picture of the policy of Imperial Rome on
+this point shows that the ancient sovereigns of the first of empires
+were more liberal than are modern rulers of their class, and that the
+Caesars scorned to do that which has been common with the Bonapartes.
+The changes in the direction of freedom which Napoleon III. has recently
+made are really more Caesarean in their character than anything that he
+had previously done in connection with thought and public discussion. It
+ought to be added, however, that the Romans had no daily press, and that
+journalism, as we understand it, was as unknown to the Caesars as were
+steamships and rifled cannon. Had they been troubled with those daily
+showers of Sibylline leaves that so vex modern potentates, their
+magnanimity would have been severely tested, and they might have
+established as severe censorships as ever have been known in Paris or
+Vienna.
+
+[Footnote A: _A History of the Romans under the Empire_. By CHARLES
+MERIVALE, B.D., late Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge. Vol. VI.,
+pp. 224-231.]
+
+Flattery has discovered a resemblance between the career of Napoleon
+III. and the career of Augustus, and it required the eyes of flattery
+to make such a discovery. The Frenchman is the equal of the Roman in
+talent, but the resemblance goes no farther. What resemblance can there
+be between the boy who became a statesman at twenty and the man who
+began his career at forty? between the youth who made himself master of
+the Roman situation in a few months and the elderly man whose position
+at fifty-three is by no means an assured one? between the man who at
+thirty-three had destroyed all rivals and competitors, and gathered into
+his person all the powers of the State, and the man who at a much later
+period of life is still engaged upon an experiment in politics? Augustus
+avenged the murder of Julius within a brief time after it had been
+perpetrated; Napoleon III. has never avenged the fall of _his_
+uncle, but has refrained from injuring his uncle's destroyers, when,
+apparently, he might have done so with profit to himself, and with the
+general approbation of the world. Augustus's public life knew but one
+signal calamity, the loss of the legions of Varus, which happened toward
+its close, and in his dying moments he could congratulate himself on
+having played well, which meant successfully, his part in the drama of
+life. Napoleon III.'s life has been full of calamities, and it remains
+yet to be seen whether history shall have to rank him among its
+favorites, or high in the list of those unfortunates against whom it
+has recorded sentence of everlasting condemnation. Should he live, and
+maintain his place, and bequeath his throne to his son, and that son be
+of an age to appreciate his position, and possessed of fair talent,
+he may pass for the modern Augustus; but thinking of him, and of the
+strange reverses of fortune that have happened since 1789 to men and to
+nations, we subscribe to the wisdom of the hackneyed Greek sentiment,
+that no man should be called fortunate until the seal of death shall
+have placed an everlasting and an impassable barrier between him and the
+cruel sports of Mutabilities which are played "to many men's decay."
+
+In one respect it will be allowed by all but absolutists that the
+condition of Europe has changed greatly for the better in the last
+eleven years, as a consequence of the triumphs of the French Emperor.
+From the year 1815 to 1850, national independence was in its true sense
+unknown to Continental Europe. The ascendency of Napoleon I. had small
+claim to faultlessness, but the men who led in the work of his overthrow
+proceeded as if they meant to make the world regret his fall. This is
+the secret--which secret is none--of the reaction that speedily took
+place in his favor, and which caused an alliance of Liberals and
+Jacobins and Imperialists to do honor to his memory; so that, being
+dead, he was from his island-sepulchre a more effective foe to
+legitimacy and the established order of things than he had been from St.
+Cloud and the Tuileries. It has been satirically said that a mythical
+Napoleon rose from the dust of the dead Emperor, who bore no moral
+resemblance to Europe's master of 1812. As to the resemblance between
+the master of a hundred legions and "the dead but sceptred sovereign" of
+1824, who ruled men's spirits from his urn, we will not stop to inquire;
+but it can be positively asserted that the mythical Napoleon, if any
+such creation there was, was the work of the true Napoleon's destroyers.
+They earned the hatred and detestation of the greater part of the better
+classes in the civilized world; and as it is the nature of men to love
+those who have warred against the objects of their hate, nothing was
+more natural than for Europeans and Americans to turn fondly to the
+memory of one who had beaten and trampled upon every member of the Holy
+Alliance, and who had carried the tricolor, that emblem of revolution,
+to Vienna and Berlin and Moscow. Men wished to have their own feet upon
+the necks of Francis and Frederick William and Alexander, and therefore
+they were ready to forget the faults, and to remember only the virtues,
+of one who had enjoyed the luxury they so much coveted. It would be
+unreasonable to complain of that disposition of the public mind toward
+Napoleon I. which prevailed from about the date of his death to that of
+the restoration of his dynasty in the person of his nephew, or to sneer
+at the inconsistency of "that many-headed monster thing," the people,
+who had shouted over the decisions of Vittoria and Leipsic, and before
+a decade had expired were regretting that those decisions could not be
+reversed; for the change was the consequence of the operations of an
+immutable law, of that reaction which dogs the heels of all conquerors.
+The legitimate despots, whose union had been too much for the parvenu
+despot, established a tyranny over Europe that threatened to stunt the
+human mind, and which would have left the world hopeless, if England
+had not resolved to part company with her military allies. But her
+condemnation of their policy did not prevent its development. Even the
+events of 1830 did not restore national freedom to the Continent;
+and fifteen years after the overthrow of the elder Bourbons, the
+partitioners of Poland could unite, in defiance of their plighted faith,
+to destroy the independence of Cracow, the last shadowy remnant of old
+and glorious Poland. The ascendency of Napoleon III. has put a stop to
+such proceedings as were common from the invasion of France, in 1815, to
+the invasion of Hungary, in 1849. He has, to be sure, interfered in the
+affairs of foreign countries, but his acts of interference have been
+made against the strong, and not against the weak. He interfered to
+protect Turkey when she was threatened with destruction by Russia, and
+he did so with success. He interfered to protect the Italians against
+the hordes of Austria, and with such effect that the _Kingdom of Italy_
+has been called into existence through his action, when there was not
+another sovereign in the world who would have fired a shot to prevent
+the whole Italian Peninsula, and the great islands of Sicily and
+Sardinia, from becoming Austrian provinces. He interfered to protect the
+Christians of the East against the fire and sword of the Mussulmans, and
+it is under the shadow of the French flag alone that Christianity can be
+preached in the Lebanon and in the Hollow Syria, in the aged Damascus
+and in the historical Sidon. He has interfered to assist England in
+China, whereby there has been a new world, as it were, opened to the
+enterprise of commerce. He has falsified the predictions of those who
+have seen in him only the enemy of England, and who have told us twice
+a year, for nine years past, that he would attempt to throw his legions
+into Kent, and to march them upon London. He has added nothing to the
+territory of France that has not been honorably acquired. Having thus
+redeemed Europe from degradation, and not having justified the fears of
+those who expected him to renew the old duel between France and
+England, his continued prosperity may be earnestly desired by Liberals
+everywhere, and with perfect consistency; for can any intelligent man
+venture to say that there would be any hope for a better state of
+things, either for France or for Europe at large, should his rule be
+changed for that of either branch of the Bourbons, or for that of the
+Republicans, Red or Blue? Considering the good that he has done, and the
+evil that he might have done, and yet has refrained from doing, he will
+compare advantageously with any living ruler; and mankind can overlook
+his errors in view of his virtues,--save and except those men whom he
+vanquished at their own weapons, and whose chief regret it is, that,
+being no better political moralists than was the Prince-President, their
+immorality was fruitless, while his, according to their interpretation
+of his history, gave him empire. Other men, whom his success has not
+consigned to partisan darkness, will judge him more justly, and say that
+his victory was the proper meed of superior ability, and that whatever
+was vicious in his manner of acquiring power has been redeemed by the
+use he has almost invariably made of that power. He is not without sin;
+but if he shall not die until he shall be stoned by saints selected from
+governments and parties, his existence will be prolonged until doomsday.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+CONCERNING THINGS SLOWLY LEARNT.
+
+
+You will see in a little while what sort of things they are which I
+understand by _Things Slowly Learnt_. Some are facts, some are moral
+truths, some are practical lessons; but the great characteristic of all
+those which are to be thought of in this essay is, that we have to learn
+them and act upon them in the face of a strong bias to think or act in
+an opposite way. It is not that they are so difficult in themselves,
+not that they are hard to be understood, or that they are supported by
+arguments whose force is not apparent to every mind. On the contrary,
+the things which I have especially in view are very simple, and for the
+most part quite unquestionable. But the difficulty of learning them lies
+in this: that, as regards them, the head seems to say one thing and the
+heart another. We see plainly enough what we ought to think or to do;
+but we feel an irresistible inclination to think or to do something
+else. It is about three or four of these things that we are going, my
+friend, to have a little quiet talk. We are going to confine our view
+to a single class, though possibly the most important class, in the
+innumerable multitude of Things Slowly Learnt.
+
+The truth is, a great many things are slowly learnt. I have lately had
+occasion to observe that the Alphabet is one of these. I remember,
+too, in my own sorrowful experience, how the Multiplication Table was
+another. A good many years since, an eminent dancing-master undertook
+to teach a number of my schoolboy companions a graceful and easy
+deportment; but comparatively few of us can be said as yet to have
+thoroughly attained it. I know men who have been practising the art of
+extempore speaking for many years, but who have reached no perfection in
+it, and who, if one may judge from their confusion and hesitation
+when they attempt to speak, are not likely ever to reach even decent
+mediocrity in that wonderful accomplishment. Analogous statements might
+be made, with truth, with regard to my friend Mr. Snarling's endeavors
+to produce magazine articles; likewise concerning his attempts to skate,
+and his efforts to ride on horseback unlike a tailor. Some folk learn
+with remarkable slowness that Nature never intended them for wits. There
+have been men who have punned, ever more and more wretchedly, to the end
+of a long and highly respectable life. People submitted in silence to
+the infliction; no one liked to inform those reputable individuals that
+they had better cease to make fools of themselves. This, however, is
+part of a larger subject, which shall be treated hereafter.
+
+On the other hand, there are things which are very quickly
+learnt,--which are learnt by a single lesson. One liberal tip, or even
+a few kind words heartily said, to a manly little schoolboy, will
+establish in his mind the rooted principle that the speaker of the words
+or the bestower of the tip is a jolly and noble specimen of humankind.
+Boys are great physiognomists: they read a man's nature at a glance.
+Well I remember how, when going to and from school, a long journey of
+four hundred miles, in days when such a journey implied travel by sea as
+well as by land, I used to know instantly the gentlemen or the railway
+officials to whom I might apply for advice or information. I think that
+this intuitive perception of character is blunted in after years. A man
+is often mistaken in his first impression of man or woman; a boy hardly
+ever. And a boy not only knows at once whether a human being is amiable
+or the reverse, he knows also whether the human being is wise or
+foolish. In particular, he knows at once whether the human being always
+means what he says, or says a great deal more than he means. Inferior
+animals learn some lessons quickly. A dog once thrashed for some offence
+knows quite well not to repeat it. A horse turns for the first time down
+the avenue to a house where he is well fed and cared for; next week,
+or next month, you pass that gate, and though the horse has been long
+taught to submit his will to yours, you can easily see that he knows the
+place again, and that he would like to go back to the stable with which,
+in his poor, dull, narrow mind, there are pleasant associations. I
+would give a good deal to know what a horse is thinking about. There is
+something very curious and very touching about the limited intelligence
+and the imperfect knowledge of that immaterial principle in which the
+immaterial does not imply the immortal. And yet, if we are to rest
+the doctrine of a future life in any degree upon the necessity of
+compensation for the sufferings and injustice of the present, I think
+the sight of the cab-horses of any large town might plead for the
+admission of some quiet world of green grass and shady trees, where
+there should be no cold, starvation, over-work, or flogging. Some one
+has said that the most exquisite material scenery would look very
+cold and dead in the entire absence of irrational life. Trees suggest
+singing-birds; flowers and sunshine make us think of the drowsy bees.
+And it is curious to think how the future worlds of various creeds are
+described as not without their lowly population of animals inferior to
+man. We know what the "poor Indian" expects shall bear him company in
+his humble heaven; and possibly various readers may know some dogs who
+in certain important respects are very superior to certain men. You
+remember how, when a war-chief of the Western prairies was laid by
+his tribe in his grave, his horse was led to the spot in the funeral
+procession, and at the instant when the earth was cast upon the dead
+warrior's dust, an arrow reached the noble creature's heart, that in the
+land of souls the man should find his old friend again. And though it
+has something of the grotesque, I think it has more of the pathetic, the
+aged huntsman of Mr. Assheton Smith desiring to be buried by his master,
+with two horses and a few couples of dogs, that they might all be ready
+to start together when they met again far away.
+
+This is a deviation; but that is of no consequence. It is of the essence
+of the present writer's essays to deviate from the track. Only we must
+not forget the thread of the discourse; and after our deviation we must
+go back to it. All this came of our remarking that some things are
+very quickly learnt; and that certain inferior classes of our
+fellow-creatures learn them quickly. But deeper and larger lessons are
+early learnt. Thoughtful children, a very few years old, have their own
+theory of human nature. Before studying the metaphysicians, and indeed
+while still imperfectly acquainted with their letters, young children
+have glimpses of the inherent selfishness of humanity. I was recently
+present when a small boy of three years old, together with his sister,
+aged five, was brought down to the dining-room at the period of dessert.
+The small boy climbed upon his mother's knee, and began by various
+indications to display his affection for her. A stranger remarked what
+an affectionate child he was. "Oh," said the little girl, "he suspects
+(by which she meant _expects_) that he is going to get something to
+eat!" Not Hobbes himself had reached a clearer perception or a firmer
+belief of the selfish system in moral philosophy. "He is always very
+affectionate," the youthful philosopher proceeded, "when he suspects he
+is going to get something good to eat!"
+
+By _Things Slowly Learnt_ I mean not merely things which are in their
+nature such that it takes a long time to learn them,--such as the Greek
+language, or the law of vendors and purchasers. These things indeed take
+long time and much trouble to learn; but once you have learnt them, you
+know them. Once you have come to understand the force of the second
+aorist, you do not find your heart whispering to you, as you are lying
+awake at night, that what the grammar says about the second aorist is
+all nonsense; you do not feel an inveterate disposition, gaining force
+day by day, to think concerning the second aorist just the opposite of
+what the grammar says. By _Things Slowly Learnt_, I understand things
+which it is very hard to learn at the first, because, strong as the
+reasons which support them are, you find it so hard to make up your mind
+to them. I understand things which you can quite easily (when it is
+fairly put to you) see to be true, but which it seems as if it would
+change the very world you live in to accept. I understand things you
+discern to be true, but which you have all your life been accustomed to
+think false, and which you are extremely anxious to think false. And by
+_Things Slowly Learnt_ I understand things which are not merely very
+hard to learn at the first, but which it is not enough to learn for once
+ever so well. I understand things which, when you have made the bitter
+effort and admitted to be true and certain, you put into your mind to
+keep (so to speak); and hardly a day has passed, when a soft, quiet hand
+seems to begin to crumble them down and to wear them away to nothing.
+You write the principle which was so hard to receive upon the tablet of
+your memory; and day by day a gentle hand comes over it with a bit of
+india-rubber, till the inscription loses its clear sharpness, grows
+blurred and indistinct, and finally quite disappears. Nor is the gentle
+hand content even then; but it begins, very faintly at first, to trace
+letters which bear a very different meaning. Then it deepens and darkens
+them day by day, week by week, till at a month's or a year's end the
+tablet of memory bears, in great, sharp, legible letters, just the
+opposite thing to that which you had originally written down there.
+These are my _Things Slowly Learnt_: things you learn at first in the
+face of a strong bias against them; things, when once taught, you
+gradually forget, till you come back again to your old way of thinking.
+Such things, of course, lie within the realm to which extends the
+influence of feeling and prejudice. They are things in the accepting of
+which both head and heart are concerned. Once convince a man that two
+and two make four, and he learns the truth without excitement, and
+he never doubts it again. But prove to a man that he is of much less
+importance than he has been accustomed to think,--or prove to a woman
+that her children are very much like those of other folk,--or prove to
+the inhabitant of a country parish that Britain has hundreds of parishes
+which in soil and climate and production are just as good as his
+own,--or prove to the great man of a little country town that there
+are scores of towns in this world where the walks are as pleasant,
+the streets as well paved, and the population as healthy and as well
+conducted; and in each such case you will find it very hard to convince
+the individual at the time, and you will find that in a very short space
+the individual has succeeded in entirely escaping from the disagreeable
+conviction. You may possibly find, if you endeavor to instil such belief
+into minds of but moderate cultivation, that your arguments will be
+met less by force of reason than by roaring of voice and excitement of
+manner; you may find that the person you address will endeavor to change
+the issue you are arguing, to other issues, wholly irrelevant, touching
+your own antecedents, character, or even personal appearance; and you
+may afterwards be informed by good-natured friends, that the upshot of
+your discussion had been to leave on the mind of your acquaintance the
+firm conviction that you yourself are intellectually a blockhead and
+morally a villain. And even when dealing with human beings who have
+reached that crowning result of a fine training, that they shall have
+got beyond thinking a man their "enemy because he tells them the truth,"
+you may find that you have rendered a service like that rendered by the
+surgeon's amputating knife,--salutary, yet very painful,--and leaving
+forever a sad association with your thought and your name. For among the
+things we slowly learn are truths and lessons which it goes terribly
+against the grain to learn at first, which must be driven into us time
+after time, and which perhaps are never learnt completely.
+
+One thing very slowly learnt by most human beings is, that they are
+of no earthly consequence beyond a very small circle indeed, and
+that really nobody is thinking or talking about them. Almost every
+commonplace man and woman in this world has a vague, but deeply-rooted
+belief that they are quite different from anybody else, and of course
+quite superior to everybody else. It may be in only one respect they
+fancy they are this, but that one respect is quite sufficient. I
+believe, that, if a grocer or silk-mercer in a little town has a hundred
+customers, each separate customer lives on under the impression that
+the grocer or the silk-mercer is prepared to give to him or her certain
+advantages in buying and selling which will not be accorded to the other
+ninety-nine customers. "Say it is for Mrs. Brown," is Mrs. Brown's
+direction to her servant, when sending for some sugar; "say it is for
+Mrs. Brown, and he will give it a little better." The grocer, keenly
+alive to the weaknesses of his fellow-creatures, encourages this notion.
+"This tea," he says, "would be four-and-sixpence a pound _to any one
+else_, but _to you_ it is only four-and-threepence." Judging from my own
+observation, I should say that retail dealers trade a good deal upon
+this singular fact in the constitution of the human mind, that it is
+inexpressibly bitter to most people to believe that they stand on the
+ordinary level of humanity,--that, in the main, they are just like their
+neighbors. Mrs. Brown would be filled with unutterable wrath, if it were
+represented to her that the grocer treats her precisely as he does Mrs.
+Smith, who lives on one side of her, and Mrs. Snooks, who lives on the
+other. She would be still more angry, if you asked her what earthly
+reason there is why she should in any way be distinguished beyond Mrs.
+Snooks and Mrs. Smith. She takes for granted she is quite different
+from them, quite superior to them. Human beings do not like to be
+classed,--at least, with the class to which in fact they belong. To be
+classed at all is painful to an average mortal, who firmly believes
+that there never was such a being in this world. I remember one of
+the cleverest friends I have--one who assuredly cannot be classed
+intellectually, except in a very small and elevated class--telling
+me how mortified he was, when a very clever boy of sixteen, at being
+classed at all. He had told a literary lady that he admired Tennyson.
+"Yes," said the lady, "I am not surprised at that: there is a class of
+young men who like Tennyson at your age." It went like a dart to my
+friend's heart. _Class of young men_, indeed! Was it for _this_ that I
+outstripped all competitors at school, that I have been fancying myself
+a unique phenomenon in Nature, _different_ at least from every other
+being that lives, that I should be spoken of as one of _a class of
+young men_? Now in my friend's half-playful reminiscence I see the
+exemplification of a great fact in human nature. Most human beings fancy
+themselves, and all their belongings, to be quite different from all
+other beings and the belongings of all other beings. I heard an old
+lady, whose son is a rifleman, and just like all the other volunteers
+of his corps, lately declare, that, on the occasion of a certain grand
+review, her Tom looked so entirely different from all the rest. No doubt
+he did to her, poor old lady,--for he was her own. But the irritating
+thing was, that the old lady wished it to be admitted that Tom's
+superiority was an actual fact, equally patent to the eyes of all
+mankind. Yes, my friend: it is a thing very slowly learnt by most men,
+that they are very much like other people. You see the principle which
+underlies what you hear so often said by human beings, young and old,
+when urging you to do something which it is against your general rule to
+do. "Oh, but you might do it _for me_!" Why for you more than for any
+one else? would be the answer of severe logic. But a kindly man would
+not take that ground: for doubtless the _Me_, however little to every
+one else, is to each unit in humankind the centre of all the world.
+
+Arising out of this mistaken notion of their own difference from all
+other men is the fancy entertained by many, that they occupy a much
+greater space in the thoughts of others than they really do. Most folk
+think mainly about themselves and their own affairs. Even a matter which
+"everybody is talking about" is really talked about by each for a
+very small portion of the twenty-four hours. And a name which is "in
+everybody's mouth" is not in each separate mouth for more than a few
+minutes at a time. And during those few minutes, it is talked of with an
+interest very faint, when compared with that you feel for yourself. You
+fancy it a terrible thing, when you yourself have to do something which
+you would think nothing about, if done by anybody else. A lady grows
+sick, and has to go out of church during the sermon. Well, you remark
+it; possibly, indeed, you don't; and you say, "Mrs. Thomson went out of
+church to-day; she must be ill"; and there the matter ends. But a day
+or two later you see Mrs. Thomson, and find her quite in a fever at the
+awful fact. It was a dreadful trial, walking out, and facing all the
+congregation: they must have thought it so strange; she would not run
+the risk of it again for any inducement. The fact is just this: Mrs.
+Thomson thinks a great deal of the thing, because it happened to
+herself. It did not happen to the other people, and so they hardly think
+of it at all. But nine in every ten of them, in Mrs. Thomson's place,
+would have Mrs. Thomson's feeling; for it is a thing which you, my
+reader, slowly learn, that people think very little about you.
+
+Yes, it is a thing slowly learnt,--by many not learnt at all. How many
+persons you meet walking along the street who evidently think that
+everybody is looking at them! How few persons can walk through an
+exhibition of pictures at which are assembled the grand people of the
+town and all their own grand acquaintances, in a fashion thoroughly free
+from self-consciousness! I mean without thinking of themselves at all,
+or of how they look; but in an unaffected manner, observing the objects
+and beings around them. Men who have attained recently to a moderate
+eminence are sometimes, if of small minds, much affected by this
+disagreeable frailty. Small literary men, and preachers with no great
+head or heart, have within my own observation suffered from it severely.
+I have witnessed a poet, whose writing I have never read, walking along
+a certain street. I call him a poet to avoid periphrasis. The whole
+get-up of the man, his dress, his hair, his hat, the style in which he
+walked, showed unmistakably that he fancied that everybody was looking
+at him, and that he was the admired of all admirers. In fact, nobody was
+looking at him at all. Some time since I beheld a portrait of a very,
+very small literary man. It was easy to discern from it that the small
+author lives in the belief, that, wherever he goes, he is the object of
+universal observation. The intense self-consciousness and self-conceit
+apparent in that portrait were, in the words of Mr. Squeers, "more
+easier conceived than described." The face was a very commonplace and
+rather good-looking one: the author, notwithstanding his most strenuous
+exertions, evidently could make nothing of the features to distinguish
+him from other men. But the length of his hair was very great: and, oh,
+what genius he plainly fancied glowed in those eyes! I never in my life
+witnessed such an extraordinary glare. I do not believe that any human
+being ever lived whose eyes habitually wore that expression: only by a
+violent effort could the expression be produced, and then for a very
+short time, without serious injury to the optic nerves. The eyes were
+made as large as possible; and the thing after which the poor fellow
+had been struggling was that peculiar look which may be conceived to
+penetrate through the beholder, and pierce his inmost thoughts. I never
+beheld the living original, but, if I saw him, I should like in a kind
+way to pat him on the head, and tell him that _that_ sort of expression
+would produce a great effect on the gallery of a minor theatre. The
+other day I was at a public meeting. A great crowd of people was
+assembled in a large hall: the platform at one end of it remained
+unoccupied till the moment when the business of the meeting was to
+begin. It was an interesting sight for any philosophic observer seated
+in the body of the hall to look at the men who by-and-by walked in
+procession on to the platform, and to observe the different ways in
+which they walked in. There were several very great and distinguished
+men: every one of these walked on to the platform and took his seat in
+the most simple and unaffected way, as if quite unconscious of the many
+eyes that were looking at them with interest and curiosity. There were
+many highly respectable and sensible men, whom nobody cared particularly
+to see, and who took their places in a perfectly natural manner, as
+though well aware of the fact. But there were one or two small men,
+struggling for notoriety; and I declare it was pitiful to behold their
+entrance. I remarked one, in particular, who evidently thought that
+the eyes of the whole meeting were fixed upon himself, and that, as
+he walked in, everybody was turning to his neighbor, and saying with
+agitation, "See, that's Snooks!" His whole gait and deportment testified
+that he felt that two or three thousand eyes were burning him up: you
+saw it in the way he walked to his place, in the way he sat down, in the
+way he then looked about him. If anyone had tried to get up three cheers
+for Snooks, Snooks would not have known that he was being made a fool
+of. He would have accepted the incense of fame as justly his due. There
+once was a man who entered the Edinburgh theatre at the same instant
+with Sir Walter Scott. The audience cheered lustily; and while Sir
+Walter modestly took his seat, as though unaware that those cheers were
+to welcome the Great Magician, the other man advanced with dignity
+to the front of the box, and bowed in acknowledgment of the popular
+applause. This of course was but a little outburst of the great tide of
+vain self-estimation which the man had cherished within his breast for
+years. Let it be said here, that an affected unconsciousness of the
+presence of a multitude of people is as offensive an exhibition of
+self-consciousness as any that is possible. Entire naturalness, and a
+just sense of a man's personal insignificance, will produce the right
+deportment. It is very irritating to see some clergymen walk into church
+to begin the service. They come in, with eyes affectedly cast down, and
+go to their place without ever looking up, and rise and begin without
+one glance at the congregation. To stare about them, as some clergymen
+do, in a free and easy manner, befits not the solemnity of the place
+and the worship; but the other is the worse thing. In a few cases it
+proceeds from modesty; in the majority from intolerable self-conceit.
+The man who keeps his eyes downcast in that affected manner fancies that
+everybody is looking at him; there is an insufferable self-consciousness
+about him; and he is much more keenly aware of the presence of other
+people than the man who does what is natural, and looks at the people
+to whom he is speaking. It is not natural nor rational to speak to
+one human being with your eyes fixed on the ground; and neither is
+it natural or rational to speak to a thousand. And I think that the
+preacher who feels in his heart that he is neither wiser nor better than
+his fellow-sinners to whom he is to preach, and that the advices he
+addresses to them are addressed quite as solemnly to himself, will
+assume no conceited airs of elevation above them, but will unconsciously
+wear the demeanor of any sincere worshipper, somewhat deepened in
+solemnity by the remembrance of his heavy personal responsibility in
+leading the congregation's worship; but assuredly and entirely free
+from the vulgar conceit which may be fostered in a vulgar mind by the
+reflection, "Now everybody is looking at me!" I have seen, I regret to
+say, various distinguished preachers whose pulpit demeanor was made to
+me inexpressibly offensive by this taint of self-consciousness. And I
+have seen some, with half the talent, who made upon me an impression a
+thousandfold deeper than ever was made by the most brilliant eloquence;
+because the simple earnestness of their manner said to every heart, "Now
+I am not thinking in the least about myself, or about what you may think
+of me: my sole desire is to impress on your hearts these truths I
+speak, which I believe will concern us all forever!" I have heard great
+preachers, after hearing whom you could walk home quite at your ease,
+praising warmly the eloquence and the logic of the sermon. I have heard
+others, (infinitely greater in my poor judgment,) after hearing whom you
+would have felt it profanation to criticize the literary merits of their
+sermon, high as those were: but you walked home thinking of the lesson
+and not of the teacher, solemnly revolving the truths you had heard, and
+asking the best of all help to enable you to remember them and act upon
+them.
