diff options
| author | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-15 04:47:43 -0700 |
|---|---|---|
| committer | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-15 04:47:43 -0700 |
| commit | d8375f5ba6b59ffdcad3d2c4a8ff540d38e1c541 (patch) | |
| tree | 2b7b3c00d1e3549f88145ebb08bb30bab9508eef | |
| -rw-r--r-- | .gitattributes | 3 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 15880-8.txt | 8854 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 15880-8.zip | bin | 0 -> 205776 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 15880-h.zip | bin | 0 -> 213316 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 15880-h/15880-h.htm | 9049 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 15880.txt | 8854 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 15880.zip | bin | 0 -> 205578 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | LICENSE.txt | 11 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | README.md | 2 |
9 files changed, 26773 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/15880-8.txt b/15880-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..1362c74 --- /dev/null +++ b/15880-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,8854 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, +April, 1864, by Various + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 + +Author: Various + +Release Date: May 23, 2005 [EBook #15880] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY, VOL. *** + + + + +Produced by Cornell University, Joshua Hutchinson, Josephine +Paolucci and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team. + + + + + + + + + + +THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY. + +A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS. + +VOL. XIII.--APRIL, 1864.--NO. LXXVIII. + +Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1864, by TICKNOR AND +FIELDS, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of +Massachusetts. + + * * * * * + +FIGHTING FACTS FOR FOGIES. + + +Young people are often charged with caring little for the past. The +charge is just; and the young are right. If they care little for the +past, then it is certain that it is in debt to them,--as for them the +past cared nothing. It is wonderful, considering how children used to be +treated, that the human race ever succeeded in getting established on +earth. Humanity should have died out, there was so little that was +humane in its bringing up. Because they had contrived to bring a +helpless creature into a world that every one wishes he had never known +at least twenty-four times a day, a father and mother of the very old +school indeed assumed that they had the right to make that creature a +slave, and to hold it in everlasting chains. They had much to say about +the duty of children, and very little about the love of parents. The +sacrificing of children to idols, a not uncommon practice in some +renowned countries of antiquity, the highest-born children being the +favorite victims,--for Moloch's appetite was delicate,--could never have +taken place in any country where the voice of Nature was heeded; and yet +those sacrifices were but so many proofs of the existence of a spirit of +pride, which caused men to offer up their offspring on the domestic +altar. Son and slave were almost the same word with the Romans; and your +genuine old Roman made little ado about cutting off the head of one of +his boys, perhaps for doing something of a praiseworthy nature. Old +Junius Brutus was doubly favored by Fortune, for he was enabled to kill +two of his sons in the name of Patriotism, and thereby to gain a +reputation for virtue that endures to this day,--though, after all, he +was but the first of the brutes. The Romans kept up the paternal rule +for many ages, and theoretically it long survived the Republic. It had +existed in the Kingdom, and it was not unknown to the Empire. We have an +anecdote that shows how strong was the supremacy of _paterfamilias_ at +the beginning of the eighth century, when Young Rome had already made +more than one audacious display of contempt for the Conscript Fathers. +When Pompeius was asked what he would do, if Cæsar should resist the +requirements of the Senate, he answered,--"What if my son should raise +his stick against me?"--meaning to imply, that, in his opinion, +resistance from Cæsar was something too absurd to be thought of. Yet +Cæsar _did_ resist, and triumphed; and, judging from their after-lives, +we should say that the Young Pompeys would have had small hesitation in +raising their sticks against their august governor, had he proved too +disobedient. A few years earlier, according to Sallust, a Roman, one +Fulvius, had caused his son to be put to death, because he had sought to +join Catiline. The old gentleman heard what his son was about, and when +Young Hopeful was arrested and brought before him, he availed himself of +his fatherly privilege, and had him strangled, or disposed of after some +other of those charming fashions which were so common in the model +republic of antiquity. "This imitation of the discipline of the ancient +republic," says Merivale, "excited neither applause nor indignation +among the languid voluptuaries of the Senate." They probably voted +Fulvius a brute, but they no more thought of questioning the legality of +his conduct than they did of imitating it. Law was one thing, opinion +another. If he liked to play Lucius Junius, well and good; but they had +no taste for the part. They felt much as we used to feel in +Fugitive-Slave-Law times: we did not question the law, but we would have +nothing to do with its execution. + +Modern fathers have had no such powers as were held by those of Rome, +and if an Englishman of Red-Rose views had killed his son for setting +off to join Edward IV. when he had landed at Ravenspur, no one would +think of praising the act. What was all right in a Roman of the year 1 +of the Republic would be considered shocking in a Christian of the +fifteenth century, a time when Christianity had become much diluted from +the inter-mixture of blood. In the next century, poor Lady Jane Grey +spoke of the torments which she had endured at the hands of her parents, +who were of the noblest blood of Europe, in terms that ought to make +every young woman thankful that her lot was not cast in the good old +times. Roger Ascham was her confidant. He had gone to Brodegate, to take +leave of her, and "found her in her chamber alone, reading Phædo +Platonis in Greek, and that with as much delight as some gentlemen would +read a merry tale of Boccace"; and as all the rest of the Greys were +hunting in the park, the schoolmaster inquired why she should lose such +pastime. The lady answered, that the pleasure they were having in the +park was but the shadow of that pleasure she found in Plato. The +conversation proceeding, Ascham inquired how it was that she had come to +know such true pleasure, and she answered,--"I will tell you, and tell +you a truth which perchance ye may marvel at. One of the greatest +benefits God ever gave me is that he sent me so sharp and severe parents +and so gentle a schoolmaster. For when I am in presence either of father +or mother, whether I speak, keep silence, sit, stand, or go, eat, drink, +be merry, or sad, be sewing, playing, dancing, or doing anything else, I +must do it as it were in such weight, number, and measure, even so +perfectly as God made the world, or else I am so sharply taunted, so +cruelly threatened, yea, presently, sometimes with pinches, nips, and +bobs, and other ways, (which I will not name for the honor I bear them,) +so without measure misordered, that I think myself in hell, till time +come that I must go to Mr. Elmer, who teacheth me so gently, so +pleasantly, with such fair allurements to learning, that I think all the +time nothing while I am with him. And when I am called from him, I fall +on weeping, because whatsoever I do else beside learning is full of +grief, trouble, fear, and whole misliking unto me. And thus my book hath +been so much my pleasure, and bringeth daily more pleasure and more, +that in respect of it all other pleasures, in very deed, be but trifles +and troubles to me." The Duke and Duchess of Suffolk were neither better +nor worse than other parents who tormented and tyrannized over their +children _temp._ Edward VI., and nothing but the prominence of the most +unfortunate of their unfortunate daughters has preserved the memory of +their domestic despotism. Throughout all England it was the same, from +palace to castle, and from castle to hovel; and father and tyrant were +convertible terms. Youth must have been but a dreary time in those old +days. Scott's Sir Henry Lee, according to his son, kept strict rule over +his children, and he was a type of the antique knight, not of the +debauched cavalier, and would be obeyed, with or without reason. The +letters and the literature of the seventeenth century show, that, how +loose soever became other ties, parents maintained their hold on their +children with iron hands. Even the license of the Restoration left +fatherly rule largely triumphant and undisputed. When even "husbands, of +decent station, were not ashamed to beat their wives," sons and +daughters were not spoiled by a sparing of the rod. Harshness was the +rule in every grade of life, and harsh indeed was parental rule, until +the reader wonders that there was not a general rebellion of women, +children, scholars, and apprentices against the savage ascendency of +husbands, fathers, pedagogues, and masters. + +But the fashions of this world, whether good or evil, pass away. In the +eighteenth century we find parents becoming more humane, though still +keeping their offspring pretty stiffly bitted. They shared in the +general melioration of the age. The father was "honored sir," and was +not too familiar with his boys. The great outbreak at the close of the +century did much for the emancipation of the young; and by the time that +the present century had advanced to a third of its years, youth had so +far got the best of the conflict, and treated their elders with so +little consideration, that it was thought the latter were rather +presumptuous in remaining on earth after fifty. Youth began to organize +itself. Young Germany, Young France, and Young England became powers in +the world. Young Germany was revolutionary and metaphysical, and +nourished itself on bad beer and worse tobacco. Young France was +full-bearded and decidedly dirty, and so far deferred to the past as to +look for models in '93; and it had a strong reverence for that antique +sentiment which exhibited itself in the assassination of kings. Young +England was gentlemanly and cleanly, its leaders being of the patrician +order; and it looked to the Middle Ages for patterns of conduct. Its +chiefs wore white waistcoats, gave red cloaks and broken meat to old +women, and would have lopped off three hundred years from Old England's +life, by pushing her back to the early days of Henry VIII., when the +religious houses flourished, and when the gallows was a perennial plant, +bearing fruit that was _not_ for the healing of the nations. Some of the +cleverest of the younger members of the aristocracy belonged to the new +organization, and a great genius wrote some delightful novels to show +their purpose, and to illustrate their manner of how-not-to-do-it in +grappling with the grand social questions of the age. In "Coningsby" +they sing canticles and carry about the boar's head; in "Sibyl" they +sing hymns to the Holy Virgin and the song of labor, and steal +title-deeds, after setting houses on fire to distract attention from +their immediate object; and in "Tancred" they go on pilgrimage to the +Holy Sepulchre, by way of reviving their faith. All this is so well +done, that Young England will survive in literature, and be the source +of edification, long after there shall be no more left of the dust of +its chiefs than there is of the dust of Cheops or Cæsar. For all these +youths are already vanished, leaving no more traces than you would find +of the flowers that bloomed in the days of their lives. Young Germany +went out immediately after the failure of the revolutionists of 1848-9. +Young France thought it had triumphed in the fall of the Orléans +monarchy, but had only taken the first long step toward making its own +fall complete; and now some of its early members are of the firmest +supporters of the new phase of imperialism, the only result of the +Revolution of February that has given signs of endurance. Young England +went out as soberly and steadily as it had lived. The select few who +composed it died like gentlemen, and were as polite as Lord Chesterfield +in the article of death. Some of them turned Whigs, and have held office +under Lord Palmerston; and others are Tories, and expect to hold office +under Lord Derby, when he shall form his third ministry. Young America, +the worst of these youths, and the latest born, was never above an +assassin in courage, or in energy equal to more than the plundering of a +hen-roost. The fruits of his exertions are to be seen in some of the +incidents of the Secession War, and they were not worth the gathering. + +The world had settled down into the belief, that, after all, a man was +not much to be blamed for growing old, and liberal-minded people were +fast coming to the conclusion, that years, on the whole, were not +dishonorable, when the breaking out of a great war led to the return of +youth to consideration. The English found themselves at war with Russia, +much to their surprise; and, still more to their surprise, their part in +that war was made subordinate to that of the French, who acted with +them, in the world's estimate of the deeds of the members of the new +Grand Alliance. This is not the place to discuss the question whether +that estimate was a just one. We have to do only with the facts that +England was made to stand in the background and that she seemed at first +disposed to accept the general verdict. There was, too, much +mismanagement in the conduct of the war, some of which might easily have +been avoided; and there was not a little suffering, as the consequence +of that mismanagement. John Bull must have his scape-goat, like the rest +of us; and, looking over the field, he discovered that all his leaders +were old men, and forthwith, though the oldest of old fellows himself, +he laid all his mishaps to the account of the years of his upper +servants. Sir Charles Napier, who never got into St. Petersburg, was +old, and had been a dashing sailor forty years before. Admiral Dundas, +who did not destroy Sweaborg, but only burned a lot of corded wood there +in summer time, was another old sailor. Lord Raglan, who never saw the +inside of Sebastopol, was well stricken in years, having served in +Wellington's military family during the Peninsular War. General Simpson, +Sir C. Campbell, General Codrington, Sir G. Brown, Sir G. Cathcart, and +others of the leaders of the English army in the Crimea, were of the +class of gentlemen who might, upon meeting, furnish matter for a +paragraph on "united ages." What more natural than to attribute all that +was unpleasant in the war to the stagnated blood of men who had heard +the music of that musketry before which Napoleon I.'s empire had gone +down? The world went mad on the subject, and it was voted that old +generals were nuisances, and that no man had any business in active war +who was old enough to have much experience. Age might be venerable, but +it was necessarily weak; and the last place in which it should show +itself was the field. + +It was not strange that the English should have come to the conclusion +that the fogies were unfit to lead armies. They were in want of an +excuse for their apparent failure in the war, and they took the part +that was suggested to them,--therein behaving no worse than ourselves, +who have accounted for our many reverses in many foolish and +contradictory ways. But it was strange that their view was accepted by +others, whose minds were undisturbed, because unmistified,--and +accepted, too, in face of the self-evident fact that almost every man +who figured in the war was old. Maréchal Pelissier,[A] to whom the chief +honor of the contest has been conceded, was but six years the junior of +Lord Raglan; and if the Englishman's sixty-six years are to count +against age in war, why should not the Frenchman's sixty years count for +it? Prince Gortschakoff, who defended Sebastopol so heroically, was but +four years younger than Lord Raglan; and Prince Paskevitch was more than +six years his senior. Muravieff, Menschikoff, Luders, and other Russian +commanders opposed to the Allies, were all old men, all past sixty years +when the war began. Prince Menschikoff was sixty-four when he went on +his famous mission to Constantinople, and he did not grow younger in the +eighteen months that followed, and at the end of which he fought and +lost the Battle of the Alma. The Russian war was an old man's war, and +the stubbornness with which it was waged had in it much of that ugliness +which belongs to age. + + "The young man's wrath is like light straw on fire. + But like red-hot steel is the old man's ire." + +What rendered the attacks that were made on old generals in 1854-6 the +more absurd was the fact, that the English called upon an old man to +relieve them from bad government, and were backed by other nations. Lord +Palmerston, upon whom all thoughts and all eyes were directed, was older +than any one of those generals to whose years Englishmen attributed +their country's failure. When, with the all but universal approbation of +Great Britain and her friends, he became Prime-Minister, he was in his +seventy-first year, and his action showed that his natural force was not +abated. He was called to play the part of the elder Pitt at a greater +age than Pitt reached; and he did not disappoint expectation. It is +strange indeed, considering that the Premiership was a more difficult +post to fill than that held by any English general, that the English +should rely upon the oldest of their active statesmen to retrieve their +fortunes, while they were condemning as unfit for service men who were +his juniors by several years. + +In truth, the position that youth is necessary to success in war is not +sustained by military history. It may he no drawback to a soldier's +excellence that he is young, but it is equally true that an old man may +possess every quality that is necessary in a soldier who would serve his +country well and win immortal fame for himself. The best of the Greek +commanders were men in advanced life, with a few exceptions. The precise +age of Miltiades at Marathon is unproven; but as he had become a noted +character almost thirty years before the date of that most memorable of +battles, he must have been old when he fought and won it. Even +Alcibiades, with whom is associated the idea of youth through his whole +career, as if Time had stood still in his behalf, did not have a great +command until he was approaching to middle age; and it was not until +some years more had expired that he won victories for the Athenians. The +date of the birth of Epaminondas--the best public man of all antiquity, +and the best soldier of Greece--cannot be fixed; but we find him a +middle-aged man when first he appears on that stage on which he +performed so pure and brilliant a part through seventeen eventful years. +Eight years after he first came forward he won the Battle of Leuctra, +which shattered the Spartan supremacy forever, and was the most perfect +specimen of scientific fighting that is to be found in classical +history, and which some of the greatest of modern commanders have been +proud merely to imitate. After that action, but not immediately after +it, he invaded the Peloponnesus, and led his forces to the vicinity of +Sparta, and then effected a revolution that bridled that power +perpetually. Nine years after Leuctra he won the Battle of Mantinea, +dying on the field. He must then have been an old man, but the last of +his campaigns was a miracle of military skill in all respects; and the +effect of his death was the greatest that ever followed the fall of a +general on a victorious field, actually turning victory into defeat. The +Spartan king, Agesilaus II., who was a not unworthy antagonist of the +great Theban, was an old man, and was over seventy when he saved Sparta +solely through his skill as a soldier and his energy as a statesman. As +a rule, the Greeks, the most intellectual of all races, were averse to +the employment of young men in high offices. The Spartan Brasidas, if it +be true that he fell in the flower of his age, as the historian asserts, +may have been a young man at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War, in +which he was eminently distinguished; but it was his good fortune to be +singularly favored by circumstances on more than one occasion, and his +whole career was eminently exceptional to the general current of +Hellenic life. + +The Romans, though not braver than the Greeks, were more fortunate in +their military career than the stayers of the march of Persia. Like the +Greeks, they had but few young generals of much reputation. Most of +their conquests, and, indeed, the salvation of their country, were the +work of old leaders. The grand crisis of Rome was in the years that +followed the arrival of Hannibal in Italy; and the two men who did most +to baffle the invader were Fabius and Marcellus, who were called, +respectively, Rome's shield and sword. They were both old men, though +Marcellus may have been looked upon as young in comparison with Fabius, +who was upward of seventy, and who, eight years after his memorable +pro-dictatorship, retook Tarentum and baffled Hannibal. The old +_Lingerer_ was, at eighty, too clever, slow as they thought him at Rome, +to be "taken in" by Hannibal, who had prepared a nice trap for him, into +which he would not walk. Marcellus was about fifty-two when he was +pitted against the victor of Cannæ, and he met him on various occasions, +and sometimes with striking success. At the age of fifty-six he took +Syracuse, after one of the most memorable of sieges, in which he had +Archimedes for an opponent. At sixty he was killed in a skirmish, +leaving the most brilliant military name of the republican times, so +highly are valor and energy rated, though in the higher qualities of +generalship he was inferior to men whose names are hardly known. +Undoubtedly, Mommsen is right when he says that Rome was saved by the +Roman system, and not by the labors of this man or that; but it is +something for a country to have men who know how to work under its +system, and in accordance with its requirements; and such men were +Fabius and Marcellus, the latter old enough to be Hannibal's father, +while the former was the contemporary of his grandfather. + +The turning point in the Second Punic War was the siege of Capua by the +Romans. That siege Hannibal sought by all means in his power to raise, +well knowing, that, if the Campanian city should fall, he could never +hope to become master of Italy. He marched to Rome in the expectation of +compelling the besiegers to hasten to its defence; but without effect. +Two old Romans commanded the beleaguering army, and while one of them, +Q. Fulvius, hastened home with a small force, the other, Appius +Claudius, carried on the siege. Hannibal had to retreat, and Capua fell, +the effect of the tenacity with which ancient generals held on to their +prey. Had they been less firm, the course of history would have been +changed. At a later period of the war, Rome was saved from great danger, +if not from destruction, by the victory of the Metaurus, won by M. +Livius Salinator and C. Claudius Nero. Nero was an elderly man, having +been conspicuous for some years, and the consular age being forty. His +colleague was a very old man, having been consul before the war began, +and having long lived in retirement, because he had been unjustly +treated. The Romans now forced him to take office, against his wish, +though his actions and his language were of the most insulting +character. A great union of parties had taken place, for Hasdrubal was +marching to Italy, for the purpose of effecting a junction with his +brother Hannibal, and it was felt that nothing short of perfect union +could save the State. The State was saved, the two old consuls acting +together, and defeating and slaying Hasdrubal in the last great battle +of the war that was fought in Italy. The old fogies were too much for +their foe, a much younger man than either of them, and a soldier of high +reputation. + +It must be admitted, however, that the Second Punic War is fairly +quotable by those who insist upon the superiority of youthful generals +over old ones, for the two greatest men who appeared in it were young +leaders,--Hannibal, and Publius Cornelius Scipio, the first Africanus. +No man has ever exceeded Hannibal in genius for war. He was one of the +greatest statesmen that ever lived, and he was so because he was the +greatest of soldiers. He might have won pitched battles as a mere +general, but it was his statesmanship that enabled him to contend for +sixteen years against Rome, in Italy, though Rome was aided by +Carthaginian copperheads. But, though a young general, Hannibal was an +old soldier when he led his army from the Ebro to the Trebia, as the +avenging agent of his country's gods. His military as well as his moral +training began in childhood; and when his father, Hamilcar Barcas,[B] +was killed, Hannibal, though but eighteen, was of established reputation +in the Carthaginian service. Eight years later he took the place which +his father and brother-in-law had held, called to it by the voice of the +army. During those eight years he had been constantly employed, and he +brought to the command an amount and variety of experience such as it +has seldom been the lot of even old generals to acquire. Years brought +no decay to his faculties, and we have the word of his successful foe, +that at Zama, when he was forty-five, he showed as much skill as he had +displayed at Cannæ, when he was but thirty-one. Long afterward, when an +exile in the East, his powers of mind shine as brightly as they did when +he crossed the Pyrenees and the Alps to fulfil his oath. Scipio, too, +though in a far less degree than Hannibal, was an old soldier. He had +been often employed, and was present at Cannæ, before he obtained that +proconsular command in Spain which was the worthy foundation of his +fortunes. The four years that he served in that country, and his +subsequent services in Africa, qualified him to meet Hannibal, whose +junior he was by thirteen years. That he was Hannibal's superior, +because he defeated him at Zama, with the aid of Masinissa, no more +follows than that Wellington was Napoleon's superior, because, with the +aid of Blücher, he defeated him at Waterloo. It would not be more +difficult to account for the loss of the African field than it is to +account for the loss of the Flemish field, by the superior genius. The +elder Africanus is the most exceptional character in all history, and it +is impossible to place him. He seems never to have been young, and we +cannot associate the idea of age with him, even when he is dying at +Liternum at upwards of fifty. He was a man at seventeen, when first he +steps boldly out on the historic page, and there is no apparent change +in him when we find him leading great armies, and creating a new policy +for the redemption of Italy from the evils of war. He was intended to be +a king, but he was born two centuries too early to be of any use to his +country in accordance with his genius, out of the field. Such a man is +not to be judged as a mere soldier, and we were inclined not to range +him on the side of youthful generals; but we will be generous, and, in +consideration of his years, permit him to be claimed by those who insist +that war is the business of youth. + +At later periods, Rome's greatest generals were men who were old. The +younger Africanus was fifty-one at Numantia, Marius did not obtain the +consulship until he was fifty; and he was fifty-five when he won his +first great victory over the Northern barbarians, and a year older when +he completed their destruction. Sulla was past fifty when he set out to +meet the armies of Mithridates, which he conquered; and he was fifty-six +when he made himself master of his country, after one of the fiercest +campaigns on record. Pompeius distinguished himself when very young, but +it is thought that the title of "the Great" was conferred upon him by +Sulla in a spirit of irony. The late Sir William Napier, who ought to +have been a good judge, said that he was a very great general, and in a +purely military sense perhaps greater than Cæsar. He was fifty-eight in +the campaign of Pharsalia, and if he then failed, his failure must be +attributed to the circumstances of his position, which was rather that +of a party leader than of a general; and a party leader, it has been +truly said, must sometimes obey, in order that at other times he may +command. Pompeius delivered battle at Pharsalia against his own +judgment. The "Onward to Rome!" cry of the fierce aristocrats was too +strong to be resisted; and "their general yielded with a sigh to the +importunities of his followers, declaring that he could no longer +command, and must submit to obey." Not long before he had beaten Cæsar +at Dyrrachium, with much loss to the vanquished, completely spoiling his +plans; and the great contest might have had a very different result, had +not political and personal considerations been permitted to outweigh +those of a military character. Politicians are pests in a camp. Cæsar +was in his fifty-first year when he crossed the Rubicon and began his +wonderful series of campaigns in the Civil War,--campaigns characterized +by an almost superhuman energy. The most remarkable of his efforts was +that which led to his last appearance in the field, at the Battle of +Munda, where he fought for existence; he was then approaching +fifty-five, and he could not have been more active and energetic, had he +been as young as Alexander at Arbela. + +In modern days, the number of old generals who have gained great battles +is large, far larger than the number of young generals of the highest +class. The French claim to be the first of military peoples, and though +no other nation has been so badly beaten in battles, or so completely +crushed in campaigns, there is a general disposition to admit their +claim; and many of their best commanders were old men. Bertrand du +Gueselin performed his best deeds against the English after he was +fifty, and he was upward of sixty years when the commandant of Randon +laid the keys of his fortress on his body, surrendering, not to the +living, but to the dead. Turenne was ever great, but it is admitted that +his three last campaigns, begun when he was sixty-two, were his greatest +performances. Condé's victory at Rocroi was a most brilliant deed, he +being then but twenty-two; but it does not so strikingly illustrate his +genius as do those operations by which, at fifty-four, he baffled +Montecuculi, and prevented him from profiting from the fall of Turenne. +Said Condé to one of his officers, "How much I wish that I could have +conversed only two hours with the ghost of Monsieur de Turenne, so as to +be able to follow the scope of his ideas!" In these days, generals can +have as much ghostly talk as they please, but the privilege would not +seem to be much used, or it is not useful, for they do nothing that is +of consequence sufficient to be attributed to supernatural power. +Luxembourg was sixty-two when he defeated Prince Waldeck at Fleurus; and +at sixty-four and sixty-five he defeated William III. at Steinkirk and +Landen. Vendôme was fifty-one when he defeated Eugène at Cassano; and at +fifty-six he won the eventful Battle of Villaviciosa, to which the +Spanish Bourbons owe their throne. Villars, who fought the terrible +Battle of Malplaquet against Marlborough and Eugène, was then fifty-six +years old; and he had more than once baffled those commanders. At sixty +he defeated Eugène, and by his successes enabled France to conclude +honorably a most disastrous war. The Comte de Saxe was in his +forty-ninth year when he gained the Battle of Fontenoy;[C] and later he +won other successes. Rochambeau was in his fifty-seventh year when he +acted with Washington at Yorktown, in a campaign that established our +existence as a nation. + +The Spanish army of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, down to the +date of the Battle of Rocroi, stood very high. Several of its best +generals were old men. Gonsalvo de Córdova, "the Great Captain," who may +be considered the father of the famous Spanish infantry, was fifty when +he completed his Italian conquests; and nine years later he was again +called to the head of the Spaniards in Italy, but the King of Aragon's +jealousy prevented him from going to that country. Alva was about sixty +when he went to the Netherlands, on his awful mission; and it must be +allowed that he was as great in the field as he was detestably cruel. At +seventy-four he conquered Portugal. Readers of Mr. Prescott's work on +Peru will remember his lively account of Francisco de Carbajal, who at +fourscore was more active than are most men at thirty. Francisco Pizarro +was an old man, about sixty, when he effected the conquest of Peru; and +his principal associate, Almagro, was his senior. Spinola, who died at +sixty-one, in the full possession of his reputation, was, perhaps, the +greatest military genius of his time, next to Gustavus Adolphus and +Wallenstein. + +The Austrian military service has become a sort of butt with those who +shoot their arrows at what is called slowness, and who delight to +transfix old generals. Since Bonaparte, in less than a year, tumbled +over Beaulieu, Wurmser, and Alvinczy, (whose united ages exceeded two +hundred years,) it has been taken for granted that the Austrians never +have generals under threescore-and-ten years, and that they are always +beaten. There have been many old generals in the Austrian service, it is +true, and most of them have been very good leaders. Montecuculi was +fifty-six when he defeated the Turks at St. Gothard, which is counted +one of the "decisive battles" of the seventeenth century. Daun was +fifty-three when he won the victory of Kolin, June 18, 1757, inflicting +defeat on the Prussian Frederick, next to Marlborough the greatest +commander of modern times who had then appeared. Melas was seventy when +he met Bonaparte at Marengo, and beat him, the victory being with the +Austrian while he remained on the field; but infirmities having +compelled him to leave before he could glean it, the arrival of Desaix +and the dash of the younger Kellermann turned the tide of battle in +favor of the French. General Zach, Melas's chief of the staff, was in +command in the latter part of the battle, and it is supposed, that, if +he had not been captured, the Austrians would have kept what they had +won. He was fifty-six years old, but was not destined to be the "Old +Zach" of his country, as _the_ "Old Zach" was always victorious. Marshal +Radelzky was eighty-two when, in 1848, he found himself compelled to +uphold the Austrian cause in Italy, without the hope of aid from home; +and not only did he uphold it, but a year later he restored it +completely, and was the virtual ruler of the Peninsula until he had +reached the age of ninety. Of all the military men who took part in the +wars of 1848-9, he, it is admitted, displayed the most talent and +energy. So well was his work done, that it required the united forces of +France and Sardinia to undo it, shortly after his death; and he died in +the conviction that it could not be undone. Haynau, who certainly +displayed eminent ability in 1848-9, was in his sixty-second year when +the war began, and stands next to Radetzky as the preserver of the +Austrian monarchy; and we should not allow detestation of his cruelties +to detract from his military merits. The Devil is entitled to justice, +and by consequence so are his imps. Austria has often seen her armies +beaten when led by old men, but other old men have won victories for +her. Even those of her generals who were so rapidly beaten by young +Bonaparte had been good soldiers elsewhere; and when the Archduke +Charles, who was two years the junior of Bonaparte, was sent to meet the +Frenchman, he had no better luck than had been found by Beaulieu and +Wurmser, though his reverses were not on the same extraordinary scale +that had marked the fall of his predecessors. Twelve years later, in +1809, Napoleon again met the Archduke Charles, and defeated him +repeatedly; and though the Archduke was victorious at Essling, he, the +younger commander, had not sufficient boldness so to improve his success +as should have given to Austria the credit of the deliverance of +Germany, which was to come from Russia. Those who dwell so +pertinaciously on the failures of old Austrian generals should in +justice to age remember that it was a young Austrian general, and a good +soldier too, who showed a most extraordinary want of energy in 1809, +immediately after the French under Napoleon had met with the greatest +reverse which their arms had then experienced since Bonaparte had been +spoiled into a despot. Prince Schwartzenberg, who had nominal command of +the Allied Armies in 1813-14, was of the same age as the Archduke +Charles, but it would be absurd to call him a great soldier. He was a +brave man, and he had seen considerable service; but as a general he did +not rank even as second-rate. His appointment to command in 1813 was a +political proceeding, meant to conciliate Austria; but though it was a +useful appointment in some respects, it was injurious to the Allies in +the field; and had the Prince's plan at Leipsic been adhered to, +Napoleon would have won decided successes there. The Czar wished for the +command, and his zeal might have enabled him to do something; but the +entire absence of military talent from the list of his accomplishments +would have greatly endangered the Allies' cause. Schwartzenberg's merit +consisted in this, that he had sufficient influence and tact to "keep +things straight" in the councils of a jarring confederacy, until others +had gained such victories as placed the final defeat of Napoleon beyond +all doubt. His first battle was Dresden, and there Napoleon gave him a +drubbing of the severest character; and the loss of that battle would +have carried with it the loss of the cause for which it was fought by +the Allies, had it not been that at the very same time were fought and +won a series of battles, at the Katzbach and elsewhere, which were due +to the boldness of Blücher, who was old enough to be Schwartzenberg's +father, with more than a dozen years to spare. Blücher was also the real +hero at Leipsie, where he gained brilliant successes; while on that part +of the field where Schwartzenberg commanded, the Allies did but little +beyond holding their original ground. Had Blücher failed, Leipsie would +have been a French victory. + +England's best generals mostly have been old men, or men well advance in +life, the chief exceptions being found among her kings and princes.[D] +The Englishmen who have exhibited the greatest genius for war, in what +may be called their country's modern history, are Oliver Cromwell, +Marlborough, and Wellington. Cromwell was in his forty-fourth year when +he received the baptism of fire at Edgehill, as a captain; and he was in +his fifty-third year when he fought, as lord-general, his last battle, +at Worcester, which closed a campaign, as well as an active military +career, that had been conducted with great energy. It was as a military +man that he subsequently ruled the British islands, and to the day of +his death there was no abatement in ability. Marlborough had a good +military education, served under Turenne when he was but twenty-two, and +attracted his commander's admiration; but he never had an independent +command until he was forty, when he led an expedition to Ireland, and +captured Cork and Kinsale. He was fifty-two when he assumed command of +the armies of the Grand Alliance against Louis XIV., and in his +fifty-fifth year when he won the Battle of Blenheim. At fifty-six he +gained the victory of Ramillies, and at fifty-eight that of Oudenarde. +His last great battle, Malplaquet, was fought when he was in his +sixtieth year; and after that the French never durst meet him in the +field. He never knew what defeat meant, from experience, and was the +most successful even of those commanders who have never failed. He left +his command at sixty-two, with no one to dispute his title of the first +of living soldiers; and with him victory left the Alliance. Subsequently +he was employed by George I., and to his measures the defeat of the +rebels of 1715 was due, he having predicted that they would be +overthrown precisely where they were overthrown. The story that he +survived his mental powers is without foundation, and he continued to +perform his official duties to the last, the King having refused to +accept his proffered resignation. Wellington had a thorough military +training, received his first commission at eighteen, and was a +lieutenant-colonel in his twenty-fifth year. After showing that he was a +good soldier in 1794-5, against the French, he went to India, where he +distinguished himself in subordinate campaigns, and was made a +major-general in 1802. Assaye, the first battle in which he commanded, +was won when he was in his thirty-fifth year. He had just entered on his +fortieth year when he took command of that force with which he first +defeated the French in Portugal. He was in his forty-seventh year when +he fought at Waterloo. If he cannot be classed with old generals, +neither can he be placed in the list of youthful soldiers; and so little +confidence had he in his military talents, that at twenty-six he +petitioned to be transferred to the civil service. His powers were +developed by events and time. Some of his Peninsular lieutenants were +older than himself. Craufurd was five years his senior, and was a +capital soldier. Picton, who had some of the highest military qualities, +was almost eleven years older than his chief, and was little short of +fifty-seven when he fell at Waterloo. Lord Hopetoun was six years older +than Wellington. Lord Lynedoch (General Sir Thomas Graham) was in his +sixty-first year when he defeated Maréchal Victor at Barrosa, and in his +sixty-third when he led the left wing of the Allies at Vittoria, which +was the turning battle of the long contest between England and France. A +few months later he took St. Sebastian, after one of the most terrible +sieges known to modern warfare. He continued to serve under Wellington +until France was invaded. Returning to England, he was sent to Holland, +with an independent command; and though his forces were few, so little +had his fire been dulled by time, that he carried the great fortress of +Bergen-op-Zoom by storm, but only to lose it again, with more than two +thousand men, because of the sense and gallantry of the French General +Bezanet, who, like our Rosecrans at Murfreesboro', would not accept +defeat under any circumstances. When Wellington afterward saw the place, +he remarked that it was very strong, and must have been extremely +difficult to enter; "but when once in," he added, "I wonder how the +Devil they suffered themselves to be beaten out again!" Though the old +Scotchman failed on this particular occasion, his boldness and daring +are to be cited in support of the position that energy in war is not the +exclusive property of youth. + +Some of the best of the English second-class generals were old men. Lord +Clyde began his memorable Indian campaigns at sixty-six, and certainly +showed no want of talent and activity in their course. He restored, to +all appearance, British supremacy in the East. Sir C.J. Napier was in +his sixty-second year when he conquered Sinde, winning the great Battles +of Meanee and Doobah; and six years later he was sent out to India, as +Commander-in-chief, at the suggestion of Wellington, who said, that, if +Napier would not go, he should go himself. He reached India too late to +fight the Sikhs, but showed great vigor in governing the Indian army. He +died in 1853; had he lived until the next spring, he would +unquestionably have been placed at the head of that force which England +sent first to Turkey and then to Southern Russia. Lord Raglan was almost +sixty-six when he was appointed to his first command, and though his +conduct has been severely criticized, and much misrepresented by many +writers, the opinion is now becoming common that he discharged well the +duties of a very difficult position. Mr. Kinglake's brilliant work is +obtaining justice for the services and memory of his illustrious friend. +Lord Hardinge and Lord Gough were old men when they carried on some of +the fiercest hostilities ever known to the English in India. Sir Ralph +Abercromby was sixty-three when he defeated the French in Egypt, in +1801. Lord Cornwallis was fifty-two when he broke the power of Tippoo +Saib, and prepared the way for his ultimate overthrow. Lord Peterborough +was forty-seven, and had never before held a command or seen much +service, when he set out on that series of extraordinary campaigns which +came so near replacing the Austrian house in possession of Spain and the +Indies. Peterborough has been called the last of the knights-errant; +but, in fact, no book on knight-errantry contains anything half so +wonderful as his deeds in the country of Don Quixote. Sir Eyre Coote, +who had so boldly supported that bold policy which led to the victory of +Plassey, nearly a quarter of a century later supported Hastings in the +field with almost as much vigor as he had supported Clive in council, +and saved British India, when it was assailed by the ablest of all its +foes. His last victories were gained in advanced life, and are ranked +with the highest of those actions to which England owes her wonderful +Oriental dominion. Lord Keane was verging upon sixty when he led the +British forces into Afghanistan, and took Ghuznee. Against all her old +and middle-aged generals, her kings and princes apart, England could +place but very few young commanders of great worth. Clive's case was +clearly exceptional; and Wolfe owed his victory on the Heights of +Abraham as much to Montcalm's folly as to his own audacity. The +Frenchman should have refused battle, when time and climate would soon +have wrought his deliverance and his enemy's ruin. + +It is generally held that the wars which grew out of the French +Revolution, and which involved the world in their flames, were chiefly +the work of young men, and that their history illustrates the +superiority of youth over age in the ancient art of human destruction. +But this belief is not well founded, and, indeed, bears a close +resemblance to that other error in connection with the French +Revolution, namely, that it proceeded from the advent of new opinions, +which obtained ascendency,--whereas those opinions were older than +France, and had more than once been aired in France, and there had +struggled for supremacy. The opinions before the triumph of which the +old monarchy went down were much older than that monarchy; but as they +had never before been able definitely to influence the nation's action, +it was not strange that they should be considered new, when there was +nothing new about them save their application. Young opinions, as they +are supposed to have been, are best championed by young men; and hence +it is assumed that the French leaders in the field were youthful heroes, +as were the civil leaders in many instances,--and a very nice mess the +latter made of the business they engaged in, doing little that was well +in it beyond getting their own heads cut off. There are some facts that +greatly help to sustain the position that France was saved from +partition by the exertions of young generals, the new men of the new +time. Hoche, Moreau, Bonaparte, Desaix, Soult, Lannes, Ney, and others, +who early rose to fame in the Revolutionary wars, were all young men, +and their exploits were so great as to throw the deeds of others into +the shade; but the salvation of France was effected before any one of +their number became conspicuous as a leader. Napoleon once said that it +was not the new levies that saved France, but the old soldiers of the +Bourbons; and he was right; and he might have added, that they were led +by old or elderly generals. Dumouriez was in his fifty-fourth year when, +in 1792, he won the Battles of Valmy and Jemmapes; and at Valmy he was +aided by the elder Kellermann, who was fifty-seven. Those two battles +decided the fate of Europe, and laid the foundation of that French +supremacy which endured for twenty years, until Napoleon himself +overthrew it by his mad Moscow expedition. Custine, who also was +successful in 1792, on the side of Germany, was fifty-two. Jourdan and +Pichegru, though not old men, were old soldiers, when, in 1794 and 1795, +they did so much to establish the power of the French Republic, the +former winning the Battle of Fleurus. It was in the three years that +followed the beginning of the war in 1792, that the French performed +those deeds which subsequently enabled Napoleon and his Marshals to +chain victory to their chariots, and to become so drunk from success +that they fell through their own folly rather than because of the +exertions of their enemies. Had the old French generals been beaten at +Valmy, the Prussians would have entered Paris in a few days, the +monarchy would have been restored, and the name of Bonaparte never would +have been heard; and equally unknown would have been the names of a +hundred other French leaders, who distinguished themselves in the +three-and-twenty years that followed the first successes of Dumouriez +and Kellermann. Let honor be given where it is due, and let the fogies +have their just share of it. There can be nothing meaner than to insist +upon stripping gray heads of green laurels. + +After the old generals and old soldiers of France had secured +standing-places for the new generation, the representatives of the +latter certainly did make their way brilliantly and rapidly. The school +was a good one, and the scholars were apt to learn, and did credit to +their masters. They carried the tricolor over Europe and into Egypt, and +saw it flying over the capital of almost every member of those +coalitions which had purposed its degradation at Paris. It was the flag +to which men bowed at Madrid and Seville, at Milan and Rome, at Paris +and at the Hague, at Warsaw and Wilna, at Dantzie and in Dalmatia, at +the same time that it was fast approaching Moscow; and it was thought +of with as much fear as hatred at Vienna and Berlin. No wonder that the +world forgot or overlooked the earlier and fewer triumphs of the first +Republican commanders, when dazzled by the glories that shone from +Arcola, the Pyramids, Zürich, Marengo, Hohenlinden, Ulm, Austerlitz, +Jena, Eckmühl, Wagram, Borodino, Lützen, Bautzen, and Dresden. But those +young generals of the Republic and the Empire were sometimes found +unequal to the work of contending against the old generals of the +Coalitionists. Suvaroff was in his seventieth year when he defeated +Macdonald at the Battle of the Trebbia, the Frenchman being but +thirty-four; and a few months later he defeated Joubert, who was thirty, +at Novi. Joubert was one of Bonaparte's generals in his first Italian +wars, and was so conspicuous and popular that he had been selected to +command the Army of Italy by the moderate reactionists, in the hope that +he might there win such glory as should enable him to play the part +which Bonaparte played but a few months later,--Bonaparte being then in +the East, with the English fleets between him and France, so that he was +considered a lost man. "The striking similarity of situation between +Joubert and Bonaparte," says Madame d'Abrantes, "is most remarkable. +They were of equal age, and both, in their early career, suffered a sort +of disgrace; they were finally appointed to command, first, the +seventeenth military division, and afterward the Army of Italy. There is +in all this a curious parity of events; but death soon ended the career +of one of the young heroes. That which ought to have constituted the +happiness of his life was the cause of Joubert's death,--his marriage. +But how could he refrain from loving the woman he espoused? Who can +have forgotten Zaphirine de Montholon, her enchanting grace, her playful +wit, her good humor, and her beauty?" Like another famous soldier, +Joubert loved too well to love wisely. Bonaparte, who never was young, +had received the command of the Army of Italy as the portion of the +ex-mistress of Barras, who was seven years his senior, and, being a +matter-of-fact man, he reduced his _lune de miel_ to three days, and +posted off to his work. He knew the value of time in those days, and not +Cleopatra herself could have kept him from his men. Joubert, more of a +man, but an inferior soldier, took his honeymoon in full measure, +passing a month with his bride; and the loss of that month, if so sweet +a thirty days could be called a loss, ruined him, and perhaps prevented +him from becoming Emperor of the French. The enemy received +reinforcements while he was so lovingly employed, and when he at length +arrived on the scene of action he found that the Allies had obtained +mastery of the situation. It was no longer in the power of the French to +say whether they would fight or not. They had to give battle at Novi, +where the tough old Russian of seventy years asserted his superiority +over the _héros de roman_ who had posted from Paris to retrieve the +fortune of France, and to make his own. When he left Paris, he said to +his wife, "You will see me again, dead or victorious,"--and dead he was, +in less than a month. He fell early in the action, on the fifteenth of +August, 1799, the very day on which Bonaparte completed his thirtieth +year. Moreau took the command, but failed to turn the tide of disaster. +The French are unanimous in ascribing their defeat to Joubert's delay at +Paris, and it is certain that the enemy did take Alexandria and Mantua +during that month's delay, and thus were enabled to add the besieging +forces to their main army, so that Joubert was about to retreat to the +Apennines, and to assume a defensive position, when Suvaroff forced him +to accept battle. But something should be allowed for the genius of the +Russian general, who was one of the great master-spirits of war, and who +seldom fought without being completely victorious. He had mostly been +employed against the Turks, whose military reputation was then at the +lowest, or the Poles, who were too divided and depressed to do +themselves and their cause justice, and therefore his character as a +soldier did not stand so high as that of more than one man who was his +inferior; but when, in his seventieth year, he took command in Italy, +there to encounter soldiers who had beaten the armies of almost all +other European nations, and who were animated by a fanatical spirit as +strong as that which fired his own bosom, he showed himself to be more +than equal to his position. He was not at all at fault, though brought +face to face with an entirely new state of things, but acted with his +accustomed vigor, marching from victory to victory, and reconquering +Italy more rapidly than it had been conquered three years before by +Bonaparte. When Bonaparte was destroying the Austrian armies in Italy, +Suvaroff watched his operations with deep interest, and said that he +must go to the West to meet the new genius, or that Bonaparte would +march to the East against Russia,--a prediction, it has been said, that +was fulfilled to the Frenchman's ruin. Whether, had he encountered +Bonaparte, he would have beaten him, is a question for the ingenious to +argue, but which never can be settled. But one thing is certain, and +that is, that Bonaparte never encountered an opponent of that determined +and energetic character which belonged to Suvaroff until his latter +days, and then his fall was rapid and his ruin utter. That Suvaroff +failed in Switzerland, to which country he had been transferred from +Italy, does not at all impeach his character for generalship. His +failure was due partly to the faults of others, and partly to +circumstances. Switzerland was to him what Russia became to Napoleon in +1812. Massena's victory at Zürich, in which half of Korsakoff's army was +destroyed, rendered Russian failure in the campaign inevitable. All the +genius in the world, on that field of action, could not have done +anything that should have compensated for so terrible a calamity. Zürich +saved France far more than did Marengo, and it is to be noted that it +was fought and won by the oldest of all the able men who figure in +history as Napoleon's Marshals. There were some of the Marshals who were +older than Massena, but they were not men of superior talents. Massena +was forty-one when he defeated Korsakoff, and he was a veteran soldier +when the Revolutionary wars began. + +The three commanders who did most to break down Napoleon's power, and to +bring about his overthrow, namely,--Benningsen, and Kutusoff, and +Blücher,--were all old men; and the two last-named were very old men. It +would be absurd to call either of them a great commander, but it is +indisputable that they all had great parts in great wars. Benningsen can +scarcely be called a good general of the second class, and he is mostly +spoken of as a foolish braggart and boaster; but it is a fact that he +did some things at an important time which indicated his possession of +qualities that were highly desirable in a general who was bound to act +against Napoleon. Having, in 1807, obtained command of the Russian army +in Poland, he had what the French considered the consummate impudence to +take the offensive against the Emperor, and compelled him to mass his +forces, and to fight in the dead of winter, and a Polish winter to boot, +in which all that is not ice and snow is mud. True, Napoleon would have +made him pay dear for his boldness, had there not occurred one or two of +those accidents which often spoil the best-laid plans of war; but as it +was, the butcherly Battle of Eylau was fought, both parties, and each +with some show of reason, claiming the victory. Had the Russians acted +on the night after Eylau as the English acted on the night after +Flodden, and remained on the field, the world would have pronounced them +victorious, and the French Empire might have been shorn of its +proportions, and perhaps have fallen, seven years in advance of its +time; but they retreated, and thus the French made a fair claim to the +honors of the engagement, though virtually beaten in the fight. +Benningsen boasted tremendously, and as there were men enough to believe +what he said to be true, because they wished it to be true, and as he +had behaved well on some previous occasions, his reputation was vastly +raised, and his name was in all mouths and on all pens. If the reader +will take the trouble to look over a file of some Federal journal of +1807, he will find Benningsen as frequently and as warmly praised as Lee +or Stonewall Jackson is (or was) praised by English journals in +1863,--for the Federalists hated Napoleon as bitterly as the English +hate us, and read of Eylau with as much unction as the English of to-day +read of the American reverses at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, +while Austerlitz and Friedland pleased our Federalists about as well as +Donelson and Pulaski please the English of these times. A few months +after Eylau, Benningsen repulsed an attack which Napoleon imprudently +made on his intrenched camp at Heilsberg, which placed another feather +in his cap; nor did the smashing defeat he met with four days later, at +Friedland, lessen his reputation. The world is slow to think poorly of a +man who has done some clever things. We have seen how it was with the +late Stonewall Jackson, concerning whom most men spoke as if he had +never known defeat, though it is, or it should be, notorious, that he +was as often beaten as successful, that more than once he had to fly +with wind-like swiftness to escape personal destruction, and that on one +occasion he was saved from ruin only because of an exhibition on our +side of more than a usual amount of stupidity. But he had repeatedly +showed some of the best qualities of a dashing general, and all else was +overlooked in admiration of the skill and the audacity with which he +then had done his evil work. So it was with Benningsen, and with more +justice. The man who had bearded Napoleon but a few months after Jena, +and not much more than a year after Austerlitz, and who had fought an +even battle with him, in which fifty thousand men fell, must have had +some high moral qualities that entitled him to respect; and he continued +to be much talked of until greater and more fruitful campaigns had +obscured his deeds. The pluck which he had exhibited tended to keep +alive the spirit of European resistance to Napoleon, as it showed that +the conqueror had only to be firmly met to be made to fight hardly for +victory; and that was much, in view of the rapidity with which Napoleon +had beaten both Austria and Russia in 1805, and Prussia in 1806. +Benningsen completed his sixty-second year two days after the Battle of +Eylau. He was employed in 1812, '13, '14, but not in the first line, and +his name is not of much mention in the histories of those eventful +years. + +Prince Kutusoff, though a good soldier in the Turkish and Polish wars, +did not have a command against the French until he had completed his +sixtieth year, in 1805, when he led a Russian army to the aid of +Austria. He checked the advance of the French after Ulm, and was in +nominal command of the Allies at Austerlitz; but that battle was really +fought in accordance with the plans of General Weyrother, for which +Kutusoff had a profound contempt. If thorough beating could make good +soldiers of men, the vanquished at Austerlitz ought to have become the +superiors of the victors. In 1812, when the Russians had become weary of +that sound policy which was drawing Napoleon to destruction, Kutusoff +assumed command of their army, and fought the Battle of Borodino, which +was a defeat in name, but a victory in its consequences, to the invaded +party. His conduct while the French were at Moscow had the effect of +keeping them in that trap until their fate was sealed; and his action +while following them on their memorable retreat was a happy mixture of +audacity and prudence, and completed the Russian triumph. Sir Robert +Wilson, who was with the Russian general, who must have found him a bore +of the first magnitude, is very severe on Kutusoff's proceedings; but +all that he says makes it clear that the stout old Russian knew what he +was about, and that he was determined not to be made a mere tool of +England. If success is a test of merit, Kutusoff's action deserves the +very highest admiration, for the French army was annihilated. He died +just after he had brought the greatest of modern campaigns to a +triumphant close, at the age of sixty-eight, and before he could hear +the world's applause. The Germans, who were to owe so much to his +labors, rejoiced at his removal, because he was supposed to belong to +the peace party, who were opposed to further action, and who thought +that their country was under no obligation to fight for the deliverance +of other nations. They feared, too, that, if the war should go on, his +"Muscovite hoof" would be too strong for the Fatherland to bear it; and +they saw in his death a Providential incident, which encouraged them to +move against the French. It is altogether probable, that, if he had +lived but three months longer, events would have taken quite a different +turn. Baron von Müffling tells us that Kutusoff "would not hear a word +of crossing the Elbe; and all Scharnhorst's endeavors to make him more +favorably disposed toward Prussia were fruitless. The whole peace party +in the Russian army joined with the Field-Marshal, and the Emperor was +placed in a difficult position. On my arrival at Altenberg, I found +Scharnhorst deeply dejected, for he could not shut his eyes to the +consequences of this resistance. Unexpectedly, the death of the +obstinate old Marshal occurred on the twenty-eighth of April, and the +Emperor was thus left free to pursue his own policy." The first general +who had successfully encountered Napoleon, it would have been the +strangest of history's strange facts, if the Emperor had owed the +continuance of his reign to Kutusoff's influence, and that was the end +to which the Russian's policy was directed; for, though he wished to +confine French power within proper limits, he had no wish to strengthen +either England or any of the German nations, deeming them likely to +become the enemies of Russia, while he might well suppose that the +French had had enough of Russian warfare to satisfy them for the rest of +the century. Had his astute policy been adopted and acted on, there +never would have been a Crimean War, and Sebastopol would not now be a +ruin; and Russia would have been greater than she is likely to be in our +time, or in the time of our children. + +Blücher, who completed the work which Kutusoff began, and in a manner +which the Russian would hardly have approved, was an older man than the +hero of Borodino. When called to the command of the Prussian army, in +March, 1813, he was in his seventy-first year; and he was in his +seventy-third year when his energy enabled him, in the face of +difficulties that no other commander could have overcome, to bring up +more than fifty thousand men to the assistance of Wellington at +Waterloo, losing more than an eighth of their number. He had no military +talent, as the term is generally used. He could not tell whether a plan +was good or bad. He could not understand the maps. He was not a +disciplinarian, and he was ignorant of all the details of preparing an +army, of clothing and feeding and arming it. In all those things which +it is supposed a commander should know, and which such commanders as +Napoleon and Wellington did know well, he was so entirely ignorant, that +he might have been raised to the head of an army of United States +Volunteers amid universal applause. He was vicious to an extent that +surprised even the fastest men of that vicious time,--a gambler, a +drunkard, and a loose liver every way, indulging in vices that are held +by mild moralists to be excusable in youth who are employed in sowing +wild oats, but which are universally admitted to be disgusting in those +upon whom age has laid its withering hand. Yet this vicious and ignorant +old man had more to do with bringing about the fall of Napoleon than all +the generals and statesmen of the Allies combined. He had energy, which +is the most valuable of all qualities in a military leader; and he +hated Napoleon as heartily as he hated Satan, and a great deal more +heartily than he hated sin. Mr. Dickens tells us that the vigorous +tenacity of love is always much stronger than hate, and perhaps he is +right, so far as concerns private life; but in public life hate is by +far the stronger passion. But for Blücher's hatred of Napoleon the +campaign of 1813 would have terminated in favor of the Emperor, that of +1814 never would have been undertaken, and that of 1815, if ever +attempted, would have had a far different issue. The old German +disregarded all orders and suggestions, and set all military and +political principles at defiance, in his ardor to accomplish the one +purpose which he had in view; and as that purpose was accomplished, he +has taken his place in history as one of the greatest of soldiers. +Napoleon himself is not more secure of immortality. He was greatly +favored by circumstances, but he is a wise man who knows how to profit +from circumstances. Take Blücher out of the wars of 1813-15, and there +is little left in them on the side of the Allies that is calculated to +command admiration. Next to Blücher stands his celebrated chief of the +staff, General Count Gneisenau, who was the brains of the Army of +Silesia, Blücher being its head. When Blücher was made an LL.D. at +Oxford, he facetiously remarked, "If I am a doctor, here is my +pill-maker," placing his hand on Gneisenau's head,--which was a frank +acknowledgment that few men would have been able to make. Gneisenau was +fifty-three when he became associated with Blücher, and he was +fifty-five when he acted with him in 1815. In 1831 he was appointed to +an important command, being then seventy-one. The celebrated +Scharnhorst, Gneisenau's predecessor, and to whom the Prussians owed so +much, was in his fifty-seventh year when he died of the wounds he had +received at the Battle of Lützen. + +There are some European generals whom it is difficult to class, as they +showed great capacity and won great victories as well in age as in +youth. Prince Eugène was one of these, and Frederick of Prussia was +another. Eugène showed high talent when very young, and won the first of +his grand victories over the Turks at thirty-four; but it was not so +splendid an affair as that of Belgrade, which he won at fifty-four. He +was forty-three when he defeated the French at Turin, under +circumstances and with incidents that took attention even from +Marlborough, whom he subsequently aided to gain the victories of +Oudenarde and Malplaquet, as he had previously aided him at Blenheim. At +seventy-one Eugène led an Austrian army against the French; and though +no battle was fought, his conduct showed that he had not lost his +capacity for command. Frederick began his military life when in his +thirtieth year, and was actively engaged until thirty-three, showing +striking ability on several occasions, though he began badly, according +to his own admission. But it was in the Seven Years' War that his fame +as a soldier was won, and that contest began when he was in his +forty-fifth year. He was close upon forty-six when he gained the Battles +of Rossbach and Leuthen. Whatever opinion others may entertain as to his +age, it is certain that he counted himself an old man in those days. +Writing to the Marquis d'Argens, a few days before he was forty-eight, +he said, "In my old age I have come down almost to be a theatrical +king"; and not two years later he wrote to the same friend, "I have +sacrificed my youth to my father, and my manhood to my fatherland. I +think, therefore, I have acquired the right to my old age." He reckoned +by trials and events, and he had gone through enough to have aged any +man. Those were the days when he carried poison on his person, in order +that, should he be completely beaten, or captured, he might not adorn +Maria Theresa's triumph, but end his life "after the high Roman +fashion." When the question of the Bavarian succession threatened to +lead to another war with Austria, Frederick's action, though he was in +his sixty-seventh year, showed, to use the homely language of the +English soldier at St. Helena when Napoleon arrived at that famous +watering place, that he had many campaigns in his belly yet. The +youthful Emperor, Joseph II., would have been no match for the old +soldier of Liegnitz and Zorndorf. + +Some of Frederick's best generals were old men. Schwerin, who was killed +in the terrible Battle of Prague, was then seventy-three, and a soldier +of great reputation. Sixteen years before he had won the Battle of +Mollwitz, one of the most decisive actions of that time, from which +Frederick himself is said to have run away in sheer fright. General +Ziethen, perhaps the best of all modern cavalry commanders, was in his +fifty-eighth year when the Seven Years' War began, and he served through +it with eminent distinction, and most usefully to his sovereign. He +could not have exhibited more dash, if he had been but eight-and-twenty, +instead of eight-and-fifty, or sixty-five, as he was when peace was +made. Field-Marshal Keith, an officer of great ability, was sixty when +he fell at Hochkirchen, after a brilliant career. + +American military history is favorable to old generals. Washington was +in his forty-fourth year when he assumed command of the Revolutionary +armies, and in his fiftieth when he took Yorktown. Wayne and Greene were +the only two of our young generals of the Revolution who showed decided +fitness for great commands. Had Hamilton served altogether in the field, +his would have been the highest military name of the war. The absurd +jealousies that deprived Schuyler of command, in 1777, alone prevented +him from standing next to Washington. He was close upon forty-four when, +he gave way to Gates, who was forty-nine. The military reputation of +both Schuyler and Hamilton has been most nobly maintained by their +living descendants. Washington was called to the command of the American +forces at sixty-six, when it was supposed that the French would attempt +to invade the United States, which shows that the Government of that day +had no prejudice against old generals. General Jackson's great Louisiana +campaign was conducted when he was nearly forty-eight, and he was, from +almost unintermitted illness, older in constitution than in years. Had +General Scott had means at his disposal, we should have been able to +point to a young American general equal to any who is mentioned in +history; but our poverty forbade him an opportunity in war worthy of his +genius. It "froze the genial current of his soul." As a veteran leader, +he was most brilliantly distinguished. He was in his sixty-first year +when he set out on his memorable Mexican campaign, which was an unbroken +series of grand operations and splendid victories, such as are seldom to +be found in the history of war. The weight of years had no effect on +that magnificent mind. Of him, as it was of Carnôt, it can be said that +he organized victory, and made it permanent. His deeds were all the +greater because of the feeble support he received from his Government. +Like Wellington, in some of his campaigns, he had to find within himself +the resources which were denied him by bad ministers. General Taylor was +in his sixty-second year when the Mexican War began, and in less than a +year he won the Battles of Palo Alto, Resaca de la Palma, Monterey, and +Buena Vista. He, too, was badly supported. The Secession War has been +conducted by elderly or middle-aged men. General Lee, whom the world +holds to have displayed the most ability in it, is about fifty-six. +General Rosecrans is forty-four, and General Grant forty-two. Stonewall +Jackson died at thirty-seven. General Banks is forty-eight, General +Hooker forty-five, General Beauregard forty-six, General Bragg +forty-nine, General Burnside forty, General Gillmore thirty-nine, +General Franklin forty-one, General Magruder fifty-three, General Meade +forty-eight, General Schuyler Hamilton forty-two, General Charles S. +Hamilton forty, and General Foster forty. General Lander, a man of +great promise, died in his fortieth year. General Kearney was killed at +forty-seven, and General Stevens at forty-five. General Sickles was in +his forty-first year when he was wounded at Gettysburg, and General Reno +was thirty-seven when he died so bravely at South Mountain. General +Pemberton lost Vicksburg at forty-five. General T.W. Sherman is +forty-six, and General W. T. Sherman forty-four. General McClellan was +in his thirty-fifth year when he assumed command at Washington in 1861. +General Lyon had not completed the first month of his forty-third year +when he fell at Wilson's Creek. General McDowell was in his forty-third +year when he failed at Bull Run, in consequence of the coming up of +General Joe Johnston, who was fifty-one. General Keyes is fifty-three, +General Kelley fifty-seven, General King forty, and General Pope +forty-one. General A.S. Johnston was fifty-nine when he was killed at +Shiloh. General Halleck is forty-eight. General Longstreet is forty. The +best of the Southern cavalry-leaders was General Ashby, who was killed +at thirty-eight. General Stuart is twenty-nine. On our side, General +Stanley is thirty, General Pleasonton forty, and General Averell about +thirty. General Phelps is fifty-one, General Polk fifty-eight, General +S. Cooper sixty-eight, General J. Cooper fifty-four, and General Blunt +thirty-eight. The list might be much extended, but very few young men +would be found in it,--or very few old men, either. The best of our +leaders are men who have either passed beyond middle life, or who may be +said to be in the enjoyment of that stage of existence. It is so, too, +with the Rebels. If the war does not afford many facts in support of the +position that old generals are very useful, neither does it afford many +to be quoted by those who hold that the history of heroism is the +history of youth. + + * * * * * + +THE WRECK OF RIVERMOUTH.[E] + +[1657.] + + + Rivermouth Rocks are fair to see, + By dawn or sunset shone across, + When the ebb of the sea has left them free + To dry their fringes of gold-green moss: + For there the river comes winding down + From salt sea-meadows and uplands brown, + And waves on the outer rocks afoam + Shout to its waters, "Welcome home!" + + And fair are the sunny isles in view + East of the grisly Head of the Boar, + And Agamenticus lifts its blue + Disk of a cloud the woodlands o'er; + And southerly, when the tide is down, + 'Twixt white sea-waves and sand-hills brown, + The beach-birds dance and the gray gulls wheel + Over a floor of burnished steel. + + Once, in the old Colonial days, + Two hundred years ago and more, + A boat sailed down through the winding ways + Of Hampton river to that low shore, + Full of a goodly company + Sailing out on the summer sea, + Veering to catch the land-breeze light, + With the Boar to left and the Rocks to right. + + In Hampton meadows, where mowers laid + Their scythes to the swaths of salted grass, + "Ah, well-a-day! our hay must be made!" + A young man sighed, who saw them pass. + Loud laughed his fellows to see him stand + Whetting his scythe with a listless hand, + Hearing a voice in a far-off song, + Watching a white hand beckoning long. + + "Fie on the witch!" cried a merry girl, + As they rounded the point where Goody Cole + Sat by her door with her wheel atwirl, + A bent and blear-eyed poor old soul. + "Oho!" she muttered, "ye're brave to-day! + But I hear the little waves laugh and say, + 'The broth will be cold that waits at home; + For it's one to go, but another to come!'" + + "She's curst," said the skipper; "speak her fair: + I'm scary always to see her shake + Her wicked head, with its wild gray hair, + And nose like a hawk, and eyes like a snake." + But merrily still, with laugh and shout, + From Hampton river the boat sailed out, + Till the huts and the flakes on Star seemed nigh, + And they lost the scent of the pines of Rye. + + They dropped their lines in the lazy tide, + Drawing up haddock and mottled cod; + They saw not the Shadow that walked beside, + They heard not the feet with silence shod. + But thicker and thicker a hot mist grew, + Shot by the lightnings through and through; + And muffled growls, like the growl of a beast, + Ran along the sky from west to east. + + Then the skipper looked from the darkening sea + Up to the dimmed and wading sun, + But he spake like a brave man cheerily, + "Yet there is time for our homeward run." + Veering and tacking, they backward wore; + And just as a breath from the woods ashore + Blew out to whisper of danger past, + The wrath of the storm came down at last! + + The skipper hauled at the heavy sail: + "God be our help!" he only cried, + As the roaring gale, like the stroke of a flail, + Smote the boat on its starboard side. + The Shoalsmen looked, but saw alone + Dark films of rain-cloud slantwise blown, + Wild rocks lit up by the lightning's glare, + The strife and torment of sea and air. + + Goody Cole looked out from her door: + The Isles of Shoals were drowned and gone, + Scarcely she saw the Head of the Boar + Toss the foam from tusks of stone. + She clasped her hands with a grip of pain, + The tear on her cheek was not of rain: + "They are lost," she muttered, "boat and crew! + Lord, forgive me! my words were true!" + + Suddenly seaward swept the squall; + The low sun smote through cloudy rack; + The Shoals stood clear in the light, and all + The trend of the coast lay hard and black. + But far and wide as eye could reach, + No life was seen upon wave or beach; + The boat that went out at morning never + Sailed back again into Hampton river. + + O mower, lean on thy bended snath, + Look from the meadows green and low: + The wind of the sea is a waft of death, + The waves are singing a song of woe! + By silent river, by moaning sea, + Long and vain shall thy watching be: + Never again shall the sweet voice call, + Never the white hand rise and fall! + + O Rivermouth Rocks, how sad a sight + Ye saw in the light of breaking day! + Dead faces looking up cold and white + From sand and sea-weed where they lay! + The mad old witch-wife wailed and wept, + And cursed the tide as it backward crept: + "Crawl back, crawl back, blue water-snake! + Leave your dead for the hearts that break!" + + Solemn it was in that old day + In Hampton town and its log-built church, + Where side by side the coffins lay + And the mourners stood in aisle and porch. + In the singing-seats young eyes were dim, + The voices faltered that raised the hymn, + And Father Dalton, grave and stern, + Sobbed through his prayer and wept in turn. + + But his ancient colleague did not pray, + Because of his sin at fourscore years: + He stood apart, with the iron-gray + Of his strong brows knitted to hide his tears. + And a wretched woman, holding her breath + In the awful presence of sin and death, + Cowered and shrank, while her neighbors thronged + To look on the dead her shame had wronged. + + Apart with them, like them forbid, + Old Goody Cole looked drearily round, + As, two by two, with their faces hid, + The mourners walked to the burying-ground. + She let the staff from her clasped hands fall: + "Lord, forgive us! we're sinners all!" + And the voice of the old man answered her: + "Amen!" said Father Bachiler. + + So, as I sat upon Appledore + In the calm of a closing summer day, + And the broken lines of Hampton shore + In purple mist of cloudland lay, + The Rivermouth Rocks their story told; + And waves aglow with sunset gold, + Rising and breaking in steady chime, + Beat the rhythm and kept the time. + + And the sunset paled, and warmed once more + With a softer, tenderer after-glow; + In the east was moon-rise, with boats off-shore + And sails in the distance drifting slow. + The beacon glimmered from Portsmouth bar, + The White Isle kindled its great red star; + And life and death in my old-time lay + Mingled in peace like the night and day! + + * * * * * + +THE SCHOOLMASTER'S STORY. + + +I was in the shop of my friend on the day of the great snow-storm, when +the plan was proposed which he mentions in the beginning of his story, +called "Pink and Blue," printed in this magazine in the month of May, +1861. Fears were entertained that some of the women might object. And +they did. My sister Fanny, Mrs. Maylie, said it was like being set in a +frame. Farmer Hill's wife hoped we shouldn't tell _exactly_ how much we +used to think of them, for "praise to the face was open disgrace." But +my wife, Mrs. Browne, thought the stories should be made as good as +possible, for praise could not hurt them so long as they knew +themselves, just what they were. It was suggested by some one, that, if +the married men told how they won their wives, there were a couple of +old bachelors belonging to our set who ought to tell how they came to be +without, which seemed very fair. + +When the lot fell upon me, my wife laughed, and declared that our +affairs ran so crooked, she didn't believe I could tell a straight +story. But Fanny said _that_ would make it seem more like a book; the +puzzle to her was what I should call myself, seeing that I was neither +one thing nor another. It was finally agreed, however, that, as I had +taught school one winter, and that an important one, I should call mine +"The Schoolmaster's Story." The truth is, my own calling would not look +well at the head of an article, for I am by profession a loafer. For +this vocation, which was my own deliberate choice, I was well prepared, +having graduated, with a moderate degree of honor, from Cambridge +College. I know of no profession requiring for its complete enjoyment a +more thorough and varied preparation. + +My sister Fanny and I were two poor orphans, brought up, fed, clothed, +and loved by our Aunt Huldah. If it had not been for her, I don't know +what we should have done. Our Aunt Huldah was a widow and a _manager_. +Nearly every person has among his acquaintances one individual, usually +a female, who is called _a good manager_. She knows what is to be done, +and who should do it,--picks out wives for the young men, husbands for +the maidens, and attends herself to the matter of bringing them +together. Sometimes these individuals become tyrannical, standing with +vials of wrath all ready to be poured forth upon the heads of the +unsubmissive, and it must be owned that our aunt was in this not wholly +unlike the rest; but then she was so good-natured, so reasonable, that, +although the aforesaid vials were often known to be well filled, yet her +kindness and good sense always kept the corks in. + +I think she took us partly from love, and partly to show how children +ought to be managed. We got on admirably together. I was by no means a +fiery youth. I was amiable, fond of books, had soft, light hair, fair +complexion, a quiet, persevering way, and never _ran_ after the girls. +Taking all these things into consideration, my aunt determined that I +should go to college, and become an honor to the family. + +Fanny, though not a bit like me, got along equally as well with the +reigning power. She was a smart, black-eyed maiden, full of life, and +had herself some of the managing blood in her veins. In fact, so bright +and so sly was my dear little sister, that she often succeeded in +managing the Grand Panjandra herself. I speak thus particularly of +Fanny, because, if it had not been for her, I might now have no story to +tell. I never, from childhood to manhood, worked myself into any tight +place, that her little scheming brain did not invent some way of getting +me out. + +When my collegiate labors were nearly finished, our aunt was taken +_poor_. She was subject to these attacks, under which she always +resorted to the heroic treatment, retrenching and economizing with the +greatest zeal. This attack of hers was the primary cause of my taking a +winter school in the little village of Norway, about twenty miles from +home. I was perfectly willing to keep school; it seemed the easiest +thing in the world. + +The night before leaving home, my aunt summoned me to her chamber. She +sat erect in her straight-backed chair, a tall, dark woman, in a +bombazine gown, with white muslin frill and turban. Her eyes were black +and deep. Her nose was rather above than below the usual height, and +eminently fitted to bear its spectacles. She was evidently a person who +thought before she acted, but who was sure to act after she had thought. + +Good advice was what she wanted to give me. The world was a snare. The +Devil was always on the lookout, and everywhere in a minute. She read +considerable portions from the "Boston Recorder," after which she +dropped some hints about the marriage-state,--said she had noticed, with +pleasure, my prudence in not hurrying these matters, adding, that it was +much safer to choose a wife from among our own neighbors and friends +than to run the risk of marrying a stranger. No names were mentioned, +but I knew she was thinking of Alice, the postmaster's daughter, a fair +young maiden, soft in speech, quiet in manners, and constant at +meeting,--a maiden, in fact, of whom I had long stood in dread. + +My school commenced the week after Thanksgiving. I had fancied myself +appearing among my scholars like a king surrounded by his subjects. But +these lofty notions soon melted down beneath the searching glances of +forty pairs of eyes. A sense of my incompetency came over me, and I felt +like saying,--"Young people, little children, what can I do for you, and +how shall I show you any good?" + +The first thing I did was to take the names. Ah! in what school-record +of modern times could be found such a catalogue of the Christian +virtues? Think of mending pens for Faith and Prudence!--of teaching +arithmetic to Love, Hope, and Charity!--of imparting general knowledge +to Experience! There were three of this last name, and it was only after +a long _experience_ of my own that I learned that the first was called +"Pelly," the second, "Exy," and the third, "Sperrence." Penelope was +rendered "Pep." + +It gave me peculiar sensations to find among my scholars so many large +girls. I have said that I had never been in the habit of running after +the girls, and I never had. I was one of those quiet young men who read +poetry, buy pictures and statues, and play the flute on still, moonlight +evenings. Not that I was indifferent to female charms, or let beauty +pass by unnoticed. In fact, I was keenly alive to the beautiful in all +its forms. I had seen, in the course of my life, a great many handsome +faces, which, in my quiet way, I had studied, when nobody was minding, +comparing beauties, or imagining alterations for the better, just as if +I had been studying a picture or a statue, and with no more fear of +being myself affected. Passing strange it was, that, exposed as I had +been, I should have remained so long unscathed. My time had not yet +come. But now dangers thickened around me, and I felt that Aunt Huldah +knew the world, when she said it was a _snare_. For, in glancing about +the room carelessly, while taking the names, I could not but perceive +that I was beset by perils on every side,--perils from which there +seemed no possible escape: for no sooner did I turn resolutely away from +a dove-like face in one corner than my eye was caught by a bright eye or +a sweet smile in another; and the admiring glance which with reluctance +I withdrew from a graceful figure was arrested by a well-shaped head or +a rosy cheek. One was almost a beauty, with her light curls and delicate +pink cheeks; another was quite such: her smile was bewitching, and her +eyes were roguish. But I soon found that there were other things to be +attended to besides picking out the prettiest flowers in my winter +bouquet. + +I have intimated that my ideas regarding school-keeping were exceedingly +vague. Nevertheless, I had in the course of my studies picked out and +put together a system for the instruction and management of youth. This +system I now proceeded to apply. + +It is curious, as we trace back the current of our lives, to discover +the multitude of whims, plans, and mighty resolves which lie wrecked +upon the shore. I cannot help smiling, as, in looking back upon my own +life-stream, I discern the remains of my precious system lying high and +dry among the rocks of that winter's experience. Yet I tried all ways to +make it go. I was like a boy with a new boat, who increases or lessens +his ballast, now tries her with mainsail, foresail, topsail, jib, flying +jib, and jibber jib, and now with bare poles,--_anything_ to make her +float. Each night I took my poor system home for repairs, and each +morning, full of hope, tried to launch it anew in my school-room. I have +always felt that I wronged those scholars, that I learned more than I +taught. I have no doubt of it. + +I, of course, as was then the custom, boarded round; and this method of +obtaining nourishment, though savoring somewhat of the Arab or the +common beggar, I, on the whole, enjoyed. It gave me a much stronger +interest in the children, seeing them thus in their own homes, where was +so much love, so much solicitude for even the dullest of them. Besides +this, I came in contact with all sorts of curious people, found new +faces to study. + +Another custom of the place I also fell in with, which was, to keep an +evening-school. All the schoolmasters had kept one from time immemorial. +This evening-school I really enjoyed. Plenty of charming girls, too big +or too busy to waste their daylight upon books, came from great +distances, bringing their brothers and their beaux, all intent upon +having a good time and getting on in their ciphering. Teaching them was +a pleasure, for they felt the need of knowledge. I feel bound to say, +however, that imparting knowledge was not my only pleasure. In intervals +of leisure, before or after school, or at recess, I found much that was +worthy attention. Seated at my desk, wrapped in my dignity, I watched, +with many a sidelong glance, the progress of rustic love-making. I only +mean by this, that from their general movements I constructed such +love-stories as seemed to me probable. I learned who went with whom, who +wished they could go with whom, who could and who couldn't, who did and +who didn't. + +Did I not go into the business on my own account? That is by no means an +improper question. In fact, I might have expected it. Some have, no +doubt, considered it a settled thing that I fell in love with the +bright-eyed beauty, before mentioned, or with the pink-cheeked; but I +beg that such fancies may be brushed away, that all may be in readiness +to receive the true queen, who in due time will come to take possession +of her kingdom. For I will be honest with you, and not, like most +story-tellers, try to pull wool over your eyes all the way through. I +will say openly, that I did first see the girl who was afterwards my +wife in that cold little village of Norway. Cold it seems not to me now, +in the light of so many warm, sunshiny memories! + +When my evening-school had been in operation a few weeks, I noticed, one +evening, at the end of the back-form on the girls' side a new face. The +owner of this new face was very quietly studying her book, a thin, +blue-covered book, Temple's Arithmetic. She was dressed in black,--not +fine, glossy black, but black that was gray, rusty, and well worn. A +very small silk handkerchief of the same color was drawn over her +shoulders and pinned where its two corners met her gown in front, making +a sort of triangle of whiteness,--some would say, "revealing a neck and +throat pure and white as a lily-leaf"; and they would say no more than +the truth, only I never like to put things in that way. Just so white +was her face. Her hair was black, soft, but not what the other girls +would have called smooth, or "slick." It was pulled away behind her +ears, and fixed up rather queerly in a great bunch behind, as if the +only aim were to get it out of the way. The upper part of her face was +the most striking,--the black eyebrows upon such a white, straight +forehead. I am rather particular in describing this new face, +because--well, perhaps because I remember it so distinctly. While I was +studying her as, I might perhaps say, a work of Art, she suddenly raised +her eyes, as people always do when they are watched. I looked away in a +hurry, though her eyes were just what I wanted to see more of, for they +were splendid eyes. "Splendid" is not the right word, though. Deep, +thoughtful, sorrowful, are the words which are floating about in my +mind. I wondered how she would look when animated, and watched, at +recess, for some of the others to talk to her. + +But she seemed one by herself. While other girls chatted with their +beaux, or whispered wonderful secrets, she remained sitting alone, now +looking at her book, and now glancing around in a pitiful sort of way, +that made me feel like going to speak to her. In fact, as her teacher, I +was bound to do this, and, true to the promptings of duty, I walked +slowly down the alley. As I paused by her side, she glanced up in my +face. I never forgot that look. I might say that I never recovered from +the effects of it. I asked about her studies, and very willingly +explained a sum over which she had stumbled. + +After this, she came every evening, and it usually happened that it was +most convenient for me to attend to her at recess. Helping her in her +sums was a pleasant thing to do, but in nothing was I more interested +than in the writing-exercise. I felt that I was indeed fortunate to be +in duty bound to follow the movement of her charming little hand across +the page, to teach her pretty fingers how to hold the pen; but then, if +pleasure and duty _would_ unite, how could I help it? Then I had a way, +all my own, of throwing looks sidelong at her face, while thus engaged; +but sometimes my eyes would get so entangled in her long lashes, that I +could hardly turn them away before she looked up. + +Yet I never thought then of being in love with the girl. Marriage was a +subject upon which I had never seriously reflected. Much as I liked to +watch, to criticize pretty faces, I never had thought of taking one for +my own. I was like a good boy in a flower-garden, who looks about him +with delight, admiring each beautiful blossom, but plucking none. Not +that I meant to live a bachelor; for, whenever I looked forward,--an +indefinite number of years,--I invariably saw myself sitting by my own +fireside, with a gentle-faced woman making pinafores near me, a cradle +close by, and one or two chaps reading stories, or playing checkers with +beans and buttons. But this gentle maker of pinafores had never yet +assumed a tangible shape. She had only floated before me, in my lonely +moments, enveloped in mist, and far too indistinct for revealing the +color of the eyes and hair. So I could not be in love with Rachel,--her +name was Rachel Lowe,--only a sort of magnetism, as it would be called +in these days, drew my eyes constantly that way. I soon found, however, +that it was impossible to watch her face with that indifference with +which, as I have before stated, it had been my custom to regard female +beauty. Its peculiar expression puzzled me, and I kept trying to study +it out. Interesting, but dangerous study! The difficulties of +school-keeping are by no means fully appreciated. + +One evening, after school, the young folks stopped to slide down-hill. +Rachel and a few little girls stood awhile, watching the sleds go by; +but it was cold standing still, and they soon moved homewards. I walked +along by the side of Rachel: this was the first time I ever went home +with her. I found she was living in the family of Squire Brewster, a +family in which I had not yet boarded. After this I frequently walked +home with her. Sometimes I would determine not to do so again, for I was +afraid I was getting--I didn't know where, but where I had never been +before; but when evening came, and I saw how handsome she looked, and +how all alone, I couldn't help it. It was not often I could get her to +talk much. She was bashful, different from any girl I had ever met. The +only friend she seemed to have was the young wife of the Doctor, Mrs. +James. The Doctor, she said, had attended her through a fever, and asked +no pay. His wife was kind, and lent her books to read. + +I was boarding at that time with a poor widow-woman, and one night I +asked her about Rachel. She warmed up immediately, said Rachel Lowe was +a good girl and ought to be "sot by," and not slighted on her parents' +account. + +"And who were her parents?" I asked. + +"Why, when her father was a poor boy, the Squire thought he would take +him and bring him up to learnin'; but when he came to be a man grown +almost, he ran away to sea; and long afterwards we heard of his marryin' +some outlandish girl, half English, half French,--but Rachel's no worse +for that. After his wife died,--and, as far as I can find out, the way +he carried on was what killed her,--he started to bring Rachel here; but +he died on the passage, and she came with only a letter. I suppose he +thought the ones that had been kind to him would be kind to her; but, +you see, the Squire is a-livin' with his second wife, and she isn't the +woman the first Miss Brewster was. In time folks will come round, but +now they sort of look down upon her; for, you see, everybody knows who +her father was, and how he didn't do any credit to his bringin' up, and +nobody knows who her mother was, only that she was a furrener, which was +so much agin her. But you are goin' right from here to the Squire's; and +mebby, if you make of her, and let folks see that you set store by her, +they'll begin to open their eyes." + +I thought I felt just like kissing the poor widow; anyway, I knew I felt +like kissing somebody. To be sure, the talk was all about Rachel, and it +might--But no matter; what difference does it make now who it was I +wanted to kiss forty or fifty years ago? + +The next day I went to board at the Squire's. It was dark when I reached +the house; the candles were just being lighted. The Squire, a kindly old +man, met me in the porch and took my bundle. I followed him into the +kitchen. There something more than common seemed to be going on, for +chairs were being arranged in rows, and Mrs. Brewster was putting out of +sight every article suggestive of work. There was to be an evening +meeting. I watched the people as they came in, still and solemn. Not +many of the women wore bonnets. All who lived within a moderate distance +just stepped in with a little homespun blanket over the head, or a +patchwork cradle-quilt. I noticed Rachel when she entered and took her +seat upon the settle. It will only take a minute to tell what a settle +is, or, rather, was. If you should take a low wooden bench and add to it +a high back and ends, you would make a settle. It usually stood near the +fireplace, and was a most luxurious seat,--its high back protecting you +from cold draughts and keeping in the heat of the fire. It was now +shoved back against the wall. This neighborhood-gathering was called a +conference-meeting, being carried on by the brethren. I liked to hear +them speak, because they were so much in earnest. The exercises closed +with singing "Old Hundred." I joined at first, but soon there fell upon +my ear such sweet strains from the other side of the room that I was +glad to stop and listen. They came from the settle. It was Rachel, +singing counter. Only those who have heard it know what counter is, and +how particularly beautiful it is in "Old Hundred." I think it has +already been intimated that I was somewhat poetical. It will not, +therefore, be considered strange, that, when I heard those clear tones, +rising high above the harsher ones around, above the grating bass of the +brethren and the cracked voices of elderly females, I thought of summer +days in the woods, when I had listened to the notes of the robin amid a +chorus of locusts and grasshoppers. + +Squire Brewster treated Rachel kindly; but women make the home, and Mrs. +Brewster was a hard woman. The neighbors said she was close, and would +have more of a cat than her skin. Miss Sarah had been out of town to +school, and was proud. Sam, the grown-up son, was coarse, but just as +proud as his sister. I disliked the way he looked at Rachel. Her +position in the family I soon understood. She was there to take the +drudgery from Mrs. Brewster, to be ordered about by Miss Sarah, +tormented by the younger children, and teased, if not insulted, by Sam. +What puzzled me was her manner towards them. She spoke but seldom, and, +it seemed to me, had a way of looking _down_ upon these people, who were +so bent upon making her look _up_ to them. The cross looks and words +seemed not to hit her. Her deep, dark eyes appeared as if they were +looking away beyond the scenes around her. I was very glad to see, +however, that she could notice Sam enough to avoid him; for to that +young man I had taken a dislike, and not, as it turned, without reason. + +One evening, during my second week at the Brewsters', I sat long at my +chamber-window, watching the fading twilight, the growing moonlight, and +the steady snow-light. Presently I saw Rachel come out to take in the +clothes. It seemed just right that she should appear then, for in her +face were all three,--the shadowy twilight, the soft moonlight, and the +white snow-light. + +She wore a little shawl, crossed in front, and tied behind at the waist, +and over her head a bright-colored blanket, just pinned under the chin. +This exposed her face, and while I watched it, as it showed front-view +or profile, not knowing which I liked best, admiring, meanwhile, the +grace with which she reached up, where the line was high, sometimes +springing from the ground, I saw Sam approaching, very slowly and +softly, from behind. When quite near, watching his opportunity, he +seized her by the waist. He was going to kiss her. I started up, as if +to do something, but there was nothing to be done. With a quick motion +she slid from his grasp, stepped back, and looked him in the face. Not a +word fell from her lips, only her silence spoke. "I despise you! There +is nothing in you that words can reach!" was the speech which I felt in +my heart she was making, though her lips never moved. Other things, too, +I felt in my heart,--rather perplexing, agitating, but still pleasing +sensations, which I did not exactly feel like analyzing. One of the +children came out to take hold one side of the basket, and Sam walked +away. + +I went down soon after and look my favorite seat upon the settle, which +was then in its own place by the fire. The children were in bed, the +older ones had gone to singing-school, and Mrs. Brewster was at an +evening-meeting. The Squire was at home with his rheumatism. + +I liked a nice chat with the Squire. He was a great reader, and +delighted to draw me into long talks, political or theological. My +remarks on this particular evening would have been more brilliant, had +not Rachel been sprinkling and folding clothes at the back of the room. +The Squire, in his roundabout, came exactly between us, so that, in +looking up to answer his questions, I could not help seeing a white arm +with the sleeve rolled above the elbow, could not help watching the +drops of water, as she shook them from her fingers. I wondered how it +was, that, while working so hard, her hands should be so white. My +sister Fanny told me, long afterwards, that some girls always have white +hands, no matter how hard they work. + +This question interested me more than the political ones raised by the +Squire, and I became aware that my answers were getting wild, by his +eying me over his spectacles. Rachel finished the clothes, and seated +herself, with her knitting-work, at the opposite corner of the +fireplace. I changed to the other end of the settle: sitting long in one +position is tiresome. She was knitting a gray woollen stocking. I think +she must have been "setting the heel," for she kept counting the +stitches. I had often noticed Fanny doing the same thing, at this +turning-point in the progress of a stocking; but then it never took her +half as long. After knitting so many feet of leg, though, any change +must have been pleasant. + +A mug of cider stood near one andiron; leaning against the other was a +flat stone,--the Squire's "Simon." It would soon be needed, for he was +already nodding,--nodding and brightening up,--nodding and brightening +up. While he slept, the room was still, unless the fire snapped, or a +brand fell down. I said within myself, "This is a pleasant time! It is +good to be here!" That cozy settle, that glowing fire, that good old +man, that pure-hearted girl,--how distinctly do they now rise before me! +It seems such a little, little while ago! For I feel young. I like to be +with young folks; I like what they like. Yet deep lines are set in my +forehead, the veins stand out upon my hands, and my shadow is the shadow +of a stooping old man; and when, from frequent weariness, I rest my head +on my hand, the fingers clasp only smoothness, or, at best, but a few +scattered locks,--_wisps_, I might as well say. If ever I took pride in +anything, it was in my fine head of hair. Well, what matters it? Since +_heart_ of youth is left me, I'll never mind the _head_. + +Many writers speak well of age, and it certainly is not without its +advantages, meeting everywhere, as it does, with respect and indulgence. +Neither is it, so the books say, without its own peculiar beauty. An old +man leaning upon his staff, with white locks streaming in the wind, they +call a picturesque object. All this may be; still, I have tried both, +and must say that my own leaning is towards youth. + +Remembering the desire of the poor widow, that Rachel should be "made +of," I continued to walk home with her from evening-school, and to pay +her many little attentions, even after I had left the Squire's. The +widow was right in saying, that, when folks saw that I "set store" by +her, they would open their eyes. They did,--in wonder that "the +schoolmaster should be so attentive to Rachel Lowe!" We were +"town-talk." I often, in the school-house entry, overheard the scholars +joking about us; and once I saw them slyly writing our names together on +the bricks of the fireplace. Everybody was on the look-out for what +might happen. + +One evening, in school-time, I stood a long while leaning over her desk, +working out for her a difficult sum. On observing me change my position, +to rest myself, she, very naturally, and almost unconsciously, moved for +me to sit down, and I took a seat beside her, going on, all the while, +with my ciphering. Happening to look up suddenly, I saw that half the +school were watching us. I kept my seat with calmness, though I knew I +turned red. I glanced at Rachel, and really pitied her, she looked so +distressed, so conscious. That night she hurried home before I had put +away my books, and for several evenings did not appear. + +But if she could do without me, I could not do without her. I missed her +face there at the end of the back-seat. I missed the walk home with her: +I had grown to depend upon it. She was just getting willing to talk, and +in what she said and the way she said it, in the tone of her voice and +in her whole manner, there was something to me extremely bewitching. She +had been strangely brought up, was familiar with books, but, having +received no regular education, fancied herself ignorant, and different +from everybody. + +Finding that she still kept away from the school, I resolved one night +to call at the Squire's. It was some time after dark when I reached +there; and as I stood in the porch, brushing the snow from my boots, I +became aware of loud talking in the kitchen. Poor Rachel! both Mrs. +Brewster and Sarah were upon her, laughing and sneering about her +"setting her cap" for the schoolmaster, and accusing her of trying to +get him to come home with her, of moving for him to sit down by her +side! Once I heard Rachel's voice,--"Oh, please don't talk so! I don't +do as you say. It is dreadful for you to talk so!" I judged it better to +defer my call, and walked slowly along the road. It was not very cold, +and I sat down upon the stone wall. I sat down to think. Presently +Rachel herself hurried by, carrying a pitcher. She was bound on some +errand up the road. I called out,-- + +"Rachel, stop!" + +She turned, in affright, and, upon seeing me, hurried the more. But I +overtook her, and placed her arm within mine in a moment, saying,-- + +"Rachel, you are not afraid of me, I hope!" + +"Oh, no, Sir! no, indeed!" she exclaimed. + +"And yet you run away from me." + +She made no answer. + +"Rachel," I said, at last, "I wish you would talk to me freely. I wish +you would tell what troubles you." + +She hesitated a moment; and when, at last, she spoke, her answer rather +surprised me. + +"I ought not to be so weak, I know," she replied; "but it is so hard to +stand all alone, to live my life just right, that sometimes I get +discouraged." + +I had expected complaints of ill treatment, but found her blaming no one +but herself. + +"And who said you must stand alone?" I asked. + +"That was one of the things my mother used to say." + +"And what other things did she say?" + +"Oh, Mr. Browne," she replied, "I wish I could tell you about my mother! +But I can't talk; I am too ignorant; I don't know how to say it. When +she was alive," she continued, speaking very slowly, "I never knew how +good she was; but now her words keep coming back to me. Sometimes I +think she whispers them,--for she is an