+
+There are various ways in which self-consciousness disagreeably evinces
+its existence; and there is not one, perhaps, more disagreeable than the
+affected avoidance of what is generally regarded as egotism. Depend upon
+it, my reader, that the straightforward and natural writer who frankly
+uses the first person singular, and says, "I think thus and thus," "I
+have seen so and so," is thinking of himself and his own personality
+a mighty deal less than the man who is always employing awkward and
+roundabout forms of expression to avoid the use of the obnoxious _I_.
+Every such periphrasis testifies unmistakably that the man was thinking
+of himself; but the simple, natural writer, warm with his subject, eager
+to press his views upon his readers, uses the _I_ without a thought of
+self, just because it is the shortest, most direct, and most natural way
+of expressing himself. The recollection of his own personality probably
+never once crossed his mind during the composition of the paragraph from
+which an ill-set critic might pick out a score of _I_-s. To say, "It is
+submitted" instead of "I think," "It has been observed" instead of "I
+have seen," "The present writer" instead of "I," is much the more really
+egotistical. Try to write an essay without using that vowel which
+some men think the very shibboleth of egotism, and the remembrance of
+yourself will be in the background of your mind all the time you are
+writing. It will be always intruding and pushing in its face, and you
+will be able to give only half your mind to your subject. But frankly
+and naturally use the _I_, and the remembrance of yourself vanishes. You
+are grappling with the subject; you are thinking of it, and of nothing
+else. You use the readiest and most unaffected mode of speech to set out
+your thoughts of it. You have written _I_ a dozen times, but you have
+not thought of yourself once.
+
+You may see the self-consciousness of some men strongly manifested
+in their handwriting. The handwriting of some men is essentially
+affected,--more especially their signature. It seems to be a very
+searching test whether a man is a conceited person or an unaffected
+person, to be required to furnish his autograph to be printed underneath
+his published portrait. I have fancied I could form a theory of a man's
+whole character from reading, in such a situation, merely the words,
+"Very faithfully yours, Eusebius Snooks," You could see that Mr. Snooks
+was acting, when he wrote that signature. He was thinking of the
+impression it would produce on those who saw it. It was not the thing
+which a man would produce who simply wished to write his name legibly in
+as short a time and with as little needless trouble as possible. Let me
+say with sorrow that I have known even venerable bishops who were not
+superior to this irritating weakness. Some men aim at an aristocratic
+hand; some deal in vulgar flourishes. These are the men who have reached
+no farther than that stage at which they are proud of the dexterity with
+which they handle their pen. Some strive after an affectedly simple and
+student-like hand; some at a dashing and military style. But there may
+be as much self-consciousness evinced by handwriting as by anything
+else. Any clergyman who performs a good many marriages will be impressed
+by the fact that very few among the humbler classes can sign their name
+in an unaffected way. I am not thinking of the poor bride who shakily
+traces her name, or of the simple bumpkin who slowly writes his, making
+no secret of the difficulty with which he does it. These are natural
+and pleasing. You would like to help and encourage them. But it is
+irritating, when some forward fellow, after evincing his marked contempt
+for the slow and cramped performances of his friends, jauntily takes up
+the pen and dashes off his signature at a tremendous rate and with the
+air of an exploit, evidently expecting the admiration of his rustic
+friends, and laying a foundation for remarking to them on his way home
+that the parson could not touch him at penmanship. I have observed with
+a little malicious satisfaction that such persons, arising in their
+pride from the place where they wrote, generally smear their signature
+with their coat-sleeve, and reduce it to a state of comparative
+illegibility. I like to see the smirking, impudent creature a little
+taken down.
+
+But it is endless to try to reckon up the fashions in which people show
+that they have not learnt the lesson of their own unimportance. Did you
+ever stop in the street and talk for a few minutes to some old bachelor?
+If so, I dare say you have remarked a curious phenomenon. You have found
+that all of a sudden the mind of the old gentleman, usually reasonable
+enough, appeared stricken into a state approaching idiocy, and that
+the sentence which he had begun in a rational and intelligible way was
+ending in a maze of wandering words, signifying nothing in particular.
+You had been looking in another direction, but in sudden alarm you look
+straight at the old gentleman to see what on earth is the matter; and
+you discern that his eyes are fixed on some passer-by, possibly a young
+lady, perhaps no more than a magistrate or the like, who is by this
+time a good many yards off, with the eyes still following, and slowly
+revolving on their axes so as to follow without the head being turned
+round. It is this spectacle which has drawn off your friend's attention;
+and you notice his whole figure twisted into an ungainly form, intended
+to be dignified or easy, and assumed because he fancied that the
+passerby was looking at him. Oh the pettiness of human nature! Then you
+will find people afraid that they have given offence by saying or doing
+things which the party they suppose offended had really never observed
+that they had said or done. There are people who fancy that in church
+everybody is looking at them, when in truth no mortal is taking the
+trouble to do so. It is an amusing, though irritating sight, to behold
+a weak-minded lady walking into church and taking her seat under this
+delusion. You remember the affected air, the downcast eyes, the demeanor
+intended to imply a modest shrinking from notice, but through which
+there shines the real desire, "Oh, for any sake, look at me!" There are
+people whose voice is utterly inaudible in church six feet off, who will
+tell you that a whole congregation of a thousand or fifteen hundred
+people was listening to their singing. Such folk will tell you that they
+went to a church where the singing was left too much to the choir, and
+began to sing as usual, on which the entire congregation looked round
+to see who it was that was singing, and ultimately proceeded to sing
+lustily too. I do not remember a more disgusting exhibition of vulgar
+self-conceit than I saw a few months ago at Westminster Abbey. It was a
+weekday afternoon service, and the congregation was small. Immediately
+before me there sat an insolent boor, who evidently did not belong to
+the Church of England. He had walked in when the prayers were half over,
+having with difficulty been made to take off his hat, and his manifest
+wish was to testify his contempt for the whole place and service.
+Accordingly he persisted in sitting, in a lounging attitude, when the
+people stood, and in standing up and staring about with an air of
+curiosity while they knelt. He was very anxious to convey that he was
+not listening to the prayers; but rather inconsistently, he now and then
+uttered an audible grunt of disapproval. No one can enjoy the choral
+service more than I do, and the music that afternoon was very fine; but
+I could not enjoy it or join in it as I wished, for the disgust I felt
+at the animal before me, and for my burning desire to see him turned out
+of the sacred place he was profaning. But the thing which chiefly struck
+me about the individual was not his vulgar and impudent profanity; it
+was his intolerable self-conceit. He plainly thought that every eye
+under the noble old roof was watching all his movements. I could see
+that he would go home and boast of what he had done, and tell his
+friends that all the clergy, choristers, and congregation had been
+awestricken by him, and that possibly word had by this time been
+conveyed to Lambeth or Fulham of the weakened influence and approaching
+downfall of the Church of England. I knew that the very thing he
+wished was that some one should rebuke his conduct, otherwise I should
+certainly have told him either to behave with decency or to be gone.
+
+I have sometimes witnessed a curious manifestation of this vain sense of
+self-importance. Did you ever, my reader, chance upon such a spectacle
+as this: a very commonplace man, and even a very great blockhead,
+standing in a drawing-room where a large party of people is assembled,
+with a grin of self-complacent superiority upon his unmeaning face? I
+am sure you understand the thing I mean. I mean a look which conveyed,
+that, in virtue of some hidden store of genius or power, he could survey
+with a calm, cynical loftiness the little conversation and interests of
+ordinary mortals. You know the kind of interest with which a human being
+would survey the distant approaches to reason of an intelligent dog or a
+colony of ants. I have seen this expression on the face of one or two
+of the greatest blockheads I ever knew. I have seen such a one wear it
+while clever men were carrying on a conversation in which he could not
+have joined to have saved his life. Yet you could see that (who can tell
+how?) the poor creature had somehow persuaded himself that he occupied a
+position from which he could look down upon his fellow-men in general.
+Or was it rather that the poor creature knew he was a fool, and fancied
+that thus he could disguise the fact? I dare say there was a mixture of
+both feelings.
+
+You may see many indications of vain self-importance in the fact that
+various persons, old ladies for the most part, are so ready to give
+opinions which are not wanted, on matters of which they are not
+competent to judge. Clever young curates suffer much annoyance from
+these people: they are always anxious to instruct the young curates how
+to preach. I remember well, ten years ago, when I was a curate (which in
+Scotland we call an _assistant_) myself, what advices I used to receive
+(quite unsought by me) from well-meaning, but densely stupid old ladies.
+I did not think the advices worth much, even then; and now, by longer
+experience, I can discern that they were utterly idiotic. Yet they were
+given with entire confidence. No thought ever entered the heads of
+these well-meaning, but stupid individuals, that possibly they were not
+competent to give advice on such subjects. And it is vexatious to think
+that people so stupid may do serious harm to a young clergyman by
+head-shakings and sly innuendoes as to his orthodoxy or his gravity of
+deportment. In the long run they will do no harm, but at the first start
+they may do a good deal of mischief. Not long since, such a person
+complained to me that a talented young preacher had taught unsound
+doctrine. She cited his words. I showed her that the words were
+taken _verbatim_ from the "Confession of Faith," which is our Scotch
+Thirty-Nine Articles. I think it not unlikely that she would go on
+telling her tattling story just the same. I remember hearing a stupid
+old lady say, as though her opinion were quite decisive of the question,
+that no clergyman ought to have so much as a thousand a year; for, if he
+had, he would be sure to neglect his duty. You remember what Dr. Johnson
+said to a woman who expressed some opinion or other upon a matter she
+did not understand. "Madam," said the moralist, "before expressing your
+opinion, you should consider what your opinion is worth." But this shaft
+would have glanced harmlessly from off the panoply of the stupid and
+self-complacent old lady of whom I am thinking. It was a fundamental
+axiom with her that her opinion was entirely infallible. Some people
+would feel as though the very world were crumbling away under their
+feet, if they realized the fact that they could go wrong.
+
+Let it here be said, that this vain belief of their own importance,
+which most people cherish, is not at all a source of unmixed happiness.
+It will work either way. When my friend, Mr. Snarling, got his beautiful
+poem printed in the county newspaper, it no doubt pleased him to think,
+as he walked along the street, that every one was pointing him out as
+the eminent literary man who was the pride of the district, and that the
+whole town was ringing with that magnificent effusion. Mr. Tennyson, it
+is certain, felt that his crown was being reft away. But, on the other
+hand, there is no commoner form of morbid misery than that of the poor
+nervous man or woman who fancies that he or she is the subject of
+universal unkindly remark. You will find people, still sane for
+practical purposes, who think that the whole neighborhood is conspiring
+against them, when in fact nobody is thinking of them.
+
+All these pages have been spent in discussing a single thing slowly
+learnt: the remaining matters to be considered in this essay must be
+treated briefly.
+
+Another thing slowly learnt is that we have no reason or right to be
+angry with people because they think poorly of us. This is a truth which
+most people find it very hard to accept, and at which, probably, very
+few arrive without pretty long thought and experience. Most people are
+angry, when they are informed that some one has said that their ability
+is small, or that their proficiency in any art is limited. Mrs. Malaprop
+was very indignant, when she found that some of her friends had spoken
+lightly of her parts of speech. Mr. Snarling was wroth, when he learned
+that Mr. Jollikin thought him no great preacher. Miss Brown was so, on
+hearing that Mr. Smith did not admire her singing; and Mr. Smith, on
+learning that Miss Brown did not admire his horsemanship. Some authors
+feel angry, on reading an unfavorable review of their book. The present
+writer has been treated very, very kindly by the critics,--far more so
+than he ever deserved; yet he remembers showing a notice of him, which
+was intended to extinguish him for all coming time, to a warm-hearted
+friend, who read it with gathering wrath, and, vehemently starting up at
+its close, exclaimed, (we knew who wrote the notice,)--"Now I shall
+go straight and kick that fellow!" Now all this is very natural; but
+assuredly it is quite wrong. You understand, of course, that I am
+thinking of unfavorable opinions of you, honestly held, and expressed
+without malice. I do not mean to say that you would choose for your
+special friend or companion one who thought meanly of your ability or
+your sense; it would not be pleasant to have him always by you; and the
+very fact of his presence would tend to keep you from doing justice to
+yourself. For it is true, that, when with people who think you very
+clever and wise, you really are a good deal cleverer and wiser than
+usual; while with people who think you stupid and silly, you find
+yourself under a malign influence which tends to make you actually so
+for the time. If you want a man to gain any good quality, the way is to
+give him credit for possessing it. If he has but little, give him credit
+for all he has, at least; and you will find him daily get more. You know
+how Arnold made boys truthful; it was by giving them credit for truth.
+Oh that we all fitly understood that the same grand principle should
+be extended to all good qualities, intellectual and moral! Diligently
+instil into a boy that he is a stupid, idle, bad-hearted blockhead, and
+you are very likely to make him all _that_. And so you can see that it
+is not judicious to choose for a special friend and associate one who
+thinks poorly of one's sense or one's parts. Indeed, if such a one
+honestly thinks poorly of you, and has any moral earnestness, you could
+not get him for a special friend, if you wished it. Let us choose for
+our companions (if such can be found) those who think well and kindly of
+us, even though we may know within ourselves that they think too kindly
+and too well. For that favorable estimation will bring out and foster
+all that is good in us. There is between this and the unfavorable
+judgment all the difference between the warm, genial sunshine, that
+draws forth the flowers and encourages them to open their leaves,
+and the nipping frost or the blighting east-wind, that represses and
+disheartens all vegetable life. But though thus you would not choose
+for your special companion one who thinks poorly of you, and though you
+might not even wish to see him very often, you have no reason to have
+any angry feeling towards him. He cannot help his opinion. His opinion
+is determined by his lights. His opinion, possibly, founds on those
+aesthetic considerations as to which people will never think alike, with
+which there is no reasoning, and for which there is no accounting. God
+has made him so that he dislikes your book, or at least cannot heartily
+appreciate it; and that is not his fault. And, holding his opinion, he
+is quite entitled to express it. It may not be polite to express it to
+yourself. By common consent it is understood that you are never,
+except in cases of absolute necessity, to say to any man that which is
+disagreeable to him. And if you go, and, without any call to do so,
+express to a man himself that you think poorly of him, he may justly
+complain, not of your unfavorable opinion of him, but of the malice
+which is implied in your needlessly informing him of it. But if any one
+expresses such an unfavorable opinion of you in your absence, and some
+one comes and repeats it to you, be angry with the person who repeats
+the opinion to you, not with the person who expressed it. For what you
+do not know will cause you no pain. And all sensible folk, aware how
+estimates of any mortal must differ, will, in the long run, attach
+nearly the just weight to any opinion, favorable or unfavorable.
+
+Yes, my friend, utterly put down the natural tendency in your heart to
+be angry with the man who thinks poorly of you. For you have, in sober
+reason, no right to be angry with him. It is more pleasant, and indeed
+more profitable, to live among those who think highly of you--It makes
+you better. You actually grow into what you get credit for. Oh, how much
+better a clergyman preaches to his own congregation, who listen with
+kindly and sympathetic attention to all he says, and always think too
+well of him, than to a set of critical strangers, eager to find faults
+and to pick holes! And how heartily and pleasantly the essayist covers
+his pages which are to go into a magazine whose readers have come to
+know him well, and to bear with all his ways! If every one thought him a
+dull and stupid person, he could not write at all: indeed, he would bow
+to the general belief, and accept the truth that he is dull and stupid.
+But further, my reader, let us be reasonable, when it is pleasant; and
+let us sometimes be irrational, when _that_ is pleasant too. It is
+natural to have a very kindly feeling to those who think well of us.
+Now, though, in severe truth, we have no more reason for wishing to
+shake hands with the man who thinks well of us than for wishing to shake
+the man who thinks ill of us, yet let us yield heartily to the former
+pleasant impulse. It is not reasonable, but it is all right. You cannot
+help liking people who estimate you favorably and say a good word of
+you. No doubt we might slowly learn not to like them more than anybody
+else; but we need not take the trouble to learn _that_ lesson. Let us
+all, my readers, be glad if we can reach that cheerful position of mind
+at which my eloquent friend SHIRLEY and I have long since arrived: that
+we are extremely gratified when we find ourselves favorably reviewed,
+and not in the least angry when we find ourselves reviewed unfavorably;
+that we have a very kindly feeling towards such as think well of us, and
+no unkind feeling whatever to those who think ill of us. Thus, at the
+beginning of the month, we look with equal minds at the newspaper
+notices of our articles; we are soothed and exhilarated when we find
+ourselves described as sages, and we are amused and interested when we
+find ourselves shown up as little better than geese.
+
+Of course, it makes a difference in the feeling with which you ought to
+regard any unfavorable opinion of you, whether spoken or written, if the
+unfavorable opinion which is expressed be plainly not honestly held, and
+be maliciously expressed. You may occasionally hear a judgment expressed
+of a young girl's music or dancing, of a gentleman's horses, of a
+preacher's sermons, of an author's books, which is manifestly dictated
+by personal spite and jealousy, and which is expressed with the
+intention of doing mischief and giving pain to the person of whom
+the judgment is expressed. You will occasionally find such judgments
+supported by wilful misrepresentation, and even by pure invention. In
+such a case as this, the essential thing is not the unfavorable opinion;
+it is the malice which leads to its entertainment and expression. And
+the conduct of the offending party should be regarded with that feeling
+which, on calm thought, you discern to be the right feeling with which
+to regard malice accompanied by falsehood. Then, is it well to be
+angry here? I think not. You may see that it is not safe to have any
+communication with a person who will abuse and misrepresent you; it is
+not safe, and it is not pleasant. But don't be angry. It is not worth
+while. That old lady, indeed, told all her friends that you said, in
+your book, something she knew quite well you did not say. Mr. Snarling
+did the like. But the offences of such people are not worth powder and
+shot; and besides this, my friend, if you saw the case from their point
+of view, you might see that they have something to say for themselves.
+You failed to call for the old lady so often as she wished you should.
+You did not ask Mr. Snarling to dinner. These are bad reasons for
+pitching into you; but still they are reasons; and Mr. Snarling and the
+old lady, by long brooding over them, may have come to think that they
+are very just and weighty reasons. And did you never, my friend, speak
+rather unkindly of these two persons? Did you never give a ludicrous
+account of their goings-on, or even an ill-set account, which some kind
+friend was sure to repeat to them?
+
+Ah, my reader, don't be too hard on Snarling; possibly you have yourself
+done something very like what he is doing now. Forgive, as you need to
+be forgiven! And try to attain that quite attainable temper in which you
+will read or listen to the most malignant attack upon you with curiosity
+and amusement, and with no angry feeling at all. I suppose great people
+attain to this: I mean cabinet-ministers and the like, who are daily
+flayed in print somewhere or other. They come to take it all quite
+easily. And if they were pure angels, somebody would attack them. Most
+people, even those who differ from him, know, that, if this world has
+a humble, conscientious, pious man in it, that man is the present
+Archbishop of Canterbury: yet last night I read in a certain powerful
+journal, that the great characteristics of that good man are cowardice,
+trickery, and simple rascality! Honest Mr. Bumpkin, kind-hearted Miss
+Goodbody, do you fancy that _you_ can escape?
+
+Then we ought to try to fix it in our mind, that, in all matters into
+which taste enters at all, the most honest and the most able men may
+hopelessly, diametrically, differ: original idiosyncrasy has so much to
+say here; and training has also so much. One cultivated and honest
+man has an enthusiastic and most real love and enjoyment of Gothic
+architecture, and an absolute hatred for that of the classic revival;
+another man, equally cultivated and honest, has tastes which are the
+logical contradictory of these. No one can doubt the ability of Byron,
+or of Sheridan; yet each of them thought very little of Shakspeare. The
+question is, _What suits you_? You may have the strongest conviction
+that you ought to like an author; you may be ashamed to confess that you
+don't like him; and yet you may feel that you detest him. For myself, I
+confess with shame, and I know the reason is in myself, I cannot for my
+life see anything to admire in the writings of Mr. Carlyle. His style,
+both of thought and language, is to me insufferably irritating. I tried
+to read the "Sartor Resartus," and could not do it. So if all people who
+have learned to read English were like me, Mr. Carlyle would have no
+readers. Happily, the majority, in most cases, possesses the normal
+taste. At least there is no further appeal than to the deliberate
+judgment of the majority of educated men. I confess, further, that I
+would rather read Mr. Helps than Milton: I do not say that I think Mr.
+Helps the greater man, but that I feel he suits me better. I value the
+"Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table" more highly than all the writings of
+Shelley put together. It is a curious thing to read various reviews of
+the same book,--particularly if it be one of those books which, if you
+like at all, you will like very much, and which, if you don't like,
+you will absolutely hate. It is curious to find opinions flatly
+contradictory of one another set forth in those reviews by very able,
+cultivated, and unprejudiced men. There is no newspaper published in
+Britain which contains abler writing than the "Edinburgh Scotsman." And
+of course no one need say anything as to the literary merits of the
+"Times." Well, one day within the last few months, the "Times" and the
+"Scotsman" each published a somewhat elaborate review of a certain book.
+The reviews were flatly opposed to one another; they had no common
+ground at all; one said the book was extremely good, and the other that
+it was extremely bad. You must just make up your mind that in matters of
+taste there can be no unvarying standard of truth. In aesthetic matters,
+truth is quite relative. What is bad to you is good to me, perhaps. And
+indeed, if one might adduce the saddest of all possible proofs how even
+the loftiest and most splendid genius fails to commend itself to every
+cultivated mind, it may suffice to say, that that brilliant "Scotsman"
+has on several occasions found fault with the works of A.K.H.B.!
+
+If you, my reader, are a wise and kind-hearted person, (as I have no
+doubt whatever but you are,) I think you would like very much to meet
+and converse with any person who has formed a bad opinion of you. You
+would take great pleasure in overcoming such a one's prejudice against
+you; and if the person were an honest and worthy person, you would be
+almost certain to do so. Very few folk are able to retain any bitter
+feeling towards a man they have actually talked with, unless the bitter
+feeling be one which is just. And a very great proportion of all the
+unfavorable opinions which men entertain of their fellow-men found on
+some misconception. You take up somehow an impression that such a one is
+a conceited, stuck-up person: you come to know him, and you find he is
+the frankest and most unaffected of men. You had a belief that such
+another was a cynical, heartless being, till you met him one day coming
+down a long black stair, in a poor part of the town, from a bare chamber
+in which is a little sick child, with two large tears running down his
+face; and when you enter the poor apartment, you learn certain facts as
+to his quiet benevolence which compel you suddenly to construct a new
+theory of that man's character. It is only people who are radically and
+essentially bad whom you can really dislike after you come to know
+them. And the human beings who are thus essentially bad are very few.
+Something of the original Image lingers yet in almost every human soul:
+and in many a homely, commonplace person, what with vestiges of the old,
+and a blessed planting-in of something new, there is a vast deal of
+it. And every human being, conscious of honest intention and of a kind
+heart, may well wish that the man who dislikes and abuses him could just
+know him.
+
+But there are human beings whom, if you are wise, you would not wish to
+know you too well: I mean the human beings (if such there should be) who
+think very highly of you,--who imagine you very clever and very amiable.
+Keep out of the way of such! Let them see as little of you as possible.
+For, when they come to know you well, they are quite sure to be
+disenchanted. The enthusiastic ideal which young people form of any
+one they admire is smashed by the rude presence of facts. I have got
+somewhat beyond the stage of feeling enthusiastic admiration, yet there
+are two or three living men whom I should be sorry to see: I know I
+should never admire them so much any more. I never saw Mr. Dickens: I
+don't want to see him. Let us leave Yarrow unvisited: our sweet ideal is
+fairer than the fairest fact. No hero is a hero to his valet: and it may
+be questioned whether any clergyman is a saint to his beadle. Yet the
+hero may be a true hero, and the clergyman a very excellent man: but no
+human being can bear too close inspection. I remember hearing a clever
+and enthusiastic young lady complain of what she had suffered, on
+meeting a certain great bishop at dinner. No doubt he was dignified,
+pleasant, clever; but the mysterious halo was no longer round his head.
+Here is a sad circumstance in the lot of a very great man: I mean such
+a man as Mr. Tennyson or Professor Longfellow. As an elephant walks
+through a field, crushing the crop at every step, so do these men
+advance through life, smashing, every time they dine out, the
+enthusiastic fancies of several romantic young people.
+
+This was to have been a short essay. But you see it is already long; and
+I have treated only two of the four Things Slowly Learnt which I had
+noted down. After much consideration I discern several courses which are
+open to me:--
+
+1. To ask the editor to allow me forty or fifty pages of the magazine
+for my essay.
+
+2. To stop at once, and allow it to remain forever a secret what the two
+remaining things are.
+
+3. To stop now, and continue my subject in a future number of the
+magazine.
+
+4. To state briefly what the two things are, and get rid of the subject
+at once.
+
+The fundamental notion of Course No. 1 is manifestly vain. The editor is
+doubtless well aware that about sixteen pages is the utmost length
+of essay which his readers can stand. Nos. 2 and 3, for reasons too
+numerous to state, cannot be adopted. And thus I am in a manner
+compelled to adopt Course No. 4.
+
+The first of the two things is a practical lesson. It is this: to allow
+for human folly, laziness, carelessness, and the like, just as you allow
+for the properties of matter, such as weight, friction, and the like,
+without being surprised or angry at them. You know, that, if a man
+is lifting a piece of lead, he does not think of getting into a rage
+because it is heavy; or if a man is dragging a tree along the ground, he
+does not get into a rage because it ploughs deeply into the earth as it
+comes. He is not surprised at these things. They are nothing new. It is
+just what he counted on. But you will find that the same man, if his
+servants are lazy, careless, and forgetful, or if his friends are
+petted, wrong-headed, and impracticable, will not only get quite angry,
+but will get freshly angry at each new action which proves that his
+friends or servants possess these characteristics. Would it not be
+better to make up your mind that such things are characteristic of
+humanity, and so that you must look for them in dealing with human
+beings? And would it not be better, too, to regard each new proof of
+laziness, not as a new thing to be angry with, but merely as a piece of
+the one great fact that your servant is lazy, with which you get angry
+once for all, and have done with it? If your servant makes twenty
+blunders a day, do not regard them as twenty separate facts at which to
+get angry twenty several times: regard them just as twenty proofs of the
+one fact that your servant is a blunderer; and be angry just once, and
+no more. Or if some one you know gives twenty indications in a day that
+he or she (let us say she) is of a petted temper, regard these merely as
+twenty proofs of one lamentable fact, and not as twenty different facts
+to be separately lamented. You accept the fact that the person is petted
+and ill-tempered: you regret it and blame it once for all. And after
+this once you take as of course all new manifestations of pettedness and
+ill-temper. And you are no more surprised at them, or angry with them,
+than you are at lead for being heavy, or at down for being light. It is
+their nature, and you calculate on it, and allow for it.
+
+Then the second of the two remaining things is this,--that you have no
+right to complain, if you are postponed to greater people, or if you are
+treated with less consideration than you would be, if you were a greater
+person. Uneducated people are very slow to learn this most obvious
+lesson. I remember hearing of a proud old lady who was proprietor of a
+small landed estate in Scotland. She had many relations,--some greater,
+some less. The greater she much affected, the less she wholly ignored.
+But they did not ignore _her_; and one morning an individual arrived at
+her mansion-house, bearing a large box on his back. He was a travelling
+peddler; and he sent up word to the old lady that he was her cousin, and
+hoped she would buy something from him. The old lady indignantly refused
+to see him, and sent orders that he should forthwith quit the house.
+The peddler went; but, on reaching the courtyard, he turned to the
+inhospitable dwelling, and in a loud voice exclaimed, in the ears of
+every mortal in the house, "Ay, if I had come in my carriage-and-four,
+ye wad have been proud to have ta'en me in!" The peddler fancied that he
+was hurling at his relative a scathing sarcasm: he did not see that he
+was simply stating a perfectly unquestionable fact. No doubt earthly, if
+he had come in a carriage-and-four, he would have got a hearty welcome,
+and he would have found his claim of kindred eagerly allowed. But he
+thought he was saying a bitter and cutting thing, and (strange to say)
+the old lady fancied she was listening to a bitter and cutting thing.