angel, and you know the hymn +says, + + 'There are angels hovering round.' + +When we sing, + + 'Ye holy throng of angels bright,' + +I always sing to her, for I know she is listening." + +Here she stopped suddenly, as if frightened that she had said so much. +The house to which she was going was now close by. I waited for her to +come out, and walked back with her towards home. After proceeding a +little way in silence, I said, abruptly,-- + +"Rachel, do they treat you well at the house yonder?" + +She seemed reluctant to answer, but said, at last,-- + +"Not very well." + +"Then, why stay? Why not find some other home?" + +"I don't think it is time yet," she replied. + +"I don't understand you. I wish--Rachel, can't you make a friend of me, +since you have no other?" + +"I will tell you as well as I can," she replied, "what my mother used to +say. She said we must act rightly." + +"That is true," I replied; "and what else did she say?" + +"She said, that _that_ would only be the outside life, but the inside +life must be right too, must be pure and strong, and that the way to +make it pure and strong was to learn to _bear_." + +"Still," I urged, "I wish you would find a better home. You cannot learn +to bear any more patiently than you do." + +She shook her head. + +"That shows that you don't know," she answered. "It seems to me right to +remain. Why, you know they can't hurt me any. Suppose they scold me +when I am not to blame, and my temper rises,--for I am very +quick-tempered"-- + +"Oh, no, Rachel!" + +"Oh, yes, Mr. Browne! Suppose my temper rises, and I put it down, and +keep myself pleasant, do I not do myself good? And thinking about it in +this way, is not their unkindness a benefit to me,--to the real me,--to +the soul of Rachel Lowe?" + +I hardly knew what to say. Somehow, she seemed away up above me, while I +found that I had, in common with the Brewsters, only in a different way, +taken for granted my own superiority. + +"All this may be true," I remarked, after a pause, "but it is not the +common way of viewing things." + +"Perhaps not," she answered. "My mother was not like other people. My +father was a strong man, but he looked _up_ to her, and he loved her; +but he killed her at last,--with his conduct, he killed her. But when +she was dead, he grew crazy with grief, he loved her so. He talked about +her always,--talked in an absent, dreamy way about her goodness, her +beauty, her white hands, her long hair. Sometimes he would seem to be +whispering with her, and would say, softly,--'Oh, yes! I'll take care of +Rachel! pretty Rachel! your Rachel!'" + +I longed to have her go on; but we had now reached the bars, and she was +not willing to walk farther. + +"I have been talking a great deal about myself," she said; "but you know +you kept asking me questions." + +"Yes, Rachel, I know I kept asking you questions. Do you care? I may +wish to ask you others." + +"Oh, no," she replied; "but I could not answer many questions. I have +only a few thoughts, and know very little." + +I watched her into the house, and then walked slowly homewards, +thinking, all the way, of this strange young girl, striving thus to +stand alone, working out her own salvation. I passed a pleasant night, +half sleeping, half waking, having always before my eyes that white +face, earnest and beautiful, as it looked up to me in the winter +starlight, and in my ears her words, "Is not their unkindness a benefit +to me,--to the real me,--to the soul of Rachel Lowe?" + +But spring came; my school drew to a close; and I began to think of +home, Aunt Huldah, and Fanny. I wished that my sister could see Rachel. +I knew she would appreciate her, for there was depth in Fanny, with all +her liveliness. Sometimes I imagined, just imagined, myself married to +Rachel. But then there was Aunt Huldah,--what would she say to a +foreigner? And I was dependent upon Aunt Huldah. Besides, how did I know +that Rachel would have me? Was I equal to her? How worthless seemed my +little stock of book-learning by the side of that heart-wisdom which she +had coined, as it were, from her own sorrow! + +My last day came, and I had not spoken. In fact, we latterly had both +grown silent. I was to leave in the afternoon stage. I gave the driver +my trunk, telling him to call for me at the Squire's,--for I must bid +Rachel good-bye, and in some way let her know how I felt towards her. As +I drew near the house, I saw that she was drawing water. I stepped +quickly towards the well, but Sam appeared just then, and I could not +say one word. She walked into the house. I went behind with the +water-pail, and Sam followed us into the porch. Rachel was going +up-stairs, but I took her hand to bid her good-bye. Mrs. Brewster and +Sarah were in the kitchen, watching. "Quite a love-scene!" I heard them +whisper. "I do believe he'll marry her!" + +Now, although I was by nature quiet, yet I _could_ be roused. Bidding +good-bye to Rachel had stirred the very depths of my nature. I longed to +take her in my arms, and bear her away to my own quiet home. And when, +instead of this, I thought of the life to which I must leave her, it +needed but those sneering whispers to make me speak out,--and I did +speak out. Taking her by the hand, I stepped quickly forward, and stood +before them. + +"And so I _will_ marry her!" I exclaimed. "If she will accept me, I +shall be _proud_ to marry her!" + +"Rachel," said I, turning towards her, "this is strange wooing; but +before these people I ask, Will you be my wife?" + +The astonished spectators of our love-scene looked on in dismay. + +"Mr. Browne!" exclaimed Mrs. Brewster, "do you know what you are doing? +I have no ill-will to the girl; but I feel it my duty to tell you who +and what she is." + +"I know what Rachel Lowe is, Madam!" I cried, almost fiercely; "you +don't,--you can't!" + +Then, turning to the trembling girl, I said again,-- + +"Rachel, say, _will_ you be my wife?" + +At this moment Sam came forward. His face was pale, and he trembled. + +"No, Rachel," said he, "don't be his wife! Be mine! I haven't treated +you right, I know I haven't; but I love you, you don't know how much! +The very way you have tried to keep me off has made me love you!" + +"Sam! stop!" cried his mother, in a rage. "What do you mean? You _know_ +you won't marry that girl!" + +"Mother," exclaimed Sam, "you don't know anything about her! She is +worth every other girl in the place, and handsomer than all of them put +together!" + +"Sam!" began Miss Sarah. + +"Now, Sarah, you stop!" cried he. "I've begun, and now I'll _tell_. At +first I teased her for fun. Then I watched her to see how she bore +everything so well. And while I was watching, I--before I knew it--I +began to love her. You may talk, if you want to; but I shall never _be_ +anybody, if she won't have me!" + +"Stage coming!" said a little boy, running in. + +I took Rachel by the hand, and drew her with me into the porch. + +"Don't promise to marry him!" cried Sam, as we passed through the +door-way. "But she will,--I know she will!" he added, as I closed the +door. + +He spoke in a pitiful tone, and his voice trembled. I was surprised that +he showed so much feeling. + +"Rachel," said I, as soon as we were alone, "won't you answer me now? +You must know how much I love you. Will you be my wife?" + +"Oh, Mr. Browne, I cannot! I cannot!" she whispered. + +I was silent, for my fears came uppermost. Pressing one hand to my +forehead, I thought of a thousand things in a moment. Nothing seemed +more probable than that she should already have a lover across the sea. +Seeing my distress, she spoke. + +"Don't think, Mr. Browne," she began, earnestly, "that it is because I +do not"-- + +There she stopped. I gazed eagerly in her face. It was strangely +agitated. I should hardly have known my calm, white-faced Rachel. Just +then I heard the stage stop at the bars. + +"Oh, Rachel!" I cried, "go on! What mustn't I think? What shall I +think?" + +"Don't think me ungrateful,--you have been so kind," she said, softly. + +"And is that all?" I asked. + +"Stage ready!" called out the driver. + +I opened the door, to show that I was coming; then, taking her hand, I +said,-- + +"Good bye, Rachel! And so--you can't love me!" + +An expression of pain crossed her face. She leaned against the wall, but +did not speak. + +"Hurry up there!" shouted the driver. + +"Yes, yes!" I cried, impatiently. + +"If you can't speak," I went on to Rachel, "press my hand, if you can +love me,--now, for I am going. Good bye!" + +She did not press my hand, and I could not go. + +"You can't say you love me," I cried; "then say you don't. Anything +rather than this doubt." + +"Oh, Mr. Browne!" she replied, at last, "I can't say anything--but--good +bye!" + +"Good bye, then," I said, sadly. "But shall you still live here?" + +"Oh, no!" she exclaimed, earnestly; "you can't think that I"-- + +Here she stopped, and glanced towards the kitchen-door. + +"No," said I, "I won't think it. But where will you stay?" + +"With Mrs. James. You know her. I have already spoken with her." + +The tramp of the driver was now heard, approaching. + +"Any passenger here bound for Boston?" + +"Yes, Sir," I answered, and with one more whispered good-bye, one wring +of the hand, I passed out, gave my bundle to the driver, and entered the +coach. + +What a ride home that was! What a half-day of doubting, hoping, +despairing! I had not before realized how sure I had been of her +accepting me; and now that I felt how much I loved her, and thought of +the many causes which might separate us, I could not but say over in my +heart the sorrowful words of poor Sam,--"I shall never _be_ anybody, if +she won't have me." Still, though not accepted, I could not feel +refused; for what was it I read in her face? why so agitated? That she +struggled with some strong feeling was evident. The remembrance, +perhaps, of a former love. + +In this tumult, this miserable condition, I reached home, where, +spreading my old calmness over my new agitation, I received, as best I +might, the joyful greeting of Fanny, the heartfelt welcome of Aunt +Huldah. I tried hard to be my own old self, and could not but hope that +even my sharp-eyed sister was blinded. But no sooner had I entered my +room for the night, no sooner had I thrown myself into my deep-cushioned +arm-chair, than this lively sprite entered, on her way to bed. She +seated herself on the trunk close by me, laid her hand upon my arm, and +said,-- + +"What is it, Charley?" + +"What, Fanny?" I asked. + +"Now, Charley," said she, "you might as well speak out at once. Why was +I left, when all the rest were taken, but that you might have at least +_one_ that you loved to tell your troubles to? Come, now! Take off that +manner of yours; you might as well, for I can see right through it. You +will feel better to let everything out,--and then, who knows but I might +help you?" + +Sure enough. It was strange, considering what Fanny had always been to +me, that this had not occurred to my own mind. How natural it seemed now +to tell her all about it! What a relief it would be! But how should I +begin? I shrank from it. I began to come round to my first position. It +seemed as if the corner of my heart which held Rachel was a holy of +holies, too sacred to be entered even by my dear, good sister. While I +was thinking, she watched my face. + +"Ah!" said she, "I see you don't know how to begin, and that I must both +listen and talk. Give me your hand. Haven't I got gypsy eyes? I will +tell your fortune." + +Dear little bright-faced Fanny! I smiled a real smile when she took my +hand. + +"It is about a girl?" she said, half inquiringly. + +I colored, though it was only Fanny, and nodded,-- + +"Yes." + +"You love the girl?" she continued, after a pause. + +"I _do_ love the girl!" I said, earnestly,--for, now that the curtain +was lifted, she might see all she chose. + +"And she loves you?" + +"No,--I think so,--I don't know," was my satisfactory reply. + +"But why don't you ask her?" + +"I _have_ asked her." + +"And what did she say? I wish, Charley, you would begin at the beginning +and tell me all about it. How can I help you, if I don't know?" + +I was glad enough to do it. I began at the beginning, and told all there +was to tell. It was not much,--for the beauty, the goodness, the +patience of Rachel could not be told. When all was over, she said,-- + +"I am glad you have told me, for I can make you easy on one point. She +loves you. Ah, I can see! Women can always see, but men are stupid. Your +declaration was too sudden. She might have thought you were forced into +it. She is too high-minded to take advantage of a moment when your +feelings were all excited. Wait awhile. Let her see that you do not +change, and she will give you just such an answer as you will like to +hear. Why, Charley, I like her better for not accepting you than for +anything you have told about her." + +"Well, Fanny," I said, half sighing, "it may be so,--I hope it may be +so; but if it does turn out as you say, how shall we manage about Aunt +Huldah? You know how she feels; and then there is Alice." + +"What a brother you are!" exclaimed Fanny. "No sooner do I get you out +of one difficulty than you go beating against another! Perhaps _I_ +shan't like her; then how will you manage about _me_? It is not every +girl I will take for a sister! And as for Alice, do you think she is +waiting for you all this time, vain man? She's got another beau. But +now," she went on, as soon as she could stop laughing, "go to bed, and +sleep easy, knowing that Rachel loves you, for I have said it. She loves +you too well to take you at your word. I hope she isn't too good for +you. I will think it all over, and see what can be done. Good night! +Kiss me now for what I have told you, just as you would Rachel, if she +had told you herself." + +And I did, almost. + +The next afternoon Fanny and I went out for a long walk. Aunt Huldah +encouraged our going, for she was coloring, and wanted from the store +both indigo and alum. + +"Do you know the person with whom Rachel is staying?" asked Fanny, as +soon as we were fairly started. + +"Mrs. James? Yes, she is a nice young woman." + +"Do you think Rachel would like to learn the milliner's trade? It would +be a good thing for her." + +"So it would; but where?" + +"Does she know much of your friends, of how you are situated?" + +"No. In the few hours we were together I was too much occupied in +drawing her out to speak of my own affairs." + +"I suppose she knows where you live?" + +"I don't know; I think, if I spoke of any place, it was Cambridge,--I +hailed from there." + +"Well," said Fanny, thoughtfully, "perhaps it will make no difference. +Anyway, it will do to try it. There are many Brownes. Besides, Aunt +Huldah will be different. She will be Sprague, I shall be only Fanny, +and Charley will be Charley." + +"My dear Fanny!" I exclaimed, "what _are_ you saying?" + +"Why, you see, buddy,"--she often called me "buddy" for +"brother,"--"that, if Rachel loves you, and you love her, you will +_have_ each other. If Aunt Huldah is angry, and won't give you any of +her money, still you will be married, even if you both have to work by +the day. Does this seem clear?" + +I laughed, and said,-- + +"Very,--and right, too." + +"Still," she went on, "it will be better for all concerned to have Aunt +Huldah like her. Don't you remember that one summer a young girl from +the milliner's boarded with us, and helped us, to pay her board?" + +"Capital!" I said. "But can you manage it?" + +"I think I can. Mrs. Sampson is, I know, wanting a girl for the busy +season." + +"But Rachel wouldn't come here,--to my home!" + +"She need not know it is your home. I will write to Mrs. James, and tell +her all about it,--tell why I want Rachel here, and what a good +situation it will be for her at Mrs. Sampson's. She can find out whether +the plan is pleasing to her; and if it is, she can herself make all the +arrangements. Of course I shall charge her not to tell. Then, when +everything is settled, I can just say to the milliner that we should +like to make the same little arrangement that we did before." + +"And she live here with you, with Aunt Huldah?" + +"Why not? She needn't know that Mrs. Huldah Sprague is your aunt, or +that this is your home." + +"But she would find it out some way. People calling would mention me. +Aunt herself would." + +"I know it," said Fanny, not quite so hopefully; "and that is the weak +point of my plan. But then, you know, we are Charley and Fanny to +everybody. _She_ only thinks of you as Mr. Browne. Anyway, something +will be gained. I shall see her, and decide about liking her, which is +quite important; and it will be well for her to have the situation, even +if nothing else comes of it. I don't see any harm our scheme can do; do +you, Charley?" + +"No,--no harm; but still, things don't look--exactly clear." + +"Of course not; it is not to be expected. I have read in books that +lovers have always a mist before their eyes. Mine are clear yet; and I +will tell you what to do,--or, rather, what not to do. Don't write her +from here; wait till you are in Cambridge." + +By this time we reached the house. The moment we entered, Aunt Huldah +stretched out her hand for the dye-stuff. We had forgotten all about it! + +Those few days at home were pleasant. Aunt Huldah was unusually kind. It +was such a satisfaction to her to know that I had kept a school,--to +think that some of her own pluck was hid beneath my quiet seeming. She +proposed my becoming a lawyer, to which I made no objection,--for I knew +I could make a _dumb_ lawyer, one of the kind who only sit and write. + +I wrote to Rachel from Cambridge, and she answered my letter. It was +like herself. "How very kind you have been," she wrote, "to me, a poor +stranger-girl! If I knew how to write, I would try to let you know how +much I feel it. I can't understand your wanting to marry a girl like me. +I know so little, _am_ so little. I hope it will not offend you, but I +think I ought to say, even if it does, that you must not write any more. +Sometime you will thank me, in your heart, for not doing as you want me +to now." + +I saw that I had indeed a noble nature to deal with. Here was a girl, +all alone in the world, rejecting the sweetest offering that could be +made to a friendless one,--a loving heart,--lest that heart should be +made to suffer on her account! Of course I kept on writing, though my +letters were not answered. I sent her letter to Fanny, who wrote me to +keep up good courage, for she had already put her irons in the +fire,--that, although now fully convinced that Rachel was too good for +me, she had herself begun to love her, and was at work on her own +account. + +I always kept Fanny's letters. Here is a part of one I received after +having been a few weeks from home:-- + +"I have just got my answer from Mrs. James. She is just the woman to +help us along. Rachel wants to come! I have spoken to Aunt Huldah. It is +too bad, but I had to be a bit of a hypocrite, to hint that I was rather +poorly, and how nice it would be to have a little help. She had just got +in a new piece to weave, and so was quite ready to take up with my plan. +I shall get well as soon as it will do, for she seems anxious. Aunt has +a stiff way, I know, but there's a warm corner somewhere in her heart, +and we are in it, and you know there's always room for one more." + +It was a week, and more, before I got another letter from my scheming +sister. It began this way:-- + +"Your Rachel is a beauty! Just as sweet and modest as she can be! She is +sitting at the end-window of my room, watching the vessels. I am writing +at the front-window. She has just looked at me. What eyes she has! If +she _only_ knew whom I was writing to! When I see you, I shall tell you +the particulars. But don't come posting home now, and spoil everything. +You shall hear all that is necessary for you to know." + +Fanny need not have cautioned me about coming home. It was happiness +enough then to think of Rachel sitting in my sister's room,--of Aunt +Huldah's keen eyes watching her daily life. + +"My plan works," writes Fanny, a week afterwards. "Aunt seems to take a +liking to Rachel, which I, if anything, rather discourage, thinking she +will be more likely to stick to it. Rachel is a sister after my own +heart. I do like those people who, while they are so steady and calm, +show by their eyes and the tone of the voice what warm, delicate +feelings they are keeping to themselves! She is one of the real good +kind! What a way she has with her!--I saw her to-day, when she received +a letter from you. It came in one from Mrs. James. I was making believe +read, but peeped at her sideways, just as I have seen you do at the +girls in meeting-time. She slipped yours into her pocket, with such a +blush,--then looked up, sort of scared, to see if I noticed anything; +but I was reading my book. Then she stepped quickly out of the room, and +I saw her, a moment after, go through the garden into the apple-orchard, +and along the path to the low-branching apple-tree, to read it all +alone." + +This tree I knew well. It was an irregular old apple-tree, one of whose +branches formed of itself a nice seat, where Fanny and I had often sat +from childhood up. + +Afterwards she writes,-- + +"You have sent Rachel a ring,--a pearl ring; you didn't tell me, but I +know. I have seen her kiss it. (Does this please you?) I happened to +find it yesterday, while rummaging her box for the buttonhole scissors. +(She sent me there.) Said I,--'Oh, what a pretty ring! Why don't you +wear it?' I never thought till I had spoken; but then I knew in a +minute, by her looking so red. She said she'd a reason for thinking it +would not be quite right to wear it,--said perhaps she would tell +sometime. It was last night I saw her kiss it, when she thought I was +asleep,--we sleep in the same room. She tried it on her finger, but took +it right off again, sighing, and looking so sad that I don't know what I +should have done, had I not known how it was all coming out right pretty +soon.--Aunt Huldah is completely entangled in my web. She has come into +it with her sharp eyes wide open! She likes Rachel,--says she always +knows where to _take hold_, and makes no fuss about doing things. She +gets her to read the chapter, because she says she likes the sound of +her voice. There is not only _sound_, but _feeling_ in her voice, and +that is what aunt means; but you know she never says _all_ she +means,--she isn't one of the kind. Rachel is always doing little things +for her, and bringing home bunches of sweet-fern and everlasting. Even +if my plan upsets now, much will be gained,--for aunt can't get back her +liking, I have found a dear friend, and Rachel a good place. Your name +has been mentioned, but only as Charley. I am in daily fear that aunt +will allude to your school, though, to be sure, she is not at all +communicative, (girls having brothers in college should use a big word +now and then,) but we are getting so well acquainted that I begin to +shake in my shoes. But the mornings are busy, the noons are short, and +you know aunt always goes to bed with the hens. My dread is of +_callers_,--not just the neighbors running in, but the _regulars_. It is +so natural for them to say, 'How is your nephew?'--not that they care +for you, except as being something to talk about." + +Soon after, came the following:-- + +"Charley, my boy, what I feared has come to pass! Last night our new +young minister called. He is a good young man, I know, but so stiff! Not +too stiff, though, to take a good look at Rachel. We all sat up straight +in our chairs. His eyes were deep and black, his face pale and solemn. +He was all in black, but just the white about his throat. When the +weather, the prospects of the farmers, and of the church, were all over +with, then came an awful pause. _Then_ it was that I began to shiver, +and that the mischief was done. 'Mrs. Sprague.' he began, 'I understand +you have a nephew, not now at home, who taught school last winter in the +little village of Norway.' You may guess the rest. There was a long talk +about you. Rachel hasn't said a word, but I see by her face that she is +laying some desperate plan. Now, Charley, is your time! Hurry home! Come +and spend next Sunday. Aunt spoke of your coming in four weeks, but I +shall look for you next Saturday night. She gets through work earlier +then. The stage reaches here about sunset. Stop at the tavern, and run +home over the hills. You will come out behind the orchard, and Rachel +and I will be sitting on the branch of the low apple-tree." + +Now I had been getting uneasy for some time. All this while I had been +living on Fanny's letters. Now I wanted more. It was much to know that +Rachel loved me, but I longed to hear her say so. I depended upon her. +She seemed already a part of myself. My shadowy pinafore-maker had +assumed a living form of beauty, and was already more to me than I had +ever imagined woman could be to man, than one soul could be to another. +I had always, in common with other men, considered myself as an oak +destined in the course of Nature to support some clinging vine; but, if +I were an oak-tree, she was another, with an infinitude more of grace +and beauty. + +As may be supposed, I required no urging to take the Saturday's stage +for home. We arrived at sunset. I made for the hills with all speed, +rushing through bushes and briers, leaping brooks at a bound, until I +came out just behind the orchard. There I paused. My happiness seemed so +near that I would fain enjoy, before grasping it. I walked softly along +under the trees, until I came in sight of two girls sitting with their +arms around each other's waists upon the low branch of the apple-tree. +There was just room for two. The branch, after running parallel with the +ground for a little way, took a sudden turn upwards; and to this natural +seat I had myself, in my younger days, added a back of rough branches. I +came towards them, from behind, and hid myself awhile behind the trunk +of a tree. Fanny was making Rachel talk, making her laugh, in spite of +herself, as I could well see. Then she began to play with her dark hair, +twining it prettily about her head, and twisting among it damask roses +with their buds,--for it was June, and our damask rose-bush was then +always in full bloom. + +If Rachel had been beautiful in her rusty black dress, what could I say +of her now? She wore a gown of pink gingham, made after the fashion of +the day, short-waisted and low in the neck, with a--finishing-off--of +white muslin or lace, edged with a tucker. There was color in her +cheeks, and added to this was the glow from the roses, and from the pink +gown. When she smiled, her mouth was beautiful. I had not been used to +seeing her smile. As she threw her arm over the back of the seat, in +turning her face towards Fanny, laughing as I had never before seen her +laugh, I was so bewildered by the beauty of her face and figure that I +forgot my caution, and made a hasty step towards her. The grass was +soft, but they heard the noise and turned full upon me. + +"Why, Charley! you dear boy!" exclaimed Fanny; and she came running up, +throwing both arms around my neck. + +I kissed her; and then she drew me towards Rachel, who stood, like one +in despair, trembling, blushing, almost weeping. + +"Charley," cried Fanny, roguishly, "kiss me, kiss my friend. This is my +friend. Won't you kiss her, too?" + +"With pleasure," I answered, with too much of deep feeling to laugh. +"Rachel, I always mind Fanny; you will not, then, think it strange, if +I"-- + +I cannot finish the sentence on paper, because it had not a grammatical +ending. I kept hold of Rachel's hand, thus adding to her +distress,--telling her, all the while, how good it was to see her, and +to see her there. She tried to withdraw her hand, tried to speak, tried +to keep silent, and at last burst out with,-- + +"Oh, Fanny! do tell him that I didn't know,--that I had no idea,--that +you asked me,--that you never told me!" + +"Charley," said Fanny, laughing, "did you ever know me to tell a lie? To +my certain knowledge, this young woman came here to board, expecting to +find nothing worse than Aunt Huldah and myself; and it was at my +suggestion she came." + +Then taking Rachel by the hand, she said,-- + +"Be easy, my dear child. You need not feel so pained. Charley loves you, +and you love him, and we all love one another. Charley is a dear boy, +and you mustn't plague him. I will tell you all about it, dear. When +Charley came home, and I made him tell me about you, I know, from what +he said, that you were--But I won't praise you to your face. Hasn't +Charley seen plenty of girls, handsome girls, educated, accomplished? +And haven't I watched him these years, to see when Love would catch him? +Haven't I searched his face, time and again, for signs of love at his +heart? When he came home in the spring, I saw that his time had come, +and trouble with it. I made him _tell_, for I would not send him away +with a grief shut up in his heart. Then I contrived this plan of seeing +and knowing you, dear. I knew that Charley would never have been so +deeply moved, had you not been worthy; but, my dear child, I never +thought of loving you so! I shall be so proud, if you will be my +sister,--for you will, I know. You can't refuse such a dear boy as +Charley!" + +I still held Rachel by the hand; and while Fanny was speaking so +earnestly, my other hand, of itself, went creeping around her waist, and +drew her close to me. + +"You can't refuse," I whispered, reposting Fanny's words; and I knew by +the look in her face, and the way her heart beat, that she couldn't. + +But Fanny was one who never liked deep waters. Seeing that matters were +growing earnest, she rose quickly to the surface, and went rattling on, +in her lively way. + +"Now, come, you two, and sit down in this cozy seat. You have never had +a nice time all to yourselves, to make love in. Ah! how well you look +together! Just room enough! Rachel, dear, rest your head on Charley's +shoulder. You must. Charley always minds me, and you will have to. Now, +buddy, just drop your head on hers a minute. Capital! Your light curls +make her hair look more like black velvet than ever! That will do. Now I +leave you to your fate. I am rattle-headed, I know, but I hope I have +some consideration." + +And so she left us, sitting there in the twilight, in the solemn hush of +Saturday night. + +The next day we all went to meeting. It seemed good that I was only to +spend Sunday at home. The quiet, the air of solemnity all around us, +harmonized well with the song my own soul was singing. It was +Sabbath-day within, one long, blessed Sabbath, with which the bustle of +week-day life would ill accord. That perfect day I never forgot. Even +now I can scent its roses in the air. Even now I can almost feel the +daisies brushing against my feet, while walking up the narrow lane on +our way to church,--can see the sweetbrier by the red gate, and myself +giving Rachel one of its blossoms. + +During the rest of the term I had frequent letters from Fanny and +Rachel, telling how happy they both were, and what talks they had in the +apple-tree,--telling that Aunt Huldah _knew_, but wasn't angry, only +just a little at Fanny, for being so sly. Then came the long summer +vacation. The very day I got home, the solemn young minister called. +Fanny said that he came often, but she thought he would do so no longer, +for he would see that it was of no use to be looking at Rachel. He did, +however, and Rachel said he came to look at Fanny. I bestirred myself, +therefore, to become acquainted with him. His stiffness was only of the +manners. I found him a genial, cultivated, warm-hearted person; in fact, +I liked him. How cold the word sounds now, applied to one whom I +afterwards came to love as a brother, whose gentle heart sympathized in +all our troubles, whose tears were ever ready to mingle with our own! + +He gave us every opportunity of finding him out, joined us in our sunset +walks, and in our long sittings under the trees. I soon came to be well +satisfied that he should look at Fanny,--satisfied that she should watch +for his coming, and blush when he came. I was happy to see the mist she +once spoke of slowly gathering before her own eyes, and to know, from +the strange quiet which came over her, that some new influence was at +work within her heart. + +The beauty of Rachel seemed each day more brilliant. Amid such happy +influences, the lively, genial side of her nature expanded like a flower +in the sunshine. "The soul of Rachel Lowe," having no longer to stand +alone, bearing the weight of its own sorrows, brought its energies to +promote the happiness of us all. She contrived pleasant surprises, and +charmed Aunt Huldah with her constant acts of kindness. She sang +beautiful songs, and filled the house with flowers; and when we sat +long, in the cool of the evening, out under the trees, she would relate +strange, wild stories which she had heard from her mother,--stories of +other times and distant lands. + +Meanwhile Aunt Huldah was as kind as heart could wish, treating us +tenderly, and as if we were little children; and one stormy night, when +we four sat with her in the keeping-room, talking, until daylight faded, +and the short twilight left us nearly in darkness, she told us some +things about her own youth, things of which, by daylight, she would +never have spoken,--and told, too, of a dear, only brother, who was +ruined for all time, and, she feared, for eternity also, from being +crossed in love by the strong will of his father. Aunt Huldah had a +tender heart. Her voice grew thick and hoarse, while telling the story. +I was always glad we had that talk. It made us know her better. She +lived only a year after. She died in June, when the grass was green and +the roses were in bloom,--just a year from that Sabbath I spent at home, +that perfect day when I walked to meeting with Rachel up the grassy +lane. With sad hearts, we laid her to rest in a spot that she loved, +where the sweet-fern and wild-roses were growing,--with sad, grateful +hearts, for she had been to us as father, mother, and true friend. We +loved her for the affection she showed, and still more for that which we +knew she concealed within herself,--for the tenderness she would not let +be revealed. + +The next year Rachel and I were married, thus making the month of June +trebly sacred. We had a double wedding; for the young minister, finding +that he had looked at Fanny too long for his own tranquillity, proposed +to mend matters in a way which no one whose faculties were not strangely +betwisted by love would ever have thought of. And my sister must either +have secretly liked the plan, or else have lost her old faculty of +managing; for, when he said, "Come, Fanny, and let us dwell together in +the parsonage," she went, just as quiet as a lamb. + +Rachel and I remained, and do remain to this day, at the old house. +Fanny said we ought to go into the world,--that I might possibly become +brilliant, and Rachel would certainly be admired. But the first of these +suggestions had little weight with me; and Rachel said how nice it would +be to live here among the apple-trees, near Fanny, to read books, sing +songs, and so have a good time all our lives! + +"And have nobody but Charley see how handsome you are!" exclaimed Fanny. + +Rachel didn't color at this, but remarked, a little roguishly, that she +would rather have one of those sidelong looks I used to give her in the +old school-house than all the admiration in the world. + +This was the time when I chose my profession, as mentioned in the +beginning. And I may say that we _have_ had a good time all our lives. +Yet we have known sorrow. Four times has the dark shadow fallen upon our +hearts; four sad processions have passed up the narrow lane; four little +graves, by the side of Aunt Huldah's, show where, standing together, we +wept tears of agony! Yet we stood together; and Rachel, who knew so +well, taught me how to bear. In every hour of anguish I have found +myself leaning upon the strong, steadfast "soul of Rachel Lowe." I say +still, therefore, that we have had a good time, for we have loved one +another all our lives. And we have never been too much alone. Plenty of +friends have been glad to come and see us; and on Anniversary Week we +have usually made a journey to Boston, to wear off the rust, and get +stirred up generally. We attend most frequently the Anti-Slavery +Conventions. I know of no better place, whether for getting stirred up, +or wearing off the rust. That couple whom you may have noticed +sitting near the platform--that bald-headed old gentleman and +intelligent-looking elderly lady--are my wife and I. We met with the +early Abolitionists in a stable; we saw Garrison dragged through the +streets, and heard Phillips's first speech in Faneuil Hall. + +I have always kept my old habit of watching pretty faces; only I don't +look sideways now: for the girls never think that an old man cares to +see them; but he does. We have one son, who Fanny devoutly hopes will +turn out better than his father. May he go through life as happily! And +he is in a fair way for it. I like to see him with Jenny, the pretty +daughter of my friend the watchmaker. If my good friend thinks to keep +always with him that youngest one of his flock, he will find his +mistake; for it was only yesterday that I saw them sitting together on +the seat in the low-branching apple-tree. + + * * * * * + +PICTOR IGNOTUS. + + +Human nature is impatient of mysteries. The occurrence of an event out +of the line of common causation, the advent of a person not plastic to +the common moulds of society, causes a great commotion in this little +ant-hill of ours. There is perplexity, bewilderment, a running hither +and thither, until the foreign substance is assigned a place in the +ranks; and if there be no rank to which it can be ascertained to belong, +a new rank shall be created to receive it, rather than that it shall be +left to roam up and down, baffling, defiant, and alone. Indeed, so great +is our abhorrence of outlying, unclassified facts, that we are often +ready to accept classification for explanation; and having given our +mystery a niche and a name, we cease any longer to look upon it as +mysterious. The village-schoolmaster, who displayed his superior +knowledge to the rustics gazing at an eclipse of the sun by assuring +them that it was "only a phenomenon," was but one of a great host of +wiseacres who stand ready with brush and paint-pot to label every new +development, and fancy that in so doing they have abundantly answered +every reasonable inquiry concerning cause, character, and consequence. + +When William Blake flashed across the path of English polite society, +society was confounded. It had never had to do with such an apparition +before, and was at its wits' end. But some Daniel was found wise enough +to come to judgment, and pronounce the poet-painter mad; whereupon +society at once composed itself, and went on its way rejoicing. + +There are a few persons, however, who are not disposed to let this +verdict stand unchallenged. Mr. Arthur Gilchrist, late a barrister of +the Middle Temple, a man, therefore, who must have been accustomed to +weigh evidence, and who would not have been likely to decide upon +insufficient grounds, wrote a life of Mr. Blake, in which he strenuously +and ably opposed the theory of insanity. From this book, chiefly, we +propose to lay before our readers a slight sketch of the life of a man +who, whether sane or insane, was one of the most remarkable productions +of his own or of any age. + +One word, in the beginning, regarding the book before us. The death of +its author, while as yet but seven chapters of his work had been +printed, would preclude severe criticism, even if the spirit and purpose +with which he entered upon his undertaking, and which he sustained to +its close, did not dispose us to look leniently upon imperfections of +detail. Possessing that first requisite of a biographer, thorough +sympathy with his subject, he did not fall into the opposite error of +indiscriminate panegyric. Looking at life from the standpoint of the +"madman," he saw how fancies could not only appear, but be, facts; and +then, crossing over, he looked at the madman from the world's +standpoint, and saw how these soul-born facts could seem not merely +fancies, but the wild vagaries of a crazed brain. For the warmth with +which he espoused an unpopular cause, for the skill with which he set +facts in their true light, for the ability which he brought to the +defence of a man whom the world had agreed to condemn, for the noble +persistence with which he forced attention to genius that had hitherto +received little but neglect, we cannot too earnestly express our +gratitude. But the greater our admiration of material excellence, the +greater is our regret for superficial defects. The continued oversight +of the author would doubtless have removed many infelicities of style; +yet we marvel that one with so clear an insight should ever, even in the +first glow of composition, have involved himself in sentences so +complicated and so obscure. The worst faults of Miss Sheppard's worst +style are reproduced here, joined to an unthriftiness in which she had +no part nor lot. Not unfrequently a sentence Is a conglomerate in which +the ideas to be conveyed are heaped together with no apparent attempt at +arrangement, unity, or completeness. Surely, it need be no presumptuous, +but only a tender and reverent hand that should have organized these +chaotic periods, completing the work which death left unfinished, and +sending it forth to the world in a garb not unworthy the labor of love +so untiringly bestowed upon it by the lamented author. + +To show that our strictures are not undeserved, we transcribe a few +sentences, taken at random from the memoir:-- + +"Which decadence it was led this Pars to go into the juvenile +Art-Academy line, _vice_ Shipley retired." + +"The unusual notes struck by William Blake, in any case appealing but to +one class and a small one, were fated to remain unheard, even by the +Student of Poetry, until the process of regeneration had run its course, +and, we may say, the Poetic Revival gone to seed again: seeing that the +virtues of simplicity and directness the new poets began by bringing +once more into the foreground, are those least practised now." + +"In after years of estrangement from Stothard, Blake used to complain of +this mechanical employment as engraver to a fellow-designer, who (he +asserted) first borrowed from one that, in his servile capacity, had +then to copy that comrade's version of his own inventions--as to motive +and composition his own, that is." + +"And this imposing scroll of fervid truisms and hap-hazard generalities, +as often disputable as not, if often acute and striking, always +ingenuous and pleasant, was, like all his other writings, warmly +welcomed in this country." + +Let us now go back a hundred years, to the time when William Blake was a +fair-haired, smooth-browed boy, wandering aimlessly, after the manner of +boys, about the streets of London. It might seem at first a matter of +regret that a soul full of all glowing and glorious fancies should have +been consigned to the damp and dismal dulness of that crowded city; but, +in truth, nothing could be more fit. To this affluent, creative mind +dinginess and dimness were not. Through the grayest gloom golden palaces +rose before him, silver pavements shone beneath his feet, jewelled gates +unfolded on golden hinges turning, and he wandered forth into a fair +country. What need of sunshine and bloom for one who saw in the deepest +darkness a "light that never was on sea or land"? Rambling out into the +pleasant woods of Dulwich, through the green meadows of Walton, by the +breezy heights of Sydenham, bands of angels attended him. They walked +between the toiling haymakers, they hovered above him in the +apple-boughs, and their bright wings shone like stars. For him there was +neither awe nor mystery, only delight. Angels were no more unnatural +than apples. But the honest hosier, his father, took different views. +Never in all his life had that worthy citizen beheld angels perched on +tree-tops, and he was only prevented from administering to his son a +sound thrashing for the absurd falsehood by the intercession of his +mother. Ah, these mothers! By what fine sense is it that they detect the +nascent genius for which man's coarse perception can find no better name +than perverseness, and no wiser treatment than brute force? + +The boy had much reason to thank his mother, for to her intervention it +was doubtless largely due that he was left to follow his bent, and haunt +such picture-galleries as might be found in noblemen's houses and public +sale-rooms. There he feasted his bodily eyes on earthly beauty, as his +mental gaze had been charmed with heavenly visions. From admiration to +imitation was but a step, and the little hands soon began to shape such +rude, but loving copies as Raffaelle, with tears in his eyes, must have +smiled to see. His father, moved by motherly persuasions, as we can +easily infer, bought him casts for models, that he might continue his +drawing-lessons at home; his own small allowance of pocket-money went +for prints; his wistful child-face presently became known to dealers, +and many a cheap lot was knocked down to him with amiable haste by +friendly auctioneers. Then and there began that life-long love and +loyalty to the grand old masters of Germany and Italy, to Albrecht +Dürer, to Michel Angelo, to Raffaelle, which knew no diminution, and +which, in its very commencement, revealed the eclecticism of true +genius, because the giants were not the gods in those days. + +But there came a time when Pegasus must be broken in to drudgery, and +travel along trodden ways. By slow, it cannot be said by toilsome +ascent, the young student had reached the vestibule of the temple; but + + "Every door was barred with gold, and opened but to golden keys," + +which, alas! to him were wanting. Nothing daunted, his sincere soul +preferred to be a doorkeeper in the house of his worship rather than a +dweller in the tents of Mammon. Unable to be an artist, he was content +for the time to become an artisan, and chose to learn engraving,--a +craft which would keep him within sight and sound of the heaven from +which he was shut out. Application was first made to Ryland, then in the +zenith of his fame, engraver to the King, friend of authors and artists, +himself a graceful, accomplished, and agreeable gentleman. But the +marvellous eyes that pierced through mortal gloom to immortal glory saw +also the darkness that brooded behind uncanny light. "I do not like the +man's face," said young Blake, as he was leaving the shop with his +father; "it looks as if he will live to be hanged." The negotiation +failed; Blake was apprenticed to Basire; and twelve years after, the +darkness that had lain so long in ambush came out and hid the day: +Ryland was hanged. + +His new master, Basire, was one of those workmen who magnify their +office and make it honorable. The most distinguished of four generations +of Basires, engravers, he is represented as a superior, liberal-minded, +upright man, and a kind master. With him Blake served out his seven +years of apprenticeship, as faithful, painstaking, and industrious as +any blockhead. So great was the confidence which he secured, that, month +after month, and year after year, he was sent out alone to Westminster +Abbey and the various old churches in the neighborhood, to make drawings +from the monuments, with no oversight but that of his own taste and his +own conscience. And a rich reward we may well suppose his integrity +brought him, in the charming solitudes of those old-time sanctuaries. +Wandering up and down the consecrated aisles,--eagerly peering through +the dim, religious light for the beautiful forms that had leaped from +many a teeming brain now turned to dust,--reproducing, with patient +hand, graceful outline and deepening shadow,--his daring, yet reverent +heart held high communion with the ages that were gone. The Spirit of +the Past overshadowed him. The grandeur of Gothic symbolism rose before +him. Voices of dead centuries murmured low music down the fretted vault. +Fair ladies and brave gentlemen came up from the solemn chambers where +they had lain so long in silent state, and smiled with their olden +grace. Shades of nameless poets, who had wrought their souls into a +cathedral and died unknown and unhonored, passed before the dreaming +boy, and claimed their immortality. Nay, once the Blessed Face shone +through the cloistered twilight, and the Twelve stood roundabout. In +this strange solitude and stranger companionship many an old problem +untwined its Gordian knot, and whispered along its loosened length,-- + + "I give you the end of a golden string: + Only wind it into a ball, + It will lead you in at Heaven's gate, + Built in Jerusalem wall." + +To an engraving of "Joseph of Arimathea among the Rocks of Albion," +executed at this time, he appends,--"This is one of the Gothic artists +who built the Cathedrals in what we call the Dark Ages, wandering about +in sheepskins and goatskins; of whom the world was not worthy. Such were +the Christians in all ages." + +Yet, somewhere, through mediæval gloom and modern din, another spirit +breathed upon him,--a spirit of green woods and blue waters, the +freshness of May mornings, the prattle of tender infancy, the gambols of +young lambs on the hill-side. From his childhood, Poetry walked hand in +hand with Painting, and beguiled his loneliness with wild, sweet +harmonies. Bred up amid the stately, measured, melodious platitudes of +the eighteenth century, that Golden Age of commonplace, he struck down +through them all with simple, untaught, unconscious directness, and +smote the spring of ever-living waters. Such wood-notes wild as trill in +Shakspeare's verse sprang from the stricken chords beneath his hand. The +little singing-birds that seem almost to have leaped unbidden into life +among the gross creations of those old Afreets who + + "Stood around the throne of Shakspeare, + Sturdy, but unclean," + +carolled their clear, pure lays to him, and left a quivering echo. Fine, +fleeting fantasies we have, a tender, heartfelt, heart-reaching pathos, +laughter that might at any moment tremble into tears, eternal truths, +draped in the garb of quaint and simple story, solemn fervors, subtile +sympathies, and the winsomeness of little children at their +play,--sometimes glowing with the deepest color, often just tinged to +the pale and changing hues of a dream, but touched with such coy grace, +modulated to such free, wild rhythm, suffused with such a delicate, +evanishing loveliness, that they seem scarcely to be the songs of our +tangible earth, but snatches from fairy-land. Often rude in form, often +defective in rhyme, and not unfrequently with even graver faults than +these, their ruggedness cannot hide the gleam of the sacred fire. "The +Spirit of the Age," moulding her pliant poets, was wiser than to meddle +with this sterner stuff. From what hidden cave in Rare Ben Jonson's +realm did the boy bring such an opal as this + + SONG. + + "My silks and fine array, + My smiles and languished air, + By Love are driven away; + And mournful, lean Despair + Brings me yew to deck my grave: + Such end true lovers have! + + "His face is fair as heaven, + Where springing buds unfold; + Oh, why to him was 't given, + Whose heart is wintry cold? + His breast is Love's all-worshipped tomb, + Where all Love's pilgrims come. + + "Bring me an axe and spade, + Bring me a winding-sheet; + When I my grave have made, + Let winds and tempests beat: + Then down I'll lie, as cold as clay. + True love doth pass away." + +What could the Spirit of the Age hope to do with a boy scarcely yet in +his teens, who dared arraign her in such fashion as is set forth in his +address + + TO THE MUSES. + + "Whether on Ida's shady brow, + Or in the chambers of the East, + The chambers of the Sun, that now + From ancient melody have ceased; + + "Whether in heaven ye wander fair, + Or the green corners of the earth, + Or the blue regions of the air, + Where the melodious winds have birth; + + "Whether on crystal rocks ye rove + Beneath the bosom of the sea, + Wandering in many a coral grove, + Fair Nine, forsaking Poetry; + + "How have you left the ancient love + That bards of old enjoyed in you! + The languid strings do scarcely move, + The sound is forced, the notes are few." + +Whereabouts in its Elegant Extracts would a generation that strung +together sonorous couplets, and compiled them into a book to Enforce the +Practice of Virtue, place such a ripple of verse as this?-- + + "Piping down the valleys wild, + Piping songs of pleasant glee, + On a cloud I saw a child, + And he, laughing, said to me: + + "'Pipe a song about a lamb!' + So I piped with merry cheer. + 'Piper, pipe that song again!' + So I piped; he wept to hear. + + "'Drop thy pipe, thy happy pipe; + Sing thy songs of happy cheer!' + So I sang the same again, + While he wept with joy to hear. + + "'Piper, sit thee down and write + In a book, that all may read!' + So he vanished from my sight. + And I plucked a hollow reed, + + "And I made a rural pen, + And I stained the water clear, + And I wrote my happy songs + Every child may joy to hear." + +A native of the jungle, leaping into the fine drawing-rooms of Cavendish +Square, would hardly create more commotion than such a poem as "The +Tiger," charging in among Epistles to the Earl of Dorset, Elegies +describing the Sorrow of an Ingenuous Mind, Odes innumerable to Memory, +Melancholy, Music, Independence, and all manner of odious themes. + + "Tiger, tiger, burning bright + In the forests of the night, + What immortal hand or eye + Framed thy fearful symmetry? + + "In what distant deeps or skies + Burned that fire within thine eyes? + On what wings dared he aspire? + What the hand dared seize the fire? + + "And what shoulder, and what art, + Could twist the sinews of thy heart? + When thy heart began to beat, + What dread hand formed thy dread feet? + + "What the hammer, what the chain, + Knit thy strength and forged thy brain? + What the anvil? What dread grasp + Dared thy deadly terrors clasp? + + "When the stars threw down their spears, + And watered heaven with their tears, + Did he smile his work to see? + Did He who made the lamb make thee?" + +Mrs. Montagu, by virtue of the "moral" in the last line, may possibly +have ventured to read the "Chimney-Sweeper" at her annual festival to +those swart little people; but we have not space to give the gem a +setting here; nor the "Little Black Boy," with its matchless, sweet +child-sadness. Indeed, scarcely one of these early poems--all written +between the ages of eleven and twenty--is without its peculiar, and +often its peerless charm. + +Arrived at the age of twenty-one, he finished his apprenticeship to +Basire, and began at once the work and worship of his life,--the latter +by studying at the Royal Academy, the former by engraving for the +booksellers. Introduced by a brother-artist to Flaxman, he joined him in +furnishing designs for the famous Wedgwood porcelain, and so one +dinner-set gave bread and butter to genius, and nightingales' tongues to +wealth. That he was not a docile, though a very devoted pupil, is +indicated by his reply to Moser, the keeper, who came to him, as he was +looking over prints from his beloved Raffaelle and Michel Angelo, and +said, "You should not study these old, hard, stiff, and dry, unfinished +works of Art: stay a little, and _I_ will show you what you should +study." He brought down Le Brun and Rubens. "How did I secretly rage!" +says Blake. "I also spake my mind! I said to Moser, 'These things that +you call finished are not even begun; how, then, can they be finished?'" +The reply of the startled teacher is not recorded. In other respects, +also, he swerved from Academical usage. Nature, as it appeared in models +artificially posed to enact an artificial part, became hateful to him, +seemed to him a caricature of Nature, though he delighted in the noble +antique figures. + +Nature soon appeared to him in another shape, and altogether charming. A +lively miss to whom he had paid court showed herself cold to his +advances; which circumstance he was one evening bemoaning to a +dark-eyed, handsome girl,--(a dangerous experiment, by the way,)--who +assured him that she pitied him from her heart. "_Do_ you pity me?" he +eagerly asked. "Yes, I do, most sincerely." "Then I love you for that," +replied the new Othello to his Desdemona; and so well did the wooing go +that the dark-eyed Catharine presently became his wife, the Kate of a +forty-five years' marriage. Loving, devoted, docile, she learned to be +helpmeet and companion. Never, on the one side, murmuring at the narrow +fortunes, nor, on the other, losing faith in the greatness to which she +had bound herself, she not only ordered well her small household, but +drew herself up within the range of her husband's highest sympathy. She +learned to read and write, and to work off his engravings. Nay, love +became for her creative, endowed her with a new power, the vision and +the faculty divine, and she presently learned to design with a spirit +and a grace hardly to be distinguished from her husband's. No children +came to make or mar their harmony; and from the summer morning in +Battersea that placed her hand in his, to the summer evening in London +that loosed it from his dying grasp, she was the true angel-vision, +Heaven's own messenger to the dreaming poet-painter. + +Being the head of a family, Blake now, as was proper, went into +"society." And what a society it was to enter! And what a man was Blake +to enter it! The society of President Reynolds, and Mr. Mason the poet, +and Mr. Sheridan the play-actor, and pompous Dr. Burney, and abstract +Dr. Delap,--all honorable men; a society that was dictated to by Dr. +Johnson, and delighted by Edmund Burke, and sneered at by Horace +Walpole, its untiring devotee: a society presided over by Mrs. Montagu, +whom Dr. Johnson dubbed Queen of the Blues; Mrs. Carter, borrowing, by +right of years, her matron's plumes; Mrs. Chapone, sensible, ugly, and +benevolent; the beautiful Mrs. Sheridan; the lively, absurd, incisive +Mrs. Cholmondeley; sprightly, witty Mrs. Thrale; and Hannah More, coiner +of guineas, both as saint and sinner: a most piquant, trenchant, and +entertaining society it was, and well might be, since the bullion of +genius was so largely wrought into the circulating medium of small talk; +but a society which, from sheer lack of vision, must have entertained +its angels unawares. Such was the current which caught up this +simple-hearted painter, this seer of unutterable things, this "eternal +child,"--caught him up only to drop him, with no creditable, but with +very credible haste. As a lion, he was undoubtedly thrice welcome in +Rathbone Place; but when it was found that the lion would not roar there +gently, nor be bound by their silken strings, but rather shook his mane +somewhat contemptuously at his would-be tamers, and kept, in their grand +saloons, his freedom of the wilderness, he was straightway suffered to +return to his fitting solitudes. One may imagine the consternation that +would be caused by this young fellow turning to Mrs. Carter, whose "talk +was all instruction," or to Mrs. Chapone, bent on the "improvement of +the mind," or to Miss Streatfield, with her "nose and notions _à la +Grecque_," and abruptly inquiring, "Madam, did you ever see a fairy's +funeral?" "Never, Sir!" responds the startled Muse. "I have," pursues +Blake, as calmly as if he were proposing to relate a _bon mot_ which he +heard at Lady Middleton's rout last night. "I was walking alone in my +garden last night: there was great stillness among the branches and +flowers, and more than common sweetness in the air. I heard a low and +pleasant sound, and knew not whence it came. At last I saw the broad +leaf of a flower move, and underneath I saw a procession of creatures of +the size and color of green and gray grasshoppers, bearing a body laid +out on a rose-leaf, which they buried with songs, and then disappeared. +It was a fairy funeral." Or they are discussing, somewhat pompously, +Herschel's late discovery of Uranus, and the immense distances of +heavenly bodies, when Blake bursts out uproariously, "'Tis false! I was +walking down a lane the other day, and at the end of it I touched the +sky with my stick." Truly, for this wild man, who obstinately refuses to +let his mind be regulated, but bawls out his mad visions the louder, the +more they are combated, there is nothing for it but to go back to his +Kitty, and the little tenement in Green Street. + +But real friends Blake found, who, if they could not quite understand +him, could love and honor and assist. Flaxman, the "Sculptor for +Eternity," and Fuseli, the fiery-hearted Swiss painter, stood up for him +manfully. His own younger brother, Robert, shared his talents, and +became for a time a loved and honored member of his family,--too much +honored, if we may credit an anecdote in which the brother appears to +much better advantage than the husband. A dispute having one day arisen +between Robert and Mrs. Blake, Mr. Blake, after a while, deemed her to +have gone too far, and bade her kneel down and beg Robert's pardon, or +never see her husband's face again. Nowise convinced, she nevertheless +obeyed the stern command, and acknowledged herself in the wrong. "Young +woman, you lie!" retorted Robert "_I_ am in the wrong!" This beloved +brother died at the age of twenty-five. During his last illness, Blake +attended him with the most affectionate devotion, nor ever left the +bedside till he beheld the disembodied spirit leave the frail clay and +soar heavenward, clapping its hands for joy! + +His brother gone, though not so far away that he did not often revisit +the old home,--friendly Flaxman in Italy, but more inaccessible there +than Robert in the heaven which lay above this man in his perpetual +infancy,--the _bas-bleus_ reinclosed in the charmed circle in which +Blake had so riotously disported himself, a small attempt at +partnership, shop-keeping, and money-making, wellnigh "dead before it +was born,"--the poet began to think of publishing. The verses of which +we have spoken had been seen but by few people, and the store was +constantly increasing. Influence with the publishers, and money to +defray expenses, were alike wanting. A copy of Lavater's "Aphorisms," +translated by his fellow-countryman, Fuseli, had received upon its +margins various annotations which reveal the man in his moods. "The +great art to love your enemy consists in never losing sight of _man_ in +him," says Lavater. "None _can_ see the man in the enemy," pencils +Blake. "If he is ignorantly so, he is not truly an enemy; if maliciously +so, not a man. I cannot love my enemy; for my enemy is not a man, but a +beast. And if I have any, I can love him as a beast, and wish to beat +him." No equivocation here, surely. On superstition he comments,--"It +has been long a bugbear, by reason of its having been united with +hypocrisy. But let them be fairly separated, and then superstition will +be honest feeling, and God, who loves all honest men, will lead the poor +enthusiast in the path of holiness." Herein lies the germ of a truth. +Again, Lavater says,--"A great woman not imperious, a fair woman not +vain, a woman of common talents not jealous, an accomplished woman who +scorns to shine, are four wonders just great enough to be divided among +the four corners of the globe." Whereupon Blake adds,--"Let the men do +their duty, and the women will be such wonders; the female life lives +from the life of the male. See a great many female dependents, and you +know the man." If this be madness, would that the madman might have +bitten all mankind before he died! To the advice, "Take here the grand +secret, if not of pleasing all, yet of displeasing none: court +mediocrity, avoid originality, and sacrifice to fashion," he appends, +with an evident reminiscence of Rathbone Place, "And go to hell." + +But this private effervescence was not enough; and long thinking +anxiously as to ways and means, suddenly, in the night, Robert stood +before him, and revealed to him a secret by which a facsimile of poetry +and design could be produced. On rising in the morning, Mrs. Blake was +sent out with a half-crown to buy the necessary materials, and with that +he began an experiment which resulted in furnishing his principal means +of support through life. It consisted in a species of engraving in +relief both of the words and the designs of his poems, by a process +peculiar and original. From his plates he printed off in any tint he +chose, afterwards coloring up his designs by hand. Joseph, the sacred +carpenter, had appeared in a vision, and revealed to him certain secrets +of coloring. Mrs. Blake delighted to assist him in taking impressions, +which she did with great skill, in tinting the designs, and in doing up +the pages in boards; so that everything, except manufacturing the paper, +was done by the poet and his wife. Never before, as his biographer +justly remarks, was a man so literally the author of his own book. If we +may credit the testimony that is given, or even judge from such proofs +as Mr. Gilchrist's book can furnish, these works of his hands were +exquisitely beautiful. The effect of the poems imbedded in their designs +is, we are told, quite different from their effect set naked upon a +blank page. It was as if he had transferred scenery and characters from +that spirit-realm where his own mind wandered at will; and from wondrous +lips wondrous words came fitly, and with surpassing power. Confirmation +of this we find in the few plates of "Songs of Innocence" which have +been recovered. Shorn of the radiant rainbow hues, the golden sheen, +with which the artist, angel-taught, glorified his pictures, they still +body for us the beauty of his "Happy Valley." Children revel there in +unchecked play. Springing vines, in wild exuberance of life, twine +around the verse, thrusting their slender coils in among the lines. +Weeping willows dip their branches into translucent pools. Heavy-laden +trees droop their ripe, rich clusters overhead. Under the shade of +broad-spreading oaks little children climb on the tiger's yielding back +and stroke the lion's tawny mane in a true Millennium. + +The first series, "Songs of Innocence," was succeeded by "Songs of +Experience," subsequently bound in one volume. Then came the book of +"Thel," an allegory, wherein Thel, beautiful daughter of the Seraphim, +laments the shortness of her life down by the River of Adona, and is +answered by the Lily of the Valley, the Little Cloud, the Lowly Worm, +and the Clod of Clay; the burden of whose song is-- + + "But how this is, sweet maid, I know not, and I cannot know, + I ponder, and I cannot ponder: yet I live and love!" + +The designs give the beautiful daughter listening to the Lily and the +Cloud. The Clod is an infant wrapped in a lily-leaf. The effect of the +whole poem and design together is as of an "angel's reverie." + +The "Marriage of Heaven and Hell" is considered one of the most curious +and original of his works. After an opening "Argument" comes a series of +"Proverbs of Hell," which, however, answer very well for earth: as, "A +fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees"; "He whose face gives +no light shall never become a star"; "The apple-tree never asks the +beech how he shall grow, nor the lion the horse how he shall take his +prey." The remainder of the book consists of "Memorable Fancies," half +dream, half allegory, sublime and grotesque inextricably commingling, +but all ornamented with designs most daring and imaginative in +conception, and steeped in the richest color. We subjoin a description +of one or two, as a curiosity. "A strip of azure sky surmounts, and of +land divides, the words of the title-page, leaving on each side scant +and baleful trees, little else than stem and spray. Drawn on a tiny +scale lies a corpse, and one bends over it. Flames burst forth below and +slant upward across the page, gorgeous with every hue. In their very +core, two spirits rush together and embrace." In the seventh design is +"a little island of the sea, where an infant springs to its mother's +bosom. From the birth-cleft ground a spirit has half emerged. Below, +with outstretched arms and hoary beard, an awful, ancient man rushes at +you, as it were, out of the page." The eleventh is "a surging of mingled +fire, water, and blood, wherein roll the volumes of a huge, +double-fanged serpent, his crest erect, his jaws wide open." "The +ever-fluctuating color, the spectral pigmies rolling, flying, leaping +among the letters, the ripe bloom of quiet corners, the living light and +bursts of flame, the spires and tongues of fire vibrating with the full +prism, make the page seem to move and quiver within its boundaries, and +you lay the book down tenderly, as if you had been handling something +sentient." + +We have not space to give a description, scarcely even a catalogue, of +Blake's numerous works. Wild, fragmentary, gorgeous dreams they are, +tangled in with strange allegoric words and designs, that throb with +their prisoned vitality. The energy, the might, the intensity of his +lines and figures it is impossible for words to convey. It is power in +the fiercest, most eager action,--fire and passion, the madness and the +stupor of despair, the frenzy of desire, the lurid depths of woe, that +thrill and rivet you even in the comparatively lifeless rendering of +this book. The mere titles of the poems give but a slight clue to their +character. Ideas are upheaved in a tossing surge of words. It is a +mystic, but lovely Utopia, into which "The Gates of Paradise" open. The +practical name of "America" very faintly foreshadows the Ossianic Titans +that glide across its pages, or the tricksy phantoms, the headlong +spectres, the tongues of flame, the folds and fangs of symbolic +serpents, that writhe and leap and dart and riot there. With a poem +named "Europe," we should scarcely expect for a frontispiece the Ancient +of Days, in unapproached grandeur, setting his "compass upon the face of +the Earth,"--a vision revealed to the designer at the top of his own +staircase. + +Small favor and small notice these works secured from the public, which +found more edification in the drunken courtship and brutal squabbles of +"the First Gentleman of Europe" than in Songs of Innocence or Sculptures +for Eternity. The poet's own friends constituted his public, and +patronized him to the extent of their power. The volume of Songs he sold +for thirty shillings and two guineas. Afterwards, with the delicate and +loving design of helping the artist, who would receive help in no other +way, five and even ten guineas were paid, for which sum he could hardly +do enough, finishing off each picture like a miniature. One solitary +patron he had, Mr. Thomas Butts, who, buying his pictures for thirty +years, and turning his own house into "a perfect Blake Gallery, often +supplied the painter with his sole means of subsistence." May he have +his reward! Most pathetic is an anecdote related by Mr. H.C. Robinson, +who found himself one morning sole visitor at an Exhibition which Blake +had opened, on his own account, at his brother James's house. In view of +the fact that he had bought four copies of the Descriptive Catalogue, +Mr. Robinson inquired of James, the custodian, if he might not come +again free. "Oh, yes! _free as long an you live_!" was the reply of the +humble hosier, overjoyed at having so munificent a visitor, or a visitor +at all. + +We have a sense of incongruity in seeing this defiant, but sincere +pencil employed by publishers to illustrate the turgid sorrow of Young's +"Night Thoughts." The work was to have been issued in parts, but got no +farther than the first. (It would have been no great calamity, if the +poem itself had come to the same premature end!) The sonorous mourner +could hardly have recognized himself in the impersonations in which he +was presented, nor his progeny in the concrete objects to which they +were reduced. The well-known couplet, + + "'Tis greatly wise to talk with our past hours + And ask them what report they've borne to heaven," + +is represented by hours "drawn as aërial and shadowy beings," some of +whom are bringing their scrolls to the inquirer, and others are carrying +their records to heaven. + + "Oft burst my song beyond the bounds of life" + +has a lovely figure, holding a lyre, and springing into the air, but +confined by a chain to the earth. Death puts off his skeleton, and +appears as a solemn, draped figure; but in many cases the clerical poet +is "taken at his word," with a literalness more startling than +dignified. + +Introduced by Flaxman to Hayley, friend and biographer of Cowper, +favorably known to his contemporaries, though now wellnigh forgotten, +Blake was invited to Felpham, and began there a new life. It is pleasant +to look back upon this period. Hayley, the kindly, generous, vain, +imprudent, impulsive country squire, not at all excepting himself in his +love for mankind, pouring forth sonnets on the slightest +provocation,--indeed, so given over to the vice of verse, that + + "he scarce could ope + His mouth but out there flew a trope,"-- + +floating with the utmost self-complacence down the smooth current of his +time; and Blake, sensitive, unique, protestant, impracticable, +aggressive: it was a rare freak of Fate that brought about such +companionship; yet so true courtesy was there that for four years they +lived and wrought harmoniously together,--Hayley pouring out his +harmless wish-wash, and Blake touching it with his fiery gleam. Their +joint efforts were hardly more pecuniarily productive than Blake's +single-handed struggles; but his life there had other and better fruits. +In the little cottage overlooking the sea, fanned by the pure breeze, +and smiled upon by sunshine of the hills, he tasted rare spiritual joy. +Throwing off mortal incumbrance,--never, indeed, an overweight to +him,--he revelled in his clairvoyance. The lights that shimmered across +the sea shone from other worlds. The purple of the gathering darkness +was the curtain of God's tabernacle. Gray shadows of the gloaming +assumed mortal shapes, and he talked with Moses and the prophets, and +the old heroes of song. The Ladder of Heaven was firmly fixed by his +garden-gate, and the angels ascended and descended. A letter written to +Flaxman, soon after his arrival at Felpham, is so characteristic that we +cannot refrain from transcribing it:-- + + "DEAR SCULPTOR OF ETERNITY,--We are safe arrived at our cottage, + which is more beautiful than I thought it, and more convenient. It + is a perfect model for cottages, and, I think, for palaces of + magnificence,--only enlarging, not altering, its proportions, and + adding ornaments, and not principles. Nothing can be more grand + than its simplicity and usefulness. Simple, without intricacy, it + seems to be the spontaneous expression of humanity, congenial to + the wants of man. No other formed house can ever please me so + well, nor shall I ever be persuaded, I believe, that it can be + improved, either in beauty or use. + + "Mr. Hayley received us with his usual brotherly affection. I have + begun to work. Felpham is a sweet place for study, because it is + more spiritual than London. Heaven opens here on all sides her + golden gates; her windows are not obstructed by vapors; voices of + celestial inhabitants are more distinctly heard, and their forms + more distinctly seen; and my cottage is also a shadow of their + houses. My wife and sister are both well, courting Neptune for an + embrace. + + "Our journey was very pleasant; and though we had a great deal of + luggage, no grumbling. All was cheerfulness and good-humor on the + road, and yet we could not arrive at our cottage before half-past + eleven at night, owing to the necessary shifting of our luggage + from one chaise to another; for we had seven different chaises, + and as many different drivers. We set out between six and seven in + the morning of Thursday, with sixteen heavy boxes and portfolios + full of prints. + + "And now begins a new life, because another covering of earth is + shaken off. I am more famed in heaven for my works than I could + well conceive. In my brain are studies and chambers filled with + books and pictures of old, which I wrote and painted in ages of + Eternity, before my mortal life, and those works are the delight + and study of archangels. Why, then, should I be anxious about the + riches or fame of mortality? The Lord our Father will do for us + and with us according to Ins Divine will, for our good. + + "You, O dear Flaxman, are a sublime archangel,--my friend and + companion from Eternity. In the Divine bosom is our + dwelling-place. I look back into the regions of reminiscence, and + behold our ancient days, before this earth appeared in its + vegetated mortality to my mortal vegetated eyes. I see our houses + of eternity, which can never be separated, though our mortal + vehicles should stand at the remotest corners of heaven from each + other. + + "Farewell, my best friend! Remember me and my wife in love and + friendship to our dear Mrs. Flaxman, whom we ardently desire to + entertain beneath our thatched roof of rusted gold. And believe me + forever to remain your grateful and affectionate + + "WILLIAM BLAKE." + +Other associations than spiritual ones mingle with the Felpham sojourn. +A drunken soldier one day broke into his garden, and, being great of +stature, despised the fewer inches of the owner. But between spirits of +earth and spirits of the skies there is but one issue to the conflict, +and Blake "laid hold of the intrusive blackguard, and turned him out +neck and crop, in a kind of inspired frenzy." The astonished ruffian +made good his retreat, but in revenge reported sundry words that +exasperation had struck from his conqueror. The result was a trial for +high treason at the next Quarter Sessions. Friends gathered about him, +testifying to his previous character; nor was Blake himself at all +dismayed. When the soldiers trumped up their false charges in court, he +did not scruple to cry out, "False!" with characteristic and convincing +vehemence. Had this trial occurred at the present day, it would hardly +be necessary to say that he was triumphantly acquitted. But fifty years +ago such a matter wore a graver aspect. In his early life he had been an +advocate of the French Revolution, an associate of Price, Priestley, +Godwin, and Tom Paine, a wearer of white cockade and _bonnet rouge_. He +had even been instrumental in saving Tom Paine's life, by hurrying him +to France, when the Government was on his track; but all this was +happily unknown to the Chichester lawyers, and Blake, more fortunate +than some of his contemporaries, escaped the gallows. + +The disturbance caused by this untoward incident, the repeated failures +of literary attempts, the completion of Cowper's Life, which had been +the main object of his coming, joined, doubtless, to a surfeit of +Hayley, induced a return to London. He feared, too, that his imaginative +faculty was failing. "The visions were angry with me at Felpham," he +used afterwards to say. We regret to see, also, that he seems not always +to have been in the kindest of moods towards his patron. Indeed, it was +a weakness of his to fall out occasionally with his best friends; but +when a man is waited upon by angels and ministers of grace, it is not +surprising that he should sometimes be impatient with mere mortals. Nor +is it difficult to imagine that the bland and trivial Hayley, +perpetually kind, patronizing, and obvious, should, without any definite +provocation, become presently insufferable to such a man as Blake. + +Returned to London, he resumed the production of his oracular +works,--"prophetic books," he called them. These he illustrated with his +own peculiar and beautiful designs, "all sanded over with a sort of +golden mist." Among much that is incoherent and incomprehensible may be +found passages of great force, tenderness, and beauty. The concluding +verses of the Preface to "Milton" we quote, as shadowing forth his great +moral purpose, and as revealing also the luminous heart of the cloud +that so often turns to us only its gray and obscure exterior:-- + + "And did those feet in ancient time + Walk upon England's mountain green? + And was the holy Lamb of God + On England's pleasant pastures seen? + + "And did the countenance Divine + Shine forth upon our clouded hills? + And was Jerusalem builded here + Among these dark, Satanic hills? + + "Bring me my bow of burning gold! + Bring me my arrows of desire! + Bring me my spear! O clouds, unfold! + Bring me my chariot of fire! + + "I will not cease from mental fight, + Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand, + Till we have built Jerusalem + In England's green and pleasant land." + +The same lofty aim is elsewhere expressed in the line,-- + + "I touch the heavens as an instrument to glorify the Lord!" + +Our rapidly diminishing space warns us to be brief, and we can only +glance at a few of the remaining incidents of this outwardly calm, yet +inwardly eventful life. In an evil hour--though to it we owe the +"Illustrations to Blair's Grave"--he fell into the hands of Cromek, the +shrewd Yorkshire publisher, and was tenderly entreated, as a dove in the +talons of a kite. The famous letter of Cromek to Blake is one of the +finest examples on record of long-headed worldliness bearing down upon +wrong-headed genius. Though clutching the palm in this case, and in some +others, it is satisfactory to know that Cromek's clever turns led to no +other end than poverty; and nothing worse than poverty had Blake, with +all his simplicity, to encounter. But Blake, in his poverty, had meat to +eat which the wily publisher knew not of. + +In the wake of this failure followed another. Blake had been engaged to +make twenty drawings to illustrate Ambrose Philips's "Virgil's +Pastorals" for schoolboys. The publishers saw them, and stood aghast, +declaring he must do no more. The engravers received them with derision, +and pronounced sentence, "This will never do." Encouraged, however, by +the favorable opinion of a few artists who saw them, the publishers +admitted, with an apology, the seventeen which had already been +executed, and gave the remaining three into more docile hands. Of the +two hundred and thirty cuts, the namby-pambyism, which was thought to be +the only thing adapted to the capacity of children, has sunk to the +level of its worthlessness, and the book now is valued only for Blake's +small contribution. + +Of an entirely different nature were the "Inventions from the Book of +Job," which are pronounced the most remarkable series of etchings on a +Scriptural theme that have been produced since the days of Rembrandt and +Albrecht Dürer. Of these drawings we have copies in the second volume of +the "Life," from which one can gather something of their grandeur, their +bold originality, their inexhaustible and often terrible power. His +representations of God the Father will hardly accord with modern taste, +which generally eschews all attempt to embody the mind's conceptions of +the Supreme Being; but Blake was far more closely allied to the ancient +than to the modern world. His portraiture and poetry often remind us of +the childlike familiarity--not rude in him, but utterly reverent--which +was frequently, and sometimes offensively, displayed in the old miracle +and moral plays. + +These drawings, during the latter part of his life, secured him from +actual want. A generous friend, Mr. Linnell, himself a struggling young +artist, gave him a commission, and paid him a small weekly stipend: it +was sufficient to keep the wolf from the door, and that was enough: so +the wolf was kept away, his lintel was uncrossed 'gainst angels. It was +little to this piper that the public had no ear for his piping,--to this +painter, that there was no eye for his pictures. + + "His soul was like a star, and dwelt apart." + +He had but to withdraw to his inner chamber, and all honor and +recognition awaited him. The pangs of poverty or coldness he never +experienced, for his life was on a higher plane:-- + + "I am in God's presence night and day, + He never turns his face away." + +When a little girl of extraordinary beauty was brought to him, his +kindest wish, as he stood stroking her long ringlets, was, "May God make +this world to you, my child, as beautiful as it has been to me!" His own +testimony declares,-- + + "The angel who presided at my birth + Said,--'Little creature, formed of joy and mirth, + Go, love without the help of anything on earth!'" + +But much help from above came to him. The living lines that sprung +beneath his pencil were but reminiscences of his spiritual home. +Immortal visitants, unseen by common eyes, hung enraptured over his +sketches, lent a loving ear to his songs, and left with him their legacy +to Earth. There was no looking back mournfully on the past, nor forward +impatiently to the future, but a rapturous, radiant, eternal now. Every +morning came heavy-freighted with its own delights; every evening +brought its own exceeding great reward. + +So, refusing to the last to work in traces,--flying out against +Reynolds, the bland and popular President of the Royal Academy, yet +acknowledging with enthusiasm what he deemed to be excellence,--loving +Fuseli with a steadfast love through all neglect, and hurling his +indignation at a public that refused to see his worth,--flouting at +Bacon, the great philosopher, and fighting for Barry, the restorer of +the antique, he resolutely pursued his appointed way unmoved. But the +day was fast drawing on into darkness. The firm will never quailed, but +the sturdy feet faltered. Yet, as the sun went down, soft lights +overspread the heavens. Young men came to him with fresh hearts, and +drew out all the freshness of his own. Little children learned to watch +for his footsteps over the Hampstead hills, and sat on his knee, sunning +him with their caresses. Men who towered above their time, reverencing +the god within, and bowing not down to the _dæmon à la mode_, gathered +around him, listened to his words, and did obeisance to his genius. They +never teased him with unsympathetic questioning, or enraged him with +blunt contradiction. They received his visions simply, and discussed +them rationally, deeming them worthy of study rather than of ridicule or +vulgar incredulity. To their requests the spirits were docile. Sitting +by his side at midnight, they watched while he summoned from unknown +realms long-vanished shades. William Wallace arose from his "gory bed," +Edward I. turned back from the lilies of France, and, forgetting their +ancient hate, stood before him with placid dignity. The man who built +the Pyramids lifted his ungainly features from the ingulfing centuries; +souls of blood--thirsty men, duly forced into the shape of fleas, lent +their hideousness to his night; and the Evil One himself did not disdain +to sit for his portrait to this undismayed magician. That these are +actual portraits of concrete object? is not to be affirmed. That they +are portraits of what Blake saw is as little to be denied. We are +assured that his whole manner was that of a man copying, and not +inventing, and the simplicity and sincerity of his life forbid any +thought of intentional deceit. No criticism affected him. Nothing could +shake his faith. "It must be right: I saw it so," was the beginning and +end of his defence. The testimony of these friends of his is that he was +of all artists most spiritual, devoted, and single-minded. One of them +says, if asked to point out among the intellectual a happy man, he +should at once think of Blake. One, a young artist, finding his +invention flag for a whole fortnight, had recourse to Blake. + +"It is just so with us," he exclaimed, turning to his wife, "is it not, +for weeks together, when the visions forsake us? What do we do then, +Kate?" + +"We kneel down and pray, Mr. Blake." + +To these choice spirits, these enthusiastic and confiding friends, his +house was the House of the Interpreter. The little back-room, kitchen, +bedroom, studio, and parlor in one, plain and neat, had for them a kind +of enchantment. That royal presence lighted up the "hole" into a palace. +The very walls widened with the greatness of his soul. The windows that +opened on the muddy Thames seemed to overlook the river of the water of +life. Among the scant furnishings, his high thoughts, set in noble +words, gleamed like apples of gold in pictures of silver. Over the gulf +that yawns between two worlds he flung a glorious arch, and walked +tranquilly back and forth. Heaven was as much a matter-of-fact to him as +earth. Of sacred things he spoke with a familiarity which, to those who +did not understand him, seemed either madness or blasphemy; but his +friends never misunderstood. With one exception, none who knew him +personally ever thought of calling his sanity in question. To them he +was a sweet, gentle, lovable man. They felt the truth of his life. They +saw that + + "Only that fine madness still he did retain + Which rightly should possess a poet's brain." + +Imagination was to him the great reality. The external, that which makes +the chief consciousness of most men, was to him only staging, an +incumbrance, and uncouth, but to be endured and made the most of. The +world of the imagination was the true world. Imagination _bodied_ forth +the forms of things unknown in a deeper sense, perhaps, than the great +dramatist meant. His poet's pen, his painter's pencil turned them to +shapes, and gave to airy nothings a local habitation and a name. Nay, he +denied that they were nothings. He rather asserted the actual existence +of his visions,--an existence as real, though not of the same nature, as +those of the bed or the table. Imagination was a kind of sixth sense, +and its objects were as real as the objects of the other senses. This +sense he believed to exist, though latent, in every one, and to be +susceptible of development by cultivation. This is surely a very +different thing from madness. Neither is it the low superstition of +ghosts. He recounted no miracle, nothing supernatural. It was only that +by strenuous effort and untiring devotion he had penetrated beyond the +rank and file--but not beyond the possibilities of the rank and +file--into the unseen world. Undoubtedly this power finally assumed +undue proportions. In his isolation it led him on too unresistingly. His +generation knew him not. It neglected where it should have trained, and +stared where it should have studied. He was not wily enough to conceal +or gloss over his views. Often silent with congenial companions, he +would thrust in with boisterous assertion in the company of captious +opponents. Set upon by the unfriendly and the conventional, he wilfully +hurled out his wild utterances, exaggerating everything, scorning all +explanation or modification, goading peculiarities into reckless +extravagance, on purpose to puzzle and startle, and so avenging himself +by playing off upon those who attempted to play off upon him. To the +gentle, the reverent, the receptive, the simple, he, too, was gentle and +reverent. + +Nearest and dearest of all, the "beloved Kate" held him in highest +honor. The ripples that disturbed the smooth flow of their early life +had died away and left an unruffled current. To the childless wife, he +was child, husband, and lover. No sphere so lofty, but he could come +quickly down to perform the lowliest duties. The empty platter, silently +placed on the dinner-table, was the signal for his descent from +Parnassus to the money-earning graver. No angel-faces kept him from +lighting the morning fire and setting on the breakfast-kettle before his +Kitty awoke. Their life became one. Her very spirit passed into his. By +day and by night her love surrounded him. In his moments of fierce +inspiration, when he would arise from his bed to sketch or write the +thoughts that tore his brain, she, too, arose and sat by his side, +silent, motionless, soothing him only by the tenderness of her presence. +Years and wintry fortunes made havoc of her beauty, but love renewed it +day by day for the eyes of her lover, and their hands only met in firmer +clasp as they neared the Dark River. + +It was reached at last. No violent steep, but a gentle and gracious +slope led to the cold waters that had no bitterness for him. Shining +already in the glory of the celestial city, his eyes rested upon the +dear form that had stood by his side through all these years, and with +waning strength he cried, "Stay! Keep as you are! _You_ have been ever +an angel to me: I will draw you." And, summoning his forces, he sketched +his last portrait of the fond and faithful wife. Then, comforting her +with the shortness of their separation, assuring her that he should +always be about her to take care of her, he set his face steadfastly +towards the Beautiful Gate. So joyful was his passage, so triumphant his +march, that the very sight was to them that could behold it as if heaven +itself were come down to meet him. Even the sorrowing wife could but +listen enraptured to the sweet songs he chanted to his Maker's praise; +but, "They are _not_ mine, my beloved!" he tenderly cried; "_No!_ they +are _not_ mine!" The strain he heard was of a higher mood; and +continually sounding as he went, with melodious noise, in notes on high, +he entered in through the gates into the City. + + * * * * * + +THE FIRST VISIT TO WASHINGTON. + + +One chill morning in the autumn of 1826, in the town of Keene, New +Hampshire, lights might have been seen at an unusually early hour in the +windows of a yellow one-story-and-a-half house, that stood--and still +stands, perhaps--on the corner of the main street and the Swanzey road. + +There was living in that house a blind widow, the mother of a large +family of children, now mostly scattered; and the occasion of the +unseasonable lights was the departure from home of a son yet left to +her, upon a long and uncertain adventure. + +He was a young man, eighteen years old, just out of college. Graduating +at Dartmouth, he had brought away from that institution something better +than book-learning,--a deep religious experience, which was to be his +support through trials now quickly to come, and through a subsequent +prosperity more dangerous to the soul than trials. He had been bred a +farmer's boy. He was poor, and had his living to get. And he was now +going out into the world, he scarcely knew whither, to see what prizes +were to be won. In person he was tall, slender, slightly bent; shy and +diffident in his manners; in his appearance a little green and awkward. +He had an impediment in his speech also. His name--it is an odd one, but +you may perhaps have heard it--was Salmon. + +He had been up long before day, making preparations for the journey. His +mother was up also, busily assisting him, though blind,--her intelligent +hands placing together the linen that was to remind him affectingly of +her, when unpacked in a distant city. + +A singular hush was upon the little household, though all were so +active. The sisters moved about noiselessly by candle-light, their pale +cheeks and constrained lips betraying the repressed emotion. The early +breakfast was eaten in silence,--anxious eyes looking up now and then at +the clock. It was only when the hour for the starting of the stage +struck that all seemed suddenly to remember that there were a thousand +things to be said; and so the last moments were crowded with last words. + +"Your blessing, mother!" said Salmon, (for we shall call the youth by +the youth's name,) bending before her with his heart chokingly full. + +She rose up from her chair. Her right hand held his; the other was laid +lovingly over his neck. Her blind eyes were turned upward prayerfully, +and tears streamed from them as she spoke and blessed him. Then a last +embrace; and he hurried forth from the house, his checks still wet,--not +with his own tears. + +The stage took him up. He climbed to the driver's seat. Then again the +dull clank of the lumbering coach-wheels was heard,--a heavy sound to +the mother's ears. In the dim, still light of the frosty morning he +turned and waved back his farewell to her who could not see, took his +last look at the faces at the door, and so departed from that home +forever. The past was left behind him, with all its dear associations; +and before him rose the future, chill, uncertain, yet not without gleams +of rosy brightness, like the dawn then breaking upon Monadnock's misty +head. + +Thus went forth the young man into the world, seeking his fortune. +Conscious of power, courageous, shrinking from no hardship, palpitating +with young dreams, he felt that he had his place off yonder somewhere, +beneath that brightening sky, beyond those purple hills,--but where? + +In due time he arrived in New York; but something within assured him +that here was not the field of his fortunes. So he went on to +Philadelphia. There he made a longer stop. He had a letter of +introduction to the Rev. Mr. ----, who received him with hospitality, +and used his influence to assist him in gaining a position. But the door +of Providence did not open yet: Philadelphia was not that door: his path +led farther. + +So he kept on, still drawn by that magnet which we call Destiny. He went +to Frederick: still the invisible finger pointed on. At last there was +but one more step. He secured a seat in the stage going down the +Frederick road to Washington. + +Years after he was to approach the capital of the nation with far +different prospects! But this was his first visit. It was at the close +of a bleak day, late in November, that he came in sight of the city. The +last tint of daylight was fading from a sullen sky. The dreary twilight +was setting in. Cold blew the wind from over the Maryland hills. The +trees were leafless; they shook and whistled in the blast. Gloom was +shutting down upon the capital. The city wore a dismal and forbidding +aspect; and the whole landscape was desolate and discouraging in the +extreme. Here was mud, in which the stage-coach lurched and rolled as it +descended the hills. Yonder was the watery spread of the Potomac, gray, +cold, dimly seen under the shadow of coming night. Between this mud and +that water what was there for him? Yet here was his destination. + +Years after there dwelt in Washington a man high in position, wielding a +power that was felt not only throughout this nation, but in Europe +also,--his hand dispensing benefits, his door thronged by troops of +friends. But now it was a city of strangers he was entering, a youth. Of +all the dwellers there he knew not a living soul. There was no one to +dispense favors to _him_,--to receive _him_ with cheerful look and +cordial grasp of the hand. A heavy foreboding settled upon his spirit, +as the darkness settled upon the hills. Here he was, alone and +unknown,--a bashful boy as yet, utterly wanting in that ready audacity +by means of which persons of extreme shallowness often push themselves +into notice. Well might he foresee days of gloom, long days of waiting +and struggle, stretching like the landscape before him! + +But he was not disheartened. From the depths of his spirit arose a hope, +like a bubble from a deep spring. That spring was FAITH. There, in that +dull, bleak November twilight, he seemed to feel the hand of Providence +take hold of his. And a prayer rose to his lips,--a prayer of earnest +supplication for guidance and support. Was that prayer answered? + +The stage rumbled through the naked suburbs and along the unlighted +streets. + +"Where do you stop?" asked the driver. + +"Set me down at a boarding-house, if you know of a good one." For Salmon +could not afford to go to a hotel. + +"What sort of a boarding-house? I know of a good many. Some 's right +smart,--'ristocratic, and 'ristocratic prices. Then there's some good +enough in every way, only not quite so smart,--and with this advantage, +you don't have the smartness to pay for." + +"I prefer to go to a good house, where there are nice people, without +too much smartness to be put into the bill." + +"I know jest the kind of place, I reckon!"--and the driver whipped up +his jaded horses. + +He drew up before a respectable-looking wooden tenement on Pennsylvania +Avenue, the windows of which, just lighted up, looked warm and inviting +to the chilled and weary traveller. + +"Good evening, Mrs. Markham!" said the driver to a kindly-looking lady +who came to the door at his knock. "Got room for a boarder?" + +"I don't know, I'm sure. I'm afraid not," said the lady, loud enough for +Salmon to hear and be discouraged. "There's only half a room +unoccupied,--if he would be content with that, and if he's the right +sort of person"-- + +Here she said something in a whisper to the driver, who apparently +pointed out Salmon to her inspection. + +But it was too dark for her to decide whether he would do to put into +the room with Williams; so Salmon had to get down and show himself. She +examined him, and he inquired her terms. They appeared mutually +satisfied. Accordingly the driver received directions to deposit +Salmon's baggage in the entry; and the hungry and benumbed young +traveller had the comfort of feeling that he had reached a home. + +Grateful at finding a kind woman's face to welcome him,--glad of the +opportunity to economize his slender means by sharing a room with +another person, strongly-recommended as "very quiet" by Mrs. +Markham,--Salmon washed his face, combed his hair, and ate his first +supper in Washington. He has eaten better suppers there since, no +doubt,--but not many, I fancy, that have been sweetened by a more devout +sense of reliance upon Providence. + +"Williams was a companionable person, who had a place in the Treasury +Department, and talked freely about the kind of work he had to do, and +the salary. + +"Eight hundred a year!" thought Salmon, deeming that man enviable who +had constant employment, an assured position, and eight hundred a year. +_His_ ambition was to get a living simply,--to place his foot upon some +certainty, however humble, with freedom from this present gnawing +anxiety, and with a prospect of rising, he cared not how slowly, to the +place which he felt belonged to him in the future. Little did he dream +what that place was, when he questioned Williams so curiously as to what +sort of thing the Treasury Department might be. + +"If I could be sure of half that salary,--or even of three, or two +hundred, just enough to pay my expenses, the first year,--I should be +perfectly happy!" + +"Haven't you any idea what you are going to do?" + +"None whatever." + +"What _can_ you do?" + +"For one thing, I can teach. I think I shall try that." + +"You'll find it a mighty hard place to get pupils!" said Williams, with +a dubious smile. + +Which rather gloomy prediction Salmon had to think of before going to +bed. + +But soon another subject, which he deemed of far greater importance, +occupied his mind. He had of late been seriously considering whether it +was his duty to continue his private devotions openly, or in +secret,--and had concluded, that, when occasion seemed to require it, he +ought to make an open manifestation of his faith. Here now was a test +for his conscience. His room-mate showed no signs of going out again +that night: he had pulled off his boots, put on his slippers, and +lighted his pipe. Salmon had already inferred, from the tone of his +conversation, that he was not a person who could sympathize with him in +his religious sentiments. Yet he must kneel there in his presence, if he +knelt at all. It was not the fear of ridicule, but a certain +sensitiveness of spirit, which caused him to shrink from the act. He did +not hesitate long, however. He turned, and knelt by his chair. Williams +took the pipe out of his mouth, and looked at him over his shoulder with +curious amazement. Not a word was spoken. Salmon, feeling that he had no +right to intrude his devotions upon the ear of another, prayed silently; +and Williams, compelled to respect the courageous, yet quiet manner in +which he performed what he regarded as a solemn duty, kept his +astonishment to himself. + +Then Salmon arose, and went to bed for that first time in Washington +under Mrs. Markham's roof. + +On the twenty-third of December, 1826, the following advertisement +appeared in the columns of the "National Intelligencer":-- + + "SELECT CLASSICAL SCHOOL. + + "The Subscriber intends opening a Select Classical School, in the + Western part of the City, to commence on the second Monday in + January. His number of pupils will be limited to twenty, which + will enable him to devote a much larger portion of his time and + attention than ordinary to each individual student. Instruction + will be given in all the studies preparatory to entering College, + or, if desired, in any of the higher branches of a classical + education. The subscriber pledges himself that no effort shall be + wanting on his part to promote both the moral and intellectual + improvement of those who may be confided to his care. He may be + found at his room, three doors west of Brown's Hotel. Reference + may be made to the Hon. Henry Clay; Hon. D. Chase and Hon. H. + Seymour, of the Senate; Hon. I. Bartlett and Hon. William C. + Bradley, of the House of Representatives; Rev. Wm. Hawley and Rev. + E. Allen. + + "SALMON ----. + + "Dec. 23--3td & eotJ8." + +The "Hon. Henry Clay" was then Secretary of State. The "Hon. D. Chase" +referred to was Salmon's uncle Dudley, then United States Senator from +Vermont. Congress was now in session, and he had arrived in town. He was +a man of great practical sagacity, and kept a true heart beating under +an exterior which appeared sometimes austere and eccentric. He had the +year before been a second time elected to the Senate; and when he was on +his way to Washington, Salmon had gone over from Hanover to Woodstock to +meet him. They occupied the same room at the tavern, and the uncle had +given the nephew some very good advice. What he said of the human +passions was characteristic of the man; and it made a strong impression +upon the mind of the youth:-- + +"A man's passions are given him for good, and not evil. They are not to +be destroyed, but controlled. If they get the mastery, they destroy the +man; but kept in their place, they are sources of power and happiness." + +And he used this illustration, which, though the same thing has been +said by others, remains, nevertheless, fresh as truth itself:-- + +"The passions are the winds that fill our sails; but the helmsman must +be faithful, if we would avoid shipwreck, and reach the happy port at +last." + +Salmon had remembered well these words of his uncle, and the night spent +with him at the Woodstock inn. Hearing of his arrival in Washington, he +had called on him at his boarding-house. The Senator received him +kindly, listened to his plans, approved them, and helped him to procure +the references named in the advertisement. + +Day after day the advertisement appeared; and day after day Salmon +waited for pupils. But his room, "three doors west of Brown's Hotel," +remained unvisited. Sometimes, at first, when there came a knock at Mrs. +Markham's door, his heart gave a bound of expectation; but it was never +a knock for him. + +So went out the old year, drearily enough for Salmon. He had made the +acquaintance of several people; but friends he had none. There was +nobody to whom he could open his heart,--for he was not one of those +persons "of so loose soul" that they hasten to pour out their troubles +and appeal for sympathy to the first chance-comer. In the mean time the +advertisement was to be paid for, barren of benefit though it had been +to him. There was also his board-bill to be settled at the end of each +week; and Salmon saw his slender purse grow lank and lanker than ever, +with no means within his reach of replenishing it. + +The new year came; but it brought no brightening skies to him. Lonely +enough those days were! When tired of waiting in his room, he would go +out and walk,--always alone. He strolled up and down the Potomac, and +sometimes crossed over to the Virginia shore, and climbed the brown, +wooded banks there, and listened to the clamor of the crows in the +leafless oak-trees. There was something in their wild cawing, in the +desolateness of the fields, in the rush of the cold river, that suited +his mood. It was winter in his spirit too, just then. + +Sometimes he visited the halls of Congress, and saw the great +legislators of those days. There was something here that fed his heart. +Wintry as his prospects were, the sun still shone overhead; his courage +never failed him; he never gave way to weak repining; and when he +entered those halls,--when he saw the deep fire in the eyes of Webster, +and heard the superb thunder of his voice,--when he listened to the +witty and terrible invectives of Randolph, that "meteor of Congress," as +Benton calls him, and watched the electric effect of the "long and +skinny forefinger" pointed and shaken,--when charmed by this speaker, or +convinced by that, or roused to indignation by another,--there was +kindled a sense of power within his own breast, a fire prophetic of his +future. + +On returning home, he would look on his table for communications, or he +would ask, "Has anybody called for me to-day?" But there was never any +letter; and Mrs. Markham's gentle response always was, "No one, Sir." + +The thirteenth of January passed,--his birthday. He was now nineteen. +When the world is bright before us, birthdays are not so unpleasant. But +to feel that your time is slipping away from you, with nothing +accomplishing,--to see no rainbow of promise in the clouds,--to walk the +streets of a lonely city, and think of home,--these things make a +birthday sad and solitary. + +At last his money was all gone. The prospect was more than dismal,--it +was appalling. What was he to do? + +Should he borrow of his uncle? "Not unless it be to keep me from +starvation!" was his proud resolve. + +Should he apply to his mother? The remembrance of what she had already +done for him was as much as his heart could bear. Her image, venerable, +patient, blind, was before him: he recalled the sacrifices she had made +for his sake, postponing her own comfort, and accepting pain and +privation, in order that her boy might have an education; and he was +filled with remorse at the thought that he had never before fully +appreciated all that love and devotion. For so it is: seldom, until too +late, comes any true recognition of such sacrifices. But when she who +made them is no longer with us,--too often, alas, when she has passed +forever beyond the reach of filial gratitude and affection,--we awake at +once to a realization of her worth and of our loss. + +What Salmon did was to make a confidant of Mrs. Markham; for he felt +that she at least ought to know his resources. + +"This is all _I_ have for the present," he said to her one day, when +paying his week's bill. "I thought you ought to know. I do not wish to +appear a swindler,"--with a gloomy smile. + +"You a swindler!" exclaimed the good woman, with glistening eyes. "I +would trust you as far as I would trust myself. If you haven't any +money, never mind. You shall stay, and pay me when you can. Don't worry +yourself at all. It will turn out right, I am sure. You'll have pupils +yet." + +"I trust so," said Salmon, touched by her kindness. "At all events, if +my life is spared, you shall be paid some day. Now you know how I am +situated; and if you choose to keep me longer on an uncertainty, I shall +be greatly obliged to you." + +His voice shook a little as he spoke. + +"As long as you please," she replied. + +Just then there was a knock. + +"Maybe that is for you!" + +And she hastened away, rather to conceal her emotion, I suspect, than in +the hope of admitting a patron for her boarder. + +She returned in a minute with shining countenance. + +"A gentleman and his little boy, to see Mr. ----! I have shown them into +the parlor." + +Salmon was amazed. Could it be true? A pupil at last! He gave a hurried +glance at himself In the mirror, straightened his shirt-collar, gave his +hair a touch, and descended, with beating heart, to meet his visitor. + +He was dignified enough, however, on entering the parlor, and so cool +you would never have suspected that he almost felt his fate depending +upon this gentleman's business. + +He was a Frenchman,--polite, affable, and of a manner so gracious, you +would have said he had come to beg a favor, rather than to grant one. + +"This is Mr. ----? My name is Bonfils. This is my little boy. We have +come to entreat of you the kindness to take him into your school." + +"I will do so most gladly!" said Salmon, shaking the boy's hand. + +"You are very good. We shall be greatly indebted to you. When does your +school commence?" + +"As soon, Sir, as I shall have engaged a sufficient number of pupils." + +"All! you have not a great number, then?" + +"I have none," Salmon was obliged to confess. + +"None? You surprise me! I have seen your advertisement, I hear good +things said of you,--why, then, no pupils?" + +"I am hardly known yet. Allow me to count your son here my first, and I +have no doubt but others will soon come in." + +"Assuredly! Make your compliments to Mr. ----, my son. I shall interest +myself. I think I shall send you some pupils. In mean time, my son will +wait." + +And with many expressions of good-will the cheerful Monsieur Bonfils +withdrew. + +This was a gleam of hope. The door of Providence had opened just a +crack. + +It opened no farther, however. No more pupils came. Salmon waited. Day +after day glided by like sand under his feet. He could not afford even +to advertise now. He was getting fearfully in debt; and debt is always a +nightmare to a generous and upright mind. + +"Any pupils yet?" asked Monsieur Bonfils, meeting him, one day, in the +street. + +"Not one!" said Salmon, with gloomy emphasis. + +"Ah, that is unfortunate!" + +He expected nothing less than that the Frenchman would add,--"Then I +must place my son elsewhere." But no; he was polite as ever; he was +charming. + +"You should have many before now. I have spoken for you to my friends. +But patience, my dear Sir. You will succeed. In mean time we will wait." + +And with a cordial hand-shake, and a Parisian flourish, he smilingly +passed on, leaving a gleam of sunshine on the young man's path. + +Now Salmon was one who would never, if he could help it, abandon an +undertaking in which he had once embarked. But when convinced that +persistence was hopeless, then, however reluctantly, he would give it +up. On the present occasion, he was not only spending his time and +exhausting his energies in a pursuit which grew each day more and more +dubious, but his conscience was stung with the thought that he was +wronging others. Kind as Mrs. Markham was to him, he did not like to +look her in the face and feel that he owed her a debt which was always +increasing, and which he knew not how he should ever pay. + +"Why don't you get a place in the Department?" said Williams, that +enviable fellow, who had light duties, several hours each day to +himself, and eight hundred a year! + +"That's more easily said than done!" And Salmon shook his head. + +"No, it isn't!" The fortunate Williams sat with his legs upon the table, +one foot on the other, a pipe in his mouth, and a book in his hand, +enjoying himself. "You have an uncle in the Senate. Ask him to use his +influence for you. He can get you a place." And puffing a fragrant cloud +complacently into the air, he returned to his pleasant reading. + +Salmon walked the room. He went out and walked the street. A sore +struggle was taking place in his breast. Should he give up the school? +Should he go and ask this thing of his uncle? Oh, for somebody to whom +he could go for counsel and sympathy! + +"Williams is perhaps right I may wait a year, and not get another pupil. +Meanwhile I am growing shabby. I need a new pair of boots. My +washerwoman must be paid. Why not get a clerkship as a temporary thing, +if nothing more? My uncle can get it for me, without any trouble to +himself. It is not like asking him for money." + +Yet he dreaded to trouble the Senator even thus much. Proud and +sensitive natures do not like to beg favors, any way. + +"I'll wait one day longer. Then, if not a pupil applies, I'll go to my +uncle--" + +He waited twenty-four hours. Not a pupil. Then, desperate and +discouraged at last, Salmon buttoned his coat, and walked fast through +the streets to his uncle's boarding-house. + +It was evening. The Senator was at home. + +"Well, Salmon?" inquiringly. "How do you get on?" + +"Poorly," said Salmon, sitting down, with his hat on his knee. + +"You must have patience, boy!" said the Senator, laying down a pamphlet +open at the page where he was reading when his nephew came in. "Pluck +and patience,--those are the two oars that pull the boat." + +"I have patience enough, and I don't think I'm lacking in pluck," +replied Salmon, coldly. "But one thing I lack, and am likely to +lack,--pupils, I've only one, and I expect every day to lose him." + +"Well, what can I do for you?" said the Senator, perceiving that his +nephew had come for something. + +"I would like to have you get me a place in the Treasury Department." + +It was a minute before Dudley Chase replied. He took up the pamphlet, +rolled it together, then threw it abruptly upon the table. + +"Salmon," said he, "listen. I once got an appointment for a nephew of +mine, and it ruined him. If you want half-a-dollar with which to buy a +spade, and go out and dig for your living, I'll give it to you +cheerfully. But I will not get you a place under Government." + +Salmon felt a choking sensation in his throat. He knew his uncle did not +mean it for unkindness; but the sentence seemed hard. He arose, +speechless for a moment, mechanically brushing his hat. + +"Thank you. I will not trouble you for the half-dollar. I shall try to +get along without the appointment. Good night, uncle." + +"Good night, Salmon." Dudley accompanied him to the door. He must have +seen what a blow he had given him. "You think me harsh," he added; "but +the time will come when you will see that this is the best advice I +could give you." + +"Perhaps," said Salmon, stiffly; and be walked away, filled with +disappointment and bitterness. + +"Well, did he promise it?" asked Williams, who sat up awaiting his +return. + +He had been thinking he would like to have Salmon in his own room at the +Department; but now, seeing how serious he looked, his own countenance +fell. + +"What! Didn't he give you any encouragement?" + +"On the other hand," said Salmon, "he advised me to buy a spade and go +to digging for my living! And I shall do it before I ask again for an +appointment." + +Williams was astonished. He thought the Senator from Vermont must be +insane. + +But, after the lapse of a few years, perhaps he, too, saw that the uncle +had given his nephew good advice indeed. Williams remained a clerk in +the Department, and was never anything else. Perhaps, if Salmon had got +the appointment he sought, he would have become a clerk like him, and +would never have been anything else. + +In a little more than twenty years Salmon was himself a Senator, and had +the making of such clerks. And what happened a dozen years later? This: +he who had once sought in vain a petty appointment was called to +administer the finances of the nation. Instead of a clerk grown gray in +the Department, to whom the irreverent youngsters might be saying +to-day, "----, do this," or, "----, do that," and he doeth it, he is +himself the supreme ruler there. He could never have got _that_ place by +promotion in the Department itself. I mention this, not to speak +slightingly of clerkships,--for he who does his duty faithfully in any +calling, however humble, is worthy of honor,--but to show that the ways +of Providence are not our ways, and that often we are disappointed for +our own good. Had a clerkship been what was in store for Salmon, he +would have obtained it; but since, had he got it, he would probably have +never been ready to give it up, how fortunate that he received instead +the offer of fifty cents wherewith to purchase a spade! + +It may be, when the new Secretary entered upon his duties, Williams was +there still; for there were men in the Treasury who had been there a +much longer term than from 1826 to 1861. I should like to know. I can +fancy him, gray now, slightly bald, and rather round-shouldered, but +cheerful as a cricket, introducing himself to the chief. + +"My name is Williams. Don't you remember Williams,--boarded at Mrs. +Markham's in '26 and '27, when you did?" + +"What! David Williams? Are you here yet?" + +"Yes, your Honor." (These old clerks all say, "Your Honor," in +addressing the Secretary. The younger ones are not so respectful.) "I +was never so lucky as to be turned out, and I was never quite prepared +to leave. You have got in at last, I see! But it was necessary for you +to make a wide circuit first, in order to come in at the top!" + +Did such an interview ever take place, I wonder? + +But we are talking of that evening so long ago, when Williams seemed the +lucky one, and things looked so black to Salmon, after he had asked of +his uncle bread, and received (as he then thought) a stone. + +"Well, then I don't know what the deuse you _will_ do!" said Williams, +knocking the ashes out of his pipe. + +You would have said that his hopes of Salmon were likewise ashes: he had +entertained himself with them a little while; now they were burnt out; +and he seemed to knock them out of his pipe, too, into the fire. He got +up, yawned, said he pitied ----, and went to bed. + +In a little while his breathing denoted that he was fast asleep. + +Salmon went to bed, too; but did he sleep? + +Do not think, after all this, that he gave way to weak despondency. +Something within him seemed to say, "What you have you must obtain +through earnest struggle and endeavor. It is only commonplace people and +weaklings who find the hinges of life all smoothly oiled. Great doors do +not open so easily. Be brave, be strong, be great." It was the voice of +Faith speaking within him. + +The next morning he arose, more a man than he had ever felt before. This +long and severe trial had been necessary to develop what was in him. His +self-reliance, his strength of character, his faith in God's +providence,--these were tried, and not found wanting. + +Still the veil of the future remained impenetrable. Not a gleam of light +shone through its sable folds. He could only watch for its uplifting, +and sit still. + +"A bad beginning makes a good ending," said Williams, one evening, to +comfort him. + +"Yes,--and a good beginning sometimes makes a bad ending. I had a lesson +on that subject once. When I was about eleven years old, I started from +Keene, with one of my sisters, to go and visit another sister, who was +married and living at Hookset Falls, over on the Merrimac. It was in +winter, and we set out in a sleigh with one horse. I was driver. My idea +of sleighing was bells and fast driving; and I put the poor beast up to +all he knew. We intended to reach a friend's house, at Peterborough, +before night; but I found I had used up our horse-power before we had +made much more than half the journey. Then came on a violent +snow-squall, which obliterated the track. It grew dark; we were blinded +by the storm; we got into drifts, and finally quite lost our way. Not a +house was in sight, and the horse was tired out. The prospect of a night +in the storm, and only a winding-sheet of snow to cover us, made me +bitterly regret the foolish ambition with which I had set out. At last +my sister, whose eyes were better than mine, saw a light. We went +wallowing through the drifts towards it, and discovered a house. Here we +got a boy to guide us; and so at last reached our friend's, in as sad a +plight as ever two such mortals were in. Since which time," added +Salmon, "I have rather inclined to the opinion that slow beginnings, +with steady progress, are best." + +"That's first-rate philosophy!" said Williams, secretly congratulating +himself, however, on having made what he considered a brisk start in +life. + +One day Salmon passed a store where some spades were exposed for sale. +He stopped to look at them. There was a strange smile on his face. + +"Perhaps, after all, digging is my vocation! Well, it is an honorable +one. I only wish to know what God would have me to do. If to dig, then I +will undertake it cheerfully." + +However, there was one great objection to his lifting a spade. It would +first have been necessary to apply to his uncle for the once-rejected +half-dollar. He was determined never to do that. + +He walked home, very thoughtful. He could not see how it was possible +that any good fortune should ever happen to him in Washington. The +sights of the city had become exceedingly distasteful to him, associated +as they were with his hopes deferred and his heart-sickness. He reached +his door. Mrs. Markham met him with beaming countenance. + +"There is a gentleman waiting for you! I reckon it's another pupil!" + +His face brightened for an instant. But it was clouded again quickly, as +be reflected,-- + +"_One_ more pupil! Very likely! That makes two! At this rate, I shall +have four in the course of a year!" + +He was inclined to be sarcastic with himself. But he checked the +ungrateful thoughts at once. + +"What Providence sends me, that let me cheerfully and thankfully +accept!" + +He entered the parlor. A gentlemanly person, with an air of culture, +advanced to meet him. + +"This is Mr. ----?" + +"That is my name, Sir." + +"Mrs. Markham said you would be in in a minute; so I have waited." + +"You are very kind to do so, Sir. Sit down." + +"I have seen your advertisement in the 'Intelligencer.' You still think +of establishing a school?" + +"That is my intention." + +"May I ask if you have been successful in obtaining pupils?" + +"Not very. I have one engaged. I would like a dozen more, to begin +with." + +The gentleman took his hat. "Of course he will go, now he knows what my +prospects are!" But Salmon was mistaken. The visitor seemed to have +taken his hat merely for the sake of having something in his hands, to +occupy them. + +"Then perhaps you will be pleased to listen to my proposition? + +"Certainly, Sir." + +"My name is Plumley. I have established a successful classical school, +as you may be aware. It is in G-Street." + +"I have heard of you, Sir." And Salmon might have added, "I have envied +you!" + +"Well, Mrs. Phimley has recently opened a young ladies' school, which +has succeeded beyond all our expectations." + +"I congratulate you sincerely!" + +"But it is found that the two schools are more than we can attend to. I +propose to give up one. Now, if you choose to take the boys' school off +my hands, I will make over my entire interest in it to you. Perhaps you +may know the character the school sustains. We have, as pupils, sons of +the Honorable Henry Clay, William Wirt, Southard, and other eminent men. +The income amounts to something like eight hundred a year. You can go in +next Monday, if you like." + +Thus suddenly the door, so long mysteriously closed, flew open wide, "on +golden hinges turning." What Salmon saw within was heaven. He was +dazzled. He was almost stunned with happiness. His lips quivered, his +voice failed him as he spoke. + +"Mr. Plumley, this is--you are--too kind!" + +"You accept?" + +"Most gratefully!" + +The young man was regaining possession of himself. He grasped the +other's hand. + +"You do not know what this is to me, Sir! You cannot know from what you +have saved me! Providence has surely sent you to me! I cannot thank you +now; but some day--perhaps--it may be in my power to do you a service." + +He was not the only one happy. Mr. Plumley felt the sweetness of doing a +kind action for one who was truly worthy and grateful. From that moment +they were friends. Salmon engaged to see him again, and make +arrangements for entering the school the next Monday; and they parted. + +His benefactor gone, Salmon hastened to tell the good news to Mrs. +Markham. But he could not remain in the house. His joy was too great to +be thus confined. Again he went out,--but how different now the world +looked to his eyes! He had not observed before that it was such a lovely +spring day. The sky overhead was of heaven's deepest hue. The pure, +sweet air was like the elixir of life. The hills were wondrously +beautiful, all about the city; and it seemed, that, whichever way he +turned, there were birds singing in sympathy with his joy. The Potomac, +stretching away with soft and misty glimmer between its hazy banks, was +like the river of some exquisite dream. + +It was no selfish happiness he felt. He thought of his mother and +sisters at home,--of all those to whom he was indebted; and in the +lightness of his spirit, after its heavy burden had been taken away, he +lifted up his heart in thanksgiving to the Giver of all blessings. + +The school, transferred to his charge, continued successful; and it +opened the way to successes of greater magnitude. Through all his +subsequent career he looked back to this as the beginning; and he ever +retained for Mr. Plumley the feeling we cherish for one whom we regard +as a Heaven-appointed agent of some great benefaction. Were it not for +trenching upon ground too private and personal, we might here complete +the romance, by relating how the young man's vaguely uttered +presentiment, that he might some day render him a service, was, long +afterwards, touchingly realized. But enough. All we promised ourselves +at the start was a glance at the Secretary's first visit to Washington. + + * * * * * + +HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS. + +BY CHRISTOPHER CROWFIELD. + +IV. + + +Talking to you in this way once a month, O my confidential reader, there +seems to be danger, as in all intervals of friendship, that we shall not +readily be able to take up our strain of conversation, just where we +left off. Suffer me, therefore, to remind you that the month past left +us seated at the fireside, just as we had finished reading of what a +home was, and how to make one. + +The fire had burned low, and great, solid hickory coals were winking +dreamily at us from out their fluffy coats of white ashes,--just as if +some household sprite there were opening now one eye and then the other, +and looking in a sleepy, comfortable way at us. + +The close of my piece, about the good house-mother, had seemed to tell +on my little audience. Marianne had nestled close to her mother, and +laid her head on her knee; and though Jennie sat up straight as a pin, +yet her ever-busy knitting was dropped in her lap, and I saw the glint +of a tear in her quick, sparkling eye,--yes, actually a little bright +bead fell upon her work; whereupon she started up actively, and declared +that the fire wanted just one more stick to make a blaze before bedtime; +and then there was such a raking among the coals, such an adjusting of +the andirons, such vigorous arrangement of the wood, and such a brisk +whisking of the hearth-brush, that it was evident Jennie had something +on her mind. + +When all was done, she sat down again and looked straight into the +blaze, which went dancing and crackling up, casting glances and flecks +of light on our pictures and books, and making all the old, familiar +furniture seem full of life and motion. + +"I think that's a good piece," she said, decisively. "I think those are +things that should be thought about." + +Now Jennie was the youngest of our flock, and therefore, in a certain +way, regarded by my wife and me as perennially "the baby"; and these +little, old-fashioned, decisive ways of announcing her opinions seemed +so much a part of her nature, so peculiarly "Jennyish," as I used to +say, that my wife and I only exchanged amused glances over her head, +when they occurred. + +In a general way, Jennie, standing in the full orb of her feminine +instincts like Diana in the moon, rather looked down on all masculine +views of women's matters as "_tolerabiles ineptiae_"; but towards her +papa she had gracious turns of being patronizing to the last degree; and +one of these turns was evidently at its flood-tide, as she proceeded to +say,-- + +"_I_ think papa is right,--that keeping house and having a home, and all +that, is a very serious thing, and that people go into it with very +little thought about it. I really think those things papa has been +saying there ought to be thought about." + +"Papa," said Marianne, "I wish you would tell me exactly how _you_ would +spend that money you gave me for house-furnishing. I should like just +your views." + +"Precisely," said Jennie, with eagerness; "because it is just as papa +says,--a sensible man, who has thought, and had experience, can't help +having some ideas, even about women's affairs, that are worth attending +to. I think so, decidedly." + +I acknowledged the compliment for my sex and myself with my best bow. + +"But then, papa," said Marianne, "I can't help feeling sorry that one +can't live in such a way as to have beautiful things around one. I'm +sorry they must cost so much, and take so much care, for I am made so +that I really want them. I do so like to see pretty things! I do like +rich carpets and elegant carved furniture, and fine china and cut-glass +and silver. I can't bear mean, common-looking rooms. I should so like to +have my house look beautiful!" + +"Your house ought not to look mean and common,--your house ought to look +beautiful," I replied. "It would be a sin and a shame to have it +otherwise. No house ought to be fitted up for a future home without a +strong and a leading reference to beauty in all its arrangements. If I +were, a Greek, I should say that the first household libation should be +made to beauty; but, being an old-fashioned Christian, I would say that +he who prepares a home with no eye to beauty neglects the example of the +great Father who has filled our earth-home with such elaborate +ornament." + +"But then, papa, there's the money!" said Jennie, shaking her little +head wisely. "You men don't think of that. You want us girls, for +instance, to be patterns of economy, but we must always be wearing +fresh, nice things; you abhor soiled gloves and worn shoes: and yet how +is all this to be done without money? And it's just so in housekeeping. +You sit in your arm-chairs and conjure up visions of all sorts of +impossible things to be done; but when mamma there takes out that little +account-book, and figures away on the cost of things, where do the +visions go?" + +"You are mistaken, my little dear, and you talk just like a +woman,"--(this was my only way of revenging myself,)--"that is to say, +you jump to conclusions, without sufficient knowledge. I maintain that +in house-furnishing, as well as woman-furnishing, there's nothing so +economical as beauty." + +"There's one of papa's paradoxes!" said Jennie. + +"Yes," said I, "that is my thesis, which I shall nail up over the +mantel-piece there, as Luther nailed his to the church-door. It is time +to rake up the fire now; but to-morrow night I will give you a paper on +the Economy of the Beautiful." + + * * * * * + +"Come, now we are to have papa's paradox," said Jennie, as soon as the +teachings had been carried out. + +_Entre nous_, I must tell you that insensibly we had fallen into the +habit of taking our tea by my study-fire. Tea, you know, is a mere +nothing in itself, its only merit being its social and poetic +associations, its warmth and fragrance,--and the more socially and +informally it can be dispensed, the more in keeping with its airy and +cheerful nature. + +Our circle was enlightened this evening by the cheery visage of Bob +Stephens, seated, as of right, close to Marianne's work-basket. + +"You see, Bob," said Jennie, "papa has undertaken to prove that the most +beautiful things are always the cheapest." + +"I'm glad to hear that," said Bob,--"for there's a carved antique +bookcase and study-table that I have my eye on, and if this can in any +way be made to appear"-- + +"Oh, it won't be made to appear," said Jennie, settling herself at her +knitting, "only in some transcendental, poetic sense, such as papa can +always make out. Papa is more than half a poet, and his truths turn out +to be figures of rhetoric, when one comes to apply them to matters of +fact." + +"Now, Miss Jennie, please remember my subject and thesis," I +replied,--"that in house-furnishing there is nothing so economical as +beauty; and I will make it good against all comers, not by figures of +rhetoric, but by figures of arithmetic. I am going to be very +matter-of-fact and commonplace in my details, and keep ever in view the +addition-table. I will instance a case which has occurred under my own +observation." + + * * * * * + +THE ECONOMY OF THE BEAUTIFUL. + +Two of the houses lately built on the new land in Boston were bought by +two friends, Philip and John. Philip had plenty of money, and paid the +cash down for his house, without feeling the slightest vacancy in his +pocket. John, who was an active, rising young man, just entering on a +flourishing business, had expended all his moderate savings for years in +the purchase of his dwelling, and still had a mortgage remaining, which +he hoped to clear off by his future successes. Philip begins the work of +furnishing as people do with whom money is abundant, and who have simply +to go from shop to shop and order all that suits their fancy and is +considered 'the thing' in good society. John begins to furnish with very +little money. He has a wife and two little ones, and he wisely deems +that to insure to them a well-built house, in an open, airy situation, +with conveniences for warming, bathing, and healthy living, is a wise +beginning in life; but it leaves him little or nothing beyond. + +Behold, then, Philip and his wife, well pleased, going the rounds of +shops and stores in fitting up their new dwelling, and let us follow +step by step. To begin with the wall-paper. Imagine a front and back +parlor, with folding-doors, with two south windows on the front, and two +looking on a back court, after the general manner of city houses. We +will suppose they require about thirty rolls of wall-paper. Philip buys +the heaviest French velvet, with gildings and traceries, at four dollars +a roll. This, by the time it has been put on, with gold mouldings, +according to the most established taste of the best paper-hangers, will +bring the wall-paper of the two rooms to a figure something like two +hundred dollars. Now they proceed to the carpet-stores, and there are +thrown at their feet by obsequious clerks velvets and Axminsters, with +flowery convolutions and medallion-centres, as if the flower-gardens of +the tropics were whirling in waltzes, with graceful lines of +arabesque,--roses, callas, lilies, knotted, wreathed, twined, with blue +and crimson and golden ribbons, dazzling marvels of color and tracery. +There, is no restraint in price,--four or six dollars a yard, it is all +the same to them,--and soon a magic flower-garden blooms on the floors, +at a cost of five hundred dollars. A pair of elegant rugs, at fifty +dollars apiece, complete the inventory, and bring our rooms to the mark +of eight hundred dollars for papering and carpeting alone. Now come the +great mantel-mirrors for four hundred more, and our rooms progress. Then +comes the upholsterer, and measures our four windows, that he may +skilfully barricade them from air and sunshine. The fortifications +against heaven, thus prepared, cost, in the shape of damask, cord, +tassels, shades, laces, and cornices, about two hundred dollars per +window. To be sure, they make the rooms close and sombre as the grave; +but they are of the most splendid stuffs; and if the sun would only +reflect, he would see, himself, how foolish it was for him to try to +force himself into a window guarded by his betters. If there is anything +cheap and plebeian, it is sunshine and fresh air! Behold us, then, with +our two rooms papered, carpeted, and curtained for two thousand dollars; +and now are to be put in them sofas, lounges, étageres, centre-tables, +screens, chairs of every pattern and device, for which it is but +moderate to allow a thousand more. We have now two parlors furnished at +an outlay of three thousand dollars, without a single picture, a single +article of statuary, a single object of Art of any kind, and without any +light to see them by, if they were there. We must say for our Boston +upholsterers and furniture-makers that such good taste generally reigns +in their establishments that rooms furnished at hap-hazard from them +cannot fail of a certain air of good taste, so far as the individual +things are concerned. But the different articles we have supposed, +having been ordered without reference to one another or the rooms, have, +when brought together, no unity of effect, and the general result is +scattering and confused. If asked how Philip's parlors look, your reply +is,--"Oh, the usual way of such parlors,--everything that such people +usually get,--medallion-carpets, carved furniture, great mirrors, bronze +mantel-ornaments, and so on." The only impression a stranger receives, +while waiting in the dim twilight of these rooms, is that their owner +is rich, and able to get good, handsome things, such as all other rich +people get. + +Now our friend John, as often happens in America, is moving in the same +social circle with Philip, visiting the same people,--his house is the +twin of the one Philip has been furnishing, and how shall he, with a few +hundred dollars, make his rooms even presentable beside those which +Philip has fitted up elegantly and three thousand? + +Now for the economy of beauty. Our friend must make his prayer to the +Graces,--for, if they cannot save him, nobody can. One thing John has to +begin with, that rare gift to man, a wife with the magic cestus of +Venus,--not around her waist, but, if such a thing could be, in her +finger-ends. All that she touches falls at once into harmony and +proportion. Her eye for color and form is intuitive: let her arrange a +garret, with nothing but boxes, barrels, and cast-off furniture in it, +and ten to one she makes it seem the most attractive place in the house. +It is a veritable "gift of good faërie," this tact of beautifying and +arranging, that some women have,--and, on the present occasion, it has a +real material value, that can be estimated in dollars and cents. Come +with us and you can see the pair taking their survey of the yet +unfurnished parlors, as busy and happy as a couple of blue-birds picking +up the first sticks and straws for their nest. + +"There are two sunny windows to begin with," says the good fairy, with +an appreciative glance. "That insures flowers all winter." + +"Yes," says John; "I never would look at a house without a good sunny +exposure. Sunshine is the best ornament of a house, and worth an extra +thousand a year. + +"Now for our wall-paper," says she. "Have you looked at wall-papers, +John?" + +"Yes; we shall get very pretty ones for thirty-seven cents a roll; all +you want of a paper, you know, is to make a ground-tint to throw out +your pictures and other matters, and to reflect a pleasant tone of +light." + +"Well, John, you know Uncle James says that a stone-color is the +best,--but I can't bear those cold blue grays." + +"Nor I," says John. "If we must have gray, let it at least be a gray +suffused with gold or rose-color, such as you see at evening in the +clouds." + +"So I think," responds she; "but better, I should like a paper with a +tone of buff,--something that produces warm yellowish reflections, and +will almost make you think the sun is shining in cold gray weather; and +then there is nothing that lights up so cheerfully in the evening. In +short, John, I think the color of a _zafferano_ rose will be just about +the shade we want." + +"Well, I can find that, in good American paper, as I said before, at +from thirty-seven to forty cents a roll. Then, our bordering: there's an +important question, for that must determine the carpet, the chairs, and +everything else. Now what shall be the ground-tint of our rooms?" + +"There are only two to choose between," says the lady,--"green and +maroon: which is the best for the picture?" + +"I think," says John, looking above the mantel-piece, as if he saw a +picture there,--"I think a border of maroon velvet, with maroon +furniture, is the best for the picture." + +"I think so too," said she; "and then we will have that lovely maroon +and crimson carpet that I saw at Lowe's;--it is an ingrain, to be sure, +but has a Brussels pattern, a mossy, mixed figure, of different shades +of crimson; it has a good warm, strong color, and when I come to cover +the lounges and our two old arm-chairs with a pretty maroon _rep_, it +will make such a pretty effect." + +"Yes," said John; "and then, you know, our picture is so bright, it will +light up the whole. Everything depends on the picture." + +Now as to "the picture," it has a story must be told. John, having been +all his life a worshipper and adorer of beauty and beautiful things, +had never passed to or from his business without stopping at the +print-shop windows, and seeing a little of what was there. + +On one of these occasions he was smitten to the heart with the beauty of +an autumn landscape, where the red maples and sumachs, the purple and +crimson oaks, all stood swathed and harmonized together in the hazy +Indian-summer atmosphere. There was a great yellow chestnut-tree, on a +distant hill, which stood out so naturally that John instinctively felt +his fingers tingling for a basket, and his heels alive with a desire to +bound over on to the rustling hill-side and pick up the glossy brown +nuts. Everything was there of autumn, even to the golden-rod and purple +asters and scarlet creepers in the foreground. + +John went in and inquired. It was by an unknown French artist, without +name or patrons, who had just come to our shores to study our scenery, +and this was the first picture he had exposed for sale. John had just +been paid a quarter's salary; he bethought him of board-bill and +washerwoman, sighed, and faintly offered fifty dollars. + +To his surprise he was taken up at once, and the picture became his. +John thought himself dreaming. He examined his treasure over and over, +and felt sure that it was the work of no amateur beginner, but of a +trained hand and a true artist-soul. So he found his way to the studio +of the stranger, and apologized for having got such a gem for so much +less than its worth. "It was all I _could_ give, though," he said; "and +one who paid four times as much could not value it more." And so John +took one and another of his friends, with longer purses than his own, to +the studio of the modest stranger; and now his pieces command their full +worth in the market, and he works with orders far ahead of his ability +to execute, giving to the canvas the traits of American scenery as +appreciated and felt by the subtile delicacy of the French mind,--our +rural summer views, our autumn glories, and the dreamy, misty delicacy +of our snowy winter landscapes. Whoso would know the truth of the same, +let him inquire for the modest studio of Morvillier, at Malden, scarce a +bow-shot from our Boston. + +This picture had always been the ruling star of John's house, his main +dependence for brightening up his bachelor-apartments; and when he came +to the task of furbishing those same rooms for a fair occupant, the +picture was still his mine of gold. For a picture, painted by a real +artist, who studies Nature minutely and conscientiously, has something +of the charm of the good Mother herself,--something of her faculty of +putting on different aspects under different lights. John and his wife +had studied their picture at all hours of the day: they had seen how it +looked when the morning sun came aslant the scarlet maples and made a +golden shimmer over the blue mountains, how it looked toned down in the +cool shadows of afternoon, and how it warmed up in the sunset, and died +off mysteriously into the twilight; and now, when larger parlors were to +be furnished, the picture was still the tower of strength, the +rallying-point of their hopes. + +"Do you know, John," said the wife, hesitating, "I am really in doubt +whether we shall not have to get at least a few new chairs and a sofa +for our parlors? They are putting in such splendid things at the other +door that I am positively ashamed of ours; the fact is, they look almost +disreputable,--like a heap of rubbish." + +"Well," said John, laughing, "I don't suppose all together sent to an +auction-room would bring us fifty dollars, and yet, such as they are, +they answer the place of better things for us; and the fact is, Mary, +the hard impassable barrier in the case is, that there really _is no +money to get any more_." + +"Ah, well, then, if there isn't, we must see what we can do with these, +and summon all the good fairies to our aid," said Mary. "There's your +little cabinet-maker, John, will look over the things, and furbish them +up; there's that broken arm of the chair must be mended, and everything +revarnished; then I have found such a lovely _rep_, of just the richest +shade of maroon, inclining to crimson, and when we come to cover the +lounges and arm-chairs and sofas and ottomans all alike, you know they +will be quite another thing." + +"Trust you for that, Mary! By-the-by, I've found a nice little woman, +who has worked on upholstery, who will come in by the day, and be the +hands that shall execute the decrees of your taste." + +"Yes, I am sure we shall get on capitally. Do you know that I'm almost +glad we can't get new things? it's a sort of enterprise to see what we +can do with old ones." + +"Now, you see, Mary," said John, seating himself on a lime-cask which +the plasterers had left, and taking out his memorandum-book, "you see, +I've calculated this thing all over; I've found a way by which I can +make our rooms beautiful and attractive without a cent expended on new +furniture." + +"Well, let's hear." + +"Well, my way is short and simple. We must put things into our rooms +that people will look at, so that they will forget to look at the +furniture, and never once trouble their heads about it. People never +look at furniture so long as there is anything else to look at; just as +Napoleon, when away on one of his expeditions, being told that the +French populace were getting disaffected, wrote back, 'Gild the _dome +des Invalides_' and so they gilded it, and the people, looking at that, +forgot everything else." + +"But I'm not clear yet," said Mary, "what is coming of this rhetoric." + +"Well, then, Mary, I'll tell you. A suit of new carved black-walnut +furniture, severe in taste and perfect in style, such as I should choose +at David and Saul's, could not be got under three hundred dollars, and I +haven't the three hundred to give. What, then, shall we do? We must fall +back on our resources; we must look over our treasures. We have our +proof cast of the great glorious head of the Venus di Milo; we have +those six beautiful photographs of Rome, that Brown brought to us; we +have the great German lithograph of the San Sisto Mother and Child, and +we have the two angel-heads, from the same; we have that lovely golden +twilight sketch of Heade's; we have some sea-photographs of Bradford's; +we have an original pen-and-ink sketch by Billings; and then, as before, +we have 'our picture.' What has been the use of our watching at the +gates and waiting at the doors of Beauty all our lives, if she hasn't +thrown us out a crust now and then, so that we might have it for time of +need? Now, you see, Mary, we must make the toilet of our rooms just as a +pretty woman makes hers when money runs low, and she sorts and freshens +her ribbons, and matches them to her hair and eyes, and, with a bow +here, and a bit of fringe there, and a button somewhere else, dazzles us +into thinking that she has an infinity of beautiful attire. Our rooms +are new and pretty of themselves, to begin with; the tint of the paper, +and the rich coloring of the border, corresponding with the furniture +and carpets, will make them seem prettier. And now for arrangement. Take +this front-room. I propose to fill those two recesses each side of the +fireplace with my books, in their plain pine cases, just breast-high +from the floor: they are stained a good dark color, and nobody need +stick a pin in them to find out that they are not rosewood. The top of +these shelves on either side to be covered with the same stuff as the +furniture, finished with a crimson fringe. On top of the shelves on one +side of the fireplace I shall set our noble Venus di Milo, and I shall +buy at Cicci's the lovely Clytie and put it the other side. Then I shall +get of Williams and Everett two of their chromo-lithographs, which give +you all the style and charm of the best English water-color school. I +will have the lovely Bay of Amalfi over my Venus, because she came from +those suns and skies of Southern Italy, and I will hang Lake Como over +my Clytie. Then, in the middle, over the fireplace, shall be 'our +picture.' Over each door shall hang one of the lithographed angel-heads +of the San Sisto, to watch our going-out and coming-in; and the glorious +Mother and Child shall hang opposite the Venus di Milo, to show how +Greek and Christian unite in giving the noblest type to womanhood. And +then, when we have all our sketches and lithographs framed and hung here +and there, and your flowers blooming as they always do, and your ivies +wandering and rambling as they used to, and hanging in the most graceful +ways and places, and all those little shells and ferns and vases, which +you are always conjuring with, tastefully arranged, I'll venture to say +that our rooms will be not only pleasant, but beautiful, and that people +will oftener say, 'How beautiful!' when they enter, than if we spent +three times the money on new furniture." + +In the course of a year after this conversation, one and another of my +acquaintances were often heard speaking of John Merton's house. "Such +beautiful rooms,--so charmingly furnished,--you must go and see them. +What does make them so much pleasanter than those rooms in the other +house, which have everything in them that money can buy?" So said the +folk,--for nine people out of ten only feel the effect of a room, and +never analyze the causes from which it flows: they know that certain +rooms seem dull and heavy and confused, but they don't know why; that +certain others seem cheerful, airy, and beautiful, but they know not +why. The first exclamation, on entering John's parlors, was so often, +"How beautiful!" that it became rather a by-word in the family. +Estimated by their mere money-value, the articles in the rooms were of +very trifling worth; but as they stood arranged and combined, they had +all the effect of a lovely picture. Although the statuary was only +plaster, and the photographs and lithographs such as were all within the +compass of limited means, yet every one of them was a good thing of its +own kind, or a good reminder of some of the greatest works of Art. A +good plaster cast is a daguerrotype, so to speak, of a great statue, +though it may be bought for five or six dollars, while its original is +not to be had for any nameable sum. A chromo-lithograph of the best sort +gives all the style and manner and effect of Turner or Stanfield, or any +of the best of modern artists, though you buy it for five or ten +dollars, and though the original would command a thousand guineas. The +lithographs from Raphael's immortal picture give you the results of a +whole age of artistic culture, in a form within the compass of very +humble means. There is now selling for five dollars at Williams and +Everett's a photograph of Cheney's crayon drawing of the San Sisto +Madonna and Child, which has the very spirit of the glorious original. +Such a picture, hung against the wall of a child's room, would train its +eye from infancy; and yet how many will freely spend five dollars in +embroidery on its dress, that say they cannot afford works of Art! + +There was one advantage which John and his wife found in the way in +which they furnished their house, that I have hinted at before: it gave +freedom to their children. Though their rooms were beautiful, it was not +with the tantalizing beauty of expensive and frail knick-knacks. +Pictures hung against the wall, and statuary safely lodged on brackets, +speak constantly to the childish eye, but are out of reach of childish +fingers, and are not upset by childish romps. They are not like china +and crystal, liable to be used and abused by servants; they do not wear +out; they are not spoiled by dust, nor consumed by moths. The beauty +once there is always there; though the mother be ill and in her chamber, +she has no fears that she shall find it all wrecked and shattered. And +this style of beauty, inexpensive as it is, compared with luxurious +furniture, is a means of cultivation. No child is ever stimulated to +draw or to read by an Axminster carpet or a carved centre-table; but a +room surrounded with photographs and pictures and fine casts suggests a +thousand inquiries, stimulates the little eye and hand. The child is +found with its pencil, drawing; or he asks for a book on Venice, or +wants to hear the history of the Roman Forum. + +But I have made my article too long. I will write another on the moral +and intellectual effects of house-furnishing. + + * * * * * + +"I have proved my point, Miss Jennie, have I not? _In house-furnishing, +nothing is more economical than beauty_." + +"Yes, papa," said Jennie; "I give it up." + + * * * * * + +THE BLACK PREACHER. + +A BRETON LEGEND. + + + At Carnac in Brittany, close on the bay, + They show you a church, or rather the gray + Ribs of a dead one, left there to bleach + With the wreck lying near on the crest of the beach; + Roofless and splintered with thunder-stone, + 'Mid lichen-blurred gravestones all alone, + 'Tis the kind of ruin strange sights to see + That may have their teaching for you and me. + + Something like this, then, my guide had to tell, + Perched on a saint cracked across when he fell. + But since I might chance give his meaning a wrench, + He talking his _patois_ and I English-French, + I'll put what he told me, preserving the tone, + In a rhymed prose that makes it half his, half my own. + + An abbey-church stood here, once on a time, + Built as a death-bed atonement for crime: + 'Twas for somebody's sins, I know not whose; + But sinners are plenty, and you can choose. + Though a cloister now of the dusk-winged bat, + 'Twas rich enough once, and the brothers grew fat, + Looser in girdle and purpler in jowl, + Singing good rest to the founder's lost soul. + But one day came Northmen, and lithe tongues of fire + Lapped up the chapter-house, licked off the spire, + And left all a rubbish-heap, black and dreary, + Where only the wind sings _miserere_. + Of what the monks came by no legend runs, + At least they were lucky in not being nuns. + + No priest has kneeled since at the altar's foot, + Whose crannies are searched by the nightshade's root, + Nor sound of service is ever heard, + Except from throat of the unclean bird, + Hooting to unassoiled shapes as they pass + In midnights unholy his witches' mass, + Or shouting "Ho! ho!" from the belfry high + As the Devil's sabbath-train whirls by; + But once a year, on the eve of All-Souls, + Through these arches dishallowed the organ rolls, + Fingers long fleshless the bell-ropes work, + The chimes peal muffled with sea-mists mirk, + The skeleton windows are traced anew + On the baleful flicker of corpse-lights blue, + And the ghosts must come, so the legend saith, + To a preaching of Reverend Doctor Death. + + Abbots, monks, barons, and ladies fair + Hear the dull summons and gather there: + No rustle of silk now, no clink of mail, + Nor ever a one greets his church-mate pale; + No knight whispers love in the _châtelaine's_ ear, + His next-door neighbor this five hundred year; + No monk has a sleek _benedicite_ + For the great lord shadowy now as he; + Nor needeth any to hold his breath, + Lest he lose the least word of Doctor Death. + + He chooses his text in the Book Divine, + Tenth verse of the Preacher in chapter nine:-- + "'Whatsoever thy hand shall find thee to do, + That do with thy whole might, or thou shalt rue; + For no man is wealthy or wise or brave + In that quencher of might-bes and would-bes, the grave.' + Bid by the Bridegroom, 'To-morrow,' ye said, + And To-morrow was digging a trench for your bed; + Ye said, 'God can wait; let us finish our wine'; + Ye had wearied Him, fools, and that last knock was mine!" + + But I can't pretend to give you the sermon, + Or say if the tongue were French, Latin, or German; + Whatever he preached in, I give you my word + The meaning was easy to all that heard; + Famous preachers there have been and be, + But never was one so convincing as he; + So blunt was never a begging friar, + No Jesuit's tongue so barbed with fire, + Cameronian never, nor Methodist, + Wrung gall out of Scripture with such a twist. + + And would you know who his hearers must be? + I tell you just what my guide told me: + Excellent teaching men have, day and night, + From two earnest friars, a black and a white, + The Dominican Death and the Carmelite Life; + And between these two there is never strife, + For each has his separate office and station, + And each his own work in the congregation; + Whoso to the white brother deafens his ears, + And cannot be wrought on by blessings or tears, + Awake in his coffin must wait and wait, + In that blackness of darkness that means _too late_, + And come once a year, when the ghost-bell tolls, + As till Doomsday it shall on the eve of All-Souls, + To hear Doctor Death, whose words smart with the brine + Of the Preacher, the tenth verse of chapter nine. + + * * * * * + +FOUQUET THE MAGNIFICENT. + + +Modern times began in France with the death of Mazarin. Spain, Austria, +and Italy no longer led the world in politics, literature, and +refinement. The _grande nation_, delivered from _Ligue_ and _Fronde_, +took her position with England at the head of civilized Europe. This +great change had been going on during eighty years of battle, murder, +anarchy, and confusion. As always, the new grew up unnoticed, until it +overtopped the old. The transformation was complete in 1661, when Louis +XIV. appeared upon the scene, and gave his name to this brilliant +period, with not much better claim to the distinction than had Vespucci +to America. + +There had been a prodigious yield of brains in France. A host of clever +men developed the new ideas in every direction. Philosophy and science, +literature and language, manners, habits, dress, assumed the forms with +which we are so familiar. Then commenced the _grand siècle_, the era +Frenchmen date from. They look upon those gallant ancestors almost as +contemporaries, and still admire their feats in war, and laugh over +their strokes of wit. The books they wrote became classics, and were in +all hands until within the last twenty or thirty years. Latterly, +indeed, they have been less read, for thought is turning to fresh +fields, and society seems to be entering upon a new era. + +No man more fully recognized the great change that was going on, or did +more to help it forward, than Nicolas Fouquet, Vicomte de Vaux, and +Marquis de Belleîle,--but better known as the _Surintendant_. In the +pleasant social annals of France, Fouquet is the type of splendor, and +of sudden, hopeless ruin. "There was never a man so magnificent, there +was never a man so unfortunate," say the lively gentlemen and ladies in +their _Mémoires_. His story is told to point the old and dreary moral of +the instability of human prosperity. It is, indeed, like a tale of the +"Arabian Nights." The Dervish is made Grand Vizier. He marries the +Sultan's daughter. His palace owes its magical beauty to the Genies. The +pillars are of jasper, the bases and capitals of massive gold. The +Sultan frowns, waves his hand, and the crowd, who kissed the favorite's +slipper yesterday, hoot and jeer as they see him pass by to his dungeon, +disgraced, stripped, and beaten, Fouquet was of good family, the son of +a Councillor of State in Louis XIII.'s time. Educated for the +magistracy, he became a _Maître des Requétes_ (say Master in Chancery) +at twenty, and at thirty-five _Procureur-Général_ (or Attorney-General) +of the Parliament of Paris, which was only a court of justice, although +it frequently attempted to usurp legislative, and even executive +functions. During the rebellious troubles of the Fronde, the Procureur +and his brother, the Abbé Fouquet, remained faithful to Mazarin and to +the throne. The Abbé, in the ardor of his zeal, once offered the Queen +his services to kill De Retz and salt him, if she would give her +consent. It was at the request of the Queen that the Cardinal made the +trusty Procureur _Surintendant des Finances_, the first position in +France after the throne and the prime-ministership. + +Pensions, and the promise of comfortable places, had collected about the +Surintendant talent, fashion, and beauty. Some of the ablest men in the +kingdom were in his employ. Pellisson, famous for ugliness and for wit, +the _Acanthe_ of the Hôtel de Rambouillet, the beloved of Sappho +Scudéry, was his chief clerk. Pellisson was then a Protestant; but +Fouquet's disgrace, and four years in the Bastille, led him to reëxamine +the grounds of his religious faith. He became, luckily, enlightened on +the subject of his heresies at a time when the renunciation of +Protestantism led to honors and wealth. Change of condition followed +change of doctrine. The King attached him to his person as Secretary and +Historiographer, and gave him the management of the fund for the +conversion of Huguenots. Gourville, whom Charles II., an excellent +judge, called the wisest of Frenchmen, belonged to Fouquet, as a +receiver-general of taxes. Molière wrote two of his earlier plays for +the Surintendant. La Fontaine was an especial favorite. He bound himself +to pay for his quarterly allowance in quarterly madrigals, ballads, or +sonnets. If he failed, a bailiff was to be sent to levy on his stanzas. +He paid pretty regularly, but in a depreciated currency. The verses have +not the golden ring of the "Contes" and the "Fables." + + "Le Roi, l'État, la Patrie, + Partagent toute votre vie." + +That is a sample of their value. Quack-medicine poets often do as well. +He wrote "Adonis" for Fouquet, and had worked three years at the "Songe +de Vaux," when the ruin of his patron caused him to lay it aside. It is +a dull piece. Four fairies, _Palatiane, Hortésie, Apellanire, and +Calliopée_, make long speeches about their specialty in Art, as seen at +Vaux. Their names sufficiently denote it. A fish comes as ambassador +from Neptune to Vaux, the glory of the universe, where Oronte (Fouquet's +_alias_, in the affected jargon of the period) + + "fait bâtir un palais magnifique, + Où règne l'ordre Ionique + Avec beaucoup d'agrément." + +Apollo comes and promises to take charge of the live-stock, and of the +picture-gallery. The Muses, too, are busy. + + "Pour lui Melpomène médite, + Thalie en est jalouse,"-- + +and soon-- + +Fouquet's physician, Pecquet, is well known to physiologists by his +treatise, "_De Motu Chyli_," and by "Pecquet's reservoir." His patron +was warmly interested in the new discoveries in circulation, which were +then, and so long after, violently opposed by the _Purgons_ and the +_Diafoirus_ of the old school. The Surintendant's judgment was equally +good in Art. Le Brun, the painter, owed fame and fortune to him. He gave +him twelve thousand livres a year, besides paying a fixed price for each +of his works. With the exception of Renaudot's journal, Loret's weekly +gazette, published in the shape of a versified letter to Mademoiselle de +Longueville, was the only newspaper in France. Fouquet furnished the +editor with money and with items. He allowed Scarron sixteen hundred +livres a year, when Mazarin struck his name from the pension-list, as +punishment for a "_Mazarinade_," the only squib of the kind the Cardinal +had ever noticed. Poor Scarron was hopelessly paralyzed, and bedridden. +He had been a comely, robust fellow in his youth, given to dissipated +courses. In a Carnival frolic, he appeared in the streets with two +companions in the character of bipeds with feathers,--a scanty addition +to Plato's definition of man. This airy costume was too much for French +modesty, proverbially shrinking and sensitive. The mob hooted and gave +chase. The maskers fled from the town and hid themselves in a marsh to +evade pursuit. The result of this venturesome _travestissement_ was the +death of both his friends, and an attack of inflammatory rheumatism +which twisted Scarron for life into the shape of the letter Z. + +The Surintendant's _hôtel_, at St. Mandé, was a marvel of art, his +library the best in France. The number and value of his books was urged +against him, on his trial, as evidence of his peculations. His +country-seat, at Vaux, cost him eighteen millions of livres. Three +villages were bought and razed to enlarge the grounds. Le Vau built the +_château_. Le Brun painted the ceilings and panels. La Fontaine and +Michel Gervaise furnished French and Latin mottoes for the allegorical +designs. Le Nôtre laid out the gardens in the style which may still be +seen at Versailles. Torelli, an Italian engineer, decorated them with +artificial cascades and fountains, a wonder of science to Frenchmen in +the seventeenth century. Puget had collected the statues which +embellished them. There was a collection of wild animals, a rare +spectacle before the days of zoological gardens,--an aviary of foreign +birds,--tanks as large as ponds, in which, among other odd fish, swam a +sturgeon and a salmon taken in the Seine. Everything was magnificent, +and everything was new,--so original and so perfect, that Louis XIV., +after he had crushed the Surintendant, could find no plans so good and +no artists so skilful as these _pour embellir son règne_. He was obliged +to imitate the man he hated. Even Fouquet's men of letters were soon +enrolled in the service of the King. + +In March, 1661, Mazarin died, full of honor. His favorite saying, "_Il +tiempo è un galantuomo_," was fulfilled for him. In spite of many +desperate disappointments and defeats, _Messer Tiempo_ had made him +rich, powerful, and triumphant. The young King, who had already +announced his theory of government in the well-known speech, "_L'État, +c'est moi_," waited patiently, and with respect, (filial, some have +said,) for the old man to depart. He put on mourning, a compliment never +paid but once before by a French sovereign to the memory of a +subject,--by Henry IV. to Gabrielle d'Estrées. When the Council came +together, the King told them, that hitherto he had permitted the late +Cardinal to direct the affairs of State, but that in future he should +take the duty upon himself,--the gentlemen present would aid him with +their advice, if he should see fit to ask for it. It was a "neat little +speech," and very much to the point: Louis XIV. had the talent of making +neat little speeches. But the Surintendant, who presided in the Council, +did not believe him. A prince, he thought, two-and-twenty years of age, +fond of show and of pleasure, of moderate capacity, and with no +education, might undertake for a while the cares of government, but, +when the novelty wore off, would tire of the labor. And then, whose +pretensions to shoulder the burden were so well founded as Fouquet's? He +was almost a king, and had the political patronage of a president. The +revenue of the nation passed through his hands. _Fermiers_ and +_traitants_, those who farmed the taxes and those who gathered them for +a consideration, obeyed his nod and laid their offerings at his feet. A +judicious mixture of presents and promises had given him the control of +judges enough in the different Parliaments to fortify his views of the +public business by legal decisions. In his own Parliament he was +supreme. Clever agents, stationed in important places, both at home and +abroad, watched over his interests, and kept him informed of all that +transpired, by faithful couriers. But he misunderstood his position, and +was mistaken in his King. Louis XIV. had, indeed, little talent and less +education. He could never learn Latin, at that time as much a part of a +gentleman's training as French is now with us; but he had what for want +of a more distinctive word we may call character,--that +well-proportioned mixture of sense, energy, and self-reliance which +obtains for its possessor more success in life, and more respect from +those about him, than brilliant mental endowments. It was the moral side +of his nature which was deficient. He was selfish, envious, and cruel; +and he had not that noble hatred of the crooked, the mean, and the +dishonorable which becomes a gentleman. Mazarin once said,--"There is +stuff enough in him to make four kings and one worthy man." Divide this +favorable opinion by four, and the result will be an approximation to +the value of Louis XIV. as a monarch and a man. There was a king in +him,--a determination to be master, and to bear no rival near the +throne, no matter of how secondary or trifling a nature the rivalry +might be. + +Fouquet had been deep in Mazarin's confidence, his agent and partner in +those sharp financial operations which had brought so much profit to the +Cardinal and so little to the Crown. One of their jobs was to buy up, at +an enormous discount, old and discredited claims against the Treasury, +dating from the Fronde, which, when held by the right parties, were paid +in full,--a species of fraud known by various euphemisms in the purest +of republics. All the checks and balances of our enlightened system of +administration, whether federal, state, or municipal, do not prevent +skilful officials from perverting vast sums of money to their own uses. +In France, demoralized by years of civil war, the official facilities +for plundering were concentrated in the hands of one clever man. We can +easily understand that his wealth was enormous, and his power +correspondingly great. + +When the late Cardinal, surfeited with spoils, was drawing near his end, +scruples of conscience, never felt before, led him to advise the King to +keep a strict watch upon the Surintendant. He recommended for that +purpose his steward, Colbert, of whose integrity and knowledge of +business he had the highest opinion. Colbert was made Under-Secretary of +State, and Fouquet's dismissal from office determined upon from that +time. + +The Surintendant had no previsions of danger. With his usual boldness, +he laid the financial "situation" of the kingdom before his new master, +confessed frankly what it was impossible to conceal, laid the blame of +all irregularities upon Mazarin, or upon the exigencies of the times, +and ended by imploring an amnesty for the past, and promising thrift and +economy for the future. The King appeared satisfied, and granted a full +pardon. Fouquet, more confident than ever, dashed on in the old way, +while Colbert and his clerks were quietly digging the pit into which he +was soon to fall. Colbert was reinforced by Séguier, the Chancellor, and +by Le Tellier, a Secretary of State, who had an energetic son, Louvois, +in the War Department. All three hated the Surintendant, and each hoped +to succeed him. Fouquet's ostentation and haughtiness had made him +enemies among the old nobility. Many of them were eager to see the proud +and prosperous man humiliated,--merely to gratify that wretched feeling +of envy and spite so inherent in poor human nature, and one of the +strongest proofs of that corruption "which standeth in the following of +Adam." + +Louis XIV. had reasons of his own for his determination to destroy the +Surintendant. First of all, he was afraid of him. The Fronde was fresh +in the royal memory. Fouquet had enormous wealth, an army of friends and +retainers; he could command Brittany from his castle of Belleîle, which +he had fortified and garrisoned. Why might he not, if his ambition were +thwarted, revive rebellion, and bring back misery upon France? The +personal reminiscences of the King's whole life must have made him feel +keenly the force of this apprehension. He was ten years old, when, to +escape De Retz and Beaufort, the Queen-Mother fled with him to St. +Germain, and slept there upon straw, in want of the necessaries of life. +After their return to Paris, the mob broke into the Louvre, and +penetrated to the royal bedchamber. He could not well forget the night +when his mother placed him upon his knees to pray for the success of the +attempt to arrest Condé, who thought himself the master. He was twelve +when Mazarin marched into France with seven thousand men wearing green +scarfs, the Cardinal's colors, and in the Cardinal's pay. After the +young King had joined them, the Parliament of Paris offered fifty +thousand crowns for the Cardinal's head. He was thirteen when Condé, in +command of Spanish troops, surprised the royalists at Bléneau, and would +have captured King and Court, had it not been for the skill of Turenne. +A few years before, Turenne had served against France, under the Spanish +flag. The boy-King had witnessed the battle of St. Antoine,--had seen +the gates of Paris closed against him, and the cannon of the Bastille +firing upon his army, by order of his cousin, _Mademoiselle_, the +grand-daughter of Henry IV. He had known a Parliament at Paris, and an +Anti-Parliament at Pontoise. In 1651, Condé, De Retz, and La +Rochefoucauld fought in the Palais Royal, almost in the royal presence. +In 1652 he had been compelled to exile Mazarin again; and it was not +until 1658 that Turenne finally defeated Condé and Don John of Austria, +and opened the way to the Peace of the Pyrenees, and the marriage with +the Infanta. Oliver Cromwell aided the King with six thousand of his +soldiers in this battle, and seized upon Dunkirk to repay himself,--only +three years before. No wonder Louis was anxious to place the throne +beyond the reach of danger and insult, and to crush the only man who +seemed to have the power to rekindle a civil war. + +A stronger and a meaner motive he kept to himself. He was small-minded +enough to think that a subject overshadowed him, _nec pluribus impar_. +He hated Fouquet because he was so much admired,--because he was called +the Magnificent,--because his _châteaux_ and gardens were incomparably +finer than St. Germain or Fontainebleau,--because he was surrounded by +the first wits and artists,--no trifling matter in that bright morning +of French literature, when every gentleman of station in Paris aspired +to be a _bel-esprit_, or, if that was impossible, to keep one in his +employ. "_Le Roi s'abaissa jusqu'à se croire humilié par un sujet_." His +"_gloire_" as he called it, was his passion, not only in war and in +government, where it meant something, but in buildings and furniture, +dress and dinners, madrigals and _bon-mots_. The monopoly of _gloire_ he +must and would have,--nobly, if possible, but at any rate, and in every +kind, _gloire_. + +And the unlucky Surintendant had sinned against the royal feelings in a +still more unpardonable way. The King was in love with La Vallière. He +had surrounded his attachment with the mystery the young and sentimental +delight in. Fouquet, quite unconscious of the royal fancy, had cast eyes +of favor upon the same lady. Proceeding according to the custom of men +of middle age and of abundant means, he had wasted no time in _petits +soins_ and sighs, but, Jupiter-like, had offered to shower two hundred +thousand livres upon the fair one. This proposition was reported to the +King, and was the cause of the _acharnement_, the relentless fury, he +showed in persecuting Fouquet. He would have dealt with him as Queen +Christina had dealt with Monaldeschi, if he had dared. The hatred +survived long after he had dismissed the fair cause of it from his +affections, and from his palace. + +Such was the Surintendant's position when he issued his invitation to +the King, Court, and _bel-air_ for the seventeenth of August, 1661,--the +_fête de Vaux_, which fills a paragraph in every history of France. In +June, he had entertained the Queen of England in a style which made +Mazarin's pageants for the Infanta Queen seem tasteless and +old-fashioned. The present festival cast the preceding one into the +shade. It began in the early afternoon, like a _déjeuner_ of our day. +The King was there, the Queen-Mother, Monsieur, brother to the King, and +Madame, daughter of Charles I. of England, attended by Princes, Dukes, +Marquises, and Counts, with their quick-witted, sharp-tongued, and +independent spouses. The highest and noblest of France came to stare at +Fouquet's magnificence, to wonder at the strange birds and beasts, and +to admire the fountains and cascades. After a walk about the grounds, +the august company were served with supper in the _château_. Vatel was +the _maître d'hôtel_. The King could not conceal his astonishment at the +taste and luxury of the Surintendant, nor his annoyance when he +recognized the portrait of La Vallière in a mythological panel. Over +doors and windows were carved and painted Fouquet's arms,--a squirrel, +with the motto, "_Quò non ascendam_?" The King asked a chamberlain for +the translation. When the device was interpreted, the measure of his +wrath was full. He was on the point of ordering Fouquet's instant +arrest; but the Queen-Mother persuaded him to wait until every +precaution had been taken. + +After supper, the guests were conducted to the play. The theatre was at +the end of an alley of pines, almost _al fresco_. The stage represented +a garden decorated with fountains and with statues of Terminus. Scenery +by Le Brun; machinery and transmutations by Torelli; stage-manager, +Molière; the comedy, "_Les Fâcheux_," "The Bores," composed, written, +and rehearsed expressly for this occasion, in the short space of fifteen +days. This piece was put upon the stage in a new way. The ballet, +introduced by Mazarin a few years before, was the fashion, and +indispensable. As Molière had only a few good dancers, he placed the +scenes of the ballet between the acts of the comedy, in order to give +his artists time to change their dresses and to take three or four +different parts. To avoid awkwardness in these transitions, the plot of +the comedy was carried over into the pantomime. This arrangement proved +so successful that Molière made use of it in many of his later plays. + +The curtain rises upon a man in citizen's-dress (Molière). He expresses +amazement and dismay at seeing so large and so distinguished an +audience, and implores His Majesty to pardon him for being there without +actors enough and without time enough to prepare a suitable +entertainment. While he is yet speaking, twenty jets of water spring +into the air,--a huge rock in the foreground changes into a shell,--the +shell opens,--forth steps a Naiad (pretty Mademoiselle Béjart, a +well-known actress,--too well known for Moliere's domestic comfort) and +declaims verses written by Pellisson for the occasion. Here is a part of +this prologue in commonplace prose; Pellisson's verses are of a kind +which loses little by translation. The flattery is heavy, but Louis XIV. +was not dainty; he liked it strong, and probably swallowed more of it +with pleasure and comfort during fifty years than any other man. + +"Mortals," said _la Béjart_, "I come from my grotto to look upon the +greatest king in the world. Shall the land or the water furnish a new +spectacle for his amusement? He has only to speak,--to wish; nothing is +impossible to him. Is he not himself a miracle? And has he not the right +to demand miracles of Nature? He is young, victorious, wise, valiant, +and dignified,--as benevolent and just as he is powerful. He governs his +desires as well as his subjects; he unites labor and pleasure; always +busy, never at fault, seeing all, hearing all. To such a prince Heaven +can refuse nothing. If Louis commands, these Termini shall walk from +their places, these trees shall speak better than the oaks of Dodona. +Come forth, then, all of you! Louis commands it. Come forth to amuse +him, and transform yourselves upon this novel stage!" Trees and Termini +fly open. Dryads, Fauns, and Satyrs skip out. Then the Naiad invokes +Care, the goddess whose hand rests heavily upon monarchs, and implores +her to grant the great King an hour's respite from the business of +State and from his anxiety for his people. "Let him give his great heart +up to pleasure. To-morrow, with strength renewed, he will take up his +burden, sacrifice his own rest to give repose to mankind and maintain +peace throughout the universe. But to-night let all _fâcheux_ stand +back, except those who can make themselves agreeable to him." The Naiad +vanishes. The Fauns dance to the violins and hautboys, until the play +begins. + +After the comedy, the spectators walked slowly to the _château_. A _feu +d'artifice_, ending in a bouquet of a thousand rockets from the dome, +lighted them on their way back. Another repast followed, which lasted +until the drums of the royal _mousquetaires_, the King's escort, were +heard in the courtyard. This was the signal for breaking up. + +The Surintendant seemed to be on the highest pinnacle of prosperity, +beyond the reach of Fate. There was at Rome a Sire de Maucroix, sent +thither by Fouquet on his private business. To him his friend La +Fontaine wrote a full description of the day, and of the effect Vaux had +produced upon the fashionable world. "You would think that Fame [_la +Renommée_] was made only for him, he gives her so much to do at once. + + 'Plein d'éclat, plein de gloire, adoré des mortels, + Il reçoit des honneurs qu'on ne doit qu'aux autels.'" + +A few days later, the Surintendant arrived at Angers, on his way to +Nantes. Arnauld writes, that the Bishop of Angers and himself waited +upon the great man to pay their respects. "From the height upon which he +stood, all others seemed so far removed from him that he could not +recognize them. He scarcely looked at us, and Madame, his wife, seemed +neither less frigid nor more civil." On the fifth of September, nineteen +days after the _fête_, the thunderbolt fell upon him. + +A _Procureur-Général_ could be tried only by the Parliament to which he +belonged. To make Fouquet's destruction more certain, Colbert had +induced him, by various misrepresentations, to sell out. He received +fourteen hundred thousand livres for the place, and presented the +enormous sum to the Treasury. This act of munificence, or of +restitution, did not save him. If he had been backed by fifty thousand +men, the King could hardly have taken greater precautions. His Majesty's +manner was more gracious than ever. To prevent a rising in the West, +Louis journeyed to Nantes, which is near Belleîle. Fouquet accompanied +the progress with almost equal state. He had his court, his guards, his +own barge upon the Loire,--and travelled brilliantly onward to ruin. The +palace in Nantes was the scene of the arrest. Fouquet, suspecting +nothing, waited upon the King. Louis kept him engaged in conversation, +until he saw D'Artagnau, a name famous in storybooks, and the +_mousquetaires_ in the courtyard. Then he gave the signal. The +Surintendant was seized and taken to Angers, thence to Amboise, +Vincennes, and finally to the Bastille. He was confined in a room +lighted only from above, and allowed no communication with family or +friends. The mask was now thrown off, and the blow followed up with a +malignant energy which showed the determination to destroy. The King was +very violent, and said openly that he had matter in his possession which +would hang the Surintendant. His secretaries and agents were arrested. +His friends, not knowing how much they might be implicated, either fled +the kingdom, or kept out of the way in the provinces. Pellisson and Dr. +Pecquet were sent to the Bastille; Guénégaud lost half his fortune; the +Bishop of Avranches had to pay twelve thousand francs; Gourville fled to +England; Pomponne was ordered to reside at Verdun. Fouquet's papers were +examined in the presence of the King. Letters were there from persons in +every class of life,--a very large number from women, for the prisoner +had charms which the fair sex have always found it difficult to resist. +Madame Scarron had written to thank him for his bounty to the poor +cripple whose name and roof protected her. The King had probably never +before heard of this lady, who was to be the wife and ruler of his old +age. The portfolio contained specimens of the gayest and brightest of +letter-writers. In the course of his career, the gallant Surintendant +had attempted to add the charming widow Sévigné to his conquests. She +refused the temptation, but always remained grateful for the compliment. +Le Tellier told her cousin, Bussy-Rabutin, that the King liked her +letters,--"very different," he said, "from the _douceurs fades_"--the +insipid sweet things--"of the other feminine scribes." Nevertheless, she +thought it prudent to reside for a time upon her estate in Brittany. A +copy of a letter by St. Évremond was found, written three years before +from the Spanish frontier. It was a sarcastic pleasantry at the expense +of Mazarin and the _Paix des Pyrénées_, St. Évremond was a soldier, a +wit, and the leader of fashion; Colbert hated him, and magnified a _jeu +d'esprit_ into a State-crime. He was exiled, and spent the rest of his +long life in England. Of the baser sort, hundreds were turned out of +their places and thrown penniless upon the world. It was a _coup +d'état_, a revolution, and most people were against Fouquet. It is such +a consolation for the little to see the mighty fall! + +The instinct which impels friends and servants to fly from sinking +fortunes is a well-established fact in human natural history; but +Fouquet's hold upon his followers was extraordinary: it resisted the +shock of ruin. They risked court-favor, purse, and person, to help him. +Gourville, before he thought of his own safety, carried a hundred +thousand livres to Madame Fouquet, to be used in defending the +Surintendant, or in bribing a judge or a jailer. The rest of his +property he divided, intrusting one half to a devout friend, the other +to a sinful beauty, Ninon de l'Enclos, and fled the country. The +"professor" absorbed all that was left in his hands; Ninon returned her +trust intact. This little incident was made much use of at a later day +by the _Philosophes_, and Voltaire worked it up into "Le Dépositaire." +From the Bastille, Pellisson addressed to the King three papers in +defence of his chief: "masterpieces of prose, worthy of Cicero," +Voltaire says,--"_ce que l'éloquence a produit de plus beau_." And +Sainte-Beuve thinks that Louis must have yielded to them, if he had +heard them spoken, instead of reading them in his closet. The faithful +La Fontaine fearlessly sang the sorrows of his patron, and accustomed +"_chacun à plaindre ses malheurs_." He begged to the King for mercy, in +an ode full of feeling, if not of poetry. "Has not Oronte been +sufficiently punished by the withdrawal of thy favor? Attack Rome, +Vienna, but be merciful to us. _La Clémence est fille des Dieux_." A +copy of this ode found its way to the prisoner. He protested against +these lines:-- + + "Mais, si tu crois qu'il est coupable, + Il ne veut point être innocent." + +Two years of prison had not broken him down to this point of +self-abasement. Could any Sultan, or even the "Oriental Despot" of a +radical penny-a-liner, be implored in more abject terms? Madame de +Sévigné, Madame de Scudéry, Le Fèvre, talked, wrote, and spared no +expense for their dear friend. Brébeuf, the poet, who had neither +influence nor money, took to his bed and died of grief. Hesnault, author +of the "Avorton," a sonnet much admired in those days, and translated +with approval into English verse, as, + + "Frail spawn of nought and of existence mixed," + +eased his feelings by insulting Colbert in another sonnet, beginning +thus:-- + + "Ministre avare et lâche, esclave malheureux." + +The poet escaped unpunished. His affront gave Colbert the chance for a +_mot_,--an opportunity which Frenchmen seldom throw away. When the +injurious verses were reported to the Minister, he asked,--"Is there +anything in them offensive to the King?" "No." "Then there can be +nothing in them offensive to me." Loret, of the Gazette, was not so +lucky. A gentle appeal in his journal for less severity was punished by +striking the editor from the pension-list,--a fine of fifteen hundred +livres a year. Fouquet heard of it, and found means to send, by the +hands of Madame Scudéry, a year's allowance to the faithful newsman. + +The Government was not ready to proceed to trial until 1664. For three +years the sharpest lawyers in France had been working on the Act of +Accusation. It was very large even for its age. The accompanying +_Pièces_ were unusually voluminous. The accused had not been idle. His +_Défenses_ may be seen in fourteen closely printed Elzevir 18mos. + +The unabated rigor of Fouquet's prison had convinced his friends that it +was useless to hope for clemency, and that it might be difficult to save +his life. The King was as malignant as at first; Colbert and Le Tellier +as venomous, as if it had been a question of Fouquet's head or their +own. They talked about justice, affected moderation, and deceived +nobody. Marshal Turenne, speaking of their respective feelings in the +matter, said a thing which was considered good by the _bel-esprits_:--"I +think that Colbert is the more anxious to have him hanged, and Le +Tellier the more afraid he will not be." + +But meantime the Parisians had changed their minds about the +Surintendant. Now, they were all for him. His friends had done much to +bring this about; time, and the usual reaction of feeling, had done +more. His haughtiness and his pomp were gone and forgotten; there +remained only an unfortunate gentleman, crushed, imprisoned, threatened +with death, attacked by his enemies with a bitterness which showed they +were seeking to destroy the man rather than to punish the criminal,--yet +bearing up against his unexampled afflictions with unshaken courage. The +great Public has strong levelling propensities, both upward and +downward. If it delights to see the prosperous humbled, it is always +ready to pity the unfortunate; and even in 1664 the popular feeling in +Paris was powerful enough to check the ministers of an absolute king, +and to save Fouquet's life. His persecutors were so eager to run down +their prey that they overran it "In their anxiety to hang him," some one +said, "they have made their rope so thick that they cannot tighten it +about his neck." + +In November, 1664, Fouquet was brought before a commission of twenty-two +judges, selected from the different Parliaments of the kingdom. After +protesting against the jurisdiction of the court, he took his seat upon +the _sellette_, although a chair had been prepared for him beside it. +The interrogatories commenced. There were two principal charges against +him. First, diversion of the public funds to his own use,--embezzlement +or defalcation we should call it. Proof: his great expenditure, too +large for any private fortune. Answer: that his expenses were within the +income he derived from his salaries, pensions, and the property of +himself and wife. He was questioned closely upon his administration of +the finances. He was invariably self-possessed and ready with an answer, +and he eluded satisfactorily every attempt of the judges to entrap him, +although, as one of his best friends confessed, "some places were very +slippery." The second charge, treason against the State, was based upon +a paper addressed to his wife, and found in his desk. Fifteen years +before, after a quarrel with Mazarin, he had drawn up a plan of the +measures to be taken by his family and adherents in case of an attack +upon his life or liberty. It was a mere rough draught, incomplete, which +had remained unburned because forgotten. The fortifications of Belleîle +and the number of his retainers were brought up as evidence of his +intention to carry out the "_projet_," as it was called, if it became +necessary. Fouquet's explanations, and the date of the paper, were +satisfactory to the majority of the Commission. At last even the +Chancellor admitted that the proof was insufficient to sustain this part +of the accusation. Fouquet's answer to Séguier, during the examination +on the "_projet_," was much admired, and repeated out-of-doors. Séguier +asserted more than once, "This is clearly treason." "No," retorted +Fouquet, "it is not treason; but I will tell you what is treason. To +hold high office, to be in the confidence of the King; then suddenly to +desert to the enemies of that King, to carry over relatives, with the +regiments and the fortresses under their command, and to betray the +secrets of State: that is treason." And that was exactly what Chancellor +Séguier had done in the Fronde. + +In French criminal jurisprudence, the theory seems to be that the +accused is guilty until he has proved his innocence, and those +conversant with French trials need not be told that the judges assist +the public prosecutor. In this case, they sought by cross-examinations +to confuse Fouquet, and to entrap him into dangerous admissions. Séguier +sternly repressed any leanings in his favor; he even reproved some of +the judges for returning the salutation of the prisoner, as he entered +the court-room. + +The trial lasted five weeks. All Paris looked on absorbed, as at a drama +of the most exciting interest. Fouquet never appeared so admirable as +then, at bay, firmly facing king, ministers, judges, eager for his +blood, excited by the ardor of pursuit, and embittered by the roar of +applause with which his masterly defence was received out-of-doors. Even +those who knew the Surintendant best were astonished at his courage and +his presence of mind. He seemed greater in his adversity than in his +magnificence. Some of the judges began to waver. Renard, J., said,--"I +must confess that this man is incomparable. He never spoke so well when +he was _Procureur_; he never showed so much self-possession." Another, +one Nesmond, died during the trial, and regretted openly on his +death-bed that he had lent himself to this persecution. The King ordered +that this dying speech and confession should not be repeated, but it +circulated only the more widely. + +"No public man," Voltaire says, "ever had so many personal friends"; and +no friends were ever more faithful and energetic. They repeated his +happy answers in all quarters, praised his behavior, pitied his +sufferings, and reviled and ridiculed his enemies. They managed to meet +him, as he walked to and from the Arsenal, where the Commission sat, and +cheered him with kind looks. Madame de Sévigné tells us how she and +other ladies of the same faith took post at a window to see "_notre +pauvre ami_" go by. "M. d'Artagnau walked by his side, followed by a +guard of fifty _mousquetaires_. He seemed sad. D'Artagnau touched him to +let him know that we were there. He saluted us with that quiet smile we +all knew so well." She says that her heart beat and her knees trembled. +The lively lady was still grateful for that compliment. + +The animosity which the King did not conceal made an acquittal almost +hopeless, but great efforts were made to save the life of the +Surintendant. Money was used skilfully and abundantly. Several judges +yielded to the force of this argument; others were known to incline to +mercy. Fouquet himself thought the result doubtful. He begged his +friends to let him know the verdict by signal, that he might have half +an hour to prepare himself to receive his sentence with firmness. + +The Commission deliberated for one week,--an anxious period for +Fouquet's friends, who trembled lest they had not secured judges enough +to resist the pressure from above. At last the court was reopened. +D'Ormesson, a man of excellent family and social position, who had +favored the accused throughout the trial, delivered his opinion at +length. He concluded for banishment. The next judge voted for +decapitation, but with a recommendation to mercy. Next, one Pussort, a +malignant tool of the Chancellor, inveighed against Fouquet for four +hours, so violently that he injured his case. His voice was for the +gallows,--but, in consideration of the criminal's rank, he would consent +to commute the cord for the axe. After him, four voted for death; then, +five for banishment. Six to six. Anxiety had now reached a distressing +point. The Chancellor stormed and threatened; but in vain. On the +twenty-fifth of December the result was known. Nine for death, thirteen +for banishment. Saved! "I am so glad," Sévigné wrote to Simon Arnauld, +"that I am beside myself." She exulted too soon. The King was not to be +balked of his vengeance. He refused to abide by the verdict of the +Commission he himself had packed, and arbitrarily changed the decree of +banishment to imprisonment for life in the Castle of Pignerol,--to +solitary confinement,--wife, family, friends, not to be permitted to see +the prisoner, or to write to him; even his valet was taken away. + +Thus the magnificent Surintendant disappeared from the world +forever,--buried alive, but indomitable and cheerful. His last message +to his wife was, "I am well. Keep up your courage; I have enough for +myself, and to spare." + +"We still hope for some relaxation," Sévigné writes again; but none ever +came from the narrow-hearted, vindictive King. He exiled Roquesante, the +judge who had shown the most kindness to Fouquet, and turned an +_Avocat-Général_ out of office for saying that Pussort was a disgrace to +the Parliament he belonged to. Madame Fouquet, the mother, famous for +her book of prescriptions, "Recueil de Recettes Choisies," who had +cured, or was supposed to have cured, the Queen by a plaster of her +composition, threw herself at the King's feet, with her son's wife and +children. Their prayer was coldly refused, and they soon received an +order to reside in remote parts of France. Time seemed to have no +mollifying effect upon the animosity of the King. Six years later, a +young man who attempted to carry a letter from Fouquet to his wife was +sent to the galleys; and in 1676, fifteen years after the arrest, Madame +de Montespan had not influence enough to obtain permission for Madame +Fouquet and her children to visit the prisoner. + +This cruel and illegal punishment lasted for twenty years, until an +attack of apoplexy placed the Surintendant beyond the reach of his +torturer. So lost had he been in his living tomb, that it is a debated +point whether he died in Piguerol or not. He has even been one of the +candidates for the mysterious dignity of the Iron Mask. In his dungeon +he could learn nothing of what was passing in the world. Lauzun, whose +every-day life seemed more unreal and romantic than the dreams of +ordinary men, was confined in Pignerol. Active and daring as Jack +Sheppard, he dug through the wall of his cell, and discovered that his +next neighbor was Fouquet. When he told his fellow-prisoner of his +adventures and of his honors, how he had lost the place of Grand Master +of the Artillery through Louvois, and had only missed being the +acknowledged husband of the grand-daughter of Henry IV. because Madame +de Montespan persuaded the King to withdraw his consent, Fouquet, who +recollected him as a poor _cadet de famille_, thought him crazy, and +begged the jailer to have him watched and properly cared for. + +The Surintendant had twice wounded the vanity of his King. He had +presumed to have a more beautiful _château_ than his master, and had +unluckily fancied the same woman. Louis revenged himself by burying his +rival alive for twenty years. That Fouquet had plotted rebellion nobody +believed. He was too wise a politician not to know that the French were +weary of civil war and could not be tempted to exchange one master for +half a dozen military tyrants. That he had taken the public money for +his own use was not denied, even by his friends; and banishment would +have been a just punishment, although, perhaps, a harsh one. For it is +hardly fair to judge Fouquet by our modern standard of financial +honesty, low as that may be. We, at least, try to cover up jobs, +contracts, and defalcations by professions or appearances. The +difficulty of raising money for the expenses of Government in a state +impoverished by years of internal commotions had accustomed public men +to strange and irregular expedients, and unscrupulous financiers catch +fine fish in troubled waters. Mazarin openly put thousands of livres +into his pocket; the Surintendant imitated him on a smaller scale. But, +if he paid himself liberally for his services, he also showed energy and +skill in his attempts to restore order and economy in the administration +of the revenue. After his disgrace money was not much more plenty. +France, it is true, tranquil and secure within her borders, again showed +signs of wealth, and was able to pay heavier taxes; but the King wasted +them on his wars, his _châteaux_, and his mistresses, as recklessly as +the Surintendant. He had no misgivings as to his right to spend the +people's money. From his principle, "_L'État, c'est moi_," followed the +corollary, "The income of the State is mine." From 1664 to 1690 one +hundred and sixteen millions of livres were laid out in unnecessary +_hôtels, châteaux_, and gardens. His ministers imitated him at a humble +distance. Louvois boasted that he had reached his fourteenth million at +Meudon. "I like," said Louis, "to have those who manage my affairs +skilfully do a good business for themselves." + +Before many years had passed, it was evident that Colbert, with all his +energy and his systems, did not make both the financial ends meet any +better than the Surintendant. A merchant of Paris, with whom he +consulted, told him,--"You found the cart upset on one side, and you +have upset it on the other." Colbert had tried to lighten it by striking +eight millions of _rentes_ from the funded debt; but it was too deeply +imbedded in the mire; the shoulder of Hercules at the wheel could not +have extricated it. After Colbert was removed, times grew harder. Long +before the King's death the financial distress was greater than in the +wars and days of the Fronde. Every possible contrivance by which money +could be raised was resorted to. Lotteries were drawn, tontines +established, letters of nobility offered for sale at two thousand crowns +each. Those who preferred official rank could buy the title of +Councillor of State or of Commissioner of Police. New and +profitable offices were created and disposed of to the highest +bidder,--inspectorships of wood, of hay, of wine, of butter. Arbitrary +power, no matter whether we call it sovereign prince or sovereign +people, falls instinctively into the same ways in all times and +countries. The Demos of a neighboring State, absolute and greedy as any +monarch, have furnished us with plenty of examples of this last +imposition upon industry. Zealous servants are rewarded and +election-expenses paid by similar inspectorships and commissionerships, +not only useless, but injurious, to every one except those who hold +them. + +When these resources became exhausted, a capitation-tax was laid, +followed by an assessment of one tenth, and the adulteration of the +currency. The King cut off the pension-list, sold his plate, and +dismissed his servants. Misery and starvation laid waste the realm. At +last, the pompous, "stagy" old monarch died, full of infirmities and of +humiliations; and the road from the Boulevard to St. Denis was lined +with booths as for a _fête_, and the people feasted, sang, and danced +for joy that the tyrant was in his coffin. Time, the _galantuomo_, amply +avenged Fouquet. + + * * * * * + +AMONG THE MORMONS. + + +The approach to Salt Lake City from the east is surprisingly harmonious +with the genius of Mormonism. Nature, usually so unpliant to the spirit +of people who live with her, showing a bleak and rugged face, which +poetically should indicate the abode of savages and ogres, to Hans +Christian Andersen and his hospitable countrymen, but lavishing the +eternal summer of her tropic sea upon barbarians who eat baked enemy +under her palms, or throw their babies to her crocodiles,--this stiff, +unaccommodating Nature relents into a little expressiveness in the +neighborhood of the Mormons, and you feel that the grim, tremendous +_cañons_ through which your overland stage rolls down to the City of the +Saints are strangely fit avenues to an anomalous civilization. + +We speak of crossing the Rocky Mountains from Denver to Salt Lake; but, +in reality, they reach all the way between those places. They are not a +chain, as most Eastern people imagine them, but a giant ocean caught by +petrifaction at the moment of maddest tempest. For six hundred miles the +overland stage winds over, between, and around the tremendous billows, +lying as much as may be in the trough, and reaching the crest at +Bridger's Pass, (a sinuous gallery, walled by absolutely bare yellow +mountains between two and three thousand feet in height at the +road-side,) but never getting entirely out of the Rocky-Mountain system +till it reaches the Desert beyond Salt Lake. Even there it runs +constantly among mountains; in fact, it never loses sight of lofty +ranges from the moment it makes Pike's Peak till its wheels +(metaphorically) are washed by the Pacific Ocean; but the mountains of +the Desert may legitimately set up for themselves, belonging, as I +believe, to a system independent of the Rocky Mountains on the one side +and the Sierra Nevada on the other. At a little _plateau_ among snowy +ridges a few miles east of Bridger's Pass, the driver leans over and +tells his insiders, in a matter-of-fact manner, through the window, that +they have reached the summit-level. Then, if you have a particle of true +cosmopolitanism in you, it is sure to come out. There is something +indescribably sublime, a conception of universality, in that sense of +standing on the water-shed of a hemisphere. You have reached the secret +spot where the world clasps her girdle; your feet are on its granite +buckle; perhaps there sparkles in your eyes that fairest gem of her +cincture, a crystal fountain, from which her belt of rivers flows in two +opposite ways. Yesterday you crossed the North Platte, almost at its +source (for it rises out of the snow among the Wind-River Mountains, and +out of your stage-windows you can see, from Laramie Plains, the Lander's +Peak which Bierstadt has made immortal); that stream runs into the sea +from whose historic shores you came; you might drop a waif upon its +ripples with the hope of its reaching New Orleans, New York, Boston, or +even Liverpool. To-morrow you will be ferried over Green River, as near +its source,--a stream whose cradle is in the same snow-peaks as the +Platte,--whose mysterious middle-life, under the new name of the +Colorado, flows at the bottom of those tremendous fissures, three +thousand feet deep, which have become the wonder of the +geologist,--whose grave, when it has dribbled itself away into the +dotage of shallows and quicksands, is the desert-margined Gulf of +California and the Pacific Sea. Between Green River and the Mormon city +no human interest divides your perpetually strained attention with +Nature. Fort Bridger, a little over a day's stage-ride east of the city, +is a large and quite a populous trading-post and garrison of the United +States; but although we found there a number of agreeable officers, +whose acquaintance with their wonderful surroundings was thorough and +scientific, and though at that period the fort was a rendezvous for our +only faithful friend among the Utah Indians, Washki, the Snake chief, +and that handful of his tribe who still remained loyal to their really +noble leader and our Government, Fort Bridger left the shadowiest of +impressions on my mind, compared with the natural glories of the +surrounding scenery. + +Mormondom being my theme, and my space so limited, I must resist the +temptation to give detailed accounts of the many marvellous masterpieces +of mimetic art into which we find the rocks of this region everywhere +carved by the hand of Nature. Before we came to the North Platte, we +were astonished by a ship, equalling the Great Eastern in size, even +surpassing it in beauty of outline, its masts of columnar sandstone +snapped by a storm, its prodigious hulk laboring in a gloomy sea of +hornblendic granite, its deck-houses, shapen with perfect accuracy of +imitation, still remaining in their place, and a weird-looking demon at +the wheel steering it on to some invisible destruction. This naval +statue (if its bulk forbid not the name) was carved out of a coarse +millstone-grit by the chisel of the wind, with but slight assistance +from the infrequent rain-storms of this region. In Colorado I first +began to perceive how vast an omission geologists had been guilty of in +their failure to give the wind a place in the dynamics of their science. +Depending for a year at a time, as that Territory sometimes does, upon +dews and meltings from the snow-peaks for its water, it is nevertheless +fuller than any other district in the world of marvellous architectural +simulations, vast cemeteries crowded with monuments, obelisks, castles, +fortresses, and natural colossi from two to five hundred feet high, done +in argillaceous sandstone or a singular species of conglomerate, all of +which owe their existence almost entirely to the agency of wind. The +arid plains from which the conglomerate crops out rarefy the +superincumbent air-stratum to such a degree that the intensely chilled +layers resting on the closely adjoining snow-peaks pour down to +reëstablish equilibrium, with the wrathful force of an invisible +cataract, eight, ten, even seventeen thousand feet in height. These +floods of cold wind find their appropriate channels in the +characteristic _cañons_ which everywhere furrow the whole Rocky-Mountain +system to its very base. Most of these are exceedingly tortuous, and the +descending winds, during their passage through them, acquire a spiral +motion as irresistible as the fiercest hurricane of the Antilles, which, +moreover, they preserve for miles after they have issued from the mouth +of the _cañon_. Every little cold gust that I observed in the Colorado +country had this corkscrew character. The moment the spiral reaches a +loose sand-bed, it sweeps into its vortex all the particles of grit +which it can hold. The result is an auger, of diameter varying from an +inch to a thousand feet, capable of altering its direction so as to bore +curved holes, revolving with incalculable rapidity, and armed with a +cutting edge of silex. Is it possible to conceive an instrument more +powerful, more versatile? Indeed, practically, there is no description +of surface, no kind of cut, which it is not capable of making. I have +repeatedly seen it in operation. One day, while riding from Denver to +Pike's Peak, I saw it (in this instance, one of the smaller diameters) +burrow its way six or seven feet into a sand-bluff, making as smooth a +hole as I could cut in cheese with a borer, of the equal diameter of six +inches throughout, all in less time than I have taken to describe it. +Repeatedly, on the same trip, I saw it gouge out a circular groove +around portions of a similar bluff, and leave them standing as isolated +columns, with heavy base and capital, presently to be solidified into +just such rock pillars as throng the cemeteries or aid in composing the +strange architectural piles mentioned above. Surveyor-General Pierce of +Colorado, (a man whose fine scientific genius and culture have already +done yeoman's service in the study of that most interesting Territory,) +on a certain occasion, saw one of these wind-and-silex augers meet at +right angles a window-pane in a settler's cabin, which came out from the +process, after a few seconds, a perfect opaque shade, having been +converted into ground-glass as neatly and evenly as could have been +effected by the manufacturer's wheel. It is not a very rare thing in +Colorado to be able to trace the spiral and measure the diameter of the +auger by rocks of fifty pounds' weight and tree-trunks half as thick as +an average man's waist, torn up from their sites, and sent revolving +overhead for miles before the windy turbine loses its impetus. The +efficiency of an instrument like this I need not dwell upon. After some +protracted examination and study of many of the most interesting +architectural and sculpturesque structures of the Rocky-Mountain system, +I am convinced that they are mainly explicable on the hypothesis of the +wind-and-silex instrument operating upon material in the earthy +condition, which petrified after receiving its form. Indeed, this same +instrument is at present nowise restricted by that condition in +Colorado, and is not only, year by year, altering the conformation of +all sand and clay bluff's on the Plains, but is tearing down, +rebuilding, and fashioning on its facile lathe many rock-strata of the +solidity of the more friable grits, wherever exposed to its action. +Water at the East does hardly more than wind at the West. + +Before we enter the City of the Saints, let me briefly describe the +greatest, not merely of the architectural curiosities, but, in my +opinion, the greatest natural curiosity of any kind which I have ever +seen or heard of. Mind, too, that I remember Niagara, the Cedar-Creek +Bridge, and the Mammoth Cave, when I speak thus of the _Church Buttes_. + +They are situated a short distance from Fort Bridger; the overland road +passes by their side. They consist of a sandstone bluff, reddish-brown +in color, rising with the abruptness of a pile of masonry from the +perfectly level plain, carved along its perpendicular face into a series +of partially connected religious edifices, the most remarkable of which +is a cathedral as colossal as St. Peter's, and completely relieved from +the bluff on all sides save the rear, where a portico joins it with the +main precipice. The perfect symmetry of this marvellous structure would +ravish Michel Angelo. So far from requiring an effort of imagination to +recognize the propriety of its name, this church almost staggers belief +in the unassisted naturalness of its architecture. It belongs to a style +entirely its own. Its main and lower portion is not divided into nave +and transept, but seems like a system of huge semi-cylinders erected on +their bases, and united with reëntrant angles, their convex surfaces +toward us, so that the ground-plan might be called a species of +quatre-foil. In each of the convex faces is an admirably proportioned +door-way, a Gothic arch with deep-carved and elaborately fretted +mouldings, so wonderfully perfect in its imitation that you almost feel +like knocking for admittance, secure of an entrance, did you only know +the "Open sesame." Between and behind the doors, alternating with +flying-buttresses, are a series of deep-niched windows, set with +grotesque statues, varying from the pigmy to the colossal size, +representing demons rather than saints, though some of the figures are +costumed in the style of religious art, with flowing sacerdotal +garments. + +The structure terminates above in a double dome, whose figure may be +imagined by supposing a small acorn set on the truncated top of a large +one, (the horizontal diameter of both being considerably longer in +proportion to the perpendicular than is common with that fruit,) and +each of these domes is surrounded by a row of prism-shaped pillars, half +column, half buttress in their effect, somewhat similar to the exquisite +columnar _entourage_ of the central cylinder of the leaning tower of +Pisa. The result of this arrangement is an aërial, yet massive beauty, +without parallel in the architecture of the world. I have not conveyed +to any mind an idea of the grandeur of this pile, nor could I, even with +the assistance of a diagram. I can only say that the Cathedral Buttes +are a lesson for the architects of all Christendom,--a purely novel and +original creation, of such marvellous beauty that Bierstadt and I +simultaneously exclaimed,--"Oh that the master-builders of the world +could come here even for a single day! The result would be an entirely +new style of architecture,--an American school, as distinct from all the +rest as the Ionic from the Gothic or Byzantine." If they could come, the +art of building would have a regeneration. "Amazing" is the only word +for this glorious work of Nature. I could have bowed down with awe and +prayed at one of its vast, inimitable doorways, but that the mystery of +its creation, and the grotesqueness of even its most glorious statues, +made one half dread lest it were some temple built by demon-hands for +the worship of the Lord of Hell, and sealed in the stone-dream of +petrifaction, with its priests struck dumb within it, by the hand of +God, to wait the judgment of Eblis and the earthquakes of the Last Day. + +After leaving Church Buttes and passing Fort Bridger, our attention +slept upon what it had seen until we entered the region of the _cañons_. +These are defiles, channelled across the whole breadth of the Wahsatch +Mountains almost to the level of their base, walled by precipices of red +sandstone or sugar-loaf granite, compared with which the Palisades of +the Hudson become insignificant as a garden-fence. The least poetical +man who traverses these giant fissures cannot help feeling their fitness +as the avenues to a paradoxical region, an anomalous civilization, and a +people whose psychological problem is the most unsolvable of the +nineteenth century. During the Mormon War, Brigham Young made some rude +attempts at a fortification of the great Echo Cañon, half a day's +journey from his city, and this work still remains intact. He need not +have done it; a hundred men, ambushed among the ledges at the top of the +cañon-walls, and well provided with loose rocks and Minié-rifles, could +convert the defile into a new Thermopylae, without exposure to +themselves. In an older and more superstitious age, the unassisted +horrors of Nature herself would have repelled an invading host from the +passage of this grizzly _cañon_, as the profane might have been driven +from the galleries of Isis or Eleusis. + +About forty miles from Salt Lake City we began to find Nature's +barrenness succumbing to the truly marvellous industry of the Mormon +people. To understand the exquisite beauty of simple green grass, you +must travel through eight hundred miles of sage-brush and _grama_,--the +former, the homely gray-leaved plant of our Eastern goose-stuffing, +grown into a dwarf tree six feet high, with a twisted trunk sometimes as +thick as a man's body; the latter, a stunted species of herbage, growing +in ash-tinted spirals, only two inches from the ground, and giving the +Plains an appearance of being matted with curled hair or gray +corkscrews. Its other name is "buffalo-grass"; and in spite of its +dinginess, with the assistance of the sage, converting all the Plains +west of Fort Kearney into a model Quaker landscape, it is one of the +most nutritious varieties of cattle-fodder, and for hundreds of miles +the emigrant-drover's only dependence. + +By incredible labor, bringing down rivulets from the snow-peaks of the +Wahsatch range and distributing them over the levels by every ingenious +device known to artificial irrigation, the Mormon farmers have converted +the bottoms of the _cañons_ through which we approached Salt Lake into +fertile fields and pasture-lands, whose emerald sweep soothed our eyes +wearied with so many leagues of ashen monotony, as an old home-strain +mollifies the ear irritated by the protracted rhythmic clash or the +dull, steady buzz of iron machinery. Contrasting the Mormon settlements +with their surrounding desolation, we could not wonder that their +success has fortified this people in their delusion. The superficial +student of rewards and punishments might well believe that none but +God's chosen people could cause this horrible desert, after such +triumphant fashion, to blossom like the rose. + +The close observer soon notices a painful deficiency in these green and +smiling Mormon settlements. Everything has been done for the +farm,--nothing for the home. That blessed old Anglo-Saxon idea seems +everywhere quite extinct. The fields are billowing over with dense, +golden grain, the cattle are wallowing in emerald lakes of juicy grass, +the barns are substantial, the family-windmill buzzes merrily on its +well-oiled pivot, drawing water or grinding feed, the fruit-trees are +thrifty,--but the house is desolate. Even where its owner is +particularly well off, and its architecture somewhat more ambitious than +the average, (though, as yet, this superiority is measured by little +more than the difference between logs and clapboards,) there is still no +air about it of being the abode of happy people, fond of each other, and +longing after it in absence. It looks like a mere inclosure to eat and +sleep in. Nobody seems to have taken any pride in it, to feel any +ambition for it. Woman's tender little final touches, which make a dear +refuge out of a mud-cabin, and without which palatial brownstone is only +a home in the moulding-clay,--those dexterous ornamentations which make +so little mean so much,--the brier-rose-slip by the doorstep, growing +into the fragrant welcome of many Junes,--the trellised +Madeira-vines,--the sunny spot of chrysanthemums, charming summer on to +the very brink of frost,--all these things are utterly and everywhere +lacking to the Mormon inclosure. Sometimes we passed a fence which +guarded three houses instead of one. Abundant progeny played at their +doors, or rolled in their yard, watched by several unkempt, bedraggled +mothers owning a common husband,--and we could easily understand how +neither of these should feel much interest in the looks of a demesne +held by them in such unhappy partnership. The humblest New-England +cottage has its climbing flowers at the door-post, or its garden-bed in +front; but how quickly would these wither, if the neat, brisk +house-mistress owned her husband in common with Mrs. Deacon Pratt next +door! + +The first Mormon household I ever visited belonged to a son of the +famous Heber Kimball, Brigham Young's most devoted follower, and next to +him in the Presidency. It was the last stage-station but one before we +entered Salt Lake, situated at the bottom of a green valley in Parley's +Cañon (named after the celebrated Elder, Parley Pratt); and as it looked +like the residence of a well-to-do farmer, I went in, and asked for a +bowl of bread and milk,--the greatest possible luxury after a life of +bacon and salt-spring water, such as we had been leading in the +mountains. A fine-looking, motherly woman, with a face full of +character, gray-haired, and about sixty years old, rose promptly to +grant my request, and while the horses were changing I had ample time to +make the acquaintance of two pretty young girls, hardly over twenty, +holding two infants, of ages not more than three months apart. Green as +I was to saintly manners, I supposed that one of these two young mothers +had run in from a neighbor's to compare babies with the mistress of the +house, after our Eastern fashion, universal with the owners of juvenile +phenomena. When the old lady came back with the bread and milk, and both +of the young girls addressed her as "mother," I was emboldened to tell +her that her daughters had a pretty pair of children. + +"They _are_ pretty," said the old lady, demurely; "but they are the +children of my son"; then, as if resolved to duck a Gentile head and +heels into Mormon realities at once, she added,--"Those young ladies are +the wives of my son, who is now gone on a mission to Liverpool,--young +Mr. Kimball, the son of Heber Kimball; and I am Heber Kimball's wife." + +A cosmopolitan, especially one knowing beforehand that Utah was not +distinguished for monogamy, might well be ashamed to be so taken off +his feet as I was by my first view of Mormonism in its practical +workings. I stared,--I believe I blushed a little,--I tried to stutter a +reply; and the one dreadful thought which persistently kept uppermost, +so that I felt they must read it in my face, was, "How _can_ these young +women sit looking at each other's babies without flying into each +other's faces with their fingernails, and tearing out each other's +hair?" Heber Kimball afterwards solved the question for me, by saying +that it was a triumph of grace. + +Such another triumph was Mrs. Heber Kimball herself. She was a woman of +remarkable presence, in youth must have been very handsome, would have +been the oracle of tea-fights, the ruling spirit of donation-visits, in +any Eastern village where she might have lived, and, had her home been +New York, would have fallen by her own gravity into the Chief +Directress's chair of half a dozen Woman's Aid Societies and +Associations for Moral Reform. Yet here was this strong-minded woman, as +her husband afterward acknowledged to me, his best counsellor and +right-hand helper through a married life reaching into middle-age, +witnessing her property in that husband's affections subdivided and +parcelled out until she owned but a one-thirtieth share, not only +without a pang, but with the acquiescence of her conscience and the +approbation of her intellect. Though few first wives in Utah had learned +to look concubinage in the face so late in life as this emphatic and +vigorous-natured woman, I certainly met none whose partisanship of +polygamy was so unquestioning and eloquent. She was one of the strangest +psychological problems I ever met. Indeed, I am half inclined to think +that she embraced Mormonism earlier than her husband, and, by taking the +initiative, secured for herself the only true wifely place in the +harem,--the marital after-thoughts of Brother Heber being her servants +rather than her sisters. She was most unmistakably his favorite. + +One day in the Opera-House at Salt Lake, when the carpenters were laying +the floor for the Fourth-of-July-Eve Ball, Heber and I got talking of +the _pot-pourri_ of nationalities assembled in Utah. Heber waxed +unctuously benevolent, and expressed his affection for each succeeding +race as fast as mentioned. + +"I love the Danes dearly! I've got a Danish wife." Then turning to a +rough-looking carpenter, hammering near him,--"You know Christiny,--eh, +Brother Spudge?" + +"Oh, yes! know her very well!" + +A moment after,--"The Irish are a dear people. My Irish wife is among +the best I've got." + +Again,--"I love the Germans! Got a Dutch wife, too! Know Katrine, +Brother Spudge? Remember she couldn't scarcely talk a word o' English +when she come,--eh, Brother Spudge?" + +Brother Spudge remembered,--and Brother Heber continued to trot out the +members of his marital stud for discussion of their points with his more +humble fellow-polygamist of the hammer; but when I happened to touch +upon the earliest Mrs. Heber, whom I naturally thought he would by this +time regard as a forgotten fossil in the Lower Silurian strata of his +connubial life, and referred to the interview I had enjoyed with her on +the afternoon before entering the city, his whole manner changed to a +proper husbandly dignity, and, without seeking corroboration from the +carpenter, be replied, gravely,-- + +"Yes! that is my first wife, and the best woman God ever made!" + +The ball to which I have referred was such an opportunity for studying +Mormon sociology as three months' ordinary stay in Salt Lake might not +have given me. Though Mormondom is disloyal to the core, it still +patronizes the Fourth of July, at least in its phase of festivity, +omitting the patriotism, but keeping the fireworks of our Eastern +celebration, substituting "Utah" for "Union" in the Buncombe speeches, +and having a ball instead of the Declaration of Independence. All the +saints within half a day's ride of the city come flocking into it to +spend the Fourth. A well-to-do Mormon at the head of his wives and +children, all of whom are probably eating candy as they march through +the metropolitan streets in solid column, looks to the uninitiated like +the principal of a female seminary, weak in its deportment, taking out +his charge for an airing. + +Last Fourth of July, it may be remembered, fell on a Saturday. In their +ambition to reproduce ancient Judaism (and this ambition is the key to +their whole puzzle) the Mormons are Sabbatarians of a strictness which +would delight Lord Shaftesbury. Accordingly, in order that their +festivities might not encroach on the early hours of the Sabbath, they +had the ball on Fourth-of-July eve, instead of the night of the Fourth. +I could not realize the risk of such an encroachment when I read the +following sentence printed on my billet of invitation:-- + +"_Dancing to commence at_ 4 P.M." + +Bierstadt, myself, and three gentlemen of our party were the only +Gentiles whom I found invited by President Young to meet in the +neighborhood of three thousand saints. Under these circumstances I felt +like the three-thousandth homoeopathic dilution of monogamy. Morality in +this world is so mainly a matter of convention that I dreaded to appear +in decent polygamic society, lest respectable women, owning their +orthodox tenth of a husband, should shrink from the pollution of my +presence, whispering, with a shudder, "Ugh! Well, I never! How that +one-wifed reprobate can dare to show his face!" But they were very +polite, and received me with as skilfully veiled disapprobation as is +shown by fashionable Eastern belies to brilliant seducers immoral in +_our_ sense. Had I been a woman, I suppose there would have been no +mercy for me. + +I sought out our entertainer, Brigham Young, to thank him for the +flattering exception made in our Gentile favor. He was standing in the +dress-circle of the theatre, looking down on the dancers with an air of +mingled hearty kindness and feudal ownership. I could excuse the latter, +for Utah belongs to him of right. He may justly say of it, "Is not this +great Babylon which I have built?" His sole executive tact and personal +fascination are the key-stone of the entire arch of Mormon society. +While he remains, eighty thousand (and increasing) of the most +heterogeneous souls that could be swept together from the by-ways of +Christendom will continue builded up into a coherent nationality. The +instant he crumbles, Mormondom and Mormonism will fall to pieces at +once, irreparably. His individual magnetism, his executive tact, his +native benevolence, are all immense; I regard him as Louis Napoleon, +_plus_ a heart; but these advantages would avail him little with the +dead-in-earnest fanatics who rule Utah under him, and the entirely +persuaded fanatics whom they rule, were not his qualities all +coordinated in this one,--_absolute sincerity of belief and motive_. +Brigham Young is the farthest remove on earth from a hypocrite; he is +that grand, yet awful sight in human nature, a man who has brought the +loftiest Christian self-devotion to the altar of the Devil,--who is +ready to suffer crucifixion for Barabbas, supposing him Christ. Be sure, +that, were he a hypocrite, the Union would have nothing to fear from +Utah. When he dies, at least four hostile factions, which find their +only common ground in deification of his person, will snatch his mantle +at opposite corners. Then will come such a rending as the world has not +seen since the Macedonian generals fought over the coffin of +Alexander,--and then Mormonism will go out of Geography into the History +of Popular Delusions. There is not a single chief, apostle, or bishop, +except Brigham, who possesses any catholicity of influence. I found this +tacitly acknowledged in every quarter. The people seem like citizens of +a beleaguered town, who know they have but a definite amount of bread, +yet have made up their minds to act while it lasts as if there were no +such thing as starvation. The greatest comfort you can afford a Mormon +is to tell him how young Brigham looks; for the quick, unconscious +sequence is, "Then Brigham may last out my time." Those who think at all +have no conjecture of any Mormon future beyond him, and I know that many +Mormons (Heber Kimball included) would gladly die to-day rather than +survive him and encounter that judgment-day and final perdition of their +faith which must dawn on his new-made grave. + +Well, we may give them this comfort without any insincerity. Let us +return to where he stands gazing down on the _parquet_. Like any Eastern +party-goer, he is habited in the "customary suit of solemn black," and +looks very distinguished in this dress, though his daily homespun +detracts nothing from the feeling, when in his presence, that you are +beholding a most remarkable man. He is nearly seventy years old, but +appears very little over forty. His height is about five feet ten +inches; his figure very well made and slightly inclining to portliness. +His hair is a rich curly chestnut, formerly worn long, in supposed +imitation of the apostolic coiffure, but now cut in our practical +Eastern fashion, as accords with the man of business, whose _métier_ he +has added to apostleship with the growing temporal prosperity of Zion. +Indeed, he is the greatest business-man on the continent,--the cashier +of a firm of eighty thousand silent partners, and the only auditor of +that cashier, besides. If I to-day signified my conversion to Mormonism, +to-morrow I should be baptized by Brigham's hands. The next day I should +be invited to appear at the Church-Office (Brigham's) and exhibit to the +Church (Brigham) a faithful inventory of my entire estate. I am a +cabinet-maker, let us say, and have brought to Salt Lake the entire +earnings of my New-York shop,--twenty thousand dollars. The Church +(Brigham sole and simple) examines and approves my inventory. It +(Brigham alone) has the absolute decision of the question whether any +more cabinet-makers are needed in Utah. If the Church (Brigham) says, +"No," it (Brigham again) has the right to tell me where labor is wanted, +and set me going in my new occupation. If the Church (Brigham) says, +"Yes," it further goes on to inform me, without appeal, exactly what +proportion of the twenty thousand dollars on my inventory can be +properly turned into the channels of the new cabinet-shop. I am making +no extraordinary or disproportionate supposition when I say that the +Church (Brigham) permits me to retain just one-half of my property. The +remaining ten thousand dollars goes into the Church-Fund, (Brigham's +Herring-safe,) and from that portion of my life's savings I never hear +again, in the form either of capital, interest, bequeathable estate, or +dower to my widow. Except for the purposes of the Church, (Brigham's +unquestionable will,) my ten thousand dollars is as though it had not +been. I am a sincere believer, however, and go home light-hearted, with +a certified check written by the Recording Angel on my conscience for +that amount, passed to my credit in the bank where thieves break not +through nor steal,--it being no more accessible to them than to the +depositor, which is a comfort to the latter. The first year I net from +my chairs and tables two thousand dollars. The Church (Brigham) sends me +another invitation to visit it, make a solemn averment of the sum, and +pay over to that ecclesiastical edifice, the Herring-safe, two hundred +dollars. Or suppose I have not sold any of my wares as yet, but have +only imported, to be sold by-and-by, five hundred Boston rockers. On +learning this fact, the Church (Brigham) graciously accepts fifty for +its own purposes.