+He was merely expressing a certain and innocuous truth. But though all
+mortals know that in this world big people meet greater respect than
+small, (and quite right too,) most mortals seem to find the principle a
+very unpleasant one, when it comes home to themselves. And we learn but
+slowly to acquiesce in seeing ourselves plainly subordinated to other
+people. Poor Oliver Goldsmith was very angry, when at the club one night
+he was stopped in the middle of a story by a Dutchman, who had noticed
+that the Great Bear was rolling about in preparation for speaking, and
+who exclaimed to Goldsmith, "Stop, stop! Toctor Shonson is going to
+speak!" Once I arrived at a certain railway station. Two old ladies were
+waiting to go by the same train. I knew them well, and they expressed
+their delight that we were going the same way. "Let us go in the same
+carriage," said the younger, in earnest tones; "and will you be so very
+kind as to see about our luggage?" After a few minutes of the lively
+talk of the period and district, the train came up. I feel the tremor
+of the platform yet. I handed my friends into a carriage, and then saw
+their baggage placed in the van. It was a station at which trains
+stop for a few minutes for refreshments. So I went to the door of the
+carriage into which I had put them, and waited a little before taking
+my seat. I expected that my friends would proceed with the conversation
+which had been interrupted; but to my astonishment I found that I had
+become wholly invisible to them. They did not see me and speak to me at
+all. In the carriage with them was a living peer, of wide estates and
+great rank, whom they knew. And so thoroughly did he engross their eyes
+and thoughts and words, that they had become unaware of my presence, or
+even my existence. The stronger sensation rendered them unconscious of
+the weaker. Do you think I felt angry? No, I did not. I felt very much
+amused. I recognized a slight manifestation of a grand principle. It was
+a straw showing how a current sets, but for which Britain would not be
+the country it is. I took my seat in another carriage, and placidly read
+my "Times." There was one lady in that carriage. I think she inferred,
+from the smiles which occasionally for the first few miles overspread
+my countenance without apparent cause, that my mind was slightly
+disordered.
+
+These are the two things already mentioned. But you cannot understand,
+friendly reader, what an effort it has cost me to treat them so briefly,
+The experienced critic will discern at a glance that the author could
+easily have made sixteen pages out of the material you have here in two.
+The author takes his stand upon this,--that there are few people who can
+beat out thought so thin, or say so little in such a great number of
+words. But I remember how a very great prelate (who could compress all I
+have said into a page and a half) once comforted me by telling me that
+for the consumption of many minds it was desirable that thought should
+be very greatly diluted; that quantity as well as quality is needful
+in the dietetics both of the body and the mind. With this soothing
+reflection I close the present essay.
+
+
+
+
+AMERICAN NAVIGATION:
+
+ITS CHECKS, ITS PROGRESS, ITS DANGERS.--THE BIRTH OF THE NAVY.--THE
+EMBARGO.
+
+
+In these palmy days of Commerce it is difficult to conceive the distress
+which attended the Embargo. To form some idea of its effects at a period
+when the nation engrossed most of the carrying trade of the world, let
+us imagine a message from Washington announcing that Congress, after a
+few midnight-sessions, has suddenly resolved to withdraw our ships from
+the ocean, and to export nothing from New York, or any other seaport;
+that it requires the merchant to dismantle his ships and leave them to
+decay at the wharves; that it calls upon two hundred thousand masters
+and mariners, who now plough the main, to seek their bread ashore; that
+it forbids even the fisherman to launch his chebacco-boat or follow his
+gigantic prey upon the deep; that it subjects the whole coastwise trade
+to onerous bonds and the surveillance of custom-house officers; that it
+interdicts all exports by land to Canada, New Brunswick, or Mexico.
+
+Imagine for a moment five million tons of shipping detained, thousands
+of seamen reduced to want, the trades of the ship-builder, joiner,
+rigger, and sail-maker stopped, the masses of produce now seeking the
+coast for shipment arrested on their way by the entire cessation of
+demand, the banker and insurer idle, the commissioners of bankruptcy,
+the sheriff, and the jailer busy. Imagine the whole country, in the
+midst of a prosperous commerce, thus suddenly brought to a stand.
+Imagine the navigation, the produce, and the merchandise of the nation
+thus suddenly embargoed by one great seizure, upon the plea that they
+might possibly be seized abroad, and some faint idea may be formed of
+the alarm, distress, and indignant feeling which pervaded the entire
+seaboard under the Embargo of 1807. At the period in question the
+distressed seamen and ruined merchants had no railways, scarcely an
+ordinary road to the West. Manufactures were almost unknown, the
+mechanic arts were undeveloped, and consequently the exclusion from the
+sea was felt with double force.
+
+Why, urged the merchant and the mariner, should our property perish and
+our children go supperless to bed, when we can insure our ships and
+still make large profits? Would the planter reconcile himself to a law
+which forbade him to harness his teams or use the hoe or the plough, and
+bade him lie down and die of hunger beside fruitful fields? Does the
+Constitution of the Union, which empowers Congress to regulate commerce,
+authorize its destruction? And if it is the intent of Government merely
+to protect our ships abroad, why are foreign vessels forbidden to
+purchase or export our perishing fish and provisions? and why is our
+property to be confiscated and heavy fines to be imposed, if we send it
+across the Canada line, where there is no risk of seizure?--And when, in
+the progress of events, it became apparent that France approved of our
+Embargo, and that England, opening new marts for her trade and new
+sources of supplies in Russia, Spain, India, and Spanish America, was
+without a rival on the ocean, monopolizing the trade and becoming the
+carrier of the world, it was impossible to reconcile the Eastern States
+to this general interdict.
+
+Many a rich man was ruined, many a prosperous town was utterly
+prostrated by the shock. Property, real and personal, fell from thirty
+to sixty per cent., affecting by its fall all classes of society.
+A spirit of hostility to the party in power was engendered, which
+outlasted the war with England, and continued to glow until Monroe had
+adopted the great Federal measures of a navy, a military academy, and an
+enlarged system of coast-defence.
+
+Half a century has now elapsed since the signal failure of the Embargo.
+The theorists who planned it, the cabinet that adopted it, the
+politicians who blindly sustained it have passed from the stage. Angry
+feelings have subsided. The measure itself has become a part of the
+history of the country; but now that our commerce has again expanded,
+now that our navigation, for at least a quarter of a century, has
+continued to progress until it has outstripped that of Great Britain in
+speed, despatch, and capacity to carry, now that it knows no superior
+either in ancient or modern times, it is a fitting moment to investigate
+the causes and effects of the measure which once arrested its progress.
+Its history is replete with lessons; and if our late President has
+failed in other particulars, he at least cautioned us, in his inaugural
+address, "that our commerce and navigation are again exceeding the means
+provided for their defence," and recommended "an increase of a navy now
+inadequate to the protection of our vast tonnage afloat," greater than
+that of any other nation, "as well as to the defence of our extended
+sea-coast." To ascertain and appreciate the true causes of the Embargo,
+we must ascend to the origin of our commerce and trace it downward.
+
+The Pilgrims who sought freedom in New England were enterprising men.
+The country in which they landed kindled a commercial spirit. Natural
+ports and havens, vast forests of pine and oak suitable for spars and
+timber, abundance of fish and whales, and the occasional failure of
+their crops, all invited them to the deep. Under the rule of Governor
+Winthrop, the shallop Blessing of the Bay was built at his Ten Hills
+farm, and made a voyage to Virginia. Boats, soon followed by sloops,
+engaged in the fisheries; brigs and ships were built for the trade with
+England. Boston became noted for ship-building, and Portsmouth supplied
+the royal navy with spars. The fleet which took Port Royal in 1710 was
+composed principally of American ships. The New England volunteers who
+in 1745 captured the fortress of Louisburg from the veteran troops of
+France were conveyed by ten American ships of war.
+
+As early as 1765, six hundred sail from Massachusetts were engaged in
+the fisheries, and many American vessels pursued the trade to England,
+Spain, and the West Indies. The towns of Salem, Marblehead, and
+Gloucester were almost surrounded by fish-flakes. Fish, lumber, and
+provisions were the great basis of trade. Ships were built and laden
+with timber, and sold with their lading in English ports. Cargoes were
+made up of fish, live stock, and boards, for the West India Islands.
+The returns were shipped to Spain and Portugal, and there exchanged
+for silk, iron, fruit, wines, and bills on England. Occasionally ships
+joined the Jamaica fleet, or adventured on bolder voyages to the French
+islands; but the admiralty courts at Tortola and New Providence, often
+supposed to be in league with English admirals, repressed the spirit of
+adventure, and annually condemned American ships on the most frivolous
+pretences. The fame of American whalers had already reached England.
+Burke, in his celebrated speech on America, alludes to their enterprise.
+"We find them," he says, "in the deepest frozen recesses of Hudson's
+Bay, and again beneath the frozen serpent of the South.....What sea
+is not vexed by their fisheries? what climate is not witness to their
+toils?"
+
+No record is to be found of the shipping of the Colonies prior to the
+Revolution, but there is reason to suppose that it must have exceeded
+two hundred thousand tons. During the Revolution the merchantmen went
+generally to decay or were captured. Some were equipped as privateers.
+But after seven years a ship is in its dotage. New vessels were built
+and armed. The models which figure in old pictures, with high sterns and
+bows, proved too clumsy for war, and modern forms were adopted. At least
+five hundred armed vessels were fitted out in the commercial States, and
+among them one hundred and fifty-eight from the single port of Salem.
+Some of these vessels mounted twenty guns; they captured large numbers
+of English vessels, and performed feats on the ocean as brilliant as
+any upon the land. At the close of the war, our shipping, although it
+included many prizes, was undoubtedly reduced; but it had changed its
+character. Our ships had improved in size and speed, and were manned by
+officers and seamen who had measured their strength with Englishmen,
+and acknowledged no superiors. From the Peace of 1783 to the Embargo
+of 1807, a period of twenty-four years, is a remarkable epoch in the
+history of American navigation.
+
+At the close of the war, the country was exhausted by its long and
+protracted struggle with the colossal power of England. The Eastern
+States, which furnished most of the shipping, had made great sacrifices,
+and had contributed more than their share in men, money, and ships to
+the common defence. They were creditor States, and their means
+were locked up in "final settlements." Their remaining capital was
+insufficient to equip their vessels and give them full cargoes. The
+country was impoverished, too, by the suits of foreign creditors, to
+whom our merchants had become deeply indebted before the war. Under
+these circumstances, commerce was slowly resumed. For several years
+our exports did not exceed ten millions. But our merchants were not
+disheartened; they gradually enlarged their trade and extended their
+field of adventure; privateers were put into the India trade, and
+entered into successful rivalry with the more cumbrous ships of the
+East India Companies. The new Constitution was adopted, the public debt
+funded, and duties imposed to meet the interest. The war-worn officer,
+the patriotic merchant, and the humble capitalist, who had relied on the
+honor and justice of the country, were paid in public stocks which found
+favor abroad. Old capital was resuscitated and became the basis of
+commerce.
+
+In 1793 our tonnage had risen to 488,000 tons; and in 1799 it had grown
+to 939,488 tons, and was still increasing. The aggressions of France
+in 1798 and 1799 were met with a bold spirit and proved of brief
+continuance, a proper chastisement was inflicted on the corsairs of
+Africa, the honor of the flag was maintained, our commerce moved onward
+until the close of 1807, and by the official report of that year our
+tonnage had increased to 1,208,735 tons, or at least five hundred per
+cent. in the first twenty-four years after the close of the war. The
+revenue had risen to fifteen millions, and the official report of the
+Treasurer showed a balance in the Treasury of eighteen millions in bonds
+and money; it stated, also, that twenty-six millions of the public debt
+had been extinguished in the seven years preceding. Our ships, too,
+had become the great carriers of the deep; our exports for 1807 were
+$108,343,750, of which $59,622,558 were of foreign origin; our ports,
+remote from the seat of war, had become the depots of goods; and our
+commerce, whitening the surface of every ocean, had begun to tempt the
+cupidity of contending nations. In 1807, the United States, in addition
+to its domestic produce, which went principally to English ports,
+exported of foreign goods, in round numbers, to
+
+  Holland,  . . . . . . . . $14,000,000
+  French ports, . . . . . .  13,000,000
+  Spanish  "    . . . . . .  14,000,000
+  Italian  "    . . . . . .   5,500,000
+  Danish   "    . . . . . .   2,500,000
+  English and other ports,.  10,000,000
+
+In those prosperous days of navigation, during the first period of
+twenty-four years after the Peace of 1783, the merchants of our country
+were accumulating riches; but a check was given to their prosperity by
+the Embargo, closely followed by acts of non-intercourse, by war, and
+by sixteen years of debility which ensued. In 1814, our tonnage was
+diminished to 1,159,288 tons, a point actually below that of 1807; and
+at the close of the second epoch of twenty-four years, in 1831, during
+which our population had doubled, the tonnage remained at 1,267,846
+tons, having virtually made no progress in the second epoch of
+twenty-four years, commencing with the Embargo.
+
+We now enter upon the third epoch of equal length, from 1831 to 1855,
+which stands out in bold relief a striking contrast to the gloomy
+period which it followed, and bears some resemblance to the epoch which
+preceded the Embargo, showing the recuperative power of a commerce
+destined to float after the most disastrous shipwreck.
+
+Peace had continued down to 1831; the debt incurred during the war was
+at length reduced; new breeds of sheep were imported, and manufactures,
+aided by new inventions, were established on a permanent basis; our new
+fabrics began to demand more raw material; the culture of cotton
+was thus extended; railways were constructed; England, relaxing her
+commercial code, opened her marts to our breadstuffs; the great
+discovery of gold followed. Each of these causes gave an impulse to
+navigation, and at the close of the third epoch of twenty-four years,
+in 1855, our tonnage had outstripped that of England both in amount and
+effective power, and had risen by the official report to 5,212,000 tons,
+exhibiting a gain of more than three hundred per cent. The ratio of its
+advance may be inferred from the following table:--
+
+  Tonnage of ships built in 1818    55,856
+        do.          do.    1831    85,962
+        do.          do.    1832   144,539
+        do.          do.    1848   318,072
+        do.          do.    1855   583,451
+
+Let us contrast these three epochs we have named. During the first, our
+navigation sprang from infancy to manhood, surmounting all obstacles and
+bidding defiance to all foes. In the second, in the vigor of manhood, it
+was withdrawn by a mysterious and pusillanimous policy from the ocean.
+This very timidity invited aggression, seizures and war followed, and
+the growth was checked for nearly the fourth of a century. In the third
+epoch it resumed its onward march, stimulating improvement, and thereby
+accelerating its own progress, until at length the offspring has
+surpassed the parent and taken the lead in navigation. Mark the
+contrast: the three epochs were of equal length: the first witnessed
+a growth of five hundred per cent.; in the second there was an entire
+paralysis; in the third, renewed progress of more than three hundred per
+cent.
+
+What were the causes that confined the young giant to a Procrustean bed
+for a quarter of a century?
+
+The subject has become history, and we can now calmly investigate it
+by the light of the past and the present. May not this investigation
+illumine the path of the future? Let us examine the maritime policy of
+our nation during each period.
+
+At the close of the Revolution there was no navy, and few ships to be
+protected. Our private armed vessels were converted into merchantmen,
+our solitary ship of the line was presented to France, and we had no
+frigates worth preserving.
+
+The first great effort of the country was to form a constitution; the
+second, to provide for the creditors who had sustained the nation; the
+third, to provide a revenue to meet expenses and interest. And these
+were all successful. As commerce advanced, the Federal party under
+Washington revived the idea of a navy, and on March 11th, 1794, against
+the opposition of Madison, they carried a bill through Congress for
+the construction of six frigates. Under this bill, the Constitution,
+Constellation, and United States, all since identified with the fame
+of our country, were commenced, but they were not launched until the
+accession of John Adams in 1797.
+
+Washington, in his Farewell Address, gave the sanction of his name to
+a navy, as well as to the West Point Academy, and to a system of
+harbor-defence. He thus marked out the great outlines; but the
+founder of the navy was John Adams. Nurtured among the hardy sons of
+Massachusetts, familiar with their exploits upon the ocean during the
+war both in private and public service, he felt assured of their ability
+to cope with the Mistress of the Seas. When France seized our ships and
+undertook to involve us in European wars, Adams renounced her alliance
+and called for the creation of a navy. In his annual message in 1797,
+he spoke of "a navy as next to the militia the natural defence of the
+United States." In 1798 the three frigates above-mentioned were
+finished and sent to sea, and soon after the Constellation captured the
+Insurgent. During the same year Congress voted to construct six
+more frigates, twelve sloops-of-war, and six smaller vessels, and
+appropriated a million for the frames of six ships of the line, two
+millions for timber, and fifty thousand dollars for two dock-yards.
+At the same time, in response to a vote of Congress authorizing the
+acceptance of additional ships, $711,700 were subscribed, and the
+frigates Essex, Connecticut, Merrimack, and other vessels, constructed
+and turned over to the Government by the merchants of Salem,
+Newburyport, Hartford, and other seaports.
+
+To illustrate the spirit with which the merchants responded to the call
+for a navy, we may cite the action of the Federal county of Essex, none
+of whose towns at that period contained over ten thousand inhabitants.
+This county had contributed more armed ships and men to the War of the
+Revolution than any other county in the Union, and was conspicuous for
+its enterprise and patriotism before the embargo, non-intercourse, and
+war had crushed its commerce.
+
+The merchants of Essex assembled and subscribed the funds for the
+frigates Essex and Merrimack, the first of which was built at Salem and
+the other at Newburyport, and both of New-England oak; and this effort
+was the more remarkable, as they advanced the money while the Government
+found it difficult to borrow at eight per cent., and these patriotic men
+afterwards took their pay in depreciated six per cent. stock at par.
+
+We have not the history of the Merrimack; but the Essex, a frigate of
+thirty-two guns, begun in April, was launched in September, 1799, and
+the best commentary upon the policy of the measure and upon the skill
+and fidelity of her builders is the fact that she proved the fastest
+ship in the navy, that she lasted thirty-eight years, namely, till 1837,
+that she cost for hull, spars, sails, and rigging, when ready to receive
+her armament and stores, but $75,473.59, and that under the gallant
+Porter, in the War of 1812, she captured the British corvette Alert, of
+twenty guns, a transport with one hundred and ninety-seven troops
+for Canada, and twenty-three other prizes, valued at two millions of
+dollars; she also broke up the British whale-fishing in the Pacific; and
+when finally captured at Valparaiso by two ships of superior force, who
+would not venture within reach of her carronades, she fought a battle
+of three hours' duration, which does honor to the country. While this
+frigate was building, so fast did the timber come in, that the spirited
+contractor, Mr. Briggs, was obliged to insert the following notice in
+the Salem paper to check the supply.
+
+"THE SALEM FRIGATE.
+
+"Through the medium of the Gazette the subscriber pays his
+acknowledgments to the good people of the County of Essex, for their
+spirited exertions in bringing down the trees of the Forest for building
+the Frigate.
+
+"In the short space of four weeks the full complement of timber has been
+furnished. Those who have contributed to their country's defence are
+invited to come forward and receive the reward of their patriotism. They
+are informed that with the permission of a kind Providence who hath
+hitherto favored the undertaking, that
+
+  "Next September is the time
+    When we'll launch her from the strand,
+  And our cannon load and prime
+    With tribute due to Talleyrand."
+
+The promise was fulfilled on September 30th, 1799. The hills in the
+vicinity and the rocks upon the shores were covered with people
+assembled to witness the launch, and the guns of the frigate were
+planted on an eminence "to speak aloud the joy of the occasion."
+
+A correspondent of the "Gazette" gave the following jubilant account of
+the affair.
+
+"And Adams said, Let there be a Navy, and there was a Navy. To build a
+navy was the advice of our venerable sage. How far it has been adhered
+to is demonstrated by almost every town' in the United States that is
+capable of floating a Galley or Gunboat. Salem has not been backward in
+this laudable design; impressed with a due sense of the importance of
+a Navy, the patriotic citizens of this town put out a subscription and
+thereby obtained an equivalent for building a vessel of force. Among
+the foremost in this good work were Messrs. Derby & Gray, who set the
+example by subscribing ten thousand dollars each,--but, alas, the former
+is no more; we trust his good deeds follow him. Yesterday the stars and
+stripes were unfurled on board the Frigate Essex, and at twelve o'clock
+she made a majestic movement into her destined element, there to join
+her sister-craft in repelling foreign invasion and maintaining the
+rights and liberties of 'a great, free, peaceful, and independent
+Republic.'"
+
+The early reports under Adams give the estimated cost of a ship of the
+line as $400,000; and the first frigates actually cost as follows:--
+
+  Constellation                     $314,212
+  Constitution                       302,718
+  United States                      299,336
+  President                          220,910
+  Chesapeake                         220,679
+  Congress                           197,246
+  Essex, with armament and stores    139,202
+
+In 1799 the estimates for the navy were raised to four millions and
+a half, and large appropriations were continued in 1800. Under these
+appropriations several navy-yards were established, and frames of
+live-oak and cedar were furnished for eight ships of the line. The
+energy of the Administration produced corresponding effects, convoys
+were provided for our merchantmen, insurance fell from twenty to ten per
+cent., and France, impressed by our spirit and armament, retired from
+the contest.
+
+At the close of 1800 the navy had made great progress; and the Secretary
+of the Navy, Hon. Benjamin Stoddard of Baltimore, proposed in 1801 an
+annual appropriation of one million for its increase.
+
+But in 1801 the spirited administration of Adams came to an end. He had
+favored the payment of the national debt; he had dared to anticipate the
+future, to impose taxes and provide ships; he had aided the formation
+of a military academy and advocated a system of coast-defence, and had
+boldly asserted our national rights against the French Republic; and yet
+he loved peace so well, that, against the advice and wishes of his party
+and his cabinet, he sent a minister to France, who made an honorable
+treaty. Posterity sees little to censure in all these measures, for
+they evince the courage and forecast of the great Statesman of the
+Revolution; but they were assailed by his opponents, and aided in
+effecting his defeat.
+
+Jefferson came into power as the advocate of retrenchment and
+reform,--captivating terms! Under his administration the military
+academy was thrown into the shade, the coast-defences were forgotten,
+most of the new frigates and sloops built by patriotic citizens were
+sold, the navy reduced to ten frigates, half of which were suffered to
+decay, the frames of the ships of the line were used for repairs, and
+the appropriations for the increase of the navy were reduced to the
+pitiful sum of a quarter of a million, which was applied principally to
+gunboats. Of these Jefferson built no less than one hundred and seventy,
+at a cost of $10,500 each,--incurring for the construction and
+maintenance of this flotilla an expense of nearly three millions,
+without a particle of benefit to the country.
+
+We would not detract from the services of Jefferson. Posterity will
+honor him as the Patriot of the Revolution, as the champion of the
+rights of man; but will it not trace to his policy as a statesman, in
+the cabinet of Washington, in the opposition to Adams, and in the
+office of President, the grave errors from which sprang the embargo,
+non-intercourse, and the second war with England? At the close of his
+administration in 1809, he claimed credit for having left eighteen
+millions in the Treasury after payment of twenty-six millions of the
+debt of the Revolution in less than seven years, and his successor,
+Madison, in 1812, had over eleven millions in funds and cash in the
+Treasury after the extinguishment of forty-nine millions of the
+Revolutionary debt,--the expenses of Government, in the mean time,
+exclusive of the debt, having averaged from five to seven millions only.
+But parsimony is not always economy.
+
+The embargo cost the nation at least forty millions; non-intercourse
+twenty more; the war in three years added one hundred and thirteen
+millions to the debt, with at least an equal loss by the sacrifice of
+commerce and heavy drafts by taxes: and if the embargo, non-intercourse,
+and war can be traced to the loss of the navy, we find a saving of a
+million per annum in ships dearly purchased by a loss of capital which,
+at compound interest, would exceed to-day one-third the computed wealth
+of the nation.
+
+Had the policy of Adams been continued from 1800 to 1808, the annual
+million, aided by the live-oak and cedar frames, the three millions paid
+for gun-boats, and the frigates on hand when Jefferson came into power,
+would have provided or placed upon the stocks ten ships of the line,
+forty frigates, and ten sloops-of-war. If with the increase of revenue
+this estimate had been doubled in 1808, the material collected and the
+ships held back until the latter part of 1812, the country would have
+been supplied with twenty sail of the line, fifty frigates, and thirty
+sloops-of-war,--a force which would have employed at least threefold its
+number of English ships, upon our coast, upon the passage, and in the
+dock-yards. Impressment, orders in council, paper blockades, would have
+gone down before such a force of American ships ere one-tenth of it had
+left our harbors; for England, distressed for men and at war with the
+Continent, could not have spared the ships required to meet such a navy.
+The reports of Jefferson and Madison now make it apparent, that, without
+omitting to pay one instalment of the debt, they could have carried out
+the policy of Adams and provided a navy the very aspect of which would
+have commanded the respect and deference of the only foe we had occasion
+to dread.
+
+This point is most forcibly illustrated by the speeches of Lowndes and
+Cheves of South Carolina in Congress a few years later, cited by Henry
+Clay in 1812, in which they very justly say,--"If England should
+determine to station permanently on our coast a squadron of twelve ships
+of the line, she would require for this service thirty-six ships of
+the line, one-third in port repairing, one-third on the passage, and
+one-third on the station; but that is a force which it has been shown
+England, with her limited navy, could not spare for the American
+service." For once, at least, two of the gifted sons of South Carolina
+sustained the views of Massachusetts. The War of the Revolution and
+the War of 1812 have both demonstrated that England can maintain no
+permanent blockade through the winter on our waters, and the largest
+fleet upon our Atlantic coast during the last war did not exceed twenty
+sail of armed vessels of all sizes.
+
+Jefferson, in his "Notes on Virginia," in 1785 had expressed his views
+on our maritime policy in the following terms:--
+
+"You ask me what I think of the expediency of encouraging our States
+to become commercial. Were I to indulge my own theory, I wish them to
+practise neither commerce or navigation, but to stand with respect to
+Europe precisely on the footing of China."
+
+We have seen the commercial policy of Adams illustrated by the
+creation of a navy; we now see the anti-commercial theory of Jefferson
+illustrated by its overthrow.
+
+He was once tempted to concede that we might apply a year's revenue to
+a navy, but that year he never designated. Perhaps, if he could have
+foreseen the unceremonious way in which a few English frigates have
+of late years dealt with China, or the facility with which they have
+compelled her to pay millions for a drug alike pernicious to character
+and health, or the report of the treaty and tribute dictated from
+the walls of Pekin,--or could he have foreseen the progress of Lord
+Cochrane's frigates up the Potomac, regardless of his gunboats,--could
+he have foreshadowed the conflagration of the Capitol and the exit of
+the Cabinet,--he would perhaps have attached more importance to a navy
+and found less to admire in the policy of China, and doubtless his
+immediate successor would not have aimed a side-blow at our army and
+navy, as he did, in suggesting "that the fifteenth century was the
+unhappy epoch of military establishments in the time of peace."
+
+But our country, under Jefferson and Madison, for twelve years adopted
+the blind policy of China. The navy was suffered to decay. In 1807 but
+one frigate and five sloops-of-war were in commission. The Federal
+party, however, although in a weak minority, did not tamely submit to
+the unhappy policy of Southern statesmen; and individuals even of the
+dominant party opposed it. Among these, the late Justice Story, who in
+1807 represented the County of Essex in Congress, made an effort for
+the revival of the navy. But it was objected, on the part of the
+Administration, that such a force would be impotent against Great
+Britain. Williams, subsequently Governor of South Carolina, insisted,
+that, if we built ships, they would all fall into the hands of the
+British; and the capture of the Danish fleet at Copenhagen was
+instanced,--the fall of Genoa, Venice, and Carthage, notwithstanding
+their navies, being also cited. Story, with almost a prescience of the
+future, urged in its favor,--"I was born among the hardy sons of the
+ocean, and I cannot doubt their courage or their skill; if Great Britain
+ever gets possession of our present little navy, it will be at the
+expense of the best blood of the country, and after a struggle which
+will call for more of her strength than she has ever found necessary for
+a European enemy." To which Williams replied,--"If our rights are only
+so to be saved, I would abandon the ocean." And in December, 1807, the
+ocean was abandoned.
+
+No additions were made to the navy during the period of the embargo or
+non-intercourse, nor was a new ship sent to sea until after the peace;
+and at the commencement of the war, in June, 1812, the country had
+neither navy, fortifications, nor disciplined troops. The relics of the
+Federal navy then consisted of five frigates and seven sloops and brigs
+in commission, and three frigates under repair,--a feeble force, indeed,
+with which to meet the Mistress of the Seas, but which demonstrated by
+its achievements what fifty or a hundred sail might have accomplished.
+
+In 1812, Quincy, in the House, and Lloyd, in the Senate, both from
+Massachusetts, advocated a navy, and Clay and Davies, of the West,
+raised their voices in its support; but their efforts were unavailing.