--Being founded upon a rock, it does not care, in its +collective capacity, to sit upon rockers, but has an immense series of +warehouses, omnivorous and eupeptic, which swallow all manner of tithes, +from grain and horseshoes to the less stable commodities of fresh fish +and melons, assimilating them by admirable processes into coin of the +realm. These warehouses are in the Church (Brigham's own private) +inclosure.--If success in my cabinet-making has moved me to give a +feast, and I thereat drink more healths than are consistent with my own, +the Church surely knows that fact the very next day; and as Utah +recognizes no impunitive "getting drunk in the bosom of one's family," I +am again sent for, on this occasion to pay a fine, probably exceeding +the expenses of my feast. A second offence is punished with imprisonment +as well as fine; for no imprisonment avoids fine,--this comes in every +case. The hand of the Church holds the souls of the saints by inevitable +purse-strings. But I cannot waste time by enumerating the multitudinous +lapses and offences which all bring revenue to the Herring-safe. + +Over all these matters Brigham Young has supreme control. His power is +the most despotic known to mankind. Here, by the way, is the +constitutionally vulnerable point of Mormonism. If fear of establishing +a bad precedent hinder the United States at any time from breaking up +that nest of all disloyalty, because of its licentious +marriage-institutions, Utah is still open to grave punishment, and the +Administration inflicting it would have duty as well as vested right +upon its side, on the ground that it stands pledged to secure to each +of the nation's constituent sections a republican form of +government,--something which Utah has never enjoyed any more than +Timbuctoo. I once asked Brigham if Dr. Bernhisel would be likely to get +to Congress again. "No," he replied, with perfect certainty; "_we_ shall +send ---- as our Delegate." (I think he mentioned Colonel Kinney, but do +not remember absolutely.) Whoever it was, when the time came, Brigham +would send in his name to the "Deseret News,"--whose office, like +everything else valuable and powerful, is in his inclosure. It would be +printed as a matter of course; a counter-nomination is utterly unheard +of; and on election-day ---- would be Delegate as surely as the sun +rose. The mountain-stream that irrigates the city, flowing to all the +gardens through open ditches on each side of the street, passes through +Brigham's inclosure: if the saints needed drought to humble them, he +could set back the waters to their source. The road to the only _cañon_ +where firewood is attainable runs through the same close, and is barred +by a gate of which he holds the sole key. A family-man, wishing to cut +fuel, must ask his leave, which is generally granted on condition that +every third or fourth load is deposited in the inclosure, for +Church-purposes. Thus everything vital, save the air he breathes, +reaches the Mormon only through Brigham's sieve. What more absolute +despotism is conceivable? Here lies the _pou-sto_ for the lever of +Governmental interference. The mere fact of such power resting in one +man's irresponsible hands is a crime against the Constitution. At the +same time, this power, wonderful as it may seem, is practically wielded +for the common good. I never heard Brigham's worst enemies accuse him of +peculation, though such immense interests are controlled by his one pair +of hands. His life is all one great theoretical mistake, yet he makes +fewer practical mistakes than any other man, so situated, whom the world +ever saw. Those he does make are not on the side of self. He merges his +whole personality in the Church, with a self-abnegation which would +establish in business a whole century of martyrs having a worthy cause. + +The cut of Brigham's hair led me away from his personal description. To +return to it: his eyes are a clear blue-gray, frank and straightforward +in their look; his nose a finely chiselled aquiline; his mouth +exceedingly firm, and fortified in that expression by a chin almost as +protrusive beyond the rest of the profile as Charlotte Cushman's, though +less noticeably so, being longer than hers; and he wears a narrow ribbon +of brown beard, meeting under the chin. I think I have heard Captain +Burton say that he had irregular teeth, which made his smile unpleasant. +Since the Captain's visit, our always benevolent President, Mr. Lincoln, +has altered all that, sending out as Territorial Secretary a Mr. Fuller, +who, besides being a successful politician, was an excellent dentist. +He secured Brigham's everlasting gratitude by making him a very handsome +false set, and performing the same service for all of his favorite, but +edentate wives. Several other apostles of the Lord owe to Mr. Fuller +their ability to gnash their teeth against the Gentiles. The result was +that he became the most popular Federal officer (who didn't turn Mormon) +ever sent to Utah. The man who obtains ascendency over the mouths of the +authorities cannot fail ere-long to get their ears. + +Brigham's manners astonish any one who knows that his only education was +a few quarters of such common-school experience as could be had in +Ontario County, Central New York, during the early part of the century. +There are few courtlier men living. His address is a fine combination of +dignity with the desire to confer happiness,--of perfect deference to +the feelings of others with absolute certainty of himself and his own +opinions. He is a remarkable example of the educating influence of +tactful perception, combined with entire singleness of aim, considered +quite apart from its moral character. His early life was passed among +the uncouth and illiterate; his daily associations, since he embraced +Mormonism, have been with the least cultivated grades of human +society,--a heterogeneous peasant-horde, looking to him for erection +into a nation: yet he has so clearly seen what is requisite in the man +who would be respected in the Presidency, and has so unreservedly +devoted his life to its attainment, that in protracted conversations +with him I heard only a single solecism, ("a'n't you" for "aren't you,") +and saw not one instance of breeding which would be inconsistent with +noble lineage. + +I say all this good of him frankly, disregarding any slur that maybe +cast on me as his defender by those broad-effect artists who always +paint the Devil black,--for I think it high time that the Mormon enemies +of our American Idea should be plainly understood as far more dangerous +antagonists than hypocrites or idiots can ever hope to be. Let us not +twice commit the blunder of underrating our foes. + +Brigham began our conversation at the theatre by telling me I was +late,--it was after nine o'clock. I replied, that this was the time we +usually set about dressing for an evening party in Boston or New York. + +"Yes," said he, "you find us an old-fashioned people; we are trying to +return to the healthy habits of patriarchal times." + +"Need you go back so far as that for your parallel?" suggested I. "It +strikes me that we might have found four-o'clock balls among the _early_ +Christians." + +He smiled, without that offensive affectation of some great men, the air +of taking another's joke under their gracious patronage, and went on to +remark that there were, unfortunately, multitudinous differences between +the Mormons and Americans at the East, besides the hours they kept. + +"You find us," said he, "trying to live peaceably. A sojourn with people +thus minded must be a great relief to you, who come from a land where +brother hath lifted hand against brother, and you hear the confused +noise of the warrior perpetually ringing in your ears." + +Despite the courtly deference and Scriptural dignity of this speech, I +detected in it a latent crow over that "perished Union" which was the +favorite theme of every saint I met in Utah, and hastened to assure the +President that I had no desire for relief from sympathy with my +country's struggle for honor and existence. + +"Ah!" he replied, in a voice slightly tinged with sarcasm. "You differ +greatly, then, from multitudes of your countrymen, who, since the draft +began to be talked of, have passed through Salt Lake, flying westward +from the crime of their brothers' blood." + +"I do indeed." + +"Still, they are excellent men. Brother Heber Kimball and myself are +every week invited to address a train of them down at Emigrant Square. +They are honest, peaceful people. You call them 'Copperheads,' I +believe. But they are real, true, good men. We find them very +truth-seeking, remarkably open to conviction. Many of them have stayed +with us. Thus the Lord makes the wrath of man to praise Him. The +Abolitionists--the same people who interfered with our institutions, and +drove us out into the wilderness--interfered with the Southern +institutions till they broke up the Union. But it's all coming out +right,--a great deal better than we could have arranged it for +ourselves. The men who flee from Abolitionist oppression come out here +to our ark of refuge, and people the asylum of God's chosen. You'll all +be out here before long. Your Union's gone forever. Fighting only makes +matters worse. When your country has become a desolation, we, the saints +whom you cast out, will forget all your sins against us, and give you a +home." + +There was something so preposterous in the idea of a mighty and +prosperous people abandoning, through abject terror of a desperate set +of Southern conspirators, the fertile soil and grand commercial avenues +of the United States, to populate a green strip in the heart of an +inaccessible desert, that, until I saw Brigham Young's face glowing with +what he deemed prophetic enthusiasm, I could not imagine him in earnest. +Before I left Utah, I discovered, that, without a single exception, all +the saints were inoculated with a prodigious craze, to the effect that +the United States was to become a blighted chaos, and its inhabitants +Mormon proselytes and citizens of Utah within the next two years,--the +more sanguine said, "next summer." + +At first sight, one point puzzled me. Where were they to get the +orthodox number of wives for this sudden accession of converts? My +gentlemen-readers will feel highly nattered by a solution of this +problem which I received from no leaser light of the Latter-Day Church +than that jolly apostle, Heber Kimball. + +"Why," said the old man, twinkling his little black eyes like a godly +Silenus, and nursing one of his fat legs with a lickerish smile, "isn't +the Lord Almighty providin' for His beloved heritage jist as fast as He +anyways kin? This war's a-goin' on till the biggest part o' you male +Gentiles hez killed each other off, then the leetle handful that's left +and comes a-fleein' t' our asylum 'll bring all the women o' the nation +along with 'em, so we shall hev women enough to give every one on 'em +all they want, and hev a large balance left over to distribute round +among God's saints that hez been here from the beginnin' o' the +tribulation." + +The sweet taste which this diabolical reflection seemed to leave in +Heber Kimball's mouth made me long to knock him down worse than I had +ever felt regarding either saint or sinner. But it is costly to smite an +apostle of the Lord in Salt Lake City; and I merely retaliated by +telling him I wished I could hear him say that in a lecture-room full of +Sanitary-Commission ladies scraping lint for their husbands, +sweethearts, and brothers in the Union army. I didn't know whether +saints made good lint, but I thought I knew one who'd get scraped a +little. + +To resume Brigham for the last time. After a conversation about the +Indians, in which he denounced the military policy of the Government, +averring that one bale of blankets and ten pounds of beads would go +farther to protect the mails from stoppage and emigrants from massacre +than a regiment of soldiers, he discovered that we crossed swords on +every war-question, and tactfully changed the subject to the beauty of +the Opera-House. + +As to the Indians, let me remark by-the-by, I did not tell him that I +understood the reason of his dislike to severe measures in that +direction. Infernally bestial and cruel as are the Goshoots, Pi-Utes, +and other Desert tribes, still they have never planned any extensive +raid since the Mormons entered Utah. In every settlement of the saints +you will find from two to a dozen young men who wear their black hair +cut in the Indian fashion, and speak all the surrounding dialects with +native fluency. Whenever a fatly provided wagon-train is to be attacked, +a fine herd of emigrants' beeves stampeded, the mail to be stopped, or +the Gentiles in any way harassed, these desperadoes stain their skin, +exchange their clothes for a breech-clout, and rally a horde of the +savages, whose favor they have always propitiated, for the ambush and +massacre, which in all but the element of brute force is their work in +plan, leadership, and execution. I have multitudes of most interesting +facts to back this assertion, but am already in danger of overrunning my +allowed limits. + +The Opera-House was a subject we could agree upon. I was greatly +astonished to find in the desert heart of the continent a place of +public amusement which for capacity, beauty, and comfort has no superior +in America, except the opera-houses of New York, Boston, and +Philadelphia. It is internally constructed somewhat like the first of +these, seats twenty-five hundred people, and commodiously receives five +hundred more, when, as in the present instance, the stage is thrown into +the _parquet_, and the latter boarded up to the level of the former for +dancing. Externally the building is a plain, but not ungraceful +structure, of stone, brick, and stucco. My greatest surprise was excited +by the really exquisite artistic beauty of the gilt and painted +decorations of the great arch over the stage, the cornices, and the +moulding about the _proscenium_-boxes. President Young, with a proper +pride, assured me that every particle of the ornamental work was by +indigenous and saintly hands. + +"But you don't know yet," he added, "how independent we are of you at +the East. Where do you think we got that central chandelier, and what d' +ye suppose we paid for it?" + +It was a piece of workmanship which would have been creditable to any +New York firm,--apparently a richly carved circle, twined with gilt +vines, leaves, and tendrils, blossoming all over with flaming +wax-lights, and suspended by a massive chain of golden lustre. So I +replied that he probably paid a thousand dollars for it in New York. + +"Capital!" exclaimed Brigham. "I made it myself! That circle is a +cartwheel which I washed and gilded; it hangs by a pair of gilt +ox-chains; and the ornaments of the candlesticks were all cut after my +patterns out of sheet-tin!" + +I talked with the President till a party of young girls, who seemed to +regard him with idolatry, and whom, in return, he treated with a sage +mixture of gallantry and fatherliness, came to him with an invitation to +join in some old-fashioned contra-dance long forgotten at the East. I +was curious to see how he would acquit himself in this supreme ordeal of +dignity; so I descended to the _parquet_, and was much impressed by the +aristocratic grace with which he went through his figures. + +After that I excused myself from numerous kind invitations by the +ball-committee to be introduced to a partner and join in the dances. The +fact was that I greatly wished to make a thorough physiognomical study +of the ball-room, and I know that my readers will applaud my self-denial +in not dancing, since it enables me to tell them how Utah good society +_looks_. + +After spending an hour in a circuit and survey of the room as minute as +was compatible with decency, I arrived at the following results. + +There was very little ostentation in dress at the ball, but there was +also very little taste in dressing. Patrician broadcloth and silk were +the rare exceptions, generally ill-made and ill-worn, but they cordially +associated with the great mass of plebeian tweed and calico. Few ladies +wore jewelry or feathers. There were some pretty girls swimming about in +tasteful whip-syllabub of puffed tarlatan. Where saintly gentlemen came +with several wives, the oldest generally seemed the most elaborately +dressed, and acted much like an Eastern chaperon toward her younger +sisters. (Wives of the same man habitually besister each other in Utah. +Another triumph of grace!) Among the men I saw some very strong and +capable faces; but the majority had not much character in their +looks,--indeed, differed little in that regard from any average crowd of +men anywhere. Among the women, to my surprise, I found no really +degraded faces, though many stolid ones,--only one deeply dejected, +(this belonged to the wife of a hitherto monogamic husband, who had left +her alone in the dress-circle, while he was dancing with a chubby young +Mormoness, likely to be added to the family in a month or two,) but many +impassive ones; and though I saw multitudes of kindly, good-tempered +countenances, and a score which would have been called pretty anywhere, +I was obliged to confess, after a most impartial and anxious search, +that I had not met a single woman who looked high-toned, first-class, +capable of poetic enthusiasm or heroic self-devotion,--not a single +woman whom an artist would dream of and ask to sit for a study,--not one +to whom a finely constituted intellectual man could come for +companionship in his pursuits or sympathy in his yearnings. Because I +knew that this verdict would be received at the East with a "Just as you +might have expected!" I cast aside everything like prejudice, and forgot +that I was in Utah, as I threaded the great throng. + +I must condense greatly what I have to say about two other typical men +besides Brigham Young, or I shall have no room to speak of the Lake and +the Desert. Heber Kimball, second President, (_proximus longo +intervallo!_) Brigham's most devoted worshipper, and in all respects the +next most important man, although utterly incapable of keeping coherent +the vast tissue of discordant Mormon elements, in case he should survive +Brigham, is the latter's equal in years, but in all things else his +antipodes. His height is over six feet, his form of aldermanic +rotundity, his face large, plethoric, and lustrous with the stable red +of stewed cranberries, while his small, twinkling black beads of eyes +and a Satyric sensualism about the mouth would indicate a temperament +fatally in the way of any apostleship save that of polygamy, even +without the aid of an induction from his favorite topics of discourse +and his patriarchally unvarnished style of handling them. Men, +everywhere, unfortunately, tend little toward the error of bashfulness +in their chat among each other, but most of us at the East would feel +that we were insulting the lowest member of the _demi-monde_, if we +uttered before her a single sentence of the talk which forms the +habitual staple of all Heber Kimball's public sermons to the wives and +daughters who throng the Sunday Tabernacle. + +Heber took a vivid interest in Bierstadt's and my own eternal welfare. +He quite laid himself out for our conversion, coming to sit with us at +breakfast in our Mormon hotel, dressed in a black swallow-tail, buff +vest, and a stupendous truncate cone of Leghorn, which made him look +like an Italian mountebank-physician of the seventeenth century. I have +heard men who could misquote Scripture for their own ends, and talk a +long while without saying anything; but he so far surpassed in these +particulars the loftiest efforts within my former experience, that I +could think of no comparison for him but Jack Bunsby taken to exhorting. +Witness a sample:-- + +"Seven women shall take a hold o' one man! There!" (with a slap on the +back of the nearest subject for conversion). "What d' ye think o' that? +Shall! _Shall_ take a hold on him! That don't mean they _sha'n't_, does +it? No! God's word means what it says. And therefore means no +otherwise,--not in no way, shape, nor manner. Not in no _way_, for He +saith, 'I am the _way_--and the truth and the life.' Not in no _shape_, +for a man beholdeth his nat'ral _shape_ in a glass; nor in no _manner_, +for he straightway forgetteth what manner o' man he was. Seven women +_shall_ catch a hold on him. And ef they _shall_, then they _will_! For +everything shall come to pass, and not one good word shall fall to the +ground. You who try to explain away the Scriptur' would make it +fig'rative. But don't come to ME with none o' your spiritooalizers! Not +_one_ good word shall fall. Therefore _seven_ shall not fall. And ef +seven shall catch a hold on him,--and, as I jist proved, seven _will_ +catch a hold on him,--then seven _ought_,--and in the Latter-Day Glory, +_seven_, yea, as our Lord said un-tew Peter, 'Verily I say un-tew you, +not seven, but seventy times seven,' these seventy times seven shall +catch a hold and cleave. Blessed day! For the end shall be even as the +beginnin', and seventy-fold more abundantly. Come over into my garden." + +This invitation would wind up the homily. We gladly accepted it, and I +must confess, that, if there ever could be any hope of our conversion, +it was just about the time we stood in Brother Heber's fine orchard, +eating apples and apricots between exhortations, and having sound +doctrine poked down our throats with gooseberries as big as plums, to +take the taste out of our mouths, like jam after castor-oil. + +Porter Rockwell is a man whom my readers must have heard of in every +account of fearlessly executed massacre committed in Utah during the +last thirteen years. He is the chief of the Danites,--a band of saints +who possess the monopoly of vengeance upon Gentiles and apostates. If a +Mormon tries to sneak off to California by night, after converting his +property into cash, their knives have the inevitable duty of changing +his destination to another state, and bringing back his goods into the +Lord's treasury. Their bullets are the ones which find their unerring +way through the brains of external enemies. They are the Heaven-elected +assassins of Mormonism,--the butchers by divine right. Porter Rockwell +has slain his forty men. This is historical. His probable private +victims amount to as many more. He wears his hair braided behind, and +done up in a knot with a back-comb, like a woman's. He has a face full +of bull-dog courage,--but vastly good-natured, and without a bad trait +in it. I went out riding with him on the Fourth of July, and enjoyed his +society greatly,--though I knew that at a word from Brigham he would cut +my throat in as matter-of-fact a style as if I had been a calf instead +of an author. But he would have felt no unkindness toward me on that +account. I understood his anomaly perfectly, and found him one of the +pleasantest murderers I ever met. He was mere executive force, from +which the lever, conscience, had suffered entire disjunction, being in +the hand of Brigham. He was everywhere known as the Destroying Angel, +but he seemed to have little disagreement with his toddy, and took his +meals regularly. He has two very comely and pleasant wives. Brigham has +about seventy, Heber about thirty. The seventy of Brigham do not include +those spiritually married, or "sealed" to him, who may never see him +again after the ceremony is performed in his back-office. These often +have temporal husbands, and marry Brigham only for the sake of belonging +to his lordly establishment in heaven. + +Salt Lake City, Brigham told me, he believed to contain sixteen thousand +inhabitants. Its houses are built generally of adobe or wood,--a few of +stone,--and though none of them are architecturally ambitious, almost +all have delightful gardens. Both fruit- and shade-trees are plenty and +thrifty. Indeed, from the roof of the Opera-House the city looks fairly +embowered in green. It lies very picturesquely on a plain quite +embasined among mountains, and the beauty of its appearance is much +heightened by the streams which run on both sides of all the broad +streets, brought down from the snow-peaks for purposes of irrigation. +The Mormons worship at present in a plain, low building,--I think, of +adobe,--called the Tabernacle, save during the intensely hot weather, +when an immense booth of green branches, filled with benches, +accommodates them more comfortably. Brigham is erecting a Temple of +magnificent granite, (much like the Quincy,) about two hundred feet long +by one hundred and twenty-five feet wide. If this edifice be ever +finished, it will rank among the most capacious religious structures of +the continent. + +The lake from which the city takes its name is about twenty miles +distant from the latter, by a good road across the level valley-bottom. +Artistically viewed, it is one of the loveliest sheets of water I ever +saw,--bluer than the intensest blue of the ocean, and practically as +impressive, since, looking from the southern shore, you see only a +water-horizon. This view, however, is broken by a magnificent +mountainous island, rising, I should think, seven or eight hundred feet +from the water, half a dozen miles from shore, and apparently as many +miles in circuit. The density of the lake-brine has been under- instead +of over-stated. I swam out into it for a considerable distance, then lay +upon my back _on_, rather than in, the water, and suffered the breeze to +waft me landward again. I was blown to a spot where the lake was only +four inches deep, without grazing my back, and did not know I had got +within my depth again until I depressed my hand a trifle and touched +bottom! It is a mistake to call this lake azoic. It has no fish, but +breeds myriads of strange little maggots, which presently turn into +troublesome gnats. The rocks near the lake are grandly castellated and +cavernous crags of limestone, some of it finely crystalline, but most of +it like our coarser Trenton and Black-River groups. There is a large +cave in this formation, ten minutes' climb from the shore. + +I must abruptly leap to the overland stage again. + +From Salt Lake City to Washoe and the Sierra Nevada Mountains, the road +lies through the most horrible desert conceivable by the mind of man. +For the sand of the Sahara we find substituted an impalpable powder of +alkali, white as the driven snow, stretching for ninety miles at a time +in one uninterrupted dazzling sheet, which supports not even that last +obstinate _vidette_ of vegetation, the wild-sage brush. Its springs are +far between, and, without a single exception, mere receptacles of a +salt, potash, and sulphur hell-broth, which no man would drink, save _in +extremis_. A few days of this beverage within, and of wind-drifted +alkali invading every pore of the body without, often serve to cover the +miserable passenger with an erysipelatous eruption which presently +becomes confluent and irritates him to madness. Meanwhile he jolts +through alkali-ruts, unable to sleep for six days and nights together, +until frenzy sets in, or actual delirium comes to his relief. I look +back on that desert as the most frightful nightmare of my existence. + +As if Nature had not done her worst, we were doomed, on the second day +out from Salt Lake, to hear, at one station, where we stopped, horrid +rumors of Goshoots on the war-path, and, ere the day reached its noon, +to find their proofs irrefragable. Every now and then we saw in the +potash-dust moccasin-tracks, with the toes turned in, and presently my +field-glass revealed a hideous devil skulking in the mile-off ledges, +who was none other than a Goshoot spy. How far off were the scalpers and +burners? + +The first afternoon-stage that day was a long and terrible one. The poor +horses could hardly drag our crazy wagon, up to its hubs in potash; and +yet we knew our only safety, in case of attack, was a running fight. We +must fire from our windows as the horses flew. + +About four o'clock we entered a terrible defile, which seemed planned by +Nature for treachery and ambush. The great, black, barren rocks of +porphyry and trachyte rose three hundred feet above our heads, their +lower and nearer ledges being all so many natural parapets to fire over, +loop-holed with chinks to fire through. There were ten rifles in our +party. We ran them out, five on a side, ready to send the first red +villain who peeped over the breastworks to quick perdition. Our +six-shooters lay across our laps, our bowie-knives were at our sides, +our cartouch-boxes, crammed with ready vengeance, swung open on our +breast-straps. We sat with tight-shut teeth,--only muttering now and +then to each other, in a glum undertone, "Don't get nervous,--don't +throw a single shot away,--take aim,--remember it's for _home_!" +Something of that sort, or a silent squeeze of the hand, was all that +passed, as we sat with one eye glued to the ledges and our guns +unswerving. None of us, I think, were cowards; but the agony of sitting +there, tugging along two miles an hour, expecting to hear a volley of +yells and musketry ring over the next ledge, drinking the cup of thought +to its miscroscopic dregs,--_that_ was worse than fear! + +Only one consolation was left us. In the middle of the defile stood an +overland station, where we were to get fresh horses. The next stage was +twenty miles long. If we were attacked in force, we might manage to run +it, almost the whole way, unless the Indians succeeded in shooting one +of our team,--the _coup_ they always attempt. + +I have no doubt we were ambushed at several points in that defile, but +our perfect preparation intimidated our foes. The Indian is cruel as the +grave, but he is an arrant coward. He will not risk being the first man +shot, though his band may overpower the enemy afterward. + +At last we turned the corner around which the station-house should come +in view. + +A thick, nauseous smoke was curling up from the site of the buildings. +We came nearer. Barn, stables, station-house,--all were a smouldering +pile of rafters. We came still nearer. The whole stud of horses--a dozen +or fifteen--lay roasting on the embers. We came close to the spot. +There, inextricably mixed with the carcasses of the beasts, lay six men, +their brains dashed out, their faces mutilated beyond recognition, their +limbs hewn off,--a frightful holocaust steaming up into our faces. I +must not dwell on that horror of all senses. It comes to me now at high +noonday with a grisly shudder. + + * * * * * + +After that, we toiled on twenty miles farther with our nearly dying +horses; a hundred miles more of torturing suspense on top of that sight +branded into our brains before we gained Ruby Valley, at the foot of the +Humboldt Mountains, and left the last Goshoot behind us. + +The remainder of our journey was horrible by Nature only, without the +atrocious aid of man. But the past had done its work. We reached Washoe +with our very marrows almost burnt out by sleeplessness, sickness, and +agony of mind. The morning before we came to the silver-mining +metropolis, Virginia City, a stout, young Illinois farmer, whom we had +regarded as the stanchest of all our fellow-passengers, became +delirious, and had to be held in the stage by main force. (A few weeks +afterward, when the stage was changing horses near the Sink of Carson, +another traveller became suddenly insane, and blew his brains out.) As +for myself, the moment that I entered a warm bath, in Virginia City, I +swooned entirely away, and was resuscitated with great difficulty after +an hour and a half's unconsciousness. + +We stopped at Virginia for three days,--saw the California of '49 +reënacted in a feverish, gambling, mining town,--descended to the bottom +of the exhaustlessly rich "Ophir" shaft,--came up again, and resumed our +way across the Sierra. By the mere act of crossing that ridge and +stepping over the California line, we came into glorious forests of +ever-living green, a rainbow-affluence of flowers, an air like a draught +from windows left open in heaven. + +Just across the boundary, we sat down on the brink of glorious Lake +Tahoe, (once "Bigler," till the ex-Governor of that name became a +Copperhead, and the loyal Californians kicked him out of their +geography, as he had already been thrust out of their politics,)--a +crystal sheet of water fresh-distilled from the snow-peaks, its granite +bottom visible at the depth of a hundred feet, its banks a celestial +garden, lying in a basin thirty-five miles long by ten wide, and nearly +seven thousand feet above the Pacific level. Geography has no superior +to this glorious sea, this chalice of divine cloud-wine held sublimely +up against the very press whence it was wrung. Here, virtually at the +end of our overland journey, since our feet pressed the green borders of +the Golden State, we sat down to rest, feeling that one short hour, one +little league, had translated us out of the infernal world into heaven. + + + * * * * * + +ON PICKET DUTY. + + + Within a green and shadowy wood, + Circled with spring, alone I stood: + The nook was peaceful, fair, and good. + + The wild-plum blossoms lured the bees, + The birds sang madly in the trees, + Magnolia-scents were on the breeze. + + All else was silent; but the ear + Caught sounds of distant bugle clear, + And heard the bullets whistle near,-- + + When from the winding river's shore + The Rebel guns began to roar, + And ours to answer, thundering o'er; + + And echoed from the wooded hill, + Repeated and repeated still, + Through all my soul they seemed to thrill. + + For, as their rattling storm awoke, + And loud and fast the discord broke, + In rude and trenchant _words_ they spoke. + + "_We hate!_" boomed fiercely o'er the tide; + "We fear not!" from the other side; + "_We strike!_" the Rebel guns replied. + + Quick roared our answer, "We defend!" + "_Our rights!_" the battle-sounds contend; + "The rights of _all_!" we answer send. + + "_We conquer!_" rolled across the wave; + "We persevere!" our answer gave; + "_Our chivalry!_" they wildly rave. + + "Ours _are the brave_!" "Be _ours_ the free!" + "_Be ours the slave, the masters we_!" + "On us their blood no more shall be!" + + As when some magic word is spoken, + By which a wizard spell is broken, + There was a silence at that token. + + The wild birds dared once more to sing, + I heard the pine-bough's whispering, + And trickling of a silver spring. + + Then, crashing forth with smoke and din, + Once more the rattling sounds begin, + Our iron lips roll forth, "We win!" + + And dull and wavering in the gale + That rushed in gusts across the vale + Came back the faint reply, "_We fail_!" + + And then a word, both stern and sad, + From throat of huge Columbiad,-- + "Blind fools and traitors! ye are mad!" + + Again the Rebel answer came, + Muffled and slow, as if in shame,-- + "_All, all is lost_!" in smoke and flame. + + Now bold and strong and stern as Fate + The Union guns sound forth, "We wait!" + Faint comes the distant cry, "_Too late_!" + + "Return! return!" our cannon said; + And, as the smoke rolled overhead, + "_We dare not_!" was the answer dread. + + Then came a sound, both loud and clear, + A godlike word of hope and cheer,-- + "Forgiveness!" echoed far and near; + + As when beside some death-bed still + We watch, and wait God's solemn will, + A blue-bird warbles his soft trill. + + I clenched my teeth at that blest word, + And, angry, muttered, "Not so, Lord! + The only answer is the sword!" + + I thought of Shiloh's tainted air, + Of Richmond's prisons, foul and bare, + And murdered heroes, young and fair,-- + + Of block and lash and overseer, + And dark, mild faces pale with fear, + Of baying hell-hounds panting near. + + But then the gentle story told + My childhood, in the days of old, + Rang out its lessons manifold. + + O prodigal, and lost! arise + And read the welcome blest that lies + In a kind Father's patient eyes! + + Thy elder brother grudges not + The lost and found should share his lot, + And wrong in concord be forgot. + + Thus mused I, as the hours went by, + Till the relieving guard drew nigh, + And then was challenge and reply. + + And as I hastened back to line, + It seemed an omen half divine + That "Concord" was the countersign. + + * * * * * + +OUR PROGRESSIVE INDEPENDENCE. + + +It is among the possibilities of the future, that, in due course of +time, the United States of America shall become to England what England +has become to Saxony. We cannot be sure, it is true, that the +mother-country will live, a prosperous and independent kingdom, to see +the full maturity of her gigantic offspring. We have no right to assume +it as a matter of course, that the Western Autocracy will fill up, +unbroken, the outline traced for it by Nature and history. But England, +forced as her civilization must be considered ever since the Conquest, +has a reasonable chance for another vigorous century, and the Union, the +present storm once weathered, does not ask a longer time than this to +become, according to the prediction of the London "Times," the +master-power of the planet. + +The class that guides the destinies of Great Britain and her +dependencies is far-reaching in its anticipations as it is deep-rooted +in its recollections. _Quantum radice in Tartara, tantum vertice ad +auras_,--if we may invert the poet's words. An American millionnaire may +be anxious about the condition of his grandchildren, but a peer whose +ancestors came in with the Conqueror looks ahead at least as far as the +end of the twentieth century. The royal astrologers have cast the +horoscope of the nationality born beneath the evening-star, and report +it as being ominous for that which finds its nativity in the House of +Leo. + +Every dynasty sees a natural enemy in a self-governing state. Its dread +of that enemy is in exact proportion to the amount of liberty enjoyed by +its own people. Freedom is the ferment of Freedom. The moistened sponge +drinks up water greedily; the dry one sheds it. Russia has no popular +legislation, and her Emperor almost, perhaps quite, loves us. England +boasts of her freeborn people, and her governing class, to say the +least, does not love us. + +An unexpected accident of situation startled us by the revelation of a +secret which had been, on the whole, very well kept. No play of mirrors +in a story, no falling of a screen in a comedy, no flash of +stage-lightning in a melodrama, ever betrayed a lover's or a murderer's +hidden thought and purpose more strikingly than the over-hasty +announcement that the Union was broken into warring fragments, never +again to be joined together, unveiled the cherished hope of its +Old-World enemies. The whispers of expectant heirs at the opening of a +miser's will are decorous and respectful, compared to the chuckle of the +leading English social and political organ and its echoes, when the +bursting of the Republican "bubble" was proclaimed as an accomplished +fact, and the hour was thought to have come when the "Disunited States" +could be held up as a spectacle to the people of Europe. A _Te Deum_ in +Westminster Abbey would hardly have added emphasis to the expression of +what appeared to be the prevailing sentiment of the upper classes. + +If the comparative prudence of the British Government had not tempered +this exultant movement, the hopes of civilization would have been +blasted by such a war as it is sickening to think of: England in +alliance with an empire trying to spread and perpetuate Slavery as its +very principle of life, against a people whose watchwords were freedom, +education, and the dignity of labor. If the silent masses of the British +people had not felt that our cause was theirs, there would have been no +saying how far the passionate desire to see their predictions made facts +might have led the proud haters of popular government. + +Between these two forces the British Cabinet has found a diagonal which +has met with the usual success of compromises. The aristocracy, which +very naturally wishes to see the Union divided, is in a fair way of +being disappointed, because, as its partisans may claim, England did not +force herself into our quarrel. That portion of the middling classes +which could not tolerate the thought of a Slave Empire has been +compelled to witness a deliberate exposure in the face of the whole +world of the hollowness of those philanthropic pretensions which have +been so long the boast of British patriots. The people of the Union, who +expected moral support and universal indignant repudiation of the +slaveholding Rebel conspiracy, have been disgusted and offended. The +Rebels, who supposed Great Britain, and perhaps France also, would join +them in a war which was virtually a crusade against free institutions, +have been stung into a second paroxysm of madness. Western Europe failed +us in the storm; it leaves them in the moment of shipwreck. + +The recent action of the British Government, under the persuasive +influence of Mr. Seward's polite representation, that instant +hostilities would be sure to follow, if England did not keep her iron +pirates at home, has improved somewhat the tone of Northern feeling +towards her. The late neighborly office of the Canadian Government, in +warning us of the conspiracy to free our prisoners, has produced a very +favorable impression, so far as the effect of a single act is felt in +striking the balance of a long account. + +We can, therefore, examine some of our relations with Great Britain in a +better temper now than we could do some months ago, when we never went +to sleep without thinking that before morning we might be shelled out of +our beds by a fleet of British iron-clad steamers. But though we have +been soothed, and in some measure conciliated, by the change referred +to, there is no such thing possible as returning to the _status quo ante +bellum_. We can never feel in all respects to England as we felt of old. +This is a fact which finds expression in so many forms that it is +natural to wish to see how deep it lies: whether it is an effect of +accidental misunderstanding and collision of interests, or whether it +is because the events of the last few years have served to bring to +light the organic, inherent, and irreconcilable antagonism of the two +countries. + +We are all of us in the habit of using words so carelessly, that it will +help us to limit their vagueness as here employed. We speak of "England" +for Great Britain, for the simple reason that Ireland is but a reluctant +alien she drags after her, and Scotland only her most thriving province. +We are not surprised, for instance, when "Blackwood" echoes the abusive +language of the metropolitan journals, for it is only as a village-cur +joins the hounds that pass in full cry. So, when we talk of "the +attitude of England," we have a tolerably defined idea, made up of the +collective aspect of the unsympathetic Government, of the mendacious and +insolent press, of the mercenary trading allies of the Rebels, of the +hostile armaments which have sailed from British ports, of the +undisguised enmity of many of her colonists, neighbors of the North as +well as neighbors of the South; all of which shape themselves into an +image having very much the look of representing the nation,--certainly +much more the look of it than the sum of all those manifestations which +indicate sympathy with the cause of the North. + +The attitude of England, then, has been such, since the Rebellion began, +as to alienate much of the affection still remaining among us for the +mother-country. It has gone far towards finishing that process of +separation of the child from the parent which two centuries of exile and +two long wars had failed to complete. But, looking at the matter more +clearly, we shall find that our causes of complaint must be very +unequally distributed among the different classes of the British people. + +The _Government_ has carefully measured out to us, in most cases +certainly, strict, technical justice. It could not well do otherwise, +for it knows the force of precedents. But we have an unpleasing sense +that our due, as an ally and a Christian nation, striving against an +openly proclaimed heathen conspiracy, has been paid us grudgingly, +tardily, sparingly, while our debt, as in the case of the Rebel +emissaries, has been extorted fiercely, swiftly, and to the last +farthing. We have recognized a change, it is true, ever since Earl +Russell gave the hint that our cause was more popular in England than +that of the South. We have gratefully accepted the friendly acts already +alluded to. Better late than not at all. But the past cannot be undone. +British "neutrality" has strengthened the arms that have been raised +against our national life, and winged the bloody messengers that have +desolated our households. Still, every act of justice which has even a +show of good-will in it is received only too graciously by a people +which has known what it is to be deserted by its friends in the hour of +need. Whatever be the motives of the altered course of the British +Government,--an awakened conscience, or a series of "Federal" +successes,--Mr. Sumner's arguments, or General Gillmore's long-range +practice,--a more careful study of the statistics of Slavery, or of the +lists of American iron-clad steamers,--we welcome it at once; we take +the offered hand, if not with warm pressure, at least with decent +courtesy. We only regret that forbearance and good offices, and that +moral influence which would have been almost as important as an +offensive and defensive alliance, had not come before the flower of our +youth was cut down in the battle-field, and mourning and misery had +entered half the families of the land. + +The British _aristocracy_, with all its dependent followers, cannot help +being against us. The bearing which our success would have on its +interests is obvious enough, and we cannot wonder that the instinct of +self-preservation opens its eyes to the remote consequences which will +be likely to flow from the continued and prosperous existence of the +regenerated, self-governing Union. The privileged classes feel to our +labor- and money-saving political machinery just as the hand-weavers +felt to the inventor and introducers of the power-loom. The simple fact +is, that, if a great nation like ours can govern itself, they are not +needed, and Nobility has a nightmare of Jews going about the streets +with half a dozen coronets on their heads, one over another, like so +many old beavers. What can we expect of the law-spinning heir-loom +owners, but that they should wish to break this new-fangled machine, and +exterminate its contrivers? The right to defend its life is the claim of +everything that lives, and we must not lose our temper because the +representatives of an hereditary ruling class wish to preserve those +privileges which are their very existence, nor because they have +foresight enough to know, that, if the Western Continent remains the +seat of a vast, thriving, irresistible, united republic, the days of +their life, as an order, are numbered. + +"The _people_," as Mr. Motley has said, in one of his official letters, +"everywhere sympathize with us; for they know that our cause is that of +free institutions,--that our struggle is that of the people against an +oligarchy." We have evidence that this is partially true of the British +people. But we know also how much they are influenced by their political +and social superiors, and we know, too, what base influences have been +long at work to corrupt their judgment and inflame their prejudices. We +have too often had occasion to see that the middle classes had been +reached by the passions of their superiors, or infected by the poison +instilled by traitorous emissaries. We have been struck with this +particularly in some of the British colonies. It is the livid gleam of a +reflected hatred they shed upon us; but the angle of reflection is equal +to the angle of incidence, and we feel sure that the British inhabitants +of an African cape or of a West-India islet would not have presumed to +sympathize with the Rebels, unless they had known that it was +respectable, if not fashionable, to do so at home. It is one of the most +painful illustrations of the influence of a privileged class that the +opinions and prejudices and interests of the English aristocracy should +have been so successfully imposed upon a large portion of the people, +for whom the North was fighting over again the battles of that long +campaign which will never end until the rightful Sovereigns have +dispossessed the whole race of Pretenders. + +The effect of this course on the part of the mother-country has been +like that of harsh treatment upon children generally. It chills their +affections, lessens their respect for the parental authority, interrupts +their friendly intercourse, and perhaps drives them from the +family-mansion. But it cannot destroy the ties of blood and the +recollections of the past. It cannot deprive the "old home" of its +charm. If there has been but a single member of the family beneath its +roof who has remained faithful and kind, all grateful memories will +cluster about that one, though the hearts of the rest were hard as the +nether millstone. + +The soil of England will always be dearer to us of English descent than +any except our own. The Englishman will always be more like one of +ourselves than any "foreigner" can be. We shall never cease to feel the +tenderest regard for those Englishmen who have stood by us like brothers +in the day of trial. They have hardly guessed in our old home how sacred +to us is the little island from which our fathers were driven into the +wilderness,--not saying, with the Separatists, "Farewell, Babylon! +farewell, Rome!" but "Farewell, _dear_ England!" At that fearful thought +of the invasion of her shores,--a thought which rises among the spectral +possibilities of the future,--we seem to feel a dull aching in the bones +of our forefathers that lie beneath her green turf, as old soldiers feel +pain in the limbs they have left long years ago on the battle-field. + +But hard treatment often proves the most useful kind of discipline. One +good effect, so far as we are concerned, that will arise from the harsh +conduct of England, will be the promotion of our intellectual and moral +independence. We declared our political independence a good while ago, +but this was as a small dividend is declared on a great debt. We owed a +great deal more to posterity than to insure its freedom from political +shackles. The American republic was to be emancipated from every +Old-World prejudice that might stand in the way of its entire fulness of +development according to its own law, which is in many ways different +from any precedent furnished by the earlier forms of civilization. There +were numerous difficulties in the way. The American talked the language +of England, and found a literature ready-made to his hands. He brought +his religion with him, shaped under English influences, whether he +called himself Dissenter or not. He dispensed justice according to the +common law of England. His public assemblies were guided by +Parliamentary usage. His commerce and industry had been so long in +tutelage that both required long exercise before they could know their +own capacities. + +The mother-country held her American colonies as bound to labor for her +profit, not their own, just as an artisan claims the whole time of his +apprentice. If we think the policy of England towards America in the +year 1863 has been purely selfish, looking solely to her own interest, +without any regard to the principles involved in our struggle, let us +look back and see whether it was any different in 1763, or in 1663. If +her policy has been uniform at these three periods, it is time for us to +have learned our lesson. + +Two hundred years ago, in the year 1663, an Act of Parliament was passed +to monopolize the Colonial trade for England, for the sake, as its +preamble stated, "of keeping them [the Colonies] in a firmer dependence +upon it, and rendering them yet more beneficial and advantageous unto +it, in the further employment and increase of English shipping and +seamen, vent of English woollens and other manufactures and +commodities," etc. This act had, of course, the effect of increasing and +perpetuating the naturally close dependence of the Colonies on the +mother-country for most of the products of industry. But in an infant +community the effect of such restrictions would be little felt, and it +required another century before an extension of the same system was +publicly recognized as being a robbery of the child by the parent. To +show how far the system was carried, and what was the effect on the +public mind of a course founded in pure, and, as it proved, +short-sighted selfishness, it will be necessary to recall some of the +details which help to account for the sudden change at last in the +disposition of the Colonists. + +One hundred years ago, on the tenth of February, 1763, a treaty of peace +between England and France, as the leading powers, was signed at Paris. +This was no sooner arranged than the Ministry began that system of +Colonial taxation which the Massachusetts House of Representatives +denounced as tending to give the Crown and Ministers "an absolute and +uncontrollable power of raising money upon the people, which by the wise +Constitution of Great Britain is and can be only lodged with safety in +the legislature." Part and parcel of this system was that comprehensive +scheme of tyranny by means of which England attempted to secure the +perpetual industrial dependence of the American Colonies, the principle +of which we have already seen openly avowed in the Act of Parliament of +1663, a hundred years earlier. + +It was her fixed policy, as is well known, to keep her skilled artisans +at home, and to discourage as far as possible all manufactures in the +Colonies. By different statutes, passed in successive reigns, persons +enticing artificers into foreign countries incur the penalty of five +hundred pounds and twelve months' imprisonment for the first offence, +and of one thousand pounds and two years' imprisonment for the second +offence. If the workmen did not return within six months after warning, +they were to be deemed aliens, forfeit all their lands and goods, and be +incapable of receiving any legacy or gift. A similar penalty was laid so +late as the reign of George III. upon any person contracting with or +endeavoring to persuade any artificer concerned in printing calicoes, +cottons, muslins, or linens, or preparing any tools for such +manufacture, to go out of the kingdom. + +The same jealousy of the Colonies, lest they should by their success in +the different branches of industry interfere with the home monopoly, +shows itself in various other forms. There was, naturally enough, a +special sensitiveness to the practice of the art of printing. Sir Edmund +Andros, when he came out as Governor of the Northern Colonies, was +instructed "to allow of no printing-press"; and Lord Effingham, on his +appointment to the government of Virginia, was directed "to allow no +person to use a printing-press on any occasion whatever." + +The Board of Trade and Plantations made a report, in 1731, to the +British Parliament concerning the "trades carried on, and manufactures +set up, in the Colonies," in which it is recommended that "some +expedient be fallen upon to direct the thoughts of the Colonists from +undertakings of this kind; so much the rather, because these +manufactures in process of time may be carried on in a greater degree, +unless an early stop be put to their progress." + +In one of Franklin's papers, published in London in 1768, are enumerated +some instances of the way in which the Colonists were actually +interfered with by legislation. + +"Iron is to be found everywhere in America, and beaver are the natural +produce of that country: hats and nails and steel are wanted there as +well as here. It is of no importance to the common welfare of the empire +whether a subject of the king gets his living by making hats on this or +on that side of the water. Yet the hatters of England have prevailed to +obtain an act in their own favor restraining that manufacture in +America, in order to oblige the Americans to send their beaver to +England to be manufactured, and purchase back the hats, loaded with the +charges of a double transportation. In the same manner have a few +nail-makers, and a still smaller body of steel-makers, (perhaps there +are not half a dozen of these in England,) prevailed totally to forbid, +by an Act of Parliament, the erecting of slitting-mills or +steel-furnaces in America, that the Americans may be obliged to take all +their nails for their buildings, and steel for their tools, from these +artificers," etc. + +"It is an idle argument in the Americans," said Governor Pownall, "when +they talk of setting up manufactures _for trade_; but it would be +equally injudicious in Government here to force any measure that may +render the manufacturing for _home consumption_ an object of prudence, +or even of pique, in the Americans." + +The maternal Government pressed this matter a little too fast and too +far. The Colonists became _piqued_ at last, and resolved, in 1764, not +to purchase English stuffs for clothing, but to use articles of domestic +manufacture as far as possible. Boston, always a ringleader in these +mischiefs, diminished her consumption of British merchandise ten +thousand pounds and more in this one year. The Harvard-College youth +rivalled the neighboring town in their patriotic self-sacrifice, and the +whole graduating class of 1770, with the names of Hutchinson, +Saltonstall, and Winthrop at the head of the list, appeared at +Commencement in black cloth of home-manufacture. This act of defiance +only illustrates more forcibly the almost complete dependence of +Colonial industry at the time of its occurrence, the effect of a policy +which looked upon the Colonies with no reference to any other +consideration than the immediate profit to be derived from them. + +In spite, however, of the hard measures employed by England to cripple +the development of the Colonies in every direction, except such as might +be profitable to herself, it was a very difficult matter to root out +their affection for the mother-country. Pownall, who was in this country +from 1753 to 1761, successively Governor of Massachusetts, +Lieutenant-Governor of New Jersey, and Governor of South Carolina, gives +us the most ample testimony on this point. His words are so strong that +none can fail to be impressed with the picture he draws of a people who +ten years later were in open revolt against the home authorities. + +"The duty of a colony is affection for the mother-country: here I may +affirm, that, in whatever form and temper this affection can lie in the +human breast, in that form, by the deepest and most permanent +impression, it ever did lie in the breast of the American people. They +have no other idea of this country [England] than as their home; they +have no other word by which to express it, and, till of late, it has +constantly been expressed by the name of home. That powerful affection, +the love of our native country, which operates in every heart, operates +in this people towards England, which they consider as their native +country; nor is this a mere passive impression, a mere opinion in +speculation,--it has been wrought up in them to a vigilant and active +zeal for the service of this country." + +And Franklin's testimony confirms that of the English Governor. + +"The true loyalists," he says, "were the people of America against whom +the royalists of England acted. No people were ever known more truly +loyal, and universally so, to their sovereigns.... They were +affectionate to the people of England, zealous and forward to assist in +her wars, by voluntary contributions of men and money, even beyond their +proportion." + +Such was the people whose love and obedience the greedy and grasping +policy of the British Government threw away, never to be regained. The +Revolution came at last, and the people reckoned up the long arrears of +oppression. "In the short space of two years," says a contemporary +writer, "nearly three millions of people passed over from the love and +duty of loyal subjects to the hatred and resentment of enemies." + +We have seen that our cautious parent had taken good care not to let her +American children learn the use of her tools any farther or faster than +she thought good for them--and herself. They no sooner got their hands +free than they set them at work on various new contrivances. One of the +first was the nail-cutting machinery which has been in use ever since. +All our old houses--the old gambrel-roofed Cambridge mansions, for +instance--are built with wrought nails, no doubt every one of them +imported from England. Many persons do not know the fact that the +screw-auger is another native American invention, having been first +manufactured for sale at Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in 1776, or a little +earlier. Eli Whitney contrived the cotton-gin in 1792, and some years +later the machinery for the manufacture of fire-arms, involving the +principle of absolute uniformity in the pattern of each part, so that +any injured or missing portion of a gun may be instantly supplied +without special fitting. + +We claim to have done our full share in the way of industrial inventions +since we have become a nation. The four elements have all accepted the +American as their master. The great harvests of the earth are gathered +by his mowing and reaping machines. The flame that is creeping from its +lair to spring at the roofs of the crowded city is betrayed to its +watchful guardians by the American telegraphic fire-alarm, and the +conflagration that reddens the firmament is subdued by the inundation +that flows upon it from an American steam-fire-engine. In the realm of +air, the Frenchman who sent a bubble of silk to the clouds must divide +his honors with the American who emptied the clouds themselves of their +electric fires. Water, the mightiest of all, which devours the earth +and quenches the fire, and rides over the air in vaporous exhalations, +has been the chosen field of ingenious labor for our people. The great +American invention of _ice_,--perhaps there is a certain approach to its +own coolness in calling it an invention, though Sancho, it may be +remembered, considered sleep in that light,--this remarkable invention +of ice, as a tropical commodity, could have sprung only from a +republican and revolutionary brain. The steamboat has been claimed for +various inventors, for one so far back as 1543; but somehow or other it +happened, as it has so often happened, that "the chasm from mere +attempts to positive achievement was first bridged by an American." Our +wave-splitting clippers have changed the whole model of sailing-vessels. +One of them, which was to have been taken in tow by the steam-vessels of +the Crimean squadron, spread her wings, and sailed proudly by them all. +Our iron water-beetles would send any of the old butterfly three-deckers +to the bottom, as quickly as one of these would sink a Roman trireme. + +The Yankee whittling a shingle with his jack-knife is commonly accepted +as a caricature, but it is an unconscious symbolization of the plastic +instinct which rises step by step to the clothes-pin, the apple-parer, +the mowing-machine, the wooden truss-bridge, the clipper-ship, the +carved figure-head, the Cleopatra of the World's Exhibition. + +One American invention, or discovery, has gone far towards paying back +all that the new continent owes to the old civilizations. The cradle of +artificial _anæsthesia_--man's independence of the tyranny of pain--must +be looked for at the side of the Cradle of Liberty. Never was a greater +surprise than the announcement of this miraculous revelation to the +world. One evening in October, 1846, a professional brother called upon +the writer of this paper. He shut the door carefully, and looked +nervously around him. Then he spoke, and told of the wondrons results of +the experiment which had just been made in the operating-room. "In one +fortnight's time," he said, "all Europe will be ablaze with this +discovery." He then produced and read a paper that he had just drawn up +for a learned society of which we were both members, the first paper +ever written on this subject. On that day not a surgeon in the world, +out of a little New-England circle, made any profession of knowing how +to render a patient quickly, completely, pleasantly, safely insensible +to pain for a limited period. In a few weeks every surgeon in the world +knew how to do it, and the atmosphere of the planet smelt strong of +sulphuric ether. The discovery started from the Massachusetts General +Hospital, just as definitely as the cholera started from Jessore, to +travel round the globe. + +The advance of our civilization is still more strongly marked by the +number and excellence of musical instruments, especially pianos, which +are made in this country. It would hardly be an exaggeration to say that +the piano keeps pace with the plough, as our population advances. More +striking evidence than even this is found in the fact that the highest +grade of the highest instruments used for scientific research is +produced by our artisans. One of the two largest telescope-lenses in the +world is that made by Mr. Clark, of Cambridge, whose reputation is not +confined to our own country. The microscopes of Mr. Spencer, which threw +those of the Continent into the shade at once, and challenged +competition with the work of the three great London opticians, were made +in a half-cleared district of Central New York, where, in our +pilgrimages to that Mecca of microscopists, Canastota, we found the +shrine we sought in the midst of the charred stumps of the primeval +forest. While Mr. Quekett was quoting Andrew Ross, the most famous of +the three opticians referred to, as calling "135° the largest angular +pencil that can be passed through a microscopic object-glass," Mr. +Spencer was actually making twelfths with an angle of more than 170°. +Those who remember the manner in which the record of his extraordinary +success was deliberately omitted from the second edition of a work which +records the minutest contrivance of any English amateur,--the first +edition having already mentioned the "young artist living in the +backwoods,"--will recognize in it something of the old style in which +the mother-country used to treat the Colonists. + +It may be fairly claimed that the alert and inventive spirit of the +American has lightened the cumbrous awkwardness of Old-World implements, +has simplified their traditional complexity, has systematized methods of +manufacture, and has shown a certain audacity in its innovations which +might be expected from a community where every mechanic is a voter, and +a maker of lawgivers, if not of laws. We are deficient principally in +patience of detail, and the skill which springs from minute subdivision +of labor and from hereditary training. All this will come +by-and-by,--all the sooner, if our ports are closed by foreign war. No +natural incapacity prevents us from making as good broadcloth, as fine +linen, as rich silks, as pure porcelain, as the Old World can send us. +If England wishes to hasten our complete industrial independence, she +has only to quarrel with us. We should miss many things at first which +we owe to her longer training, but they are mostly products of that kind +of industry which furnishes whatever the market calls for. + +The intellectual development of the Colonists was narrowed and limited +by the conditions of their new life. There was no need of legislation to +discourage the growth of an American literature. At the period of the +Revolution two books had been produced which had a right to live, in +virtue of their native force and freshness; hardly more than two; for we +need not count in this category the records of events, such as +Winthrop's Journal, or Prince's Annals, or even that quaint, garrulous, +conceited farrago of pedantry and piety, of fact and gossip, Mather's +"Magnalia." The two real American books were a "Treatise on the Will," +and "Poor Richard's Almanack." Jonathan Edwards and Benjamin Franklin +were the only considerable names in American literature in all that +period which, beginning with Milton and Dryden, and including the whole +lives of Newton and Locke, reached the time of Hume and Gibbon, of Burke +and Chatham, of Johnson and Goldsmith,--a period embracing five +generations, filled with an unbroken succession of statesmen, +philosophers, poets, divines, historians, who wrote for mankind and +immortality. The Colonies, in the mean time, had been fighting Nature +and the wild men of the forest, getting a kind of education as they went +along. Out of their religious freedom, such as it was, they were +rough-hewing the ground-sills of a free state: for religion and politics +always play into each other's hands, and the constitution is the child +of the catechism. Harvard College was dedicated to "Christ and the +Church," but already, in 1742, the question was discussed at +Commencement, "Whether it be lawful to resist the supreme magistrate, if +the Commonwealth cannot otherwise be preserved,"--Samuel Adams speaking +in the affirmative. + +Such was the condition of America at the period just preceding the +Revolutionary movement. Commercial and industrial dependence maintained +by Acts of Parliament, and only beginning to be openly rebelled against +under the irritation produced by oppressive enactments. Native +development in the fields of letters and science hardly advanced beyond +the embryonic stage; a literature consisting of a metaphysical treatise +and a popular almanac, with some cart-loads of occasional sermons, some +volumes of historical notes, but not yet a single history, such as we +should now hold worthy of that name, and an indefinite amount of painful +poetry. Not a line, that we can recall, had ever been produced in +America which was fit to sparkle upon the "stretched forefinger" of +Time. Berkeley's "Westward the course of Empire" _ought_ to have been +written here; but the curse of sterility was on the Western Muse, or her +offspring were too puny to live. + +The outbreak of the Revolution arrested what little growth there was in +letters and science. Franklin carried his reputation, the first one born +of science in the country, to the French court, and West and Copley +sought fame and success, and found them, in England. All the talent we +had was absorbed in the production of political essays and state-papers. +Patriotic poems, satires, _jeux d'esprit_, with more or less of the +_esprit_ implied in their name, were produced, not sparingly; but they +find it hard work to live, except in the memory of antiquaries. Philip +Freneau is known to more readers from the fact that Campbell did him the +honor to copy a line from him without acknowledgment than by all his +rhymes. It is not gratifying to observe the want, so noticeable in our +Revolutionary period, of that inspiration which the passions of such a +struggle might have been expected to bring with them. + +If we are forced to put this estimate upon our earlier achievements in +the domain of letters, it is not surprising that they were held of small +account in the mother-country. It is not fair to expect the British +critics to understand our political literature, which was until these +later years all we had to show. They had to wait until De Lolme, a Swiss +exile, explained their own Constitution to them, before they had a very +clear idea of it. One British tourist after another visited this +country, with his glass at his eye, and his small vocabulary of "Very +odd!" for all that was new to him; his "Quite so!" for whatever was +noblest in thought or deed; his "Very clever!" for the encouragement of +genius; and his "All that sort of thing, you know!" for the less +marketable virtues and heroisms not to be found in the Cockney +price-current. They came, they saw, they made their books, but no man +got from them any correct idea of what the Great Republic meant in the +history of civilization. For this the British people had to wait until +De Tocqueville, a Frenchman, made it in some degree palpable to insular +comprehension. + +The true-born Briton read as far as the first sentence of the second +paragraph of the Declaration of Independence. There he stopped, and +there he has stuck ever since. That sentence has been called a +"glittering generality,"--as if there were some shallow insincerity +about it. But because "all that glitters is not gold," it does not +follow that nothing which glitters is gold. Because a statement is +general, it does not follow that it is either untrue or unpractical. +"Glittering generality" or not, the voice which proclaimed that the +birthright of equality belonged to all mankind was the _fiat lux_ of the +new-born political universe. This, and the terrible series of logical +consequences that flowed from it, threatening all the dynasties, +menacing all the hierarchies, undermining the seemingly solid +foundations of all Old-World abuses,--this parent truth, and all to +which it gave birth, made up the literature of Revolutionary America, +and dwarfed all the lesser growths of culture for the time, as the +pine-tree dwarfs the herbage beneath the circle of its spreading +branches. + +As English policy had pursued the uniform course of provincializing our +industry during the colonial period, discouraging every form of native +ingenuity, so English criticism, naturally enough, after industry was +set free, discountenanced the growth of a native American literature. +That famous question of the "Quarterly Review," "Who reads an American +book?" was the key--note of the critical chorus. There were shortcomings +enough, no doubt, and all the faults that belong to an imperfectly +educated people. But there was something more than the feeling of +offended taste or unsatisfied scholarship in the _animus_ of British +criticism. Mr. Tudor has expressed the effect it produced upon our own +writers very clearly in his account of the "North American Review," +written in 1820. He recognizes the undue deference paid to foreign +critics, and, as its consequence, "a want, or rather a suppression, of +national feeling and independent judgment, that would sooner or later +have become highly injurious." + +It is not difficult to find examples, of earlier and of later date, +which illustrate the tone of British feeling towards this country, as it +has existed among leading literary men, and at times betrayed itself in +an insolence which amuses us after the first sense of irritation has +passed away. + +In 1775, Dr. Samuel Johnson, champion of the heavy-weights of English +literature, the "Great Moralist," the typical Englishman of his time, +wrote the pamphlet called "Taxation no Tyranny." It is what an +Englishman calls a "clever" production, smart, epigrammatic, +impertinent, the embodiment of all that is odious in British assumption. +No part of the Old World, he says, has reason to rejoice that Columbus +discovered the New. Its inhabitants--the countrymen of Washington and +Franklin, of Adams and Jefferson--multiply, as he tells us, "with the +fecundity of their own rattlesnakes." Of the fathers of our Revolution +he speaks in no more flattering terms:--"Probably in _America_, as in +other places, the chiefs are incendiaries, that hope to rob in the +tumults of a conflagration, and toss brands among a rabble passively +combustible." All these atrocities and follies amuse and interest us +now; they are the coprolites of a literary megatherium, once hateful to +gods and men, now inoffensive and curious fossilized specimens. + +In 1863, a Scotchman, whom Dr. Johnson would have hated for his birth, +and have knocked down with his Dictionary for his assaults upon the +English language, has usurped the chair of the sturdy old dogmatist. The +specious impertinence and shallow assumptions of the English sage find +their counterpart in the unworthy platitude of the Scottish seer, not +lively enough for "Punch," a mere disgrace to the page which admitted +it; whether a proof of a hardening heart or a softening brain is +uncertain, but charity hopes the latter is its melancholy apology. + +But in the interval between the cudgel-stroke of Johnson and the +mud-throwing of Carlyle, America had grown strong enough to bear the +assaults of literary bullies and mountebanks without serious annoyance. +The question which had been so superciliously asked was at last +answered. _Everybody_ reads an American book. The morning-star of our +literature rose in the genius of IRVING. There was something in his +personal conditions which singularly fitted him to introduce the New +World in its holiday-dress to the polite company of the Old World. His +father was a Scotchman, his mother was an Englishwoman, and he was born +in America. "Diedrich Knickerbocker" is a near relation of some of +Scott's characters; "Bracebridge Hall" might have been written by an +Englishman; while "Ichabod Crane" and "Rip Van Winkle" are American to +their marrow. The English naturally found Irving too much like their own +writers in his English subjects, and they could not thoroughly relish +his purely American pictures and characters. Cooper, who did not love +the English, and showed it, a navy officer, too, who dwelt with delight +on the sea-fights of the War of 1812, was too American to please them. +Dr. Channing had a limited circle of admirers in Great Britain, but +could reach only a few even of the proscribed Dissenting class in any +effective way. + +Prescott, we believe, did more than any other one man to establish the +independence of American authorship. He was the first, so far as we +know, who worked with a truly adequate literary apparatus, and at the +same time brought the results of his extensive, long-continued, costly +researches into picture-like and popular forms. It was not the judgment +of England, but of Europe, that settled his claims in the world of +letters; and from the day when the verdict of the learned world awarded +him a place in the first rank of historians, the hereditary curse of +American authorship was removed, and the insolent question of the +Quarterly was asked no more. + +From that time nearly to this the literary relations between England and +America have been growing more and more intimate, until every English +writer of repute reckoned upon his great circle of readers in the United +States, and every native author of a certain distinction depended upon a +welcome, more or less cordial, but still a welcome, from a British +reading constituency. + +Never had the mutual interchange of literary gifts from the one people +to the other been so active as during the years preceding the outbreak +of the Great Conspiracy. So close was the communication of thought and +feeling, that it seemed as if there were hardly need of a submarine +cable to stretch its nervous strands between two national brains that +were locked in Siamese union by the swift telegraph of thought. We +reprinted each other's books, we made new reputations for each other's +authors, we wrote in each other's magazines, and introduced each other's +young writers to our own several publics. Thought echoed to thought, +voice answered to voice across the Atlantic. + +But for one fatal stain upon our institutions,--a stain of which we were +constantly reminded, as the one thing that shamed all our +pretensions,--it seemed as if the peaceful and prosperous development of +the great nation sprung from the loins of England were accepted as a +gain to universal civilization. In the fulness of time the heir of Great +Britain's world-shadowing empire came among us to receive the wide and +cordial welcome which we could afford to give without compromising our +republicanism, and he to receive without lessening his dignity. It was +the seal upon the _entente cordiale_ which seemed to have at last +established itself between the thinkers as well as the authorities of +the two countries. + +A few months afterwards came the great explosion which threatened the +eternal rending asunder of the Union. That the British people had but an +imperfect understanding of the quarrel, we are ready to believe. That +they were easily misled as to some of the motives and intentions of the +North is plain enough. But this one fact remains: Every one of them +knew, by public, official statements, that what _the South_ meant to do +was to build a new social and political order on Slavery,--recognized, +proclaimed, boasted of, theoretically justified, and practically +incorporated with its very principle of existence. They might have their +doubts about the character of the North, but they could have none about +the principles or intentions of the South. That ought to have settled +the question for civilized Europe. It would have done so, but that +jealousy of the great self-governing state swallowed up every other +consideration. + +We will not be unjust nor ungrateful. We have as true friends, as brave +and generous advocates of our sacred cause, in Great Britain as our +fathers found in their long struggle for liberty. We have the +intelligent coöperation of a few leading thinkers, and the instinctive +sympathy of a large portion of the people,--may God be merciful to them +and to their children in the day of reckoning, which, sooner or later, +awaits a nation that is false to advancing civilization! + +But, with all our gratitude to the noble few who have pleaded our cause, +we are obliged to own that we have looked in vain for sympathy in many +quarters where we should assuredly have expected it. Where is the +English Church in this momentous struggle? Has it blasted with its +anathema the rising barbarism, threatening, or rather promising, to +nationalize itself, which, as a cardinal principle, denies the Word of +God and the sanctities of the marriage relation to millions of its +subjects? or does it save its indignation for the authors of "Essays and +Reviews" and the over-curious Bishop of Natal? Where are the men whose +voices ought to ring like clarions among the hosts of their brethren in +the Free States of the North? Where is Lord Brougham, ex-apostle of the +Diffusion of Knowledge, while the question is of enforced perpetual +ignorance as the cement of that unhallowed structure with which this +nineteenth century is to be outraged, if treason has its way? Where is +Dickens, the hater of the lesser wrongs of Chancery Courts, the scourge +of tyrannical beadles and heartless schoolmasters? Has he no word for +those who are striving, bleeding, dying, to keep from spreading itself +over a continent a system which legalizes outrages almost too fearful to +be told even to those who know all that is darkest in the record of +English pauperism and crime? Where is the Laureate, so full of fine +indignations and high aspirations? Has he, who holds so cheap those who +waste their genius + + "To make old baseness picturesque," + +no single stanza for the great strife of this living century? is he too +busy with his old knights to remember that + + "One great clime.... + Yet rears her crest, unconquered and sublime, + Above the far Atlantic?" + +has he a song for the six hundred, and not a line for the six hundred +thousand? Where is the London "Times," so long accepted as the true +index of English intelligence and enlightened humanity? Where are those +grave organs of thought which were always quarrelling with Slavery so +long as it was the thorn in the breast of our nation, but almost do +homage to it now that it is a poisoned arrow aimed at her life? Where is +the little hunchback's journal, whose wit was the dog-vane of +fashionable opinion, once pointing towards freedom as the prevailing +wind seemed to blow, now veered round to obey the poisoned breath of +Slavery? All silent or hostile, subject as they are themselves to the +overmastering influence of a class which dreads the existence of a +self-governing state, like this majestic Union, worse than falsehood, +worse than shame, worse than robbery, worse than complicity with the +foulest of rebellions, worse than partnership in the gigantic scheme +which was to blacken half a hemisphere with the night of eternal +Slavery! + +It is the miserable defection of so many of the thinking class, in this +time of the greatest popular struggle known to history, which impresses +us far more than the hostility of a few land-grasping nobles, or the +coldness of a Government mainly guided by their counsels. The natural +consequence has been the complete destruction of that undue deference to +foreign judgments which was so long a characteristic of our literature. +The current English talk about the affairs that now chiefly interest us +excites us very moderately. The leading organs of thought have lost +their hold upon the mind of most thinking people among us. We have +learned to distrust the responses of their timeserving oracles, and to +laugh at the ignorant pretensions of their literary artisans. These +"outsiders" have shown, to our entire satisfaction, that they are +thoroughly incompetent to judge our character as a community, and that +they have no true estimate of its spirit and its resources. The view +they have taken of the strife in which we have been and are engaged is +not only devoid of any high moral sympathy, but utterly shallow, and +flagrantly falsified by the whole course of events, political, +financial, and military. + +Perhaps we ought not to be surprised or disappointed. With a congenital +difference of organization, with a new theory of human rights involving +a virtual reconstruction of society, with larger views of human destiny, +with a virgin continent for them to be worked out in, the American +should expect to be misunderstood by the civilizations of the past, +based on a quagmire of pauperism and ignorance, or overhung by an +avalanche of revolution. Other peoples, emerging from, a condition of +serfdom, retaining many of the instincts of a conquered race, get what +liberty they have by extorting it piecemeal from their masters. Magna +Charta was forced from a weak monarch by a conspiracy of nobles, acting +from purely selfish motives, in behalf of their own order. The Habeas +Corpus Act was unpalatable to the Lords, and was passed only by a trick +or a blunder. What is there in common between the states which recognize +the rule of any persons who happen to be descended from the bold or +artful men who obtained their power by violence or fraud, and a state +which starts with the assumption that the government belongs to the +governed, subject, we must remember, to the laws which make a people a +nation,--laws recognized just as unhesitatingly by the Rebel States as +applying to Western Virginia or East Tennessee, as the Union recognizes +their application to these same Rebel States? + +Of course, it is conceivable that we are all wrong in our theory of +human rights and our plan of government. It is possible that the true +principle of selecting the rulers of a nation is to take the descendants +of the cut-throat, the assassin, the poisoner, the traitor, who got his +foot upon a people's neck some centuries ago. It may be that there is an +American people which will hold itself fortunate, if it can be ruled +over by a descendant of Charles V.,--though Philip II. was the son of +that personage, and an American historian has made us familiar with his +doings, and those of his vicegerent, the Duke of Alva. If this is the +way that people should be governed, then we _are_ wrong, and have no +right to look for sympathy from Old-World dynasties. The only question +is, How soon it will be safe to send a Grand Duke over to govern us. + +But if our theory of human rights and our plan of government are the +true ones, then our success is the inevitable downfall of every dynasty +on the face of the earth. It is not our fault that this must be so; the +blameless fact of our existence, prosperity, power, civilization, +culture, as they will show themselves on the supposition that we are +working in the divine parallels, will necessarily revolutionize all the +empirical and accidental systems which have come down to us from the +splendid semi-barbarism of the Middle Ages. What all good men desire, +here and everywhere, is that this necessary change may be effected +gradually and peaceably. We do not find fault with men for being born in +positions that confer powers upon them incommensurate with their rights. +We do not wish to cut a man's head off because he comes of a dull race +that has been taught for generations to think itself better than the +rest of mankind, and has learned to believe it and practise on it. But +if nations are fast becoming educated to a state in which they are +competent to manage their own interests, we wish these privileged +personages to recognize it, for their own sake, as well as for that of +the people. + +The spirit of republican America is not that of a wild propagandism. It +is not by war that we have sought or should ever seek to convert the Old +World to our theories and practice in government. If this young nation +is permitted, in the Providence of God, to unfold all its possibilities +into powers, the great lesson it will teach will be that of peaceful +development. Where the public wealth is mainly for the governing class, +the splendid machinery of war is as necessary as the jewels which a +province would hardly buy are to the golden circlet that is the mark of +sovereignty. Where the wealth of a country is for the people, this +particular form of pyrotechnics is too costly to be indulged in for +amusement. American civilization hates war, as such. It values life, +because it honors humanity. It values property, because property is for +the comfort and good of all, and not merely plunder, to be wasted by a +few irresponsible lawgivers. It wants all the forces of its population +to subdue Nature to its service. It demands all the intellect of its +children for construction, not for destruction. Its business is to build +the world's great temple of concord and justice; and for this it is not +Dahlgren and Parrott that are the architects, but men of thought, of +peace, of love. + +Let us not, therefore, waste our strength in threats of vengeance +against those misguided governments who mistook their true interest in +the prospect of our calamity. We can conquer them by peace better than +by war. When the Union emerges from the battle-smoke,--her crest +towering over the ruins of traitorous cities and the wrecks of Rebel +armies, her eye flashing defiance to all her evil-wishers, her breast +heaving under its corselet of iron, her arm wielding the mightiest +enginery that was ever forged into the thunderbolts of war,--her triumph +will be grand enough without her setting fire to the stubble with which +the folly of the Old World has girt its thrones. No deeper humiliation +could be asked for our foreign enemies than the spectacle of our +triumph. If we have any legal claims against the accomplices of pirates, +they will be presented, and they will be paid. If there are any +uncomfortable precedents which have been introduced into international +law, the jealous "Mistress of the Seas" must be prepared to face them in +her own hour of trouble. Had her failings but leaned to Freedom's +side,--had she but been true to her traditions, to her professions, to +her pretended principles,--where could she have found a truer ally than +her own offspring, in the time of trial which is too probably preparing +for her? "If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the +things which belong unto thy peace!" No tardy repentance can efface the +record of the past. We may forgive, but history is inexorable. + +England was startled the other day by an earthquake. The fast-anchored +isle was astonished at such a tropical phenomenon. It was all very well +for Jamaica or Manila, but who would have thought of solid, +constitutional England shaking like a jelly? The London "Times" +moralized about it in these words:--"We see, afar off, a great empire, +that had threatened to predominate over all mankind, suddenly broken up +by moral agencies, and shattered into no one knows how many fragments. +We are safe from that fate, at least so we deem ourselves, for never +were we so united." "_A great empire, that had threatened to predominate +over all mankind_." That was the trouble. That was the reason the +"Times" was so pleased to say, a few months ago, "The bubble has burst." +How, if the great empire should prove not to have been shattered? how, +if the bubble has not burst?