+
+James Lloyd, who combined the intelligent merchant with the statesman,
+thus addressed the Senate:--"To make an impression on England, we must
+have a navy. Give us thirty swift-sailing, well-appointed frigates. In
+line-of-battle ships and fleet engagements, skill and experience would
+decide the victory. We are not ripe for them; but bolt together a
+British and American frigate side by side, and though we should lose
+sometimes, we should win as often. Give us this little fleet. Place your
+Navy Department under an able and spirited administration; cashier every
+officer who strikes his flag; and you will soon have a good account of
+your navy. This may be thought a hard tenure of service; but, hard or
+easy, I will engage in five weeks, yes, in five days, to officer this
+fleet from New England alone. Give us this little fleet, and in a
+quarter of the time in which you would operate upon her in any other
+way, we would bring Great Britain to terms. To terms, not to your feet.
+No, Sir! Great Britain is at this moment the most colossal power the
+world ever saw. It is true she has an enormous national debt. Her daily
+expenditure would in six short weeks wipe off all we owe. But will these
+millstones sink her? will they subject her to the power of France? No,
+Sir! let the bubble burst to-morrow,--destroy the fragile basis on which
+her public credit stands,--sponge out her national debt,--and, dreadful
+as would be the process, she would rise with renewed vigor from the
+fall, and present to her enemy a more imposing, irresistible front than
+ever. No, Sir! Great Britain cannot be subjected by France. The genius
+of her institutions, the genuine game-cock, bulldog spirit of her
+people, will lift her head above the waves. From this belief I
+acknowledge I derive a satisfaction. In New England our blood is
+unmixed. We are the direct descendants of Englishmen. We are natives of
+the soil. In the Legislature, now in session, of the once powerful and
+still respectable State of Massachusetts, composed of more than seven
+hundred members, to my knowledge not a single foreigner holds a seat. As
+Great Britain wrongs us, I would fight her. Yet I should be worse than
+a barbarian, did I not rejoice that the sepulchres of our forefathers,
+which are in that country, shall remain unsacked, and their coffins rest
+undisturbed, by the unhallowed rapacity of the Goths and Saracens of
+modern Europe. Let us have these thirty frigates. Powerful as Great
+Britain is, she could not blockade them; with our hazardous shores and
+tempestuous northwest gales, from November to March, all the navies in
+the world could not blockade them. Divide them into six squadrons; place
+those squadrons in the Northern ports, ready for sea; and at favorable
+moments we would pounce upon her West India Islands,--repeating the game
+of De Grasse and D'Estaing in '79 and '80. By the time she was ready to
+meet us there, we would be round Cape Horn, cutting up her whalemen.
+Pursued thither, we could skim away to the Indian Seas, and would give
+an account of her China and India ships very different from that of the
+French cruisers. Now we would follow her Quebec, and now her Jamaica
+convoys; sometimes make our appearance in the chops of the Channel, and
+even sometimes wind north about into the Baltic. It would require a
+hundred British frigates to watch the movements of these thirty. Such
+are the means by which I would bring Great Britain to her senses. By
+harassing her commerce with this fleet, we could make the people ask the
+Government why they continued to violate our rights; whether it were for
+her interest to sever the chief tie between her and us, by compelling
+us to become a manufacturing people (and on this head we could make an
+exhibition that would astonish both friends and foes); what she was to
+gain by forcing us prematurely to become a naval power, destined one
+day or other to dispute with her the sceptre of the ocean? We could, in
+short, bring the people to ask the Government, For whose benefit is this
+war? And the moment this is brought about on both sides of the water,
+the business is finished; you would only have to agree on fair and equal
+terms of peace."
+
+And Daniel Webster, just entering upon public life, made one of his
+earliest efforts in Congress for a navy. In his characteristic manner,
+he urged, in 1814,--"If war must continue, go to the ocean; let it no
+longer be said, not one ship of force built by your hands since the war
+yet floats; if you are seriously contending for maritime rights, go to
+the theatre where alone those rights can be defended. Thither every
+indication of your future calls you. There the united wishes and
+exertions of the nation will go with you."
+
+But a Southern Cabinet still clung to the Chinese policy, and the war
+for maritime rights was confided to a raw militia upon the land, while
+Hull, Bainbridge, Stewart, Porter, and Barney were performing the very
+feats which Lloyd had pictured to the Senate. A vote, it is true, was at
+length passed, to build four ships of the line, six frigates, and six
+sloops; but none were finished before the close of the war; and it
+was not until after its conclusion that the Democratic party, so long
+opposed to Federal measures, and triumphant from their very opposition,
+after a loss of at least three hundred millions, caused by their
+abandonment, gave the most conclusive proof of their value by funding
+the debt, re-establishing the navy, reviving the Military Academy at
+West Point, fortifying the coast, and making a tariff for revenue with
+incidental protection. Well might party-strife cease under the veteran
+Monroe; for Democracy had become Federalized.
+
+The sketch thus given of the rise and progress of our navigation, and of
+the origin and decline of our navy, affords us a commanding view of the
+position of our nation when it adopted the Chinese policy and withdrew
+from the ocean.
+
+Let us now glance for a moment at the state of Europe at the close
+of 1807. The great struggle of England and France was in progress.
+Napoleon, by his brilliant exploits, had subdued Italy and Holland,
+established the Empire, and by the battles of Marengo, Jena, Austerlitz,
+and Friedland, humbled Austria, overwhelmed Prussia, and conquered a
+peace with Russia. The Continent, from the Pyrenees to the Vistula, was
+subject to his sway, and he had closed it against the manufactures
+of England. This nation, alike victorious on the sea, had nearly
+annihilated the navy of France, captured the fleet of Denmark, swept
+the French and Dutch ships from the ocean, and was now seizing the
+possessions of France and Holland in the Indies. Regardless of neutral
+rights, she had declared every part of the Continent, from the Pyrenees
+to the Elbe, in a state of blockade.
+
+To escape impressment, or to obtain higher wages, many of her seamen
+enlisted in our service. Anxious to reclaim them and to man all her
+ships, she followed them into American vessels, and impressed American
+seamen as Englishmen, without the least respect to the rights of a
+neutral that did not assert by arms the dignity of its flag.
+
+Neither of the parties in the excitement of the great conflict was
+disposed to respect the rights of the United States, a neutral without
+an army or a fleet, and too timid to arm its own merchantmen; and the
+purpose of both seemed to be to compel these merchantmen to contribute
+to the war. England, in addition to her blockade, required all neutrals
+bound for the Continent to pay duties in her ports; and France
+retaliated by declaring all neutral ships which had paid such tribute
+denationalized and subject to confiscation, and without a frigate on the
+ocean declared all the ports of England in a state of blockade. There
+can be no question now that the acts of both parties were a violation of
+the rights of every neutral.
+
+England, in her sober moments, has tacitly relinquished her claim to
+impress beneath the American flag; paper blockades and the right of
+search are no longer recognized in the maritime code of either England
+or France; and there can be no doubt that our country could, at a later
+period, have made reclamation on England for seizures, as she has done
+upon France, Naples, and Denmark; but the policy of our rulers had left
+us destitute of means either of offence or defence, and of the power to
+resent any indignity. Three courses were open to us. The first was to
+devote the funds in the Treasury at once to the creation of a navy; to
+commence ten or twelve ships of the line in our dock-yards, and twenty
+frigates in the ship-yards of Boston, Salem, Portsmouth, New York, and
+Philadelphia; to build them as the Constitution and Constellation were
+built before; and to appeal to the merchants who built the Essex and
+Connecticut to build more, and to take their pay in certificates of
+stock. In one twelvemonth a navy might have been created; and the note
+of preparation sounded by a nation enriched by the peaceful commerce of
+a quarter of a century, and now refreshed for a new struggle, would have
+been most influential with the conflicting powers.
+
+Another course was open to us. More than two-thirds of our commerce was
+with English ports, or ports remote from France; for England, Spain,
+Sweden, Norway, Russia, the Indies were open to our commerce. The
+premium of insurance against French capture was but five per cent, on
+ships bound to those ports; for scarcely a French privateer dared show
+itself on the ocean.
+
+Our nation had cause of war with France, for France was at war with
+commerce and had invaded her rights; and our little navy, small as it
+was, and our merchantmen, if allowed to arm, might have bid defiance to
+France. England, then, would have respected our rights as allies; or,
+as our commerce was lucrative and paid profits that would cover an
+occasional seizure, we might have put our merchants on their guard,
+allowed them to arm their ships, and have temporized until the
+conflicting powers of the Old World had exhausted their strength, and we
+had grown strong enough to demand reparation.
+
+We owned at this period from eight to ten thousand vessels, and built
+annually nearly a thousand more. All the ships seized from 1800 to
+1812 did not average one hundred and fifty yearly, of which more than
+one-third were released, and indemnity finally paid for half the
+residue: namely, there were 917 seized by England, more than half
+released; 558 seized by France, one-fourth released; 70 seized by
+Denmark; 47 seized by Naples, and more property was detained by France
+than England. But the sympathies of our Cabinet were with Napoleon; a
+moment had arrived when he had determined to reverse the laws of trade
+and exclude the exports of England from the Continent; and our rulers,
+regardless of our own commerce, determined to withhold all our produce,
+to cut off the raw material from England at the moment she had lost
+the sale of her exports, and by this combined process to bring her to
+submission. They forgot, for the moment, how impossible it is to reverse
+the great laws of trade; that we thus gratuitously resigned to her the
+commerce of the globe; that China, the Indies, with their inexhaustible
+supplies, Spain, Sweden, Norway, Russia, and Africa, were open to her
+ships and might fill the vacuum. The hazardous experiment was made. Let
+us trace the progress of events.
+
+May 16, 1806, England passed her Orders in Council, declaring the ports
+and rivers from Brest to the Elbe in a state of blockade. November 21,
+1806, Napoleon issued his Berlin Decree, declaring the British ports
+blockaded. January 6, 1807, England prohibited all coastwise trade with
+France, and November 11, 1807, prohibited all neutrals from trading with
+France or her allies, except on payment of duties to England. December
+17, 1807, Napoleon issued his Milan Decree, confiscating all neutral
+vessels that had been searched by English cruisers, or had paid duties
+to England. December 16, 1807, the day preceding the date of the Milan
+Decree, President Jefferson submitted to Congress the Embargo. The
+Democratic party was then all-powerful, and the measure, after being
+debated for a few days and nights in the House, and a few hours in the
+Senate with closed doors, was adopted. This gratuitous surrender to
+England of the commerce of the world, this measure whose objects were
+veiled in mystery, conjectured, but not understood, became a law
+December 22, 1807.
+
+A leader of the Democratic party, in urging its passage, said,--"The
+President has recommended the measure on his high responsibility. I
+would not consider, I would not deliberate, I would act; doubtless the
+President possesses such further information as would justify such a
+measure." And the pliant majority acquiesced.
+
+After the passage of the Embargo Act, other acts were speedily passed
+to give it efficacy. By these, forfeitures of threefold the value of
+merchandise were imposed on those who violated its provisions, vessels
+were obliged to give heavy bonds to land their cargoes in the United
+States, and all shipments to frontier posts were prohibited. Under these
+acts the shipment of flour coastwise was forbidden, except upon permits
+issued at the pleasure of the President, upon the requisition of
+Governors of States, most of whom were members of the dominant party.
+And last of all came the Enforcing Act, under the provisions of which
+the collectors were armed with power to call out the militia at their
+discretion and upon suspicion of an intent to violate the law, to
+require vessels that had given bonds to discharge their cargoes, and
+to detain every suspected vessel engaged in the coasting-trade. These
+measures did not pass without opposition. Although the minority was weak
+in numbers, it was not deficient in talent.
+
+In the House, Josiah Quincy of Massachusetts, at that period the great
+commercial State, was the Federal leader; and he now, after the lapse
+of half a century, still survives in a green old age to see his policy
+vindicated by the verdict of history.
+
+Quincy, in various speeches, urged upon Congress,--
+
+"You undertake to protect better the property of the merchant than his
+own sense of personal interest would induce him to protect it.
+
+"Suppose the embargo passes; will France forego a policy designed to
+crush Great Britain and secure her way to universal empire, or England a
+policy essential to her national existence? It is all very well to talk
+of the patriotism and quiet submission of the people of the interior;
+they cannot help submitting, they will have no opportunity to break the
+embargo. But they whose ships lie on the edge of the ocean laden with
+produce, with the alternative before them of total ruin or a rich
+market, are in a totally different condition."
+
+Again said Quincy,--
+
+"Never before did society witness a total prohibition of all intercourse
+like this in a commercial nation. But it has been asked in debate, 'Will
+not Massachusetts, the Cradle of Liberty, submit to such privations?' An
+Embargo Liberty was never cradled in Massachusetts. Our Liberty was not
+so much a mountain-nymph as a sea-nymph. She was free as air. She could
+swim, or she could run. The ocean was her cradle. Our fathers met her as
+she came, like the Goddess of Beauty, from the waves. They caught her as
+she was sporting on the beach. They courted her while she was spreading
+her nets upon the rocks. But an Embargo Liberty, a handcuffed Liberty,
+Liberty in fetters, a Liberty traversing between the four sides of a
+prison and beating her head against the walls, is none of our offspring.
+We abjure the monster! Its parentage is all inland.
+
+"Is embargo independence? Deceive not yourselves! it is palpable
+submission! France and Great Britain require you to relinquish a part of
+your commerce, and you relinquish it entirely! At every corner of this
+great city we meet some gentlemen of the majority wringing their hands
+and exclaiming, 'What shall we do? nothing but an embargo will save us;
+remove it, and what shall we do?' Sir, it is not for me, an humble and
+uninfluential individual, at an awful distance from the predominant
+influences, to suggest plans for Government. But, to my eye, the path
+of duty is as distinct as the Milky Way,--all studded with living
+sapphires, glowing with light. It is the path of active preparation, of
+dignified energy. It is the path of 1776. It consists not in abandoning
+our rights, but in supporting them as they exist and where they
+exist,--_on the ocean as well as on the land_."
+
+Troup of Georgia, one of the champions of the Democratic party, replied
+to the Opposition,--"Shall we sacrifice the honor and independence of
+the nation for a little trade in codfish and potash? Permission to arm
+is equivalent to a declaration of war; make the embargo effective, and
+it will show what all the great commercial politicians have said
+is true,--it will vitally affect the manufacturing and commercial
+interests of England."
+
+As one coercive measure after another was proposed, John Randolph of
+Roanoke, who had at first favored an embargo, came out against the
+measure, and "warned the Administration that they were fast following in
+the fatal footsteps of Lord North."
+
+But one of the most effective speeches against the Democratic policy was
+made in February, 1809, by Gardinier, who represented New York, a city
+the creation of commerce.
+
+"The avowed object of this policy," he said, "was to save our vessels
+and property from capture; the real one seemed to be to establish a
+total non-intercourse with the whole world. We are engaged perpetually
+in making additions and supplements to the embargo. Wherever we can spy
+a hole, although it be no bigger than a wheat-straw, at which industry
+and enterprise can find vent, all our powers are called in requisition
+to stop it. The people of the country shall sell nothing but what they
+can sell to each other. All our surplus produce shall rot on our hands.
+God knows what all this means; I cannot understand it. I see effects,
+but I can trace them to no cause. I fear there is an unknown hand
+guiding us to the most dreadful destinies, unseen, because it cannot
+endure the light. Darkness and mystery overshadow the House and the
+whole nation. We know nothing, we are permitted to know nothing. We sit
+here as mere automata."
+
+This speech nearly cost Gardinier his life, for he was in consequence of
+it challenged and dangerously wounded; but the embargo was permitted to
+continue.
+
+The produce of the country fell sixty to seventy per cent. in value, and
+much of it passed at low prices into the hands of British agents. Armed
+ships from England appeared on the coast of Georgia and loaded with
+cotton from lighters in defiance of Government, and Northern ships in
+the outports occasionally eluded the vigilance of collectors or escaped
+by their collusion; but the measure pressed with a crushing weight upon
+the honest merchants and ship-owners.
+
+When news of the Enforcing Act reached Boston, it was received with such
+indignation, that General Lincoln, the collector of the port, resigned,
+and the flags of the dismantled ships were hoisted at half-mast,
+processions of starving sailors and mechanics passed through the
+streets, and the whole community was highly excited; an excitement
+increased by an order from the Cabinet to the commandant of the fort to
+allow no vessel whatever to proceed to sea.
+
+But the end of Jefferson's administration was approaching. He had come
+in as the advocate of popular rights; and now at the close of his term
+was enforcing measures more arbitrary than those which preceded the
+Revolution. Madison was nominated as his successor. All New England,
+save the inland State of Vermont, was revolutionized and voted against
+him, while Maryland and New York chose Federal Assemblies. The South,
+however, gave him its votes, and he was elected; but the tide of public
+opinion was rolling strongly against the Embargo.
+
+The new legislature of Massachusetts was convened; Governor Gore,
+who had displaced Gerry, drew their attention to the arbitrary and
+oppressive measures of Government; and the General Court, in their
+reply, after denouncing those measures as illegal and unconstitutional,
+used the memorable words, that "_they would be true to the Union,
+although they had fallen under the ban of the Empire_."
+
+The merchants determined to test the legality of the Enforcing Act; but
+John Quincy Adams and Joseph Story repaired to Washington, and urged the
+necessity of a repeal. Their representations, and the signal defeat of
+the Democracy at the North, proved irresistible; and the Embargo, after
+a protracted struggle, fell before them.
+
+From this glance at the history of the Embargo we can account for the
+asperity of feeling towards the Democratic leaders, and the distrust of
+their measures and men, which pervaded New England from the passage of
+the Embargo Act until the close of the war.
+
+New England, and more especially Massachusetts, commercial from its
+infancy, did not come into the Union to surrender its commerce,
+navigation, or seamen to any visionary theories of the South. For nearly
+two centuries it had struggled for all its liberties with the parent
+empire. It had learned in the cruel school of oppression that the price
+of freedom is perpetual vigilance.
+
+Fifteen months had now elapsed since the laying of the embargo, and it
+had more than realized all the presages of its opponents. Our minister,
+Armstrong, had written from France, that it had produced no effect in
+France and was forgotten in England. Pinckney, in England, did all in
+his power to save the Administration, by offering to end the embargo, if
+England would relax her policy; but Canning replied, that England had no
+complaints to make, that Spain and Russia had been opened to her, and
+the measure would serve to convince her that she was not absolutely
+dependent on the trade of America; with cutting irony, he added, he
+would make but one concession to America: she had complained that
+England drew a tribute from her merchandise, when shipped to the
+Continent; he would, out of deference to American delicacy, substitute a
+total prohibition. He had the tact, also, to draw from Pinckney a letter
+offering to concede many of the points in dispute, and published it with
+an insolent commentary.
+
+Jefferson still clung to the embargo; but Madison and his friends,
+deferring to the reasons of Story and Adams, and yielding to the adverse
+current now setting strongly against Democracy, March 9, 1809, repealed
+the obnoxious act. Such was the end and signal failure of a measure
+alike disastrous at home and abroad, a measure which had falsified all
+the predictions of its author. Its avowed object was to secure our
+seamen from impressment, to protect our commerce, and preserve our
+ships; its presumed object was to coöperate with France, and starve
+England into submission: but none, of these objects were effected.
+Instead of rescuing our seamen, it imprisoned them all at home, and
+deprived them of the food which they found even in the prisons of the
+enemy. Instead of protecting our commerce, it tamely resigned it to
+England, and either left our exports to perish or reduced their value
+sixty per cent. It seized all our ships at home, and left most of them
+to decay, without giving the sufferer the claim to ultimate redress
+which consoled him in cases of foreign seizure. It aided France so
+little, that this "deed of magnanimity" was in a few months forgotten.
+Instead of impoverishing or humbling England, it poured into her lap the
+riches of the world, and increased the insolence of her tone; while it
+impoverished our own nation, broke the spirit of the commercial classes
+and alienated them from Government, and gave the first of a series of
+blows to the nation from which it did not recover for a quarter of a
+century.
+
+But the pusillanimous policy which prompted the embargo survived its
+repeal. The Chinese theory still showed itself, not in measures for
+defence, but in impotent measures for restriction or prohibition, and
+finally in a declaration of war against England on the very eve of her
+triumph by the power of her navy and commerce over the greatest captain
+of the age: a war declared by our rulers without an army, navy,
+officers, coast-defence, or national credit, for the avowed purpose of
+securing free trade and sailors' rights by measures which the mercantile
+community rejected. In its progress, the want of discipline, forts,
+ships, munitions of war, credit abroad, and frugality at home, was most
+severely felt; and the principal honor derived from it arose from the
+exploits of the few frigates left to us by improvidence and parsimony,
+from the achievements of the Northern troops of Scott, Brown, and
+Miller, disciplined during the war, and the courage and sagacity of the
+veteran Jackson and his Western volunteers behind their cotton ramparts
+at New Orleans.
+
+If, during the seven years of trial and suffering, from 1808 to 1815, in
+which nearly one-half of the wealth of New England was extinguished, her
+citizens became indignant at the wanton sacrifice of their means and
+of the best opportunity Fortune ever gave them to gain riches by
+commerce,--if the public sentiment found expression alike through
+the press, in town-meetings, in legislative halls, and even in the
+pulpit,--if the capitalists lost confidence in a government which
+trifled with its own resources,--if the merchant refused all countenance
+to those who had wrought his ruin,--let the blame fall on the
+originators of the evil. Lord North did but impose a few light taxes,
+place a few restrictions upon commerce, and make a few other inroads on
+freedom; but he set a nation in flames. The Cabinets of 1807 and 1812
+warred against commerce itself, and placed an interdict on every harbor;
+and which of the measures of the British statesman was more arbitrary
+in its character, more repugnant to the spirit of freemen, or more
+questionable as to its legality, than the Enforcing Act of 1808? And
+if the men of New England, who had in their colonial weakness met both
+France and England by sea and land without a fear, saw the fruits of
+their industry sacrificed and the bread taken from their children's
+mouths by the Chinese policy of a Southern cabinet, might they not well
+chafe under measures so oppressive and so unnecessary that they were
+ingloriously abandoned? Under a dynasty whose policy had closed their
+ports, silenced their cannon, nearly ruined their commerce, and left
+their country without a navy, army, coast-defences, or national credit,
+could they be expected to rush with ardor into a war with the greatest
+naval power of the age, elated with her triumph over Napoleon,--into a
+war to be prosecuted on land by raw recruits against the veteran troops
+of England, for the avowed purpose of protecting the commerce of those
+who opposed it, and in which munitions of war were to be dragged at
+their expense across pathless forests,--into a war whose burdens were
+to fall either in present or prospective charges upon their surviving
+trade? Must they not have deeply felt that they were still under
+"the ban of the Empire"? and is it not proof of the extent of their
+patriotism and intense love of country, that under such trials and
+adverse policy they were still "true to the Union"?
+
+If Canada were desired, how easily might it have been acquired by a
+wiser policy! A small loan to the State of New York, from surplus funds,
+might have opened the Erie and Champlain Canals twenty years in advance
+of their completion. A little aid to men of genius might have placed
+Fulton's steamers, then navigating the Hudson, on the Lakes.
+
+A dozen frigates to cruise in the Gulf of St. Lawrence would have cut
+off supplies from England. The attractions of a new outlet for commerce,
+aided by a few disciplined regiments, the command of the Lakes,
+facilities for moving munitions of war and for intercepting supplies,
+would have settled the question in advance. And instead of a series of
+measures which embittered parties, created a jealousy between North
+and South, called into the field one hundred and twenty thousand raw
+militia, and absorbed in wasteful expenses nearly half our resources, we
+should have reaped a golden harvest in commerce, preserved our wealth,
+and have either avoided war, or terminated it in the same style in which
+the Constitution, Constellation, and United States terminated their
+conflicts on the deep, or as France and England terminated their recent
+war with Russia, arresting their foe in his march of conquest, closing
+his ports, destroying his fleet, seamen, and chief military station, and
+nearly exhausting his resources,--and drawing the means of war from
+commerce, have at the same time expanded our commerce, cities, and
+wealth to a degree unparalleled in our history.
+
+The past, however, is gone, and the future is before us. England,
+conscious of her naval power, of her vast steam-marine, and of our
+deficiencies, has not acceded to our proposal to exempt merchantmen from
+seizure in future wars. Is it not now our policy to provide in advance
+for the contingencies of the future,--to obtain the live-oak and cedar
+frames, the engines, boilers, Paixhan guns for at least one hundred
+steam-frigates, with coats of mail for some of them,--so that, instead
+of spending years in their construction, launching them when the war is
+over, and then leaving them to decay, we may, as the crisis approaches,
+be able in a few months to fit out a fleet which, if not irresistible,
+shall at least command respect? Accomplished officers and men can be
+drawn from the merchant-service at short notice; but we cannot create
+steamers in a moment.
+
+The appropriations by Congress of late years for steam--frigates and
+sloops-of-war, and for the defence of New York, New Bedford, Portland,
+Bath, and Bangor,--for Bath, in particular, which owns nearly two
+hundred thousand tons of shipping, and which builds more ships annually
+than any other port in the Union, Boston excepted,--are most judicious;
+but are there not other points which deserve the attention of
+Government? Should not a few thousand rifled cannon, a good supply of
+rifles, and a proportionate amount of powder and ball be deposited near
+San Francisco, to enable us, in case of war, to convert our clipper
+ships and steamers in the Pacific into cruisers? Should not batteries of
+Paixhan guns be erected at the outlet of Long Island Sound, upon Gull
+and Fisher's Islands and the opposite points, to convert the whole
+Sound above into a fortified harbor, and thus defend New York and the
+important seaports upon the Sound, and by these fortresses and a few
+coast-batteries between Stonington and Newport, like those on the coast
+of France, keep open during war an inland navigation for coal and flour
+between the Chesapeake and Delaware Bays, Pennsylvania, New York,
+Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts? Should not these and
+similar questions of national defence, in these days of extended
+commerce, command the attention of the nation?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+DENMARK VESEY.
+
+
+On Saturday afternoon, May 25th, 1822, a slave named Devany, belonging
+to Colonel Prioleau of Charleston, South Carolina, was sent to market by
+his mistress.--the Colonel being absent in the country. After doing his
+errands, he strolled down upon the wharves, in the enjoyment of
+that magnificent wealth of leisure which usually characterizes the
+"house-servant" of the South, when once beyond hail of the street-door.
+He presently noticed a small vessel lying in the stream, with a peculiar
+flag flying; and while looking at it, he was accosted by a slave named
+William, belonging to Mr. John Paul, who remarked to him,--"I have often
+seen a flag with the number 76, but never one with the number 96 upon
+it before." After some further conversation on this trifling point, he
+continued with earnestness,--"Do you know that something serious is
+about to take place?" Devany disclaiming the knowledge of any graver
+impending crisis than the family dinner, the other went on to inform him
+that many of the slaves were "determined to right themselves." "We are
+determined," he added, "to shake off our bondage, and for that purpose
+we stand on a good foundation; many have joined, and if you will go with
+me, I will show you the man who has the list of names, and who will take
+yours down."
+
+This startling disclosure was quite too much for Devany; he was made of
+the wrong material for so daring a project; his genius was culinary, not
+revolutionary. Giving some excuse for breaking off the conversation, he
+went forthwith to consult a free colored man, named Pensil or Pencell,
+who advised him to warn his master instantly. So he lost no time in
+telling the secret to his mistress and her young son; and on the return
+of Colonel Prioleau from the country, five days afterward, it was at
+once revealed to him. Within an hour or two he stated the facts to Mr.
+Hamilton, the Intendant, or, as we should say, Mayor; Mr. Hamilton at
+once summoned the Corporation, and by five o'clock Devany and William
+were under examination.
+
+This was the first warning of a plot which ultimately filled Charleston
+with terror. And yet so thorough and so secret was the organization of
+the negroes, that a fortnight passed without yielding the slightest
+information beyond the very little which was obtained from these two.
+William Paul was, indeed, put in confinement and soon gave evidence
+inculpating two slaves as his employers,--Mingo Harth and Peter Poyas.