--nay, if that great system of intelligent +self-government which was taken for a bubble prove to be a sphere of +adamant, rounded in the mould of Divine Law, and filled with the pure +light of Heaven? + +England is happy in a virtuous queen; but what if another profligate +like George IV. should, by the accident of birth, become the heir of her +sovereignty? France is as strong as one man's life can make her; but +what if that man should run against some fanatic's idea which had taken +shape in a bullet-mould, or receive a sudden call from that pale visitor +who heeds no challenge from the guards at the gate of the Tuileries, and +stalks unannounced through antechambers and halls of audience? + +The "Times" might have found a moral for the earthquake nearer home. The +flame that sweeps our prairies is terrible, but it only scorches the +surface. What all the governments based on smothered pauperism, +tolerated ignorance, and organized degradation have to fear is the +subterranean fire, which finds its vent in blazing craters, or breaks up +all the ancient landmarks in earth-shattering convulsions. God forbid +that we should invoke any such catastrophe even for those who have been +hardest upon us in our bitter trial! Yet so surely as American society +founds itself upon the rights of civilized man, there is no permanent +safety for any nation but in the progressive recognition of the American +principle. The right of governing a nation belongs to the people of the +nation; and the urgent duty of those provisional governments which we +call monarchies, empires, aristocracies is to educate their people with +a view to the final surrender of all power into their hands. A little +longer patience, a little more sacrifice, a little more vigorous, +united action, on the part of the Loyal States, and the Union will +behold herself mirrored in the Atlantic and the Pacific, the stateliest +of earthly empires,--not in her own aspiring language, but by the +confession of her most envious rival, _predominating over all mankind_. +No Tartar hordes pouring from the depths of Asia, no Northern barbarians +swarming out of the hive of nations, no Saracens sweeping from their +deserts to plant the Crescent over the symbol of Christendom, were more +terrible to the principalities and powers that stood in their way, than +the Great Republic, by the bare fact of its existence, will become to +every government which does not hold its authority from the people. +However our present conflict may seem at first sight to do violence, in +certain respects, to the principles of self-government, everybody knows +that it is a strife of democratic against oligarchic institutions, of a +progressive against a stationary civilization, of the rights of manhood +against the claims of a class, of a national order representing the will +of a people against a conspiracy organized by a sectional minority. + +Just so far as _the people_ of Europe understand the nature of our armed +controversy, they will understand that we are pleading their cause. Nay, +if the mass of our Southern brethren did but know it, we are pleading +theirs just as much. The emancipation of industry has never taken effect +in the South, and never could until labor ceased to be degrading. + +We should be unreasonable to demand the sympathy of those classes which +have everything to lose from the extension of the self-governing +principle. What we have to thank them for is the frankness with which +they have betrayed their hostility to us and our cause, under +circumstances which showed that they would ruin us, if it could be done +safely and decently. We shall never be good friends again, it may be +feared, until we change our eagles into sovereigns, or they change their +sovereigns for a coin which bears the head of Liberty. But in the mean +time it is a great step in our education to find out that a new order of +civilization requires new modes of thought, which must, of necessity, +shape themselves out of our conditions. Thus it seems probable, that, as +the first revolution brought about our industrial independence of the +mother-country, not preventing us in any way from still availing +ourselves of the skill of her trained artisans, so this second civil +convulsion will complete that intellectual independence towards which we +have been growing, without cutting us off from whatever in knowledge or +art is the common property of Republics and Despotisms. + + * * * * * + +REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES. + + +_Heat considered as a Mode of Motion_; being a Course of Twelve Lectures +delivered at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, by JOHN TYNDALL, +F.R.S., Professor of Natural Philosophy in the Royal Institution. New +York: D. Appleton & Co. + +The readers of the "Glaciers of the Alps" have made the acquaintance of +Professor Tyndall as an Alpine adventurer, with a passion for frost and +philosophy, and a remarkable ability both in describing his +mountain-experiences and in explaining the interesting phenomena which +he there encountered. All who have read this inimitable volume will +testify to its rare attractions. It is at once dramatic and philosophic, +poetic and scientific; and the author wins our admiration alike as a +daring and intrepid explorer, a keen observer, a graphic delineator, +and an acute and original investigator. + +In the new work on Heat we are introduced to Professor Tyndall upon the +lecturing-platform, where he follows up some of the inquiries started in +the "Glaciers" in a systematic and comprehensive manner. His problem is, +the nature and laws of Heat, its relation to other forms of force, and +the part it plays in the vast scheme of the universe: an imposing task, +but executed in a manner worthy of the gifted young successor of Faraday +as Professor of Natural Philosophy in the Royal Institution of Great +Britain. + +A comparison of the volume before us with any of the previously +published treatises on Heat will afford a striking and almost startling +proof of the present activity of inquiry, and the rapid progress of +scientific research. The topics treated are the same. The first seven +lectures of the course deal with _thermometric_ heat, expansion, +combustion, conduction, specific and latent heat, and the relation of +this force to mechanical processes; while the remaining five treat of +_radiant_ heat, the law and conditions of its movement, its influence +upon matter, its relations to other forces, terrestrial and solar +radiation, and the thermal energies of the solar system. But these +subjects no longer wear their old aspect. Novel questions are presented, +starting fresh trains of experiment; facts assume new relationships, and +are interpreted in the light of a new and higher philosophy. + +The old view of the forces, which regarded them as material entities, +may now be regarded as abandoned. Light, Heat, Electricity, Magnetism, +etc., which have hitherto been considered under the self-contradictory +designation of "Imponderable Elements," or immaterial matter, are now, +by common consent, beginning to be ranked as pure forces; having passed +through their material stage, they are regarded as kindred and +convertible forms of motion in matter itself. The old notions, that +light consisted of moving corpuscles, and that heat, electricity, and +magnetism were produced by the agency of various fluids, have done good +service in times past; but their office was only provisional, and, +having served to advance the philosophy of forces beyond themselves, +they must now take rank among the outgrown and effete theories which +belong to the infantile period of science. This change, as will be seen, +involves the fundamental conceptions of science, and is nothing less +than the substitution of dynamical for material ideas in dealing with +the phenomena of Nature. + +The new views, of which Professor Tyndall is one of the ablest +expositors, are expressed by the terms "Conservation and Correlation of +Forces." The first term implies that force is indestructible, that an +impulse of power can no more be annihilated than a particle of matter, +and than the total amount of energy in the universe remains forever the +same. This principle has been well characterized by Faraday as "the +highest law in physical science which our faculties permit us to +perceive." The phrase "Correlation of Forces" is employed rather to +express their mutual convertibility, or change from one to the others. +Thus, heat excites electricity, and, through that force, magnetism, +chemical action, and light. Or, if we start with magnetism, this may +give rise to electricity, and this again to heat, chemical action, and +light. Or we can begin with chemical action, and obtain the same train +of effects. + +It has long been known that machines do not create force, but only +communicate, distribute, and apply that which has been imparted to them, +and also that a definite amount of fuel corresponds to a definite amount +of work performed by the steam-engine. This means simply that a fixed +quantity of the chemical force of combustion gives rise to a +corresponding quantity of heat, and this again to a determinate amount +of mechanical effect. Now this principle of equivalency is found to +govern the transmutations of all forms of energy. The doctrine of the +conservation and correlation of forces has been illustrated in various +ways, but nothing has so powerfully contributed to its establishment as +the investigation of the relations of heat to mechanical force. +Percussion and friction produce heat. A cold bullet, struck upon an +anvil by a cold sledge-hammer, is heated. Iron plates, ground against +each other by water-power, have yielded a large and constant supply of +heat for warming the air of a factory in winter; while water inclosed in +a box, which was made to revolve rapidly, rose to the boiling-point. +What, now, is the source of heat in these cases? The old caloric +hypothesis utterly fails to explain it; for to suppose that there is an +indefinite and inexhaustible store of latent heat in the rubbing iron +plates is purely gratuitous. It is now established, that the heat of +collision, and of friction depends, not upon the nature of the bodies in +motion, but upon the force spent in producing it. + +When a moving body is stopped, its force is not annihilated, but simply +takes another form. When the sledge-hammer strikes the leaden bullet and +comes to rest, the mechanical force is not destroyed, but is simply +converted into heat; and if all the heat produced could be collected, it +would be exactly sufficient, when reconverted into mechanical force, to +raise the hammer again to the height from which it fell. So, when bodies +are rubbed together, their surface-particles are brought into collision, +mechanical force is destroyed, and heat appears,--the heat of friction. +The conversion of heat into mechanical motion, and of that motion back +again into heat, may be familiarly illustrated in the case of a +railway-train. The heat generated by combustion in the locomotive is +converted into motion of the cars. But when it is desired to stop the +train, what is to be done? Its mechanical force cannot be annihilated; +it can only be transmuted; and so the brakes are applied, and the train +brought to rest by reconverting its motion into heat, as is manifested +by the smoke and sparks produced by the friction. Now, as heat produces +mechanical motion, and mechanical motion heat, they must clearly have +some common quality. The dynamical theory asserts, that, as they are +both modes of motion, they must be mutually and easily convertible. When +a moving mass is checked or stopped, its force is not annihilated, but +the gross, palpable motion is infinitely subdivided and communicated to +the atoms of the body, producing increased vibrations, which appear as +heat. Heat is thus inferred to be, not a material fluid, but a motion +among the ultimate atoms of matter. + +The acceptance of this view led to the highly important inquiry, What is +the equivalent relation between mechanical force and heat? or, how much +heat is produced by a definite quantity of mechanical force? To Dr. +Joule, of Manchester, England, is due the honor of having answered this +question, and experimentally established the numerical relation. He +demonstrated that a one-pound weight, falling through seven hundred and +seventy-two feet and then arrested, produces sufficient heat to raise +one pound of water one degree. Hence this is known as the mechanical +equivalent of heat, or "Joule's Law." + +The establishment of the principle of correlation between mechanical +force and heat constitutes one of the most important events in the +progress of science. It teaches us that the movements we see around us +are not spontaneous or independent occurrences, but links in the eternal +chain of forces,--that, when bodies are put in motion, it is at the +expense of some previously existing energy, and that, when they come to +rest, their force is not destroyed, but lives on in other forms. Every +motion we see has its thermal value; and when it ceases, its equivalent +of heat is an invariable result. When a cannon-ball strikes the side of +an iron-plated ship, a flash of light shows that collision has converted +the motion of the ball into intense heat, or when we jump from the table +to the floor, the temperature of the body is slightly raised,--the +degree of heat produced in both cases being ascertainable by the +application of Joule's law. + +The principle thus demonstrated has given a new interest and a vast +impulse to the science of Thermotics. It is the fundamental and +organizing conception of Professor Tyndall's work, and in his last +chapter he carries out its application to the planetary system. The +experiments of Herschel and Pouillet upon the amount of solar heat +received upon the earth's surface form the starting-point of the +computations. The total amount of heat received by the earth from the +sun would be sufficient to boil three hundred cubic miles of ice-cold +water per hour, and yet the earth arrests but 1/2,300,000,000 of the +entire thermal force which the sun emits. The entire solar radiation +each hour would accordingly be sufficient to boil 700,000,000,000 cubic +miles of ice-cold water! Speculation has hardly dared venture upon the +source of this stupendous amount of energy, but the mechanical +equivalent of heat opens a new aspect of the question. All the celestial +motions are vast potential stores of heat, and if checked or arrested, +the heat would at once become manifest. Could we imagine brakes applied +to the surface of the sun and planets, so as to arrest, by friction, +their motions upon their axes, the heat thus produced would be +sufficient to maintain the solar emission for a period of one hundred +and sixteen years. As the earth is eight thousand miles in diameter, +five and a half times heavier than water, and moves through its orbit at +the rate of sixty-eight thousand miles an hour, a sudden arrest of its +motion would generate a heat equal to the combustion of fourteen globes +of anthracite coal as large as itself. Should it fall into the sun, the +shock would produce a heat equal to the combustion of five thousand four +hundred earth-globes of solid coal,--sufficient to maintain the solar +radiation nearly a hundred years. Should all the planets thus come to +rest in the sun, it would cover his emission for a period of forty-five +thousand five hundred and eighty-nine years. It has been maintained that +the solar heat is actually produced in this way by the constant +collision upon his surface of meteoric bodies, but for the particulars +of this hypothesis we must refer to the book itself. + +Professor Tyndall opens the question in his volume respecting the share +which different investigators have had in establishing the new theory of +forces, and his observations have given rise to a sharp controversy in +the scientific journals. The point in dispute seems to have been the +relative claims of an Englishman and a German--Dr. Joule and Dr. +Mayer--to the honor of having founded the new philosophy. Tyndall +accords a high place to the German as having worked out the view in an +_a priori_ way with remarkable precision and comprehensiveness, while he +grants to the Englishman the credit of being the first to experimentally +establish the law of the mechanical equivalent of heat. But his English +critics seem to be satisfied with nothing short of an entire monopoly of +the honor. The truth is, that, in this case, as in that of many others +furnished us in the history of science, the discovery belongs rather to +an epoch than to an individual. In the growth of scientific thought, the +time had come for the evolution of this principle, and it was seized +upon by several master-minds in different countries, who worked out +their results contemporaneously, but in ignorance of the efforts of +their fellow-laborers. But if individual claims are to be pressed, and +each man accorded his aliquot share of the credit, we apprehend that +America must be placed before either England or Germany, and for the +explicit evidence we need look no farther than the volume of Professor +Tyndall before us. The first clear connection and experimental +proof of the modern theory was made by our countryman Benjamin +Thompson,--afterwards knighted as Count Rumford by the Elector of +Bavaria. He went to Europe in the time of the American Revolution, and, +devoting himself to scientific investigations, became the founder of the +Royal Institution of Great Britain. Davy was his associate, and, so far +as the new views of heat are concerned, his disciple. He exploded the +notion of caloric, demonstrated experimentally the conversion of +mechanical force into heat, and arrived at quantitative results, which, +considering the roughness of his experiments, are remarkably near the +established facts. He revolved a brass cannon against a steel borer by +horse-power for two and one-half hours, thereby generating heat enough +to raise eighteen and three-fourths pounds of water from sixty to two +hundred and twelve degrees. Concerning the nature of heat he wrote as +follows, the Italics being his own:--"What is heat? Is there any such +thing as an _igneous fluid_? Is there anything that with propriety can +be called caloric? We have seen that a very considerable quantity of +heat may be excited by the friction of two metallic surfaces, and given +off in a constant stream, or flux, in _all directions_, without +interruption or intermission, and without any signs of _diminution_ or +_exhaustion_. In reasoning on this subject, we must not forget that +_most remarkable circumstance_, that the source of the heat generated by +friction in these experiments appeared to be _inexhaustible_. It is +hardly necessary to add, that anything which any insulated body or +system of bodies can continue to furnish _without limitation_ cannot +possibly be _a material substance_; and it appears to me to be extremely +difficult, if not quite impossible, to form any distinct idea of +anything capable of being excited and communicated in these experiments, +except it be MOTION." + +In style, Professor Tyndall's work is remarkably clear, spirited, and +vigorous, and many of its pages are eloquent with the beautiful +enthusiasm and poetic spirit of its author. These attractions, combined +with the comprehensiveness and unity of the discussion, the range and +authenticity of the facts, and the delicacy, originality, and vividness +of the experiments, render the work at once popular and profound. It is +s classic upon the subject of which it treats. + + +_My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field_. A Book for Boys. By +"CARLETON." Boston: Ticknor and Fields. + +The literature of the war has already reached the dimensions of a +respectable library. The public mind at the instant of the outbreak felt +an assurance that it was to be one of the memorable epochs of mankind. +However blinded to the significance of the previous conflicts in the +forum and at the ballot-box, there was a sudden and universal instinct +that their armed culmination was a world-era. The event instantly +assumed its true grandeur. + +The previous discussions seemed local and limited. They were squabbles, +we fancied, among ourselves, which did not touch the vitals of our +system, and in which the world without had neither lot nor interest. +Even when the fires of debate and division waxed hotter and hotter, and +began to break out in violent eruptions in Congress, Kansas, throughout +the South, and especially at Harper's Ferry, we still said, These are +political conflicts, mob-violences, raids, abnormal eccentricities, +which will pass quietly away, when the dynasty is changed, and the reins +of power are fairly grasped by the successful rival. + +Europe sends her doctors to witness our dissolution. They go South and +see the mustering of arms and the intensity of purpose, and coming North +find the whole community at their usual pursuits and pleasures, +regarding the controversy as a mere political breeze, and the results in +which it is beginning to issue as but the waves that ever for a short +season roll fiercely after the storm. + +This indifference was one of the best signs of our health. We felt such +confidence in ourselves, that we distrusted no future, however +cloud-cast. The Constitution, sold for a penny-ha'penny in New York, +suggested to the mildly sarcastic humor of Dr. Russell that it had +better be a little more valuable in tact, if not so cheap in form. He +did not see how the People were the rightful masters of the +Constitution, as Mr. Lincoln had said they were of Congress and the +Courts, and that they would take care of it and of themselves when the +hour really came. + +We did not see it. Blindness in part had happened unto the whole nation. +The shot at Sumter cleft the burdened head of Jove. A Nation was born in +a day. It saw instantly the length and the breadth, the height and the +depth of the conflict. It was not a struggle about Slavery and +Abolitionism, about the white race and the black, about union and +disunion; but it was a war for the rights of man, here and everywhere, +to-day and forever. The "glittering generalities" of our Declaration and +Constitution suddenly blazed with light, while the dull particularities +of mere routine faded as a waning moon before the glowing sun. These +were lost in the fiery splendors of the grand principles in which alone +they live and move and have their being. They will reappear, meekly +shining in their humbler sphere, when the great light shall withdraw its +intenser rays, the object of their blazing being accomplished. The body +of the war is Union, its soul Democracy: union for the sake of +democracy, and democracy for the sake of the world. Abolitionism is +simply a stepping-stone to the perfection of the Idea in our society. + +The instinct that apprehended the full significance of the struggle was +universal: Europe saw it in the same flash that revealed it to us. The +lightning of the opening gun, or ever its accompanying thunder could +follow, leaped, like the lightnings of the final judgment, in an instant +from west to east, and illumined the whole earth with its glare. + +In such an awakening it was inevitable but that literature should share. +And biographies, histories, pictorials, and juveniles, in Europe and +America, testify to the general consciousness. Into this last-named +class the little book at the head of this notice modestly essays to +enter. Had it put on airs and spread itself out into the broad-margined +and large-lettered octavo, it might have stood in libraries as a worthy +compeer of the ablest chronicles. Such a presentation would not have +been beyond its desert, and would have been more consistent with the +author's type of mind. Yet his simplicity, fidelity, and +straightforwardness will make him a better guide to advanced youth than +the too prattling habits of mere child-writers. They ever incline to the +baby-talk style of composition,--"mumming," as the tavern-woman +proposed, the bread and milk which they set before their youthful +readers. "Carleton" ever treats his boy-readers as his intelligent +equals, and considers them capable of understanding the common language +of books and men. It is refreshing to read a book for boys that is not, +as most of this class are, while pretending to be juvenile, actually +senile. + +The work opens with the story of the causes of the war, in which the +author gives the old and new counterblasters a quid, or, as they will +doubtless prefer to call it, a crumb of comfort. He traces the origin of +the war, not to Slavery, but to Tobacco. The demand for the new drug was +general throughout Europe. Virginia was the main source of supply. The +vagabondish farmers would not labor. Negroes arrive, and European +appetite creates American Slavery. Two hundred years after, the +descendants of these slaveholders fancy that a like European demand for +another plant will insure this Slavery a national sovereignty. Tobacco +thus verifies Charles Lamb's unwilling execration. It is not Bacchus's +only, but Slavery's "black servant, negro fine," and belongs, after all, +to that Africa which he says "breeds no such prodigious poison." The +Union lovers of "the Great Plant" may be called to decide between their +country and their cigar. Will patriotism or the pipe then prevail? We +tremble for our country in that conflict of duty and desire. It is odd +that the two favorite plants of the South should thus be charged with +our war. These innocent leaves and blossoms, babes in the wood, are made +the bearers of our iniquities. Cotton and Tobacco are the white and +black representatives of the vegetable races. Perhaps some fanciful +theorist may show from this fact, that not only all the human races, but +those of the lower kingdoms, are involved in this struggle, and, as in +the greater warfare of Earth and Time, so in this, its condensed type, +the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in common with its head and +master. + +The anti-tobacco doctrine of the opening chapter gives place to a clear +statement of the gathering and organizing of the great army; which is +followed by descriptions of the Battles of Bull Run, Fort Henry, Fort +Donelson, Shiloh, the Siege of Island No. 10, and the capture of +Memphis. The narratives are illustrated with diagrams which set the +movements of the contending forces clearly before the eye. No +description of the first great battle of the war is superior to that +here given. It is a photographic view of the field and the combatants. +We see where the Rebels posted their divisions, how our forces were +stationed, how we attempted to outflank them, how they left their +original positions to protect the assailed outpost, how the battle raged +and was decided around that point, and how a single mistake caused our +first repulse, and, for lack of subsequent generalship, produced the +shameful and disastrous rout. Russell's description is far less clear +and concise. "Carleton" confirms McDowell's military scholarship, but +not his generalship. It is one thing to set squadrons in the field, it +is another to be equal to all the emergencies of the strife. He traces +our defeat to a single mistake, not alone nor chiefly to the arrival of +reinforcements. He puts it thus. Two regiments, the Second and Eighth +South Carolina, get in the rear of Griffin's and Rickett's batteries. +Griffin sees them, and turns his guns upon them. Major Barry declares +they are his supporters. Griffin says they are Rebels. The Major +persists in his opinion, and the Captain yields. The guns are turned +back, the South-Carolinians leap upon the batteries, and the panic +begins. + +The book is especially valuable as it describes from personal +observation the first battles of General Grant. It has no better +war-pictures than the taking of Fort Donelson and the Battle of Shiloh +or Pittsburg Landing. These were the beginnings of Grant's reputation. +In them are seen the elements of his character, writ larger in the more +renowned deeds of Vicksburg and Chattanooga. They are strangely alike. +In both he is surprised by the enemy at daybreak, and while his soldiers +are asleep. In both he is at first driven from his camp, losing largely +of men and guns. In both, after a repulse so severe that the Rebel +generals fancy the day is theirs, and while their men give themselves up +to the spoiling of his tents, Grant, abating no jot of heart or hope, +rearranges his broken columns, and plants his guns in new positions, in +both cases on a hill rising from a ravine, whose opposite summit is +crowned with the Rebel artillery. In each case the Rebels cross the +ravine and attempt to scale the hill, and in each case are repulsed with +horrible slaughter. The parallel stops not here. Grant in both battles, +as soon as he has stayed the advance of the enemy, assumes the +offensive. The bugles sound the charge, and the Rebels are driven back +through our despoiled camp, and within their own intrenchments. These +first-fruits of the great general of the war show the difference between +him and the long-time pet of the nation, McClellan. The latter could not +move an inch without supplies as numerous and superfluous as those of a +summer sauntering lady at a watering-place. Grant does not wait for +Foote's gunboats to coöperate at Donelson, but begins the fight the +instant he reaches the fort. When the boats are disabled and retire, he +does not wait for them to refit and return; nor when the enemy fails to +rout him, does he rest on his well-earned laurels till reinforcements +arrive, but turns upon them instantly and drives them with headlong fury +from their spoils and defences. There is no Antietam or Williamshurg +procrastinating. That very afternoon his exhausted troops storm the +fort, and the night beholds him the master of the outer works, and with +his guns raking the innermost fortifications. This heroic treatment of +the disease of Rebellion, with all its loss, results in far less +fatality than the rose-water generalship of the Peninsula, as the +statistics of the Eastern and Western armies will show. + +The peculiar qualities of General Grant, as seen in these battles, are +coolness, readiness, and confidence. He is not embarrassed by reverses. +He seems the rather to court them. He prefers to take arms against a sea +of troubles. He thinks little of rations, ambulances, Sanitary, and, we +fear, Christian Commissions, but much of victory. These creature and +spiritual comforts are all well enough in their place, but they do not +take batteries and redoubts. McClellan is the pet of his soldiers, Grant +the pride of his. McClellan cares for their bodies, Grant for their +fame. McClellan kills by kindness, Grant by courage. + +This battle-book for boys will hold no unimportant place in the +war-library of the times. Its style is usually as limpid as the +camp-brooks by which much of it was written. In the heat of the contest +it becomes a succession of short, sharp sentences, as if the musketry +rang in the writer's brain and moulded and winged his thoughts. It is +calm in the midst of its intensity, and thus happily illustrates by its +popularity that self-control of the nation so well expressed by +Hawthorne,--that our movements are as cool and collected, if as noisy, +as that of a thousand gentlemen in a hall quietly rising at the same +moment from their chairs. The battle-grounds of Vicksburg, +Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, and Chattanooga, all of which he saw, or by +subsequent study of the field has made his own, and descriptions of +which are promised in a companion-volume, will find no truer nor +worthier chronicler. + + +_A Compendious History of English Literature, and of the English +Language, from the Norman Conquest. With Numerous Specimens._ By GEORGE +L. CRAIK, LL.D., Professor of History and of English Literature in +Queen's College, Belfast. 2 vols. 8vo. New York: Charles Scribner. + +This is a thorough and an exhaustive work, having for its subject that +which must be of perpetual and increasing interest to all those +colonists who, in different parts of the world, are founding nations +which shall inherit the imperial language, and therefore will be +entitled to claim a share in the literary glories of the mother-land. +Professor Craik is favorably known as the author of works that depend +chiefly upon industry for their worth; and this elaborate production +must add to the esteem in which his learned labors have long been held +in many quarters. He has left no portion of his subject untouched, but +affords to his readers a full and lucid account of every part of it, +according to the materials that are at the command of scholars. If +defective on any points, it is owing to the want of authorities. His +survey of English literature includes not only all writers of the first +class, but all who can be regarded as of any considerable distinction; +and he has noticed many names which have no pretension to be considered +as even of second-rate importance, but concerning which general readers +may be curious, though their curiosity may not carry them so far as to +induce them to hunt up their works. A book of reference, such as this +book must be to most of those who shall use it, is bound to make mention +of writers whose names are of rare occurrence, but who had their parts, +though they may have been insignificant ones, in building up their +country's literature. Of the great writers, Professor Craik devotes but +little space to Shakspeare and Milton, because their works are in +everybody's hands; while from Chaucer and Spenser, Swift and Burke, +ample specimens are given, the author assuming that their writings are +but little read. Indeed, he declares that the great poets and other +writers even of the last generation have already faded from the view of +the most numerous class of the educated and reading public,--and that +scarcely anything is generally read except the publications of the day. +He correctly remarks that no true cultivation can be acquired by reading +nothing but the current literature. This, he says, "is the extreme case +of that entire ignorance of history, or of what had been done in the +world before we ourselves came into it, which has been affirmed, not +with more point than truth, to leave a person always a child." No doubt; +but we think the learned Professor overrates the extent of that neglect +of the literature of the past of which he complains,--for the editions +of the works of writers long dead, published in the last twenty years, +are numerous, and we know that books are not printed for people who do +not care for them. The number of readers of contemporary works is small, +if we compare those readers with the population of any given country; +but there are more readers now than could be found in any other age, not +only of the books of the day, but of the books of the past. + +This work combines the history of English Literature with the history of +the English Language. The author's scheme of the course is, as described +by himself, extremely simple, and rests, not upon arbitrary, but upon +natural or real distinctions, giving us the only view of the subject +that can claim to be regarded as of a scientific character. This part of +his work will be found very valuable, as it popularizes a subject which +has few attractions for most readers. + +The volumes are printed with great beauty, and do credit to the +Riverside Press, from which they come. + + +_The Foederalist_: A Collection of Essays, written in Favor of the New +Constitution, as agreed upon by the Foederal Convention, September 17, +1787. Reprinted from the Original Text. With an Historical Introduction +and Notes, by HENRY DAWSON. In Two Volumes. Volume I. 8vo. New York: +Charles Scribner. + +This volume contains the entire text of "The Federalist," with the notes +appended by the authors to their productions, preceded by an historical +and bibliographical Introduction, and an analytical Table of Contents; +in the second volume will appear the Notes prepared by Mr. Dawson, which +will embrace the more important of the alterations and corruptions of +the text, manuscript notes which have been found on the margins and +blank leaves of copies formerly owned by eminent statesmen, and other +illustrative matter, such as the author justly supposes will be useful +to those who may examine the text of the work, together with a complete +and carefully prepared Index. Mr. Dawson has devoted himself to the +preparation of this edition of "The Federalist," and labored diligently +to make it perfect, generally with success; but he is in error when he +says, in the Introduction, that there does not appear to be a copy of +the first edition of the work in any public library in Boston. There are +two copies of it in the Library of the Boston Athenaeum, both of which +we have seen. This mistake is an unhappy one, as it tends to shake our +faith in the accuracy of the editor's researches. Of "The Foederalist" +itself it is not necessary to say more than that it has the position of +an American classic, and that the political principles which it +advocates are of peculiar importance at this time, when the loyal +portion of the American people are engaged in a terrible struggle to +maintain the existence of that government which Hamilton and Madison +labored so diligently and successfully to establish. Mr. Dawson's +edition is one of rare excellence in everything that relates to +externals, and in this respect is beyond rivalry. An edition of "The +Foederalist," edited by John C. Hamilton, Esq., son of General +Hamilton, is announced to appear, and will undoubtedly be welcomed +warmly by all who feel an interest in the fame of the chief author of +the work, the man, next to Washington, to whom we are most indebted for +the establishment of our constitutional system of government. + + * * * * * + +RECENT AMERICAN PUBLICATIONS + +RECEIVED BY THE EDITORS OF THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY. + + +The Healing of the Nations. Second Series. By Charles Linton. +Philadelphia. Published by the Author. 8vo. pp. 363. $1.50. + +Report of the Superintendent of Common Schools of Pennsylvania, for the +Year ending June 4, 1863. Harrisburg. Singerly & Myers, State Printers. +8vo. pp. xxxii., 287. + +The Life and Services, as a Soldier, of Major-General Grant. +Philadelphia. T.B. Peterson & Brothers. 16mo. paper, pp. 66. 25 cts. + +Of the Imitation of Christ. Four Books. By Thomas à Kempis. Boston. E.P. +Dutton & Co. 16mo. pp. 347. $1.25. + +Redeemer and Redeemed. An Investigation of the Atonement and of Eternal +Judgment. By Charles Beecher, Georgetown, Mass. Boston. Lee & Shepard. +12mo. pp. xii., 357. $1.50. + +The Irish Sketch-Book. By W.M. Thackeray. Philadelphia. T.B. Peterson & +Brothers. 8vo. paper, pp. 179. 50 cts. + +A Text-Book of Geology. Designed for Schools and Academies. By James D. +Dana, LL.D., Silliman Professor of Geology and Natural History in Yale +College, Author of "A Manual of Geology," etc. Illustrated by 375 +Wood-Cuts. Philadelphia. Theodore Bliss & Co. 12mo. pp. vi., 354. $1.75. + +The Book of Praise, from the Best English Hymn-Writers. Selected and +arranged by Roundell Palmer. Cambridge. Sever & Francis. 16mo. pp. xx., +480. $1.50. + +Dream-Children. By the Author of "Seven Little People and their +Friends." Cambridge. Sever & Francis. 16mo. pp. 241. $1.00. + +Life of Edward Livingston. By Charles Havens Hunt. With an Introduction +by George Bancroft. New York. D. Appleton & Co. 8vo. pp. xxiv., 448. +$2.50. + +Poems. By Henry Peterson. Philadelphia. J.B. Lippincott & Co. 12mo. pp. +203. $1.00. + +Miscegenation. The Theory of the Blending of the Races, applied to the +American White Man and Negro. New York. H. Dexter, Hamilton, & Co. 12mo. +paper, pp. 72. 25 cts. + +Hand-Book of Calisthenics and Gymnastics. A Complete Drill-Book for +Schools, Families, and Gymnasiums. With Music to accompany the +Exercises. Illustrated from Original Designs. By J. Madison Watson. New +York and Philadelphia. Schermerhorn, Bancroft, & Co. 12mo. pp. 388. +$2.00. + +Rifled Ordnance. A Practical Treatise on the Application of the +Principle of the Rifle to Guns and Mortars of every Calibre. To which is +added a New Theory of the Initial Action and Force of Fired Gunpowder. +Read before the Royal Society, 16th December, 1858. First American, from +the Fifth English Edition, revised. By Lynall Thomas, F.R.S.L. New York. +D. Van Nostrand. 8vo. pp. 200. $2.00. + +Report of the Engineer and Artillery Operations of the Army of the +Potomac, from its Organization to the Close of the Peninsular Campaign. +By Brigadier-General J.G. Barnard, Chief Engineer, and Brigadier-General +W.F. Barry, Chief of Artillery. Illustrated by Eighteen Maps, Plans, +etc. New York. D. Van Nostrand. 8vo. pp. 230. $3.50. + +Poems in the Dorset Dialect. By William Barnes. Boston. Crosby & +Nichols. 16mo. pp. viii., 207. $1.00. + +Faith and Fancy. By John Savage, Author of "Sibyl, a Tragedy." New York. +J.B. Kirker. 16mo. pp. 114. 75 cts. + +The Great Consummation. The Millennial Rest; or, The World as it Will +Be. By the Rev. John Cumming, D.D., F.R.S.E., etc. Second Series. New +York. G.W. Carleton. 16mo. pp. 295. $1.00 + +The Indian Chief. By Gustavo Aimard. Philadelphia. T.B. Peterson & +Brothers. 8vo. paper, pp. 164. 50 cents. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote A: There are three accounts as to the time of the birth of +"St. Arnaud, formerly Leroy." That which makes him oldest represents him +as being fifty-eight at the Battle of the Alma. The second makes him +fifty-six, and the third fifty-three. In either case he was not a young +man; but, though suffering from mortal illness, he showed no want of +vigor on almost every occasion when its display was required.] + +[Footnote B: The advocates of youth in generals have never, that we are +aware, claimed Hamilcar Barcas as one of the illustrations of their +argument; yet he must have been a very young man when he began his +extraordinary career, if, as has been stated on good authority, he was +not beyond the middle age when he lost his life in battle. He was a +great man, perhaps even as great a man as his son Hannibal, who did but +carry out his father's designs.] + +[Footnote C: At Fontenoy the Duke of Cumberland was but half the age of +the Comte de Saxe. In that battle an English soldier was taken prisoner, +after fighting with heroic bravery. A French officer complimented him, +saying, that, if there had been fifty thousand men like him on the other +side, the victory would have been theirs. "No," said the Englishman, "it +was not the fifty thousand brave men who were wanting, but a Marshal +Saxe." Cumberland was ever unlucky, save at Culloden. Saxe was old +beyond his years, being one of the fastest of the fast men of his time, +as became the son of Augustus the Strong and Aurora von Königsmark.] + +[Footnote D: Henry V. was present, as Prince of Wales, at the Battle of +Shrewsbury, before he was sixteen; and there is some reason for +supposing that he commanded the royal forces in the Battle of Grosmont, +fought and won in his eighteenth year. He was but twenty-eight at +Agincourt. Splendid as was his military career, it was all over before +he had reached to thirty-six years. The Black Prince was but sixteen at +Crécy, and in his twenty-seventh year at Poitiers. Edward IV. was not +nineteen when he won the great Battle of Towton, and that was not his +first battle and victory. He was always successful. Richard III., as +Duke of Gloucester, was not nineteen when he showed himself to be an +able soldier, at Barnet; and he proved his generalship on other fields. +William I., Henry I., Stephen, Henry II., Richard I., Edward I., Edward +III., Henry IV., and William III. were all distinguished soldiers. The +last English sovereign who took part in a battle was George II., at +Dettingen.] + +[Footnote E: See _Norfolk County Records_, 1657; _New England Historical +and Genealogical Register_, No. II. p. 192. The moral lapse of the first +minister of Hampton at the age of fourscore is referred to in the third +number of the same periodical. Goody Cole, the Hampton witch, was twice +imprisoned for the alleged practice of her arts.] + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, +April, 1864, by Various + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY, VOL. *** + +***** This file should be named 15880-8.txt or 15880-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/5/8/8/15880/ + +Produced by Cornell University, Joshua Hutchinson, Josephine +Paolucci and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team. + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you +do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the +rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose +such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and +research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do +practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is +subject to the trademark license, especially commercial +redistribution. + + + +*** START: FULL LICENSE *** + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project +Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at +https://gutenberg.org/license). + + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy +all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. +If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the +terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or +entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement +and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" +or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the +collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an +individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are +located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from +copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative +works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg +are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project +Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by +freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of +this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with +the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by +keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project +Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in +a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check +the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement +before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or +creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project +Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning +the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United +States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate +access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently +whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, +copied or distributed: + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived +from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is +posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied +and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees +or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work +with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the +work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 +through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the +Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or +1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional +terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked +to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the +permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any +word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or +distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than +"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version +posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), +you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a +copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon +request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other +form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided +that + +- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is + owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he + has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the + Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments + must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you + prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax + returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and + sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the + address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to + the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or + destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium + and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of + Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any + money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days + of receipt of the work. + +- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set +forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from +both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael +Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the +Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm +collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain +"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual +property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a +computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by +your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with +your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with +the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a +refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity +providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to +receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy +is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further +opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO +WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. +If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the +law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be +interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by +the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any +provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance +with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, +promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, +harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, +that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do +or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm +work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any +Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. + + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers +including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists +because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from +people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. +To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 +and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org. + + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive +Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at +https://pglaf.org/fundraising. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent +permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. +Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered +throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at +809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email +business@pglaf.org. Email contact links and up to date contact +information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official +page at https://pglaf.org + +For additional contact information: + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To +SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any +particular state visit https://pglaf.org + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including including checks, online payments and credit card +donations. To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate + + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm +concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared +with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project +Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + https://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. + +*** END: FULL LICENSE *** + diff --git a/15880-8.zip b/15880-8.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..dcb054e --- /dev/null +++ b/15880-8.zip diff --git a/15880-h.zip b/15880-h.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..d432a6a --- /dev/null +++ b/15880-h.zip diff --git a/15880-h/15880-h.htm b/15880-h/15880-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..977a098 --- /dev/null +++ b/15880-h/15880-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,9049 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> + +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> + <head> + <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" /> + <title> + The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864. + </title> + <style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + p { margin-top: .75em; + text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 { + text-align: center; /* all headings centered */ + clear: both; + } + hr { width: 33%; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; + clear: both; + } + + table {margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;} + + body{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + + .linenum {position: absolute; top: auto; left: 4%;} /* poetry number */ + .blockquot{margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 10%;} + .pagenum {position: absolute; left: 92%; font-size: smaller; text-align: right;} /* page numbers */ + .sidenote {width: 20%; padding-bottom: .5em; padding-top: .5em; + padding-left: .5em; padding-right: .5em; margin-left: 1em; + float: right; clear: right; margin-top: 1em; + font-size: smaller; background: #eeeeee; border: dashed 1px;} + + .bb {border-bottom: solid 2px;} + .bl {border-left: solid 2px;} + .bt {border-top: solid 2px;} + .br {border-right: solid 2px;} + .bbox {border: solid 2px;} + + .center {text-align: center;} + .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + .u {text-decoration: underline;} + + .caption {font-weight: bold;} + + .figcenter {margin: auto; text-align: center;} + + .figleft {float: left; clear: left; margin-left: 0; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: + 1em; margin-right: 1em; padding: 0; text-align: center;} + + .figright {float: right; clear: right; margin-left: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; + margin-top: 1em; margin-right: 0; padding: 0; text-align: center;} + + .footnotes {border: dashed 1px;} + .footnote {margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-size: 0.9em;} + .footnote .label {position: absolute; right: 84%; text-align: right;} + .fnanchor {vertical-align: super; font-size: .8em; text-decoration: none;} + + .poem {margin-left:10%; margin-right:10%; text-align: left;} + .poem br {display: none;} + .poem .stanza {margin: 1em 0em 1em 0em;} + .poem span.i0 {display: block; margin-left: 0em;} + .poem span.i2 {display: block; margin-left: 2em;} + .poem span.i4 {display: block; margin-left: 4em;} + // --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> + </head> +<body> + + +<pre> + +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, +April, 1864, by Various + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 + +Author: Various + +Release Date: May 23, 2005 [EBook #15880] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY, VOL. *** + + + + +Produced by Cornell University, Joshua Hutchinson, Josephine +Paolucci and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team. + + + + + + +</pre> + + + +<p><a name="Page_399" id="Page_399"></a></p> +<h1>THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY.</h1> + +<h2>A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS.</h2> + +<h3>VOL. XIII.—APRIL, 1864.—NO. LXXVIII.</h3> + +<p>Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1864, by TICKNOR AND +FIELDS, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of +Massachusetts.</p> + +<h2>CONTENTS</h2> + +<!-- Autogenerated TOC. Modify or delete as required. --> +<p> +<a href="#FIGHTING_FACTS_FOR_FOGIES"><b>FIGHTING FACTS FOR FOGIES.</b></a><br /> +<a href="#THE_WRECK_OF_RIVERMOUTHE"><b>THE WRECK OF RIVERMOUTH.</b></a><br /> +<a href="#THE_SCHOOLMASTERS_STORY"><b>THE SCHOOLMASTER'S STORY.</b></a><br /> +<a href="#PICTOR_IGNOTUS"><b>PICTOR IGNOTUS.</b></a><br /> +<a href="#THE_FIRST_VISIT_TO_WASHINGTON"><b>THE FIRST VISIT TO WASHINGTON.</b></a><br /> +<a href="#HOUSE_AND_HOME_PAPERS"><b>HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS.</b></a><br /> +<a href="#THE_BLACK_PREACHER"><b>THE BLACK PREACHER.</b></a><br /> +<a href="#FOUQUET_THE_MAGNIFICENT"><b>FOUQUET THE MAGNIFICENT.</b></a><br /> +<a href="#AMONG_THE_MORMONS"><b>AMONG THE MORMONS.</b></a><br /> +<a href="#ON_PICKET_DUTY"><b>ON PICKET DUTY.</b></a><br /> +<a href="#OUR_PROGRESSIVE_INDEPENDENCE"><b>OUR PROGRESSIVE INDEPENDENCE.</b></a><br /> +<a href="#REVIEWS_AND_LITERARY_NOTICES"><b>REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.</b></a><br /> +<a href="#RECENT_AMERICAN_PUBLICATIONS"><b>RECENT AMERICAN PUBLICATIONS</b></a><br /> +</p> +<!-- End Autogenerated TOC. --> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="FIGHTING_FACTS_FOR_FOGIES" id="FIGHTING_FACTS_FOR_FOGIES"></a>FIGHTING FACTS FOR FOGIES.</h2> + + +<p>Young people are often charged with caring little for the past. The +charge is just; and the young are right. If they care little for the +past, then it is certain that it is in debt to them,—as for them the +past cared nothing. It is wonderful, considering how children used to be +treated, that the human race ever succeeded in getting established on +earth. Humanity should have died out, there was so little that was +humane in its bringing up. Because they had contrived to bring a +helpless creature into a world that every one wishes he had never known +at least twenty-four times a day, a father and mother of the very old +school indeed assumed that they had the right to make that creature a +slave, and to hold it in everlasting chains. They had much to say about +the duty of children, and very little about the love of parents. The +sacrificing of children to idols, a not uncommon practice in some +renowned countries of antiquity, the highest-born children being the +favorite victims,—for Moloch's appetite was delicate,—could never have +taken place in any country where the voice of Nature was heeded; and yet +those sacrifices were but so many proofs of the existence of a spirit of +pride, which caused men to offer up their offspring on the domestic +altar. Son and slave were almost the same word with the Romans; and your +genuine old Roman made little ado about cutting off the head of one of +his boys, perhaps for doing something of a praiseworthy nature. Old +Junius Brutus was doubly favored by Fortune, for he was enabled to kill +two of his sons in the name of Patriotism, and thereby to gain a +reputation for virtue that endures to this day,—though, after all, he +was but the first of the brutes. The Romans kept up the paternal rule +for many ages, and theoretically it long survived the Republic. It had +existed in the Kingdom, and it was not unknown to the Empire. We have an +anecdote that shows how strong was the supremacy of <i>paterfamilias</i> at +the beginning of the eighth century, when Young Rome had already made +more than one audacious display of contempt for the Conscript Fathers. +When Pompeius was asked what he would do, if Cæsar should resist the +requirements of the Senate, he answered,—"What if my son should raise<a name="Page_400" id="Page_400"></a> +his stick against me?"—meaning to imply, that, in his opinion, +resistance from Cæsar was something too absurd to be thought of. Yet +Cæsar <i>did</i> resist, and triumphed; and, judging from their after-lives, +we should say that the Young Pompeys would have had small hesitation in +raising their sticks against their august governor, had he proved too +disobedient. A few years earlier, according to Sallust, a Roman, one +Fulvius, had caused his son to be put to death, because he had sought to +join Catiline. The old gentleman heard what his son was about, and when +Young Hopeful was arrested and brought before him, he availed himself of +his fatherly privilege, and had him strangled, or disposed of after some +other of those charming fashions which were so common in the model +republic of antiquity. "This imitation of the discipline of the ancient +republic," says Merivale, "excited neither applause nor indignation +among the languid voluptuaries of the Senate." They probably voted +Fulvius a brute, but they no more thought of questioning the legality of +his conduct than they did of imitating it. Law was one thing, opinion +another. If he liked to play Lucius Junius, well and good; but they had +no taste for the part. They felt much as we used to feel in +Fugitive-Slave-Law times: we did not question the law, but we would have +nothing to do with its execution.</p> + +<p>Modern fathers have had no such powers as were held by those of Rome, +and if an Englishman of Red-Rose views had killed his son for setting +off to join Edward IV. when he had landed at Ravenspur, no one would +think of praising the act. What was all right in a Roman of the year 1 +of the Republic would be considered shocking in a Christian of the +fifteenth century, a time when Christianity had become much diluted from +the inter-mixture of blood. In the next century, poor Lady Jane Grey +spoke of the torments which she had endured at the hands of her parents, +who were of the noblest blood of Europe, in terms that ought to make +every young woman thankful that her lot was not cast in the good old +times. Roger Ascham was her confidant. He had gone to Brodegate, to take +leave of her, and "found her in her chamber alone, reading Phædo +Platonis in Greek, and that with as much delight as some gentlemen would +read a merry tale of Boccace"; and as all the rest of the Greys were +hunting in the park, the schoolmaster inquired why she should lose such +pastime. The lady answered, that the pleasure they were having in the +park was but the shadow of that pleasure she found in Plato. The +conversation proceeding, Ascham inquired how it was that she had come to +know such true pleasure, and she answered,—"I will tell you, and tell +you a truth which perchance ye may marvel at. One of the greatest +benefits God ever gave me is that he sent me so sharp and severe parents +and so gentle a schoolmaster. For when I am in presence either of father +or mother, whether I speak, keep silence, sit, stand, or go, eat, drink, +be merry, or sad, be sewing, playing, dancing, or doing anything else, I +must do it as it were in such weight, number, and measure, even so +perfectly as God made the world, or else I am so sharply taunted, so +cruelly threatened, yea, presently, sometimes with pinches, nips, and +bobs, and other ways, (which I will not name for the honor I bear them,) +so without measure misordered, that I think myself in hell, till time +come that I must go to Mr. Elmer, who teacheth me so gently, so +pleasantly, with such fair allurements to learning, that I think all the +time nothing while I am with him. And when I am called from him, I fall +on weeping, because whatsoever I do else beside learning is full of +grief, trouble, fear, and whole misliking unto me. And thus my book hath +been so much my pleasure, and bringeth daily more pleasure and more, +that in respect of it all other pleasures, in very deed, be but trifles +and troubles to me." The Duke and Duchess of Suffolk were neither better +nor worse than other parents who tormented and tyrannized over <a name="Page_401" id="Page_401"></a>their +children <i>temp.</i> Edward VI., and nothing but the prominence of the most +unfortunate of their unfortunate daughters has preserved the memory of +their domestic despotism. Throughout all England it was the same, from +palace to castle, and from castle to hovel; and father and tyrant were +convertible terms. Youth must have been but a dreary time in those old +days. Scott's Sir Henry Lee, according to his son, kept strict rule over +his children, and he was a type of the antique knight, not of the +debauched cavalier, and would be obeyed, with or without reason. The +letters and the literature of the seventeenth century show, that, how +loose soever became other ties, parents maintained their hold on their +children with iron hands. Even the license of the Restoration left +fatherly rule largely triumphant and undisputed. When even "husbands, of +decent station, were not ashamed to beat their wives," sons and +daughters were not spoiled by a sparing of the rod. Harshness was the +rule in every grade of life, and harsh indeed was parental rule, until +the reader wonders that there was not a general rebellion of women, +children, scholars, and apprentices against the savage ascendency of +husbands, fathers, pedagogues, and masters.</p> + +<p>But the fashions of this world, whether good or evil, pass away. In the +eighteenth century we find parents becoming more humane, though still +keeping their offspring pretty stiffly bitted. They shared in the +general melioration of the age. The father was "honored sir," and was +not too familiar with his boys. The great outbreak at the close of the +century did much for the emancipation of the young; and by the time that +the present century had advanced to a third of its years, youth had so +far got the best of the conflict, and treated their elders with so +little consideration, that it was thought the latter were rather +presumptuous in remaining on earth after fifty. Youth began to organize +itself. Young Germany, Young France, and Young England became powers in +the world. Young Germany was revolutionary and metaphysical, and +nourished itself on bad beer and worse tobacco. Young France was +full-bearded and decidedly dirty, and so far deferred to the past as to +look for models in '93; and it had a strong reverence for that antique +sentiment which exhibited itself in the assassination of kings. Young +England was gentlemanly and cleanly, its leaders being of the patrician +order; and it looked to the Middle Ages for patterns of conduct. Its +chiefs wore white waistcoats, gave red cloaks and broken meat to old +women, and would have lopped off three hundred years from Old England's +life, by pushing her back to the early days of Henry VIII., when the +religious houses flourished, and when the gallows was a perennial plant, +bearing fruit that was <i>not</i> for the healing of the nations. Some of the +cleverest of the younger members of the aristocracy belonged to the new +organization, and a great genius wrote some delightful novels to show +their purpose, and to illustrate their manner of how-not-to-do-it in +grappling with the grand social questions of the age. In "Coningsby" +they sing canticles and carry about the boar's head; in "Sibyl" they +sing hymns to the Holy Virgin and the song of labor, and steal +title-deeds, after setting houses on fire to distract attention from +their immediate object; and in "Tancred" they go on pilgrimage to the +Holy Sepulchre, by way of reviving their faith. All this is so well +done, that Young England will survive in literature, and be the source +of edification, long after there shall be no more left of the dust of +its chiefs than there is of the dust of Cheops or Cæsar. For all these +youths are already vanished, leaving no more traces than you would find +of the flowers that bloomed in the days of their lives. Young Germany +went out immediately after the failure of the revolutionists of 1848-9. +Young France thought it had triumphed in the fall of the Orléans +monarchy, but had only taken the first long step toward making its own +fall complete; and now some of its early members are of the firmest +supporters <a name="Page_402" id="Page_402"></a>of the new phase of imperialism, the only result of the +Revolution of February that has given signs of endurance. Young England +went out as soberly and steadily as it had lived. The select few who +composed it died like gentlemen, and were as polite as Lord Chesterfield +in the article of death. Some of them turned Whigs, and have held office +under Lord Palmerston; and others are Tories, and expect to hold office +under Lord Derby, when he shall form his third ministry. Young America, +the worst of these youths, and the latest born, was never above an +assassin in courage, or in energy equal to more than the plundering of a +hen-roost. The fruits of his exertions are to be seen in some of the +incidents of the Secession War, and they were not worth the gathering.</p> + +<p>The world had settled down into the belief, that, after all, a man was +not much to be blamed for growing old, and liberal-minded people were +fast coming to the conclusion, that years, on the whole, were not +dishonorable, when the breaking out of a great war led to the return of +youth to consideration. The English found themselves at war with Russia, +much to their surprise; and, still more to their surprise, their part in +that war was made subordinate to that of the French, who acted with +them, in the world's estimate of the deeds of the members of the new +Grand Alliance. This is not the place to discuss the question whether +that estimate was a just one. We have to do only with the facts that +England was made to stand in the background and that she seemed at first +disposed to accept the general verdict. There was, too, much +mismanagement in the conduct of the war, some of which might easily have +been avoided; and there was not a little suffering, as the consequence +of that mismanagement. John Bull must have his scape-goat, like the rest +of us; and, looking over the field, he discovered that all his leaders +were old men, and forthwith, though the oldest of old fellows himself, +he laid all his mishaps to the account of the years of his upper +servants. Sir Charles Napier, who never got into St. Petersburg, was +old, and had been a dashing sailor forty years before. Admiral Dundas, +who did not destroy Sweaborg, but only burned a lot of corded wood there +in summer time, was another old sailor. Lord Raglan, who never saw the +inside of Sebastopol, was well stricken in years, having served in +Wellington's military family during the Peninsular War. General Simpson, +Sir C. Campbell, General Codrington, Sir G. Brown, Sir G. Cathcart, and +others of the leaders of the English army in the Crimea, were of the +class of gentlemen who might, upon meeting, furnish matter for a +paragraph on "united ages." What more natural than to attribute all that +was unpleasant in the war to the stagnated blood of men who had heard +the music of that musketry before which Napoleon I.'s empire had gone +down? The world went mad on the subject, and it was voted that old +generals were nuisances, and that no man had any business in active war +who was old enough to have much experience. Age might be venerable, but +it was necessarily weak; and the last place in which it should show +itself was the field.</p> + +<p>It was not strange that the English should have come to the conclusion +that the fogies were unfit to lead armies. They were in want of an +excuse for their apparent failure in the war, and they took the part +that was suggested to them,—therein behaving no worse than ourselves, +who have accounted for our many reverses in many foolish and +contradictory ways. But it was strange that their view was accepted by +others, whose minds were undisturbed, because unmistified,—and +accepted, too, in face of the self-evident fact that almost every man +who figured in the war was old. Maréchal Pelissier,<a name="FNanchor_A_1" id="FNanchor_A_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_A_1" class="fnanchor">[A]</a> to whom the chief +<a name="Page_403" id="Page_403"></a>honor of the contest has been conceded, was but six years the junior of +Lord Raglan; and if the Englishman's sixty-six years are to count +against age in war, why should not the Frenchman's sixty years count for +it? Prince Gortschakoff, who defended Sebastopol so heroically, was but +four years younger than Lord Raglan; and Prince Paskevitch was more than +six years his senior. Muravieff, Menschikoff, Luders, and other Russian +commanders opposed to the Allies, were all old men, all past sixty years +when the war began. Prince Menschikoff was sixty-four when he went on +his famous mission to Constantinople, and he did not grow younger in the +eighteen months that followed, and at the end of which he fought and +lost the Battle of the Alma. The Russian war was an old man's war, and +the stubbornness with which it was waged had in it much of that ugliness +which belongs to age.</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"The young man's wrath is like light straw on fire.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">But like red-hot steel is the old man's ire."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>What rendered the attacks that were made on old generals in 1854-6 the +more absurd was the fact, that the English called upon an old man to +relieve them from bad government, and were backed by other nations. Lord +Palmerston, upon whom all thoughts and all eyes were directed, was older +than any one of those generals to whose years Englishmen attributed +their country's failure. When, with the all but universal approbation of +Great Britain and her friends, he became Prime-Minister, he was in his +seventy-first year, and his action showed that his natural force was not +abated. He was called to play the part of the elder Pitt at a greater +age than Pitt reached; and he did not disappoint expectation. It is +strange indeed, considering that the Premiership was a more difficult +post to fill than that held by any English general, that the English +should rely upon the oldest of their active statesmen to retrieve their +fortunes, while they were condemning as unfit for service men who were +his juniors by several years.</p> + +<p>In truth, the position that youth is necessary to success in war is not +sustained by military history. It may he no drawback to a soldier's +excellence that he is young, but it is equally true that an old man may +possess every quality that is necessary in a soldier who would serve his +country well and win immortal fame for himself. The best of the Greek +commanders were men in advanced life, with a few exceptions. The precise +age of Miltiades at Marathon is unproven; but as he had become a noted +character almost thirty years before the date of that most memorable of +battles, he must have been old when he fought and won it. Even +Alcibiades, with whom is associated the idea of youth through his whole +career, as if Time had stood still in his behalf, did not have a great +command until he was approaching to middle age; and it was not until +some years more had expired that he won victories for the Athenians. The +date of the birth of Epaminondas—the best public man of all antiquity, +and the best soldier of Greece—cannot be fixed; but we find him a +middle-aged man when first he appears on that stage on which he +performed so pure and brilliant a part through seventeen eventful years. +Eight years after he first came forward he won the Battle of Leuctra, +which shattered the Spartan supremacy forever, and was the most perfect +specimen of scientific fighting that is to be found in classical +history, and which some of the greatest of modern commanders have been +proud merely to imitate. After that action, but not immediately after +it, he invaded the Peloponnesus, and led his forces to the vicinity of +Sparta, and then effected a revolution that bridled that power +perpetually. Nine years after Leuctra he won the Battle of Mantinea, +dying on the field. He must then have been an old man, but the last of +his campaigns was a miracle of military skill in <a name="Page_404" id="Page_404"></a>all respects; and the +effect of his death was the greatest that ever followed the fall of a +general on a victorious field, actually turning victory into defeat. The +Spartan king, Agesilaus II., who was a not unworthy antagonist of the +great Theban, was an old man, and was over seventy when he saved Sparta +solely through his skill as a soldier and his energy as a statesman. As +a rule, the Greeks, the most intellectual of all races, were averse to +the employment of young men in high offices. The Spartan Brasidas, if it +be true that he fell in the flower of his age, as the historian asserts, +may have been a young man at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War, in +which he was eminently distinguished; but it was his good fortune to be +singularly favored by circumstances on more than one occasion, and his +whole career was eminently exceptional to the general current of +Hellenic life.</p> + +<p>The Romans, though not braver than the Greeks, were more fortunate in +their military career than the stayers of the march of Persia. Like the +Greeks, they had but few young generals of much reputation. Most of +their conquests, and, indeed, the salvation of their country, were the +work of old leaders. The grand crisis of Rome was in the years that +followed the arrival of Hannibal in Italy; and the two men who did most +to baffle the invader were Fabius and Marcellus, who were called, +respectively, Rome's shield and sword. They were both old men, though +Marcellus may have been looked upon as young in comparison with Fabius, +who was upward of seventy, and who, eight years after his memorable +pro-dictatorship, retook Tarentum and baffled Hannibal. The old +<i>Lingerer</i> was, at eighty, too clever, slow as they thought him at Rome, +to be "taken in" by Hannibal, who had prepared a nice trap for him, into +which he would not walk. Marcellus was about fifty-two when he was +pitted against the victor of Cannæ, and he met him on various occasions, +and sometimes with striking success. At the age of fifty-six he took +Syracuse, after one of the most memorable of sieges, in which he had +Archimedes for an opponent. At sixty he was killed in a skirmish, +leaving the most brilliant military name of the republican times, so +highly are valor and energy rated, though in the higher qualities of +generalship he was inferior to men whose names are hardly known. +Undoubtedly, Mommsen is right when he says that Rome was saved by the +Roman system, and not by the labors of this man or that; but it is +something for a country to have men who know how to work under its +system, and in accordance with its requirements; and such men were +Fabius and Marcellus, the latter old enough to be Hannibal's father, +while the former was the contemporary of his grandfather.</p> + +<p>The turning point in the Second Punic War was the siege of Capua by the +Romans. That siege Hannibal sought by all means in his power to raise, +well knowing, that, if the Campanian city should fall, he could never +hope to become master of Italy. He marched to Rome in the expectation of +compelling the besiegers to hasten to its defence; but without effect. +Two old Romans commanded the beleaguering army, and while one of them, +Q. Fulvius, hastened home with a small force, the other, Appius +Claudius, carried on the siege. Hannibal had to retreat, and Capua fell, +the effect of the tenacity with which ancient generals held on to their +prey. Had they been less firm, the course of history would have been +changed. At a later period of the war, Rome was saved from great danger, +if not from destruction, by the victory of the Metaurus, won by M. +Livius Salinator and C. Claudius Nero. Nero was an elderly man, having +been conspicuous for some years, and the consular age being forty. His +colleague was a very old man, having been consul before the war began, +and having long lived in retirement, because he had been unjustly +treated. The Romans now forced him to take office, against his wish, +though his actions and his language were of the most insulting +character. A great <a name="Page_405" id="Page_405"></a>union of parties had taken place, for Hasdrubal was +marching to Italy, for the purpose of effecting a junction with his +brother Hannibal, and it was felt that nothing short of perfect union +could save the State. The State was saved, the two old consuls acting +together, and defeating and slaying Hasdrubal in the last great battle +of the war that was fought in Italy. The old fogies were too much for +their foe, a much younger man than either of them, and a soldier of high +reputation.</p> + +<p>It must be admitted, however, that the Second Punic War is fairly +quotable by those who insist upon the superiority of youthful generals +over old ones, for the two greatest men who appeared in it were young +leaders,—Hannibal, and Publius Cornelius Scipio, the first Africanus. +No man has ever exceeded Hannibal in genius for war. He was one of the +greatest statesmen that ever lived, and he was so because he was the +greatest of soldiers. He might have won pitched battles as a mere +general, but it was his statesmanship that enabled him to contend for +sixteen years against Rome, in Italy, though Rome was aided by +Carthaginian copperheads. But, though a young general, Hannibal was an +old soldier when he led his army from the Ebro to the Trebia, as the +avenging agent of his country's gods. His military as well as his moral +training began in childhood; and when his father, Hamilcar Barcas,<a name="FNanchor_B_2" id="FNanchor_B_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_B_2" class="fnanchor">[B]</a> +was killed, Hannibal, though but eighteen, was of established reputation +in the Carthaginian service. Eight years later he took the place which +his father and brother-in-law had held, called to it by the voice of the +army. During those eight years he had been constantly employed, and he +brought to the command an amount and variety of experience such as it +has seldom been the lot of even old generals to acquire. Years brought +no decay to his faculties, and we have the word of his successful foe, +that at Zama, when he was forty-five, he showed as much skill as he had +displayed at Cannæ, when he was but thirty-one. Long afterward, when an +exile in the East, his powers of mind shine as brightly as they did when +he crossed the Pyrenees and the Alps to fulfil his oath. Scipio, too, +though in a far less degree than Hannibal, was an old soldier. He had +been often employed, and was present at Cannæ, before he obtained that +proconsular command in Spain which was the worthy foundation of his +fortunes. The four years that he served in that country, and his +subsequent services in Africa, qualified him to meet Hannibal, whose +junior he was by thirteen years. That he was Hannibal's superior, +because he defeated him at Zama, with the aid of Masinissa, no more +follows than that Wellington was Napoleon's superior, because, with the +aid of Blücher, he defeated him at Waterloo. It would not be more +difficult to account for the loss of the African field than it is to +account for the loss of the Flemish field, by the superior genius. The +elder Africanus is the most exceptional character in all history, and it +is impossible to place him. He seems never to have been young, and we +cannot associate the idea of age with him, even when he is dying at +Liternum at upwards of fifty. He was a man at seventeen, when first he +steps boldly out on the historic page, and there is no apparent change +in him when we find him leading great armies, and creating a new policy +for the redemption of Italy from the evils of war. He was intended to be +a king, but he was born two centuries too early to be of any use to his +country in accordance with his genius, out of the field. Such a man is +not to be judged as a mere soldier, and we were inclined not to range +him on the side of youthful generals; but we will be generous, and, <a name="Page_406" id="Page_406"></a>in +consideration of his years, permit him to be claimed by those who insist +that war is the business of youth.</p> + +<p>At later periods, Rome's greatest generals were men who were old. The +younger Africanus was fifty-one at Numantia, Marius did not obtain the +consulship until he was fifty; and he was fifty-five when he won his +first great victory over the Northern barbarians, and a year older when +he completed their destruction. Sulla was past fifty when he set out to +meet the armies of Mithridates, which he conquered; and he was fifty-six +when he made himself master of his country, after one of the fiercest +campaigns on record. Pompeius distinguished himself when very young, but +it is thought that the title of "the Great" was conferred upon him by +Sulla in a spirit of irony. The late Sir William Napier, who ought to +have been a good judge, said that he was a very great general, and in a +purely military sense perhaps greater than Cæsar. He was fifty-eight in +the campaign of Pharsalia, and if he then failed, his failure must be +attributed to the circumstances of his position, which was rather that +of a party leader than of a general; and a party leader, it has been +truly said, must sometimes obey, in order that at other times he may +command. Pompeius delivered battle at Pharsalia against his own +judgment. The "Onward to Rome!" cry of the fierce aristocrats was too +strong to be resisted; and "their general yielded with a sigh to the +importunities of his followers, declaring that he could no longer +command, and must submit to obey." Not long before he had beaten Cæsar +at Dyrrachium, with much loss to the vanquished, completely spoiling his +plans; and the great contest might have had a very different result, had +not political and personal considerations been permitted to outweigh +those of a military character. Politicians are pests in a camp. Cæsar +was in his fifty-first year when he crossed the Rubicon and began his +wonderful series of campaigns in the Civil War,—campaigns characterized +by an almost superhuman energy. The most remarkable of his efforts was +that which led to his last appearance in the field, at the Battle of +Munda, where he fought for existence; he was then approaching +fifty-five, and he could not have been more active and energetic, had he +been as young as Alexander at Arbela.</p> + +<p>In modern days, the number of old generals who have gained great battles +is large, far larger than the number of young generals of the highest +class. The French claim to be the first of military peoples, and though +no other nation has been so badly beaten in battles, or so completely +crushed in campaigns, there is a general disposition to admit their +claim; and many of their best commanders were old men. Bertrand du +Gueselin performed his best deeds against the English after he was +fifty, and he was upward of sixty years when the commandant of Randon +laid the keys of his fortress on his body, surrendering, not to the +living, but to the dead. Turenne was ever great, but it is admitted that +his three last campaigns, begun when he was sixty-two, were his greatest +performances. Condé's victory at Rocroi was a most brilliant deed, he +being then but twenty-two; but it does not so strikingly illustrate his +genius as do those operations by which, at fifty-four, he baffled +Montecuculi, and prevented him from profiting from the fall of Turenne. +Said Condé to one of his officers, "How much I wish that I could have +conversed only two hours with the ghost of Monsieur de Turenne, so as to +be able to follow the scope of his ideas!" In these days, generals can +have as much ghostly talk as they please, but the privilege would not +seem to be much used, or it is not useful, for they do nothing that is +of consequence sufficient to be attributed to supernatural power. +Luxembourg was sixty-two when he defeated Prince Waldeck at Fleurus; and +at sixty-four and sixty-five he defeated William III. at Steinkirk and +Landen. Vendôme was fifty-one when he defeated Eugène at Cassano; and at +fifty-six he won the eventful Battle of Villaviciosa, to which the +Spanish Bourbons owe <a name="Page_407" id="Page_407"></a>their throne. Villars, who fought the terrible +Battle of Malplaquet against Marlborough and Eugène, was then fifty-six +years old; and he had more than once baffled those commanders. At sixty +he defeated Eugène, and by his successes enabled France to conclude +honorably a most disastrous war. The Comte de Saxe was in his +forty-ninth year when he gained the Battle of Fontenoy;<a name="FNanchor_C_3" id="FNanchor_C_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_C_3" class="fnanchor">[C]</a> and later he +won other successes. Rochambeau was in his fifty-seventh year when he +acted with Washington at Yorktown, in a campaign that established our +existence as a nation.</p> + +<p>The Spanish army of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, down to the +date of the Battle of Rocroi, stood very high. Several of its best +generals were old men. Gonsalvo de Córdova, "the Great Captain," who may +be considered the father of the famous Spanish infantry, was fifty when +he completed his Italian conquests; and nine years later he was again +called to the head of the Spaniards in Italy, but the King of Aragon's +jealousy prevented him from going to that country. Alva was about sixty +when he went to the Netherlands, on his awful mission; and it must be +allowed that he was as great in the field as he was detestably cruel. At +seventy-four he conquered Portugal. Readers of Mr. Prescott's work on +Peru will remember his lively account of Francisco de Carbajal, who at +fourscore was more active than are most men at thirty. Francisco Pizarro +was an old man, about sixty, when he effected the conquest of Peru; and +his principal associate, Almagro, was his senior. Spinola, who died at +sixty-one, in the full possession of his reputation, was, perhaps, the +greatest military genius of his time, next to Gustavus Adolphus and +Wallenstein.</p> + +<p>The Austrian military service has become a sort of butt with those who +shoot their arrows at what is called slowness, and who delight to +transfix old generals. Since Bonaparte, in less than a year, tumbled +over Beaulieu, Wurmser, and Alvinczy, (whose united ages exceeded two +hundred years,) it has been taken for granted that the Austrians never +have generals under threescore-and-ten years, and that they are always +beaten. There have been many old generals in the Austrian service, it is +true, and most of them have been very good leaders. Montecuculi was +fifty-six when he defeated the Turks at St. Gothard, which is counted +one of the "decisive battles" of the seventeenth century. Daun was +fifty-three when he won the victory of Kolin, June 18, 1757, inflicting +defeat on the Prussian Frederick, next to Marlborough the greatest +commander of modern times who had then appeared. Melas was seventy when +he met Bonaparte at Marengo, and beat him, the victory being with the +Austrian while he remained on the field; but infirmities having +compelled him to leave before he could glean it, the arrival of Desaix +and the dash of the younger Kellermann turned the tide of battle in +favor of the French. General Zach, Melas's chief of the staff, was in +command in the latter part of the battle, and it is supposed, that, if +he had not been captured, the Austrians would have kept what they had +won. He was fifty-six years old, but was not destined to be the "Old +Zach" of his country, as <i>the</i> "Old Zach" was always victorious. Marshal +Radelzky was eighty-two when, in 1848, he found himself compelled to +uphold the Austrian cause in Italy, without the hope of aid from home; +and not only did he uphold it, but a year later he restored it +completely, and was the virtual ruler of the Peninsula until he had +reached the age of ninety. Of all the military men who took part in the +<a name="Page_408" id="Page_408"></a>wars of 1848-9, he, it is admitted, displayed the most talent and +energy. So well was his work done, that it required the united forces of +France and Sardinia to undo it, shortly after his death; and he died in +the conviction that it could not be undone. Haynau, who certainly +displayed eminent ability in 1848-9, was in his sixty-second year when +the war began, and stands next to Radetzky as the preserver of the +Austrian monarchy; and we should not allow detestation of his cruelties +to detract from his military merits. The Devil is entitled to justice, +and by consequence so are his imps. Austria has often seen her armies +beaten when led by old men, but other old men have won victories for +her. Even those of her generals who were so rapidly beaten by young +Bonaparte had been good soldiers elsewhere; and when the Archduke +Charles, who was two years the junior of Bonaparte, was sent to meet the +Frenchman, he had no better luck than had been found by Beaulieu and +Wurmser, though his reverses were not on the same extraordinary scale +that had marked the fall of his predecessors. Twelve years later, in +1809, Napoleon again met the Archduke Charles, and defeated him +repeatedly; and though the Archduke was victorious at Essling, he, the +younger commander, had not sufficient boldness so to improve his success +as should have given to Austria the credit of the deliverance of +Germany, which was to come from Russia. Those who dwell so +pertinaciously on the failures of old Austrian generals should in +justice to age remember that it was a young Austrian general, and a good +soldier too, who showed a most extraordinary want of energy in 1809, +immediately after the French under Napoleon had met with the greatest +reverse which their arms had then experienced since Bonaparte had been +spoiled into a despot. Prince Schwartzenberg, who had nominal command of +the Allied Armies in 1813-14, was of the same age as the Archduke +Charles, but it would be absurd to call him a great soldier. He was a +brave man, and he had seen considerable service; but as a general he did +not rank even as second-rate. His appointment to command in 1813 was a +political proceeding, meant to conciliate Austria; but though it was a +useful appointment in some respects, it was injurious to the Allies in +the field; and had the Prince's plan at Leipsic been adhered to, +Napoleon would have won decided successes there. The Czar wished for the +command, and his zeal might have enabled him to do something; but the +entire absence of military talent from the list of his accomplishments +would have greatly endangered the Allies' cause. Schwartzenberg's merit +consisted in this, that he had sufficient influence and tact to "keep +things straight" in the councils of a jarring confederacy, until others +had gained such victories as placed the final defeat of Napoleon beyond +all doubt. His first battle was Dresden, and there Napoleon gave him a +drubbing of the severest character; and the loss of that battle would +have carried with it the loss of the cause for which it was fought by +the Allies, had it not been that at the very same time were fought and +won a series of battles, at the Katzbach and elsewhere, which were due +to the boldness of Blücher, who was old enough to be Schwartzenberg's +father, with more than a dozen years to spare. Blücher was also the real +hero at Leipsie, where he gained brilliant successes; while on that part +of the field where Schwartzenberg commanded, the Allies did but little +beyond holding their original ground. Had Blücher failed, Leipsie would +have been a French victory.</p> + +<p>England's best generals mostly have been old men, or men well advance in +life, the chief exceptions being found among her kings and princes.<a name="FNanchor_D_4" id="FNanchor_D_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_D_4" class="fnanchor">[D]</a> +The Englishmen <a name="Page_409" id="Page_409"></a>who have exhibited the greatest genius for war, in what +may be called their country's modern history, are Oliver Cromwell, +Marlborough, and Wellington. Cromwell was in his forty-fourth year when +he received the baptism of fire at Edgehill, as a captain; and he was in +his fifty-third year when he fought, as lord-general, his last battle, +at Worcester, which closed a campaign, as well as an active military +career, that had been conducted with great energy. It was as a military +man that he subsequently ruled the British islands, and to the day of +his death there was no abatement in ability. Marlborough had a good +military education, served under Turenne when he was but twenty-two, and +attracted his commander's admiration; but he never had an independent +command until he was forty, when he led an expedition to Ireland, and +captured Cork and Kinsale. He was fifty-two when he assumed command of +the armies of the Grand Alliance against Louis XIV., and in his +fifty-fifth year when he won the Battle of Blenheim. At fifty-six he +gained the victory of Ramillies, and at fifty-eight that of Oudenarde. +His last great battle, Malplaquet, was fought when he was in his +sixtieth year; and after that the French never durst meet him in the +field. He never knew what defeat meant, from experience, and was the +most successful even of those commanders who have never failed. He left +his command at sixty-two, with no one to dispute his title of the first +of living soldiers; and with him victory left the Alliance. Subsequently +he was employed by George I., and to his measures the defeat of the +rebels of 1715 was due, he having predicted that they would be +overthrown precisely where they were overthrown. The story that he +survived his mental powers is without foundation, and he continued to +perform his official duties to the last, the King having refused to +accept his proffered resignation. Wellington had a thorough military +training, received his first commission at eighteen, and was a +lieutenant-colonel in his twenty-fifth year. After showing that he was a +good soldier in 1794-5, against the French, he went to India, where he +distinguished himself in subordinate campaigns, and was made a +major-general in 1802. Assaye, the first battle in which he commanded, +was won when he was in his thirty-fifth year. He had just entered on his +fortieth year when he took command of that force with which he first +defeated the French in Portugal. He was in his forty-seventh year when +he fought at Waterloo. If he cannot be classed with old generals, +neither can he be placed in the list of youthful soldiers; and so little +confidence had he in his military talents, that at twenty-six he +petitioned to be transferred to the civil service. His powers were +developed by events and time. Some of his Peninsular lieutenants were +older than himself. Craufurd was five years his senior, and was a +capital soldier. Picton, who had some of the highest military qualities, +was almost eleven years older than his chief, and was little short of +fifty-seven when he fell at Waterloo. Lord Hopetoun was six years older +than Wellington. Lord Lynedoch (General Sir Thomas Graham) was in his +sixty-first year when he defeated Maréchal Victor at Barrosa, and in his +sixty-third when he led the left wing of the Allies at Vittoria, which +was the turning battle of the long contest between England and France. A +few months later he took St. Sebastian, after one of the most terrible +sieges known to modern warfare. He continued to serve <a name="Page_410" id="Page_410"></a>under Wellington +until France was invaded. Returning to England, he was sent to Holland, +with an independent command; and though his forces were few, so little +had his fire been dulled by time, that he carried the great fortress of +Bergen-op-Zoom by storm, but only to lose it again, with more than two +thousand men, because of the sense and gallantry of the French General +Bezanet, who, like our Rosecrans at Murfreesboro', would not accept +defeat under any circumstances. When Wellington afterward saw the place, +he remarked that it was very strong, and must have been extremely +difficult to enter; "but when once in," he added, "I wonder how the +Devil they suffered themselves to be beaten out again!" Though the old +Scotchman failed on this particular occasion, his boldness and daring +are to be cited in support of the position that energy in war is not the +exclusive property of youth.</p> + +<p>Some of the best of the English second-class generals were old men. Lord +Clyde began his memorable Indian campaigns at sixty-six, and certainly +showed no want of talent and activity in their course. He restored, to +all appearance, British supremacy in the East. Sir C.J. Napier was in +his sixty-second year when he conquered Sinde, winning the great Battles +of Meanee and Doobah; and six years later he was sent out to India, as +Commander-in-chief, at the suggestion of Wellington, who said, that, if +Napier would not go, he should go himself. He reached India too late to +fight the Sikhs, but showed great vigor in governing the Indian army. He +died in 1853; had he lived until the next spring, he would +unquestionably have been placed at the head of that force which England +sent first to Turkey and then to Southern Russia. Lord Raglan was almost +sixty-six when he was appointed to his first command, and though his +conduct has been severely criticized, and much misrepresented by many +writers, the opinion is now becoming common that he discharged well the +duties of a very difficult position. Mr. Kinglake's brilliant work is +obtaining justice for the services and memory of his illustrious friend. +Lord Hardinge and Lord Gough were old men when they carried on some of +the fiercest hostilities ever known to the English in India. Sir Ralph +Abercromby was sixty-three when he defeated the French in Egypt, in +1801. Lord Cornwallis was fifty-two when he broke the power of Tippoo +Saib, and prepared the way for his ultimate overthrow. Lord Peterborough +was forty-seven, and had never before held a command or seen much +service, when he set out on that series of extraordinary campaigns which +came so near replacing the Austrian house in possession of Spain and the +Indies. Peterborough has been called the last of the knights-errant; +but, in fact, no book on knight-errantry contains anything half so +wonderful as his deeds in the country of Don Quixote. Sir Eyre Coote, +who had so boldly supported that bold policy which led to the victory of +Plassey, nearly a quarter of a century later supported Hastings in the +field with almost as much vigor as he had supported Clive in council, +and saved British India, when it was assailed by the ablest of all its +foes. His last victories were gained in advanced life, and are ranked +with the highest of those actions to which England owes her wonderful +Oriental dominion. Lord Keane was verging upon sixty when he led the +British forces into Afghanistan, and took Ghuznee. Against all her old +and middle-aged generals, her kings and princes apart, England could +place but very few young commanders of great worth. Clive's case was +clearly exceptional; and Wolfe owed his victory on the Heights of +Abraham as much to Montcalm's folly as to his own audacity. The +Frenchman should have refused battle, when time and climate would soon +have wrought his deliverance and his enemy's ruin.</p> + +<p>It is generally held that the wars which grew out of the French +Revolution, and which involved the world in their flames, were chiefly +the work of young men, and <a name="Page_411" id="Page_411"></a>that their history illustrates the +superiority of youth over age in the ancient art of human destruction. +But this belief is not well founded, and, indeed, bears a close +resemblance to that other error in connection with the French +Revolution, namely, that it proceeded from the advent of new opinions, +which obtained ascendency,—whereas those opinions were older than +France, and had more than once been aired in France, and there had +struggled for supremacy. The opinions before the triumph of which the +old monarchy went down were much older than that monarchy; but as they +had never before been able definitely to influence the nation's action, +it was not strange that they should be considered new, when there was +nothing new about them save their application. Young opinions, as they +are supposed to have been, are best championed by young men; and hence +it is assumed that the French leaders in the field were youthful heroes, +as were the civil leaders in many instances,—and a very nice mess the +latter made of the business they engaged in, doing little that was well +in it beyond getting their own heads cut off. There are some facts that +greatly help to sustain the position that France was saved from +partition by the exertions of young generals, the new men of the new +time. Hoche, Moreau, Bonaparte, Desaix, Soult, Lannes, Ney, and others, +who early rose to fame in the Revolutionary wars, were all young men, +and their exploits were so great as to throw the deeds of others into +the shade; but the salvation of France was effected before any one of +their number became conspicuous as a leader. Napoleon once said that it +was not the new levies that saved France, but the old soldiers of the +Bourbons; and he was right; and he might have added, that they were led +by old or elderly generals. Dumouriez was in his fifty-fourth year when, +in 1792, he won the Battles of Valmy and Jemmapes; and at Valmy he was +aided by the elder Kellermann, who was fifty-seven. Those two battles +decided the fate of Europe, and laid the foundation of that French +supremacy which endured for twenty years, until Napoleon himself +overthrew it by his mad Moscow expedition. Custine, who also was +successful in 1792, on the side of Germany, was fifty-two. Jourdan and +Pichegru, though not old men, were old soldiers, when, in 1794 and 1795, +they did so much to establish the power of the French Republic, the +former winning the Battle of Fleurus. It was in the three years that +followed the beginning of the war in 1792, that the French performed +those deeds which subsequently enabled Napoleon and his Marshals to +chain victory to their chariots, and to become so drunk from success +that they fell through their own folly rather than because of the +exertions of their enemies. Had the old French generals been beaten at +Valmy, the Prussians would have entered Paris in a few days, the +monarchy would have been restored, and the name of Bonaparte never would +have been heard; and equally unknown would have been the names of a +hundred other French leaders, who distinguished themselves in the +three-and-twenty years that followed the first successes of Dumouriez +and Kellermann. Let honor be given where it is due, and let the fogies +have their just share of it. There can be nothing meaner than to insist +upon stripping gray heads of green laurels.</p> + +<p>After the old generals and old soldiers of France had secured +standing-places for the new generation, the representatives of the +latter certainly did make their way brilliantly and rapidly. The school +was a good one, and the scholars were apt to learn, and did credit to +their masters. They carried the tricolor over Europe and into Egypt, and +saw it flying over the capital of almost every member of those +coalitions which had purposed its degradation at Paris. It was the flag +to which men bowed at Madrid and Seville, at Milan and Rome, at Paris +and at the Hague, at Warsaw and Wilna, at Dantzie and in Dalmatia, at +the same time that it was fast approaching<a name="Page_412" id="Page_412"></a> Moscow; and it was thought +of with as much fear as hatred at Vienna and Berlin. No wonder that the +world forgot or overlooked the earlier and fewer triumphs of the first +Republican commanders, when dazzled by the glories that shone from +Arcola, the Pyramids, Zürich, Marengo, Hohenlinden, Ulm, Austerlitz, +Jena, Eckmühl, Wagram, Borodino, Lützen, Bautzen, and Dresden. But those +young generals of the Republic and the Empire were sometimes found +unequal to the work of contending against the old generals of the +Coalitionists. Suvaroff was in his seventieth year when he defeated +Macdonald at the Battle of the Trebbia, the Frenchman being but +thirty-four; and a few months later he defeated Joubert, who was thirty, +at Novi. Joubert was one of Bonaparte's generals in his first Italian +wars, and was so conspicuous and popular that he had been selected to +command the Army of Italy by the moderate reactionists, in the hope that +he might there win such glory as should enable him to play the part +which Bonaparte played but a few months later,—Bonaparte being then in +the East, with the English fleets between him and France, so that he was +considered a lost man. "The striking similarity of situation between +Joubert and Bonaparte," says Madame d'Abrantes, "is most remarkable. +They were of equal age, and both, in their early career, suffered a sort +of disgrace; they were finally appointed to command, first, the +seventeenth military division, and afterward the Army of Italy. There is +in all this a curious parity of events; but death soon ended the career +of one of the young heroes. That which ought to have constituted the +happiness of his life was the cause of Joubert's death,—his marriage. +But how could he refrain from loving the woman he espoused? Who can +have forgotten Zaphirine de Montholon, her enchanting grace, her playful +wit, her good humor, and her beauty?" Like another famous soldier, +Joubert loved too well to love wisely. Bonaparte, who never was young, +had received the command of the Army of Italy as the portion of the +ex-mistress of Barras, who was seven years his senior, and, being a +matter-of-fact man, he reduced his <i>lune de miel</i> to three days, and +posted off to his work. He knew the value of time in those days, and not +Cleopatra herself could have kept him from his men. Joubert, more of a +man, but an inferior soldier, took his honeymoon in full measure, +passing a month with his bride; and the loss of that month, if so sweet +a thirty days could be called a loss, ruined him, and perhaps prevented +him from becoming Emperor of the French. The enemy received +reinforcements while he was so lovingly employed, and when he at length +arrived on the scene of action he found that the Allies had obtained +mastery of the situation. It was no longer in the power of the French to +say whether they would fight or not. They had to give battle at Novi, +where the tough old Russian of seventy years asserted his superiority +over the <i>héros de roman</i> who had posted from Paris to retrieve the +fortune of France, and to make his own. When he left Paris, he said to +his wife, "You will see me again, dead or victorious,"—and dead he was, +in less than a month. He fell early in the action, on the fifteenth of +August, 1799, the very day on which Bonaparte completed his thirtieth +year. Moreau took the command, but failed to turn the tide of disaster. +The French are unanimous in ascribing their defeat to Joubert's delay at +Paris, and it is certain that the enemy did take Alexandria and Mantua +during that month's delay, and thus were enabled to add the besieging +forces to their main army, so that Joubert was about to retreat to the +Apennines, and to assume a defensive position, when Suvaroff forced him +to accept battle. But something should be allowed for the genius of the +Russian general, who was one of the great master-spirits of war, and who +seldom fought without being completely victorious. He had mostly been +employed against the Turks, whose military reputation was <a name="Page_413" id="Page_413"></a>then at the +lowest, or the Poles, who were too divided and depressed to do +themselves and their cause justice, and therefore his character as a +soldier did not stand so high as that of more than one man who was his +inferior; but when, in his seventieth year, he took command in Italy, +there to encounter soldiers who had beaten the armies of almost all +other European nations, and who were animated by a fanatical spirit as +strong as that which fired his own bosom, he showed himself to be more +than equal to his position. He was not at all at fault, though brought +face to face with an entirely new state of things, but acted with his +accustomed vigor, marching from victory to victory, and reconquering +Italy more rapidly than it had been conquered three years before by +Bonaparte. When Bonaparte was destroying the Austrian armies in Italy, +Suvaroff watched his operations with deep interest, and said that he +must go to the West to meet the new genius, or that Bonaparte would +march to the East against Russia,—a prediction, it has been said, that +was fulfilled to the Frenchman's ruin. "Whether, had he encountered +Bonaparte, he would have beaten him, is a question for the ingenious to +argue, but which never can be settled. But one thing is certain, and +that is, that Bonaparte never encountered an opponent of that determined +and energetic character which belonged to Suvaroff until his latter +days, and then his fall was rapid and his ruin utter. That Suvaroff +failed in Switzerland, to which country he had been transferred from +Italy, does not at all impeach his character for generalship. His +failure was due partly to the faults of others, and partly to +circumstances. Switzerland was to him what Russia became to Napoleon in +1812. Massena's victory at Zürich, in which half of Korsakoff's army was +destroyed, rendered Russian failure in the campaign inevitable. All the +genius in the world, on that field of action, could not have done +anything that should have compensated for so terrible a calamity. Zürich +saved France far more than did Marengo, and it is to be noted that it +was fought and won by the oldest of all the able men who figure in +history as Napoleon's Marshals. There were some of the Marshals who were +older than Massena, but they were not men of superior talents. Massena +was forty-one when he defeated Korsakoff, and he was a veteran soldier +when the Revolutionary wars began.</p> + +<p>The three commanders who did most to break down Napoleon's power, and to +bring about his overthrow, namely,—Benningsen, and Kutusoff, and +Blücher,—were all old men; and the two last-named were very old men. It +would be absurd to call either of them a great commander, but it is +indisputable that they all had great parts in great wars. Benningsen can +scarcely be called a good general of the second class, and he is mostly +spoken of as a foolish braggart and boaster; but it is a fact that he +did some things at an important time which indicated his possession of +qualities that were highly desirable in a general who was bound to act +against Napoleon. Having, in 1807, obtained command of the Russian army +in Poland, he had what the French considered the consummate impudence to +take the offensive against the Emperor, and compelled him to mass his +forces, and to fight in the dead of winter, and a Polish winter to boot, +in which all that is not ice and snow is mud. True, Napoleon would have +made him pay dear for his boldness, had there not occurred one or two of +those accidents which often spoil the best-laid plans of war; but as it +was, the butcherly Battle of Eylau was fought, both parties, and each +with some show of reason, claiming the victory. Had the Russians acted +on the night after Eylau as the English acted on the night after +Flodden, and remained on the field, the world would have pronounced them +victorious, and the French Empire might have been shorn of its +proportions, and perhaps have fallen, seven years in advance of its +time; but they retreated, and thus the French made a fair claim to the +honors of the engagement, though virtually <a name="Page_414" id="Page_414"></a>beaten in the fight. +Benningsen boasted tremendously, and as there were men enough to believe +what he said to be true, because they wished it to be true, and as he +had behaved well on some previous occasions, his reputation was vastly +raised, and his name was in all mouths and on all pens. If the reader +will take the trouble to look over a file of some Federal journal of +1807, he will find Benningsen as frequently and as warmly praised as Lee +or Stonewall Jackson is (or was) praised by English journals in +1863,—for the Federalists hated Napoleon as bitterly as the English +hate us, and read of Eylau with as much unction as the English of to-day +read of the American reverses at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, +while Austerlitz and Friedland pleased our Federalists about as well as +Donelson and Pulaski please the English of these times. A few months +after Eylau, Benningsen repulsed an attack which Napoleon imprudently +made on his intrenched camp at Heilsberg, which placed another feather +in his cap; nor did the smashing defeat he met with four days later, at +Friedland, lessen his reputation. The world is slow to think poorly of a +man who has done some clever things. We have seen how it was with the +late Stonewall Jackson, concerning whom most men spoke as if he had +never known defeat, though it is, or it should be, notorious, that he +was as often beaten as successful, that more than once he had to fly +with wind-like swiftness to escape personal destruction, and that on one +occasion he was saved from ruin only because of an exhibition on our +side of more than a usual amount of stupidity. But he had repeatedly +showed some of the best qualities of a dashing general, and all else was +overlooked in admiration of the skill and the audacity with which he +then had done his evil work. So it was with Benningsen, and with more +justice. The man who had bearded Napoleon but a few months after Jena, +and not much more than a year after Austerlitz, and who had fought an +even battle with him, in which fifty thousand men fell, must have had +some high moral qualities that entitled him to respect; and he continued +to be much talked of until greater and more fruitful campaigns had +obscured his deeds. The pluck which he had exhibited tended to keep +alive the spirit of European resistance to Napoleon, as it showed that +the conqueror had only to be firmly met to be made to fight hardly for +victory; and that was much, in view of the rapidity with which Napoleon +had beaten both Austria and Russia in 1805, and Prussia in 1806. +Benningsen completed his sixty-second year two days after the Battle of +Eylau. He was employed in 1812, '13, '14, but not in the first line, and +his name is not of much mention in the histories of those eventful +years.