+But these men, when arrested, behaved with such perfect coolness and
+treated the charge with such entire levity, their trunks and premises,
+when searched, were so innocent of all alarming contents, that they were
+soon discharged by the Wardens. William Paul at length became alarmed
+for his own safety, and began to let out further facts piecemeal, and to
+inculpate other men. But some of those very men came voluntarily to the
+Intendant, on hearing that they were suspected, and indignantly offered
+themselves for examination. Puzzled and bewildered, the municipal
+government kept the thing as secret as possible, placed the city guard
+in an efficient condition, provided sixteen hundred rounds of ball
+cartridges, and ordered the sentinels and patrols to be armed with
+loaded muskets. "Such had been our fancied security, that the guard had
+previously gone on duty without muskets and with only sheathed bayonets
+and bludgeons."
+
+It has since been asserted, though perhaps on questionable authority,
+that the Secretary of War was informed of the plot, even including
+some details of the plan and the leader's name, before it was known in
+Charleston. If so, he utterly disregarded it; and, indeed, so well
+did the negroes play their part, that the whole report was eventually
+disbelieved, while (as was afterwards proved) they went on to complete
+their secret organization, and hastened by a fortnight the appointed day
+of attack. Unfortunately for their plans, however, another betrayal
+took place at the very last moment, from a different direction. A
+class-leader in a Methodist church had been persuaded or bribed by his
+master to procure further disclosures. He at length came and stated,
+that, about three months before, a man named Rolla, slave of Governor
+Bennett, had communicated to a friend of his the fact of an intended
+insurrection, and had said that the time fixed for the outbreak was the
+following Sunday night, June 16th. As this conversation took place on
+Friday, it gave but a very short time for the city authorities to act,
+especially as they wished neither to endanger the city nor to alarm it.
+
+Yet so cautiously was the game played on both sides, that the whole
+thing was still kept hushed up from the Charleston public; and some
+members of the city government did not fully appreciate their danger
+till they had passed it. "The whole was concealed," wrote the Governor
+afterwards, "until the time came; but secret preparations were made.
+Saturday night and Sunday morning passed without demonstrations; doubts
+were excited, and counter orders issued for diminishing the guard." It
+afterwards proved that these preparations showed to the slaves that
+their plot was betrayed, and so saved the city without public alarm.
+Newspaper correspondence soon was full of the story,--each informant of
+course hinting plainly that he had been behind the scenes all along,
+and had withheld it only to gratify the authorities in their policy of
+silence. It was "now no longer a secret," they wrote,--adding, that for
+five or six weeks but little attention had been paid by the community to
+these rumors, the city council having kept it carefully to themselves,
+until a number of suspicious slaves had been arrested. This refers to
+ten prisoners who were seized on June 18th,--an arrest which killed
+the plot, and left only the terrors of what might have been. The
+investigation, thus publicly commenced, soon revealed a free colored man
+named Denmark Vesey as the leader of the enterprise,--among his chief
+coadjutors being that innocent Peter and that unsuspecting Mingo who had
+been examined and discharged nearly three weeks before.
+
+It is matter of demonstration, that, but for the military preparations
+on the appointed Sunday night, the attempt would have been made. The
+ringleaders had actually met for their final arrangements, when, by
+comparing notes, they found themselves foiled; and within another week
+they were prisoners on trial. Nevertheless, the plot which they had laid
+was the most elaborate insurrectionary project ever formed by American
+slaves, and came the nearest to a terrible success. In boldness of
+conception and thoroughness of organization there has been nothing
+to compare with it, and it is worth while to dwell somewhat upon its
+details, first introducing the _Dramatis Personae_.
+
+Denmark Vesey had come very near figuring as a revolutionist in Hayti,
+instead of South Carolina. Captain Vesey, an old resident of Charleston,
+commanded a ship that traded between St. Thomas and Cape Français,
+during our Revolutionary War, in the slave-transportation line. In the
+year 1781 he took on board a cargo of three hundred and ninety slaves,
+and sailed for the Cape. On the passage, he and his officers were much
+attracted by the beauty and intelligence of a boy of fourteen, whom they
+unanimously adopted into the cabin as a pet. They gave him new clothes
+and a new name, Télémaque, which was afterwards gradually corrupted into
+Telmak and Denmark. They amused themselves with him until their arrival
+at Cape Français, and then, "having no use for the boy," sold their pet
+as if he had been a macaw or a monkey. Captain Vesey sailed for St.
+Thomas, and presently making another trip to Cape Français, was
+surprised to hear from his consignee that Télémaque would be returned
+on his hands as being "unsound,"--not in theology nor in morals, but in
+body,--subject to epileptic fits, in fact. According to the custom of
+that place, the boy was examined by the city physician, who required
+Captain Vesey to take him back; and Denmark served him faithfully, with
+no trouble from epilepsy, for twenty years, travelling all over the
+world with him, and learning to speak various languages. In 1800, he
+drew a prize of fifteen hundred dollars in the East Bay Street Lottery,
+with which he bought his freedom from his master for six hundred
+dollars,--much less than his market value. From that time, the official
+report says, he worked as a carpenter in Charleston, distinguished for
+physical strength and energy. "Among those of his color he was looked up
+to with awe and respect. His temper was impetuous and domineering in the
+extreme, qualifying him for the despotic rule of which he was ambitious.
+All his passions were ungovernable and savage; and to his numerous wives
+and children he displayed the haughty and capricious cruelty of an
+Eastern bashaw."
+
+"For several years before he disclosed his intentions to any one, he
+appears to have been constantly and assiduously engaged in endeavoring
+to embitter the minds of the colored population against the white.
+He rendered himself perfectly familiar with all those parts of the
+Scriptures which he thought he could pervert to his purpose; and would
+readily quote them, to prove that slavery was contrary to the laws of
+God,--that slaves were bound to attempt their emancipation, however
+shocking and bloody might be the consequences,--and that such efforts
+would not only be pleasing to the Almighty, but were absolutely enjoined
+and their success predicted in the Scriptures. His favorite texts, when
+he addressed those of his own color, were Zechariah, xiv. 1-3, and
+Joshua, vi. 21; and in all his conversations he identified their
+situation with that of the Israelites. The number of inflammatory
+pamphlets on slavery brought into Charleston from some of our sister
+States within the last four years, (and once from Sierra Leone,) and
+distributed amongst the colored population of the city, for which, there
+was a great facility, in consequence of the unrestricted intercourse
+allowed to persons of color between the different States in the Union,
+and the speeches in Congress of those opposed to the admission of
+Missouri into the Union, perhaps garbled and misrepresented, furnished
+him with ample means for inflaming the minds of the colored population
+of this State; and by distorting certain parts of those speeches, or
+selecting from them particular passages, he persuaded but too many that
+Congress had actually declared them free, and that they were held in
+bondage contrary to the laws of the land. Even whilst walking through
+the streets in company with another, he was not idle; for if his
+companion bowed to a white person, he would rebuke him, and observe that
+all men were born equal, and that he was surprised that any one would
+degrade himself by such conduct,--that he would never cringe to the
+whites, nor ought any one who had the feelings of a man. When answered,
+'We are slaves,' he would sarcastically and indignantly reply, 'You
+deserve to remain slaves'; and if he were further asked, 'What can we
+do?' he would remark, 'Go and buy a spelling-book and read the fable of
+Hercules and the Wagoner,' which he would then repeat, and apply it
+to their situation. He also sought every opportunity of entering into
+conversation with white persons, when they could be overheard by negroes
+near by, especially in grogshops,--during which conversation he would
+artfully introduce some bold remark on slavery; and sometimes, when,
+from the character he was conversing with, he found he might be still
+bolder, he would go so far, that, had not his declarations in such
+situations been clearly proved, they would scarcely have been credited.
+He continued this course until some time after the commencement of the
+last winter; by which time he had not only obtained incredible influence
+amongst persons of color, but many feared him more than their owners,
+and, one of them declared, even more than his God."
+
+It was proved against him that his house had been the principal place of
+meeting for the conspirators, that all the others habitually referred to
+him as the leader, and that he had shown great address in dealing with
+different temperaments and overcoming a variety of scruples. One
+witness testified that Vesey had read to him from the Bible about the
+deliverance of the Children of Israel; another, that he had read to him
+a speech which had been delivered "in Congress by a Mr. King" on the
+subject of slavery, and Vesey had said that "this Mr. King was the black
+man's friend,--that he, Mr. King, had declared he would continue to
+speak, write, and publish pamphlets against slavery the longest day he
+lived, until the Southern States consented to emancipate their slaves,
+for that slavery was a great disgrace to the country." But among all the
+reports there are only two sentences which really reveal the secret soul
+of Denmark Vesey, and show his impulses and motives. "He said he did not
+go with Creighton to Africa, because he had not a will; _he wanted to
+stay and see what he could do for his fellow-creatures_." The other
+takes us still nearer home. Monday Gell stated in his confession, that
+Vesey, on first broaching the plan to him, said "he was satisfied with
+his own condition, being free, _but, as all his children were slaves, he
+wished to see what could be done for them._"
+
+It is strange to turn from this simple statement of a perhaps
+intelligent preference, on the part of a parent, for seeing his
+offspring in a condition of freedom, to the _naïve_ astonishment of
+his judges. "It is difficult to imagine," says the sentence finally
+passed on Denmark Vesey, "what _infatuation_ could have prompted you
+to attempt an enterprise so wild and visionary. You were a free man,
+comparatively wealthy, and enjoyed every comfort compatible with your
+situation. You had, therefore, much to risk and little to gain." Is
+slavery, then, a thing so intrinsically detestable, that a man thus
+favored will engage in a plan thus desperate merely to rescue his
+children from it? "Vesey said the negroes were living such an abominable
+life, they ought to rise. I said, I was living well; he said, though I
+was, others were not, and that 't was such fools as I that were in the
+way and would not help them, and that after all things were well he
+would mark me." "His general conversation," said another witness, a
+white boy, "was about religion, which he would apply to slavery; as, for
+instance, he would speak of the creation of the world, in which he would
+say all men had equal rights, blacks as well as whites, etc.; all his
+religious remarks were mingled with slavery." And the firmness of this
+purpose did not leave him, even after the betrayal of his cherished
+plans. "After the plot was discovered," said Monday Gell, in his
+confession, "Vesey said it was all over, unless an attempt were made to
+rescue those who might be condemned, by rushing on the people and saving
+the prisoners, or all dying together."
+
+The only person to divide with Vesey the claim of leadership was
+Peter Poyas. Vesey was the missionary of the cause, but Peter was the
+organizing mind. He kept the register of "candidates," and decided who
+should or should not be enrolled. "We can't live so," he often reminded
+his confederates; "we must break the yoke." "God has a hand in it; we
+have been meeting for four years and are not yet betrayed." Peter was a
+ship-carpenter, and a slave of great value. He was to be the military
+leader. His plans showed some natural generalship; he arranged the
+night-attack; he planned the enrolment of a mounted troop to scour the
+streets; and he had a list of all the shops where arms and ammunition
+were kept for sale. He voluntarily undertook the management of the
+most difficult part of the enterprise,--the capture of the main
+guard-house,--and had pledged himself to advance alone and surprise
+the sentinel. He was said to have a magnetism in his eye, of which his
+confederates stood in great awe; if he once got his eye upon a man,
+there was no resisting it. A white witness has since narrated, that,
+after his arrest, he was chained to the floor in a cell, with another of
+the conspirators. Men in authority came and sought by promises, threats,
+and even tortures, to ascertain the names of other accomplices. His
+companion, wearied out with pain and suffering, and stimulated by the
+hope of saving his own life, at last began to yield. Peter raised
+himself, leaned upon his elbow, looked at the poor fellow, saying
+quietly, "Die like a man," and instantly lay down again. It was enough;
+not another word was extorted.
+
+One of the most notable individuals in the plot was a certain Jack
+Purcell, commonly called Gullah Jack,--Gullah signifying Angola, the
+place of his origin. A conjurer by profession and by lineal heritage in
+his own country, he had resumed the practice of his vocation on this
+side the Atlantic. For fifteen years he had wielded in secret an immense
+influence among a sable constituency in Charleston; and as he had the
+reputation of being invulnerable, and of teaching invulnerability as
+an art, he was very good at beating up recruits for insurrection. Over
+those of Angolese descent, especially, he was a perfect king, and made
+them join in the revolt as one man. They met him monthly at a place
+called Bulkley's Farm, selected because the black overseer on that
+plantation was one of the initiated, and because the farm was accessible
+by water, thus enabling them to elude the patrol. There they prepared
+cartridges and pikes, and had primitive banquets, which assumed a
+melodramatic character under the inspiriting guidance of Jack. If a fowl
+was privately roasted, that mystic individual muttered incantations over
+it, and then they all grasped at it, exclaiming, "Thus we pull Buckra
+to pieces!" He gave them parched corn and ground-nuts to be eaten as
+internal safeguards on the day before the outbreak, and a consecrated
+_cullah_, or crab's claw, to be carried in the mouth by each, as an
+amulet. These rather questionable means secured him a power which was
+very unquestionable; the witnesses examined in his presence all showed
+dread of his conjurations, and referred to him indirectly, with a kind
+of awe, as "the little man who can't be shot."
+
+When Gullah Jack was otherwise engaged, there seems to have been a sort
+of deputy seer employed in the enterprise, a blind man named Philip. He
+was a preacher, was said to have been born with a caul on his head, and
+so claimed the gift of second-sight. Timid adherents were brought to his
+house for ghostly counsel. "Why do you look so timorous?" he said to
+William Garner, and then quoted Scripture, "Let not your hearts be
+troubled." That a blind man should know how he _looked_ was beyond the
+philosophy of the visitor, and this piece of rather cheap ingenuity
+carried the day.
+
+Other leaders were appointed also. Monday Gell was the scribe of the
+enterprise; he was a native African, who had learned to read and write.
+He was by trade a harness-maker, working chiefly on his own account. He
+confessed that he had written a letter to President Boyer of the new
+black republic; "the letter was about the sufferings of the blacks, and
+to know if the people of St. Domingo would help them, if they made an
+effort to free themselves." This epistle was sent by the black cook of a
+Northern schooner, and the envelope was addressed to a relative of the
+bearer.
+
+Tom Russell was the armorer, and made pikes "on a very improved model,"
+the official report admits. Polydore Faber fitted the weapons with
+handles. Bacchus Hammett had charge of the firearms and ammunition, not
+as yet a laborious duty. William Garner and Mingo Harth were to lead the
+horse-company. Lot Forrester was the courier, and had done, no one ever
+knew how much, in the way of enlisting country negroes, of whom Ned
+Bennett was to take command when enlisted. Being the Governor's servant,
+Ned was probably credited with some official experience. These were the
+officers: now for the plan of attack.
+
+It was the custom then, as now, for the country negroes to flock largely
+into Charleston on Sunday. More than a thousand came, on ordinary
+occasions, and a far larger number might at any time make their
+appearance without exciting any suspicion. They gathered in, especially
+by water, from the opposite sides of Ashley and Cooper Rivers, and from
+the neighboring islands; and they came in a great number of canoes of
+various sizes,--many of which could carry a hundred men,--which were
+ordinarily employed in bringing agricultural products to the Charleston
+market. To get an approximate knowledge of the number, the city
+government once ordered the persons thus arriving to be counted,--and
+that during the progress of the trials, at a time when the negroes were
+rather fearful of coming into town,--and it was found, that, even then,
+there were more than five hundred visitors on a single Sunday. This
+fact, then, was the essential point in the plan of insurrection. Whole
+plantations were found to have been enlisted among the "candidates,"
+as they were termed; and it was proved that the city negroes who lived
+nearest the place of meeting had agreed to conceal these confederates in
+their houses to a large extent, on the night of the proposed outbreak.
+
+The details of the plan, however, were not rashly committed to the mass
+of the confederates; they were known only to a few, and were finally to
+have been announced after the evening prayer-meetings on the appointed
+Sunday. But each leader had his own company enlisted, and his own work
+marked out. When the clock struck twelve, all were to move. Peter Poyas
+was to lead a party ordered to assemble at South Bay, and to be joined
+by a force from James' Island; he was then to march up and seize the
+arsenal and guard-house opposite St. Michael's Church, and detach a
+sufficient number to cut off all white citizens who should appear at the
+alarm-posts. A second body of negroes, from the country and the Neck,
+headed by Ned Bennett, was to assemble on the Neck and seize the arsenal
+there. A third was to meet at Governor Bennett's Mills, under command of
+Rolla, and, after putting the Governor and Intendant to death, to march
+through the city, or be posted at Cannon's Bridge, thus preventing the
+inhabitants of Cannonsborough from entering the city. A fourth, partly
+from the country and partly from the neighboring localities in the city,
+was to rendezvous on Gadsden's Wharf and attack the upper guard-house.
+A fifth, composed of country and Neck negroes, was to assemble at
+Bulkley's Farm, two miles and a half from the city, seize the upper
+powder-magazine and then march down; and a sixth was to assemble at
+Denmark Vesey's and obey his orders. A seventh detachment, under Gullah
+Jack, was to assemble in Boundary Street, at the head of King Street,
+to capture the arms of the Neck company of militia, and to take an
+additional supply from Mr. Duquercron's shop. The naval stores on Mey's
+Wharf were also to be attacked. Meanwhile a horse-company, consisting
+of many draymen, hostlers, and butcher-boys, was to meet at Lightwood's
+Alley and then scour the streets to prevent the whites from assembling.
+Every white man coming out of his own door was to be killed, and, if
+necessary, the city was to be fired in several places,--slow-match for
+this purpose having been purloined from the public arsenal and placed in
+an accessible position.
+
+Beyond this, the plan of action was either unformed or undiscovered;
+some slight reliance seems to have been placed on English aid,--more on
+assistance from St. Domingo; at any rate, all the ships in the harbor
+were to be seized, and in these, if the worst came to the worst, those
+most deeply inculpated could set sail, bearing with them, perhaps, the
+spoils of shops and of banks. It seems to be admitted by the official
+narrative, that, they might have been able, at that season of the year,
+and with the aid of the fortifications on the Neck and around the
+harbor, to retain possession of the city for some time.
+
+So unsuspicious were the authorities, so unprepared the citizens, so
+open to attack lay the city, that nothing seemed necessary to the
+success of the insurgents except organization and arms. Indeed, the
+plan of organization easily covered a supply of arms. By their own
+contributions they had secured enough to strike the first blow,--a
+few hundred pikes and daggers, together with swords and guns for the
+leaders. But they had carefully marked every place in the city where
+weapons were to be obtained. On King-Street Road, beyond the municipal
+limits, in a common wooden shop, were left unguarded the arms of the
+Neck company of militia, to the number of several hundred stand; and
+these were to be secured by Bacchus Hammett, whose master kept the
+establishment. In Mr. Duquercron's shop there were deposited for sale
+as many more weapons; and they had noted Mr. Schirer's shop in Queen
+Street, and other gunsmiths' establishments. Finally, the State arsenal
+in Meeting Street, a building with no defences except ordinary wooden
+doors, was to be seized early in the outbreak. Provided, therefore, that
+the first moves proved successful, all the rest appeared sure.
+
+Very little seems to have been said among the conspirators in regard to
+any plans of riot or debauchery, subsequent to the capture of the city.
+Either their imaginations did not dwell on them, or the witnesses did
+not dare to give testimony, or the authorities to print it. Death was to
+be dealt out, comprehensive and terrible; but nothing more is mentioned.
+One prisoner, Rolla, is reported in the evidence to have dropped hints
+in regard to the destiny of the women; and there was a rumor in the
+newspapers of the time, that he, or some other of Governor Bennett's
+slaves, was to have taken the Governor's daughter, a young girl of
+sixteen, for his wife, in the event of success; but this is all. On the
+other hand, Denmark Vesey was known to be for a war of immediate and
+total extermination; and when some of the company opposed killing "the
+ministers and the women and children," Vesey read from the Scriptures
+that all should be cut off, and said that "it was for their safety not
+to leave one white skin alive, for this was the plan they pursued at St.
+Domingo." And all this was not a mere dream of one lonely enthusiast,
+but a measure which had been maturing for four full years among several
+confederates, and had been under discussion for five months among
+multitudes of initiated "candidates."
+
+As usual with slave-insurrections, the best men and those most trusted
+were deepest in the plot. Rolla was the only prominent conspirator who
+was not an active Church-member. "Most of the ringleaders," says a
+Charleston letter-writer of that day, "were the rulers or class-leaders
+in what is called the African Society, and were considered faithful,
+honest fellows. Indeed, many of the owners could not be convinced, till
+the fellows confessed themselves, that they were concerned, and that the
+first object of all was to kill their masters." And the first official
+report declares that it would not be difficult to assign a motive for
+the insurrectionists, "if it had not been distinctly proved, that, with
+scarcely an exception, they had no individual hardship to complain
+of, and were among the most humanely treated negroes in the city. The
+facilities for combining and confederating in such a scheme were amply
+afforded by the extreme indulgence and kindness which characterizes
+the domestic treatment of our slaves. Many slave-owners among us, not
+satisfied with ministering to the wants of their domestics by all the
+comforts of abundant food and excellent clothing, with a misguided
+benevolence have not only permitted their instruction, but lent to such
+efforts their approbation and applause."
+
+"I sympathize most sincerely," says the anonymous author of a pamphlet
+of the period, "with the very respectable and pious clergyman whose
+heart must still bleed at the recollection that his confidential
+class-leader, but a week or two before his just conviction, had received
+the communion of the Lord's Supper from his hand. This wretch had
+been brought up in his pastor's family, and was treated with the same
+Christian attention as was shown to their own children." "To us who are
+accustomed to the base and proverbial ingratitude of these people this
+ill return of kindness and confidence is not surprising; but they who
+are ignorant of their real character will read and wonder."
+
+One demonstration of this "Christian attention" had lately been the
+closing of the African Church,--of which, as has been stated, most of
+the leading revolutionists were members,--on the ground that it tended
+to spread the dangerous infection of the alphabet. On January 15th,
+1821, the City Marshal, John J. Lafar, had notified "ministers of the
+gospel and others who keep night- and Sunday-schools for slaves, that
+the education of such persons is forbidden by law, and that the city
+government feel imperiously bound to enforce the penalty." So that there
+were some special, as well as general grounds for disaffection among
+these ungrateful favorites of Fortune, the slaves. Then there were
+fancied dangers. An absurd report had somehow arisen--since you cannot
+keep men ignorant without making them unreasonable also--that on the
+ensuing Fourth of July the whites were to create a false alarm, and that
+every black man coming out was to be killed, "in order to thin them";
+this being done to prevent their joining an imaginary army supposed to
+be on its way from Hayti. Others were led to suppose that Congress had
+ended the Missouri Compromise discussion by making them all free, and
+that the law would protect their liberty, if they could only secure it.
+Others again were threatened with the vengeance of the conspirators,
+unless they also joined; on the night of attack, it was said, the
+initiated would have a countersign, and all who did not know it would
+share the fate of the whites. Add to this the reading of Congressional
+speeches, and of the copious magazine of revolution to be found in the
+Bible,--and it was no wonder, if they for the first time were roused,
+under the energetic leadership of Vesey, to a full consciousness of
+their own condition.
+
+"Not only were the leaders of good character and very much indulged by
+their owners, but this was very generally the case with all who were
+convicted,--many of them possessing the highest confidence of their
+owners, and not one of bad character." In one case it was proved that
+Vesey had forbidden his followers to trust a certain man, because he had
+once been seen intoxicated. In another case it was shown that a slave
+named George had made every effort to obtain their confidence, but was
+constantly excluded from their meetings as a talkative fellow who could
+not be trusted,--a policy which his levity of manner, when examined in
+court, fully justified. They took no women into counsel,--not from any
+distrust apparently, but in order that their children might not be left
+uncared-for, in case of defeat and destruction. House-servants were
+rarely trusted, or only when they had been carefully sounded by the
+chief leaders. Peter Poyas, in commissioning an agent to enlist men,
+gave him excellent cautions: "Don't mention it to those waiting-men who
+receive presents of old coats, etc., from their masters, or they'll
+betray us; _I will speak to them_." When he did speak, if he did not
+convince them, he at least frightened them; but the chief reliance was
+on the slaves hired out and therefore more uncontrolled,--and also upon
+the country negroes.
+
+The same far-sighted policy directed the conspirators to disarm
+suspicion by peculiarly obedient and orderly conduct. And it shows the
+precaution with which the thing was carried on, that, although Peter
+Poyas was proved to have had a list of some six hundred persons, yet not
+one of his particular company was ever brought to trial. As each leader
+kept to himself the names of his proselytes, and as Monday Gell was the
+only one of these who turned traitor, any opinion as to the numbers
+actually engaged must appear altogether conjectural. One witness said
+nine thousand; another, six thousand six hundred. These statements
+were probably extravagant, though not more so than Governor Bennett's
+assertion, on the other side, that "all who were actually concerned had
+been brought to justice,"--unless by this phrase he designates only the
+ringleaders. The avowed aim of the Governor's letter, indeed, is to
+smooth the thing over, for the credit and safety of the city; and
+its evasive tone contrasts strongly with the more frank and thorough
+statements of the Judges, made after the thing could no longer be hushed
+up. These best authorities explicitly acknowledge that they had failed
+to detect more than a small minority of those concerned in the project,
+and seem to admit, that, if it had once been brought to a head, the
+slaves generally would have joined in.
+
+"We cannot venture to say," says the Intendant's pamphlet, "to how many
+the knowledge of the intended effort was communicated, who, without
+signifying their assent, or attending any of the meetings, were yet
+prepared to profit by events. That there are many who would not have
+permitted the enterprise to have failed at a critical moment, for the
+want of their coöperation, we have the best reason for believing." So
+believed the community at large; and the panic was in proportion, when
+the whole danger was finally made public. "The scenes I witnessed," says
+one who has since narrated the circumstances, "and the declaration of
+the impending danger that met us at all times and on all occasions,
+forced the conviction that never were an entire people more thoroughly
+alarmed than were the people of Charleston at that time.... During the
+excitement and the trial of the supposed conspirators, rumor proclaimed
+all, and doubtless more than all, the horrors of the plot. The city was
+to be fired in every quarter, the arsenal in the immediate vicinity was
+to be broken open and the arms distributed to the insurgents, and an
+universal massacre of the white inhabitants to take place. Nor did there
+seem to be any doubt in the mind of the people that such would actually
+have been the result, had not the plot fortunately been detected before
+the time appointed for the outbreak. It was believed, as a matter of
+course, that every black in the city would join in the insurrection, and
+that, if the original design had been attempted, and the city taken by
+surprise, the negroes would have achieved a complete and easy victory.
+Nor does it seem at all impossible that such might have been or yet
+may be the case, if any well-arranged and resolute rising should take
+place."
+
+Indeed, this universal admission, that all the slaves were ready to take
+part in any desperate enterprise, was one of the most startling aspects
+of the affair. The authorities say that the two principal State's
+evidence declared that "they never spoke to any person of color on the
+subject, or knew of any one who had been spoken to by the other leaders,
+who had withheld his assent." And the conspirators seem to have been
+perfectly satisfied that all the remaining slaves would enter their
+ranks upon the slightest success. "Let us assemble a sufficient number
+to commence the work with spirit, and we'll not want men; they'll fall
+in behind us fast enough." And as an illustration of this readiness,
+the official report mentions a slave who had belonged to one master for
+sixteen years, sustaining a high character for fidelity and affection,
+who had twice travelled with him through the Northern States, resisting
+every solicitation to escape, and who yet was very deeply concerned in
+the insurrection, though knowing it to involve the probable destruction
+of the whole family with whom he lived.
+
+One singular circumstance followed the first rumors of the plot. Several
+white men, said to be of low and unprincipled character, at once began
+to make interest with the supposed leaders among the slaves, either from
+genuine sympathy, or with the intention of betraying them for money, or
+of profiting by the insurrection, should it succeed. Four of these were
+brought to trial; but the official report expresses the opinion that
+many more might have been discovered but for the inadmissibility of
+slave-testimony against whites. Indeed, the evidence against even
+these four was insufficient for a capital conviction, although one was
+overheard, through stratagem, by the Intendant himself, and arrested
+on the spot. This man was a Scotchman, another a Spaniard, a third a
+German, and the fourth a Carolinian. The last had for thirty years kept
+a shop in the neighborhood of Charleston; he was proved to have asserted
+that "the negroes had as much right to fight for their liberty as the
+white people," had offered to head them in the enterprise, and had said
+that in three weeks he would have two thousand men. But in no case, it
+appears, did these men obtain the confidence of the slaves, and the
+whole plot was conceived and organized, so far as appears, without the
+slightest coöperation from any white man.