</p> + +<p>Prince Kutusoff, though a good soldier in the Turkish and Polish wars, +did not have a command against the French until he had completed his +sixtieth year, in 1805, when he led a Russian army to the aid of +Austria. He checked the advance of the French after Ulm, and was in +nominal command of the Allies at Austerlitz; but that battle was really +fought in accordance with the plans of General Weyrother, for which +Kutusoff had a profound contempt. If thorough beating could make good +soldiers of men, the vanquished at Austerlitz ought to have become the +superiors of the victors. In 1812, when the Russians had become weary of +that sound policy which was drawing Napoleon to destruction, Kutusoff +assumed command of their army, and fought the Battle of Borodino, which +was a defeat in name, but a victory in its consequences, to the invaded +party. His conduct while the French were at Moscow had the effect of +keeping them in that trap until their fate was sealed; and his action +while following them on their memorable retreat was a happy mixture of +audacity and prudence, and completed the Russian triumph. Sir Robert +Wilson, who was with the Russian general, who must have found him a bore +of the first magnitude, is very severe on Kutusoff's proceedings; but +all that he says <a name="Page_415" id="Page_415"></a>makes it clear that the stout old Russian knew what he +was about, and that he was determined not to be made a mere tool of +England. If success is a test of merit, Kutusoff's action deserves the +very highest admiration, for the French army was annihilated. He died +just after he had brought the greatest of modern campaigns to a +triumphant close, at the age of sixty-eight, and before he could hear +the world's applause. The Germans, who were to owe so much to his +labors, rejoiced at his removal, because he was supposed to belong to +the peace party, who were opposed to further action, and who thought +that their country was under no obligation to fight for the deliverance +of other nations. They feared, too, that, if the war should go on, his +"Muscovite hoof" would be too strong for the Fatherland to bear it; and +they saw in his death a Providential incident, which encouraged them to +move against the French. It is altogether probable, that, if he had +lived but three months longer, events would have taken quite a different +turn. Baron von Müffling tells us that Kutusoff "would not hear a word +of crossing the Elbe; and all Scharnhorst's endeavors to make him more +favorably disposed toward Prussia were fruitless. The whole peace party +in the Russian army joined with the Field-Marshal, and the Emperor was +placed in a difficult position. On my arrival at Altenberg, I found +Scharnhorst deeply dejected, for he could not shut his eyes to the +consequences of this resistance. Unexpectedly, the death of the +obstinate old Marshal occurred on the twenty-eighth of April, and the +Emperor was thus left free to pursue his own policy." The first general +who had successfully encountered Napoleon, it would have been the +strangest of history's strange facts, if the Emperor had owed the +continuance of his reign to Kutusoff's influence, and that was the end +to which the Russian's policy was directed; for, though he wished to +confine French power within proper limits, he had no wish to strengthen +either England or any of the German nations, deeming them likely to +become the enemies of Russia, while he might well suppose that the +French had had enough of Russian warfare to satisfy them for the rest of +the century. Had his astute policy been adopted and acted on, there +never would have been a Crimean War, and Sebastopol would not now be a +ruin; and Russia would have been greater than she is likely to be in our +time, or in the time of our children.</p> + +<p>Blücher, who completed the work which Kutusoff began, and in a manner +which the Russian would hardly have approved, was an older man than the +hero of Borodino. When called to the command of the Prussian army, in +March, 1813, he was in his seventy-first year; and he was in his +seventy-third year when his energy enabled him, in the face of +difficulties that no other commander could have overcome, to bring up +more than fifty thousand men to the assistance of Wellington at +Waterloo, losing more than an eighth of their number. He had no military +talent, as the term is generally used. He could not tell whether a plan +was good or bad. He could not understand the maps. He was not a +disciplinarian, and he was ignorant of all the details of preparing an +army, of clothing and feeding and arming it. In all those things which +it is supposed a commander should know, and which such commanders as +Napoleon and Wellington did know well, he was so entirely ignorant, that +he might have been raised to the head of an army of United States +Volunteers amid universal applause. He was vicious to an extent that +surprised even the fastest men of that vicious time,—a gambler, a +drunkard, and a loose liver every way, indulging in vices that are held +by mild moralists to be excusable in youth who are employed in sowing +wild oats, but which are universally admitted to be disgusting in those +upon whom age has laid its withering hand. Yet this vicious and ignorant +old man had more to do with bringing about the fall of Napoleon than all +the generals and statesmen of the Allies combined. He had energy, which +is the <a name="Page_416" id="Page_416"></a>most valuable of all qualities in a military leader; and he +hated Napoleon as heartily as he hated Satan, and a great deal more +heartily than he hated sin. Mr. Dickens tells us that the vigorous +tenacity of love is always much stronger than hate, and perhaps he is +right, so far as concerns private life; but in public life hate is by +far the stronger passion. But for Blücher's hatred of Napoleon the +campaign of 1813 would have terminated in favor of the Emperor, that of +1814 never would have been undertaken, and that of 1815, if ever +attempted, would have had a far different issue. The old German +disregarded all orders and suggestions, and set all military and +political principles at defiance, in his ardor to accomplish the one +purpose which he had in view; and as that purpose was accomplished, he +has taken his place in history as one of the greatest of soldiers. +Napoleon himself is not more secure of immortality. He was greatly +favored by circumstances, but he is a wise man who knows how to profit +from circumstances. Take Blücher out of the wars of 1813-15, and there +is little left in them on the side of the Allies that is calculated to +command admiration. Next to Blücher stands his celebrated chief of the +staff, General Count Gneisenau, who was the brains of the Army of +Silesia, Blücher being its head. When Blücher was made an LL.D. at +Oxford, he facetiously remarked, "If I am a doctor, here is my +pill-maker," placing his hand on Gneisenau's head,—which was a frank +acknowledgment that few men would have been able to make. Gneisenau was +fifty-three when he became associated with Blücher, and he was +fifty-five when he acted with him in 1815. In 1831 he was appointed to +an important command, being then seventy-one. The celebrated +Scharnhorst, Gneisenau's predecessor, and to whom the Prussians owed so +much, was in his fifty-seventh year when he died of the wounds he had +received at the Battle of Lützen.</p> + +<p>There are some European generals whom it is difficult to class, as they +showed great capacity and won great victories as well in age as in +youth. Prince Eugène was one of these, and Frederick of Prussia was +another. Eugène showed high talent when very young, and won the first of +his grand victories over the Turks at thirty-four; but it was not so +splendid an affair as that of Belgrade, which he won at fifty-four. He +was forty-three when he defeated the French at Turin, under +circumstances and with incidents that took attention even from +Marlborough, whom he subsequently aided to gain the victories of +Oudenarde and Malplaquet, as he had previously aided him at Blenheim. At +seventy-one Eugène led an Austrian army against the French; and though +no battle was fought, his conduct showed that he had not lost his +capacity for command. Frederick began his military life when in his +thirtieth year, and was actively engaged until thirty-three, showing +striking ability on several occasions, though he began badly, according +to his own admission. But it was in the Seven Years' War that his fame +as a soldier was won, and that contest began when he was in his +forty-fifth year. He was close upon forty-six when he gained the Battles +of Rossbach and Leuthen. Whatever opinion others may entertain as to his +age, it is certain that he counted himself an old man in those days. +Writing to the Marquis d'Argens, a few days before he was forty-eight, +he said, "In my old age I have come down almost to be a theatrical +king"; and not two years later he wrote to the same friend, "I have +sacrificed my youth to my father, and my manhood to my fatherland. I +think, therefore, I have acquired the right to my old age." He reckoned +by trials and events, and he had gone through enough to have aged any +man. Those were the days when he carried poison on his person, in order +that, should he be completely beaten, or captured, he might not adorn +Maria Theresa's triumph, but end his life "after the high Roman +fashion." When the question of the Bavarian succession threatened to +lead to another war with Austria, Frederick's action, though he <a name="Page_417" id="Page_417"></a>was in +his sixty-seventh year, showed, to use the homely language of the +English soldier at St. Helena when Napoleon arrived at that famous +watering place, that he had many campaigns in his belly yet. The +youthful Emperor, Joseph II., would have been no match for the old +soldier of Liegnitz and Zorndorf.</p> + +<p>Some of Frederick's best generals were old men. Schwerin, who was killed +in the terrible Battle of Prague, was then seventy-three, and a soldier +of great reputation. Sixteen years before he had won the Battle of +Mollwitz, one of the most decisive actions of that time, from which +Frederick himself is said to have run away in sheer fright. General +Ziethen, perhaps the best of all modern cavalry commanders, was in his +fifty-eighth year when the Seven Years' War began, and he served through +it with eminent distinction, and most usefully to his sovereign. He +could not have exhibited more dash, if he had been but eight-and-twenty, +instead of eight-and-fifty, or sixty-five, as he was when peace was +made. Field-Marshal Keith, an officer of great ability, was sixty when +he fell at Hochkirchen, after a brilliant career.</p> + +<p>American military history is favorable to old generals. Washington was +in his forty-fourth year when he assumed command of the Revolutionary +armies, and in his fiftieth when he took Yorktown. Wayne and Greene were +the only two of our young generals of the Revolution who showed decided +fitness for great commands. Had Hamilton served altogether in the field, +his would have been the highest military name of the war. The absurd +jealousies that deprived Schuyler of command, in 1777, alone prevented +him from standing next to Washington. He was close upon forty-four when, +he gave way to Gates, who was forty-nine. The military reputation of +both Schuyler and Hamilton has been most nobly maintained by their +living descendants. Washington was called to the command of the American +forces at sixty-six, when it was supposed that the French would attempt +to invade the United States, which shows that the Government of that day +had no prejudice against old generals. General Jackson's great Louisiana +campaign was conducted when he was nearly forty-eight, and he was, from +almost unintermitted illness, older in constitution than in years. Had +General Scott had means at his disposal, we should have been able to +point to a young American general equal to any who is mentioned in +history; but our poverty forbade him an opportunity in war worthy of his +genius. It "froze the genial current of his soul." As a veteran leader, +he was most brilliantly distinguished. He was in his sixty-first year +when he set out on his memorable Mexican campaign, which was an unbroken +series of grand operations and splendid victories, such as are seldom to +be found in the history of war. The weight of years had no effect on +that magnificent mind. Of him, as it was of Carnôt, it can be said that +he organized victory, and made it permanent. His deeds were all the +greater because of the feeble support he received from his Government. +Like Wellington, in some of his campaigns, he had to find within himself +the resources which were denied him by bad ministers. General Taylor was +in his sixty-second year when the Mexican War began, and in less than a +year he won the Battles of Palo Alto, Resaca de la Palma, Monterey, and +Buena Vista. He, too, was badly supported. The Secession War has been +conducted by elderly or middle-aged men. General Lee, whom the world +holds to have displayed the most ability in it, is about fifty-six. +General Rosecrans is forty-four, and General Grant forty-two. Stonewall +Jackson died at thirty-seven. General Banks is forty-eight, General +Hooker forty-five, General Beauregard forty-six, General Bragg +forty-nine, General Burnside forty, General Gillmore thirty-nine, +General Franklin forty-one, General Magruder fifty-three, General Meade +forty-eight, General Schuyler Hamilton forty-two, General Charles S. +Hamilton forty, and General Foster forty. General<a name="Page_418" id="Page_418"></a> Lander, a man of +great promise, died in his fortieth year. General Kearney was killed at +forty-seven, and General Stevens at forty-five. General Sickles was in +his forty-first year when he was wounded at Gettysburg, and General Reno +was thirty-seven when he died so bravely at South Mountain. General +Pemberton lost Vicksburg at forty-five. General T.W. Sherman is +forty-six, and General W. T. Sherman forty-four. General McClellan was +in his thirty-fifth year when he assumed command at Washington in 1861. +General Lyon had not completed the first month of his forty-third year +when he fell at Wilson's Creek. General McDowell was in his forty-third +year when he failed at Bull Run, in consequence of the coming up of +General Joe Johnston, who was fifty-one. General Keyes is fifty-three, +General Kelley fifty-seven, General King forty, and General Pope +forty-one. General A.S. Johnston was fifty-nine when he was killed at +Shiloh. General Halleck is forty-eight. General Longstreet is forty. The +best of the Southern cavalry-leaders was General Ashby, who was killed +at thirty-eight. General Stuart is twenty-nine. On our side, General +Stanley is thirty, General Pleasonton forty, and General Averell about +thirty. General Phelps is fifty-one, General Polk fifty-eight, General +S. Cooper sixty-eight, General J. Cooper fifty-four, and General Blunt +thirty-eight. The list might be much extended, but very few young men +would be found in it,—or very few old men, either. The best of our +leaders are men who have either passed beyond middle life, or who may be +said to be in the enjoyment of that stage of existence. It is so, too, +with the Rebels. If the war does not afford many facts in support of the +position that old generals are very useful, neither does it afford many +to be quoted by those who hold that the history of heroism is the +history of youth.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="THE_WRECK_OF_RIVERMOUTHE" id="THE_WRECK_OF_RIVERMOUTHE"></a>THE WRECK OF RIVERMOUTH.<a name="FNanchor_E_5" id="FNanchor_E_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_E_5" class="fnanchor">[E]</a></h2> + +<p>[1657.]</p> + + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Rivermouth Rocks are fair to see,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">By dawn or sunset shone across,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">When the ebb of the sea has left them free</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">To dry their fringes of gold-green moss:</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">For there the river comes winding down</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">From salt sea-meadows and uplands brown,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And waves on the outer rocks afoam</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Shout to its waters, "Welcome home!"</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And fair are the sunny isles in view</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">East of the grisly Head of the Boar,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And Agamenticus lifts its blue</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Disk of a cloud the woodlands o'er;</span><br /><a name="Page_419" id="Page_419"></a> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And southerly, when the tide is down,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">'Twixt white sea-waves and sand-hills brown,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The beach-birds dance and the gray gulls wheel</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Over a floor of burnished steel.</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Once, in the old Colonial days,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Two hundred years ago and more,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">A boat sailed down through the winding ways</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Of Hampton river to that low shore,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Full of a goodly company</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Sailing out on the summer sea,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Veering to catch the land-breeze light,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">With the Boar to left and the Rocks to right.</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">In Hampton meadows, where mowers laid</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Their scythes to the swaths of salted grass,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"Ah, well-a-day! our hay must be made!"</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">A young man sighed, who saw them pass.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Loud laughed his fellows to see him stand</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Whetting his scythe with a listless hand,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Hearing a voice in a far-off song,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Watching a white hand beckoning long.</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"Fie on the witch!" cried a merry girl,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">As they rounded the point where Goody Cole</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Sat by her door with her wheel atwirl,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">A bent and blear-eyed poor old soul.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"Oho!" she muttered, "ye're brave to-day!</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">But I hear the little waves laugh and say,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">'The broth will be cold that waits at home;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">For it's one to go, but another to come!'"</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"She's curst," said the skipper; "speak her fair:</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">I'm scary always to see her shake</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Her wicked head, with its wild gray hair,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And nose like a hawk, and eyes like a snake."</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">But merrily still, with laugh and shout,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">From Hampton river the boat sailed out,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Till the huts and the flakes on Star seemed nigh,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And they lost the scent of the pines of Rye.</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">They dropped their lines in the lazy tide,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Drawing up haddock and mottled cod;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">They saw not the Shadow that walked beside,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">They heard not the feet with silence shod.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">But thicker and thicker a hot mist grew,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Shot by the lightnings through and through;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And muffled growls, like the growl of a beast,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Ran along the sky from west to east.</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Then the skipper looked from the darkening sea</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Up to the dimmed and wading sun,</span><br /><a name="Page_420" id="Page_420"></a> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">But he spake like a brave man cheerily,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">"Yet there is time for our homeward run."</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Veering and tacking, they backward wore;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And just as a breath from the woods ashore</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Blew out to whisper of danger past,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The wrath of the storm came down at last!</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The skipper hauled at the heavy sail:</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">"God be our help!" he only cried,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">As the roaring gale, like the stroke of a flail,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Smote the boat on its starboard side.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The Shoalsmen looked, but saw alone</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Dark films of rain-cloud slantwise blown,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Wild rocks lit up by the lightning's glare,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The strife and torment of sea and air.</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Goody Cole looked out from her door:</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">The Isles of Shoals were drowned and gone,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Scarcely she saw the Head of the Boar</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Toss the foam from tusks of stone.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">She clasped her hands with a grip of pain,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The tear on her cheek was not of rain:</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"They are lost," she muttered, "boat and crew!</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Lord, forgive me! my words were true!"</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Suddenly seaward swept the squall;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">The low sun smote through cloudy rack;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The Shoals stood clear in the light, and all</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">The trend of the coast lay hard and black.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">But far and wide as eye could reach,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">No life was seen upon wave or beach;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The boat that went out at morning never</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Sailed back again into Hampton river.</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">O mower, lean on thy bended snath,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Look from the meadows green and low:</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The wind of the sea is a waft of death,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">The waves are singing a song of woe!</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">By silent river, by moaning sea,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Long and vain shall thy watching be:</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Never again shall the sweet voice call,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Never the white hand rise and fall!</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">O Rivermouth Rocks, how sad a sight</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Ye saw in the light of breaking day!</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Dead faces looking up cold and white</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">From sand and sea-weed where they lay!</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The mad old witch-wife wailed and wept,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And cursed the tide as it backward crept:</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"Crawl back, crawl back, blue water-snake!</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Leave your dead for the hearts that break!"</span><br /><a name="Page_421" id="Page_421"></a> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Solemn it was in that old day</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">In Hampton town and its log-built church,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Where side by side the coffins lay</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And the mourners stood in aisle and porch.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">In the singing-seats young eyes were dim,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The voices faltered that raised the hymn,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And Father Dalton, grave and stern,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Sobbed through his prayer and wept in turn.</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">But his ancient colleague did not pray,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Because of his sin at fourscore years:</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">He stood apart, with the iron-gray</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Of his strong brows knitted to hide his tears.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And a wretched woman, holding her breath</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">In the awful presence of sin and death,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Cowered and shrank, while her neighbors thronged</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To look on the dead her shame had wronged.</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Apart with them, like them forbid,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Old Goody Cole looked drearily round,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">As, two by two, with their faces hid,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">The mourners walked to the burying-ground.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">She let the staff from her clasped hands fall:</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"Lord, forgive us! we're sinners all!"</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And the voice of the old man answered her:</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"Amen!" said Father Bachiler.</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">So, as I sat upon Appledore</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">In the calm of a closing summer day,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And the broken lines of Hampton shore</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">In purple mist of cloudland lay,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The Rivermouth Rocks their story told;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And waves aglow with sunset gold,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Rising and breaking in steady chime,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Beat the rhythm and kept the time.</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And the sunset paled, and warmed once more</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">With a softer, tenderer after-glow;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">In the east was moon-rise, with boats off-shore</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And sails in the distance drifting slow.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The beacon glimmered from Portsmouth bar,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The White Isle kindled its great red star;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And life and death in my old-time lay</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Mingled in peace like the night and day!</span><br /> +</p><p><a name="Page_422" id="Page_422"></a></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="THE_SCHOOLMASTERS_STORY" id="THE_SCHOOLMASTERS_STORY"></a>THE SCHOOLMASTER'S STORY.</h2> + + +<p>I was in the shop of my friend on the day of the great snow-storm, when +the plan was proposed which he mentions in the beginning of his story, +called "Pink and Blue," printed in this magazine in the month of May, +1861. Fears were entertained that some of the women might object. And +they did. My sister Fanny, Mrs. Maylie, said it was like being set in a +frame. Farmer Hill's wife hoped we shouldn't tell <i>exactly</i> how much we +used to think of them, for "praise to the face was open disgrace." But +my wife, Mrs. Browne, thought the stories should be made as good as +possible, for praise could not hurt them so long as they knew +themselves, just what they were. It was suggested by some one, that, if +the married men told how they won their wives, there were a couple of +old bachelors belonging to our set who ought to tell how they came to be +without, which seemed very fair.</p> + +<p>When the lot fell upon me, my wife laughed, and declared that our +affairs ran so crooked, she didn't believe I could tell a straight +story. But Fanny said <i>that</i> would make it seem more like a book; the +puzzle to her was what I should call myself, seeing that I was neither +one thing nor another. It was finally agreed, however, that, as I had +taught school one winter, and that an important one, I should call mine +"The Schoolmaster's Story." The truth is, my own calling would not look +well at the head of an article, for I am by profession a loafer. For +this vocation, which was my own deliberate choice, I was well prepared, +having graduated, with a moderate degree of honor, from Cambridge +College. I know of no profession requiring for its complete enjoyment a +more thorough and varied preparation.</p> + +<p>My sister Fanny and I were two poor orphans, brought up, fed, clothed, +and loved by our Aunt Huldah. If it had not been for her, I don't know +what we should have done. Our Aunt Huldah was a widow and a <i>manager</i>. +Nearly every person has among his acquaintances one individual, usually +a female, who is called <i>a good manager</i>. She knows what is to be done, +and who should do it,—picks out wives for the young men, husbands for +the maidens, and attends herself to the matter of bringing them +together. Sometimes these individuals become tyrannical, standing with +vials of wrath all ready to be poured forth upon the heads of the +unsubmissive, and it must be owned that our aunt was in this not wholly +unlike the rest; but then she was so good-natured, so reasonable, that, +although the aforesaid vials were often known to be well filled, yet her +kindness and good sense always kept the corks in.</p> + +<p>I think she took us partly from love, and partly to show how children +ought to be managed. We got on admirably together. I was by no means a +fiery youth. I was amiable, fond of books, had soft, light hair, fair +complexion, a quiet, persevering way, and never <i>ran</i> after the girls. +Taking all these things into consideration, my aunt determined that I +should go to college, and become an honor to the family.</p> + +<p>Fanny, though not a bit like me, got along equally as well with the +reigning power. She was a smart, black-eyed maiden, full of life, and +had herself some of the managing blood in her veins. In fact, so bright +and so sly was my dear little sister, that she often succeeded in +managing the Grand Panjandra herself. I speak thus particularly of +Fanny, because, if it had not been for her, I might now have no story to +tell. I never, from childhood to manhood, worked myself into any tight +place, that her little scheming brain did not invent some way of getting +me out.</p> + +<p>When my collegiate labors were nearly finished, our aunt was taken +<i>poor</i>.<a name="Page_423" id="Page_423"></a> She was subject to these attacks, under which she always +resorted to the heroic treatment, retrenching and economizing with the +greatest zeal. This attack of hers was the primary cause of my taking a +winter school in the little village of Norway, about twenty miles from +home. I was perfectly willing to keep school; it seemed the easiest +thing in the world.</p> + +<p>The night before leaving home, my aunt summoned me to her chamber. She +sat erect in her straight-backed chair, a tall, dark woman, in a +bombazine gown, with white muslin frill and turban. Her eyes were black +and deep. Her nose was rather above than below the usual height, and +eminently fitted to bear its spectacles. She was evidently a person who +thought before she acted, but who was sure to act after she had thought.</p> + +<p>Good advice was what she wanted to give me. The world was a snare. The +Devil was always on the lookout, and everywhere in a minute. She read +considerable portions from the "Boston Recorder," after which she +dropped some hints about the marriage-state,—said she had noticed, with +pleasure, my prudence in not hurrying these matters, adding, that it was +much safer to choose a wife from among our own neighbors and friends +than to run the risk of marrying a stranger. No names were mentioned, +but I knew she was thinking of Alice, the postmaster's daughter, a fair +young maiden, soft in speech, quiet in manners, and constant at +meeting,—a maiden, in fact, of whom I had long stood in dread.</p> + +<p>My school commenced the week after Thanksgiving. I had fancied myself +appearing among my scholars like a king surrounded by his subjects. But +these lofty notions soon melted down beneath the searching glances of +forty pairs of eyes. A sense of my incompetency came over me, and I felt +like saying,—"Young people, little children, what can I do for you, and +how shall I show you any good?"</p> + +<p>The first thing I did was to take the names. Ah! in what school-record +of modern times could be found such a catalogue of the Christian +virtues? Think of mending pens for Faith and Prudence!—of teaching +arithmetic to Love, Hope, and Charity!—of imparting general knowledge +to Experience! There were three of this last name, and it was only after +a long <i>experience</i> of my own that I learned that the first was called +"Pelly," the second, "Exy," and the third, "Sperrence." Penelope was +rendered "Pep."</p> + +<p>It gave me peculiar sensations to find among my scholars so many large +girls. I have said that I had never been in the habit of running after +the girls, and I never had. I was one of those quiet young men who read +poetry, buy pictures and statues, and play the flute on still, moonlight +evenings. Not that I was indifferent to female charms, or let beauty +pass by unnoticed. In fact, I was keenly alive to the beautiful in all +its forms. I had seen, in the course of my life, a great many handsome +faces, which, in my quiet way, I had studied, when nobody was minding, +comparing beauties, or imagining alterations for the better, just as if +I had been studying a picture or a statue, and with no more fear of +being myself affected. Passing strange it was, that, exposed as I had +been, I should have remained so long unscathed. My time had not yet +come. But now dangers thickened around me, and I felt that Aunt Huldah +knew the world, when she said it was a <i>snare</i>. For, in glancing about +the room carelessly, while taking the names, I could not but perceive +that I was beset by perils on every side,—perils from which there +seemed no possible escape: for no sooner did I turn resolutely away from +a dove-like face in one corner than my eye was caught by a bright eye or +a sweet smile in another; and the admiring glance which with reluctance +I withdrew from a graceful figure was arrested by a well-shaped head or +a rosy cheek. One was almost a beauty, with her light curls and delicate +pink cheeks; another was quite such: her smile was bewitching, and her +eyes were roguish. But I soon found that there were other things to be +attended to besides <a name="Page_424" id="Page_424"></a>picking out the prettiest flowers in my winter +bouquet.</p> + +<p>I have intimated that my ideas regarding school-keeping were exceedingly +vague. Nevertheless, I had in the course of my studies picked out and +put together a system for the instruction and management of youth. This +system I now proceeded to apply.</p> + +<p>It is curious, as we trace back the current of our lives, to discover +the multitude of whims, plans, and mighty resolves which lie wrecked +upon the shore. I cannot help smiling, as, in looking back upon my own +life-stream, I discern the remains of my precious system lying high and +dry among the rocks of that winter's experience. Yet I tried all ways to +make it go. I was like a boy with a new boat, who increases or lessens +his ballast, now tries her with mainsail, foresail, topsail, jib, flying +jib, and jibber jib, and now with bare poles,—<i>anything</i> to make her +float. Each night I took my poor system home for repairs, and each +morning, full of hope, tried to launch it anew in my school-room. I have +always felt that I wronged those scholars, that I learned more than I +taught. I have no doubt of it.</p> + +<p>I, of course, as was then the custom, boarded round; and this method of +obtaining nourishment, though savoring somewhat of the Arab or the +common beggar, I, on the whole, enjoyed. It gave me a much stronger +interest in the children, seeing them thus in their own homes, where was +so much love, so much solicitude for even the dullest of them. Besides +this, I came in contact with all sorts of curious people, found new +faces to study.</p> + +<p>Another custom of the place I also fell in with, which was, to keep an +evening-school. All the schoolmasters had kept one from time immemorial. +This evening-school I really enjoyed. Plenty of charming girls, too big +or too busy to waste their daylight upon books, came from great +distances, bringing their brothers and their beaux, all intent upon +having a good time and getting on in their ciphering. Teaching them was +a pleasure, for they felt the need of knowledge. I feel bound to say, +however, that imparting knowledge was not my only pleasure. In intervals +of leisure, before or after school, or at recess, I found much that was +worthy attention. Seated at my desk, wrapped in my dignity, I watched, +with many a sidelong glance, the progress of rustic love-making. I only +mean by this, that from their general movements I constructed such +love-stories as seemed to me probable. I learned who went with whom, who +wished they could go with whom, who could and who couldn't, who did and +who didn't.</p> + +<p>Did I not go into the business on my own account? That is by no means an +improper question. In fact, I might have expected it. Some have, no +doubt, considered it a settled thing that I fell in love with the +bright-eyed beauty, before mentioned, or with the pink-cheeked; but I +beg that such fancies may be brushed away, that all may be in readiness +to receive the true queen, who in due time will come to take possession +of her kingdom. For I will be honest with you, and not, like most +story-tellers, try to pull wool over your eyes all the way through. I +will say openly, that I did first see the girl who was afterwards my +wife in that cold little village of Norway. Cold it seems not to me now, +in the light of so many warm, sunshiny memories!</p> + +<p>When my evening-school had been in operation a few weeks, I noticed, one +evening, at the end of the back-form on the girls' side a new face. The +owner of this new face was very quietly studying her book, a thin, +blue-covered book, Temple's Arithmetic. She was dressed in black,—not +fine, glossy black, but black that was gray, rusty, and well worn. A +very small silk handkerchief of the same color was drawn over her +shoulders and pinned where its two corners met her gown in front, making +a sort of triangle of whiteness,—some would say, "revealing a neck and +throat pure and white as a lily-leaf"; and they would say no more than +the truth, only I never like to put <a name="Page_425" id="Page_425"></a>things in that way. Just so white +was her face. Her hair was black, soft, but not what the other girls +would have called smooth, or "slick." It was pulled away behind her +ears, and fixed up rather queerly in a great bunch behind, as if the +only aim were to get it out of the way. The upper part of her face was +the most striking,—the black eyebrows upon such a white, straight +forehead. I am rather particular in describing this new face, +because—well, perhaps because I remember it so distinctly. While I was +studying her as, I might perhaps say, a work of Art, she suddenly raised +her eyes, as people always do when they are watched. I looked away in a +hurry, though her eyes were just what I wanted to see more of, for they +were splendid eyes. "Splendid" is not the right word, though. Deep, +thoughtful, sorrowful, are the words which are floating about in my +mind. I wondered how she would look when animated, and watched, at +recess, for some of the others to talk to her.</p> + +<p>But she seemed one by herself. While other girls chatted with their +beaux, or whispered wonderful secrets, she remained sitting alone, now +looking at her book, and now glancing around in a pitiful sort of way, +that made me feel like going to speak to her. In fact, as her teacher, I +was bound to do this, and, true to the promptings of duty, I walked +slowly down the alley. As I paused by her side, she glanced up in my +face. I never forgot that look. I might say that I never recovered from +the effects of it. I asked about her studies, and very willingly +explained a sum over which she had stumbled.</p> + +<p>After this, she came every evening, and it usually happened that it was +most convenient for me to attend to her at recess. Helping her in her +sums was a pleasant thing to do, but in nothing was I more interested +than in the writing-exercise. I felt that I was indeed fortunate to be +in duty bound to follow the movement of her charming little hand across +the page, to teach her pretty fingers how to hold the pen; but then, if +pleasure and duty <i>would</i> unite, how could I help it? Then I had a way, +all my own, of throwing looks sidelong at her face, while thus engaged; +but sometimes my eyes would get so entangled in her long lashes, that I +could hardly turn them away before she looked up.</p> + +<p>Yet I never thought then of being in love with the girl. Marriage was a +subject upon which I had never seriously reflected. Much as I liked to +watch, to criticize pretty faces, I never had thought of taking one for +my own. I was like a good boy in a flower-garden, who looks about him +with delight, admiring each beautiful blossom, but plucking none. Not +that I meant to live a bachelor; for, whenever I looked forward,—an +indefinite number of years,—I invariably saw myself sitting by my own +fireside, with a gentle-faced woman making pinafores near me, a cradle +close by, and one or two chaps reading stories, or playing checkers with +beans and buttons. But this gentle maker of pinafores had never yet +assumed a tangible shape. She had only floated before me, in my lonely +moments, enveloped in mist, and far too indistinct for revealing the +color of the eyes and hair. So I could not be in love with Rachel,—her +name was Rachel Lowe,—only a sort of magnetism, as it would be called +in these days, drew my eyes constantly that way. I soon found, however, +that it was impossible to watch her face with that indifference with +which, as I have before stated, it had been my custom to regard female +beauty. Its peculiar expression puzzled me, and I kept trying to study +it out. Interesting, but dangerous study! The difficulties of +school-keeping are by no means fully appreciated.</p> + +<p>One evening, after school, the young folks stopped to slide down-hill. +Rachel and a few little girls stood awhile, watching the sleds go by; +but it was cold standing still, and they soon moved homewards. I walked +along by the side of Rachel: this was the first time I ever went home +with her. I found she was living in the family of Squire Brewster, a +family in which I had not yet boarded. After this<a name="Page_426" id="Page_426"></a> I frequently walked +home with her. Sometimes I would determine not to do so again, for I was +afraid I was getting—I didn't know where, but where I had never been +before; but when evening came, and I saw how handsome she looked, and +how all alone, I couldn't help it. It was not often I could get her to +talk much. She was bashful, different from any girl I had ever met. The +only friend she seemed to have was the young wife of the Doctor, Mrs. +James. The Doctor, she said, had attended her through a fever, and asked +no pay. His wife was kind, and lent her books to read.</p> + +<p>I was boarding at that time with a poor widow-woman, and one night I +asked her about Rachel. She warmed up immediately, said Rachel Lowe was +a good girl and ought to be "sot by," and not slighted on her parents' +account.</p> + +<p>"And who were her parents?" I asked.</p> + +<p>"Why, when her father was a poor boy, the Squire thought he would take +him and bring him up to learnin'; but when he came to be a man grown +almost, he ran away to sea; and long afterwards we heard of his marryin' +some outlandish girl, half English, half French,—but Rachel's no worse +for that. After his wife died,—and, as far as I can find out, the way +he carried on was what killed her,—he started to bring Rachel here; but +he died on the passage, and she came with only a letter. I suppose he +thought the ones that had been kind to him would be kind to her; but, +you see, the Squire is a-livin' with his second wife, and she isn't the +woman the first Miss Brewster was. In time folks will come round, but +now they sort of look down upon her; for, you see, everybody knows who +her father was, and how he didn't do any credit to his bringin' up, and +nobody knows who her mother was, only that she was a furrener, which was +so much agin her. But you are goin' right from here to the Squire's; and +mebby, if you make of her, and let folks see that you set store by her, +they'll begin to open their eyes."</p> + +<p>I thought I felt just like kissing the poor widow; anyway, I knew I felt +like kissing somebody. To be sure, the talk was all about Rachel, and it +might—But no matter; what difference does it make now who it was I +wanted to kiss forty or fifty years ago?</p> + +<p>The next day I went to board at the Squire's. It was dark when I reached +the house; the candles were just being lighted. The Squire, a kindly old +man, met me in the porch and took my bundle. I followed him into the +kitchen. There something more than common seemed to be going on, for +chairs were being arranged in rows, and Mrs. Brewster was putting out of +sight every article suggestive of work. There was to be an evening +meeting. I watched the people as they came in, still and solemn. Not +many of the women wore bonnets. All who lived within a moderate distance +just stepped in with a little homespun blanket over the head, or a +patchwork cradle-quilt. I noticed Rachel when she entered and took her +seat upon the settle. It will only take a minute to tell what a settle +is, or, rather, was. If you should take a low wooden bench and add to it +a high back and ends, you would make a settle. It usually stood near the +fireplace, and was a most luxurious seat,—its high back protecting you +from cold draughts and keeping in the heat of the fire. It was now +shoved back against the wall. This neighborhood-gathering was called a +conference-meeting, being carried on by the brethren. I liked to hear +them speak, because they were so much in earnest. The exercises closed +with singing "Old Hundred." I joined at first, but soon there fell upon +my ear such sweet strains from the other side of the room that I was +glad to stop and listen. They came from the settle. It was Rachel, +singing counter. Only those who have heard it know what counter is, and +how particularly beautiful it is in "Old Hundred." I think it has +already been intimated that I was somewhat poetical. It will not, +therefore, be considered strange, that, when I heard those clear <a name="Page_427" id="Page_427"></a>tones, +rising high above the harsher ones around, above the grating bass of the +brethren and the cracked voices of elderly females, I thought of summer +days in the woods, when I had listened to the notes of the robin amid a +chorus of locusts and grasshoppers.</p> + +<p>Squire Brewster treated Rachel kindly; but women make the home, and Mrs. +Brewster was a hard woman. The neighbors said she was close, and would +have more of a cat than her skin. Miss Sarah had been out of town to +school, and was proud. Sam, the grown-up son, was coarse, but just as +proud as his sister. I disliked the way he looked at Rachel. Her +position in the family I soon understood. She was there to take the +drudgery from Mrs. Brewster, to be ordered about by Miss Sarah, +tormented by the younger children, and teased, if not insulted, by Sam. +What puzzled me was her manner towards them. She spoke but seldom, and, +it seemed to me, had a way of looking <i>down</i> upon these people, who were +so bent upon making her look <i>up</i> to them. The cross looks and words +seemed not to hit her. Her deep, dark eyes appeared as if they were +looking away beyond the scenes around her. I was very glad to see, +however, that she could notice Sam enough to avoid him; for to that +young man I had taken a dislike, and not, as it turned, without reason.</p> + +<p>One evening, during my second week at the Brewsters', I sat long at my +chamber-window, watching the fading twilight, the growing moonlight, and +the steady snow-light. Presently I saw Rachel come out to take in the +clothes. It seemed just right that she should appear then, for in her +face were all three,—the shadowy twilight, the soft moonlight, and the +white snow-light.</p> + +<p>She wore a little shawl, crossed in front, and tied behind at the waist, +and over her head a bright-colored blanket, just pinned under the chin. +This exposed her face, and while I watched it, as it showed front-view +or profile, not knowing which I liked best, admiring, meanwhile, the +grace with which she reached up, where the line was high, sometimes +springing from the ground, I saw Sam approaching, very slowly and +softly, from behind. When quite near, watching his opportunity, he +seized her by the waist. He was going to kiss her. I started up, as if +to do something, but there was nothing to be done. With a quick motion +she slid from his grasp, stepped back, and looked him in the face. Not a +word fell from her lips, only her silence spoke. "I despise you! There +is nothing in you that words can reach!" was the speech which I felt in +my heart she was making, though her lips never moved. Other things, too, +I felt in my heart,—rather perplexing, agitating, but still pleasing +sensations, which I did not exactly feel like analyzing. One of the +children came out to take hold one side of the basket, and Sam walked +away.</p> + +<p>I went down soon after and look my favorite seat upon the settle, which +was then in its own place by the fire. The children were in bed, the +older ones had gone to singing-school, and Mrs. Brewster was at an +evening-meeting. The Squire was at home with his rheumatism.</p> + +<p>I liked a nice chat with the Squire. He was a great reader, and +delighted to draw me into long talks, political or theological. My +remarks on this particular evening would have been more brilliant, had +not Rachel been sprinkling and folding clothes at the back of the room. +The Squire, in his roundabout, came exactly between us, so that, in +looking up to answer his questions, I could not help seeing a white arm +with the sleeve rolled above the elbow, could not help watching the +drops of water, as she shook them from her fingers. I wondered how it +was, that, while working so hard, her hands should be so white. My +sister Fanny told me, long afterwards, that some girls always have white +hands, no matter how hard they work.</p> + +<p>This question interested me more than the political ones raised by the +Squire, and I became aware that my answers were getting wild, by his +eying me <a name="Page_428" id="Page_428"></a>over his spectacles. Rachel finished the clothes, and seated +herself, with her knitting-work, at the opposite corner of the +fireplace. I changed to the other end of the settle: sitting long in one +position is tiresome. She was knitting a gray woollen stocking. I think +she must have been "setting the heel," for she kept counting the +stitches. I had often noticed Fanny doing the same thing, at this +turning-point in the progress of a stocking; but then it never took her +half as long. After knitting so many feet of leg, though, any change +must have been pleasant.</p> + +<p>A mug of cider stood near one andiron; leaning against the other was a +flat stone,—the Squire's "Simon." It would soon be needed, for he was +already nodding,—nodding and brightening up,—nodding and brightening +up. While he slept, the room was still, unless the fire snapped, or a +brand fell down. I said within myself, "This is a pleasant time! It is +good to be here!" That cozy settle, that glowing fire, that good old +man, that pure-hearted girl,—how distinctly do they now rise before me! +It seems such a little, little while ago! For I feel young. I like to be +with young folks; I like what they like. Yet deep lines are set in my +forehead, the veins stand out upon my hands, and my shadow is the shadow +of a stooping old man; and when, from frequent weariness, I rest my head +on my hand, the fingers clasp only smoothness, or, at best, but a few +scattered locks,—<i>wisps</i>, I might as well say. If ever I took pride in +anything, it was in my fine head of hair. Well, what matters it? Since +<i>heart</i> of youth is left me, I'll never mind the <i>head</i>.</p> + +<p>Many writers speak well of age, and it certainly is not without its +advantages, meeting everywhere, as it does, with respect and indulgence. +Neither is it, so the books say, without its own peculiar beauty. An old +man leaning upon his staff, with white locks streaming in the wind, they +call a picturesque object. All this may be; still, I have tried both, +and must say that my own leaning is towards youth.</p> + +<p>Remembering the desire of the poor widow, that Rachel should be "made +of," I continued to walk home with her from evening-school, and to pay +her many little attentions, even after I had left the Squire's. The +widow was right in saying, that, when folks saw that I "set store" by +her, they would open their eyes. They did,—in wonder that "the +schoolmaster should be so attentive to Rachel Lowe!" We were +"town-talk." I often, in the school-house entry, overheard the scholars +joking about us; and once I saw them slyly writing our names together on +the bricks of the fireplace. Everybody was on the look-out for what +might happen.</p> + +<p>One evening, in school-time, I stood a long while leaning over her desk, +working out for her a difficult sum. On observing me change my position, +to rest myself, she, very naturally, and almost unconsciously, moved for +me to sit down, and I took a seat beside her, going on, all the while, +with my ciphering. Happening to look up suddenly, I saw that half the +school were watching us. I kept my seat with calmness, though I knew I +turned red. I glanced at Rachel, and really pitied her, she looked so +distressed, so conscious. That night she hurried home before I had put +away my books, and for several evenings did not appear.</p> + +<p>But if she could do without me, I could not do without her. I missed her +face there at the end of the back-seat. I missed the walk home with her: +I had grown to depend upon it. She was just getting willing to talk, and +in what she said and the way she said it, in the tone of her voice and +in her whole manner, there was something to me extremely bewitching. She +had been strangely brought up, was familiar with books, but, having +received no regular education, fancied herself ignorant, and different +from everybody.</p> + +<p>Finding that she still kept away from the school, I resolved one night +to call <a name="Page_429" id="Page_429"></a>at the Squire's. It was some time after dark when I reached +there; and as I stood in the porch, brushing the snow from my boots, I +became aware of loud talking in the kitchen. Poor Rachel! both Mrs. +Brewster and Sarah were upon her, laughing and sneering about her +"setting her cap" for the schoolmaster, and accusing her of trying to +get him to come home with her, of moving for him to sit down by her +side! Once I heard Rachel's voice,—"Oh, please don't talk so! I don't +do as you say. It is dreadful for you to talk so!" I judged it better to +defer my call, and walked slowly along the road. It was not very cold, +and I sat down upon the stone wall. I sat down to think. Presently +Rachel herself hurried by, carrying a pitcher. She was bound on some +errand up the road. I called out,—</p> + +<p>"Rachel, stop!"</p> + +<p>She turned, in affright, and, upon seeing me, hurried the more. But I +overtook her, and placed her arm within mine in a moment, saying,—</p> + +<p>"Rachel, you are not afraid of me, I hope!"</p> + +<p>"Oh, no, Sir! no, indeed!" she exclaimed.</p> + +<p>"And yet you run away from me."</p> + +<p>She made no answer.</p> + +<p>"Rachel," I said, at last, "I wish you would talk to me freely. I wish +you would tell what troubles you."</p> + +<p>She hesitated a moment; and when, at last, she spoke, her answer rather +surprised me.</p> + +<p>"I ought not to be so weak, I know," she replied; "but it is so hard to +stand all alone, to live my life just right, that sometimes I get +discouraged."</p> + +<p>I had expected complaints of ill treatment, but found her blaming no one +but herself.</p> + +<p>"And who said you must stand alone?" I asked.</p> + +<p>"That was one of the things my mother used to say."</p> + +<p>"And what other things did she say?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, Mr. Browne," she replied, "I wish I could tell you about my mother! +But I can't talk; I am too ignorant; I don't know how to say it. When +she was alive," she continued, speaking very slowly, "I never knew how +good she was; but now her words keep coming back to me. Sometimes I +think she whispers them,—for she is an angel, and you know the hymn +says,</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">'There are angels hovering round.'</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>When we sing,</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">'Ye holy throng of angels bright,'</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>I always sing to her, for I know she is listening."</p> + +<p>Here she stopped suddenly, as if frightened that she had said so much. +The house to which she was going was now close by. I waited for her to +come out, and walked back with her towards home. After proceeding a +little way in silence, I said, abruptly,—</p> + +<p>"Rachel, do they treat you well at the house yonder?"</p> + +<p>She seemed reluctant to answer, but said, at last,—</p> + +<p>"Not very well."</p> + +<p>"Then, why stay? Why not find some other home?"</p> + +<p>"I don't think it is time yet," she replied.</p> + +<p>"I don't understand you. I wish—Rachel, can't you make a friend of me, +since you have no other?"</p> + +<p>"I will tell you as well as I can," she replied, "what my mother used to +say. She said we must act rightly."</p> + +<p>"That is true," I replied; "and what else did she say?"</p> + +<p>"She said, that <i>that</i> would only be the outside life, but the inside +life must be right too, must be pure and strong, and that the way to +make it pure and strong was to learn to <i>bear</i>."</p> + +<p>"Still," I urged, "I wish you would find a better home. You cannot learn +to bear any more patiently than you do."</p> + +<p>She shook her head.</p> + +<p>"That shows that you don't know," she answered. "It seems to me right to +remain. Why, you know they can't hurt me any. Suppose they scold me when +I <a name="Page_430" id="Page_430"></a>am not to blame, and my temper rises,—for I am very +quick-tempered"—</p> + +<p>"Oh, no, Rachel!"</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes, Mr. Browne! Suppose my temper rises, and I put it down, and +keep myself pleasant, do I not do myself good? And thinking about it in +this way, is not their unkindness a benefit to me,—to the real me,—to +the soul of Rachel Lowe?"</p> + +<p>I hardly knew what to say. Somehow, she seemed away up above me, while I +found that I had, in common with the Brewsters, only in a different way, +taken for granted my own superiority.</p> + +<p>"All this may be true," I remarked, after a pause, "but it is not the +common way of viewing things."</p> + +<p>"Perhaps not," she answered. "My mother was not like other people. My +father was a strong man, but he looked <i>up</i> to her, and he loved her; +but he killed her at last,—with his conduct, he killed her. But when +she was dead, he grew crazy with grief, he loved her so. He talked about +her always,—talked in an absent, dreamy way about her goodness, her +beauty, her white hands, her long hair. Sometimes he would seem to be +whispering with her, and would say, softly,—'Oh, yes! I'll take care of +Rachel! pretty Rachel! your Rachel!'"</p> + +<p>I longed to have her go on; but we had now reached the bars, and she was +not willing to walk farther.</p> + +<p>"I have been talking a great deal about myself," she said; "but you know +you kept asking me questions."</p> + +<p>"Yes, Rachel, I know I kept asking you questions. Do you care? I may +wish to ask you others."</p> + +<p>"Oh, no," she replied; "but I could not answer many questions. I have +only a few thoughts, and know very little."</p> + +<p>I watched her into the house, and then walked slowly homewards, +thinking, all the way, of this strange young girl, striving thus to +stand alone, working out her own salvation. I passed a pleasant night, +half sleeping, half waking, having always before my eyes that white +face, earnest and beautiful, as it looked up to me in the winter +starlight, and in my ears her words, "Is not their unkindness a benefit +to me,—to the real me,—to the soul of Rachel Lowe?"</p> + +<p>But spring came; my school drew to a close; and I began to think of +home, Aunt Huldah, and Fanny. I wished that my sister could see Rachel. +I knew she would appreciate her, for there was depth in Fanny, with all +her liveliness. Sometimes I imagined, just imagined, myself married to +Rachel. But then there was Aunt Huldah,—what would she say to a +foreigner? And I was dependent upon Aunt Huldah. Besides, how did I know +that Rachel would have me? Was I equal to her? How worthless seemed my +little stock of book-learning by the side of that heart-wisdom which she +had coined, as it were, from her own sorrow!</p> + +<p>My last day came, and I had not spoken. In fact, we latterly had both +grown silent. I was to leave in the afternoon stage. I gave the driver +my trunk, telling him to call for me at the Squire's,—for I must bid +Rachel good-bye, and in some way let her know how I felt towards her. As +I drew near the house, I saw that she was drawing water. I stepped +quickly towards the well, but Sam appeared just then, and I could not +say one word. She walked into the house. I went behind with the +water-pail, and Sam followed us into the porch. Rachel was going +up-stairs, but I took her hand to bid her good-bye. Mrs. Brewster and +Sarah were in the kitchen, watching. "Quite a love-scene!" I heard them +whisper. "I do believe he'll marry her!"</p> + +<p>Now, although I was by nature quiet, yet I <i>could</i> be roused. Bidding +good-bye to Rachel had stirred the very depths of my nature. I longed to +take her in my arms, and bear her away to my own quiet home. And when, +instead of this, I thought of the life to which I must leave her, it +needed but those sneering whispers to make me speak out,—and I did +speak out. Taking her by the hand, I stepped quickly forward, and stood +before them.</p><p><a name="Page_431" id="Page_431"></a></p> + +<p>"And so I <i>will</i> marry her!" I exclaimed. "If she will accept me, I +shall be <i>proud</i> to marry her!"</p> + +<p>"Rachel," said I, turning towards her, "this is strange wooing; but +before these people I ask, Will you be my wife?"</p> + +<p>The astonished spectators of our love-scene looked on in dismay.</p> + +<p>"Mr. Browne!" exclaimed Mrs. Brewster, "do you know what you are doing? +I have no ill-will to the girl; but I feel it my duty to tell you who +and what she is."</p> + +<p>"I know what Rachel Lowe is, Madam!" I cried, almost fiercely; "you +don't,—you can't!"</p> + +<p>Then, turning to the trembling girl, I said again,—</p> + +<p>"Rachel, say, <i>will</i> you be my wife?"</p> + +<p>At this moment Sam came forward. His face was pale, and he trembled.</p> + +<p>"No, Rachel," said he, "don't be his wife! Be mine! I haven't treated +you right, I know I haven't; but I love you, you don't know how much! +The very way you have tried to keep me off has made me love you!"</p> + +<p>"Sam! stop!" cried his mother, in a rage. "What do you mean? You <i>know</i> +you won't marry that girl!"</p> + +<p>"Mother," exclaimed Sam, "you don't know anything about her! She is +worth every other girl in the place, and handsomer than all of them put +together!"</p> + +<p>"Sam!" began Miss Sarah.</p> + +<p>"Now, Sarah, you stop!" cried he. "I've begun, and now I'll <i>tell</i>. At +first I teased her for fun. Then I watched her to see how she bore +everything so well. And while I was watching, I—before I knew it—I +began to love her. You may talk, if you want to; but I shall never <i>be</i> +anybody, if she won't have me!"</p> + +<p>"Stage coming!" said a little boy, running in.</p> + +<p>I took Rachel by the hand, and drew her with me into the porch.</p> + +<p>"Don't promise to marry him!" cried Sam, as we passed through the +door-way. "But she will,—I know she will!" he added, as I closed the +door.</p> + +<p>He spoke in a pitiful tone, and his voice trembled. I was surprised that +he showed so much feeling.</p> + +<p>"Rachel," said I, as soon as we were alone, "won't you answer me now? +You must know how much I love you. Will you be my wife?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, Mr. Browne, I cannot! I cannot!" she whispered.</p> + +<p>I was silent, for my fears came uppermost. Pressing one hand to my +forehead, I thought of a thousand things in a moment. Nothing seemed +more probable than that she should already have a lover across the sea. +Seeing my distress, she spoke.</p> + +<p>"Don't think, Mr. Browne," she began, earnestly, "that it is because I +do not"—</p> + +<p>There she stopped. I gazed eagerly in her face. It was strangely +agitated. I should hardly have known my calm, white-faced Rachel. Just +then I heard the stage stop at the bars.</p> + +<p>"Oh, Rachel!" I cried, "go on! What mustn't I think? What shall I +think?"</p> + +<p>"Don't think me ungrateful,—you have been so kind," she said, softly.</p> + +<p>"And is that all?" I asked.</p> + +<p>"Stage ready!" called out the driver.</p> + +<p>I opened the door, to show that I was coming; then, taking her hand, I +said,—</p> + +<p>"Good bye, Rachel! And so—you can't love me!"</p> + +<p>An expression of pain crossed her face. She leaned against the wall, but +did not speak.</p> + +<p>"Hurry up there!" shouted the driver.</p> + +<p>"Yes, yes!" I cried, impatiently.</p> + +<p>"If you can't speak," I went on to Rachel, "press my hand, if you can +love me,—now, for I am going. Good bye!"</p> + +<p>She did not press my hand, and I could not go.</p> + +<p>"You can't say you love me," I cried; "then say you don't. Anything +rather than this doubt."</p> + +<p>"Oh, Mr. Browne!" she replied, at last, "I can't say anything—but—good +bye!"</p><p><a name="Page_432" id="Page_432"></a></p> + +<p>"Good bye, then," I said, sadly. "But shall you still live here?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, no!" she exclaimed, earnestly; "you can't think that I"—</p> + +<p>Here she stopped, and glanced towards the kitchen-door.</p> + +<p>"No," said I, "I won't think it. But where will you stay?"</p> + +<p>"With Mrs. James. You know her. I have already spoken with her."</p> + +<p>The tramp of the driver was now heard, approaching.</p> + +<p>"Any passenger here bound for Boston?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, Sir," I answered, and with one more whispered good-bye, one wring +of the hand, I passed out, gave my bundle to the driver, and entered the +coach.</p> + +<p>What a ride home that was! What a half-day of doubting, hoping, +despairing! I had not before realized how sure I had been of her +accepting me; and now that I felt how much I loved her, and thought of +the many causes which might separate us, I could not but say over in my +heart the sorrowful words of poor Sam,—"I shall never <i>be</i> anybody, if +she won't have me." Still, though not accepted, I could not feel +refused; for what was it I read in her face? why so agitated? That she +struggled with some strong feeling was evident. The remembrance, +perhaps, of a former love.</p> + +<p>In this tumult, this miserable condition, I reached home, where, +spreading my old calmness over my new agitation, I received, as best I +might, the joyful greeting of Fanny, the heartfelt welcome of Aunt +Huldah. I tried hard to be my own old self, and could not but hope that +even my sharp-eyed sister was blinded. But no sooner had I entered my +room for the night, no sooner had I thrown myself into my deep-cushioned +arm-chair, than this lively sprite entered, on her way to bed. She +seated herself on the trunk close by me, laid her hand upon my arm, and +said,—</p> + +<p>"What is it, Charley?"</p> + +<p>"What, Fanny?" I asked.</p> + +<p>"Now, Charley," said she, "you might as well speak out at once. Why was +I left, when all the rest were taken, but that you might have at least +<i>one</i> that you loved to tell your troubles to? Come, now! Take off that +manner of yours; you might as well, for I can see right through it. You +will feel better to let everything out,—and then, who knows but I might +help you?"</p> + +<p>Sure enough. It was strange, considering what Fanny had always been to +me, that this had not occurred to my own mind. How natural it seemed now +to tell her all about it! What a relief it would be! But how should I +begin? I shrank from it. I began to come round to my first position. It +seemed as if the corner of my heart which held Rachel was a holy of +holies, too sacred to be entered even by my dear, good sister. While I +was thinking, she watched my face.</p> + +<p>"Ah!" said she, "I see you don't know how to begin, and that I must both +listen and talk. Give me your hand. Haven't I got gypsy eyes? I will +tell your fortune."</p> + +<p>Dear little bright-faced Fanny! I smiled a real smile when she took my +hand.</p> + +<p>"It is about a girl?" she said, half inquiringly.</p> + +<p>I colored, though it was only Fanny, and nodded,—</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"You love the girl?" she continued, after a pause.</p> + +<p>"I <i>do</i> love the girl!" I said, earnestly,—for, now that the curtain +was lifted, she might see all she chose.</p> + +<p>"And she loves you?"</p> + +<p>"No,—I think so,—I don't know," was my satisfactory reply.</p> + +<p>"But why don't you ask her?"</p> + +<p>"I <i>have</i> asked her."</p> + +<p>"And what did she say? I wish, Charley, you would begin at the beginning +and tell me all about it. How can I help you, if I don't know?"</p> + +<p>I was glad enough to do it. I began at the beginning, and told all there +was to tell. It was not much,—for the beauty, the goodness, the +patience of Rachel <a name="Page_433" id="Page_433"></a>could not be told. When all was over, she said,—</p> + +<p>"I am glad you have told me, for I can make you easy on one point. She +loves you. Ah, I can see! Women can always see, but men are stupid. Your +declaration was too sudden. She might have thought you were forced into +it. She is too high-minded to take advantage of a moment when your +feelings were all excited. Wait awhile. Let her see that you do not +change, and she will give you just such an answer as you will like to +hear. Why, Charley, I like her better for not accepting you than for +anything you have told about her."</p> + +<p>"Well, Fanny," I said, half sighing, "it may be so,—I hope it may be +so; but if it does turn out as you say, how shall we manage about Aunt +Huldah? You know how she feels; and then there is Alice."</p> + +<p>"What a brother you are!" exclaimed Fanny. "No sooner do I get you out +of one difficulty than you go beating against another! Perhaps <i>I</i> +shan't like her; then how will you manage about <i>me</i>? It is not every +girl I will take for a sister! And as for Alice, do you think she is +waiting for you all this time, vain man? She's got another beau. But +now," she went on, as soon as she could stop laughing, "go to bed, and +sleep easy, knowing that Rachel loves you, for I have said it. She loves +you too well to take you at your word. I hope she isn't too good for +you. I will think it all over, and see what can be done. Good night! +Kiss me now for what I have told you, just as you would Rachel, if she +had told you herself."</p> + +<p>And I did, almost.</p> + +<p>The next afternoon Fanny and I went out for a long walk. Aunt Huldah +encouraged our going, for she was coloring, and wanted from the store +both indigo and alum.</p> + +<p>"Do you know the person with whom Rachel is staying?" asked Fanny, as +soon as we were fairly started.</p> + +<p>"Mrs. James? Yes, she is a nice young woman."</p> + +<p>"Do you think Rachel would like to learn the milliner's trade? It would +be a good thing for her."</p> + +<p>"So it would; but where?"</p> + +<p>"Does she know much of your friends, of how you are situated?"</p> + +<p>"No. In the few hours we were together I was too much occupied in +drawing her out to speak of my own affairs."</p> + +<p>"I suppose she knows where you live?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know; I think, if I spoke of any place, it was Cambridge,—I +hailed from there."</p> + +<p>"Well," said Fanny, thoughtfully, "perhaps it will make no difference. +Anyway, it will do to try it. There are many Brownes. Besides, Aunt +Huldah will be different. She will be Sprague, I shall be only Fanny, +and Charley will be Charley."</p> + +<p>"My dear Fanny!" I exclaimed, "what <i>are</i> you saying?"</p> + +<p>"Why, you see, buddy,"—she often called me "buddy" for +"brother,"—"that, if Rachel loves you, and you love her, you will +<i>have</i> each other. If Aunt Huldah is angry, and won't give you any of +her money, still you will be married, even if you both have to work by +the day. Does this seem clear?"</p> + +<p>I laughed, and said,—</p> + +<p>"Very,—and right, too."</p> + +<p>"Still," she went on, "it will be better for all concerned to have Aunt +Huldah like her. Don't you remember that one summer a young girl from +the milliner's boarded with us, and helped us, to pay her board?"</p> + +<p>"Capital!" I said. "But can you manage it?"</p> + +<p>"I think I can. Mrs. Sampson is, I know, wanting a girl for the busy +season."</p> + +<p>"But Rachel wouldn't come here,—to my home!"</p> + +<p>"She need not know it is your home. I will write to Mrs. James, and tell +her all about it,—tell why I want Rachel here, and what a good +situation it will be for her at Mrs. Sampson's. She can find out whether +the plan is pleasing to her; <a name="Page_434" id="Page_434"></a>and if it is, she can herself make all the +arrangements. Of course I shall charge her not to tell. Then, when +everything is settled, I can just say to the milliner that we should +like to make the same little arrangement that we did before."</p> + +<p>"And she live here with you, with Aunt Huldah?"</p> + +<p>"Why not? She needn't know that Mrs. Huldah Sprague is your aunt, or +that this is your home."</p> + +<p>"But she would find it out some way. People calling would mention me. +Aunt herself would."</p> + +<p>"I know it," said Fanny, not quite so hopefully; "and that is the weak +point of my plan. But then, you know, we are Charley and Fanny to +everybody. <i>She</i> only thinks of you as Mr. Browne. Anyway, something +will be gained. I shall see her, and decide about liking her, which is +quite important; and it will be well for her to have the situation, even +if nothing else comes of it. I don't see any harm our scheme can do; do +you, Charley?"</p> + +<p>"No,—no harm; but still, things don't look—exactly clear."</p> + +<p>"Of course not; it is not to be expected. I have read in books that +lovers have always a mist before their eyes. Mine are clear yet; and I +will tell you what to do,—or, rather, what not to do. Don't write her +from here; wait till you are in Cambridge."</p> + +<p>By this time we reached the house. The moment we entered, Aunt Huldah +stretched out her hand for the dye-stuff. We had forgotten all about it!</p> + +<p>Those few days at home were pleasant. Aunt Huldah was unusually kind. It +was such a satisfaction to her to know that I had kept a school,—to +think that some of her own pluck was hid beneath my quiet seeming. She +proposed my becoming a lawyer, to which I made no objection,—for I knew +I could make a <i>dumb</i> lawyer, one of the kind who only sit and write.</p> + +<p>I wrote to Rachel from Cambridge, and she answered my letter. It was +like herself. "How very kind you have been," she wrote, "to me, a poor +stranger-girl! If I knew how to write, I would try to let you know how +much I feel it. I can't understand your wanting to marry a girl like me. +I know so little, <i>am</i> so little. I hope it will not offend you, but I +think I ought to say, even if it does, that you must not write any more. +Sometime you will thank me, in your heart, for not doing as you want me +to now."</p> + +<p>I saw that I had indeed a noble nature to deal with. Here was a girl, +all alone in the world, rejecting the sweetest offering that could be +made to a friendless one,—a loving heart,—lest that heart should be +made to suffer on her account! Of course I kept on writing, though my +letters were not answered. I sent her letter to Fanny, who wrote me to +keep up good courage, for she had already put her irons in the +fire,—that, although now fully convinced that Rachel was too good for +me, she had herself begun to love her, and was at work on her own +account.</p> + +<p>I always kept Fanny's letters. Here is a part of one I received after +having been a few weeks from home:—</p> + +<p>"I have just got my answer from Mrs. James. She is just the woman to +help us along. Rachel wants to come! I have spoken to Aunt Huldah. It is +too bad, but I had to be a bit of a hypocrite, to hint that I was rather +poorly, and how nice it would be to have a little help. She had just got +in a new piece to weave, and so was quite ready to take up with my plan. +I shall get well as soon as it will do, for she seems anxious. Aunt has +a stiff way, I know, but there's a warm corner somewhere in her heart, +and we are in it, and you know there's always room for one more."</p> + +<p>It was a week, and more, before I got another letter from my scheming +sister. It began this way:—</p> + +<p>"Your Rachel is a beauty! Just as sweet and modest as she can be! She is +sitting at the end-window of my room, watching the vessels. I am writing +at the front-window. She has just looked at me. What eyes she has! If +she <i>only</i><a name="Page_435" id="Page_435"></a> knew whom I was writing to! When I see you, I shall tell you +the particulars. But don't come posting home now, and spoil everything. +You shall hear all that is necessary for you to know."</p> + +<p>Fanny need not have cautioned me about coming home. It was happiness +enough then to think of Rachel sitting in my sister's room,—of Aunt +Huldah's keen eyes watching her daily life.</p> + +<p>"My plan works," writes Fanny, a week afterwards. "Aunt seems to take a +liking to Rachel, which I, if anything, rather discourage, thinking she +will be more likely to stick to it. Rachel is a sister after my own +heart. I do like those people who, while they are so steady and calm, +show by their eyes and the tone of the voice what warm, delicate +feelings they are keeping to themselves! She is one of the real good +kind! What a way she has with her!—I saw her to-day, when she received +a letter from you. It came in one from Mrs. James. I was making believe +read, but peeped at her sideways, just as I have seen you do at the +girls in meeting-time. She slipped yours into her pocket, with such a +blush,—then looked up, sort of scared, to see if I noticed anything; +but I was reading my book. Then she stepped quickly out of the room, and +I saw her, a moment after, go through the garden into the apple-orchard, +and along the path to the low-branching apple-tree, to read it all +alone."</p> + +<p>This tree I knew well. It was an irregular old apple-tree, one of whose +branches formed of itself a nice seat, where Fanny and I had often sat +from childhood up.</p> + +<p>Afterwards she writes,—</p> + +<p>"You have sent Rachel a ring,—a pearl ring; you didn't tell me, but I +know. I have seen her kiss it. (Does this please you?) I happened to +find it yesterday, while rummaging her box for the buttonhole scissors. +(She sent me there.) Said I,—'Oh, what a pretty ring! Why don't you +wear it?' I never thought till I had spoken; but then I knew in a +minute, by her looking so red. She said she'd a reason for thinking it +would not be quite right to wear it,—said perhaps she would tell +sometime. It was last night I saw her kiss it, when she thought I was +asleep,—we sleep in the same room. She tried it on her finger, but took +it right off again, sighing, and looking so sad that I don't know what I +should have done, had I not known how it was all coming out right pretty +soon.—Aunt Huldah is completely entangled in my web. She has come into +it with her sharp eyes wide open! She likes Rachel,—says she always +knows where to <i>take hold</i>, and makes no fuss about doing things. She +gets her to read the chapter, because she says she likes the sound of +her voice. There is not only <i>sound</i>, but <i>feeling</i> in her voice, and +that is what aunt means; but you know she never says <i>all</i> she +means,—she isn't one of the kind. Rachel is always doing little things +for her, and bringing home bunches of sweet-fern and everlasting. Even +if my plan upsets now, much will be gained,—for aunt can't get back her +liking, I have found a dear friend, and Rachel a good place. Your name +has been mentioned, but only as Charley. I am in daily fear that aunt +will allude to your school, though, to be sure, she is not at all +communicative, (girls having brothers in college should use a big word +now and then,) but we are getting so well acquainted that I begin to +shake in my shoes. But the mornings are busy, the noons are short, and +you know aunt always goes to bed with the hens. My dread is of +<i>callers</i>,—not just the neighbors running in, but the <i>regulars</i>. It is +so natural for them to say, 'How is your nephew?'—not that they care +for you, except as being something to talk about."</p> + +<p>Soon after, came the following:—</p> + +<p>"Charley, my boy, what I feared has come to pass! Last night our new +young minister called. He is a good young man, I know, but so stiff! Not +too stiff, though, to take a good look at Rachel. We all sat up straight +in our chairs. His eyes were deep and black, his face pale and solemn. +He was all in black, but just <a name="Page_436" id="Page_436"></a>the white about his throat. When the +weather, the prospects of the farmers, and of the church, were all over +with, then came an awful pause. <i>Then</i> it was that I began to shiver, +and that the mischief was done. 'Mrs. Sprague.' he began, 'I understand +you have a nephew, not now at home, who taught school last winter in the +little village of Norway.' You may guess the rest. There was a long talk +about you. Rachel hasn't said a word, but I see by her face that she is +laying some desperate plan. Now, Charley, is your time! Hurry home! Come +and spend next Sunday. Aunt spoke of your coming in four weeks, but I +shall look for you next Saturday night. She gets through work earlier +then. The stage reaches here about sunset. Stop at the tavern, and run +home over the hills. You will come out behind the orchard, and Rachel +and I will be sitting on the branch of the low apple-tree."</p> + +<p>Now I had been getting uneasy for some time. All this while I had been +living on Fanny's letters. Now I wanted more. It was much to know that +Rachel loved me, but I longed to hear her say so. I depended upon her. +She seemed already a part of myself. My shadowy pinafore-maker had +assumed a living form of beauty, and was already more to me than I had +ever imagined woman could be to man, than one soul could be to another. +I had always, in common with other men, considered myself as an oak +destined in the course of Nature to support some clinging vine; but, if +I were an oak-tree, she was another, with an infinitude more of grace +and beauty.</p> + +<p>As may be supposed, I required no urging to take the Saturday's stage +for home. We arrived at sunset. I made for the hills with all speed, +rushing through bushes and briers, leaping brooks at a bound, until I +came out just behind the orchard. There I paused. My happiness seemed so +near that I would fain enjoy, before grasping it. I walked softly along +under the trees, until I came in sight of two girls sitting with their +arms around each other's waists upon the low branch of the apple-tree. +There was just room for two. The branch, after running parallel with the +ground for a little way, took a sudden turn upwards; and to this natural +seat I had myself, in my younger days, added a back of rough branches. I +came towards them, from behind, and hid myself awhile behind the trunk +of a tree. Fanny was making Rachel talk, making her laugh, in spite of +herself, as I could well see. Then she began to play with her dark hair, +twining it prettily about her head, and twisting among it damask roses +with their buds,—for it was June, and our damask rose-bush was then +always in full bloom.</p> + +<p>If Rachel had been beautiful in her rusty black dress, what could I say +of her now? She wore a gown of pink gingham, made after the fashion of +the day, short-waisted and low in the neck, with a—finishing-off—of +white muslin or lace, edged with a tucker. There was color in her +cheeks, and added to this was the glow from the roses, and from the pink +gown. When she smiled, her mouth was beautiful. I had not been used to +seeing her smile. As she threw her arm over the back of the seat, in +turning her face towards Fanny, laughing as I had never before seen her +laugh, I was so bewildered by the beauty of her face and figure that I +forgot my caution, and made a hasty step towards her. The grass was +soft, but they heard the noise and turned full upon me.</p> + +<p>"Why, Charley! you dear boy!" exclaimed Fanny; and she came running up, +throwing both arms around my neck.</p> + +<p>I kissed her; and then she drew me towards Rachel, who stood, like one +in despair, trembling, blushing, almost weeping.</p> + +<p>"Charley," cried Fanny, roguishly, "kiss me, kiss my friend. This is my +friend. Won't you kiss her, too?"</p> + +<p>"With pleasure," I answered, with too much of deep feeling to laugh. +"Rachel, I always mind Fanny; you will not, then, think it strange, if +I"—</p> + +<p>I cannot finish the sentence on paper, because it had not a grammatical +ending.<a name="Page_437" id="Page_437"></a> I kept hold of Rachel's hand, thus adding to her +distress,—telling her, all the while, how good it was to see her, and +to see her there. She tried to withdraw her hand, tried to speak, tried +to keep silent, and at last burst out with,—</p> + +<p>"Oh, Fanny! do tell him that I didn't know,—that I had no idea,—that +you asked me,—that you never told me!"</p> + +<p>"Charley," said Fanny, laughing, "did you ever know me to tell a lie? To +my certain knowledge, this young woman came here to board, expecting to +find nothing worse than Aunt Huldah and myself; and it was at my +suggestion she came."</p> + +<p>Then taking Rachel by the hand, she said,—</p> + +<p>"Be easy, my dear child. You need not feel so pained. Charley loves you, +and you love him, and we all love one another. Charley is a dear boy, +and you mustn't plague him. I will tell you all about it, dear. When +Charley came home, and I made him tell me about you, I know, from what +he said, that you were—But I won't praise you to your face. Hasn't +Charley seen plenty of girls, handsome girls, educated, accomplished? +And haven't I watched him these years, to see when Love would catch him? +Haven't I searched his face, time and again, for signs of love at his +heart? When he came home in the spring, I saw that his time had come, +and trouble with it. I made him <i>tell</i>, for I would not send him away +with a grief shut up in his heart. Then I contrived this plan of seeing +and knowing you, dear. I knew that Charley would never have been so +deeply moved, had you not been worthy; but, my dear child, I never +thought of loving you so! I shall be so proud, if you will be my +sister,—for you will, I know. You can't refuse such a dear boy as +Charley!"</p> + +<p>I still held Rachel by the hand; and while Fanny was speaking so +earnestly, my other hand, of itself, went creeping around her waist, and +drew her close to me.</p> + +<p>"You can't refuse," I whispered, reposting Fanny's words; and I knew by +the look in her face, and the way her heart beat, that she couldn't.</p> + +<p>But Fanny was one who never liked deep waters. Seeing that matters were +growing earnest, she rose quickly to the surface, and went rattling on, +in her lively way.</p> + +<p>"Now, come, you two, and sit down in this cozy seat. You have never had +a nice time all to yourselves, to make love in. Ah! how well you look +together! Just room enough! Rachel, dear, rest your head on Charley's +shoulder. You must. Charley always minds me, and you will have to. Now, +buddy, just drop your head on hers a minute. Capital! Your light curls +make her hair look more like black velvet than ever! That will do. Now I +leave you to your fate. I am rattle-headed, I know, but I hope I have +some consideration."</p> + +<p>And so she left us, sitting there in the twilight, in the solemn hush of +Saturday night.</p> + +<p>The next day we all went to meeting. It seemed good that I was only to +spend Sunday at home. The quiet, the air of solemnity all around us, +harmonized well with the song my own soul was singing. It was +Sabbath-day within, one long, blessed Sabbath, with which the bustle of +week-day life would ill accord. That perfect day I never forgot. Even +now I can scent its roses in the air. Even now I can almost feel the +daisies brushing against my feet, while walking up the narrow lane on +our way to church,—can see the sweetbrier by the red gate, and myself +giving Rachel one of its blossoms.</p> + +<p>During the rest of the term I had frequent letters from Fanny and +Rachel, telling how happy they both were, and what talks they had in the +apple-tree,—telling that Aunt Huldah <i>knew</i>, but wasn't angry, only +just a little at Fanny, for being so sly. Then came the long summer +vacation. The very day I got home, the solemn young minister called. +Fanny said that he came often, but she thought he would do so no longer, +for he would see <a name="Page_438" id="Page_438"></a>that it was of no use to be looking at Rachel. He did, +however, and Rachel said he came to look at Fanny. I bestirred myself, +therefore, to become acquainted with him. His stiffness was only of the +manners. I found him a genial, cultivated, warm-hearted person; in fact, +I liked him. How cold the word sounds now, applied to one whom I +afterwards came to love as a brother, whose gentle heart sympathized in +all our troubles, whose tears were ever ready to mingle with our own!</p> + +<p>He gave us every opportunity of finding him out, joined us in our sunset +walks, and in our long sittings under the trees. I soon came to be well +satisfied that he should look at Fanny,—satisfied that she should watch +for his coming, and blush when he came. I was happy to see the mist she +once spoke of slowly gathering before her own eyes, and to know, from +the strange quiet which came over her, that some new influence was at +work within her heart.</p> + +<p>The beauty of Rachel seemed each day more brilliant. Amid such happy +influences, the lively, genial side of her nature expanded like a flower +in the sunshine. "The soul of Rachel Lowe," having no longer to stand +alone, bearing the weight of its own sorrows, brought its energies to +promote the happiness of us all. She contrived pleasant surprises, and +charmed Aunt Huldah with her constant acts of kindness. She sang +beautiful songs, and filled the house with flowers; and when we sat +long, in the cool of the evening, out under the trees, she would relate +strange, wild stories which she had heard from her mother,—stories of +other times and distant lands.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile Aunt Huldah was as kind as heart could wish, treating us +tenderly, and as if we were little children; and one stormy night, when +we four sat with her in the keeping-room, talking, until daylight faded, +and the short twilight left us nearly in darkness, she told us some +things about her own youth, things of which, by daylight, she would +never have spoken,—and told, too, of a dear, only brother, who was +ruined for all time, and, she feared, for eternity also, from being +crossed in love by the strong will of his father. Aunt Huldah had a +tender heart. Her voice grew thick and hoarse, while telling the story. +I was always glad we had that talk. It made us know her better. She +lived only a year after. She died in June, when the grass was green and +the roses were in bloom,—just a year from that Sabbath I spent at home, +that perfect day when I walked to meeting with Rachel up the grassy +lane. With sad hearts, we laid her to rest in a spot that she loved, +where the sweet-fern and wild-roses were growing,—with sad, grateful +hearts, for she had been to us as father, mother, and true friend. We +loved her for the affection she showed, and still more for that which we +knew she concealed within herself,—for the tenderness she would not let +be revealed.</p> + +<p>The next year Rachel and I were married, thus making the month of June +trebly sacred. We had a double wedding; for the young minister, finding +that he had looked at Fanny too long for his own tranquillity, proposed +to mend matters in a way which no one whose faculties were not strangely +betwisted by love would ever have thought of. And my sister must either +have secretly liked the plan, or else have lost her old faculty of +managing; for, when he said, "Come, Fanny, and let us dwell together in +the parsonage," she went, just as quiet as a lamb.</p> + +<p>Rachel and I remained, and do remain to this day, at the old house. +Fanny said we ought to go into the world,—that I might possibly become +brilliant, and Rachel would certainly be admired. But the first of these +suggestions had little weight with me; and Rachel said how nice it would +be to live here among the apple-trees, near Fanny, to read books, sing +songs, and so have a good time all our lives!</p> + +<p>"And have nobody but Charley see how handsome you are!" exclaimed Fanny.</p> + +<p>Rachel didn't color at this, but remarked, <a name="Page_439" id="Page_439"></a>a little roguishly, that she +would rather have one of those sidelong looks I used to give her in the +old school-house than all the admiration in the world.</p> + +<p>This was the time when I chose my profession, as mentioned in the +beginning. And I may say that we <i>have</i> had a good time all our lives. +Yet we have known sorrow. Four times has the dark shadow fallen upon our +hearts; four sad processions have passed up the narrow lane; four little +graves, by the side of Aunt Huldah's, show where, standing together, we +wept tears of agony! Yet we stood together; and Rachel, who knew so +well, taught me how to bear. In every hour of anguish I have found +myself leaning upon the strong, steadfast "soul of Rachel Lowe." I say +still, therefore, that we have had a good time, for we have loved one +another all our lives. And we have never been too much alone. Plenty of +friends have been glad to come and see us; and on Anniversary Week we +have usually made a journey to Boston, to wear off the rust, and get +stirred up generally. We attend most frequently the Anti-Slavery +Conventions. I know of no better place, whether for getting stirred up, +or wearing off the rust. That couple whom you may have noticed sitting +near the platform—that bald-headed old gentleman and +intelligent-looking elderly lady—are my wife and I. We met with the +early Abolitionists in a stable; we saw Garrison dragged through the +streets, and heard Phillips's first speech in Faneuil Hall.</p> + +<p>I have always kept my old habit of watching pretty faces; only I don't +look sideways now: for the girls never think that an old man cares to +see them; but he does. We have one son, who Fanny devoutly hopes will +turn out better than his father. May he go through life as happily! And +he is in a fair way for it. I like to see him with Jenny, the pretty +daughter of my friend the watchmaker. If my good friend thinks to keep +always with him that youngest one of his flock, he will find his +mistake; for it was only yesterday that I saw them sitting together on +the seat in the low-branching apple-tree.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="PICTOR_IGNOTUS" id="PICTOR_IGNOTUS"></a>PICTOR IGNOTUS.</h2> + + +<p>Human nature is impatient of mysteries. The occurrence of an event out +of the line of common causation, the advent of a person not plastic to +the common moulds of society, causes a great commotion in this little +ant-hill of ours. There is perplexity, bewilderment, a running hither +and thither, until the foreign substance is assigned a place in the +ranks; and if there be no rank to which it can be ascertained to belong, +a new rank shall be created to receive it, rather than that it shall be +left to roam up and down, baffling, defiant, and alone. Indeed, so great +is our abhorrence of outlying, unclassified facts, that we are often +ready to accept classification for explanation; and having given our +mystery a niche and a name, we cease any longer to look upon it as +mysterious. The village-schoolmaster, who displayed his superior +knowledge to the rustics gazing at an eclipse of the sun by assuring +them that it was "only a phenomenon," was but one of a great host of +wiseacres who stand ready with brush and paint-pot to label every new +development, and fancy that in so doing they have abundantly answered +every reasonable inquiry concerning cause, character, and consequence.</p> + +<p>When William Blake flashed across the path of English polite society, +society was confounded. It had never had to do with such an apparition +before, and <a name="Page_440" id="Page_440"></a>was at its wits' end. But some Daniel was found wise enough +to come to judgment, and pronounce the poet-painter mad; whereupon +society at once composed itself, and went on its way rejoicing.</p> + +<p>There are a few persons, however, who are not disposed to let this +verdict stand unchallenged. Mr. Arthur Gilchrist, late a barrister of +the Middle Temple, a man, therefore, who must have been accustomed to +weigh evidence, and who would not have been likely to decide upon +insufficient grounds, wrote a life of Mr. Blake, in which he strenuously +and ably opposed the theory of insanity. From this book, chiefly, we +propose to lay before our readers a slight sketch of the life of a man +who, whether sane or insane, was one of the most remarkable productions +of his own or of any age.</p> + +<p>One word, in the beginning, regarding the book before us. The death of +its author, while as yet but seven chapters of his work had been +printed, would preclude severe criticism, even if the spirit and purpose +with which he entered upon his undertaking, and which he sustained to +its close, did not dispose us to look leniently upon imperfections of +detail. Possessing that first requisite of a biographer, thorough +sympathy with his subject, he did not fall into the opposite error of +indiscriminate panegyric. Looking at life from the standpoint of the +"madman," he saw how fancies could not only appear, but be, facts; and +then, crossing over, he looked at the madman from the world's +standpoint, and saw how these soul-born facts could seem not merely +fancies, but the wild vagaries of a crazed brain. For the warmth with +which he espoused an unpopular cause, for the skill with which he set +facts in their true light, for the ability which he brought to the +defence of a man whom the world had agreed to condemn, for the noble +persistence with which he forced attention to genius that had hitherto +received little but neglect, we cannot too earnestly express our +gratitude. But the greater our admiration of material excellence, the +greater is our regret for superficial defects. The continued oversight +of the author would doubtless have removed many infelicities of style; +yet we marvel that one with so clear an insight should ever, even in the +first glow of composition, have involved himself in sentences so +complicated and so obscure. The worst faults of Miss Sheppard's worst +style are reproduced here, joined to an unthriftiness in which she had +no part nor lot. Not unfrequently a sentence Is a conglomerate in which +the ideas to be conveyed are heaped together with no apparent attempt at +arrangement, unity, or completeness. Surely, it need be no presumptuous, +but only a tender and reverent hand that should have organized these +chaotic periods, completing the work which death left unfinished, and +sending it forth to the world in a garb not unworthy the labor of love +so untiringly bestowed upon it by the lamented author.</p> + +<p>To show that our strictures are not undeserved, we transcribe a few +sentences, taken at random from the memoir:—</p> + +<p>"Which decadence it was led this Pars to go into the juvenile +Art-Academy line, <i>vice</i> Shipley retired."</p> + +<p>"The unusual notes struck by William Blake, in any case appealing but to +one class and a small one, were fated to remain unheard, even by the +Student of Poetry, until the process of regeneration had run its course, +and, we may say, the Poetic Revival gone to seed again: seeing that the +virtues of simplicity and directness the new poets began by bringing +once more into the foreground, are those least practised now."</p> + +<p>"In after years of estrangement from Stothard, Blake used to complain of +this mechanical employment as engraver to a fellow-designer, who (he +asserted) first borrowed from one that, in his servile capacity, had +then to copy that comrade's version of his own inventions—as to motive +and composition his own, that is."</p> + +<p>"And this imposing scroll of fervid truisms and hap-hazard generalities, +as often disputable as not, if often acute and striking, always +ingenuous and pleasant, <a name="Page_441" id="Page_441"></a>was, like all his other writings, warmly +welcomed in this country."</p> + +<p>Let us now go back a hundred years, to the time when William Blake was a +fair-haired, smooth-browed boy, wandering aimlessly, after the manner of +boys, about the streets of London. It might seem at first a matter of +regret that a soul full of all glowing and glorious fancies should have +been consigned to the damp and dismal dulness of that crowded city; but, +in truth, nothing could be more fit. To this affluent, creative mind +dinginess and dimness were not. Through the grayest gloom golden palaces +rose before him, silver pavements shone beneath his feet, jewelled gates +unfolded on golden hinges turning, and he wandered forth into a fair +country. What need of sunshine and bloom for one who saw in the deepest +darkness a "light that never was on sea or land"? Rambling out into the +pleasant woods of Dulwich, through the green meadows of Walton, by the +breezy heights of Sydenham, bands of angels attended him. They walked +between the toiling haymakers, they hovered above him in the +apple-boughs, and their bright wings shone like stars. For him there was +neither awe nor mystery, only delight. Angels were no more unnatural +than apples. But the honest hosier, his father, took different views. +Never in all his life had that worthy citizen beheld angels perched on +tree-tops, and he was only prevented from administering to his son a +sound thrashing for the absurd falsehood by the intercession of his +mother. Ah, these mothers! By what fine sense is it that they detect the +nascent genius for which man's coarse perception can find no better name +than perverseness, and no wiser treatment than brute force?</p> + +<p>The boy had much reason to thank his mother, for to her intervention it +was doubtless largely due that he was left to follow his bent, and haunt +such picture-galleries as might be found in noblemen's houses and public +sale-rooms. There he feasted his bodily eyes on earthly beauty, as his +mental gaze had been charmed with heavenly visions. From admiration to +imitation was but a step, and the little hands soon began to shape such +rude, but loving copies as Raffaelle, with tears in his eyes, must have +smiled to see. His father, moved by motherly persuasions, as we can +easily infer, bought him casts for models, that he might continue his +drawing-lessons at home; his own small allowance of pocket-money went +for prints; his wistful child-face presently became known to dealers, +and many a cheap lot was knocked down to him with amiable haste by +friendly auctioneers. Then and there began that life-long love and +loyalty to the grand old masters of Germany and Italy, to Albrecht +Dürer, to Michel Angelo, to Raffaelle, which knew no diminution, and +which, in its very commencement, revealed the eclecticism of true +genius, because the giants were not the gods in those days.</p> + +<p>But there came a time when Pegasus must be broken in to drudgery, and +travel along trodden ways. By slow, it cannot be said by toilsome +ascent, the young student had reached the vestibule of the temple; but</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Every door was barred with gold, and opened but to golden keys,"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>which, alas! to him were wanting. Nothing daunted, his sincere soul +preferred to be a doorkeeper in the house of his worship rather than a +dweller in the tents of Mammon. Unable to be an artist, he was content +for the time to become an artisan, and chose to learn engraving,—a +craft which would keep him within sight and sound of the heaven from +which he was shut out. Application was first made to Ryland, then in the +zenith of his fame, engraver to the King, friend of authors and artists, +himself a graceful, accomplished, and agreeable gentleman. But the +marvellous eyes that pierced through mortal gloom to immortal glory saw +also the darkness that brooded behind uncanny light. "I do not like the +man's face," said young Blake, as he was leaving the shop with his +father; "it looks as if he will live to be hanged." The negotiation +failed; Blake was apprenticed <a name="Page_442" id="Page_442"></a>to Basire; and twelve years after, the +darkness that had lain so long in ambush came out and hid the day: +Ryland was hanged.</p> + +<p>His new master, Basire, was one of those workmen who magnify their +office and make it honorable. The most distinguished of four generations +of Basires, engravers, he is represented as a superior, liberal-minded, +upright man, and a kind master. With him Blake served out his seven +years of apprenticeship, as faithful, painstaking, and industrious as +any blockhead. So great was the confidence which he secured, that, month +after month, and year after year, he was sent out alone to Westminster +Abbey and the various old churches in the neighborhood, to make drawings +from the monuments, with no oversight but that of his own taste and his +own conscience. And a rich reward we may well suppose his integrity +brought him, in the charming solitudes of those old-time sanctuaries. +Wandering up and down the consecrated aisles,—eagerly peering through +the dim, religious light for the beautiful forms that had leaped from +many a teeming brain now turned to dust,—reproducing, with patient +hand, graceful outline and deepening shadow,—his daring, yet reverent +heart held high communion with the ages that were gone. The Spirit of +the Past overshadowed him. The grandeur of Gothic symbolism rose before +him. Voices of dead centuries murmured low music down the fretted vault. +Fair ladies and brave gentlemen came up from the solemn chambers where +they had lain so long in silent state, and smiled with their olden +grace. Shades of nameless poets, who had wrought their souls into a +cathedral and died unknown and unhonored, passed before the dreaming +boy, and claimed their immortality. Nay, once the Blessed Face shone +through the cloistered twilight, and the Twelve stood roundabout. In +this strange solitude and stranger companionship many an old problem +untwined its Gordian knot, and whispered along its loosened length,—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"I give you the end of a golden string:</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Only wind it into a ball,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">It will lead you in at Heaven's gate,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Built in Jerusalem wall."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>To an engraving of "Joseph of Arimathea among the Rocks of Albion," +executed at this time, he appends,—"This is one of the Gothic artists +who built the Cathedrals in what we call the Dark Ages, wandering about +in sheepskins and goatskins; of whom the world was not worthy. Such were +the Christians in all ages."