+
+The trial of the conspirators began on Wednesday, June 19th. At the
+request of the Intendant, Justices Kennedy and Parker summoned five
+freeholders (Messrs. Drayton, Heyward, Pringle, Legaré, and Turnbull)
+to constitute a court, under the provisions of the act "for the better
+ordering and governing negroes and other slaves." The Intendant laid the
+case before them, with a list of prisoners and witnesses. By a vote of
+the Court, all spectators were excluded, except the owners and counsel
+of the slaves concerned. No other colored person was allowed to enter
+the jail, and a strong guard of soldiers was kept always on duty around
+the building. Under these general arrangements the trials proceeded
+with elaborate formality, though with some variations from ordinary
+usage,--as was, indeed, required by the statute.
+
+For instance, the law provided that the testimony of any Indian or slave
+could be received, _without oath_, against a slave or free colored
+person, although it was not valid, even under oath, against a white.
+But it is best to quote the official language in respect to the rules
+adopted. "As the Court had been organized under a statute of a peculiar
+and local character, and intended for the government of a distinct
+class of persons in the community, they were bound to conform their
+proceedings to its provisions, which depart in many essential features
+from the principles of the Common Law and some of the settled rules of
+evidence. The Court, however, determined to adopt those rules, whenever
+they were not repugnant to nor expressly excepted by that statute, nor
+inconsistent with the local situation and policy of the State; and laid
+down for their own government the following regulations: First, that
+no slave should be tried except in the presence of his owner or his
+counsel, and that notice should be given in every case at least one day
+before the trial; second, that the testimony of one witness, unsupported
+by additional evidence or by circumstances, should lead to no conviction
+of a _capital_ nature; third, that the witnesses should be confronted
+with the accused and with each other in every case, except where
+testimony was given under a solemn pledge that the names of the
+witnesses should not be divulged,--as they declared, in some instances,
+that they apprehended being murdered by the blacks, if it was known that
+they had volunteered their evidence; fourth, that the prisoners might be
+represented by counsel, whenever this was requested by the owners of
+the slaves, or by the prisoners themselves, if free; fifth, that the
+statements or defences of the accused should be heard in every case,
+and they be permitted themselves to examine any witness they thought
+proper."
+
+It is singular to observe how entirely these rules seem to concede that
+a slave's life has no sort of value to himself, but only to his master.
+His master, not he himself, must choose whether it be worth while to
+employ counsel. His master, not his mother or his wife, must be present
+at the trial. So far is this carried, that the provision to exclude
+"persons who had no particular interest in the slaves accused" seems to
+have excluded every acknowledged relative they had in the world, and
+admitted only those who had invested in them so many dollars. And yet
+the very first section of that part of the statute under which they were
+tried lays down an explicit recognition of their humanity. "And whereas
+natural justice forbids that any _person_, of what condition soever,
+should be condemned unheard." So thoroughly, in the whole report, are
+the ideas of person and chattel intermingled, that, when Governor
+Bennett petitions for mitigation of sentence in the case of his slave
+Batteau, and closes, "I ask this, gentlemen, as an individual incurring
+a severe and distressing loss," it is really impossible to decide
+whether the predominant emotion be affectional or financial.
+
+It is a matter of painful necessity to acknowledge that the proceedings
+of all slave-tribunals justify the honest admission of Governor Adams of
+South Carolina, in his legislative message of 1855:--"The administration
+of our laws, in relation to our colored population, by our courts of
+magistrates and freeholders, as these courts are at present constituted,
+calls loudly for reform. Their decisions are rarely in conformity
+with justice or humanity." This trial, as reported by the justices
+themselves, seems to have been no worse than the average,--perhaps
+better. In all, thirty-five were sentenced to death, thirty-four to
+transportation, twenty-seven acquitted by the Court, and twenty-five
+discharged without trial, by the Committee of Vigilance, making in all
+one hundred and twenty-one.
+
+The sentences pronounced by Judge Kennedy upon the leading rebels, while
+paying a high tribute to their previous character, of course bring all
+law and all Scripture to prove the magnitude of their crime. "It is a
+melancholy fact," he says, "that those servants in whom we reposed the
+most unlimited confidence have been the principal actors in this wicked
+scheme." Then he rises into earnest appeals. "Are you incapable of the
+heavenly influence of that gospel all whose paths are peace? It was to
+reconcile us to our destiny on earth, and to enable us to discharge
+with fidelity all our duties, whether as master or servant, that those
+inspired precepts were imparted by Heaven to fallen man." And so on.
+
+To these reasonings the prisoners had, of course, nothing to say; but
+the official reports bear the strongest testimony to their fortitude.
+"Rolla, when arraigned, affected not to understand the charge against
+him, and when it was at his request further explained to him, assumed,
+with wonderful adroitness, astonishment and surprise. He was remarkable,
+throughout his trial, for great presence and composure of mind. When he
+was informed he was convicted, and was advised to prepare for death,
+though he had previously (but after his trial) confessed his guilt, he
+appeared perfectly confounded, but exhibited no signs of fear. In Ned's
+behavior there was nothing remarkable; but his countenance was stern and
+immovable, even whilst he was receiving the sentence of death: from
+his looks it was impossible to discover or conjecture what were his
+feelings. Not so with Peter; for in his countenance were strongly marked
+disappointed ambition, revenge, indignation, and an anxiety to know how
+far the discoveries had extended; and the same emotions were exhibited
+in his conduct. He did not appear to fear personal consequences, for his
+whole behavior indicated the reverse; but exhibited an evident anxiety
+for the success of their plan, in which his whole soul was embarked. His
+countenance and behavior were the same when he received his sentence,
+and his only words were, on retiring, 'I suppose you'll let me see my
+wife and family before I die?' and that not in a supplicating tone.
+When he was asked, a day or two after, if it was possible he could wish
+to see his master and family murdered, who had treated him so kindly,
+he only replied to the question by a smile. Monday's behavior was not
+peculiar. When he was before the Court, his arms were folded; he heard
+the testimony given against him, and received his sentence with the
+utmost firmness and composure. But no description can accurately convey
+to others the impression which the trial, defence, and appearance of
+Gullah Jack made on those who witnessed the workings of his cunning and
+rude address. When arrested and brought before the Court, in company
+with another African named Jack, the property of the estate of
+Pritchard, he assumed so much ignorance, and looked and acted the fool
+so well, that some of the Court could not believe that this was the
+necromancer who was sought after. This conduct he continued when on
+his trial, until he saw the witnesses and heard the testimony as it
+progressed against him, when, in an instant, his countenance was lighted
+up as if by lightning, and his wildness and vehemence of gesture, and
+the malignant glance with which he eyed the witnesses who appeared
+against him, all indicated the savage, who, indeed, had been caught,
+but not tamed. His courage, however, soon forsook him. When he received
+sentence of death, he earnestly implored that a fortnight longer might
+be allowed him, and then a week longer, which he continued earnestly to
+solicit until he was taken from the court-room to his cell; and when
+he was carried to execution, he gave up his spirit without firmness or
+composure."
+
+Not so with Denmark Vesey. The plans of years were frustrated; his own
+life and liberty were thrown away; many others were sacrificed through
+his leader ship; and one more added to the list of unsuccessful
+insurrections. All these disastrous certainties he faced calmly, and
+gave his whole mind composedly to the conducting of his defence. With
+his arms tightly folded and his eyes fixed on the floor, he attentively
+followed every item of the testimony. He heard the witnesses examined by
+the Court, and cross-examined by his own counsel, and it is evident from
+the narrative of the presiding judge that he showed no small skill and
+policy in the searching cross-examination which he then applied. The
+fears, the feelings, the consciences of those who had betrayed him, all
+were in turn appealed to; but the facts were too overpowering, and it
+was too late to aid his comrades or himself. Then turning to the Court,
+he skilfully availed himself of the point which had so much impressed
+the community, the intrinsic improbability that a man in his position of
+freedom and prosperity should sacrifice everything to free other people.
+If they thought it so incredible, why not give him the benefit of the
+incredibility? The act being, as they stated, one of infatuation, why
+convict him of it on the bare word of men who, by their own showing, had
+not only shared the infatuation, but proved traitors to it? An ingenious
+defence,--indeed, the only one which could by any possibility be
+suggested, anterior to the days of Choate and somnambulism; but in vain.
+He was sentenced, and it was not, apparently, till the judge reproached
+him for the destruction he had brought on his followers that he showed
+any sign of emotion. Then the tears came into his eyes. But he said not
+another word.
+
+The executions took place on five different days, and, bad as they were,
+they might have been worse. After the imaginary Negro Plot of New York,
+in 1741, thirteen negroes had been judicially burned alive; two had
+suffered the same sentence at Charleston in 1808; and it was undoubtedly
+some mark of progress that in this case the gallows took the place
+of the flames. Six were hanged on July 2d, upon Blake's lands, near
+Charleston,--Denmark Vesey, Peter Poyas, Jess, Ned, Rolla, and
+Batteau,--the last three being slaves of the Governor himself. Gullah
+Jack and John were executed "on the Lines," near Charleston, on July
+12th, and twenty-two more on July 26th. Four others suffered their fate
+on July 30th; and one more, William Garner, effected a temporary escape,
+was captured and tried by a different court, and was finally executed on
+August 9th.
+
+The self-control of these men did not desert them at their execution.
+When the six leaders suffered death, the report says, Peter Poyas
+repeated his charge of secrecy. "Do not open your lips; die silent, as
+you shall see me do"; and all obeyed. And though afterwards, as the
+particulars of the plot became better known, there was less inducement
+to conceal, yet every one of the thirty-five seems to have met his fate
+bravely, except the conjurer. Governor Bennett, in his letter, expresses
+much dissatisfaction at the small amount learned from the participators.
+"to the last hour of the existence of several who appeared to be
+conspicuous actors in the drama, they were pressingly importuned to make
+farther confessions,"--this "importuning" being more clearly defined in
+a letter of Mr. Ferguson, owner of two of the slaves, as "having them
+severely corrected." Yet so little was obtained, that the Governor was
+compelled to admit at last that the really essential features of the
+plot were not known to any of the informers.
+
+It is to be remembered that the plot failed because a man unauthorized
+and incompetent, William Paul, undertook to make enlistments on his own
+account. He blundered on one of precisely that class of men--favored
+house-servants--whom his leaders had expressly reserved for more skilful
+manipulations. He being thus detected, one would have supposed that the
+discovery of many accomplices would at once have followed.
+
+The number enlisted was counted by thousands; yet for twenty-nine
+days after the first treachery, and during twenty days of official
+examination, only fifteen of the conspirators were ferreted out.
+Meanwhile the informers' names had to be concealed with the utmost
+secrecy,--they were in peril of their lives from the slaves,--William
+Paul scarcely dared to go beyond the door-step,--and the names of
+important witnesses examined in June were still suppressed in the
+official report published in October. That a conspiracy on so large a
+scale should have existed in embryo during four years, and in an active
+form for several months, and yet have been so well managed, that, after
+actual betrayal, the authorities were again thrown off their guard
+and the plot nearly brought to a head again,--this certainly shows
+extraordinary ability in the leaders, and a talent for concerted action
+on the part of slaves generally with which they have hardly been
+credited.
+
+And it is also to be noted, that the range of the conspiracy extended
+far beyond Charleston. It was proved that Frank, slave of Mr. Ferguson,
+living nearly forty miles from the city, had boasted of having enlisted
+four plantations in his immediate neighborhood. It was in evidence that
+the insurgents "were trying all round the country, from Georgetown and
+Santee round about to Combahee, to get people"; and after the trials, it
+was satisfactorily established that Vesey "had been in the country as
+far north as South Santee, and southwardly as far as the Euhaws, which
+is between seventy and eighty miles from the city." Mr. Ferguson himself
+testified that the good order of any gang was no evidence of their
+ignorance of the plot, since the behavior of his own initiated slaves
+had been unexceptionable, in accordance with Vesey's directions.
+
+With such an organization and such materials, there was nothing in the
+plan which could be pronounced incredible or impracticable. There is no
+reason why they should not have taken the city. After all the Governor's
+entreaties as to moderate language, the authorities were obliged to
+admit that South Carolina had been saved from a "horrible catastrophe."
+"For although success could not possibly have attended the conspirators,
+yet, before their suppression, Charleston would probably have been
+wrapped in flames, many valuable lives would have been sacrificed, and
+an immense loss of property sustained by the citizens, even though
+no other distressing occurrences were experienced by them, while the
+plantations in the lower country would have been disorganized, and the
+agricultural interests have sustained an enormous loss." The Northern
+journals had already expressed still greater anxieties. "It appears,"
+said the "New York Commercial Advertiser," "that, but for the timely
+disclosure, the whole of that State would in a few days have witnessed
+the horrid spectacle once witnessed in St. Domingo."
+
+My friend David Lee Child has kindly communicated to me a few memoranda
+of a conversation held long since with a free colored man who had worked
+in Vesey's shop during the time of the insurrection, and these generally
+confirm the official narratives. "I was a young man then," he said,
+"and, owing to the policy of preventing communication between free
+colored people and slaves, I had little opportunity of ascertaining how
+the slaves felt about it. I know that several of them were abused in the
+street, and some put in prison, for appearing in sack-cloth. There was
+an ordinance of the city, that any slave who wore a badge of mourning
+should be imprisoned and flogged. They generally got the law, which is
+thirty-nine lashes, but sometimes it was according to the decision of
+the Court." "I heard, at the time, of arms being buried in coffins at
+Sullivan's Island." "In the time of the insurrection, the slaves were
+tried in a small room, in the jail where they were confined. No colored
+person was allowed to go within two squares of the prison. Those two
+squares were filled with troops, five thousand of whom were on duty, day
+and night. I was told, Vesey said to those that tried him, that the
+work of insurrection would go on; but as none but white persons were
+permitted to be present, I cannot tell whether he said it."
+
+During all this time there was a guarded silence in the Charleston
+journals, which strongly contrasts with the extreme publicity at
+last given to the testimony. Even the "National Intelligencer,"
+at Washington, passed lightly over the affair, and deprecated the
+publication of particulars. The Northern editors, on the other hand,
+eager for items, were constantly complaining of this reserve, and
+calling for further intelligence. "The Charleston papers," said the
+"Hartford Courant" of July 16th, "have been silent on the subject of the
+insurrection, but letters from this city state that it has created much
+alarm, and that two brigades of troops were under arms for some time to
+suppress any risings that might have taken place." "You will doubtless
+hear," wrote a Charleston correspondent of the same paper, just before,
+"many reports, and some exaggerated ones." "There was certainly a
+disposition to revolt, and some preparations made, principally by the
+plantation negroes, to take the city." "We hoped they would progress so
+far as to enable us to ascertain and punish the ringleaders." "Assure my
+friends that we feel in perfect security, although the number of nightly
+guards and other demonstrations may induce a belief among strangers to
+the contrary."
+
+The strangers would have been very blind strangers, if they had not
+been more influenced by the actions of the Charlestonians than by their
+words. The original information was given on May 25th. The time passed,
+and the plot failed on June 16th. A plan for its revival on July 2d
+proved abortive. Yet a letter from Charleston in the "Hartford Courant"
+of August 6th, represented the panic as unabated: "Great preparations
+are making, and all the military are put in preparation to guard against
+any attempt of the same kind again; but we have no apprehension of its
+being repeated." On August 10th, Governor Bennett wrote the letter
+already mentioned, which was printed and distributed as a circular, its
+object being to deprecate undue alarm. "Every individual in the State is
+interested, whether in regard to his own property or the reputation
+of the State, in giving no more importance to the transaction than it
+justly merits." Yet five days after this,--two months after the first
+danger had passed,--a reinforcement of United States troops arrived at
+Port Moultrie. And during the same month, several different attempts
+were made by small parties of armed negroes to capture the mails between
+Charleston and Savannah, and a reward of two hundred dollars was offered
+for their detection.
+
+The first official report of the trials was prepared by the Intendant,
+by request of the city council. It passed through four editions in a few
+months,--the first and fourth being published in Charleston, and the
+second and third in Boston. Being, however, but a brief pamphlet, it
+did not satisfy the public curiosity, and in October of the same
+year, (1822,) a larger volume appeared at Charleston, edited by the
+magistrates who presided at the trials, Lionel H. Kennedy and Thomas
+Parker. It contains the evidence in full, and a separate narrative of
+the whole affair, more candid and lucid than any other which I have
+found in the newspapers or pamphlets of the day. It exhibits that rarest
+of all qualities in a slave-community, a willingness to look facts in
+the face. This narrative has been faithfully followed, with the aid
+of such cross-lights as could be secured from many other quarters, in
+preparing the present history.
+
+The editor of the first official report racked his brains to discover
+the special causes of the revolt, and never trusted himself to allude
+to the general one. The negroes rebelled because they were deluded
+by Congressional eloquence, or because they were excited by a Church
+squabble, or because they had been spoilt by mistaken indulgences, such
+as being allowed to learn to read, "a misguided benevolence," as he
+pronounces it. So the Baptist Convention seems to have thought it was
+because they were not Baptists, and an Episcopal pamphleteer because
+they were not Episcopalians. It never seems to occur to any of these
+spectators that these people rebelled simply because they were slaves
+and wished to be free.
+
+No doubt, there were enough special torches with which a man so skilful
+as Denmark Vesey could kindle up these dusky powder-magazines; but,
+after all, the permanent peril lay in the powder. So long as that
+existed, everything was incendiary. Any torn scrap in the street might
+contain a Missouri-Compromise speech, or a report of the last battle in
+St. Domingo, or one of those able letters of Boyer's which were winning
+the praise of all, or one of John Randolph's stirring speeches in
+England against the slave-trade. The very newspapers which reported
+the happy extinction of the insurrection by the hanging of the
+last conspirator, William Garner, reported also, with enthusiastic
+indignation, the massacre of the Greeks at Constantinople and at Scio;
+and then the Northern editors, breaking from their usual reticence,
+pointed out the inconsistency of Southern journals in printing, side
+by side, denunciations of Mohammedan slave-sales and advertisements of
+Christian ones.
+
+Of course, the insurrection threw the whole slavery question open to
+the public. "We are sorry to see," said the "National Intelligencer"
+of August 31st, "that a discussion of the hateful Missouri question is
+likely to be revived, in consequence of the allusions to its supposed
+effect in producing the late servile insurrection in South Carolina." A
+member of the Board of Public Works of South Carolina published in the
+Baltimore "American Farmer" an essay urging the encouragement of white
+laborers, and hinting at the ultimate abolition of slavery, "if it
+should ever be thought desirable." More boldly still, a pamphlet
+appeared in Charleston under the signature of "Achates," arguing with
+remarkable sagacity and force against the whole system of slave-labor
+_in towns_, and proposing that all slaves in Charleston should be sold
+or transferred to the plantations, and their places supplied by white
+labor. It is interesting to find many of the facts and arguments of
+Helper's "Impending Crisis" anticipated in this courageous tract,
+written under the pressure of a crisis which had just been so narrowly
+evaded. The author is described in the preface as "a soldier and patriot
+of the Revolution, whose name, did we feel ourselves at liberty to use
+it, would stamp a peculiar weight and value on his opinions." It was
+commonly attributed to General Thomas Pinckney.
+
+Another pamphlet of the period, also published in Charleston,
+recommended as a practical cure for insurrection the copious
+administration of Episcopal Church services, and the prohibition of
+negroes from attending Fourth-of-July celebrations. On this last point
+it is more consistent than most pro-slavery arguments. "The celebration
+of the Fourth of July belongs _exclusively_ to the white population of
+the United States. The American Revolution was a _family-quarrel among
+equals_. In this the negroes had no concern; their condition remained,
+and must remain, unchanged. They have no more to do with the celebration
+of that day than with the landing of the Pilgrims on the rock at
+Plymouth. It therefore seems to me improper to allow these people to
+be present on these occasions. In our speeches and orations, much, and
+sometimes more than is politically necessary, is said about personal
+liberty, which negro auditors know not how to apply, except by running
+the parallel with their own condition. They therefore imbibe false
+notions of their own personal rights, and give reality in their minds to
+what has no real existence. The peculiar state of our community must
+be steadily kept in view. This, I am gratified to learn, will in
+some measure be promoted by the institution of the South Carolina
+Association."
+
+On the other hand, more stringent laws became obviously necessary to
+keep down the advancing intelligence of the Charleston slaves. Dangerous
+knowledge must be excluded from without and from within. For the first
+end, the South Carolina legislature passed, in December, 1822, the
+act for the imprisonment of Northern colored seamen, which has since
+produced so much excitement. For the second object, the Grand Jury,
+about the same time, presented as a grievance "the number of schools
+which are kept within the city by persons of color," and proposed their
+prohibition. This was the encouragement given to the intellectual
+progress of the slaves; while, as a reward for betraying them, Pensil,
+the free colored man who advised with Devany, received a present of one
+thousand dollars, and Devany himself had what was rightly judged to
+be the higher gift of freedom, and was established in business, with
+liberal means, as a drayman. He is still living in Charleston, has
+thriven greatly in his vocation, and, according to the newspapers,
+enjoys the privilege of being the only man of property in the State whom
+a special statute exempts from taxation. It is something of a privilege,
+especially with secession impending. But those whom he betrayed to death
+have been exempt from taxation longer than be has.
+
+More than a third of a century has passed since the incidents of this
+true story closed. It has not vanished from the memories of South
+Carolinians, though the printed pages which once told it have been
+gradually withdrawn from sight. The intense avidity which at first
+grasped at every incident of the great insurrectionary plot was
+succeeded by a distaste for the memory of the tale; and the official
+reports which told what slaves had once planned and dared have now come
+to be among the rarest of American historical documents. In 1841, a
+friend of the writer, then visiting South Carolina, heard from her
+hostess for the first time the events which are recounted here. On
+asking to see the reports of the trials, she was cautiously told that
+the only copy in the house, after being carefully kept for years under
+lock and key, had been burnt at last, lest it should reach the dangerous
+eyes of the slaves. The same thing had happened, it was added, in many
+other families. This partially accounts for the great difficulty now to
+be found in obtaining a single copy of either publication; and this is
+why, to the readers of American history, Denmark Vesey and Peter Poyas
+have been heretofore but the shadows of names.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+NEW YORK SEVENTH REGIMENT.
+
+OUR MARCH TO WASHINGTON.
+
+
+THROUGH THE CITY.
+
+
+At three o'clock in the afternoon of Friday, April 19th, we took our
+peacemaker, a neat twelve-pound brass howitzer, down from the Seventh
+Regiment Armory, and stationed it in the rear of the building. The twin
+peacemaker is somewhere near us, but entirely hidden by this enormous
+crowd.
+
+An enormous crowd! of both sexes, of every age and condition. The men
+offer all kinds of truculent and patriotic hopes; the women shed tears,
+and say, "God bless you, boys!"
+
+This is a part of the town where baddish cigars prevail. But good or
+bad, I am ordered to keep all away from the gun. So the throng stands
+back, peers curiously over the heads of its junior members, and seems to
+be taking the measure of my coffin.
+
+After a patient hour of this, the word is given, we fall in, our two
+guns find their places at the right of the line of march, we move on
+through the thickening crowd.
+
+At a great house on the left, as we pass the Astor Library, I see a
+handkerchief waving for me. Yes! it is she who made the sandwiches in my
+knapsack. They were a trifle too thick, as I afterwards discovered,
+but otherwise perfection. Be these my thanks and the thanks of hungry
+comrades who had bites of them!
+
+At the corner of Great Jones Street we halted for half an hour,--then,
+everything ready, we marched down Broadway.
+
+It was worth a life, that march. Only one who passed, as we did, through
+that tempest of cheers, two miles long, can know the terrible
+enthusiasm of the occasion. I could hardly hear the rattle of our own
+gun-carriages, and only once or twice the music of our band came to me
+muffled and quelled by the uproar. We knew now, if we had not before
+divined it, that our great city was with us as one man, utterly united
+in the great cause we were marching to sustain.
+
+This grand fact I learned by two senses. If hundreds of thousands roared
+it into my ears, thousands slapped it into my back. My fellow-citizens
+smote me on the knapsack, as I went by at the gun-rope, and encouraged
+me each in his own dialect. "Bully for you!" alternated with
+benedictions, in the proportion of two "bullies" to one blessing.
+
+I was not so fortunate as to receive more substantial tokens of
+sympathy. But there were parting gifts showered on the regiment, enough
+to establish a variety-shop. Handkerchiefs, of course, came floating
+down upon us from the windows, like a snow. Pretty little gloves pelted
+us with love-taps. The sterner sex forced upon us pocket-knives new and
+jagged, combs, soap, slippers, boxes of matches, cigars by the dozen
+and the hundred, pipes to smoke shag and pipes to smoke Latakia, fruit,
+eggs, and sandwiches. One fellow got a new purse with ten bright
+quarter-eagles.
+
+At the corner of Grand Street, or thereabouts, a "bhoy" in red flannel
+shirt and black dress pantaloons, leaning back against the crowd with
+Herculean shoulders, called me,--"Saäy, bully! take my dorg! he's one of
+the kind that holds till he draps." This gentleman, with his animal, was
+instantly shoved back by the police, and the Seventh lost the "dorg."
+
+These were the comic incidents of the march, but underlying all was the
+tragic sentiment that we might have tragic work presently to do. The
+news of the rascal attack in Baltimore on the Massachusetts Sixth had
+just come in. Ours might be the same chance. If there were any of us
+not in earnest before, the story of the day would steady us. So we said
+goodbye to Broadway, moved down Cortlandt Street under a bower of flags,
+and at half-past six shoved off in the ferry-boat.
+
+Everybody has heard how Jersey City turned out and filled up the
+Railroad Station, like an opera-house, to give Godspeed to us as a
+representative body, a guaranty of the unquestioning loyalty of the
+"conservative" class in New York. Everybody has heard how the State of
+New Jersey, along the railroad line, stood through the evening and
+the night to shout their quota of good wishes. At every station the
+Jerseymen were there, uproarious as Jerseymen, to shake our hands and
+wish us a happy despatch. I think I did not see a rod of ground without
+its man, from dusk till dawn, from the Hudson to the Delaware.
+
+Upon the train we made a jolly night of it. All knew that the more a man
+sings, the better he is likely to fight. So we sang more than we slept,
+and, in fact, that has been our history ever since.
+
+
+PHILADELPHIA.
+
+
+At sunrise we were at the station in Philadelphia, and dismissed for an
+hour. Some hundreds of us made up Broad Street for the Lapierre House
+to breakfast. When I arrived, I found every place at table filled
+and every waiter ten deep with orders. So, being an old campaigner, I
+followed up the stream of provender to the fountain-head, the kitchen.
+Half a dozen other old campaigners were already there, most hospitably
+entertained by the cooks. They served us, hot and hot, with the best of
+their best, straight from the gridiron and the pan. I hope, if I live
+to breakfast again in the Lapierre House, that I may be allowed to help
+myself and choose for myself below-stairs.
+
+When we rendezvoused at the train, we found that the orders were for
+every man to provide himself three days' rations in the neighborhood,
+and be ready for a start at a moment's notice.
+
+A mountain of bread was already piled up in the station. I stuck my
+bayonet through a stout loaf, and, with a dozen comrades armed in the
+same way, went foraging about for other _vivers_.
+
+It is a poor part of Philadelphia; but whatever they had in the shops or
+the houses seemed to be at our disposition.
+
+I stopped at a corner shop to ask for pork, and was amicably assailed by
+an earnest dame,--Irish, I am pleased to say. She thrust her last loaf
+upon me, and sighed that it was not baked that morning for my "honor's
+service."
+
+A little farther on, two kindly Quaker ladies compelled me to step in.
+"What could they do?" they asked eagerly. "They had no meat in the
+house; but could we eat eggs? They had in the house a dozen and a half,
+new-laid." So the pot to the fire, and the eggs boiled, and bagged by
+myself and that tall Saxon, my friend E., of the Sixth Company. While
+the eggs simmered, the two ladies thee-ed us prayerfully and tearfully,
+hoping that God would save our country from blood, unless blood must be
+shed to preserve Law and Liberty.
+
+Nothing definite from Baltimore when we returned to the station. We
+stood by, waiting orders. About noon the Eighth Massachusetts Regiment
+took the train southward. Our regiment was ready to a man to try its
+strength with the Plug Uglies. If there had been any voting on the
+subject, the plan to follow the straight road to Washington would have
+been accepted by acclamation. But the higher powers deemed that "the
+longest way round was the shortest way home," and no doubt their
+decision was wise. The event proved it.
+
+At two o'clock came the word to "fall in." We handled our howitzers
+again, and marched down Jefferson Avenue to the steamer "Boston" to
+embark.
+
+To embark for what port? For Washington, of course, finally; but by what
+route? That was to remain in doubt to us privates for a day or two.
+
+The Boston is a steamer of the outside line from Philadelphia to New
+York. She just held our legion. We tramped on board, and were allotted
+about the craft from the top to the bottom story. We took tents, traps,
+and grub on board, and steamed away down the Delaware in the sweet
+afternoon of April. If ever the heavens smiled fair weather on any
+campaign, they have done so on ours.
+
+
+THE "BOSTON."
+
+
+Soldiers on shipboard are proverbially fish out of water. We could not
+be called by the good old nickname of "lobsters" by the crew. Our gray
+jackets saved the _sobriquet_. But we floundered about the crowded
+vessel like boiling victims in a pot. At last we found our places,
+and laid ourselves about the decks to tan or bronze or burn scarlet,
+according to complexion. There were plenty of cheeks of lobster-hue
+before next evening on the Boston.
+
+A thousand young fellows turned loose on shipboard were sure to make
+themselves merry. Let the reader imagine that! We were like any other
+excursionists, except that the stacks of bright guns were always present
+to remind us of our errand, and regular guard-mounting and drill went
+on all the time. The young citizens growled or laughed at the minor
+hardships of the hasty outfit, and toughened rapidly to business.
+
+Sunday, the 21st, was a long and somewhat anxious day. While we were
+bowling along in the sweet sunshine and sweeter moonlight of the halcyon
+time, Uncle Sam might be dethroned by somebody in buckram, or Baltimore
+burnt by the boys from Lynn and Marblehead, revenging the massacre of
+their fellows. Every one begins to comprehend the fiery eagerness of men
+who live in historic times. "I wish I had control of chain-lightning for
+a few minutes," says O., the droll fellow of our company. "I'd make it
+come thick and heavy and knock spots out of Secession."
+
+At early dawn of Monday the 22d, after feeling along slowly all night,
+we see the harbor of Annapolis. A frigate with sails unbent lies at
+anchor. She flies the stars and stripes. Hurrah!
+
+A large steamboat is aground farther in. As soon as we can see anything,
+we catch the glitter of bayonets on board.
+
+By-and-by boats come off, and we get news that the steamer is the
+"Maryland," a ferry-boat of the Philadelphia and Baltimore Railroad. The
+Massachusetts Eighth Regiment had been just in time to seize her on the
+north side of the Chesapeake. They learned that she was to be carried
+off by the crew and leave them blockaded. So they shot their Zouaves
+ahead as skirmishers. The fine fellows rattled on board, and before
+the steamboat had time to take a turn or open a valve, she was held by
+Massachusetts in trust for Uncle Sam. Hurrah for the most important
+prize thus far in the war! It probably saved the "Constitution," "Old
+Ironsides," from capture by the traitors. It probably saved Annapolis,
+and kept Maryland open without bloodshed.
+
+As soon as the Massachusetts Regiment had made prize of the ferry-boat,
+a call was made for engineers to run her. Some twenty men at once
+stepped to the front. We of the New York Seventh afterwards concluded
+that whatever was needed in the way of skill or handicraft could be
+found among those brother Yankees. They were the men to make armies
+of. They could tailor for themselves, shoe themselves, do their own
+blacksmithing, gunsmithing, and all other work that calls for sturdy
+arms and nimble fingers. In fact, I have such profound confidence in the
+universal accomplishment of the Massachusetts Eighth, that I have no
+doubt, if the order were, "Poets to the front!" "Painters present arms!"
+"Sculptors charge bagonets!" a baker's dozen out of every company would
+respond.
+
+Well, to go on with their story,--when they had taken their prize,
+they drove her straight down-stream to Annapolis, the nearest point to
+Washington. There they found the Naval Academy in danger of attack,
+and Old Ironsides--serving as a practice-ship for the future
+midshipmen--also exposed. The call was now for seamen to man the old
+craft and save her from a worse enemy than her prototype met in the
+"Guerrière." Seamen? Of course! They were Marblehead men, Gloucester
+men, Beverly men, seamen all, _par excellence_! They clapped on the
+frigate to aid the middies, and by-and-by started her out into the
+stream. In doing this their own pilot took the chance to run them
+purposely on a shoal in the intricate channel. A great error of judgment
+on his part! as he perceived, when he found himself in irons and in
+confinement. "The days of trifling with traitors are over!" think the
+Eighth Regiment of Massachusetts.
+
+But there they were, hard and fast on the shoal, when we came up.
+Nothing to nibble on but knobs of anthracite. Nothing to sleep on softer
+or cleaner than coal-dust. Nothing to drink but the brackish water under
+their keel. "Rather rough!" as they afterward patiently told us.
+
+Meantime the Constitution had got hold of a tug, and was making her way
+to an anchorage where her guns commanded everything and everybody. Good
+and true men chuckled greatly over this. The stars and stripes also were
+still up at the fort at the Naval Academy.
+
+Our dread, that, while we were off at sea, some great and perhaps fatal
+harm had been suffered, was greatly lightened by these good omens. If
+Annapolis was safe, why not Washington safe also? If treachery had got
+head at the capital, would not treachery have reached out its hand
+and snatched this doorway? These were our speculations as we began to
+discern objects, before we heard news.
+
+But news came presently. Boats pulled off to us. Our officers were put
+into communication with the shore. The scanty facts of our position
+became known from man to man. We privates have greatly the advantage in
+battling with the doubt of such a time. We know that we have nothing to
+do with rumors. Orders are what we go by. And orders are Facts.
+
+We lay a long, lingering day, off Annapolis. The air was full of doubt,
+and we were eager to be let loose. All this while the Maryland stuck
+fast on the bar. We could see them, half a mile off, making every effort
+to lighten her. The soldiers tramped forward and aft, danced on her
+decks, shot overboard a heavy baggage-truck. We saw them start the truck
+for the stern with a cheer. It crashed down. One end stuck in the mud.
+The other fell back and rested on the boat. They went at it with axes,
+and presently it was clear.
+
+As the tide rose, we gave our grounded friends a lift with a hawser. No
+go! The Boston tugged in vain. We got near enough to see the whites of
+the Massachusetts eyes, and their unlucky faces and uniforms all grimy
+with their lodgings in the coal-dust. They could not have been blacker,
+if they had been breathing battle-smoke and dust all day. That
+experience was clear gain to them.
+
+By-and-by, greatly to the delight of the impatient Seventh, the Boston
+was headed for shore. Never speak ill of the beast you bestraddle!
+Therefore _requiescat_ Boston! may her ribs lie light on soft sand when
+she goes to pieces! may her engines be cut up into bracelets for the
+arms of the patriotic fair! good-bye to her, dear old, close, dirty,
+slow coach! She served her country well in a moment of trial. Who
+knows but she saved it? It was a race to see who should first get to
+Washington,--and we and the Virginia mob, in alliance with the District
+mob, were perhaps nip and tuck for the goal.
+
+
+ANNAPOLIS.
+
+
+So the Seventh Regiment landed and took Annapolis. We were the first
+troops ashore.
+
+The middies of the Naval Academy no doubt believe that they had their
+quarters secure. The Massachusetts boys are satisfied that they first
+took the town in charge. And so they did.
+
+But the Seventh took it a little more. Not, of course, from its loyal
+men, but _for_ its loyal men,--for loyal Maryland, and for the Union.
+
+Has anybody seen Annapolis? It is a picturesque old place, sleepy
+enough, and astonished to find itself wide-awaked by a war and obliged
+to take responsibility and share for good and ill in the movement of its
+time. The buildings of the Naval Academy stand parallel with the river
+Severn, with a green plateau toward the water and a lovely green lawn
+toward the town. All the scene was fresh and fair with April, and I
+fancied, as the Boston touched the wharf, that I discerned the sweet
+fragrance of apple-blossoms coming with the spring-time airs.
+
+I hope that the companies of the Seventh, should the day arrive, will
+charge upon horrid batteries or serried ranks with as much alacrity
+as they marched ashore on the greensward of the Naval Academy. We
+disembarked, and were halted in line between the buildings and the
+river.
+
+Presently, while we stood at ease, people began to arrive,--some with
+smallish fruit to sell, some with smaller news to give. Nobody knew
+whether Washington was taken. Nobody knew whether Jeff. Davis was now
+spitting in the Presidential spittoon, and scribbling his distiches with
+the nib of the Presidential goose-quill. We were absolutely in doubt
+whether a seemingly inoffensive knot of rustics, on a mound without
+the inclosure, might not, at tap of drum, unmask a battery of giant
+columbiads, and belch blazes at us, raking our line.
+
+Nothing so entertaining happened. It was a parade, not a battle. At
+sunset our band played strains sweet enough to pacify all Secession, if
+Secession had music in its soul. Coffee, hot from the coppers of the
+Naval School, and biscuit were served out to us; and while we supped, we
+talked with our visitors, such as were allowed to approach.
+
+First the boys of the School--fine little blue-jackets--had their story
+to tell.
+
+"Do you see that white farm-house, across the river?" says a brave pigmy
+of a chap in navy uniform. "That is head-quarters for Secession. They
+were going to take the School from us, Sir, and the frigate; but
+we've got ahead of 'em, now you and the Massachusetts boys have come
+down,"--and he twinkled all over with delight. "We can't study any more.
+We are on guard all the time. We've got howitzers, too, and we'd like
+you to see, to-morrow, on drill, how we can handle 'em. One of their
+boats came by our sentry last night," (a sentry probably five feet
+high,) "and he blazed away, Sir. So they thought they wouldn't try us
+that time."
+
+It was plain that these young souls had been well tried by the treachery
+about them. They, too, had felt the pang of the disloyalty of comrades.
+Nearly a hundred of the boys had been spoilt by the base example of
+their elders in the repudiating States, and had resigned.
+
+After the middies, came anxious citizens from the town. Scared, all of
+them. Now that we were come and assured them that persons and property
+were to be protected, they ventured to speak of the disgusting tyranny
+to which they, American citizens, had been subjected. We came into
+contact here with utter social anarchy. No man, unless he was ready
+to risk assault, loss of property, exile, dared to act or talk like a
+freeman. "This great wrong must be righted," think the Seventh Regiment,
+as one man. So we tried to reassure the Annapolitans that we meant to do
+our duty as the nation's armed police, and mob-law was to be put down,
+so far as we could do it.
+
+Here, too, voices of war met us. The country was stirred up. If the
+rural population did not give us a bastard imitation of Lexington and
+Concord, as we tried to gain Washington, all Pluguglydom would treat
+us _à la_ Plugugly somewhere near the junction of the Annapolis and
+Baltimore and Washington Railroad. The Seventh must be ready to shoot.
+
+At dusk we were marched up to the Academy and quartered about in the
+buildings,--some in the fort, some in the recitation-halls. We lay down
+on our blankets and knapsacks. Up to this time our sleep and diet had
+been severely scanty.
+
+We stayed all next day at Annapolis. The Boston brought the
+Massachusetts Eighth ashore that night. Poor fellows! what a figure they
+cut, when we found them bivouacked on the Academy grounds next morning!
+To begin: They had come off in hot patriotic haste, half-uniformed and
+half-outfitted. Finding that Baltimore had been taken by its own loafers
+and traitors, and that the Chesapeake ferry was impracticable, had
+obliged them to change line of march. They were out of grub. They were
+parched dry for want of water on the ferry-boat. Nobody could decipher
+Caucasian, much less Bunker-Hill Yankee, in their grimy visages.
+
+But, hungry, thirsty, grimy, these fellows were GRIT.
+
+Massachusetts ought to be proud of such hardy, cheerful, faithful sons.
+
+We of the Seventh are proud, for our part, that it was our privilege to
+share our rations with them, and to begin a fraternization which grows
+closer every day and will be _historical_.
+
+But I must make a shorter story. We drilled and were reviewed that
+morning on the Academy parade. In the afternoon the Naval School paraded
+their last before they gave up their barracks to the coming soldiery. So
+ended the 23d of April.
+
+Midnight, 24th. We were rattled up by an alarm,--perhaps a sham one, to
+keep us awake and lively. In a moment, the whole regiment was in order
+of battle in the moonlight on the parade. It was a most brilliant
+spectacle, as company after company rushed forward, with rifles
+glittering, to take their places in the array.
+
+After this pretty spirt, we were rationed with pork, beef, and bread for
+three days, and ordered to be ready to march on the instant.
+
+
+WHAT THE MASSACHUSETTS EIGHTH HAD BEEN DOING.
+
+
+Meantime General Butler's command, the Massachusetts Eighth, had been
+busy knocking disorder in the head.
+
+Presently after their landing, and before they were refreshed, they
+pushed companies out to occupy the railroad-track beyond the town.
+
+They found it torn up. No doubt the scamps who did the shabby
+job fancied that there would be no more travel that way until
+strawberry-time. They fancied the Yankees would sit down on the fences
+and begin to whittle white-oak toothpicks, darning the rebels, through
+their noses, meanwhile.
+
+I know these men of the Eighth can whittle, and I presume they can say
+"Darn it," if occasion requires; but just now track-laying was the
+business on hand.
+
+"Wanted, experienced track-layers!" was the word along the files.
+
+All at once the line of the road became densely populated with
+experienced track-layers, fresh from Massachusetts.
+
+Presto change! the rails were relaid, spiked, and the roadway levelled
+and better ballasted than any road I ever saw south of Mason and Dixon's
+line. "We must leave a good job for these folks to model after," say the
+Massachusetts Eighth.
+
+A track without a train is as useless as a gun without a man. Train and
+engine must be had. "Uncle Sam's mails and troops cannot be stopped
+another minute," our energetic friends conclude. So--the railroad
+company's people being either frightened or false--in marches
+Massachusetts to the station. "We, the People of the United States, want
+rolling-stock for the use of the Union," they said, or words to that
+effect.
+
+The engine--a frowzy machine at the best--had been purposely disabled.
+
+Here appeared the _deus ex machina_, Charles Homans, Beverly Light
+Guard, Company E, Eighth Massachusetts Regiment.
+
+That is the man, name and titles in full, and he deserves well of his
+country.
+
+He took a quiet squint at the engine,--it was as helpless as a boned
+turkey,--and he found "Charles Homans, his mark," written all over it.
+
+The old rattletrap was an old friend. Charles Homans had had a share
+in building it. The machine and the man said, "How d'y' do?" at once.
+Homans called for a gang of engine-builders. Of course they swarmed out
+of the ranks. They passed their hands over the locomotive a few times,
+and presently it was ready to whistle and wheeze and rumble and gallop,
+as if no traitor had ever tried to steal the go and the music out of it.
+
+This had all been done during the afternoon of the 23d. During the
+night, the renovated engine was kept cruising up and down the track to
+see all clear. Guards of the Eighth were also posted to protect passage.
+
+Our commander had, I presume, been cooperating with General Butler in
+this business. The Naval Academy authorities had given us every despatch
+and assistance, and the middies, frank, personal hospitality. The day
+was halcyon, the grass was green and soft, the apple-trees were just in
+blossom: it was a day to be remembered.
+
+Many of us will remember it, and show the marks of it for months, as the
+day we had our heads cropped. By evening there was hardly one poll in
+the Seventh tenable by anybody's grip. Most sat in the shade and were
+shorn by a barber. A few were honored with a clip by the artist hand of
+the _petit caporal_ of our Engineer Company.
+
+While I rattle off these trifling details, let me not fail to call
+attention to the grave service done by our regiment, by its arrival, at
+the nick of time, at Annapolis. No clearer special Providence could have
+happened. The country-people of the traitor sort were aroused. Baltimore
+and its mob were but two hours away. The Constitution had been hauled
+out of reach of a rush by the Massachusetts men,--first on the
+ground,--but was half-manned and not fully secure. And there lay the
+Maryland, helpless on the shoal, with six or seven hundred souls on
+board, so near the shore that the late Captain Rynders's gun could have
+sunk her from some ambush.
+
+Yes! the Seventh Regiment at Annapolis was the Right Man in the Right
+Place!
+
+
+OUR MORNING MARCH.
+
+
+Reveille. As nobody pronounces this word _à la française_, as everybody
+calls it "Revelee," why not drop it, as an affectation, and translate
+it the "Stir your Stumps," the "Peel your Eyes," the "Tumble Up," or
+literally the "Wake"?
+
+Our snorers had kept up this call so lustily since midnight, that, when
+the drums sounded it, we were all ready.
+
+The Sixth and Second Companies, under Captain Nevers, are detached to
+lead the van. I see my brother Billy march off with the Sixth, into
+the dusk, half-moonlight, half-dawn, and hope that no beggar of a
+Secessionist will get a pat shot at him, by the roadside, without
+his getting a chance to let fly in return. Such little possibilities
+intensify the earnest detestation we feel for the treasons we come to
+resist and to punish. There will be some bitter work done, if we ever
+get to blows in this war,--this needless, reckless, brutal assault upon
+the mildest of all governments.
+
+Before the main body of the regiment marches, we learn that the "Baltic"
+and other transports came in last night with troops from New York and
+New England, enough to hold Annapolis against a square league of Plug
+Uglies. We do not go on without having our rear protected and our
+communications open. It is strange to be compelled to think of these
+things in peaceful America. But we really knew little more of the
+country before us than Cortes knew of Mexico. I have since learned from
+a high official, that thirteen different messengers were despatched
+from Washington in the interval of anxiety while the Seventh was not
+forthcoming, and only one got through.
+
+At half-past seven we take up our line of march, pass out of the
+charming grounds of the Academy, and move through the quiet, rusty,
+picturesque old town. It has a romantic dulness--Annapolis--which
+deserves a parting compliment.
+
+Although we deem ourselves a fine-looking set, although our belts are
+blanched with pipe-clay and our rifles shine sharp in the sun, yet the
+townspeople stare at us in a dismal silence. They have already the air
+of men quelled by a despotism. None can trust his neighbor. If he dares
+to be loyal, he must take his life into his hands. Most would be loyal,
+if they dared. But the system of society which has ended in this present
+chaos has gradually eliminated the bravest and best men. They have gone
+in search of Freedom and Prosperity; and now the bullies cow the weaker
+brothers. "There must be an end of this mean tyranny," think the
+Seventh, as they march through old Annapolis and see how sick the town
+is with doubt and alarm.
+
+Outside the town, we strike the railroad and move along, the howitzers
+in front, bouncing over the sleepers. When our line is fully disengaged
+from the town, we halt.
+
+Here the scene is beautiful. The van rests upon a high embankment, with
+a pool surrounded by pine-trees on the right, green fields on the
+left. Cattle are feeding quietly about. The air sings with birds. The
+chestnut-leaves sparkle. Frogs whistle in the warm spring morning.
+The regiment groups itself along the bank and the cutting. Several
+Marylanders of the half-price age--under twelve--come gaping up to see
+us harmless invaders. Each of these young gentry is armed with a dead
+spring frog, perhaps by way of tribute. And here--hollo! here comes
+Horace Greeley _in propria persona_! He marches through our groups with
+the Greeley walk, the Greeley hat on the back of his head, the Greeley
+white coat on his shoulders, his trousers much too short, and an
+absorbed, abstracted demeanor. Can it be Horace, reporting for himself?
+No; this is a Maryland production, and a little disposed to be sulky.
+
+After a few minutes' halt, we hear the whistle of the engine. This
+machine is also an historic character in the war.
+
+Remember it! "J.H. Nicholson" is its name. Charles Homans drives, and
+on either side stands a sentry with fixed bayonet. New spectacles for
+America! But it is grand to know that the bayonets are to protect, not
+to assail, Liberty and Law.
+
+The train leads off. We follow, by the track. Presently the train
+returns. We pass it and trudge on in light marching order, carrying
+arms, blankets, haversacks, and canteens. Our knapsacks are upon the
+train.
+
+Fortunate for our backs that they do not have to bear any more burden!
+For the day grows sultry. It is one of those breezeless baking days
+which brew thunder-gusts. We march on for some four miles, when, coming
+upon the guards of the Massachusetts Eighth, our howitzer is ordered to
+fall out and wait for the train. With a comrade of the Artillery, I am
+placed on guard over it.
+
+
+ON GUARD WITH HOWITZER NO. TWO.
+
+
+Henry Bonnell is my fellow-sentry. He, like myself, is an old campaigner
+in such campaigns as our generation has known. So we talk California,
+Oregon, Indian life, the Plains, keeping our eyes peeled meanwhile, and
+ranging the country. Men that will tear up track are quite capable of
+picking off a sentry. A giant chestnut gives us little dots of shade
+from its pigmy leaves. The country about us is open and newly ploughed.
+Some of the worm-fences are new, and ten rails high; but the farming is
+careless, and the soil thin.
+
+Two of the Massachusetts men come back to the gun while we are standing
+there. One is my friend Stephen Morris, of Marblehead, Sutton Light
+Infantry. I had shared my breakfast yesterday with Stephe. So we
+refraternize.
+
+His business is,--"I make shoes in winter and fishin' in summer." He
+gives me a few facts,--suspicious persons seen about the track, men on
+horseback in the distance. One of the Massachusetts guard last night
+challenged his captain. Captain replied, "Officer of the night"
+Whereupon, says Stephe, "The recruit let squizzle and jest missed his
+ear." He then related to me the incident of the railroad station. "The
+first thing they know'd," says he, "we bit right into the depot and took
+charge." "I don't mind," Stephe remarked,--"I don't mind life, nor yit
+death; but whenever I see a Massachusetts boy, I stick by him, and if
+them Secessionists attackt us to-night, or any other time, they'll git
+in debt."
+
+Whistle, again! and the train appears. We are ordered to ship our
+howitzer on a platform car. The engine pushes us on. This train brings
+our light baggage and the rear guard.
+
+A hundred yards farther on is a delicious fresh spring below the bank.
+While the train halts, Stephe Morris rushes down to fill my canteen.
+"This a'n't like Marblehead," says Stephe, panting up; "but a man that
+can shin up _them_ rocks can git right over _this_ sand."
+
+The train goes slowly on, as a rickety train should. At intervals we see
+the fresh spots of track just laid by our Yankee friends. Near the sixth
+mile, we began to overtake hot and uncomfortable squads of our fellows.
+The unseasonable heat of this most breathless day was too much for many
+of the younger men, unaccustomed to rough work, and weakened by want of
+sleep and irregular food in our hurried movements thus far.
+
+Charles Homans's private carriage was, however, ready to pick up tired
+men, hot men, thirsty men, men with corns, or men with blisters. They
+tumbled into the train in considerable numbers.
+
+An enemy that dared could have made a moderate bag of stragglers at this
+time. But they would not have been allowed to straggle, if any enemy
+had been about. By this time we were convinced that no attack was to be
+expected in this part of the way.
+
+The main body of the regiment, under Major Shaler, a tall, soldierly
+fellow, with a moustache of the fighting-color, tramped on their own
+pins to the watering-place, eight miles or so from Annapolis. There
+troops and train came to a halt, with the news that a bridge over a
+country road was broken a mile farther on.
+
+It had been distinctly insisted upon, in the usual Southern style, that
+we were not to be allowed to pass through Maryland, and that we were to
+be "welcomed to hospitable graves." The broken bridge was a capital spot
+for a skirmish. Why not look for it here?
+
+We looked; but got nothing. The rascals could skulk about by night, tear
+up rails, and hide them where they might be found by a man with half an
+eye, or half-destroy a bridge; but there was no shoot in them. They have
+not faith enough in their cause to risk their lives for it, even behind
+a tree or from one of these thickets, choice spots for ambush.
+
+So we had no battle there, but a battle of the elements. The volcanic
+heat of the morning was followed by a furious storm of wind and a smart
+shower. The regiment wrapped themselves in their blankets and took their
+wetting with more or less satisfaction. They were receiving samples of
+all the different little miseries of a campaign.
+
+And here let me say a word to my fellow-volunteers, actual and
+prospective, in all the armies of all the States:--
+
+  A soldier needs, besides his soldierly
+  drill,
+
+  I. Good FEET.
+
+  II. A good Stomach.
+
+  III. And after these, come the good
+  Head and the good Heart.
+
+But Good Feet are distinctly the first thing. Without them you cannot
+get to your duty. If a comrade, or a horse, or a locomotive, takes you
+on its back to the field, you are useless there. And when the field is
+lost, you cannot retire, run away, and save your bacon.
+
+Good shoes and plenty of walking make good feet. A man who pretends to
+belong to an infantry company ought always to keep himself in training,
+so that any moment he can march twenty or thirty miles without feeling a
+pang or raising a blister. Was this the case with even a decimation
+of the army who rushed to defend Washington? Were you so trained, my
+comrades of the Seventh?
+
+A captain of a company, who will let his men march with such shoes as
+I have seen on the feet of some poor fellows in this war, ought to be
+garroted with shoestrings, or at least compelled to play Pope and wash
+the feet of the whole army of the Apostles of Liberty.
+
+If you find a foot-soldier lying beat out by the roadside, desperate as
+a sea-sick man, five to one his heels are too high, or his soles too
+narrow or too thin, or his shoe is not made straight on the inside, so
+that the great toe can spread into its place as he treads.
+
+I am an old walker over Alps across the water, and over Cordilleras,
+Sierras, Deserts, and Prairies at home; I have done my near sixty miles
+a day without discomfort,--and speaking from large experience, and with
+painful recollections of the suffering and death I have known for want
+of good feet on the march, I say to every volunteer:--
+
+Trust in God; BUT KEEP YOUR SHOES EASY!
+
+
+THE BRIDGE.
+
+
+When the frenzy of the brief tempest was over, it began to be a
+question, "What to do about the broken bridge?" The gap--was narrow; but
+even Charles Homans could not promise to leap the "J.H. Nicholson" over
+it. Who was to be our Julius Caesar in bridge-building? Who but Sergeant
+Scott, Armorer of the Regiment, with my fellow-sentry of the morning,
+Bonnell, as First Assistant?
+
+Scott called for a working party. There were plenty of handy fellows
+among our Engineers and in the Line. Tools were plenty in the Engineers'
+chest. We pushed the platform car upon which howitzer No. 1 was mounted
+down to the gap, and began operations.
+
+"I wish," says the _petit caporal_ of the Engineer Company, patting his
+howitzer gently on the back, "that I could get this Putty Blower pointed
+at the enemy, while you fellows are bridge-building."
+
+The inefficient destructives of Maryland had only half spoilt the
+bridge. Some of the old timbers could be used,--and for new ones, there
+was the forest.
+
+Scott and his party made a good and a quick job of it. Our friends of
+the Massachusetts Eighth had now come up. They lent a ready hand, as
+usual. The sun set brilliantly. By twilight there was a practicable
+bridge. The engine was despatched back to keep the road open. The two
+platform cars, freighted with our howitzers, were rigged with the
+gun-ropes for dragging along the rail. We passed through the files of
+the Massachusetts men, resting by the way, and eating by the fires of
+the evening the suppers we had in great part provided them; and so
+begins our night-march.
+
+
+THE NIGHT-MARCH.
+
+
+O Gottschalk! what a poetic _Marche de Nuit_ we then began to play, with
+our heels and toes, on the railroad track!
+
+It was full-moonlight and the night inexpressibly sweet and serene. The
+air was cool and vivified by the gust and shower of the afternoon. Fresh
+spring was in every breath. Our fellows had forgotten that this morning
+they were hot and disgusted. Every one hugged his rifle as if it
+were the arm of the Girl of his Heart, and stepped out gayly for the
+promenade. Tired or foot-sore men, or even lazy ones, could mount upon
+the two freight-cars we were using for artillery-wagons. There were
+stout arms enough to tow the whole.
+
+The scouts went ahead under First Lieutenant Farnham of the Second
+Company. We were at school together,--I am afraid to say how many years
+ago. He is just the same cool, dry, shrewd fellow he was as a boy, and a
+most efficient officer.
+
+It was an original kind of march--I suppose a battery of howitzers never
+before found itself mounted upon cars, ready to open fire at once
+and bang away into the offing with shrapnel or into the bushes with
+canister. Our line extended a half-mile along the track. It was
+beautiful to stand on the bank above a cutting and watch the files
+strike from the shadow of a wood into a broad flame of moonlight, every
+rifle sparkling up alert as it came forward. A beautiful sight to see
+the barrels writing themselves upon the dimness, each a silver flash.
+
+By-and-by, "Halt!" came, repeated along from the front, company after
+company. "Halt! a rail gone."
+
+It was found without difficulty. The imbeciles who took it up probably
+supposed we would not wish to wet our feet by searching for it in the
+dewy grass of the next field. With incredible dollishness they had also
+left the chairs and spikes beside the track. Bonnell took hold, and in
+a few minutes had the rail in place and firm enough to pass the engine.