</p> + +<p>Yet, somewhere, through mediæval gloom and modern din, another spirit +breathed upon him,—a spirit of green woods and blue waters, the +freshness of May mornings, the prattle of tender infancy, the gambols of +young lambs on the hill-side. From his childhood, Poetry walked hand in +hand with Painting, and beguiled his loneliness with wild, sweet +harmonies. Bred up amid the stately, measured, melodious platitudes of +the eighteenth century, that Golden Age of commonplace, he struck down +through them all with simple, untaught, unconscious directness, and +smote the spring of ever-living waters. Such wood-notes wild as trill in +Shakspeare's verse sprang from the stricken chords beneath his hand. The +little singing-birds that seem almost to have leaped unbidden into life +among the gross creations of those old Afreets who</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"Stood around the throne of Shakspeare,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Sturdy, but unclean,"</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>carolled their clear, pure lays to him, and left a quivering echo. Fine, +fleeting fantasies we have, a tender, heartfelt, heart-reaching pathos, +laughter that might at any moment tremble into tears, eternal truths, +draped in the garb of quaint and simple story, solemn fervors, subtile +sympathies, and the winsomeness of little children at their +play,—sometimes glowing with the deepest color, often just tinged to +the pale and changing hues of a dream, but touched with such coy grace, +modulated to such free, wild rhythm, suffused with such a delicate, +evanishing loveliness, that they seem <a name="Page_443" id="Page_443"></a>scarcely to be the songs of our +tangible earth, but snatches from fairy-land. Often rude in form, often +defective in rhyme, and not unfrequently with even graver faults than +these, their ruggedness cannot hide the gleam of the sacred fire. "The +Spirit of the Age," moulding her pliant poets, was wiser than to meddle +with this sterner stuff. From what hidden cave in Rare Ben Jonson's +realm did the boy bring such an opal as this</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">SONG.</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"My silks and fine array,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">My smiles and languished air,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">By Love are driven away;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And mournful, lean Despair</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Brings me yew to deck my grave:</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Such end true lovers have!</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"His face is fair as heaven,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Where springing buds unfold;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Oh, why to him was 't given,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Whose heart is wintry cold?</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">His breast is Love's all-worshipped tomb,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Where all Love's pilgrims come.</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"Bring me an axe and spade,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Bring me a winding-sheet;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">When I my grave have made,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Let winds and tempests beat:</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Then down I'll lie, as cold as clay.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">True love doth pass away."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>What could the Spirit of the Age hope to do with a boy scarcely yet in +his teens, who dared arraign her in such fashion as is set forth in his +address</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">TO THE MUSES.</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"Whether on Ida's shady brow,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Or in the chambers of the East,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The chambers of the Sun, that now</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">From ancient melody have ceased;</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"Whether in heaven ye wander fair,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Or the green corners of the earth,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Or the blue regions of the air,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Where the melodious winds have birth;</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"Whether on crystal rocks ye rove</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Beneath the bosom of the sea,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Wandering in many a coral grove,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Fair Nine, forsaking Poetry;</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"How have you left the ancient love</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">That bards of old enjoyed in you!</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The languid strings do scarcely move,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">The sound is forced, the notes are few."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Whereabouts in its Elegant Extracts would a generation that strung +together sonorous couplets, and compiled them into a book to Enforce the +Practice of Virtue, place such a ripple of verse as this?—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"Piping down the valleys wild,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Piping songs of pleasant glee,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">On a cloud I saw a child,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And he, laughing, said to me:</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"'Pipe a song about a lamb!'</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">So I piped with merry cheer.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">'Piper, pipe that song again!'</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">So I piped; he wept to hear.</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"'Drop thy pipe, thy happy pipe;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Sing thy songs of happy cheer!'</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">So I sang the same again,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">While he wept with joy to hear.</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"'Piper, sit thee down and write</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">In a book, that all may read!'</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">So he vanished from my sight.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And I plucked a hollow reed,</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"And I made a rural pen,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And I stained the water clear,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And I wrote my happy songs</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Every child may joy to hear."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>A native of the jungle, leaping into the fine drawing-rooms of Cavendish +Square, would hardly create more commotion than such a poem as "The +Tiger," charging in among Epistles to the Earl of Dorset, Elegies +describing the Sorrow of an Ingenuous Mind, Odes innumerable to Memory, +Melancholy, Music, Independence, and all manner of odious themes.</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"Tiger, tiger, burning bright</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">In the forests of the night,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">What immortal hand or eye</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Framed thy fearful symmetry?</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"In what distant deeps or skies</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Burned that fire within thine eyes?</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">On what wings dared he aspire?</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">What the hand dared seize the fire?</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"And what shoulder, and what art,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Could twist the sinews of thy heart?</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">When thy heart began to beat,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">What dread hand formed thy dread feet?</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"What the hammer, what the chain,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Knit thy strength and forged thy brain?</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">What the anvil? What dread grasp</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Dared thy deadly terrors clasp?</span><br /><a name="Page_444" id="Page_444"></a> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"When the stars threw down their spears,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And watered heaven with their tears,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Did he smile his work to see?</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Did He who made the lamb make thee?"</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Mrs. Montagu, by virtue of the "moral" in the last line, may possibly +have ventured to read the "Chimney-Sweeper" at her annual festival to +those swart little people; but we have not space to give the gem a +setting here; nor the "Little Black Boy," with its matchless, sweet +child-sadness. Indeed, scarcely one of these early poems—all written +between the ages of eleven and twenty—is without its peculiar, and +often its peerless charm.</p> + +<p>Arrived at the age of twenty-one, he finished his apprenticeship to +Basire, and began at once the work and worship of his life,—the latter +by studying at the Royal Academy, the former by engraving for the +booksellers. Introduced by a brother-artist to Flaxman, he joined him in +furnishing designs for the famous Wedgwood porcelain, and so one +dinner-set gave bread and butter to genius, and nightingales' tongues to +wealth. That he was not a docile, though a very devoted pupil, is +indicated by his reply to Moser, the keeper, who came to him, as he was +looking over prints from his beloved Raffaelle and Michel Angelo, and +said, "You should not study these old, hard, stiff, and dry, unfinished +works of Art: stay a little, and <i>I</i> will show you what you should +study." He brought down Le Brun and Rubens. "How did I secretly rage!" +says Blake. "I also spake my mind! I said to Moser, 'These things that +you call finished are not even begun; how, then, can they be finished?'" +The reply of the startled teacher is not recorded. In other respects, +also, he swerved from Academical usage. Nature, as it appeared in models +artificially posed to enact an artificial part, became hateful to him, +seemed to him a caricature of Nature, though he delighted in the noble +antique figures.</p> + +<p>Nature soon appeared to him in another shape, and altogether charming. A +lively miss to whom he had paid court showed herself cold to his +advances; which circumstance he was one evening bemoaning to a +dark-eyed, handsome girl,—(a dangerous experiment, by the way,)—who +assured him that she pitied him from her heart. "<i>Do</i> you pity me?" he +eagerly asked. "Yes, I do, most sincerely." "Then I love you for that," +replied the new Othello to his Desdemona; and so well did the wooing go +that the dark-eyed Catharine presently became his wife, the Kate of a +forty-five years' marriage. Loving, devoted, docile, she learned to be +helpmeet and companion. Never, on the one side, murmuring at the narrow +fortunes, nor, on the other, losing faith in the greatness to which she +had bound herself, she not only ordered well her small household, but +drew herself up within the range of her husband's highest sympathy. She +learned to read and write, and to work off his engravings. Nay, love +became for her creative, endowed her with a new power, the vision and +the faculty divine, and she presently learned to design with a spirit +and a grace hardly to be distinguished from her husband's. No children +came to make or mar their harmony; and from the summer morning in +Battersea that placed her hand in his, to the summer evening in London +that loosed it from his dying grasp, she was the true angel-vision, +Heaven's own messenger to the dreaming poet-painter.</p> + +<p>Being the head of a family, Blake now, as was proper, went into +"society." And what a society it was to enter! And what a man was Blake +to enter it! The society of President Reynolds, and Mr. Mason the poet, +and Mr. Sheridan the play-actor, and pompous Dr. Burney, and abstract +Dr. Delap,—all honorable men; a society that was dictated to by Dr. +Johnson, and delighted by Edmund Burke, and sneered at by Horace +Walpole, its untiring devotee: a society presided over by Mrs. Montagu, +whom Dr. Johnson dubbed Queen of the Blues; Mrs. Carter, borrowing, by +right of years, her matron's plumes; Mrs. Chapone, sensible, ugly, and +benevolent; the beautiful<a name="Page_445" id="Page_445"></a> Mrs. Sheridan; the lively, absurd, incisive +Mrs. Cholmondeley; sprightly, witty Mrs. Thrale; and Hannah More, coiner +of guineas, both as saint and sinner: a most piquant, trenchant, and +entertaining society it was, and well might be, since the bullion of +genius was so largely wrought into the circulating medium of small talk; +but a society which, from sheer lack of vision, must have entertained +its angels unawares. Such was the current which caught up this +simple-hearted painter, this seer of unutterable things, this "eternal +child,"—caught him up only to drop him, with no creditable, but with +very credible haste. As a lion, he was undoubtedly thrice welcome in +Rathbone Place; but when it was found that the lion would not roar there +gently, nor be bound by their silken strings, but rather shook his mane +somewhat contemptuously at his would-be tamers, and kept, in their grand +saloons, his freedom of the wilderness, he was straightway suffered to +return to his fitting solitudes. One may imagine the consternation that +would be caused by this young fellow turning to Mrs. Carter, whose "talk +was all instruction," or to Mrs. Chapone, bent on the "improvement of +the mind," or to Miss Streatfield, with her "nose and notions <i>à la +Grecque</i>," and abruptly inquiring, "Madam, did you ever see a fairy's +funeral?" "Never, Sir!" responds the startled Muse. "I have," pursues +Blake, as calmly as if he were proposing to relate a <i>bon mot</i> which he +heard at Lady Middleton's rout last night. "I was walking alone in my +garden last night: there was great stillness among the branches and +flowers, and more than common sweetness in the air. I heard a low and +pleasant sound, and knew not whence it came. At last I saw the broad +leaf of a flower move, and underneath I saw a procession of creatures of +the size and color of green and gray grasshoppers, bearing a body laid +out on a rose-leaf, which they buried with songs, and then disappeared. +It was a fairy funeral." Or they are discussing, somewhat pompously, +Herschel's late discovery of Uranus, and the immense distances of +heavenly bodies, when Blake bursts out uproariously, "'Tis false! I was +walking down a lane the other day, and at the end of it I touched the +sky with my stick." Truly, for this wild man, who obstinately refuses to +let his mind be regulated, but bawls out his mad visions the louder, the +more they are combated, there is nothing for it but to go back to his +Kitty, and the little tenement in Green Street.</p> + +<p>But real friends Blake found, who, if they could not quite understand +him, could love and honor and assist. Flaxman, the "Sculptor for +Eternity," and Fuseli, the fiery-hearted Swiss painter, stood up for him +manfully. His own younger brother, Robert, shared his talents, and +became for a time a loved and honored member of his family,—too much +honored, if we may credit an anecdote in which the brother appears to +much better advantage than the husband. A dispute having one day arisen +between Robert and Mrs. Blake, Mr. Blake, after a while, deemed her to +have gone too far, and bade her kneel down and beg Robert's pardon, or +never see her husband's face again. Nowise convinced, she nevertheless +obeyed the stern command, and acknowledged herself in the wrong. "Young +woman, you lie!" retorted Robert "<i>I</i> am in the wrong!" This beloved +brother died at the age of twenty-five. During his last illness, Blake +attended him with the most affectionate devotion, nor ever left the +bedside till he beheld the disembodied spirit leave the frail clay and +soar heavenward, clapping its hands for joy!</p> + +<p>His brother gone, though not so far away that he did not often revisit +the old home,—friendly Flaxman in Italy, but more inaccessible there +than Robert in the heaven which lay above this man in his perpetual +infancy,—the <i>bas-bleus</i> reinclosed in the charmed circle in which +Blake had so riotously disported himself, a small attempt at +partnership, shop-keeping, and money-making, wellnigh "dead before it +was born,"—the poet began <a name="Page_446" id="Page_446"></a>to think of publishing. The verses of which +we have spoken had been seen but by few people, and the store was +constantly increasing. Influence with the publishers, and money to +defray expenses, were alike wanting. A copy of Lavater's "Aphorisms," +translated by his fellow-countryman, Fuseli, had received upon its +margins various annotations which reveal the man in his moods. "The +great art to love your enemy consists in never losing sight of <i>man</i> in +him," says Lavater. "None <i>can</i> see the man in the enemy," pencils +Blake. "If he is ignorantly so, he is not truly an enemy; if maliciously +so, not a man. I cannot love my enemy; for my enemy is not a man, but a +beast. And if I have any, I can love him as a beast, and wish to beat +him." No equivocation here, surely. On superstition he comments,—"It +has been long a bugbear, by reason of its having been united with +hypocrisy. But let them be fairly separated, and then superstition will +be honest feeling, and God, who loves all honest men, will lead the poor +enthusiast in the path of holiness." Herein lies the germ of a truth. +Again, Lavater says,—"A great woman not imperious, a fair woman not +vain, a woman of common talents not jealous, an accomplished woman who +scorns to shine, are four wonders just great enough to be divided among +the four corners of the globe." Whereupon Blake adds,—"Let the men do +their duty, and the women will be such wonders; the female life lives +from the life of the male. See a great many female dependents, and you +know the man." If this be madness, would that the madman might have +bitten all mankind before he died! To the advice, "Take here the grand +secret, if not of pleasing all, yet of displeasing none: court +mediocrity, avoid originality, and sacrifice to fashion," he appends, +with an evident reminiscence of Rathbone Place, "And go to hell."</p> + +<p>But this private effervescence was not enough; and long thinking +anxiously as to ways and means, suddenly, in the night, Robert stood +before him, and revealed to him a secret by which a facsimile of poetry +and design could be produced. On rising in the morning, Mrs. Blake was +sent out with a half-crown to buy the necessary materials, and with that +he began an experiment which resulted in furnishing his principal means +of support through life. It consisted in a species of engraving in +relief both of the words and the designs of his poems, by a process +peculiar and original. From his plates he printed off in any tint he +chose, afterwards coloring up his designs by hand. Joseph, the sacred +carpenter, had appeared in a vision, and revealed to him certain secrets +of coloring. Mrs. Blake delighted to assist him in taking impressions, +which she did with great skill, in tinting the designs, and in doing up +the pages in boards; so that everything, except manufacturing the paper, +was done by the poet and his wife. Never before, as his biographer +justly remarks, was a man so literally the author of his own book. If we +may credit the testimony that is given, or even judge from such proofs +as Mr. Gilchrist's book can furnish, these works of his hands were +exquisitely beautiful. The effect of the poems imbedded in their designs +is, we are told, quite different from their effect set naked upon a +blank page. It was as if he had transferred scenery and characters from +that spirit-realm where his own mind wandered at will; and from wondrous +lips wondrous words came fitly, and with surpassing power. Confirmation +of this we find in the few plates of "Songs of Innocence" which have +been recovered. Shorn of the radiant rainbow hues, the golden sheen, +with which the artist, angel-taught, glorified his pictures, they still +body for us the beauty of his "Happy Valley." Children revel there in +unchecked play. Springing vines, in wild exuberance of life, twine +around the verse, thrusting their slender coils in among the lines. +Weeping willows dip their branches into translucent pools. Heavy-laden +trees droop their ripe, rich clusters overhead. Under the shade of +broad-spreading oaks little children climb <a name="Page_447" id="Page_447"></a>on the tiger's yielding back +and stroke the lion's tawny mane in a true Millennium.</p> + +<p>The first series, "Songs of Innocence," was succeeded by "Songs of +Experience," subsequently bound in one volume. Then came the book of +"Thel," an allegory, wherein Thel, beautiful daughter of the Seraphim, +laments the shortness of her life down by the River of Adona, and is +answered by the Lily of the Valley, the Little Cloud, the Lowly Worm, +and the Clod of Clay; the burden of whose song is—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"But how this is, sweet maid, I know not, and I cannot know,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I ponder, and I cannot ponder: yet I live and love!"</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>The designs give the beautiful daughter listening to the Lily and the +Cloud. The Clod is an infant wrapped in a lily-leaf. The effect of the +whole poem and design together is as of an "angel's reverie."</p> + +<p>The "Marriage of Heaven and Hell" is considered one of the most curious +and original of his works. After an opening "Argument" comes a series of +"Proverbs of Hell," which, however, answer very well for earth: as, "A +fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees"; "He whose face gives +no light shall never become a star"; "The apple-tree never asks the +beech how he shall grow, nor the lion the horse how he shall take his +prey." The remainder of the book consists of "Memorable Fancies," half +dream, half allegory, sublime and grotesque inextricably commingling, +but all ornamented with designs most daring and imaginative in +conception, and steeped in the richest color. We subjoin a description +of one or two, as a curiosity. "A strip of azure sky surmounts, and of +land divides, the words of the title-page, leaving on each side scant +and baleful trees, little else than stem and spray. Drawn on a tiny +scale lies a corpse, and one bends over it. Flames burst forth below and +slant upward across the page, gorgeous with every hue. In their very +core, two spirits rush together and embrace." In the seventh design is +"a little island of the sea, where an infant springs to its mother's +bosom. From the birth-cleft ground a spirit has half emerged. Below, +with outstretched arms and hoary beard, an awful, ancient man rushes at +you, as it were, out of the page." The eleventh is "a surging of mingled +fire, water, and blood, wherein roll the volumes of a huge, +double-fanged serpent, his crest erect, his jaws wide open." "The +ever-fluctuating color, the spectral pigmies rolling, flying, leaping +among the letters, the ripe bloom of quiet corners, the living light and +bursts of flame, the spires and tongues of fire vibrating with the full +prism, make the page seem to move and quiver within its boundaries, and +you lay the book down tenderly, as if you had been handling something +sentient."</p> + +<p>We have not space to give a description, scarcely even a catalogue, of +Blake's numerous works. Wild, fragmentary, gorgeous dreams they are, +tangled in with strange allegoric words and designs, that throb with +their prisoned vitality. The energy, the might, the intensity of his +lines and figures it is impossible for words to convey. It is power in +the fiercest, most eager action,—fire and passion, the madness and the +stupor of despair, the frenzy of desire, the lurid depths of woe, that +thrill and rivet you even in the comparatively lifeless rendering of +this book. The mere titles of the poems give but a slight clue to their +character. Ideas are upheaved in a tossing surge of words. It is a +mystic, but lovely Utopia, into which "The Gates of Paradise" open. The +practical name of "America" very faintly foreshadows the Ossianic Titans +that glide across its pages, or the tricksy phantoms, the headlong +spectres, the tongues of flame, the folds and fangs of symbolic +serpents, that writhe and leap and dart and riot there. With a poem +named "Europe," we should scarcely expect for a frontispiece the Ancient +of Days, in unapproached grandeur, setting his "compass upon the face of +the Earth,"—a vision revealed to the designer at the top of his own +staircase.</p><p><a name="Page_448" id="Page_448"></a></p> + +<p>Small favor and small notice these works secured from the public, which +found more edification in the drunken courtship and brutal squabbles of +"the First Gentleman of Europe" than in Songs of Innocence or Sculptures +for Eternity. The poet's own friends constituted his public, and +patronized him to the extent of their power. The volume of Songs he sold +for thirty shillings and two guineas. Afterwards, with the delicate and +loving design of helping the artist, who would receive help in no other +way, five and even ten guineas were paid, for which sum he could hardly +do enough, finishing off each picture like a miniature. One solitary +patron he had, Mr. Thomas Butts, who, buying his pictures for thirty +years, and turning his own house into "a perfect Blake Gallery, often +supplied the painter with his sole means of subsistence." May he have +his reward! Most pathetic is an anecdote related by Mr. H.C. Robinson, +who found himself one morning sole visitor at an Exhibition which Blake +had opened, on his own account, at his brother James's house. In view of +the fact that he had bought four copies of the Descriptive Catalogue, +Mr. Robinson inquired of James, the custodian, if he might not come +again free. "Oh, yes! <i>free as long an you live</i>!" was the reply of the +humble hosier, overjoyed at having so munificent a visitor, or a visitor +at all.</p> + +<p>We have a sense of incongruity in seeing this defiant, but sincere +pencil employed by publishers to illustrate the turgid sorrow of Young's +"Night Thoughts." The work was to have been issued in parts, but got no +farther than the first. (It would have been no great calamity, if the +poem itself had come to the same premature end!) The sonorous mourner +could hardly have recognized himself in the impersonations in which he +was presented, nor his progeny in the concrete objects to which they +were reduced. The well-known couplet,</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"'Tis greatly wise to talk with our past hours</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And ask them what report they've borne to heaven,"</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>is represented by hours "drawn as aërial and shadowy beings," some of +whom are bringing their scrolls to the inquirer, and others are carrying +their records to heaven.</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"Oft burst my song beyond the bounds of life"</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>has a lovely figure, holding a lyre, and springing into the air, but +confined by a chain to the earth. Death puts off his skeleton, and +appears as a solemn, draped figure; but in many cases the clerical poet +is "taken at his word," with a literalness more startling than +dignified.</p> + +<p>Introduced by Flaxman to Hayley, friend and biographer of Cowper, +favorably known to his contemporaries, though now wellnigh forgotten, +Blake was invited to Felpham, and began there a new life. It is pleasant +to look back upon this period. Hayley, the kindly, generous, vain, +imprudent, impulsive country squire, not at all excepting himself in his +love for mankind, pouring forth sonnets on the slightest +provocation,—indeed, so given over to the vice of verse, that</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 6em;">"he scarce could ope</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">His mouth but out there flew a trope,"—</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>floating with the utmost self-complacence down the smooth current of his +time; and Blake, sensitive, unique, protestant, impracticable, +aggressive: it was a rare freak of Fate that brought about such +companionship; yet so true courtesy was there that for four years they +lived and wrought harmoniously together,—Hayley pouring out his +harmless wish-wash, and Blake touching it with his fiery gleam. Their +joint efforts were hardly more pecuniarily productive than Blake's +single-handed struggles; but his life there had other and better fruits. +In the little cottage overlooking the sea, fanned by the pure breeze, +and smiled upon by sunshine of the hills, he tasted rare spiritual joy. +Throwing off mortal incumbrance,—never, indeed, an overweight to +him,—he revelled in his clairvoyance. The lights that shimmered across +the sea shone from other worlds. The purple of the gathering darkness +was the curtain of God's tabernacle. Gray shadows of the <a name="Page_449" id="Page_449"></a>gloaming +assumed mortal shapes, and he talked with Moses and the prophets, and +the old heroes of song. The Ladder of Heaven was firmly fixed by his +garden-gate, and the angels ascended and descended. A letter written to +Flaxman, soon after his arrival at Felpham, is so characteristic that we +cannot refrain from transcribing it:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"DEAR SCULPTOR OF ETERNITY,—We are safe arrived at our cottage, +which is more beautiful than I thought it, and more convenient. It +is a perfect model for cottages, and, I think, for palaces of +magnificence,—only enlarging, not altering, its proportions, and +adding ornaments, and not principles. Nothing can be more grand +than its simplicity and usefulness. Simple, without intricacy, it +seems to be the spontaneous expression of humanity, congenial to +the wants of man. No other formed house can ever please me so +well, nor shall I ever be persuaded, I believe, that it can be +improved, either in beauty or use.</p> + +<p>"Mr. Hayley received us with his usual brotherly affection. I have +begun to work. Felpham is a sweet place for study, because it is +more spiritual than London. Heaven opens here on all sides her +golden gates; her windows are not obstructed by vapors; voices of +celestial inhabitants are more distinctly heard, and their forms +more distinctly seen; and my cottage is also a shadow of their +houses. My wife and sister are both well, courting Neptune for an +embrace.</p> + +<p>"Our journey was very pleasant; and though we had a great deal of +luggage, no grumbling. All was cheerfulness and good-humor on the +road, and yet we could not arrive at our cottage before half-past +eleven at night, owing to the necessary shifting of our luggage +from one chaise to another; for we had seven different chaises, +and as many different drivers. We set out between six and seven in +the morning of Thursday, with sixteen heavy boxes and portfolios +full of prints.</p> + +<p>"And now begins a new life, because another covering of earth is +shaken off. I am more famed in heaven for my works than I could +well conceive. In my brain are studies and chambers filled with +books and pictures of old, which I wrote and painted in ages of +Eternity, before my mortal life, and those works are the delight +and study of archangels. Why, then, should I be anxious about the +riches or fame of mortality? The Lord our Father will do for us +and with us according to Ins Divine will, for our good.</p> + +<p>"You, O dear Flaxman, are a sublime archangel,—my friend and +companion from Eternity. In the Divine bosom is our +dwelling-place. I look back into the regions of reminiscence, and +behold our ancient days, before this earth appeared in its +vegetated mortality to my mortal vegetated eyes. I see our houses +of eternity, which can never be separated, though our mortal +vehicles should stand at the remotest corners of heaven from each +other.</p> + +<p>"Farewell, my best friend! Remember me and my wife in love and +friendship to our dear Mrs. Flaxman, whom we ardently desire to +entertain beneath our thatched roof of rusted gold. And believe me +forever to remain your grateful and affectionate</p> + +<p>"WILLIAM BLAKE."</p></div> + +<p>Other associations than spiritual ones mingle with the Felpham sojourn. +A drunken soldier one day broke into his garden, and, being great of +stature, despised the fewer inches of the owner. But between spirits of +earth and spirits of the skies there is but one issue to the conflict, +and Blake "laid hold of the intrusive blackguard, and turned him out +neck and crop, in a kind of inspired frenzy." The astonished ruffian +made good his retreat, but in revenge reported sundry words that +exasperation had struck from his conqueror. The result was a trial for +high treason at the next Quarter Sessions. Friends gathered about him, +testifying to his previous character; nor was Blake himself at all +dismayed. When the soldiers trumped up their false charges <a name="Page_450" id="Page_450"></a>in court, he +did not scruple to cry out, "False!" with characteristic and convincing +vehemence. Had this trial occurred at the present day, it would hardly +be necessary to say that he was triumphantly acquitted. But fifty years +ago such a matter wore a graver aspect. In his early life he had been an +advocate of the French Revolution, an associate of Price, Priestley, +Godwin, and Tom Paine, a wearer of white cockade and <i>bonnet rouge</i>. He +had even been instrumental in saving Tom Paine's life, by hurrying him +to France, when the Government was on his track; but all this was +happily unknown to the Chichester lawyers, and Blake, more fortunate +than some of his contemporaries, escaped the gallows.</p> + +<p>The disturbance caused by this untoward incident, the repeated failures +of literary attempts, the completion of Cowper's Life, which had been +the main object of his coming, joined, doubtless, to a surfeit of +Hayley, induced a return to London. He feared, too, that his imaginative +faculty was failing. "The visions were angry with me at Felpham," he +used afterwards to say. We regret to see, also, that he seems not always +to have been in the kindest of moods towards his patron. Indeed, it was +a weakness of his to fall out occasionally with his best friends; but +when a man is waited upon by angels and ministers of grace, it is not +surprising that he should sometimes be impatient with mere mortals. Nor +is it difficult to imagine that the bland and trivial Hayley, +perpetually kind, patronizing, and obvious, should, without any definite +provocation, become presently insufferable to such a man as Blake.</p> + +<p>Returned to London, he resumed the production of his oracular +works,—"prophetic books," he called them. These he illustrated with his +own peculiar and beautiful designs, "all sanded over with a sort of +golden mist." Among much that is incoherent and incomprehensible may be +found passages of great force, tenderness, and beauty. The concluding +verses of the Preface to "Milton" we quote, as shadowing forth his great +moral purpose, and as revealing also the luminous heart of the cloud +that so often turns to us only its gray and obscure exterior:—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"And did those feet in ancient time</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Walk upon England's mountain green?</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And was the holy Lamb of God</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">On England's pleasant pastures seen?</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"And did the countenance Divine</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Shine forth upon our clouded hills?</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And was Jerusalem builded here</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Among these dark, Satanic hills?</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"Bring me my bow of burning gold!</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Bring me my arrows of desire!</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Bring me my spear! O clouds, unfold!</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Bring me my chariot of fire!</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"I will not cease from mental fight,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Till we have built Jerusalem</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">In England's green and pleasant land."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>The same lofty aim is elsewhere expressed in the line,—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"I touch the heavens as an instrument to glorify the Lord!"</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Our rapidly diminishing space warns us to be brief, and we can only +glance at a few of the remaining incidents of this outwardly calm, yet +inwardly eventful life. In an evil hour—though to it we owe the +"Illustrations to Blair's Grave"—he fell into the hands of Cromek, the +shrewd Yorkshire publisher, and was tenderly entreated, as a dove in the +talons of a kite. The famous letter of Cromek to Blake is one of the +finest examples on record of long-headed worldliness bearing down upon +wrong-headed genius. Though clutching the palm in this case, and in some +others, it is satisfactory to know that Cromek's clever turns led to no +other end than poverty; and nothing worse than poverty had Blake, with +all his simplicity, to encounter. But Blake, in his poverty, had meat to +eat which the wily publisher knew not of.</p> + +<p>In the wake of this failure followed another. Blake had been engaged to +make twenty drawings to illustrate Ambrose Philips's "Virgil's +Pastorals" for schoolboys. The publishers saw them, and <a name="Page_451" id="Page_451"></a>stood aghast, +declaring he must do no more. The engravers received them with derision, +and pronounced sentence, "This will never do." Encouraged, however, by +the favorable opinion of a few artists who saw them, the publishers +admitted, with an apology, the seventeen which had already been +executed, and gave the remaining three into more docile hands. Of the +two hundred and thirty cuts, the namby-pambyism, which was thought to be +the only thing adapted to the capacity of children, has sunk to the +level of its worthlessness, and the book now is valued only for Blake's +small contribution.</p> + +<p>Of an entirely different nature were the "Inventions from the Book of +Job," which are pronounced the most remarkable series of etchings on a +Scriptural theme that have been produced since the days of Rembrandt and +Albrecht Dürer. Of these drawings we have copies in the second volume of +the "Life," from which one can gather something of their grandeur, their +bold originality, their inexhaustible and often terrible power. His +representations of God the Father will hardly accord with modern taste, +which generally eschews all attempt to embody the mind's conceptions of +the Supreme Being; but Blake was far more closely allied to the ancient +than to the modern world. His portraiture and poetry often remind us of +the childlike familiarity—not rude in him, but utterly reverent—which +was frequently, and sometimes offensively, displayed in the old miracle +and moral plays.</p> + +<p>These drawings, during the latter part of his life, secured him from +actual want. A generous friend, Mr. Linnell, himself a struggling young +artist, gave him a commission, and paid him a small weekly stipend: it +was sufficient to keep the wolf from the door, and that was enough: so +the wolf was kept away, his lintel was uncrossed 'gainst angels. It was +little to this piper that the public had no ear for his piping,—to this +painter, that there was no eye for his pictures.</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"His soul was like a star, and dwelt apart."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>He had but to withdraw to his inner chamber, and all honor and +recognition awaited him. The pangs of poverty or coldness he never +experienced, for his life was on a higher plane:—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"I am in God's presence night and day,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">He never turns his face away."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>When a little girl of extraordinary beauty was brought to him, his +kindest wish, as he stood stroking her long ringlets, was, "May God make +this world to you, my child, as beautiful as it has been to me!" His own +testimony declares,—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"The angel who presided at my birth</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Said,—'Little creature, formed of joy and mirth,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Go, love without the help of anything on earth!'"</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>But much help from above came to him. The living lines that sprung +beneath his pencil were but reminiscences of his spiritual home. +Immortal visitants, unseen by common eyes, hung enraptured over his +sketches, lent a loving ear to his songs, and left with him their legacy +to Earth. There was no looking back mournfully on the past, nor forward +impatiently to the future, but a rapturous, radiant, eternal now. Every +morning came heavy-freighted with its own delights; every evening +brought its own exceeding great reward.</p> + +<p>So, refusing to the last to work in traces,—flying out against +Reynolds, the bland and popular President of the Royal Academy, yet +acknowledging with enthusiasm what he deemed to be excellence,—loving +Fuseli with a steadfast love through all neglect, and hurling his +indignation at a public that refused to see his worth,—flouting at +Bacon, the great philosopher, and fighting for Barry, the restorer of +the antique, he resolutely pursued his appointed way unmoved. But the +day was fast drawing on into darkness. The firm will never quailed, but +the sturdy feet faltered. Yet, as the sun went down, soft lights +overspread the heavens. Young men came to him with fresh hearts, and +drew out all the freshness of his own. Little children <a name="Page_452" id="Page_452"></a>learned to watch +for his footsteps over the Hampstead hills, and sat on his knee, sunning +him with their caresses. Men who towered above their time, reverencing +the god within, and bowing not down to the <i>dæmon à la mode</i>, gathered +around him, listened to his words, and did obeisance to his genius. They +never teased him with unsympathetic questioning, or enraged him with +blunt contradiction. They received his visions simply, and discussed +them rationally, deeming them worthy of study rather than of ridicule or +vulgar incredulity. To their requests the spirits were docile. Sitting +by his side at midnight, they watched while he summoned from unknown +realms long-vanished shades. William Wallace arose from his "gory bed," +Edward I. turned back from the lilies of France, and, forgetting their +ancient hate, stood before him with placid dignity. The man who built +the Pyramids lifted his ungainly features from the ingulfing centuries; +souls of blood—thirsty men, duly forced into the shape of fleas, lent +their hideousness to his night; and the Evil One himself did not disdain +to sit for his portrait to this undismayed magician. That these are +actual portraits of concrete object? is not to be affirmed. That they +are portraits of what Blake saw is as little to be denied. We are +assured that his whole manner was that of a man copying, and not +inventing, and the simplicity and sincerity of his life forbid any +thought of intentional deceit. No criticism affected him. Nothing could +shake his faith. "It must be right: I saw it so," was the beginning and +end of his defence. The testimony of these friends of his is that he was +of all artists most spiritual, devoted, and single-minded. One of them +says, if asked to point out among the intellectual a happy man, he +should at once think of Blake. One, a young artist, finding his +invention flag for a whole fortnight, had recourse to Blake.</p> + +<p>"It is just so with us," he exclaimed, turning to his wife, "is it not, +for weeks together, when the visions forsake us? What do we do then, +Kate?"</p> + +<p>"We kneel down and pray, Mr. Blake."</p> + +<p>To these choice spirits, these enthusiastic and confiding friends, his +house was the House of the Interpreter. The little back-room, kitchen, +bedroom, studio, and parlor in one, plain and neat, had for them a kind +of enchantment. That royal presence lighted up the "hole" into a palace. +The very walls widened with the greatness of his soul. The windows that +opened on the muddy Thames seemed to overlook the river of the water of +life. Among the scant furnishings, his high thoughts, set in noble +words, gleamed like apples of gold in pictures of silver. Over the gulf +that yawns between two worlds he flung a glorious arch, and walked +tranquilly back and forth. Heaven was as much a matter-of-fact to him as +earth. Of sacred things he spoke with a familiarity which, to those who +did not understand him, seemed either madness or blasphemy; but his +friends never misunderstood. With one exception, none who knew him +personally ever thought of calling his sanity in question. To them he +was a sweet, gentle, lovable man. They felt the truth of his life. They +saw that</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"Only that fine madness still he did retain</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Which rightly should possess a poet's brain."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Imagination was to him the great reality. The external, that which makes +the chief consciousness of most men, was to him only staging, an +incumbrance, and uncouth, but to be endured and made the most of. The +world of the imagination was the true world. Imagination <i>bodied</i> forth +the forms of things unknown in a deeper sense, perhaps, than the great +dramatist meant. His poet's pen, his painter's pencil turned them to +shapes, and gave to airy nothings a local habitation and a name. Nay, he +denied that they were nothings. He rather asserted the actual existence +of his visions,—an existence as real, though not of the same nature, as +those of the bed or the table. Imagination was a kind of sixth sense, +and its objects were as real as the objects of the other senses. This +sense he believed <a name="Page_453" id="Page_453"></a>to exist, though latent, in every one, and to be +susceptible of development by cultivation. This is surely a very +different thing from madness. Neither is it the low superstition of +ghosts. He recounted no miracle, nothing supernatural. It was only that +by strenuous effort and untiring devotion he had penetrated beyond the +rank and file—but not beyond the possibilities of the rank and +file—into the unseen world. Undoubtedly this power finally assumed +undue proportions. In his isolation it led him on too unresistingly. His +generation knew him not. It neglected where it should have trained, and +stared where it should have studied. He was not wily enough to conceal +or gloss over his views. Often silent with congenial companions, he +would thrust in with boisterous assertion in the company of captious +opponents. Set upon by the unfriendly and the conventional, he wilfully +hurled out his wild utterances, exaggerating everything, scorning all +explanation or modification, goading peculiarities into reckless +extravagance, on purpose to puzzle and startle, and so avenging himself +by playing off upon those who attempted to play off upon him. To the +gentle, the reverent, the receptive, the simple, he, too, was gentle and +reverent.</p> + +<p>Nearest and dearest of all, the "beloved Kate" held him in highest +honor. The ripples that disturbed the smooth flow of their early life +had died away and left an unruffled current. To the childless wife, he +was child, husband, and lover. No sphere so lofty, but he could come +quickly down to perform the lowliest duties. The empty platter, silently +placed on the dinner-table, was the signal for his descent from +Parnassus to the money-earning graver. No angel-faces kept him from +lighting the morning fire and setting on the breakfast-kettle before his +Kitty awoke. Their life became one. Her very spirit passed into his. By +day and by night her love surrounded him. In his moments of fierce +inspiration, when he would arise from his bed to sketch or write the +thoughts that tore his brain, she, too, arose and sat by his side, +silent, motionless, soothing him only by the tenderness of her presence. +Years and wintry fortunes made havoc of her beauty, but love renewed it +day by day for the eyes of her lover, and their hands only met in firmer +clasp as they neared the Dark River.</p> + +<p>It was reached at last. No violent steep, but a gentle and gracious +slope led to the cold waters that had no bitterness for him. Shining +already in the glory of the celestial city, his eyes rested upon the +dear form that had stood by his side through all these years, and with +waning strength he cried, "Stay! Keep as you are! <i>You</i> have been ever +an angel to me: I will draw you." And, summoning his forces, he sketched +his last portrait of the fond and faithful wife. Then, comforting her +with the shortness of their separation, assuring her that he should +always be about her to take care of her, he set his face steadfastly +towards the Beautiful Gate. So joyful was his passage, so triumphant his +march, that the very sight was to them that could behold it as if heaven +itself were come down to meet him. Even the sorrowing wife could but +listen enraptured to the sweet songs he chanted to his Maker's praise; +but, "They are <i>not</i> mine, my beloved!" he tenderly cried; "<i>No!</i> they +are <i>not</i> mine!" The strain he heard was of a higher mood; and +continually sounding as he went, with melodious noise, in notes on high, +he entered in through the gates into the City.</p><p><a name="Page_454" id="Page_454"></a></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="THE_FIRST_VISIT_TO_WASHINGTON" id="THE_FIRST_VISIT_TO_WASHINGTON"></a>THE FIRST VISIT TO WASHINGTON.</h2> + + +<p>One chill morning in the autumn of 1826, in the town of Keene, New +Hampshire, lights might have been seen at an unusually early hour in the +windows of a yellow one-story-and-a-half house, that stood—and still +stands, perhaps—on the corner of the main street and the Swanzey road.</p> + +<p>There was living in that house a blind widow, the mother of a large +family of children, now mostly scattered; and the occasion of the +unseasonable lights was the departure from home of a son yet left to +her, upon a long and uncertain adventure.</p> + +<p>He was a young man, eighteen years old, just out of college. Graduating +at Dartmouth, he had brought away from that institution something better +than book-learning,—a deep religious experience, which was to be his +support through trials now quickly to come, and through a subsequent +prosperity more dangerous to the soul than trials. He had been bred a +farmer's boy. He was poor, and had his living to get. And he was now +going out into the world, he scarcely knew whither, to see what prizes +were to be won. In person he was tall, slender, slightly bent; shy and +diffident in his manners; in his appearance a little green and awkward. +He had an impediment in his speech also. His name—it is an odd one, but +you may perhaps have heard it—was Salmon.</p> + +<p>He had been up long before day, making preparations for the journey. His +mother was up also, busily assisting him, though blind,—her intelligent +hands placing together the linen that was to remind him affectingly of +her, when unpacked in a distant city.</p> + +<p>A singular hush was upon the little household, though all were so +active. The sisters moved about noiselessly by candle-light, their pale +cheeks and constrained lips betraying the repressed emotion. The early +breakfast was eaten in silence,—anxious eyes looking up now and then at +the clock. It was only when the hour for the starting of the stage +struck that all seemed suddenly to remember that there were a thousand +things to be said; and so the last moments were crowded with last words.</p> + +<p>"Your blessing, mother!" said Salmon, (for we shall call the youth by +the youth's name,) bending before her with his heart chokingly full.</p> + +<p>She rose up from her chair. Her right hand held his; the other was laid +lovingly over his neck. Her blind eyes were turned upward prayerfully, +and tears streamed from them as she spoke and blessed him. Then a last +embrace; and he hurried forth from the house, his checks still wet,—not +with his own tears.</p> + +<p>The stage took him up. He climbed to the driver's seat. Then again the +dull clank of the lumbering coach-wheels was heard,—a heavy sound to +the mother's ears. In the dim, still light of the frosty morning he +turned and waved back his farewell to her who could not see, took his +last look at the faces at the door, and so departed from that home +forever. The past was left behind him, with all its dear associations; +and before him rose the future, chill, uncertain, yet not without gleams +of rosy brightness, like the dawn then breaking upon Monadnock's misty +head.</p> + +<p>Thus went forth the young man into the world, seeking his fortune. +Conscious of power, courageous, shrinking from no hardship, palpitating +with young dreams, he felt that he had his place off yonder somewhere, +beneath that brightening sky, beyond those purple hills,—but where?</p> + +<p>In due time he arrived in New York; but something within assured him +that here was not the field of his fortunes. So he went on to +Philadelphia. There he made a longer stop. He had a letter <a name="Page_455" id="Page_455"></a>of +introduction to the Rev. Mr. ——, who received him with hospitality, +and used his influence to assist him in gaining a position. But the door +of Providence did not open yet: Philadelphia was not that door: his path +led farther.</p> + +<p>So he kept on, still drawn by that magnet which we call Destiny. He went +to Frederick: still the invisible finger pointed on. At last there was +but one more step. He secured a seat in the stage going down the +Frederick road to Washington.</p> + +<p>Years after he was to approach the capital of the nation with far +different prospects! But this was his first visit. It was at the close +of a bleak day, late in November, that he came in sight of the city. The +last tint of daylight was fading from a sullen sky. The dreary twilight +was setting in. Cold blew the wind from over the Maryland hills. The +trees were leafless; they shook and whistled in the blast. Gloom was +shutting down upon the capital. The city wore a dismal and forbidding +aspect; and the whole landscape was desolate and discouraging in the +extreme. Here was mud, in which the stage-coach lurched and rolled as it +descended the hills. Yonder was the watery spread of the Potomac, gray, +cold, dimly seen under the shadow of coming night. Between this mud and +that water what was there for him? Yet here was his destination.</p> + +<p>Years after there dwelt in Washington a man high in position, wielding a +power that was felt not only throughout this nation, but in Europe +also,—his hand dispensing benefits, his door thronged by troops of +friends. But now it was a city of strangers he was entering, a youth. Of +all the dwellers there he knew not a living soul. There was no one to +dispense favors to <i>him</i>,—to receive <i>him</i> with cheerful look and +cordial grasp of the hand. A heavy foreboding settled upon his spirit, +as the darkness settled upon the hills. Here he was, alone and +unknown,—a bashful boy as yet, utterly wanting in that ready audacity +by means of which persons of extreme shallowness often push themselves +into notice. Well might he foresee days of gloom, long days of waiting +and struggle, stretching like the landscape before him!</p> + +<p>But he was not disheartened. From the depths of his spirit arose a hope, +like a bubble from a deep spring. That spring was FAITH. There, in that +dull, bleak November twilight, he seemed to feel the hand of Providence +take hold of his. And a prayer rose to his lips,—a prayer of earnest +supplication for guidance and support. Was that prayer answered?</p> + +<p>The stage rumbled through the naked suburbs and along the unlighted +streets.</p> + +<p>"Where do you stop?" asked the driver.</p> + +<p>"Set me down at a boarding-house, if you know of a good one." For Salmon +could not afford to go to a hotel.</p> + +<p>"What sort of a boarding-house? I know of a good many. Some 's right +smart,—'ristocratic, and 'ristocratic prices. Then there's some good +enough in every way, only not quite so smart,—and with this advantage, +you don't have the smartness to pay for."</p> + +<p>"I prefer to go to a good house, where there are nice people, without +too much smartness to be put into the bill."</p> + +<p>"I know jest the kind of place, I reckon!"—and the driver whipped up +his jaded horses.</p> + +<p>He drew up before a respectable-looking wooden tenement on Pennsylvania +Avenue, the windows of which, just lighted up, looked warm and inviting +to the chilled and weary traveller.</p> + +<p>"Good evening, Mrs. Markham!" said the driver to a kindly-looking lady +who came to the door at his knock. "Got room for a boarder?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know, I'm sure. I'm afraid not," said the lady, loud enough for +Salmon to hear and be discouraged. "There's only half a room +unoccupied,—if he would be content with that, and if he's the right +sort of person"—</p> + +<p>Here she said something in a whisper to the driver, who apparently +pointed out Salmon to her inspection.</p><p><a name="Page_456" id="Page_456"></a></p> + +<p>But it was too dark for her to decide whether he would do to put into +the room with Williams; so Salmon had to get down and show himself. She +examined him, and he inquired her terms. They appeared mutually +satisfied. Accordingly the driver received directions to deposit +Salmon's baggage in the entry; and the hungry and benumbed young +traveller had the comfort of feeling that he had reached a home.</p> + +<p>Grateful at finding a kind woman's face to welcome him,—glad of the +opportunity to economize his slender means by sharing a room with +another person, strongly-recommended as "very quiet" by Mrs. +Markham,—Salmon washed his face, combed his hair, and ate his first +supper in Washington. He has eaten better suppers there since, no +doubt,—but not many, I fancy, that have been sweetened by a more devout +sense of reliance upon Providence.</p> + +<p>"Williams was a companionable person, who had a place in the Treasury +Department, and talked freely about the kind of work he had to do, and +the salary.</p> + +<p>"Eight hundred a year!" thought Salmon, deeming that man enviable who +had constant employment, an assured position, and eight hundred a year. +<i>His</i> ambition was to get a living simply,—to place his foot upon some +certainty, however humble, with freedom from this present gnawing +anxiety, and with a prospect of rising, he cared not how slowly, to the +place which he felt belonged to him in the future. Little did he dream +what that place was, when he questioned Williams so curiously as to what +sort of thing the Treasury Department might be.</p> + +<p>"If I could be sure of half that salary,—or even of three, or two +hundred, just enough to pay my expenses, the first year,—I should be +perfectly happy!"</p> + +<p>"Haven't you any idea what you are going to do?"</p> + +<p>"None whatever."</p> + +<p>"What <i>can</i> you do?"</p> + +<p>"For one thing, I can teach. I think I shall try that."</p> + +<p>"You'll find it a mighty hard place to get pupils!" said Williams, with +a dubious smile.</p> + +<p>Which rather gloomy prediction Salmon had to think of before going to +bed.</p> + +<p>But soon another subject, which he deemed of far greater importance, +occupied his mind. He had of late been seriously considering whether it +was his duty to continue his private devotions openly, or in +secret,—and had concluded, that, when occasion seemed to require it, he +ought to make an open manifestation of his faith. Here now was a test +for his conscience. His room-mate showed no signs of going out again +that night: he had pulled off his boots, put on his slippers, and +lighted his pipe. Salmon had already inferred, from the tone of his +conversation, that he was not a person who could sympathize with him in +his religious sentiments. Yet he must kneel there in his presence, if he +knelt at all. It was not the fear of ridicule, but a certain +sensitiveness of spirit, which caused him to shrink from the act. He did +not hesitate long, however. He turned, and knelt by his chair. Williams +took the pipe out of his mouth, and looked at him over his shoulder with +curious amazement. Not a word was spoken. Salmon, feeling that he had no +right to intrude his devotions upon the ear of another, prayed silently; +and Williams, compelled to respect the courageous, yet quiet manner in +which he performed what he regarded as a solemn duty, kept his +astonishment to himself.</p> + +<p>Then Salmon arose, and went to bed for that first time in Washington +under Mrs. Markham's roof.</p> + +<p>On the twenty-third of December, 1826, the following advertisement +appeared in the columns of the "National Intelligencer":—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"SELECT CLASSICAL SCHOOL.</p> + +<p>"The Subscriber intends opening a Select Classical School, in the +Western part of the City, to commence on the <a name="Page_457" id="Page_457"></a>second Monday in +January. His number of pupils will be limited to twenty, which +will enable him to devote a much larger portion of his time and +attention than ordinary to each individual student. Instruction +will be given in all the studies preparatory to entering College, +or, if desired, in any of the higher branches of a classical +education. The subscriber pledges himself that no effort shall be +wanting on his part to promote both the moral and intellectual +improvement of those who may be confided to his care. He may be +found at his room, three doors west of Brown's Hotel. Reference +may be made to the Hon. Henry Clay; Hon. D. Chase and Hon. H. +Seymour, of the Senate; Hon. I. Bartlett and Hon. William C. +Bradley, of the House of Representatives; Rev. Wm. Hawley and Rev. +E. Allen.</p> + +<p>"SALMON ——.</p> + +<p>"Dec. 23—3td & eotJ8."</p></div> + +<p>The "Hon. Henry Clay" was then Secretary of State. The "Hon. D. Chase" +referred to was Salmon's uncle Dudley, then United States Senator from +Vermont. Congress was now in session, and he had arrived in town. He was +a man of great practical sagacity, and kept a true heart beating under +an exterior which appeared sometimes austere and eccentric. He had the +year before been a second time elected to the Senate; and when he was on +his way to Washington, Salmon had gone over from Hanover to Woodstock to +meet him. They occupied the same room at the tavern, and the uncle had +given the nephew some very good advice. What he said of the human +passions was characteristic of the man; and it made a strong impression +upon the mind of the youth:—</p> + +<p>"A man's passions are given him for good, and not evil. They are not to +be destroyed, but controlled. If they get the mastery, they destroy the +man; but kept in their place, they are sources of power and happiness."</p> + +<p>And he used this illustration, which, though the same thing has been +said by others, remains, nevertheless, fresh as truth itself:—</p> + +<p>"The passions are the winds that fill our sails; but the helmsman must +be faithful, if we would avoid shipwreck, and reach the happy port at +last."</p> + +<p>Salmon had remembered well these words of his uncle, and the night spent +with him at the Woodstock inn. Hearing of his arrival in Washington, he +had called on him at his boarding-house. The Senator received him +kindly, listened to his plans, approved them, and helped him to procure +the references named in the advertisement.</p> + +<p>Day after day the advertisement appeared; and day after day Salmon +waited for pupils. But his room, "three doors west of Brown's Hotel," +remained unvisited. Sometimes, at first, when there came a knock at Mrs. +Markham's door, his heart gave a bound of expectation; but it was never +a knock for him.</p> + +<p>So went out the old year, drearily enough for Salmon. He had made the +acquaintance of several people; but friends he had none. There was +nobody to whom he could open his heart,—for he was not one of those +persons "of so loose soul" that they hasten to pour out their troubles +and appeal for sympathy to the first chance-comer. In the mean time the +advertisement was to be paid for, barren of benefit though it had been +to him. There was also his board-bill to be settled at the end of each +week; and Salmon saw his slender purse grow lank and lanker than ever, +with no means within his reach of replenishing it.</p> + +<p>The new year came; but it brought no brightening skies to him. Lonely +enough those days were! When tired of waiting in his room, he would go +out and walk,—always alone. He strolled up and down the Potomac, and +sometimes crossed over to the Virginia shore, and climbed the brown, +wooded banks there, and listened to the clamor of the crows in the +leafless oak-trees. There was something in their wild cawing, in the +desolateness of the fields, in the rush of <a name="Page_458" id="Page_458"></a>the cold river, that suited +his mood. It was winter in his spirit too, just then.</p> + +<p>Sometimes he visited the halls of Congress, and saw the great +legislators of those days. There was something here that fed his heart. +Wintry as his prospects were, the sun still shone overhead; his courage +never failed him; he never gave way to weak repining; and when he +entered those halls,—when he saw the deep fire in the eyes of Webster, +and heard the superb thunder of his voice,—when he listened to the +witty and terrible invectives of Randolph, that "meteor of Congress," as +Benton calls him, and watched the electric effect of the "long and +skinny forefinger" pointed and shaken,—when charmed by this speaker, or +convinced by that, or roused to indignation by another,—there was +kindled a sense of power within his own breast, a fire prophetic of his +future.</p> + +<p>On returning home, he would look on his table for communications, or he +would ask, "Has anybody called for me to-day?" But there was never any +letter; and Mrs. Markham's gentle response always was, "No one, Sir."</p> + +<p>The thirteenth of January passed,—his birthday. He was now nineteen. +When the world is bright before us, birthdays are not so unpleasant. But +to feel that your time is slipping away from you, with nothing +accomplishing,—to see no rainbow of promise in the clouds,—to walk the +streets of a lonely city, and think of home,—these things make a +birthday sad and solitary.</p> + +<p>At last his money was all gone. The prospect was more than dismal,—it +was appalling. What was he to do?</p> + +<p>Should he borrow of his uncle? "Not unless it be to keep me from +starvation!" was his proud resolve.</p> + +<p>Should he apply to his mother? The remembrance of what she had already +done for him was as much as his heart could bear. Her image, venerable, +patient, blind, was before him: he recalled the sacrifices she had made +for his sake, postponing her own comfort, and accepting pain and +privation, in order that her boy might have an education; and he was +filled with remorse at the thought that he had never before fully +appreciated all that love and devotion. For so it is: seldom, until too +late, comes any true recognition of such sacrifices. But when she who +made them is no longer with us,—too often, alas, when she has passed +forever beyond the reach of filial gratitude and affection,—we awake at +once to a realization of her worth and of our loss.</p> + +<p>What Salmon did was to make a confidant of Mrs. Markham; for he felt +that she at least ought to know his resources.</p> + +<p>"This is all <i>I</i> have for the present," he said to her one day, when +paying his week's bill. "I thought you ought to know. I do not wish to +appear a swindler,"—with a gloomy smile.</p> + +<p>"You a swindler!" exclaimed the good woman, with glistening eyes. "I +would trust you as far as I would trust myself. If you haven't any +money, never mind. You shall stay, and pay me when you can. Don't worry +yourself at all. It will turn out right, I am sure. You'll have pupils +yet."</p> + +<p>"I trust so," said Salmon, touched by her kindness. "At all events, if +my life is spared, you shall be paid some day. Now you know how I am +situated; and if you choose to keep me longer on an uncertainty, I shall +be greatly obliged to you."</p> + +<p>His voice shook a little as he spoke.</p> + +<p>"As long as you please," she replied.</p> + +<p>Just then there was a knock.</p> + +<p>"Maybe that is for you!"</p> + +<p>And she hastened away, rather to conceal her emotion, I suspect, than in +the hope of admitting a patron for her boarder.</p> + +<p>She returned in a minute with shining countenance.</p> + +<p>"A gentleman and his little boy, to see Mr. ——! I have shown them into +the parlor."</p> + +<p>Salmon was amazed. Could it be true? A pupil at last! He gave a hurried +glance at himself In the mirror, straightened his shirt-collar, gave his +hair a touch, <a name="Page_459" id="Page_459"></a>and descended, with beating heart, to meet his visitor.</p> + +<p>He was dignified enough, however, on entering the parlor, and so cool +you would never have suspected that he almost felt his fate depending +upon this gentleman's business.</p> + +<p>He was a Frenchman,—polite, affable, and of a manner so gracious, you +would have said he had come to beg a favor, rather than to grant one.</p> + +<p>"This is Mr. ——? My name is Bonfils. This is my little boy. We have +come to entreat of you the kindness to take him into your school."</p> + +<p>"I will do so most gladly!" said Salmon, shaking the boy's hand.</p> + +<p>"You are very good. We shall be greatly indebted to you. When does your +school commence?"</p> + +<p>"As soon, Sir, as I shall have engaged a sufficient number of pupils."</p> + +<p>"All! you have not a great number, then?"</p> + +<p>"I have none," Salmon was obliged to confess.</p> + +<p>"None? You surprise me! I have seen your advertisement, I hear good +things said of you,—why, then, no pupils?"</p> + +<p>"I am hardly known yet. Allow me to count your son here my first, and I +have no doubt but others will soon come in."</p> + +<p>"Assuredly! Make your compliments to Mr. ——, my son. I shall interest +myself. I think I shall send you some pupils. In mean time, my son will +wait."</p> + +<p>And with many expressions of good-will the cheerful Monsieur Bonfils +withdrew.</p> + +<p>This was a gleam of hope. The door of Providence had opened just a +crack.</p> + +<p>It opened no farther, however. No more pupils came. Salmon waited. Day +after day glided by like sand under his feet. He could not afford even +to advertise now. He was getting fearfully in debt; and debt is always a +nightmare to a generous and upright mind.</p> + +<p>"Any pupils yet?" asked Monsieur Bonfils, meeting him, one day, in the +street.</p> + +<p>"Not one!" said Salmon, with gloomy emphasis.</p> + +<p>"Ah, that is unfortunate!"</p> + +<p>He expected nothing less than that the Frenchman would add,—"Then I +must place my son elsewhere." But no; he was polite as ever; he was +charming.</p> + +<p>"You should have many before now. I have spoken for you to my friends. +But patience, my dear Sir. You will succeed. In mean time we will wait."</p> + +<p>And with a cordial hand-shake, and a Parisian flourish, he smilingly +passed on, leaving a gleam of sunshine on the young man's path.</p> + +<p>Now Salmon was one who would never, if he could help it, abandon an +undertaking in which he had once embarked. But when convinced that +persistence was hopeless, then, however reluctantly, he would give it +up. On the present occasion, he was not only spending his time and +exhausting his energies in a pursuit which grew each day more and more +dubious, but his conscience was stung with the thought that he was +wronging others. Kind as Mrs. Markham was to him, he did not like to +look her in the face and feel that he owed her a debt which was always +increasing, and which he knew not how he should ever pay.</p> + +<p>"Why don't you get a place in the Department?" said Williams, that +enviable fellow, who had light duties, several hours each day to +himself, and eight hundred a year!</p> + +<p>"That's more easily said than done!" And Salmon shook his head.</p> + +<p>"No, it isn't!" The fortunate Williams sat with his legs upon the table, +one foot on the other, a pipe in his mouth, and a book in his hand, +enjoying himself. "You have an uncle in the Senate. Ask him to use his +influence for you. He can get you a place." And puffing a fragrant cloud +complacently into the air, he returned to his pleasant reading.</p> + +<p>Salmon walked the room. He went out and walked the street. A sore +struggle was taking place in his breast. Should he give up the school? +Should he go and <a name="Page_460" id="Page_460"></a>ask this thing of his uncle? Oh, for somebody to whom +he could go for counsel and sympathy!</p> + +<p>"Williams is perhaps right I may wait a year, and not get another pupil. +Meanwhile I am growing shabby. I need a new pair of boots. My +washerwoman must be paid. Why not get a clerkship as a temporary thing, +if nothing more? My uncle can get it for me, without any trouble to +himself. It is not like asking him for money."</p> + +<p>Yet he dreaded to trouble the Senator even thus much. Proud and +sensitive natures do not like to beg favors, any way.</p> + +<p>"I'll wait one day longer. Then, if not a pupil applies, I'll go to my +uncle—"</p> + +<p>He waited twenty-four hours. Not a pupil. Then, desperate and +discouraged at last, Salmon buttoned his coat, and walked fast through +the streets to his uncle's boarding-house.</p> + +<p>It was evening. The Senator was at home.</p> + +<p>"Well, Salmon?" inquiringly. "How do you get on?"</p> + +<p>"Poorly," said Salmon, sitting down, with his hat on his knee.</p> + +<p>"You must have patience, boy!" said the Senator, laying down a pamphlet +open at the page where he was reading when his nephew came in. "Pluck +and patience,—those are the two oars that pull the boat."</p> + +<p>"I have patience enough, and I don't think I'm lacking in pluck," +replied Salmon, coldly. "But one thing I lack, and am likely to +lack,—pupils, I've only one, and I expect every day to lose him."</p> + +<p>"Well, what can I do for you?" said the Senator, perceiving that his +nephew had come for something.</p> + +<p>"I would like to have you get me a place in the Treasury Department."</p> + +<p>It was a minute before Dudley Chase replied. He took up the pamphlet, +rolled it together, then threw it abruptly upon the table.</p> + +<p>"Salmon," said he, "listen. I once got an appointment for a nephew of +mine, and it ruined him. If you want half-a-dollar with which to buy a +spade, and go out and dig for your living, I'll give it to you +cheerfully. But I will not get you a place under Government."</p> + +<p>Salmon felt a choking sensation in his throat. He knew his uncle did not +mean it for unkindness; but the sentence seemed hard. He arose, +speechless for a moment, mechanically brushing his hat.</p> + +<p>"Thank you. I will not trouble you for the half-dollar. I shall try to +get along without the appointment. Good night, uncle."</p> + +<p>"Good night, Salmon." Dudley accompanied him to the door. He must have +seen what a blow he had given him. "You think me harsh," he added; "but +the time will come when you will see that this is the best advice I +could give you."</p> + +<p>"Perhaps," said Salmon, stiffly; and be walked away, filled with +disappointment and bitterness.</p> + +<p>"Well, did he promise it?" asked Williams, who sat up awaiting his +return.</p> + +<p>He had been thinking he would like to have Salmon in his own room at the +Department; but now, seeing how serious he looked, his own countenance +fell.</p> + +<p>"What! Didn't he give you any encouragement?"</p> + +<p>"On the other hand," said Salmon, "he advised me to buy a spade and go +to digging for my living! And I shall do it before I ask again for an +appointment."</p> + +<p>Williams was astonished. He thought the Senator from Vermont must be +insane.</p> + +<p>But, after the lapse of a few years, perhaps he, too, saw that the uncle +had given his nephew good advice indeed. Williams remained a clerk in +the Department, and was never anything else. Perhaps, if Salmon had got +the appointment he sought, he would have become a clerk like him, and +would never have been anything else.</p> + +<p>In a little more than twenty years Salmon was himself a Senator, and had +the making of such clerks. And what <a name="Page_461" id="Page_461"></a>happened a dozen years later? This: +he who had once sought in vain a petty appointment was called to +administer the finances of the nation. Instead of a clerk grown gray in +the Department, to whom the irreverent youngsters might be saying +to-day, "——, do this," or, "——, do that," and he doeth it, he is +himself the supreme ruler there. He could never have got <i>that</i> place by +promotion in the Department itself. I mention this, not to speak +slightingly of clerkships,—for he who does his duty faithfully in any +calling, however humble, is worthy of honor,—but to show that the ways +of Providence are not our ways, and that often we are disappointed for +our own good. Had a clerkship been what was in store for Salmon, he +would have obtained it; but since, had he got it, he would probably have +never been ready to give it up, how fortunate that he received instead +the offer of fifty cents wherewith to purchase a spade!</p> + +<p>It may be, when the new Secretary entered upon his duties, Williams was +there still; for there were men in the Treasury who had been there a +much longer term than from 1826 to 1861. I should like to know. I can +fancy him, gray now, slightly bald, and rather round-shouldered, but +cheerful as a cricket, introducing himself to the chief.</p> + +<p>"My name is Williams. Don't you remember Williams,—boarded at Mrs. +Markham's in '26 and '27, when you did?"</p> + +<p>"What! David Williams? Are you here yet?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, your Honor." (These old clerks all say, "Your Honor," in +addressing the Secretary. The younger ones are not so respectful.) "I +was never so lucky as to be turned out, and I was never quite prepared +to leave. You have got in at last, I see! But it was necessary for you +to make a wide circuit first, in order to come in at the top!"</p> + +<p>Did such an interview ever take place, I wonder?</p> + +<p>But we are talking of that evening so long ago, when Williams seemed the +lucky one, and things looked so black to Salmon, after he had asked of +his uncle bread, and received (as he then thought) a stone.</p> + +<p>"Well, then I don't know what the deuse you <i>will</i> do!" said Williams, +knocking the ashes out of his pipe.</p> + +<p>You would have said that his hopes of Salmon were likewise ashes: he had +entertained himself with them a little while; now they were burnt out; +and he seemed to knock them out of his pipe, too, into the fire. He got +up, yawned, said he pitied ——, and went to bed.</p> + +<p>In a little while his breathing denoted that he was fast asleep.</p> + +<p>Salmon went to bed, too; but did he sleep?</p> + +<p>Do not think, after all this, that he gave way to weak despondency. +Something within him seemed to say, "What you have you must obtain +through earnest struggle and endeavor. It is only commonplace people and +weaklings who find the hinges of life all smoothly oiled. Great doors do +not open so easily. Be brave, be strong, be great." It was the voice of +Faith speaking within him.</p> + +<p>The next morning he arose, more a man than he had ever felt before. This +long and severe trial had been necessary to develop what was in him. His +self-reliance, his strength of character, his faith in God's +providence,—these were tried, and not found wanting.</p> + +<p>Still the veil of the future remained impenetrable. Not a gleam of light +shone through its sable folds. He could only watch for its uplifting, +and sit still.</p> + +<p>"A bad beginning makes a good ending," said Williams, one evening, to +comfort him.</p> + +<p>"Yes,—and a good beginning sometimes makes a bad ending. I had a lesson +on that subject once. When I was about eleven years old, I started from +Keene, with one of my sisters, to go and visit another sister, who was +married and living at Hookset Falls, over on the Merrimac. It was in +winter, and we set out in a sleigh with one horse. I was driver. My idea +of sleighing was bells and <a name="Page_462" id="Page_462"></a>fast driving; and I put the poor beast up to +all he knew. We intended to reach a friend's house, at Peterborough, +before night; but I found I had used up our horse-power before we had +made much more than half the journey. Then came on a violent +snow-squall, which obliterated the track. It grew dark; we were blinded +by the storm; we got into drifts, and finally quite lost our way. Not a +house was in sight, and the horse was tired out. The prospect of a night +in the storm, and only a winding-sheet of snow to cover us, made me +bitterly regret the foolish ambition with which I had set out. At last +my sister, whose eyes were better than mine, saw a light. We went +wallowing through the drifts towards it, and discovered a house. Here we +got a boy to guide us; and so at last reached our friend's, in as sad a +plight as ever two such mortals were in. Since which time," added +Salmon, "I have rather inclined to the opinion that slow beginnings, +with steady progress, are best."</p> + +<p>"That's first-rate philosophy!" said Williams, secretly congratulating +himself, however, on having made what he considered a brisk start in +life.</p> + +<p>One day Salmon passed a store where some spades were exposed for sale. +He stopped to look at them. There was a strange smile on his face.</p> + +<p>"Perhaps, after all, digging is my vocation! Well, it is an honorable +one. I only wish to know what God would have me to do. If to dig, then I +will undertake it cheerfully."</p> + +<p>However, there was one great objection to his lifting a spade. It would +first have been necessary to apply to his uncle for the once-rejected +half-dollar. He was determined never to do that.</p> + +<p>He walked home, very thoughtful. He could not see how it was possible +that any good fortune should ever happen to him in Washington. The +sights of the city had become exceedingly distasteful to him, associated +as they were with his hopes deferred and his heart-sickness. He reached +his door. Mrs. Markham met him with beaming countenance.</p> + +<p>"There is a gentleman waiting for you! I reckon it's another pupil!"</p> + +<p>His face brightened for an instant. But it was clouded again quickly, as +be reflected,—</p> + +<p>"<i>One</i> more pupil! Very likely! That makes two! At this rate, I shall +have four in the course of a year!"</p> + +<p>He was inclined to be sarcastic with himself. But he checked the +ungrateful thoughts at once.</p> + +<p>"What Providence sends me, that let me cheerfully and thankfully +accept!"</p> + +<p>He entered the parlor. A gentlemanly person, with an air of culture, +advanced to meet him.</p> + +<p>"This is Mr. ——?"</p> + +<p>"That is my name, Sir."</p> + +<p>"Mrs. Markham said you would be in in a minute; so I have waited."</p> + +<p>"You are very kind to do so, Sir. Sit down."</p> + +<p>"I have seen your advertisement in the 'Intelligencer.' You still think +of establishing a school?"</p> + +<p>"That is my intention."</p> + +<p>"May I ask if you have been successful in obtaining pupils?"</p> + +<p>"Not very. I have one engaged. I would like a dozen more, to begin +with."</p> + +<p>The gentleman took his hat. "Of course he will go, now he knows what my +prospects are!" But Salmon was mistaken. The visitor seemed to have +taken his hat merely for the sake of having something in his hands, to +occupy them.</p> + +<p>"Then perhaps you will be pleased to listen to my proposition?</p> + +<p>"Certainly, Sir."</p> + +<p>"My name is Plumley. I have established a successful classical school, +as you may be aware. It is in G-Street."</p> + +<p>"I have heard of you, Sir." And Salmon might have added, "I have envied +you!"</p> + +<p>"Well, Mrs. Phimley has recently opened a young ladies' school, which +has succeeded beyond all our expectations."</p> + +<p>"I congratulate you sincerely!"</p> + +<p>"But it is found that the two schools are more than we can attend to. I +propose <a name="Page_463" id="Page_463"></a>to give up one. Now, if you choose to take the boys' school off +my hands, I will make over my entire interest in it to you. Perhaps you +may know the character the school sustains. We have, as pupils, sons of +the Honorable Henry Clay, William Wirt, Southard, and other eminent men. +The income amounts to something like eight hundred a year. You can go in +next Monday, if you like."</p> + +<p>Thus suddenly the door, so long mysteriously closed, flew open wide, "on +golden hinges turning." What Salmon saw within was heaven. He was +dazzled. He was almost stunned with happiness. His lips quivered, his +voice failed him as he spoke.</p> + +<p>"Mr. Plumley, this is—you are—too kind!"</p> + +<p>"You accept?"</p> + +<p>"Most gratefully!"</p> + +<p>The young man was regaining possession of himself. He grasped the +other's hand.</p> + +<p>"You do not know what this is to me, Sir! You cannot know from what you +have saved me! Providence has surely sent you to me! I cannot thank you +now; but some day—perhaps—it may be in my power to do you a service."</p> + +<p>He was not the only one happy. Mr. Plumley felt the sweetness of doing a +kind action for one who was truly worthy and grateful. From that moment +they were friends. Salmon engaged to see him again, and make +arrangements for entering the school the next Monday; and they parted.</p> + +<p>His benefactor gone, Salmon hastened to tell the good news to Mrs. +Markham. But he could not remain in the house. His joy was too great to +be thus confined. Again he went out,—but how different now the world +looked to his eyes! He had not observed before that it was such a lovely +spring day. The sky overhead was of heaven's deepest hue. The pure, +sweet air was like the elixir of life. The hills were wondrously +beautiful, all about the city; and it seemed, that, whichever way he +turned, there were birds singing in sympathy with his joy. The Potomac, +stretching away with soft and misty glimmer between its hazy banks, was +like the river of some exquisite dream.</p> + +<p>It was no selfish happiness he felt. He thought of his mother and +sisters at home,—of all those to whom he was indebted; and in the +lightness of his spirit, after its heavy burden had been taken away, he +lifted up his heart in thanksgiving to the Giver of all blessings.</p> + +<p>The school, transferred to his charge, continued successful; and it +opened the way to successes of greater magnitude. Through all his +subsequent career he looked back to this as the beginning; and he ever +retained for Mr. Plumley the feeling we cherish for one whom we regard +as a Heaven-appointed agent of some great benefaction. Were it not for +trenching upon ground too private and personal, we might here complete +the romance, by relating how the young man's vaguely uttered +presentiment, that he might some day render him a service, was, long +afterwards, touchingly realized. But enough. All we promised ourselves +at the start was a glance at the Secretary's first visit to Washington.</p><p><a name="Page_464" id="Page_464"></a></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="HOUSE_AND_HOME_PAPERS" id="HOUSE_AND_HOME_PAPERS"></a>HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS.</h2> + +<p>BY CHRISTOPHER CROWFIELD.</p> + +<p>IV.</p> + + +<p>Talking to you in this way once a month, O my confidential reader, there +seems to be danger, as in all intervals of friendship, that we shall not +readily be able to take up our strain of conversation, just where we +left off. Suffer me, therefore, to remind you that the month past left +us seated at the fireside, just as we had finished reading of what a +home was, and how to make one.</p> + +<p>The fire had burned low, and great, solid hickory coals were winking +dreamily at us from out their fluffy coats of white ashes,—just as if +some household sprite there were opening now one eye and then the other, +and looking in a sleepy, comfortable way at us.</p> + +<p>The close of my piece, about the good house-mother, had seemed to tell +on my little audience. Marianne had nestled close to her mother, and +laid her head on her knee; and though Jennie sat up straight as a pin, +yet her ever-busy knitting was dropped in her lap, and I saw the glint +of a tear in her quick, sparkling eye,—yes, actually a little bright +bead fell upon her work; whereupon she started up actively, and declared +that the fire wanted just one more stick to make a blaze before bedtime; +and then there was such a raking among the coals, such an adjusting of +the andirons, such vigorous arrangement of the wood, and such a brisk +whisking of the hearth-brush, that it was evident Jennie had something +on her mind.</p> + +<p>When all was done, she sat down again and looked straight into the +blaze, which went dancing and crackling up, casting glances and flecks +of light on our pictures and books, and making all the old, familiar +furniture seem full of life and motion.</p> + +<p>"I think that's a good piece," she said, decisively. "I think those are +things that should be thought about."</p> + +<p>Now Jennie was the youngest of our flock, and therefore, in a certain +way, regarded by my wife and me as perennially "the baby"; and these +little, old-fashioned, decisive ways of announcing her opinions seemed +so much a part of her nature, so peculiarly "Jennyish," as I used to +say, that my wife and I only exchanged amused glances over her head, +when they occurred.</p> + +<p>In a general way, Jennie, standing in the full orb of her feminine +instincts like Diana in the moon, rather looked down on all masculine +views of women's matters as "<i>tolerabiles ineptiae</i>"; but towards her +papa she had gracious turns of being patronizing to the last degree; and +one of these turns was evidently at its flood-tide, as she proceeded to +say,—</p> + +<p>"<i>I</i> think papa is right,—that keeping house and having a home, and all +that, is a very serious thing, and that people go into it with very +little thought about it. I really think those things papa has been +saying there ought to be thought about."</p> + +<p>"Papa," said Marianne, "I wish you would tell me exactly how <i>you</i> would +spend that money you gave me for house-furnishing. I should like just +your views."</p> + +<p>"Precisely," said Jennie, with eagerness; "because it is just as papa +says,—a sensible man, who has thought, and had experience, can't help +having some ideas, even about women's affairs, that are worth attending +to. I think so, decidedly."</p> + +<p>I acknowledged the compliment for my sex and myself with my best bow.</p> + +<p>"But then, papa," said Marianne, "I can't help feeling sorry that one +can't live in such a way as to have beautiful things around one. I'm +sorry they must cost so much, and take so much care, for I am made so +that I really want them. I do so like to see pretty things! I do like +<a name="Page_465" id="Page_465"></a>rich carpets and elegant carved furniture, and fine china and cut-glass +and silver. I can't bear mean, common-looking rooms. I should so like to +have my house look beautiful!"</p> + +<p>"Your house ought not to look mean and common,—your house ought to look +beautiful," I replied. "It would be a sin and a shame to have it +otherwise. No house ought to be fitted up for a future home without a +strong and a leading reference to beauty in all its arrangements. If I +were, a Greek, I should say that the first household libation should be +made to beauty; but, being an old-fashioned Christian, I would say that +he who prepares a home with no eye to beauty neglects the example of the +great Father who has filled our earth-home with such elaborate +ornament."</p> + +<p>"But then, papa, there's the money!" said Jennie, shaking her little +head wisely. "You men don't think of that. You want us girls, for +instance, to be patterns of economy, but we must always be wearing +fresh, nice things; you abhor soiled gloves and worn shoes: and yet how +is all this to be done without money? And it's just so in housekeeping. +You sit in your arm-chairs and conjure up visions of all sorts of +impossible things to be done; but when mamma there takes out that little +account-book, and figures away on the cost of things, where do the +visions go?"</p> + +<p>"You are mistaken, my little dear, and you talk just like a +woman,"—(this was my only way of revenging myself,)—"that is to say, +you jump to conclusions, without sufficient knowledge. I maintain that +in house-furnishing, as well as woman-furnishing, there's nothing so +economical as beauty."</p> + +<p>"There's one of papa's paradoxes!" said Jennie.</p> + +<p>"Yes," said I, "that is my thesis, which I shall nail up over the +mantel-piece there, as Luther nailed his to the church-door. It is time +to rake up the fire now; but to-morrow night I will give you a paper on +the Economy of the Beautiful."</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>"Come, now we are to have papa's paradox," said Jennie, as soon as the +teachings had been carried out.</p> + +<p><i>Entre nous</i>, I must tell you that insensibly we had fallen into the +habit of taking our tea by my study-fire. Tea, you know, is a mere +nothing in itself, its only merit being its social and poetic +associations, its warmth and fragrance,—and the more socially and +informally it can be dispensed, the more in keeping with its airy and +cheerful nature.</p> + +<p>Our circle was enlightened this evening by the cheery visage of Bob +Stephens, seated, as of right, close to Marianne's work-basket.</p> + +<p>"You see, Bob," said Jennie, "papa has undertaken to prove that the most +beautiful things are always the cheapest."</p> + +<p>"I'm glad to hear that," said Bob,—"for there's a carved antique +bookcase and study-table that I have my eye on, and if this can in any +way be made to appear"—</p> + +<p>"Oh, it won't be made to appear," said Jennie, settling herself at her +knitting, "only in some transcendental, poetic sense, such as papa can +always make out. Papa is more than half a poet, and his truths turn out +to be figures of rhetoric, when one comes to apply them to matters of +fact."</p> + +<p>"Now, Miss Jennie, please remember my subject and thesis," I +replied,—"that in house-furnishing there is nothing so economical as +beauty; and I will make it good against all comers, not by figures of +rhetoric, but by figures of arithmetic. I am going to be very +matter-of-fact and commonplace in my details, and keep ever in view the +addition-table. I will instance a case which has occurred under my own +observation."</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>THE ECONOMY OF THE BEAUTIFUL.</p> + +<p>Two of the houses lately built on the new land in Boston were bought by +two friends, Philip and John. Philip had plenty of money, and paid the +cash down for his house, without feeling the slightest <a name="Page_466" id="Page_466"></a>vacancy in his +pocket. John, who was an active, rising young man, just entering on a +flourishing business, had expended all his moderate savings for years in +the purchase of his dwelling, and still had a mortgage remaining, which +he hoped to clear off by his future successes. Philip begins the work of +furnishing as people do with whom money is abundant, and who have simply +to go from shop to shop and order all that suits their fancy and is +considered 'the thing' in good society. John begins to furnish with very +little money. He has a wife and two little ones, and he wisely deems +that to insure to them a well-built house, in an open, airy situation, +with conveniences for warming, bathing, and healthy living, is a wise +beginning in life; but it leaves him little or nothing beyond.</p> + +<p>Behold, then, Philip and his wife, well pleased, going the rounds of +shops and stores in fitting up their new dwelling, and let us follow +step by step. To begin with the wall-paper. Imagine a front and back +parlor, with folding-doors, with two south windows on the front, and two +looking on a back court, after the general manner of city houses. We +will suppose they require about thirty rolls of wall-paper. Philip buys +the heaviest French velvet, with gildings and traceries, at four dollars +a roll. This, by the time it has been put on, with gold mouldings, +according to the most established taste of the best paper-hangers, will +bring the wall-paper of the two rooms to a figure something like two +hundred dollars. Now they proceed to the carpet-stores, and there are +thrown at their feet by obsequious clerks velvets and Axminsters, with +flowery convolutions and medallion-centres, as if the flower-gardens of +the tropics were whirling in waltzes, with graceful lines of +arabesque,—roses, callas, lilies, knotted, wreathed, twined, with blue +and crimson and golden ribbons, dazzling marvels of color and tracery. +There, is no restraint in price,—four or six dollars a yard, it is all +the same to them,—and soon a magic flower-garden blooms on the floors, +at a cost of five hundred dollars. A pair of elegant rugs, at fifty +dollars apiece, complete the inventory, and bring our rooms to the mark +of eight hundred dollars for papering and carpeting alone. Now come the +great mantel-mirrors for four hundred more, and our rooms progress. Then +comes the upholsterer, and measures our four windows, that he may +skilfully barricade them from air and sunshine. The fortifications +against heaven, thus prepared, cost, in the shape of damask, cord, +tassels, shades, laces, and cornices, about two hundred dollars per +window. To be sure, they make the rooms close and sombre as the grave; +but they are of the most splendid stuffs; and if the sun would only +reflect, he would see, himself, how foolish it was for him to try to +force himself into a window guarded by his betters. If there is anything +cheap and plebeian, it is sunshine and fresh air! Behold us, then, with +our two rooms papered, carpeted, and curtained for two thousand dollars; +and now are to be put in them sofas, lounges, étageres, centre-tables, +screens, chairs of every pattern and device, for which it is but +moderate to allow a thousand more. We have now two parlors furnished at +an outlay of three thousand dollars, without a single picture, a single +article of statuary, a single object of Art of any kind, and without any +light to see them by, if they were there. We must say for our Boston +upholsterers and furniture-makers that such good taste generally reigns +in their establishments that rooms furnished at hap-hazard from them +cannot fail of a certain air of good taste, so far as the individual +things are concerned. But the different articles we have supposed, +having been ordered without reference to one another or the rooms, have, +when brought together, no unity of effect, and the general result is +scattering and confused. If asked how Philip's parlors look, your reply +is,—"Oh, the usual way of such parlors,—everything that such people +usually get,—medallion-carpets, carved furniture, great mirrors, bronze +mantel-ornaments, and so on." The only impression a stranger receives, +while waiting <a name="Page_467" id="Page_467"></a>in the dim twilight of these rooms, is that their owner +is rich, and able to get good, handsome things, such as all other rich +people get.</p> + +<p>Now our friend John, as often happens in America, is moving in the same +social circle with Philip, visiting the same people,—his house is the +twin of the one Philip has been furnishing, and how shall he, with a few +hundred dollars, make his rooms even presentable beside those which +Philip has fitted up elegantly and three thousand?</p> + +<p>Now for the economy of beauty. Our friend must make his prayer to the +Graces,—for, if they cannot save him, nobody can. One thing John has to +begin with, that rare gift to man, a wife with the magic cestus of +Venus,—not around her waist, but, if such a thing could be, in her +finger-ends. All that she touches falls at once into harmony and +proportion. Her eye for color and form is intuitive: let her arrange a +garret, with nothing but boxes, barrels, and cast-off furniture in it, +and ten to one she makes it seem the most attractive place in the house. +It is a veritable "gift of good faërie," this tact of beautifying and +arranging, that some women have,—and, on the present occasion, it has a +real material value, that can be estimated in dollars and cents. Come +with us and you can see the pair taking their survey of the yet +unfurnished parlors, as busy and happy as a couple of blue-birds picking +up the first sticks and straws for their nest.</p> + +<p>"There are two sunny windows to begin with," says the good fairy, with +an appreciative glance. "That insures flowers all winter."</p> + +<p>"Yes," says John; "I never would look at a house without a good sunny +exposure. Sunshine is the best ornament of a house, and worth an extra +thousand a year.</p> + +<p>"Now for our wall-paper," says she. "Have you looked at wall-papers, +John?"</p> + +<p>"Yes; we shall get very pretty ones for thirty-seven cents a roll; all +you want of a paper, you know, is to make a ground-tint to throw out +your pictures and other matters, and to reflect a pleasant tone of +light."</p> + +<p>"Well, John, you know Uncle James says that a stone-color is the +best,—but I can't bear those cold blue grays."</p> + +<p>"Nor I," says John. "If we must have gray, let it at least be a gray +suffused with gold or rose-color, such as you see at evening in the +clouds."</p> + +<p>"So I think," responds she; "but better, I should like a paper with a +tone of buff,—something that produces warm yellowish reflections, and +will almost make you think the sun is shining in cold gray weather; and +then there is nothing that lights up so cheerfully in the evening. In +short, John, I think the color of a <i>zafferano</i> rose will be just about +the shade we want."</p> + +<p>"Well, I can find that, in good American paper, as I said before, at +from thirty-seven to forty cents a roll. Then, our bordering: there's an +important question, for that must determine the carpet, the chairs, and +everything else. Now what shall be the ground-tint of our rooms?"</p> + +<p>"There are only two to choose between," says the lady,—"green and +maroon: which is the best for the picture?"</p> + +<p>"I think," says John, looking above the mantel-piece, as if he saw a +picture there,—"I think a border of maroon velvet, with maroon +furniture, is the best for the picture."</p> + +<p>"I think so too," said she; "and then we will have that lovely maroon +and crimson carpet that I saw at Lowe's;—it is an ingrain, to be sure, +but has a Brussels pattern, a mossy, mixed figure, of different shades +of crimson; it has a good warm, strong color, and when I come to cover +the lounges and our two old arm-chairs with a pretty maroon <i>rep</i>, it +will make such a pretty effect."</p> + +<p>"Yes," said John; "and then, you know, our picture is so bright, it will +light up the whole. Everything depends on the picture."</p> + +<p>Now as to "the picture," it has a story must be told. John, having been +all his life a worshipper and adorer of beauty <a name="Page_468" id="Page_468"></a>and beautiful things, +had never passed to or from his business without stopping at the +print-shop windows, and seeing a little of what was there.</p> + +<p>On one of these occasions he was smitten to the heart with the beauty of +an autumn landscape, where the red maples and sumachs, the purple and +crimson oaks, all stood swathed and harmonized together in the hazy +Indian-summer atmosphere. There was a great yellow chestnut-tree, on a +distant hill, which stood out so naturally that John instinctively felt +his fingers tingling for a basket, and his heels alive with a desire to +bound over on to the rustling hill-side and pick up the glossy brown +nuts. Everything was there of autumn, even to the golden-rod and purple +asters and scarlet creepers in the foreground.</p> + +<p>John went in and inquired. It was by an unknown French artist, without +name or patrons, who had just come to our shores to study our scenery, +and this was the first picture he had exposed for sale. John had just +been paid a quarter's salary; he bethought him of board-bill and +washerwoman, sighed, and faintly offered fifty dollars.</p> + +<p>To his surprise he was taken up at once, and the picture became his. +John thought himself dreaming. He examined his treasure over and over, +and felt sure that it was the work of no amateur beginner, but of a +trained hand and a true artist-soul. So he found his way to the studio +of the stranger, and apologized for having got such a gem for so much +less than its worth. "It was all I <i>could</i> give, though," he said; "and +one who paid four times as much could not value it more." And so John +took one and another of his friends, with longer purses than his own, to +the studio of the modest stranger; and now his pieces command their full +worth in the market, and he works with orders far ahead of his ability +to execute, giving to the canvas the traits of American scenery as +appreciated and felt by the subtile delicacy of the French mind,—our +rural summer views, our autumn glories, and the dreamy, misty delicacy +of our snowy winter landscapes. Whoso would know the truth of the same, +let him inquire for the modest studio of Morvillier, at Malden, scarce a +bow-shot from our Boston.</p> + +<p>This picture had always been the ruling star of John's house, his main +dependence for brightening up his bachelor-apartments; and when he came +to the task of furbishing those same rooms for a fair occupant, the +picture was still his mine of gold. For a picture, painted by a real +artist, who studies Nature minutely and conscientiously, has something +of the charm of the good Mother herself,—something of her faculty of +putting on different aspects under different lights. John and his wife +had studied their picture at all hours of the day: they had seen how it +looked when the morning sun came aslant the scarlet maples and made a +golden shimmer over the blue mountains, how it looked toned down in the +cool shadows of afternoon, and how it warmed up in the sunset, and died +off mysteriously into the twilight; and now, when larger parlors were to +be furnished, the picture was still the tower of strength, the +rallying-point of their hopes.</p> + +<p>"Do you know, John," said the wife, hesitating, "I am really in doubt +whether we shall not have to get at least a few new chairs and a sofa +for our parlors? They are putting in such splendid things at the other +door that I am positively ashamed of ours; the fact is, they look almost +disreputable,—like a heap of rubbish."</p> + +<p>"Well," said John, laughing, "I don't suppose all together sent to an +auction-room would bring us fifty dollars, and yet, such as they are, +they answer the place of better things for us; and the fact is, Mary, +the hard impassable barrier in the case is, that there really <i>is no +money to get any more</i>."</p> + +<p>"Ah, well, then, if there isn't, we must see what we can do with these, +and summon all the good fairies to our aid," said Mary. "There's your +little cabinet-maker, John, will look over the things, <a name="Page_469" id="Page_469"></a>and furbish them +up; there's that broken arm of the chair must be mended, and everything +revarnished; then I have found such a lovely <i>rep</i>, of just the richest +shade of maroon, inclining to crimson, and when we come to cover the +lounges and arm-chairs and sofas and ottomans all alike, you know they +will be quite another thing."</p> + +<p>"Trust you for that, Mary! By-the-by, I've found a nice little woman, +who has worked on upholstery, who will come in by the day, and be the +hands that shall execute the decrees of your taste."</p> + +<p>"Yes, I am sure we shall get on capitally. Do you know that I'm almost +glad we can't get new things? it's a sort of enterprise to see what we +can do with old ones."</p> + +<p>"Now, you see, Mary," said John, seating himself on a lime-cask which +the plasterers had left, and taking out his memorandum-book, "you see, +I've calculated this thing all over; I've found a way by which I can +make our rooms beautiful and attractive without a cent expended on new +furniture."</p> + +<p>"Well, let's hear."</p> + +<p>"Well, my way is short and simple. We must put things into our rooms +that people will look at, so that they will forget to look at the +furniture, and never once trouble their heads about it. People never +look at furniture so long as there is anything else to look at; just as +Napoleon, when away on one of his expeditions, being told that the +French populace were getting disaffected, wrote back, 'Gild the <i>dome +des Invalides</i>' and so they gilded it, and the people, looking at that, +forgot everything else."</p> + +<p>"But I'm not clear yet," said Mary, "what is coming of this rhetoric."