+Remember, we were not only hurrying on to succor Washington, but opening
+the only convenient and practicable route between it and the loyal
+States.
+
+A little farther on, we came to a village,--a rare sight in this
+scantily peopled region. Here Sergeant Keeler, of our company, the
+tallest man in the regiment, and one of the handiest, suggested that we
+should tear up the rails at a turnout by the station, and so be prepared
+for chances. So "Out crowbars!" was the word. We tore up and bagged half
+a dozen rails, with chairs and spikes complete. Here, too, some of the
+engineers found a keg of spikes. This was also bagged and loaded on our
+cars. We fought the chaps with their own weapons, since they would not
+meet us with ours.
+
+These things made delay, and by-and-by there was a long halt, while the
+Colonel communicated, by orders sounded along the line, with the engine.
+Homans's drag was hard after us, bringing our knapsacks and traps.
+
+After I had admired for some time the beauty of our moonlit line, and
+listened to the orders as they grew or died along the distance, I began
+to want excitement. Bonnell suggested that he and I should scout up the
+road and see if any rails were wanting. We travelled along into the
+quiet night.
+
+A mile ahead of the line we suddenly caught the gleam of a rifle-barrel.
+"Who goes there?" one of our own scouts challenged smartly.
+
+We had arrived at the nick of time. Three rails were up. Two of them
+were easily found. The third was discovered by beating the bush
+thoroughly. Bonnell and I ran back for tools, and returned at full trot
+with crowbar and sledge on our shoulders. There were plenty of
+willing hands to help,--too many, indeed,--and with the aid of a huge
+Massachusetts man we soon had the rail in place.
+
+From this time on we were constantly interrupted. Not a half-mile passed
+without a rail up. Bonnell was always at the front laying track, and
+I am proud to say that he accepted me as aide-de-camp. Other fellows,
+unknown to me in the dark, gave hearty help. The Seventh showed that it
+could do something else than drill.
+
+At one spot, on a high embankment over standing water, the rail was
+gone, sunk probably. Here we tried our rails brought from the turn-out.
+They were too short. We supplemented with a length of plank from our
+stores. We rolled our cars carefully over. They passed safe. But Homans
+shook his head. He could not venture a locomotive on that frail
+stuff. So we lost the society of the "J.H. Nicholson." Next day the
+Massachusetts commander called for some one to dive in the pool for the
+lost rail. Plump into the water went a little wiry chap and grappled the
+rail. "When I come up," says the brave fellow afterwards to me, "our
+officer out with a twenty-dollar gold piece and wanted me to take it.
+'That a'n't what I come for,' says I. 'Take it,' says he, 'and share
+with the others.' 'That a'n't what they come for,' says I. But I took a
+big cold," the diver continued, "and I'm condemned hoarse yit,"--which
+was the fact.
+
+Farther on we found a whole length of track torn up, on both sides,
+sleepers and all, and the same thing repeated with alternations of
+breaks of single rails. Our howitzer-ropes came into play to hoist and
+haul. We were not going to be stopped.
+
+But it was becoming a _Noche Triste_ to some of our comrades. We had now
+marched some sixteen miles. The distance was trifling. But the men had
+been on their legs pretty much all day and night. Hardly any one had had
+any full or substantial sleep or meal since we started from New York.
+They napped off, standing, leaning on their guns, dropping down in their
+tracks on the wet ground, at every halt. They were sleepy, but plucky.
+As we passed through deep cuttings, places, as it were, built for
+defence, there was a general desire that the tedium of the night should
+be relieved by a shindy.
+
+During the whole night I saw our officers moving about the line, doing
+their duty vigorously, despite exhaustion, hunger, and sleeplessness.
+
+About midnight our friends of the Eighth had joined us, and our whole
+little army struggled on together. I find that I have been rather
+understating the troubles of the march. It seems impossible that such
+difficulty could be encountered within twenty miles of the capital of
+our nation. But we were making a rush to put ourselves in that capital,
+and we could not proceed in the slow, systematic way of an advancing
+army. We must take the risk and stand the suffering, whatever it was. So
+the Seventh Regiment went through its bloodless _Noche Triste_.
+
+
+MORNING.
+
+
+At last we issued from the damp woods, two miles below the railroad
+junction. Here was an extensive farm. Our vanguard had halted and
+borrowed a few rails to make fires. These were, of course, carefully
+paid for at their proprietor's own price. The fires were bright in the
+gray dawn. About them the whole regiment was now halted. The men tumbled
+down to catch forty winks. Some, who were hungrier for food than sleep,
+went off foraging among the farm-houses. They returned with appetizing
+legends of hot breakfasts in hospitable abodes, or scanty fare given
+grudgingly in hostile ones. All meals, however, were paid for.
+
+Here, as at other halts below, the country-people came up to talk to us.
+The traitors could easily be distinguished by their insolence disguised
+as obsequiousness. The loyal men were still timid, but more hopeful at
+last. All were very lavish with the monosyllable, Sir. It was an odd
+coincidence, that the vanguard, halting off at a farm in the morning,
+found it deserted for the moment by its tenants, and protected only by
+an engraved portrait of our (former) Colonel Duryea, serenely smiling
+over the mantel-piece.
+
+From this point, the railroad was pretty much all gone. But we were
+warmed and refreshed by a nap and a bite, and besides had daylight and
+open country.
+
+We put our guns on their own wheels, all dropped into ranks as if on
+parade, and marched the last two miles to the station. We still had no
+certain information. Until we actually saw the train awaiting us, and
+the Washington companies, who had come down to escort us, drawn up, we
+did not know whether our Uncle Sam was still a resident of the capital.
+
+We packed into the train, and rolled away to Washington.
+
+
+WASHINGTON.
+
+
+We marched up to the White House, showed ourselves to the President,
+made our bow to him as our host, and then marched up to the Capitol, our
+grand lodgings.
+
+There we are now, quartered in the Representatives Chamber.
+
+And here I must hastily end this first sketch of the Great Defence. May
+it continue to be as firm and faithful as it is this day!
+
+I have scribbled my story with a thousand men stirring about me. If any
+of my sentences miss their aim, accuse my comrades and the bewilderment
+of this martial crowd. For here are four or five thousand others on the
+same business as ourselves, and drums are beating, guns are clanking,
+companies are tramping, all the while. Our friends of the Eighth,
+Massachusetts are quartered under the dome, and cheer us whenever we
+pass.
+
+Desks marked John Covode, John Cochran, and Anson Burlingame, have
+allowed me to use them as I wrote.
+
+
+
+
+ARMY-HYMN.
+
+
+  "Old Hundred."
+
+  O Lord of Hosts! Almighty King!
+  Behold the sacrifice we bring!
+  To every arm Thy strength impart,
+  Thy spirit shed through every heart!
+
+  Wake in our breasts the living fires,
+  The holy faith that warmed our sires;
+  Thy hand hath made our Nation free;
+  To die for her is serving Thee.
+
+  Be Thou a pillared flame to show
+  The midnight snare, the silent foe;
+  And when the battle thunders loud,
+  Still guide us in its moving cloud.
+
+  God of all Nations! Sovereign Lord!
+  In Thy dread name we draw the sword,
+  We lift the starry flag on high
+  That fills with light our stormy sky.
+
+  From treason's rent, from murder's stain
+  Guard Thou its folds till Peace shall reign,--
+  Till fort and field, till shore and sea
+  Join our loud anthem, PRAISE TO THEE!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+THE PICKENS-AND-STEALIN'S REBELLION.
+
+
+Had any one ventured to prophesy on the Fourth of March that the
+immediate prospect of Civil War would be hailed by the people of the
+Free States with a unanimous shout of enthusiasm, he would have been
+thought a madman. Yet the prophecy would have been verified by what we
+now see and hear in every city, town, and hamlet from Maine to Kansas.
+With the advantage of three months' active connivance in the cabinet of
+Mr. Buchanan, with an empty treasury at Washington, and that reluctance
+to assume responsibility and to inaugurate a decided policy, the common
+vice of our politicians, who endeavor to divine and to follow popular
+sentiment rather than to lead it, it seemed as if Disunion were
+inevitable, and the only open question were the line of separation. So
+assured seemed the event, that English journalists moralized gravely on
+the inherent weakness of Democracy. While the leaders of the Southern
+Rebellion did not dare to expose their treason to the risk of a popular
+vote in any one of the seceding States, the "Saturday Review," one of
+the ablest of British journals, solemnly warned its countrymen to learn
+by our example the dangers of an extended suffrage.
+
+Meanwhile the conduct of the people of the Free States, during all these
+trying and perilous months, had proved, if it proved anything, the
+essential conservatism of a population in which every grown man has
+a direct interest in the stability of the national government. So
+abstinent are they by habit and principle from any abnormal intervention
+with the machine of administration, so almost superstitious in adherence
+to constitutional forms, as to be for a moment staggered by the claim to
+a _right_ of secession set up by all the Cotton States, admitted by the
+Border Slave-States, which had the effrontery to deliberate between
+their plain allegiance and their supposed interest, and but feebly
+denied by the Administration then in power. The usual panacea of palaver
+was tried; Congress did its best to add to the general confusion of
+thought; and, as if that were not enough, a Convention of Notables
+called simultaneously to thresh the straw of debate anew, and to
+convince thoughtful persons that men do not grow wiser as they grow
+older. So in the two Congresses the notables talked,--in the one,
+those who ought to be shelved, in the other, those who were shelved
+already,--while those who were too thoroughly shelved for a seat in
+either addressed Great Union Meetings at home. Not a man of them but had
+a compromise in his pocket, adhesive as Spalding's glue, warranted to
+stick the shattered Confederacy together so firmly, that, if it over
+broke again, it must be in a new place, which was a great consolation.
+If these gentlemen gave nothing very valuable to the people of the Free
+States, they were giving the Secessionists what was of inestimable
+value to them,--Time. The latter went on seizing forts, navy-yards, and
+deposits of Federal money, erecting batteries, and raising and arming
+men at their leisure; above all, they acquired a prestige, and
+accustomed men's minds to the thought of disunion, not only as possible,
+but actual. They began to grow insolent, and, while compelling absolute
+submission to their rebellious usurpation at home, decried any exercise
+of legitimate authority on the part of the General Government as
+_Coercion_,--a new term, by which it was sought to be established as a
+principle of constitutional law, that it is always the Northern bull
+that has gored the Southern ox.
+
+During all this time, the Border Slave-States, and especially Virginia,
+were playing a part at once cowardly and selfish. They assumed the right
+to stand neutral between the Government and rebellion, to contract a
+kind of morganatic marriage with Treason, by which they could enjoy the
+pleasant sin without the tedious responsibility, and to be traitors in
+everything but the vulgar contingency of hemp. Doubtless the aim of the
+political managers in these States was to keep the North amused with
+schemes of arbitration, reconstruction, and whatever other fine
+words would serve the purpose of hiding the real issue, till the new
+government of Secessia should have so far consolidated itself as to
+be able to demand with some show of reason a recognition from foreign
+powers, and to render it politic for the United States to consent to
+peaceable secession. They counted on the self-interest of England and
+the supineness of the North. As to the former, they were not wholly
+without justification,--for nearly all the English discussions of
+the "American Crisis" which we have seen have shown far more of the
+shop-keeping spirit than of interest in the maintenance of free
+institutions; but in regard to the latter they made the fatal mistake of
+believing our Buchanans, Cushings, and Touceys to be representative men.
+They were not aware how utterly the Democratic Party had divorced itself
+from the moral sense of the Free States, nor had they any conception
+of the tremendous recoil of which the long-repressed convictions,
+traditions, and instincts of a people are capable.
+
+Never was a nation so in want of a leader; never was it more plain,
+that, without a head, the people "bluster abroad as beasts," with plenty
+of the iron of purpose, but purpose without coherence, and with no
+cunning smith of circumstance to edge it with plan and helve it with
+direction. What the country was waiting for showed itself in the
+universal thrill of satisfaction when Major Anderson took the
+extraordinary responsibility of doing his duty. But such was the general
+uncertainty, so doubtful seemed the loyalty of the Democratic Party as
+represented by its spokesmen at the North, so irresolute was the tone
+of many Republican leaders and journals, that a powerful and wealthy
+community of twenty millions of people gave a sigh of relief when they
+had been permitted to install the Chief Magistrate of their choice in
+their own National Capital. Even after the inauguration of Mr. Lincoln,
+it was confidently announced that Jefferson Davis, the Burr of the
+Southern conspiracy, would be in Washington before the month was out;
+and so great was the Northern despondency, that the chances of such an
+event were seriously discussed. While the nation was falling to pieces,
+there were newspapers and "distinguished statesmen" of the party so
+lately and so long in power base enough to be willing to make political
+capital out of the common danger, and to lose their country, if
+they could only find their profit. There was even one man found in
+Massachusetts, who, measuring the moral standard of his party by his
+own, had the unhappy audacity to declare publicly that there were
+friends enough of the South in his native State to prevent the march of
+any troops thence to sustain that Constitution to which he had sworn
+fealty in Heaven knows how many offices, the rewards of almost as many
+turnings of his political coat. There was one journal in New York which
+had the insolence to speak of _President_ Davis and _Mister_ Lincoln in
+the same paragraph. No wonder the "dirt-eaters" of the Carolinas could
+be taught to despise a race among whom creatures might be found to do
+that by choice which they themselves were driven to do by misery.
+
+Thus far the Secessionists had the game all their own way, for
+their dice were loaded with Northern lead. They framed their sham
+constitution, appointed themselves to their sham offices, issued their
+sham commissions, endeavored to bribe England with a sham offer of
+low duties and Virginia with a sham prohibition of the slave-trade,
+advertised their proposals for a sham loan which was to be taken up
+under intimidation, and levied real taxes on the people in the name
+of the people whom they had never allowed to vote directly on their
+enormous swindle. With money stolen from the Government, they raised
+troops whom they equipped with stolen arms, and beleaguered national
+fortresses with cannon stolen from national arsenals. They sent out
+secret agents to Europe, they had their secret allies in the Free
+States, their conventions transacted all important business in secret
+session;--there was but one exception to the shrinking delicacy becoming
+a maiden government, and that was the openness of the stealing. We had
+always thought a high sense of personal honor an essential element of
+chivalry; but among the _Romanic_ races, by which, as the wonderful
+ethnologist of "De Bow's Review" tells us, the Southern States were
+settled, and from which they derive a close entail of chivalric
+characteristics, to the exclusion of the vulgar Saxons of the North,
+such is by no means the case. For the first time in history the
+deliberate treachery of a general is deemed worthy of a civic ovation,
+and Virginia has the honor of being the first State claiming to be
+civilized that has decreed the honors of a triumph to a cabinet officer
+who had contrived to gild a treason that did not endanger his life with
+a peculation that could not further damage his reputation. Rebellion,
+even in a bad cause, may have its romantic side; treason, which had not
+been such but for being on the losing side, may challenge admiration;
+but nothing can sweeten larceny or disinfect perjury. A rebellion
+inaugurated with theft, and which has effected its entry into national
+fortresses, not over broken walls, but by breaches of trust, should
+take Jonathan Wild for its patron saint, with the run of Mr. Buchanan's
+cabinet for a choice of sponsors,--godfathers we should not dare to call
+them.
+
+Mr. Lincoln's Inaugural Speech was of the kind usually called "firm, but
+conciliatory,"--a policy doubtful in troublous times, since it commonly
+argues weakness, and more than doubtful in a crisis like ours, since it
+left the course which the Administration meant to take ambiguous, and,
+while it weakened the Government by exciting the distrust of all
+who wished for vigorous measures, really strengthened the enemy by
+encouraging the conspirators in the Border States. There might be a
+question as to whether this or that attitude were expedient for the
+Republican Party; there could be none as to the only safe and dignified
+one for the Government of the Nation. Treason was as much treason in the
+beginning of March as in the middle of April; and it seems certain now,
+as it seemed probable to many then, that the country would have sooner
+rallied to the support of the Government, if the Government had shown an
+earlier confidence in the loyalty of the people. Though the President
+talked of "repossessing" the stolen forts, arsenals, and custom-houses,
+yet close upon this declaration followed the disheartening intelligence
+that the Cabinet were discussing the propriety of evacuating not only
+Fort Sumter, which was of no strategic importance, but Fort Pickens,
+which was the key to the Gulf of Mexico, and to abandon which was almost
+to acknowledge the independence of the Rebel States. Thus far the Free
+States had waited with commendable patience for some symptom of vitality
+in the new Administration, something that should distinguish it from the
+piteous helplessness of its predecessor. But now their pride was too
+deeply outraged for endurance, indignant remonstrances were heard from
+all quarters, and the Government seemed for the first time fairly to
+comprehend that it had twenty millions of freemen at its back, and that
+forts might be taken and held by honest men as well as by knaves and
+traitors. The nettle had been stroked long enough; it was time to try
+a firm grip. Still the Administration seemed inclined to temporize, so
+thoroughly was it possessed by the notion of conciliating the Border
+States. In point of fact, the side which those States might take in the
+struggle between Law and Anarchy was of vastly more import to them than
+to us. They could bring no considerable reinforcement of money, credit,
+or arms to the rebels; they could at best but add so many mouths to an
+army whose commissariat was already dangerously embarrassed. They could
+not even, except temporarily, keep the war away from the territory of
+the seceding States, every one of which had a sea-door open to the
+invasion of an enemy who controlled the entire navy and shipping of the
+country.
+
+The position assumed by Eastern Virginia and Maryland was of consequence
+only so far as it might facilitate a sudden raid on Washington, and the
+policy of both these States was to amuse the Government by imaginary
+negotiations till the plans of the conspirators were ripe. In both
+States men were actively recruited and enrolled to assist in attacking
+the capital. With them, as with the more openly rebellious States, the
+new theory of "Coercion" was ingeniously arranged like a valve, yielding
+at the slightest impulse to the passage of forces for the subversion
+of legitimate authority, closing imperviously so that no drop of power
+could ooze through in the opposite direction. Lord de Roos, long
+suspected of cheating at cards, would never have been convicted but for
+the resolution of an adversary, who, pinning his hand to the table with
+a fork, said to him blandly, "My Lord, if the ace of spades is not under
+your Lordship's hand, why, then, I beg your pardon!" It seems to us that
+a timely treatment of Governor Letcher in the same energetic way would
+have saved the disasters of Harper's Ferry and Norfolk,--for disasters
+they were, though six months of temporizing had so lowered the public
+sense of what was due to the national dignity, that people were glad to
+see the Government active at length, even if only in setting fire to its
+own house.
+
+We are by no means inclined to criticize the Administration, even if
+this were the proper time for it; but we cannot help thinking that there
+was great wisdom in Napoleon's recipe for saving life in dealing with a
+mob,--"First fire grape-shot _into_ them; after that, over their
+heads as much as you like." The position of Mr. Lincoln was already
+embarrassed when he entered upon office, by what we believe to have been
+a political blunder in the leaders of the Republican Party. Instead of
+keeping closely to the real point, and the only point, at issue, namely,
+the claim of a minority to a right of rebellion when displeased with the
+result of an election, the bare question of Secession, pure and simple,
+they allowed their party to become divided, and to waste themselves
+in discussing terms of compromise and guaranties of slavery which had
+nothing to do with the business in hand. Unless they were ready to
+admit that popular government was at an end, those were matters already
+settled by the Constitution and the last election. Compromise was out
+of the question with men who had gone through the motions, at least, of
+establishing a government and electing an anti-president. The way to
+insure the loyalty of the Border States, as the event has shown, was to
+convince them that disloyalty was dangerous. That revolutions never go
+backward is one of those compact generalizations which the world is so
+ready to accept because they save the trouble of thinking; but, however
+it may be with revolutions, it is certain that rebellions most commonly
+go backward with disastrous rapidity, and it was of the gravest moment,
+as respected its moral influence, that Secession should not have time
+allowed it to assume the proportions and the dignity of revolution,
+in other words, of a rebellion too powerful to be crushed. The secret
+friends of the Secession treason in the Free States have done their
+best to bewilder the public mind and to give factitious prestige to a
+conspiracy against free government and civilization by talking about the
+_right_ of revolution, as if it were some acknowledged principle of the
+Law of Nations. There is a right, and sometimes a duty, of rebellion, as
+there is also a right and sometimes a duty of hanging men for it; but
+rebellion continues to be rebellion until it has accomplished its
+object and secured the acknowledgment of it from the other party to
+the quarrel, and from the world at large. The Republican Party in the
+November elections had really effected a peaceful revolution, had
+emancipated the country from the tyranny of an oligarchy which had
+abused the functions of the Government almost from the time of its
+establishment, to the advancement of their own selfish aims and
+interests; and it was this legitimate change of rulers and of national
+policy by constitutional means which the Secessionists intended to
+prevent. To put the matter in plain English, they resolved to treat the
+people of the United States, in the exercise of their undoubted and
+lawful authority, as rebels, and resorted to their usual policy of
+intimidation in order to subdue them. Either this magnificent empire
+should be their plantation, or it should perish. This was the view even
+of what were called the moderate slave-holders of the Border States;
+and all the so-called compromises and plans of reconstruction that were
+thrown into the caldron where the hell-broth of anarchy was brewing had
+this extent,--no more,--What terms of _submission_ would the people make
+to their natural masters? Whatever other result may have come of the
+long debates in Congress and elsewhere, they have at least convinced the
+people of the Free States that there can be no such thing as a moderate
+slave-holder,--that moderation and slavery can no more coexist than
+Floyd and honesty, or Anderson and treason.
+
+We believe, then, that conciliation was from the first impossible,--that
+to attempt it was unwise, because it put the party of law and loyalty in
+the wrong,--and that, if it was done as a mere matter of policy in order
+to gain time, it was a still greater mistake, because it was the rebels
+only who could profit by it in consolidating their organization, while
+the seeming gain of a few days or weeks was a loss to the Government,
+whose great advantage was in an administrative system thoroughly
+established, and, above all, in the vast power of the national idea, a
+power weakened by every day's delay. This is so true, that already men
+began to talk of the rival governments at Montgomery and Washington, and
+Canadian journals recommend a strict neutrality, as if the independence
+and legitimacy of the mushroom despotism of New Ashantee were an
+acknowledged fact, and the name of the United States of America had no
+more authority than that of Jefferson Davis and Company, dealers in
+all kinds of repudiation and anarchy. For more than a month after
+the inauguration of President Lincoln there seemed to be a kind of
+interregnum, during which the confusion of ideas in the Border States as
+to their rights and duties as members of the "old" Union, as it began
+to be called, became positively chaotic. Virginia, still professing
+neutrality, prepared to seize the arsenal at Harper's Ferry and the
+navy-yard at Norfolk; she would prevent the passage of the United
+States' forces "with a serried phalanx of her gallant sons," two
+regiments of whom stood, looking on while a file of marines took seven
+wounded men in an engine-house for them; she would do everything but her
+duty,--the gallant Ancient Pistol of a commonwealth. She "resumed her
+sovereignty," whatever that meant; her Convention passed an ordinance
+of secession, concluded a league offensive and defensive with the
+rebel Confederacy, appointed Jefferson Davis commander-in-chief of
+her land-forces and somebody else of the fleet she meant to steal at
+Norfolk, and then coolly referred the whole matter back to the people
+to vote three weeks afterwards whether they _would_ secede three weeks
+before. Wherever the doctrine of Secession has penetrated, it seems to
+have obliterated every notion of law and precedent.
+
+The country had come to the conclusion that Mr. Lincoln and his cabinet
+were mainly employed in packing their trunks to leave Washington, when
+the "venerable Edward Ruffin of Virginia" fired that first gun at Fort
+Sumter which brought all the Free States to their feet as one man.
+That shot is destined to be the most memorable one ever fired on this
+continent since the Concord fowling-pieces said, "That bridge is ours,
+and we mean to go across it," eighty-seven Aprils ago. As these began a
+conflict which gave us independence, so that began another which is to
+give us nationality. It was certainly a great piece of good-luck for the
+Government that they had a fort which it was so profitable to lose.
+The people were weary of a masterly inactivity which seemed to consist
+mainly in submitting to be kicked. We know very well the difficulties
+that surrounded the new Administration; we appreciate their reluctance
+to begin a war the responsibility of which was as great as its
+consequences seemed doubtful; but we cannot understand how it was hoped
+to evade war, except by concessions vastly more disastrous than war
+itself. War has no evil comparable in its effect on national character
+to that of a craven submission to manifest wrong, the postponement of
+moral to material interests. There is no prosperity so great as courage.
+We do not believe that any amount of forbearance would have conciliated
+the South so long as they thought us pusillanimous. The only way to
+retain the Border States was by showing that we had the will and the
+power to do without them. The little Bopeep policy of
+
+  "Let them alone, and they'll all come home
+  Wagging their tails behind them"
+
+was certainly tried long enough with conspirators who had shown
+unmistakably that they desired nothing so much as the continuance of
+peace, especially when it was all on one side, and who would never have
+given the Government the great advantage of being attacked in Fort
+Sumter, had they not supposed they were dealing with men who could not
+be cuffed into resistance. The lesson we have to teach, them now is,
+that we are thoroughly and terribly in earnest. Mr. Stephens's theories
+are to be put to a speedier and sterner test than he expected, and we
+are to prove which is stronger,--an oligarchy built _on_ men, or a
+commonwealth built _of_ them. Our structure is alive in every part with
+defensive and recuperative energies; woe to theirs, if that vaunted
+corner-stone which they believe patient and enduring as marble should
+begin to writhe with intelligent life!
+
+We have no doubt of the issue. We believe that the strongest battalions
+are always on the side of God. The Southern army will be fighting for
+Jefferson Davis, or at most for the liberty of self-misgovernment, while
+we go forth for the defence of principles which alone make government
+august and civil society possible. It is the very life of the nation
+that is at stake. There is no question here of dynasties, races,
+religions,--but simply whether we will consent to include in our Bill of
+Rights--not merely as of equal validity with all other rights, whether
+natural or acquired, but by its very nature transcending and abrogating
+them all--the Right of Anarchy. We must convince men that treason
+against the ballot-box is as dangerous as treason against a throne, and
+that, if they play so desperate a game, they must stake their lives on
+the hazard. The one lesson that remained for us to teach the political
+theorists of the Old World was, that we are as strong to suppress
+intestine disorder as foreign aggression, and we must teach it
+decisively and thoroughly. The economy of war is to be tested by the
+value of the object to be gained by it. A ten years' war would be cheap
+that gave us a country to be proud of and a flag that should command the
+respect of the world because it was the symbol of the enthusiastic unity
+of a great nation.
+
+The Government, however slow it may have been to accept the war which
+Mr. Buchanan's supineness left them, is acting now with all energy and
+determination. What they have a right to claim is the confidence of the
+people, and that depends in good measure on the discretion of the
+press. Only let us have no more weakness under the plausible name of
+Conciliation. We need not discuss the probabilities of an acknowledgment
+of the Confederated States by England and France; we have only to
+say, "Acknowledge them at your peril." But there is no chance of the
+recognition of the Confederacy by any foreign governments, so long as it
+is without the confidence of the brokers. There is no question on which
+side the strength lies. The whole tone of the Southern journals, so far
+as we are able to judge, shows the inherent folly and weakness of the
+Secession movement. Men who feel strong in the justice of their cause,
+or confident in their powers, do not waste breath in childish boasts of
+their own superiority and querulous depreciation of their antagonists.
+They are weak, and they know it. And not only are they weak in
+comparison with the Free States, but we believe they are without the
+moral support of whatever deserves the name of public opinion at home.
+If not, why does their Congress, as they call it, hold council always
+with closed doors, like a knot of conspirators? The first tap of the
+Northern drum dispelled many illusions, and we need no better proof of
+which ship is sinking than that Mr. Caleb Gushing should have made such
+haste to come over to the old Constitution with the stars and stripes at
+her mast-head.
+
+We cannot think that the war we are entering on can end without some
+radical change in the system of African slavery. Whether it be doomed
+to a sudden extinction, or to a gradual abolition through economical
+causes, this war will not leave it where it was before. As a power in
+the State, its reign is already over. The fiery tongues of the batteries
+in Charleston harbor accomplished in one day a conversion which the
+constancy of Garrison and the eloquence of Phillips had failed to bring
+about in thirty years. And whatever other result this war is destined to
+produce, it has already won for us a blessing worth everything to us as
+a nation in emancipating the public opinion of the North.
+
+
+
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+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44,
+June, 1861, by Various
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12285 ***