</p> + +<p>"Well, then, Mary, I'll tell you. A suit of new carved black-walnut +furniture, severe in taste and perfect in style, such as I should choose +at David and Saul's, could not be got under three hundred dollars, and I +haven't the three hundred to give. What, then, shall we do? We must fall +back on our resources; we must look over our treasures. We have our +proof cast of the great glorious head of the Venus di Milo; we have +those six beautiful photographs of Rome, that Brown brought to us; we +have the great German lithograph of the San Sisto Mother and Child, and +we have the two angel-heads, from the same; we have that lovely golden +twilight sketch of Heade's; we have some sea-photographs of Bradford's; +we have an original pen-and-ink sketch by Billings; and then, as before, +we have 'our picture.' What has been the use of our watching at the +gates and waiting at the doors of Beauty all our lives, if she hasn't +thrown us out a crust now and then, so that we might have it for time of +need? Now, you see, Mary, we must make the toilet of our rooms just as a +pretty woman makes hers when money runs low, and she sorts and freshens +her ribbons, and matches them to her hair and eyes, and, with a bow +here, and a bit of fringe there, and a button somewhere else, dazzles us +into thinking that she has an infinity of beautiful attire. Our rooms +are new and pretty of themselves, to begin with; the tint of the paper, +and the rich coloring of the border, corresponding with the furniture +and carpets, will make them seem prettier. And now for arrangement. Take +this front-room. I propose to fill those two recesses each side of the +fireplace with my books, in their plain pine cases, just breast-high +from the floor: they are stained a good dark color, and nobody need +stick a pin in them to find out that they are not rosewood. The top of +these shelves on either side to be covered with the same stuff as the +furniture, finished with a crimson fringe. On top of the shelves on one +side of the fireplace I shall set our noble Venus di Milo, and I shall +buy at Cicci's the lovely Clytie and put it the other side. Then I shall +get of Williams and Everett two of their chromo-lithographs, which give +you all the style and charm of the best English water-color school. I +will have the lovely Bay of Amalfi over my Venus, because she came from +those suns and skies of Southern Italy, and I will hang Lake<a name="Page_470" id="Page_470"></a> Como over +my Clytie. Then, in the middle, over the fireplace, shall be 'our +picture.' Over each door shall hang one of the lithographed angel-heads +of the San Sisto, to watch our going-out and coming-in; and the glorious +Mother and Child shall hang opposite the Venus di Milo, to show how +Greek and Christian unite in giving the noblest type to womanhood. And +then, when we have all our sketches and lithographs framed and hung here +and there, and your flowers blooming as they always do, and your ivies +wandering and rambling as they used to, and hanging in the most graceful +ways and places, and all those little shells and ferns and vases, which +you are always conjuring with, tastefully arranged, I'll venture to say +that our rooms will be not only pleasant, but beautiful, and that people +will oftener say, 'How beautiful!' when they enter, than if we spent +three times the money on new furniture."</p> + +<p>In the course of a year after this conversation, one and another of my +acquaintances were often heard speaking of John Merton's house. "Such +beautiful rooms,—so charmingly furnished,—you must go and see them. +What does make them so much pleasanter than those rooms in the other +house, which have everything in them that money can buy?" So said the +folk,—for nine people out of ten only feel the effect of a room, and +never analyze the causes from which it flows: they know that certain +rooms seem dull and heavy and confused, but they don't know why; that +certain others seem cheerful, airy, and beautiful, but they know not +why. The first exclamation, on entering John's parlors, was so often, +"How beautiful!" that it became rather a by-word in the family. +Estimated by their mere money-value, the articles in the rooms were of +very trifling worth; but as they stood arranged and combined, they had +all the effect of a lovely picture. Although the statuary was only +plaster, and the photographs and lithographs such as were all within the +compass of limited means, yet every one of them was a good thing of its +own kind, or a good reminder of some of the greatest works of Art. A +good plaster cast is a daguerrotype, so to speak, of a great statue, +though it may be bought for five or six dollars, while its original is +not to be had for any nameable sum. A chromo-lithograph of the best sort +gives all the style and manner and effect of Turner or Stanfield, or any +of the best of modern artists, though you buy it for five or ten +dollars, and though the original would command a thousand guineas. The +lithographs from Raphael's immortal picture give you the results of a +whole age of artistic culture, in a form within the compass of very +humble means. There is now selling for five dollars at Williams and +Everett's a photograph of Cheney's crayon drawing of the San Sisto +Madonna and Child, which has the very spirit of the glorious original. +Such a picture, hung against the wall of a child's room, would train its +eye from infancy; and yet how many will freely spend five dollars in +embroidery on its dress, that say they cannot afford works of Art!</p> + +<p>There was one advantage which John and his wife found in the way in +which they furnished their house, that I have hinted at before: it gave +freedom to their children. Though their rooms were beautiful, it was not +with the tantalizing beauty of expensive and frail knick-knacks. +Pictures hung against the wall, and statuary safely lodged on brackets, +speak constantly to the childish eye, but are out of reach of childish +fingers, and are not upset by childish romps. They are not like china +and crystal, liable to be used and abused by servants; they do not wear +out; they are not spoiled by dust, nor consumed by moths. The beauty +once there is always there; though the mother be ill and in her chamber, +she has no fears that she shall find it all wrecked and shattered. And +this style of beauty, inexpensive as it is, compared with luxurious +furniture, is a means of cultivation. No child is ever stimulated to +draw or to read by an Axminster carpet or a carved centre-table; but a +room surrounded <a name="Page_471" id="Page_471"></a>with photographs and pictures and fine casts suggests a +thousand inquiries, stimulates the little eye and hand. The child is +found with its pencil, drawing; or he asks for a book on Venice, or +wants to hear the history of the Roman Forum.</p> + +<p>But I have made my article too long. I will write another on the moral +and intellectual effects of house-furnishing.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>"I have proved my point, Miss Jennie, have I not? <i>In house-furnishing, +nothing is more economical than beauty</i>."</p> + +<p>"Yes, papa," said Jennie; "I give it up."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="THE_BLACK_PREACHER" id="THE_BLACK_PREACHER"></a>THE BLACK PREACHER.</h2> + +<p>A BRETON LEGEND.</p> + + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">At Carnac in Brittany, close on the bay,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">They show you a church, or rather the gray</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Ribs of a dead one, left there to bleach</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">With the wreck lying near on the crest of the beach;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Roofless and splintered with thunder-stone,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">'Mid lichen-blurred gravestones all alone,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">'Tis the kind of ruin strange sights to see</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">That may have their teaching for you and me.</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Something like this, then, my guide had to tell,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Perched on a saint cracked across when he fell.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">But since I might chance give his meaning a wrench,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">He talking his <i>patois</i> and I English-French,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I'll put what he told me, preserving the tone,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">In a rhymed prose that makes it half his, half my own.</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">An abbey-church stood here, once on a time,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Built as a death-bed atonement for crime:</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">'Twas for somebody's sins, I know not whose;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">But sinners are plenty, and you can choose.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Though a cloister now of the dusk-winged bat,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">'Twas rich enough once, and the brothers grew fat,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Looser in girdle and purpler in jowl,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Singing good rest to the founder's lost soul.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">But one day came Northmen, and lithe tongues of fire</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Lapped up the chapter-house, licked off the spire,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And left all a rubbish-heap, black and dreary,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Where only the wind sings <i>miserere</i>.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Of what the monks came by no legend runs,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">At least they were lucky in not being nuns.</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">No priest has kneeled since at the altar's foot,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Whose crannies are searched by the nightshade's root,</span><br /><a name="Page_472" id="Page_472"></a> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Nor sound of service is ever heard,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Except from throat of the unclean bird,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Hooting to unassoiled shapes as they pass</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">In midnights unholy his witches' mass,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Or shouting "Ho! ho!" from the belfry high</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">As the Devil's sabbath-train whirls by;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">But once a year, on the eve of All-Souls,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Through these arches dishallowed the organ rolls,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Fingers long fleshless the bell-ropes work,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The chimes peal muffled with sea-mists mirk,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The skeleton windows are traced anew</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">On the baleful flicker of corpse-lights blue,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And the ghosts must come, so the legend saith,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To a preaching of Reverend Doctor Death.</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Abbots, monks, barons, and ladies fair</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Hear the dull summons and gather there:</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">No rustle of silk now, no clink of mail,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Nor ever a one greets his church-mate pale;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">No knight whispers love in the <i>châtelaine's</i> ear,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">His next-door neighbor this five hundred year;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">No monk has a sleek <i>benedicite</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">For the great lord shadowy now as he;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Nor needeth any to hold his breath,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Lest he lose the least word of Doctor Death.</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">He chooses his text in the Book Divine,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Tenth verse of the Preacher in chapter nine:—</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"'Whatsoever thy hand shall find thee to do,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">That do with thy whole might, or thou shalt rue;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">For no man is wealthy or wise or brave</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">In that quencher of might-bes and would-bes, the grave.'</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Bid by the Bridegroom, 'To-morrow,' ye said,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And To-morrow was digging a trench for your bed;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Ye said, 'God can wait; let us finish our wine';</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Ye had wearied Him, fools, and that last knock was mine!"</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">But I can't pretend to give you the sermon,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Or say if the tongue were French, Latin, or German;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Whatever he preached in, I give you my word</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The meaning was easy to all that heard;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Famous preachers there have been and be,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">But never was one so convincing as he;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">So blunt was never a begging friar,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">No Jesuit's tongue so barbed with fire,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Cameronian never, nor Methodist,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Wrung gall out of Scripture with such a twist.</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And would you know who his hearers must be?</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I tell you just what my guide told me:</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Excellent teaching men have, day and night,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">From two earnest friars, a black and a white,</span><br /><a name="Page_473" id="Page_473"></a> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The Dominican Death and the Carmelite Life;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And between these two there is never strife,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">For each has his separate office and station,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And each his own work in the congregation;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Whoso to the white brother deafens his ears,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And cannot be wrought on by blessings or tears,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Awake in his coffin must wait and wait,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">In that blackness of darkness that means <i>too late</i>,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And come once a year, when the ghost-bell tolls,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">As till Doomsday it shall on the eve of All-Souls,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To hear Doctor Death, whose words smart with the brine</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Of the Preacher, the tenth verse of chapter nine.</span><br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="FOUQUET_THE_MAGNIFICENT" id="FOUQUET_THE_MAGNIFICENT"></a>FOUQUET THE MAGNIFICENT.</h2> + + +<p>Modern times began in France with the death of Mazarin. Spain, Austria, +and Italy no longer led the world in politics, literature, and +refinement. The <i>grande nation</i>, delivered from <i>Ligue</i> and <i>Fronde</i>, +took her position with England at the head of civilized Europe. This +great change had been going on during eighty years of battle, murder, +anarchy, and confusion. As always, the new grew up unnoticed, until it +overtopped the old. The transformation was complete in 1661, when Louis +XIV. appeared upon the scene, and gave his name to this brilliant +period, with not much better claim to the distinction than had Vespucci +to America.</p> + +<p>There had been a prodigious yield of brains in France. A host of clever +men developed the new ideas in every direction. Philosophy and science, +literature and language, manners, habits, dress, assumed the forms with +which we are so familiar. Then commenced the <i>grand siècle</i>, the era +Frenchmen date from. They look upon those gallant ancestors almost as +contemporaries, and still admire their feats in war, and laugh over +their strokes of wit. The books they wrote became classics, and were in +all hands until within the last twenty or thirty years. Latterly, +indeed, they have been less read, for thought is turning to fresh +fields, and society seems to be entering upon a new era.</p> + +<p>No man more fully recognized the great change that was going on, or did +more to help it forward, than Nicolas Fouquet, Vicomte de Vaux, and +Marquis de Belleîle,—but better known as the <i>Surintendant</i>. In the +pleasant social annals of France, Fouquet is the type of splendor, and +of sudden, hopeless ruin. "There was never a man so magnificent, there +was never a man so unfortunate," say the lively gentlemen and ladies in +their <i>Mémoires</i>. His story is told to point the old and dreary moral of +the instability of human prosperity. It is, indeed, like a tale of the +"Arabian Nights." The Dervish is made Grand Vizier. He marries the +Sultan's daughter. His palace owes its magical beauty to the Genies. The +pillars are of jasper, the bases and capitals of massive gold. The +Sultan frowns, waves his hand, and the crowd, who kissed the favorite's +slipper yesterday, hoot and jeer as they see him pass by to his dungeon, +disgraced, stripped, and beaten, Fouquet was of good family, the son of +a Councillor of State in Louis XIII.'s time. Educated for the +magistracy, he became <a name="Page_474" id="Page_474"></a>a <i>Maître des Requétes</i> (say Master in Chancery) +at twenty, and at thirty-five <i>Procureur-Général</i> (or Attorney-General) +of the Parliament of Paris, which was only a court of justice, although +it frequently attempted to usurp legislative, and even executive +functions. During the rebellious troubles of the Fronde, the Procureur +and his brother, the Abbé Fouquet, remained faithful to Mazarin and to +the throne. The Abbé, in the ardor of his zeal, once offered the Queen +his services to kill De Retz and salt him, if she would give her +consent. It was at the request of the Queen that the Cardinal made the +trusty Procureur <i>Surintendant des Finances</i>, the first position in +France after the throne and the prime-ministership.</p> + +<p>Pensions, and the promise of comfortable places, had collected about the +Surintendant talent, fashion, and beauty. Some of the ablest men in the +kingdom were in his employ. Pellisson, famous for ugliness and for wit, +the <i>Acanthe</i> of the Hôtel de Rambouillet, the beloved of Sappho +Scudéry, was his chief clerk. Pellisson was then a Protestant; but +Fouquet's disgrace, and four years in the Bastille, led him to reëxamine +the grounds of his religious faith. He became, luckily, enlightened on +the subject of his heresies at a time when the renunciation of +Protestantism led to honors and wealth. Change of condition followed +change of doctrine. The King attached him to his person as Secretary and +Historiographer, and gave him the management of the fund for the +conversion of Huguenots. Gourville, whom Charles II., an excellent +judge, called the wisest of Frenchmen, belonged to Fouquet, as a +receiver-general of taxes. Molière wrote two of his earlier plays for +the Surintendant. La Fontaine was an especial favorite. He bound himself +to pay for his quarterly allowance in quarterly madrigals, ballads, or +sonnets. If he failed, a bailiff was to be sent to levy on his stanzas. +He paid pretty regularly, but in a depreciated currency. The verses have +not the golden ring of the "Contes" and the "Fables."</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"Le Roi, l'État, la Patrie,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Partagent toute votre vie."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>That is a sample of their value. Quack-medicine poets often do as well. +He wrote "Adonis" for Fouquet, and had worked three years at the "Songe +de Vaux," when the ruin of his patron caused him to lay it aside. It is +a dull piece. Four fairies, <i>Palatiane, Hortésie, Apellanire, and +Calliopée</i>, make long speeches about their specialty in Art, as seen at +Vaux. Their names sufficiently denote it. A fish comes as ambassador +from Neptune to Vaux, the glory of the universe, where Oronte (Fouquet's +<i>alias</i>, in the affected jargon of the period)</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">"fait bâtir un palais magnifique,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Où règne l'ordre Ionique</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Avec beaucoup d'agrément."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Apollo comes and promises to take charge of the live-stock, and of the +picture-gallery. The Muses, too, are busy.</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"Pour lui Melpomène médite,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Thalie en est jalouse,"—</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>and soon—</p> + +<p>Fouquet's physician, Pecquet, is well known to physiologists by his +treatise, "<i>De Motu Chyli</i>," and by "Pecquet's reservoir." His patron +was warmly interested in the new discoveries in circulation, which were +then, and so long after, violently opposed by the <i>Purgons</i> and the +<i>Diafoirus</i> of the old school. The Surintendant's judgment was equally +good in Art. Le Brun, the painter, owed fame and fortune to him. He gave +him twelve thousand livres a year, besides paying a fixed price for each +of his works. With the exception of Renaudot's journal, Loret's weekly +gazette, published in the shape of a versified letter to Mademoiselle de +Longueville, was the only newspaper in France. Fouquet furnished the +editor with money and with items. He allowed Scarron sixteen hundred +livres a year, when Mazarin struck his name from the pension-list, as +punishment for a "<i>Mazarinade</i>," the only squib of the kind the Cardinal +had ever noticed. Poor Scarron was hopelessly paralyzed, and bedridden. +He had been a comely, robust fellow in his youth, given to dissipated +<a name="Page_475" id="Page_475"></a>courses. In a Carnival frolic, he appeared in the streets with two +companions in the character of bipeds with feathers,—a scanty addition +to Plato's definition of man. This airy costume was too much for French +modesty, proverbially shrinking and sensitive. The mob hooted and gave +chase. The maskers fled from the town and hid themselves in a marsh to +evade pursuit. The result of this venturesome <i>travestissement</i> was the +death of both his friends, and an attack of inflammatory rheumatism +which twisted Scarron for life into the shape of the letter Z.</p> + +<p>The Surintendant's <i>hôtel</i>, at St. Mandé, was a marvel of art, his +library the best in France. The number and value of his books was urged +against him, on his trial, as evidence of his peculations. His +country-seat, at Vaux, cost him eighteen millions of livres. Three +villages were bought and razed to enlarge the grounds. Le Vau built the +<i>château</i>. Le Brun painted the ceilings and panels. La Fontaine and +Michel Gervaise furnished French and Latin mottoes for the allegorical +designs. Le Nôtre laid out the gardens in the style which may still be +seen at Versailles. Torelli, an Italian engineer, decorated them with +artificial cascades and fountains, a wonder of science to Frenchmen in +the seventeenth century. Puget had collected the statues which +embellished them. There was a collection of wild animals, a rare +spectacle before the days of zoological gardens,—an aviary of foreign +birds,—tanks as large as ponds, in which, among other odd fish, swam a +sturgeon and a salmon taken in the Seine. Everything was magnificent, +and everything was new,—so original and so perfect, that Louis XIV., +after he had crushed the Surintendant, could find no plans so good and +no artists so skilful as these <i>pour embellir son règne</i>. He was obliged +to imitate the man he hated. Even Fouquet's men of letters were soon +enrolled in the service of the King.</p> + +<p>In March, 1661, Mazarin died, full of honor. His favorite saying, "<i>Il +tiempo è un galantuomo</i>," was fulfilled for him. In spite of many +desperate disappointments and defeats, <i>Messer Tiempo</i> had made him +rich, powerful, and triumphant. The young King, who had already +announced his theory of government in the well-known speech, "<i>L'État, +c'est moi</i>," waited patiently, and with respect, (filial, some have +said,) for the old man to depart. He put on mourning, a compliment never +paid but once before by a French sovereign to the memory of a +subject,—by Henry IV. to Gabrielle d'Estrées. When the Council came +together, the King told them, that hitherto he had permitted the late +Cardinal to direct the affairs of State, but that in future he should +take the duty upon himself,—the gentlemen present would aid him with +their advice, if he should see fit to ask for it. It was a "neat little +speech," and very much to the point: Louis XIV. had the talent of making +neat little speeches. But the Surintendant, who presided in the Council, +did not believe him. A prince, he thought, two-and-twenty years of age, +fond of show and of pleasure, of moderate capacity, and with no +education, might undertake for a while the cares of government, but, +when the novelty wore off, would tire of the labor. And then, whose +pretensions to shoulder the burden were so well founded as Fouquet's? He +was almost a king, and had the political patronage of a president. The +revenue of the nation passed through his hands. <i>Fermiers</i> and +<i>traitants</i>, those who farmed the taxes and those who gathered them for +a consideration, obeyed his nod and laid their offerings at his feet. A +judicious mixture of presents and promises had given him the control of +judges enough in the different Parliaments to fortify his views of the +public business by legal decisions. In his own Parliament he was +supreme. Clever agents, stationed in important places, both at home and +abroad, watched over his interests, and kept him informed of all that +transpired, by faithful couriers. But he misunderstood his position, and +was mistaken in his King. Louis XIV. had, indeed, little talent and less +education. He could <a name="Page_476" id="Page_476"></a>never learn Latin, at that time as much a part of a +gentleman's training as French is now with us; but he had what for want +of a more distinctive word we may call character,—that +well-proportioned mixture of sense, energy, and self-reliance which +obtains for its possessor more success in life, and more respect from +those about him, than brilliant mental endowments. It was the moral side +of his nature which was deficient. He was selfish, envious, and cruel; +and he had not that noble hatred of the crooked, the mean, and the +dishonorable which becomes a gentleman. Mazarin once said,—"There is +stuff enough in him to make four kings and one worthy man." Divide this +favorable opinion by four, and the result will be an approximation to +the value of Louis XIV. as a monarch and a man. There was a king in +him,—a determination to be master, and to bear no rival near the +throne, no matter of how secondary or trifling a nature the rivalry +might be.</p> + +<p>Fouquet had been deep in Mazarin's confidence, his agent and partner in +those sharp financial operations which had brought so much profit to the +Cardinal and so little to the Crown. One of their jobs was to buy up, at +an enormous discount, old and discredited claims against the Treasury, +dating from the Fronde, which, when held by the right parties, were paid +in full,—a species of fraud known by various euphemisms in the purest +of republics. All the checks and balances of our enlightened system of +administration, whether federal, state, or municipal, do not prevent +skilful officials from perverting vast sums of money to their own uses. +In France, demoralized by years of civil war, the official facilities +for plundering were concentrated in the hands of one clever man. We can +easily understand that his wealth was enormous, and his power +correspondingly great.</p> + +<p>When the late Cardinal, surfeited with spoils, was drawing near his end, +scruples of conscience, never felt before, led him to advise the King to +keep a strict watch upon the Surintendant. He recommended for that +purpose his steward, Colbert, of whose integrity and knowledge of +business he had the highest opinion. Colbert was made Under-Secretary of +State, and Fouquet's dismissal from office determined upon from that +time.</p> + +<p>The Surintendant had no previsions of danger. With his usual boldness, +he laid the financial "situation" of the kingdom before his new master, +confessed frankly what it was impossible to conceal, laid the blame of +all irregularities upon Mazarin, or upon the exigencies of the times, +and ended by imploring an amnesty for the past, and promising thrift and +economy for the future. The King appeared satisfied, and granted a full +pardon. Fouquet, more confident than ever, dashed on in the old way, +while Colbert and his clerks were quietly digging the pit into which he +was soon to fall. Colbert was reinforced by Séguier, the Chancellor, and +by Le Tellier, a Secretary of State, who had an energetic son, Louvois, +in the War Department. All three hated the Surintendant, and each hoped +to succeed him. Fouquet's ostentation and haughtiness had made him +enemies among the old nobility. Many of them were eager to see the proud +and prosperous man humiliated,—merely to gratify that wretched feeling +of envy and spite so inherent in poor human nature, and one of the +strongest proofs of that corruption "which standeth in the following of +Adam."</p> + +<p>Louis XIV. had reasons of his own for his determination to destroy the +Surintendant. First of all, he was afraid of him. The Fronde was fresh +in the royal memory. Fouquet had enormous wealth, an army of friends and +retainers; he could command Brittany from his castle of Belleîle, which +he had fortified and garrisoned. Why might he not, if his ambition were +thwarted, revive rebellion, and bring back misery upon France? The +personal reminiscences of the King's whole life must have made him feel +keenly the force of this apprehension. He was ten years old, when, to +escape De<a name="Page_477" id="Page_477"></a> Retz and Beaufort, the Queen-Mother fled with him to St. +Germain, and slept there upon straw, in want of the necessaries of life. +After their return to Paris, the mob broke into the Louvre, and +penetrated to the royal bedchamber. He could not well forget the night +when his mother placed him upon his knees to pray for the success of the +attempt to arrest Condé, who thought himself the master. He was twelve +when Mazarin marched into France with seven thousand men wearing green +scarfs, the Cardinal's colors, and in the Cardinal's pay. After the +young King had joined them, the Parliament of Paris offered fifty +thousand crowns for the Cardinal's head. He was thirteen when Condé, in +command of Spanish troops, surprised the royalists at Bléneau, and would +have captured King and Court, had it not been for the skill of Turenne. +A few years before, Turenne had served against France, under the Spanish +flag. The boy-King had witnessed the battle of St. Antoine,—had seen +the gates of Paris closed against him, and the cannon of the Bastille +firing upon his army, by order of his cousin, <i>Mademoiselle</i>, the +grand-daughter of Henry IV. He had known a Parliament at Paris, and an +Anti-Parliament at Pontoise. In 1651, Condé, De Retz, and La +Rochefoucauld fought in the Palais Royal, almost in the royal presence. +In 1652 he had been compelled to exile Mazarin again; and it was not +until 1658 that Turenne finally defeated Condé and Don John of Austria, +and opened the way to the Peace of the Pyrenees, and the marriage with +the Infanta. Oliver Cromwell aided the King with six thousand of his +soldiers in this battle, and seized upon Dunkirk to repay himself,—only +three years before. No wonder Louis was anxious to place the throne +beyond the reach of danger and insult, and to crush the only man who +seemed to have the power to rekindle a civil war.</p> + +<p>A stronger and a meaner motive he kept to himself. He was small-minded +enough to think that a subject overshadowed him, <i>nec pluribus impar</i>. +He hated Fouquet because he was so much admired,—because he was called +the Magnificent,—because his <i>châteaux</i> and gardens were incomparably +finer than St. Germain or Fontainebleau,—because he was surrounded by +the first wits and artists,—no trifling matter in that bright morning +of French literature, when every gentleman of station in Paris aspired +to be a <i>bel-esprit</i>, or, if that was impossible, to keep one in his +employ. "<i>Le Roi s'abaissa jusqu'à se croire humilié par un sujet</i>." His +"<i>gloire</i>" as he called it, was his passion, not only in war and in +government, where it meant something, but in buildings and furniture, +dress and dinners, madrigals and <i>bon-mots</i>. The monopoly of <i>gloire</i> he +must and would have,—nobly, if possible, but at any rate, and in every +kind, <i>gloire</i>.</p> + +<p>And the unlucky Surintendant had sinned against the royal feelings in a +still more unpardonable way. The King was in love with La Vallière. He +had surrounded his attachment with the mystery the young and sentimental +delight in. Fouquet, quite unconscious of the royal fancy, had cast eyes +of favor upon the same lady. Proceeding according to the custom of men +of middle age and of abundant means, he had wasted no time in <i>petits +soins</i> and sighs, but, Jupiter-like, had offered to shower two hundred +thousand livres upon the fair one. This proposition was reported to the +King, and was the cause of the <i>acharnement</i>, the relentless fury, he +showed in persecuting Fouquet. He would have dealt with him as Queen +Christina had dealt with Monaldeschi, if he had dared. The hatred +survived long after he had dismissed the fair cause of it from his +affections, and from his palace.</p> + +<p>Such was the Surintendant's position when he issued his invitation to +the King, Court, and <i>bel-air</i> for the seventeenth of August, 1661,—the +<i>fête de Vaux</i>, which fills a paragraph in every history of France. In +June, he had entertained the Queen of England in a style which made +Mazarin's pageants for the Infanta Queen seem tasteless and +old-fashioned.<a name="Page_478" id="Page_478"></a> The present festival cast the preceding one into the +shade. It began in the early afternoon, like a <i>déjeuner</i> of our day. +The King was there, the Queen-Mother, Monsieur, brother to the King, and +Madame, daughter of Charles I. of England, attended by Princes, Dukes, +Marquises, and Counts, with their quick-witted, sharp-tongued, and +independent spouses. The highest and noblest of France came to stare at +Fouquet's magnificence, to wonder at the strange birds and beasts, and +to admire the fountains and cascades. After a walk about the grounds, +the august company were served with supper in the <i>château</i>. Vatel was +the <i>maître d'hôtel</i>. The King could not conceal his astonishment at the +taste and luxury of the Surintendant, nor his annoyance when he +recognized the portrait of La Vallière in a mythological panel. Over +doors and windows were carved and painted Fouquet's arms,—a squirrel, +with the motto, "<i>Quò non ascendam</i>?" The King asked a chamberlain for +the translation. When the device was interpreted, the measure of his +wrath was full. He was on the point of ordering Fouquet's instant +arrest; but the Queen-Mother persuaded him to wait until every +precaution had been taken.</p> + +<p>After supper, the guests were conducted to the play. The theatre was at +the end of an alley of pines, almost <i>al fresco</i>. The stage represented +a garden decorated with fountains and with statues of Terminus. Scenery +by Le Brun; machinery and transmutations by Torelli; stage-manager, +Molière; the comedy, "<i>Les Fâcheux</i>," "The Bores," composed, written, +and rehearsed expressly for this occasion, in the short space of fifteen +days. This piece was put upon the stage in a new way. The ballet, +introduced by Mazarin a few years before, was the fashion, and +indispensable. As Molière had only a few good dancers, he placed the +scenes of the ballet between the acts of the comedy, in order to give +his artists time to change their dresses and to take three or four +different parts. To avoid awkwardness in these transitions, the plot of +the comedy was carried over into the pantomime. This arrangement proved +so successful that Molière made use of it in many of his later plays.</p> + +<p>The curtain rises upon a man in citizen's-dress (Molière). He expresses +amazement and dismay at seeing so large and so distinguished an +audience, and implores His Majesty to pardon him for being there without +actors enough and without time enough to prepare a suitable +entertainment. While he is yet speaking, twenty jets of water spring +into the air,—a huge rock in the foreground changes into a shell,—the +shell opens,—forth steps a Naiad (pretty Mademoiselle Béjart, a +well-known actress,—too well known for Moliere's domestic comfort) and +declaims verses written by Pellisson for the occasion. Here is a part of +this prologue in commonplace prose; Pellisson's verses are of a kind +which loses little by translation. The flattery is heavy, but Louis XIV. +was not dainty; he liked it strong, and probably swallowed more of it +with pleasure and comfort during fifty years than any other man.</p> + +<p>"Mortals," said <i>la Béjart</i>, "I come from my grotto to look upon the +greatest king in the world. Shall the land or the water furnish a new +spectacle for his amusement? He has only to speak,—to wish; nothing is +impossible to him. Is he not himself a miracle? And has he not the right +to demand miracles of Nature? He is young, victorious, wise, valiant, +and dignified,—as benevolent and just as he is powerful. He governs his +desires as well as his subjects; he unites labor and pleasure; always +busy, never at fault, seeing all, hearing all. To such a prince Heaven +can refuse nothing. If Louis commands, these Termini shall walk from +their places, these trees shall speak better than the oaks of Dodona. +Come forth, then, all of you! Louis commands it. Come forth to amuse +him, and transform yourselves upon this novel stage!" Trees and Termini +fly open. Dryads, Fauns, and Satyrs skip out. Then the Naiad invokes +Care, the goddess whose hand rests heavily upon monarchs, and implores +her to grant the great King an <a name="Page_479" id="Page_479"></a>hour's respite from the business of +State and from his anxiety for his people. "Let him give his great heart +up to pleasure. To-morrow, with strength renewed, he will take up his +burden, sacrifice his own rest to give repose to mankind and maintain +peace throughout the universe. But to-night let all <i>fâcheux</i> stand +back, except those who can make themselves agreeable to him." The Naiad +vanishes. The Fauns dance to the violins and hautboys, until the play +begins.</p> + +<p>After the comedy, the spectators walked slowly to the <i>château</i>. A <i>feu +d'artifice</i>, ending in a bouquet of a thousand rockets from the dome, +lighted them on their way back. Another repast followed, which lasted +until the drums of the royal <i>mousquetaires</i>, the King's escort, were +heard in the courtyard. This was the signal for breaking up.</p> + +<p>The Surintendant seemed to be on the highest pinnacle of prosperity, +beyond the reach of Fate. There was at Rome a Sire de Maucroix, sent +thither by Fouquet on his private business. To him his friend La +Fontaine wrote a full description of the day, and of the effect Vaux had +produced upon the fashionable world. "You would think that Fame [<i>la +Renommée</i>] was made only for him, he gives her so much to do at once.</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">'Plein d'éclat, plein de gloire, adoré des mortels,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Il reçoit des honneurs qu'on ne doit qu'aux autels.'"</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>A few days later, the Surintendant arrived at Angers, on his way to +Nantes. Arnauld writes, that the Bishop of Angers and himself waited +upon the great man to pay their respects. "From the height upon which he +stood, all others seemed so far removed from him that he could not +recognize them. He scarcely looked at us, and Madame, his wife, seemed +neither less frigid nor more civil." On the fifth of September, nineteen +days after the <i>fête</i>, the thunderbolt fell upon him.</p> + +<p>A <i>Procureur-Général</i> could be tried only by the Parliament to which he +belonged. To make Fouquet's destruction more certain, Colbert had +induced him, by various misrepresentations, to sell out. He received +fourteen hundred thousand livres for the place, and presented the +enormous sum to the Treasury. This act of munificence, or of +restitution, did not save him. If he had been backed by fifty thousand +men, the King could hardly have taken greater precautions. His Majesty's +manner was more gracious than ever. To prevent a rising in the West, +Louis journeyed to Nantes, which is near Belleîle. Fouquet accompanied +the progress with almost equal state. He had his court, his guards, his +own barge upon the Loire,—and travelled brilliantly onward to ruin. The +palace in Nantes was the scene of the arrest. Fouquet, suspecting +nothing, waited upon the King. Louis kept him engaged in conversation, +until he saw D'Artagnau, a name famous in storybooks, and the +<i>mousquetaires</i> in the courtyard. Then he gave the signal. The +Surintendant was seized and taken to Angers, thence to Amboise, +Vincennes, and finally to the Bastille. He was confined in a room +lighted only from above, and allowed no communication with family or +friends. The mask was now thrown off, and the blow followed up with a +malignant energy which showed the determination to destroy. The King was +very violent, and said openly that he had matter in his possession which +would hang the Surintendant. His secretaries and agents were arrested. +His friends, not knowing how much they might be implicated, either fled +the kingdom, or kept out of the way in the provinces. Pellisson and Dr. +Pecquet were sent to the Bastille; Guénégaud lost half his fortune; the +Bishop of Avranches had to pay twelve thousand francs; Gourville fled to +England; Pomponne was ordered to reside at Verdun. Fouquet's papers were +examined in the presence of the King. Letters were there from persons in +every class of life,—a very large number from women, for the prisoner +had charms which the fair sex have always found it difficult to resist. +Madame Scarron had written to thank him for his bounty to the poor +cripple whose name and roof protected her. The King <a name="Page_480" id="Page_480"></a>had probably never +before heard of this lady, who was to be the wife and ruler of his old +age. The portfolio contained specimens of the gayest and brightest of +letter-writers. In the course of his career, the gallant Surintendant +had attempted to add the charming widow Sévigné to his conquests. She +refused the temptation, but always remained grateful for the compliment. +Le Tellier told her cousin, Bussy-Rabutin, that the King liked her +letters,—"very different," he said, "from the <i>douceurs fades</i>"—the +insipid sweet things—"of the other feminine scribes." Nevertheless, she +thought it prudent to reside for a time upon her estate in Brittany. A +copy of a letter by St. Évremond was found, written three years before +from the Spanish frontier. It was a sarcastic pleasantry at the expense +of Mazarin and the <i>Paix des Pyrénées</i>, St. Évremond was a soldier, a +wit, and the leader of fashion; Colbert hated him, and magnified a <i>jeu +d'esprit</i> into a State-crime. He was exiled, and spent the rest of his +long life in England. Of the baser sort, hundreds were turned out of +their places and thrown penniless upon the world. It was a <i>coup +d'état</i>, a revolution, and most people were against Fouquet. It is such +a consolation for the little to see the mighty fall!</p> + +<p>The instinct which impels friends and servants to fly from sinking +fortunes is a well-established fact in human natural history; but +Fouquet's hold upon his followers was extraordinary: it resisted the +shock of ruin. They risked court-favor, purse, and person, to help him. +Gourville, before he thought of his own safety, carried a hundred +thousand livres to Madame Fouquet, to be used in defending the +Surintendant, or in bribing a judge or a jailer. The rest of his +property he divided, intrusting one half to a devout friend, the other +to a sinful beauty, Ninon de l'Enclos, and fled the country. The +"professor" absorbed all that was left in his hands; Ninon returned her +trust intact. This little incident was made much use of at a later day +by the <i>Philosophes</i>, and Voltaire worked it up into "Le Dépositaire." +From the Bastille, Pellisson addressed to the King three papers in +defence of his chief: "masterpieces of prose, worthy of Cicero," +Voltaire says,—"<i>ce que l'éloquence a produit de plus beau</i>." And +Sainte-Beuve thinks that Louis must have yielded to them, if he had +heard them spoken, instead of reading them in his closet. The faithful +La Fontaine fearlessly sang the sorrows of his patron, and accustomed +"<i>chacun à plaindre ses malheurs</i>." He begged to the King for mercy, in +an ode full of feeling, if not of poetry. "Has not Oronte been +sufficiently punished by the withdrawal of thy favor? Attack Rome, +Vienna, but be merciful to us. <i>La Clémence est fille des Dieux</i>." A +copy of this ode found its way to the prisoner. He protested against +these lines:—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"Mais, si tu crois qu'il est coupable,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Il ne veut point être innocent."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Two years of prison had not broken him down to this point of +self-abasement. Could any Sultan, or even the "Oriental Despot" of a +radical penny-a-liner, be implored in more abject terms? Madame de +Sévigné, Madame de Scudéry, Le Fèvre, talked, wrote, and spared no +expense for their dear friend. Brébeuf, the poet, who had neither +influence nor money, took to his bed and died of grief. Hesnault, author +of the "Avorton," a sonnet much admired in those days, and translated +with approval into English verse, as,</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"Frail spawn of nought and of existence mixed,"</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>eased his feelings by insulting Colbert in another sonnet, beginning +thus:—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"Ministre avare et lâche, esclave malheureux."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>The poet escaped unpunished. His affront gave Colbert the chance for a +<i>mot</i>,—an opportunity which Frenchmen seldom throw away. When the +injurious verses were reported to the Minister, he asked,—"Is there +anything in them offensive to the King?" "No." "Then there can be +nothing in them offensive to me." Loret, of the Gazette, was not so +lucky. A gentle appeal in <a name="Page_481" id="Page_481"></a>his journal for less severity was punished by +striking the editor from the pension-list,—a fine of fifteen hundred +livres a year. Fouquet heard of it, and found means to send, by the +hands of Madame Scudéry, a year's allowance to the faithful newsman.</p> + +<p>The Government was not ready to proceed to trial until 1664. For three +years the sharpest lawyers in France had been working on the Act of +Accusation. It was very large even for its age. The accompanying +<i>Pièces</i> were unusually voluminous. The accused had not been idle. His +<i>Défenses</i> may be seen in fourteen closely printed Elzevir 18mos.</p> + +<p>The unabated rigor of Fouquet's prison had convinced his friends that it +was useless to hope for clemency, and that it might be difficult to save +his life. The King was as malignant as at first; Colbert and Le Tellier +as venomous, as if it had been a question of Fouquet's head or their +own. They talked about justice, affected moderation, and deceived +nobody. Marshal Turenne, speaking of their respective feelings in the +matter, said a thing which was considered good by the <i>bel-esprits</i>:—"I +think that Colbert is the more anxious to have him hanged, and Le +Tellier the more afraid he will not be."</p> + +<p>But meantime the Parisians had changed their minds about the +Surintendant. Now, they were all for him. His friends had done much to +bring this about; time, and the usual reaction of feeling, had done +more. His haughtiness and his pomp were gone and forgotten; there +remained only an unfortunate gentleman, crushed, imprisoned, threatened +with death, attacked by his enemies with a bitterness which showed they +were seeking to destroy the man rather than to punish the criminal,—yet +bearing up against his unexampled afflictions with unshaken courage. The +great Public has strong levelling propensities, both upward and +downward. If it delights to see the prosperous humbled, it is always +ready to pity the unfortunate; and even in 1664 the popular feeling in +Paris was powerful enough to check the ministers of an absolute king, +and to save Fouquet's life. His persecutors were so eager to run down +their prey that they overran it "In their anxiety to hang him," some one +said, "they have made their rope so thick that they cannot tighten it +about his neck."</p> + +<p>In November, 1664, Fouquet was brought before a commission of twenty-two +judges, selected from the different Parliaments of the kingdom. After +protesting against the jurisdiction of the court, he took his seat upon +the <i>sellette</i>, although a chair had been prepared for him beside it. +The interrogatories commenced. There were two principal charges against +him. First, diversion of the public funds to his own use,—embezzlement +or defalcation we should call it. Proof: his great expenditure, too +large for any private fortune. Answer: that his expenses were within the +income he derived from his salaries, pensions, and the property of +himself and wife. He was questioned closely upon his administration of +the finances. He was invariably self-possessed and ready with an answer, +and he eluded satisfactorily every attempt of the judges to entrap him, +although, as one of his best friends confessed, "some places were very +slippery." The second charge, treason against the State, was based upon +a paper addressed to his wife, and found in his desk. Fifteen years +before, after a quarrel with Mazarin, he had drawn up a plan of the +measures to be taken by his family and adherents in case of an attack +upon his life or liberty. It was a mere rough draught, incomplete, which +had remained unburned because forgotten. The fortifications of Belleîle +and the number of his retainers were brought up as evidence of his +intention to carry out the "<i>projet</i>," as it was called, if it became +necessary. Fouquet's explanations, and the date of the paper, were +satisfactory to the majority of the Commission. At last even the +Chancellor admitted that the proof was insufficient to sustain this part +of the accusation. Fouquet's answer to<a name="Page_482" id="Page_482"></a> Séguier, during the examination +on the "<i>projet</i>," was much admired, and repeated out-of-doors. Séguier +asserted more than once, "This is clearly treason." "No," retorted +Fouquet, "it is not treason; but I will tell you what is treason. To +hold high office, to be in the confidence of the King; then suddenly to +desert to the enemies of that King, to carry over relatives, with the +regiments and the fortresses under their command, and to betray the +secrets of State: that is treason." And that was exactly what Chancellor +Séguier had done in the Fronde.</p> + +<p>In French criminal jurisprudence, the theory seems to be that the +accused is guilty until he has proved his innocence, and those +conversant with French trials need not be told that the judges assist +the public prosecutor. In this case, they sought by cross-examinations +to confuse Fouquet, and to entrap him into dangerous admissions. Séguier +sternly repressed any leanings in his favor; he even reproved some of +the judges for returning the salutation of the prisoner, as he entered +the court-room.</p> + +<p>The trial lasted five weeks. All Paris looked on absorbed, as at a drama +of the most exciting interest. Fouquet never appeared so admirable as +then, at bay, firmly facing king, ministers, judges, eager for his +blood, excited by the ardor of pursuit, and embittered by the roar of +applause with which his masterly defence was received out-of-doors. Even +those who knew the Surintendant best were astonished at his courage and +his presence of mind. He seemed greater in his adversity than in his +magnificence. Some of the judges began to waver. Renard, J., said,—"I +must confess that this man is incomparable. He never spoke so well when +he was <i>Procureur</i>; he never showed so much self-possession." Another, +one Nesmond, died during the trial, and regretted openly on his +death-bed that he had lent himself to this persecution. The King ordered +that this dying speech and confession should not be repeated, but it +circulated only the more widely.</p> + +<p>"No public man," Voltaire says, "ever had so many personal friends"; and +no friends were ever more faithful and energetic. They repeated his +happy answers in all quarters, praised his behavior, pitied his +sufferings, and reviled and ridiculed his enemies. They managed to meet +him, as he walked to and from the Arsenal, where the Commission sat, and +cheered him with kind looks. Madame de Sévigné tells us how she and +other ladies of the same faith took post at a window to see "<i>notre +pauvre ami</i>" go by. "M. d'Artagnau walked by his side, followed by a +guard of fifty <i>mousquetaires</i>. He seemed sad. D'Artagnau touched him to +let him know that we were there. He saluted us with that quiet smile we +all knew so well." She says that her heart beat and her knees trembled. +The lively lady was still grateful for that compliment.</p> + +<p>The animosity which the King did not conceal made an acquittal almost +hopeless, but great efforts were made to save the life of the +Surintendant. Money was used skilfully and abundantly. Several judges +yielded to the force of this argument; others were known to incline to +mercy. Fouquet himself thought the result doubtful. He begged his +friends to let him know the verdict by signal, that he might have half +an hour to prepare himself to receive his sentence with firmness.</p> + +<p>The Commission deliberated for one week,—an anxious period for +Fouquet's friends, who trembled lest they had not secured judges enough +to resist the pressure from above. At last the court was reopened. +D'Ormesson, a man of excellent family and social position, who had +favored the accused throughout the trial, delivered his opinion at +length. He concluded for banishment. The next judge voted for +decapitation, but with a recommendation to mercy. Next, one Pussort, a +malignant tool of the Chancellor, inveighed against Fouquet for four +hours, so violently that he injured his case. His voice was for the +gallows,—but, in consideration of the criminal's rank, he would consent +to commute the cord for <a name="Page_483" id="Page_483"></a>the axe. After him, four voted for death; then, +five for banishment. Six to six. Anxiety had now reached a distressing +point. The Chancellor stormed and threatened; but in vain. On the +twenty-fifth of December the result was known. Nine for death, thirteen +for banishment. Saved! "I am so glad," Sévigné wrote to Simon Arnauld, +"that I am beside myself." She exulted too soon. The King was not to be +balked of his vengeance. He refused to abide by the verdict of the +Commission he himself had packed, and arbitrarily changed the decree of +banishment to imprisonment for life in the Castle of Pignerol,—to +solitary confinement,—wife, family, friends, not to be permitted to see +the prisoner, or to write to him; even his valet was taken away.</p> + +<p>Thus the magnificent Surintendant disappeared from the world +forever,—buried alive, but indomitable and cheerful. His last message +to his wife was, "I am well. Keep up your courage; I have enough for +myself, and to spare."</p> + +<p>"We still hope for some relaxation," Sévigné writes again; but none ever +came from the narrow-hearted, vindictive King. He exiled Roquesante, the +judge who had shown the most kindness to Fouquet, and turned an +<i>Avocat-Général</i> out of office for saying that Pussort was a disgrace to +the Parliament he belonged to. Madame Fouquet, the mother, famous for +her book of prescriptions, "Recueil de Recettes Choisies," who had +cured, or was supposed to have cured, the Queen by a plaster of her +composition, threw herself at the King's feet, with her son's wife and +children. Their prayer was coldly refused, and they soon received an +order to reside in remote parts of France. Time seemed to have no +mollifying effect upon the animosity of the King. Six years later, a +young man who attempted to carry a letter from Fouquet to his wife was +sent to the galleys; and in 1676, fifteen years after the arrest, Madame +de Montespan had not influence enough to obtain permission for Madame +Fouquet and her children to visit the prisoner.</p> + +<p>This cruel and illegal punishment lasted for twenty years, until an +attack of apoplexy placed the Surintendant beyond the reach of his +torturer. So lost had he been in his living tomb, that it is a debated +point whether he died in Piguerol or not. He has even been one of the +candidates for the mysterious dignity of the Iron Mask. In his dungeon +he could learn nothing of what was passing in the world. Lauzun, whose +every-day life seemed more unreal and romantic than the dreams of +ordinary men, was confined in Pignerol. Active and daring as Jack +Sheppard, he dug through the wall of his cell, and discovered that his +next neighbor was Fouquet. When he told his fellow-prisoner of his +adventures and of his honors, how he had lost the place of Grand Master +of the Artillery through Louvois, and had only missed being the +acknowledged husband of the grand-daughter of Henry IV. because Madame +de Montespan persuaded the King to withdraw his consent, Fouquet, who +recollected him as a poor <i>cadet de famille</i>, thought him crazy, and +begged the jailer to have him watched and properly cared for.</p> + +<p>The Surintendant had twice wounded the vanity of his King. He had +presumed to have a more beautiful <i>château</i> than his master, and had +unluckily fancied the same woman. Louis revenged himself by burying his +rival alive for twenty years. That Fouquet had plotted rebellion nobody +believed. He was too wise a politician not to know that the French were +weary of civil war and could not be tempted to exchange one master for +half a dozen military tyrants. That he had taken the public money for +his own use was not denied, even by his friends; and banishment would +have been a just punishment, although, perhaps, a harsh one. For it is +hardly fair to judge Fouquet by our modern standard of financial +honesty, low as that may be. We, at least, try to cover up jobs, +contracts, and defalcations by professions or appearances. The +difficulty of raising money for the expenses of Government in a state +impoverished <a name="Page_484" id="Page_484"></a>by years of internal commotions had accustomed public men +to strange and irregular expedients, and unscrupulous financiers catch +fine fish in troubled waters. Mazarin openly put thousands of livres +into his pocket; the Surintendant imitated him on a smaller scale. But, +if he paid himself liberally for his services, he also showed energy and +skill in his attempts to restore order and economy in the administration +of the revenue. After his disgrace money was not much more plenty. +France, it is true, tranquil and secure within her borders, again showed +signs of wealth, and was able to pay heavier taxes; but the King wasted +them on his wars, his <i>châteaux</i>, and his mistresses, as recklessly as +the Surintendant. He had no misgivings as to his right to spend the +people's money. From his principle, "<i>L'État, c'est moi</i>," followed the +corollary, "The income of the State is mine." From 1664 to 1690 one +hundred and sixteen millions of livres were laid out in unnecessary +<i>hôtels, châteaux</i>, and gardens. His ministers imitated him at a humble +distance. Louvois boasted that he had reached his fourteenth million at +Meudon. "I like," said Louis, "to have those who manage my affairs +skilfully do a good business for themselves."</p> + +<p>Before many years had passed, it was evident that Colbert, with all his +energy and his systems, did not make both the financial ends meet any +better than the Surintendant. A merchant of Paris, with whom he +consulted, told him,—"You found the cart upset on one side, and you +have upset it on the other." Colbert had tried to lighten it by striking +eight millions of <i>rentes</i> from the funded debt; but it was too deeply +imbedded in the mire; the shoulder of Hercules at the wheel could not +have extricated it. After Colbert was removed, times grew harder. Long +before the King's death the financial distress was greater than in the +wars and days of the Fronde. Every possible contrivance by which money +could be raised was resorted to. Lotteries were drawn, tontines +established, letters of nobility offered for sale at two thousand crowns +each. Those who preferred official rank could buy the title of +Councillor of State or of Commissioner of Police. New and profitable +offices were created and disposed of to the highest +bidder,—inspectorships of wood, of hay, of wine, of butter. Arbitrary +power, no matter whether we call it sovereign prince or sovereign +people, falls instinctively into the same ways in all times and +countries. The Demos of a neighboring State, absolute and greedy as any +monarch, have furnished us with plenty of examples of this last +imposition upon industry. Zealous servants are rewarded and +election-expenses paid by similar inspectorships and commissionerships, +not only useless, but injurious, to every one except those who hold +them.</p> + +<p>When these resources became exhausted, a capitation-tax was laid, +followed by an assessment of one tenth, and the adulteration of the +currency. The King cut off the pension-list, sold his plate, and +dismissed his servants. Misery and starvation laid waste the realm. At +last, the pompous, "stagy" old monarch died, full of infirmities and of +humiliations; and the road from the Boulevard to St. Denis was lined +with booths as for a <i>fête</i>, and the people feasted, sang, and danced +for joy that the tyrant was in his coffin. Time, the <i>galantuomo</i>, amply +avenged Fouquet.</p><p><a name="Page_485" id="Page_485"></a></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="AMONG_THE_MORMONS" id="AMONG_THE_MORMONS"></a>AMONG THE MORMONS.</h2> + + +<p>The approach to Salt Lake City from the east is surprisingly harmonious +with the genius of Mormonism. Nature, usually so unpliant to the spirit +of people who live with her, showing a bleak and rugged face, which +poetically should indicate the abode of savages and ogres, to Hans +Christian Andersen and his hospitable countrymen, but lavishing the +eternal summer of her tropic sea upon barbarians who eat baked enemy +under her palms, or throw their babies to her crocodiles,—this stiff, +unaccommodating Nature relents into a little expressiveness in the +neighborhood of the Mormons, and you feel that the grim, tremendous +<i>cañons</i> through which your overland stage rolls down to the City of the +Saints are strangely fit avenues to an anomalous civilization.</p> + +<p>We speak of crossing the Rocky Mountains from Denver to Salt Lake; but, +in reality, they reach all the way between those places. They are not a +chain, as most Eastern people imagine them, but a giant ocean caught by +petrifaction at the moment of maddest tempest. For six hundred miles the +overland stage winds over, between, and around the tremendous billows, +lying as much as may be in the trough, and reaching the crest at +Bridger's Pass, (a sinuous gallery, walled by absolutely bare yellow +mountains between two and three thousand feet in height at the +road-side,) but never getting entirely out of the Rocky-Mountain system +till it reaches the Desert beyond Salt Lake. Even there it runs +constantly among mountains; in fact, it never loses sight of lofty +ranges from the moment it makes Pike's Peak till its wheels +(metaphorically) are washed by the Pacific Ocean; but the mountains of +the Desert may legitimately set up for themselves, belonging, as I +believe, to a system independent of the Rocky Mountains on the one side +and the Sierra Nevada on the other. At a little <i>plateau</i> among snowy +ridges a few miles east of Bridger's Pass, the driver leans over and +tells his insiders, in a matter-of-fact manner, through the window, that +they have reached the summit-level. Then, if you have a particle of true +cosmopolitanism in you, it is sure to come out. There is something +indescribably sublime, a conception of universality, in that sense of +standing on the water-shed of a hemisphere. You have reached the secret +spot where the world clasps her girdle; your feet are on its granite +buckle; perhaps there sparkles in your eyes that fairest gem of her +cincture, a crystal fountain, from which her belt of rivers flows in two +opposite ways. Yesterday you crossed the North Platte, almost at its +source (for it rises out of the snow among the Wind-River Mountains, and +out of your stage-windows you can see, from Laramie Plains, the Lander's +Peak which Bierstadt has made immortal); that stream runs into the sea +from whose historic shores you came; you might drop a waif upon its +ripples with the hope of its reaching New Orleans, New York, Boston, or +even Liverpool. To-morrow you will be ferried over Green River, as near +its source,—a stream whose cradle is in the same snow-peaks as the +Platte,—whose mysterious middle-life, under the new name of the +Colorado, flows at the bottom of those tremendous fissures, three +thousand feet deep, which have become the wonder of the +geologist,—whose grave, when it has dribbled itself away into the +dotage of shallows and quicksands, is the desert-margined Gulf of +California and the Pacific Sea. Between Green River and the Mormon city +no human interest divides your perpetually strained attention with +Nature. Fort Bridger, a little over a day's stage-ride east of the city, +is a large and quite a populous trading-post and garrison of the United +States; but although we found there a number of agreeable officers, +whose acquaintance <a name="Page_486" id="Page_486"></a>with their wonderful surroundings was thorough and +scientific, and though at that period the fort was a rendezvous for our +only faithful friend among the Utah Indians, Washki, the Snake chief, +and that handful of his tribe who still remained loyal to their really +noble leader and our Government, Fort Bridger left the shadowiest of +impressions on my mind, compared with the natural glories of the +surrounding scenery.</p> + +<p>Mormondom being my theme, and my space so limited, I must resist the +temptation to give detailed accounts of the many marvellous masterpieces +of mimetic art into which we find the rocks of this region everywhere +carved by the hand of Nature. Before we came to the North Platte, we +were astonished by a ship, equalling the Great Eastern in size, even +surpassing it in beauty of outline, its masts of columnar sandstone +snapped by a storm, its prodigious hulk laboring in a gloomy sea of +hornblendic granite, its deck-houses, shapen with perfect accuracy of +imitation, still remaining in their place, and a weird-looking demon at +the wheel steering it on to some invisible destruction. This naval +statue (if its bulk forbid not the name) was carved out of a coarse +millstone-grit by the chisel of the wind, with but slight assistance +from the infrequent rain-storms of this region. In Colorado I first +began to perceive how vast an omission geologists had been guilty of in +their failure to give the wind a place in the dynamics of their science. +Depending for a year at a time, as that Territory sometimes does, upon +dews and meltings from the snow-peaks for its water, it is nevertheless +fuller than any other district in the world of marvellous architectural +simulations, vast cemeteries crowded with monuments, obelisks, castles, +fortresses, and natural colossi from two to five hundred feet high, done +in argillaceous sandstone or a singular species of conglomerate, all of +which owe their existence almost entirely to the agency of wind. The +arid plains from which the conglomerate crops out rarefy the +superincumbent air-stratum to such a degree that the intensely chilled +layers resting on the closely adjoining snow-peaks pour down to +reëstablish equilibrium, with the wrathful force of an invisible +cataract, eight, ten, even seventeen thousand feet in height. These +floods of cold wind find their appropriate channels in the +characteristic <i>cañons</i> which everywhere furrow the whole Rocky-Mountain +system to its very base. Most of these are exceedingly tortuous, and the +descending winds, during their passage through them, acquire a spiral +motion as irresistible as the fiercest hurricane of the Antilles, which, +moreover, they preserve for miles after they have issued from the mouth +of the <i>cañon</i>. Every little cold gust that I observed in the Colorado +country had this corkscrew character. The moment the spiral reaches a +loose sand-bed, it sweeps into its vortex all the particles of grit +which it can hold. The result is an auger, of diameter varying from an +inch to a thousand feet, capable of altering its direction so as to bore +curved holes, revolving with incalculable rapidity, and armed with a +cutting edge of silex. Is it possible to conceive an instrument more +powerful, more versatile? Indeed, practically, there is no description +of surface, no kind of cut, which it is not capable of making. I have +repeatedly seen it in operation. One day, while riding from Denver to +Pike's Peak, I saw it (in this instance, one of the smaller diameters) +burrow its way six or seven feet into a sand-bluff, making as smooth a +hole as I could cut in cheese with a borer, of the equal diameter of six +inches throughout, all in less time than I have taken to describe it. +Repeatedly, on the same trip, I saw it gouge out a circular groove +around portions of a similar bluff, and leave them standing as isolated +columns, with heavy base and capital, presently to be solidified into +just such rock pillars as throng the cemeteries or aid in composing the +strange architectural piles mentioned above. Surveyor-General Pierce of +Colorado, (a man whose fine scientific genius and culture have already +done yeoman's service in the study of that most <a name="Page_487" id="Page_487"></a>interesting Territory,) +on a certain occasion, saw one of these wind-and-silex augers meet at +right angles a window-pane in a settler's cabin, which came out from the +process, after a few seconds, a perfect opaque shade, having been +converted into ground-glass as neatly and evenly as could have been +effected by the manufacturer's wheel. It is not a very rare thing in +Colorado to be able to trace the spiral and measure the diameter of the +auger by rocks of fifty pounds' weight and tree-trunks half as thick as +an average man's waist, torn up from their sites, and sent revolving +overhead for miles before the windy turbine loses its impetus. The +efficiency of an instrument like this I need not dwell upon. After some +protracted examination and study of many of the most interesting +architectural and sculpturesque structures of the Rocky-Mountain system, +I am convinced that they are mainly explicable on the hypothesis of the +wind-and-silex instrument operating upon material in the earthy +condition, which petrified after receiving its form. Indeed, this same +instrument is at present nowise restricted by that condition in +Colorado, and is not only, year by year, altering the conformation of +all sand and clay bluff's on the Plains, but is tearing down, +rebuilding, and fashioning on its facile lathe many rock-strata of the +solidity of the more friable grits, wherever exposed to its action. +Water at the East does hardly more than wind at the West.</p> + +<p>Before we enter the City of the Saints, let me briefly describe the +greatest, not merely of the architectural curiosities, but, in my +opinion, the greatest natural curiosity of any kind which I have ever +seen or heard of. Mind, too, that I remember Niagara, the Cedar-Creek +Bridge, and the Mammoth Cave, when I speak thus of the <i>Church Buttes</i>.</p> + +<p>They are situated a short distance from Fort Bridger; the overland road +passes by their side. They consist of a sandstone bluff, reddish-brown +in color, rising with the abruptness of a pile of masonry from the +perfectly level plain, carved along its perpendicular face into a series +of partially connected religious edifices, the most remarkable of which +is a cathedral as colossal as St. Peter's, and completely relieved from +the bluff on all sides save the rear, where a portico joins it with the +main precipice. The perfect symmetry of this marvellous structure would +ravish Michel Angelo. So far from requiring an effort of imagination to +recognize the propriety of its name, this church almost staggers belief +in the unassisted naturalness of its architecture. It belongs to a style +entirely its own. Its main and lower portion is not divided into nave +and transept, but seems like a system of huge semi-cylinders erected on +their bases, and united with reëntrant angles, their convex surfaces +toward us, so that the ground-plan might be called a species of +quatre-foil. In each of the convex faces is an admirably proportioned +door-way, a Gothic arch with deep-carved and elaborately fretted +mouldings, so wonderfully perfect in its imitation that you almost feel +like knocking for admittance, secure of an entrance, did you only know +the "Open sesame." Between and behind the doors, alternating with +flying-buttresses, are a series of deep-niched windows, set with +grotesque statues, varying from the pigmy to the colossal size, +representing demons rather than saints, though some of the figures are +costumed in the style of religious art, with flowing sacerdotal +garments.</p> + +<p>The structure terminates above in a double dome, whose figure may be +imagined by supposing a small acorn set on the truncated top of a large +one, (the horizontal diameter of both being considerably longer in +proportion to the perpendicular than is common with that fruit,) and +each of these domes is surrounded by a row of prism-shaped pillars, half +column, half buttress in their effect, somewhat similar to the exquisite +columnar <i>entourage</i> of the central cylinder of the leaning tower of +Pisa. The result of this arrangement is an aërial, yet massive beauty, +without parallel in the architecture of the world. I have not <a name="Page_488" id="Page_488"></a>conveyed +to any mind an idea of the grandeur of this pile, nor could I, even with +the assistance of a diagram. I can only say that the Cathedral Buttes +are a lesson for the architects of all Christendom,—a purely novel and +original creation, of such marvellous beauty that Bierstadt and I +simultaneously exclaimed,—"Oh that the master-builders of the world +could come here even for a single day! The result would be an entirely +new style of architecture,—an American school, as distinct from all the +rest as the Ionic from the Gothic or Byzantine." If they could come, the +art of building would have a regeneration. "Amazing" is the only word +for this glorious work of Nature. I could have bowed down with awe and +prayed at one of its vast, inimitable doorways, but that the mystery of +its creation, and the grotesqueness of even its most glorious statues, +made one half dread lest it were some temple built by demon-hands for +the worship of the Lord of Hell, and sealed in the stone-dream of +petrifaction, with its priests struck dumb within it, by the hand of +God, to wait the judgment of Eblis and the earthquakes of the Last Day.</p> + +<p>After leaving Church Buttes and passing Fort Bridger, our attention +slept upon what it had seen until we entered the region of the <i>cañons</i>. +These are defiles, channelled across the whole breadth of the Wahsatch +Mountains almost to the level of their base, walled by precipices of red +sandstone or sugar-loaf granite, compared with which the Palisades of +the Hudson become insignificant as a garden-fence. The least poetical +man who traverses these giant fissures cannot help feeling their fitness +as the avenues to a paradoxical region, an anomalous civilization, and a +people whose psychological problem is the most unsolvable of the +nineteenth century. During the Mormon War, Brigham Young made some rude +attempts at a fortification of the great Echo Cañon, half a day's +journey from his city, and this work still remains intact. He need not +have done it; a hundred men, ambushed among the ledges at the top of the +cañon-walls, and well provided with loose rocks and Minié-rifles, could +convert the defile into a new Thermopylae, without exposure to +themselves. In an older and more superstitious age, the unassisted +horrors of Nature herself would have repelled an invading host from the +passage of this grizzly <i>cañon</i>, as the profane might have been driven +from the galleries of Isis or Eleusis.</p> + +<p>About forty miles from Salt Lake City we began to find Nature's +barrenness succumbing to the truly marvellous industry of the Mormon +people. To understand the exquisite beauty of simple green grass, you +must travel through eight hundred miles of sage-brush and <i>grama</i>,—the +former, the homely gray-leaved plant of our Eastern goose-stuffing, +grown into a dwarf tree six feet high, with a twisted trunk sometimes as +thick as a man's body; the latter, a stunted species of herbage, growing +in ash-tinted spirals, only two inches from the ground, and giving the +Plains an appearance of being matted with curled hair or gray +corkscrews. Its other name is "buffalo-grass"; and in spite of its +dinginess, with the assistance of the sage, converting all the Plains +west of Fort Kearney into a model Quaker landscape, it is one of the +most nutritious varieties of cattle-fodder, and for hundreds of miles +the emigrant-drover's only dependence.</p> + +<p>By incredible labor, bringing down rivulets from the snow-peaks of the +Wahsatch range and distributing them over the levels by every ingenious +device known to artificial irrigation, the Mormon farmers have converted +the bottoms of the <i>cañons</i> through which we approached Salt Lake into +fertile fields and pasture-lands, whose emerald sweep soothed our eyes +wearied with so many leagues of ashen monotony, as an old home-strain +mollifies the ear irritated by the protracted rhythmic clash or the +dull, steady buzz of iron machinery. Contrasting the Mormon settlements +with their surrounding desolation, we could not wonder that their +success has fortified this people in their delusion. The superficial +student of rewards <a name="Page_489" id="Page_489"></a>and punishments might well believe that none but +God's chosen people could cause this horrible desert, after such +triumphant fashion, to blossom like the rose.</p> + +<p>The close observer soon notices a painful deficiency in these green and +smiling Mormon settlements. Everything has been done for the +farm,—nothing for the home. That blessed old Anglo-Saxon idea seems +everywhere quite extinct. The fields are billowing over with dense, +golden grain, the cattle are wallowing in emerald lakes of juicy grass, +the barns are substantial, the family-windmill buzzes merrily on its +well-oiled pivot, drawing water or grinding feed, the fruit-trees are +thrifty,—but the house is desolate. Even where its owner is +particularly well off, and its architecture somewhat more ambitious than +the average, (though, as yet, this superiority is measured by little +more than the difference between logs and clapboards,) there is still no +air about it of being the abode of happy people, fond of each other, and +longing after it in absence. It looks like a mere inclosure to eat and +sleep in. Nobody seems to have taken any pride in it, to feel any +ambition for it. Woman's tender little final touches, which make a dear +refuge out of a mud-cabin, and without which palatial brownstone is only +a home in the moulding-clay,—those dexterous ornamentations which make +so little mean so much,—the brier-rose-slip by the doorstep, growing +into the fragrant welcome of many Junes,—the trellised +Madeira-vines,—the sunny spot of chrysanthemums, charming summer on to +the very brink of frost,—all these things are utterly and everywhere +lacking to the Mormon inclosure. Sometimes we passed a fence which +guarded three houses instead of one. Abundant progeny played at their +doors, or rolled in their yard, watched by several unkempt, bedraggled +mothers owning a common husband,—and we could easily understand how +neither of these should feel much interest in the looks of a demesne +held by them in such unhappy partnership. The humblest New-England +cottage has its climbing flowers at the door-post, or its garden-bed in +front; but how quickly would these wither, if the neat, brisk +house-mistress owned her husband in common with Mrs. Deacon Pratt next +door!</p> + +<p>The first Mormon household I ever visited belonged to a son of the +famous Heber Kimball, Brigham Young's most devoted follower, and next to +him in the Presidency. It was the last stage-station but one before we +entered Salt Lake, situated at the bottom of a green valley in Parley's +Cañon (named after the celebrated Elder, Parley Pratt); and as it looked +like the residence of a well-to-do farmer, I went in, and asked for a +bowl of bread and milk,—the greatest possible luxury after a life of +bacon and salt-spring water, such as we had been leading in the +mountains. A fine-looking, motherly woman, with a face full of +character, gray-haired, and about sixty years old, rose promptly to +grant my request, and while the horses were changing I had ample time to +make the acquaintance of two pretty young girls, hardly over twenty, +holding two infants, of ages not more than three months apart. Green as +I was to saintly manners, I supposed that one of these two young mothers +had run in from a neighbor's to compare babies with the mistress of the +house, after our Eastern fashion, universal with the owners of juvenile +phenomena. When the old lady came back with the bread and milk, and both +of the young girls addressed her as "mother," I was emboldened to tell +her that her daughters had a pretty pair of children.</p> + +<p>"They <i>are</i> pretty," said the old lady, demurely; "but they are the +children of my son"; then, as if resolved to duck a Gentile head and +heels into Mormon realities at once, she added,—"Those young ladies are +the wives of my son, who is now gone on a mission to Liverpool,—young +Mr. Kimball, the son of Heber Kimball; and I am Heber Kimball's wife."</p> + +<p>A cosmopolitan, especially one knowing beforehand that Utah was not +distinguished for monogamy, might well be <a name="Page_490" id="Page_490"></a>ashamed to be so taken off +his feet as I was by my first view of Mormonism in its practical +workings. I stared,—I believe I blushed a little,—I tried to stutter a +reply; and the one dreadful thought which persistently kept uppermost, +so that I felt they must read it in my face, was, "How <i>can</i> these young +women sit looking at each other's babies without flying into each +other's faces with their fingernails, and tearing out each other's +hair?" Heber Kimball afterwards solved the question for me, by saying +that it was a triumph of grace.</p> + +<p>Such another triumph was Mrs. Heber Kimball herself. She was a woman of +remarkable presence, in youth must have been very handsome, would have +been the oracle of tea-fights, the ruling spirit of donation-visits, in +any Eastern village where she might have lived, and, had her home been +New York, would have fallen by her own gravity into the Chief +Directress's chair of half a dozen Woman's Aid Societies and +Associations for Moral Reform. Yet here was this strong-minded woman, as +her husband afterward acknowledged to me, his best counsellor and +right-hand helper through a married life reaching into middle-age, +witnessing her property in that husband's affections subdivided and +parcelled out until she owned but a one-thirtieth share, not only +without a pang, but with the acquiescence of her conscience and the +approbation of her intellect. Though few first wives in Utah had learned +to look concubinage in the face so late in life as this emphatic and +vigorous-natured woman, I certainly met none whose partisanship of +polygamy was so unquestioning and eloquent. She was one of the strangest +psychological problems I ever met. Indeed, I am half inclined to think +that she embraced Mormonism earlier than her husband, and, by taking the +initiative, secured for herself the only true wifely place in the +harem,—the marital after-thoughts of Brother Heber being her servants +rather than her sisters. She was most unmistakably his favorite.</p> + +<p>One day in the Opera-House at Salt Lake, when the carpenters were laying +the floor for the Fourth-of-July-Eve Ball, Heber and I got talking of +the <i>pot-pourri</i> of nationalities assembled in Utah. Heber waxed +unctuously benevolent, and expressed his affection for each succeeding +race as fast as mentioned.</p> + +<p>"I love the Danes dearly! I've got a Danish wife." Then turning to a +rough-looking carpenter, hammering near him,—"You know Christiny,—eh, +Brother Spudge?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes! know her very well!"</p> + +<p>A moment after,—"The Irish are a dear people. My Irish wife is among +the best I've got."</p> + +<p>Again,—"I love the Germans! Got a Dutch wife, too! Know Katrine, +Brother Spudge? Remember she couldn't scarcely talk a word o' English +when she come,—eh, Brother Spudge?"</p> + +<p>Brother Spudge remembered,—and Brother Heber continued to trot out the +members of his marital stud for discussion of their points with his more +humble fellow-polygamist of the hammer; but when I happened to touch +upon the earliest Mrs. Heber, whom I naturally thought he would by this +time regard as a forgotten fossil in the Lower Silurian strata of his +connubial life, and referred to the interview I had enjoyed with her on +the afternoon before entering the city, his whole manner changed to a +proper husbandly dignity, and, without seeking corroboration from the +carpenter, be replied, gravely,—</p> + +<p>"Yes! that is my first wife, and the best woman God ever made!"</p> + +<p>The ball to which I have referred was such an opportunity for studying +Mormon sociology as three months' ordinary stay in Salt Lake might not +have given me. Though Mormondom is disloyal to the core, it still +patronizes the Fourth of July, at least in its phase of festivity, +omitting the patriotism, but keeping the fireworks of our Eastern +celebration, substituting "Utah" for "Union" in the Buncombe speeches, +and having a ball instead of the Declaration of Independence. All the +saints within half a day's ride of the <a name="Page_491" id="Page_491"></a>city come flocking into it to +spend the Fourth. A well-to-do Mormon at the head of his wives and +children, all of whom are probably eating candy as they march through +the metropolitan streets in solid column, looks to the uninitiated like +the principal of a female seminary, weak in its deportment, taking out +his charge for an airing.</p> + +<p>Last Fourth of July, it may be remembered, fell on a Saturday. In their +ambition to reproduce ancient Judaism (and this ambition is the key to +their whole puzzle) the Mormons are Sabbatarians of a strictness which +would delight Lord Shaftesbury. Accordingly, in order that their +festivities might not encroach on the early hours of the Sabbath, they +had the ball on Fourth-of-July eve, instead of the night of the Fourth. +I could not realize the risk of such an encroachment when I read the +following sentence printed on my billet of invitation:—</p> + +<p>"<i>Dancing to commence at</i> 4 P.M."</p> + +<p>Bierstadt, myself, and three gentlemen of our party were the only +Gentiles whom I found invited by President Young to meet in the +neighborhood of three thousand saints. Under these circumstances I felt +like the three-thousandth homoeopathic dilution of monogamy. Morality in +this world is so mainly a matter of convention that I dreaded to appear +in decent polygamic society, lest respectable women, owning their +orthodox tenth of a husband, should shrink from the pollution of my +presence, whispering, with a shudder, "Ugh! Well, I never! How that +one-wifed reprobate can dare to show his face!" But they were very +polite, and received me with as skilfully veiled disapprobation as is +shown by fashionable Eastern belies to brilliant seducers immoral in +<i>our</i> sense. Had I been a woman, I suppose there would have been no +mercy for me.</p> + +<p>I sought out our entertainer, Brigham Young, to thank him for the +flattering exception made in our Gentile favor. He was standing in the +dress-circle of the theatre, looking down on the dancers with an air of +mingled hearty kindness and feudal ownership. I could excuse the latter, +for Utah belongs to him of right. He may justly say of it, "Is not this +great Babylon which I have built?" His sole executive tact and personal +fascination are the key-stone of the entire arch of Mormon society. +While he remains, eighty thousand (and increasing) of the most +heterogeneous souls that could be swept together from the by-ways of +Christendom will continue builded up into a coherent nationality. The +instant he crumbles, Mormondom and Mormonism will fall to pieces at +once, irreparably. His individual magnetism, his executive tact, his +native benevolence, are all immense; I regard him as Louis Napoleon, +<i>plus</i> a heart; but these advantages would avail him little with the +dead-in-earnest fanatics who rule Utah under him, and the entirely +persuaded fanatics whom they rule, were not his qualities all +coordinated in this one,—<i>absolute sincerity of belief and motive</i>. +Brigham Young is the farthest remove on earth from a hypocrite; he is +that grand, yet awful sight in human nature, a man who has brought the +loftiest Christian self-devotion to the altar of the Devil,—who is +ready to suffer crucifixion for Barabbas, supposing him Christ. Be sure, +that, were he a hypocrite, the Union would have nothing to fear from +Utah. When he dies, at least four hostile factions, which find their +only common ground in deification of his person, will snatch his mantle +at opposite corners. Then will come such a rending as the world has not +seen since the Macedonian generals fought over the coffin of +Alexander,—and then Mormonism will go out of Geography into the History +of Popular Delusions. There is not a single chief, apostle, or bishop, +except Brigham, who possesses any catholicity of influence. I found this +tacitly acknowledged in every quarter. The people seem like citizens of +a beleaguered town, who know they have but a definite amount of bread, +yet have made up their minds to act while it lasts as if there were no +such thing as starvation. The greatest comfort you <a name="Page_492" id="Page_492"></a>can afford a Mormon +is to tell him how young Brigham looks; for the quick, unconscious +sequence is, "Then Brigham may last out my time." Those who think at all +have no conjecture of any Mormon future beyond him, and I know that many +Mormons (Heber Kimball included) would gladly die to-day rather than +survive him and encounter that judgment-day and final perdition of their +faith which must dawn on his new-made grave.</p> + +<p>Well, we may give them this comfort without any insincerity. Let us +return to where he stands gazing down on the <i>parquet</i>. Like any Eastern +party-goer, he is habited in the "customary suit of solemn black," and +looks very distinguished in this dress, though his daily homespun +detracts nothing from the feeling, when in his presence, that you are +beholding a most remarkable man. He is nearly seventy years old, but +appears very little over forty. His height is about five feet ten +inches; his figure very well made and slightly inclining to portliness. +His hair is a rich curly chestnut, formerly worn long, in supposed +imitation of the apostolic coiffure, but now cut in our practical +Eastern fashion, as accords with the man of business, whose <i>métier</i> he +has added to apostleship with the growing temporal prosperity of Zion. +Indeed, he is the greatest business-man on the continent,—the cashier +of a firm of eighty thousand silent partners, and the only auditor of +that cashier, besides. If I to-day signified my conversion to Mormonism, +to-morrow I should be baptized by Brigham's hands. The next day I should +be invited to appear at the Church-Office (Brigham's) and exhibit to the +Church (Brigham) a faithful inventory of my entire estate. I am a +cabinet-maker, let us say, and have brought to Salt Lake the entire +earnings of my New-York shop,—twenty thousand dollars. The Church +(Brigham sole and simple) examines and approves my inventory. It +(Brigham alone) has the absolute decision of the question whether any +more cabinet-makers are needed in Utah. If the Church (Brigham) says, +"No," it (Brigham again) has the right to tell me where labor is wanted, +and set me going in my new occupation. If the Church (Brigham) says, +"Yes," it further goes on to inform me, without appeal, exactly what +proportion of the twenty thousand dollars on my inventory can be +properly turned into the channels of the new cabinet-shop. I am making +no extraordinary or disproportionate supposition when I say that the +Church (Brigham) permits me to retain just one-half of my property. The +remaining ten thousand dollars goes into the Church-Fund, (Brigham's +Herring-safe,) and from that portion of my life's savings I never hear +again, in the form either of capital, interest, bequeathable estate, or +dower to my widow. Except for the purposes of the Church, (Brigham's +unquestionable will,) my ten thousand dollars is as though it had not +been. I am a sincere believer, however, and go home light-hearted, with +a certified check written by the Recording Angel on my conscience for +that amount, passed to my credit in the bank where thieves break not +through nor steal,—it being no more accessible to them than to the +depositor, which is a comfort to the latter. The first year I net from +my chairs and tables two thousand dollars. The Church (Brigham) sends me +another invitation to visit it, make a solemn averment of the sum, and +pay over to that ecclesiastical edifice, the Herring-safe, two hundred +dollars. Or suppose I have not sold any of my wares as yet, but have +only imported, to be sold by-and-by, five hundred Boston rockers. On +learning this fact, the Church (Brigham) graciously accepts fifty for +its own purposes.—Being founded upon a rock, it does not care, in its +collective capacity, to sit upon rockers, but has an immense series of +warehouses, omnivorous and eupeptic, which swallow all manner of tithes, +from grain and horseshoes to the less stable commodities of fresh fish +and melons, assimilating them by admirable processes into coin of the +realm. These warehouses are in the Church (Brigham's own private) +inclosure.—If success in my <a name="Page_493" id="Page_493"></a>cabinet-making has moved me to give a +feast, and I thereat drink more healths than are consistent with my own, +the Church surely knows that fact the very next day; and as Utah +recognizes no impunitive "getting drunk in the bosom of one's family," I +am again sent for, on this occasion to pay a fine, probably exceeding +the expenses of my feast. A second offence is punished with imprisonment +as well as fine; for no imprisonment avoids fine,—this comes in every +case. The hand of the Church holds the souls of the saints by inevitable +purse-strings. But I cannot waste time by enumerating the multitudinous +lapses and offences which all bring revenue to the Herring-safe.</p> + +<p>Over all these matters Brigham Young has supreme control. His power is +the most despotic known to mankind. Here, by the way, is the +constitutionally vulnerable point of Mormonism. If fear of establishing +a bad precedent hinder the United States at any time from breaking up +that nest of all disloyalty, because of its licentious +marriage-institutions, Utah is still open to grave punishment, and the +Administration inflicting it would have duty as well as vested right +upon its side, on the ground that it stands pledged to secure to each of +the nation's constituent sections a republican form of +government,—something which Utah has never enjoyed any more than +Timbuctoo. I once asked Brigham if Dr. Bernhisel would be likely to get +to Congress again. "No," he replied, with perfect certainty; "<i>we</i> shall +send —— as our Delegate." (I think he mentioned Colonel Kinney, but do +not remember absolutely.) Whoever it was, when the time came, Brigham +would send in his name to the "Deseret News,"—whose office, like +everything else valuable and powerful, is in his inclosure. It would be +printed as a matter of course; a counter-nomination is utterly unheard +of; and on election-day —— would be Delegate as surely as the sun +rose. The mountain-stream that irrigates the city, flowing to all the +gardens through open ditches on each side of the street, passes through +Brigham's inclosure: if the saints needed drought to humble them, he +could set back the waters to their source. The road to the only <i>cañon</i> +where firewood is attainable runs through the same close, and is barred +by a gate of which he holds the sole key. A family-man, wishing to cut +fuel, must ask his leave, which is generally granted on condition that +every third or fourth load is deposited in the inclosure, for +Church-purposes. Thus everything vital, save the air he breathes, +reaches the Mormon only through Brigham's sieve. What more absolute +despotism is conceivable? Here lies the <i>pou-sto</i> for the lever of +Governmental interference. The mere fact of such power resting in one +man's irresponsible hands is a crime against the Constitution. At the +same time, this power, wonderful as it may seem, is practically wielded +for the common good. I never heard Brigham's worst enemies accuse him of +peculation, though such immense interests are controlled by his one pair +of hands. His life is all one great theoretical mistake, yet he makes +fewer practical mistakes than any other man, so situated, whom the world +ever saw. Those he does make are not on the side of self. He merges his +whole personality in the Church, with a self-abnegation which would +establish in business a whole century of martyrs having a worthy cause.</p> + +<p>The cut of Brigham's hair led me away from his personal description. To +return to it: his eyes are a clear blue-gray, frank and straightforward +in their look; his nose a finely chiselled aquiline; his mouth +exceedingly firm, and fortified in that expression by a chin almost as +protrusive beyond the rest of the profile as Charlotte Cushman's, though +less noticeably so, being longer than hers; and he wears a narrow ribbon +of brown beard, meeting under the chin. I think I have heard Captain +Burton say that he had irregular teeth, which made his smile unpleasant. +Since the Captain's visit, our always benevolent President, Mr. Lincoln, +has altered all that, sending out as Territorial Secretary a Mr. Fuller, +<a name="Page_494" id="Page_494"></a>who, besides being a successful politician, was an excellent dentist. +He secured Brigham's everlasting gratitude by making him a very handsome +false set, and performing the same service for all of his favorite, but +edentate wives. Several other apostles of the Lord owe to Mr. Fuller +their ability to gnash their teeth against the Gentiles. The result was +that he became the most popular Federal officer (who didn't turn Mormon) +ever sent to Utah. The man who obtains ascendency over the mouths of the +authorities cannot fail ere-long to get their ears.</p> + +<p>Brigham's manners astonish any one who knows that his only education was +a few quarters of such common-school experience as could be had in +Ontario County, Central New York, during the early part of the century. +There are few courtlier men living. His address is a fine combination of +dignity with the desire to confer happiness,—of perfect deference to +the feelings of others with absolute certainty of himself and his own +opinions. He is a remarkable example of the educating influence of +tactful perception, combined with entire singleness of aim, considered +quite apart from its moral character. His early life was passed among +the uncouth and illiterate; his daily associations, since he embraced +Mormonism, have been with the least cultivated grades of human +society,—a heterogeneous peasant-horde, looking to him for erection +into a nation: yet he has so clearly seen what is requisite in the man +who would be respected in the Presidency, and has so unreservedly +devoted his life to its attainment, that in protracted conversations +with him I heard only a single solecism, ("a'n't you" for "aren't you,") +and saw not one instance of breeding which would be inconsistent with +noble lineage.</p> + +<p>I say all this good of him frankly, disregarding any slur that maybe +cast on me as his defender by those broad-effect artists who always +paint the Devil black,—for I think it high time that the Mormon enemies +of our American Idea should be plainly understood as far more dangerous +antagonists than hypocrites or idiots can ever hope to be. Let us not +twice commit the blunder of underrating our foes.</p> + +<p>Brigham began our conversation at the theatre by telling me I was +late,—it was after nine o'clock. I replied, that this was the time we +usually set about dressing for an evening party in Boston or New York.</p> + +<p>"Yes," said he, "you find us an old-fashioned people; we are trying to +return to the healthy habits of patriarchal times."</p> + +<p>"Need you go back so far as that for your parallel?" suggested I. "It +strikes me that we might have found four-o'clock balls among the <i>early</i> +Christians."</p> + +<p>He smiled, without that offensive affectation of some great men, the air +of taking another's joke under their gracious patronage, and went on to +remark that there were, unfortunately, multitudinous differences between +the Mormons and Americans at the East, besides the hours they kept.</p> + +<p>"You find us," said he, "trying to live peaceably. A sojourn with people +thus minded must be a great relief to you, who come from a land where +brother hath lifted hand against brother, and you hear the confused +noise of the warrior perpetually ringing in your ears."</p> + +<p>Despite the courtly deference and Scriptural dignity of this speech, I +detected in it a latent crow over that "perished Union" which was the +favorite theme of every saint I met in Utah, and hastened to assure the +President that I had no desire for relief from sympathy with my +country's struggle for honor and existence.</p> + +<p>"Ah!" he replied, in a voice slightly tinged with sarcasm. "You differ +greatly, then, from multitudes of your countrymen, who, since the draft +began to be talked of, have passed through Salt Lake, flying westward +from the crime of their brothers' blood."</p> + +<p>"I do indeed."</p> + +<p>"Still, they are excellent men. Brother<a name="Page_495" id="Page_495"></a> Heber Kimball and myself are +every week invited to address a train of them down at Emigrant Square. +They are honest, peaceful people. You call them 'Copperheads,' I +believe. But they are real, true, good men. We find them very +truth-seeking, remarkably open to conviction. Many of them have stayed +with us. Thus the Lord makes the wrath of man to praise Him. The +Abolitionists—the same people who interfered with our institutions, and +drove us out into the wilderness—interfered with the Southern +institutions till they broke up the Union. But it's all coming out +right,—a great deal better than we could have arranged it for +ourselves. The men who flee from Abolitionist oppression come out here +to our ark of refuge, and people the asylum of God's chosen. You'll all +be out here before long. Your Union's gone forever. Fighting only makes +matters worse. When your country has become a desolation, we, the saints +whom you cast out, will forget all your sins against us, and give you a +home."</p> + +<p>There was something so preposterous in the idea of a mighty and +prosperous people abandoning, through abject terror of a desperate set +of Southern conspirators, the fertile soil and grand commercial avenues +of the United States, to populate a green strip in the heart of an +inaccessible desert, that, until I saw Brigham Young's face glowing with +what he deemed prophetic enthusiasm, I could not imagine him in earnest. +Before I left Utah, I discovered, that, without a single exception, all +the saints were inoculated with a prodigious craze, to the effect that +the United States was to become a blighted chaos, and its inhabitants +Mormon proselytes and citizens of Utah within the next two years,—the +more sanguine said, "next summer."</p> + +<p>At first sight, one point puzzled me. Where were they to get the +orthodox number of wives for this sudden accession of converts? My +gentlemen-readers will feel highly nattered by a solution of this +problem which I received from no leaser light of the Latter-Day Church +than that jolly apostle, Heber Kimball.</p> + +<p>"Why," said the old man, twinkling his little black eyes like a godly +Silenus, and nursing one of his fat legs with a lickerish smile, "isn't +the Lord Almighty providin' for His beloved heritage jist as fast as He +anyways kin? This war's a-goin' on till the biggest part o' you male +Gentiles hez killed each other off, then the leetle handful that's left +and comes a-fleein' t' our asylum 'll bring all the women o' the nation +along with 'em, so we shall hev women enough to give every one on 'em +all they want, and hev a large balance left over to distribute round +among God's saints that hez been here from the beginnin' o' the +tribulation."</p> + +<p>The sweet taste which this diabolical reflection seemed to leave in +Heber Kimball's mouth made me long to knock him down worse than I had +ever felt regarding either saint or sinner. But it is costly to smite an +apostle of the Lord in Salt Lake City; and I merely retaliated by +telling him I wished I could hear him say that in a lecture-room full of +Sanitary-Commission ladies scraping lint for their husbands, +sweethearts, and brothers in the Union army. I didn't know whether +saints made good lint, but I thought I knew one who'd get scraped a +little.</p> + +<p>To resume Brigham for the last time. After a conversation about the +Indians, in which he denounced the military policy of the Government, +averring that one bale of blankets and ten pounds of beads would go +farther to protect the mails from stoppage and emigrants from massacre +than a regiment of soldiers, he discovered that we crossed swords on +every war-question, and tactfully changed the subject to the beauty of +the Opera-House.</p> + +<p>As to the Indians, let me remark by-the-by, I did not tell him that I +understood the reason of his dislike to severe measures in that +direction. Infernally bestial and cruel as are the Goshoots, Pi-Utes, +and other Desert tribes, still they have never planned any extensive +raid since the Mormons entered Utah. In <a name="Page_496" id="Page_496"></a>every settlement of the saints +you will find from two to a dozen young men who wear their black hair +cut in the Indian fashion, and speak all the surrounding dialects with +native fluency. Whenever a fatly provided wagon-train is to be attacked, +a fine herd of emigrants' beeves stampeded, the mail to be stopped, or +the Gentiles in any way harassed, these desperadoes stain their skin, +exchange their clothes for a breech-clout, and rally a horde of the +savages, whose favor they have always propitiated, for the ambush and +massacre, which in all but the element of brute force is their work in +plan, leadership, and execution. I have multitudes of most interesting +facts to back this assertion, but am already in danger of overrunning my +allowed limits.</p> + +<p>The Opera-House was a subject we could agree upon. I was greatly +astonished to find in the desert heart of the continent a place of +public amusement which for capacity, beauty, and comfort has no superior +in America, except the opera-houses of New York, Boston, and +Philadelphia. It is internally constructed somewhat like the first of +these, seats twenty-five hundred people, and commodiously receives five +hundred more, when, as in the present instance, the stage is thrown into +the <i>parquet</i>, and the latter boarded up to the level of the former for +dancing. Externally the building is a plain, but not ungraceful +structure, of stone, brick, and stucco. My greatest surprise was excited +by the really exquisite artistic beauty of the gilt and painted +decorations of the great arch over the stage, the cornices, and the +moulding about the <i>proscenium</i>-boxes. President Young, with a proper +pride, assured me that every particle of the ornamental work was by +indigenous and saintly hands.</p> + +<p>"But you don't know yet," he added, "how independent we are of you at +the East. Where do you think we got that central chandelier, and what d' +ye suppose we paid for it?"</p> + +<p>It was a piece of workmanship which would have been creditable to any +New York firm,—apparently a richly carved circle, twined with gilt +vines, leaves, and tendrils, blossoming all over with flaming +wax-lights, and suspended by a massive chain of golden lustre. So I +replied that he probably paid a thousand dollars for it in New York.</p> + +<p>"Capital!" exclaimed Brigham. "I made it myself! That circle is a +cartwheel which I washed and gilded; it hangs by a pair of gilt +ox-chains; and the ornaments of the candlesticks were all cut after my +patterns out of sheet-tin!"</p> + +<p>I talked with the President till a party of young girls, who seemed to +regard him with idolatry, and whom, in return, he treated with a sage +mixture of gallantry and fatherliness, came to him with an invitation to +join in some old-fashioned contra-dance long forgotten at the East. I +was curious to see how he would acquit himself in this supreme ordeal of +dignity; so I descended to the <i>parquet</i>, and was much impressed by the +aristocratic grace with which he went through his figures.</p> + +<p>After that I excused myself from numerous kind invitations by the +ball-committee to be introduced to a partner and join in the dances. The +fact was that I greatly wished to make a thorough physiognomical study +of the ball-room, and I know that my readers will applaud my self-denial +in not dancing, since it enables me to tell them how Utah good society +<i>looks</i>.</p> + +<p>After spending an hour in a circuit and survey of the room as minute as +was compatible with decency, I arrived at the following results.</p> + +<p>There was very little ostentation in dress at the ball, but there was +also very little taste in dressing. Patrician broadcloth and silk were +the rare exceptions, generally ill-made and ill-worn, but they cordially +associated with the great mass of plebeian tweed and calico. Few ladies +wore jewelry or feathers. There were some pretty girls swimming about in +tasteful whip-syllabub of puffed tarlatan. Where saintly gentlemen came +with several wives, the oldest generally seemed the most elaborately +dressed, and <a name="Page_497" id="Page_497"></a>acted much like an Eastern chaperon toward her younger +sisters. (Wives of the same man habitually besister each other in Utah. +Another triumph of grace!) Among the men I saw some very strong and +capable faces; but the majority had not much character in their +looks,—indeed, differed little in that regard from any average crowd of +men anywhere. Among the women, to my surprise, I found no really +degraded faces, though many stolid ones,—only one deeply dejected, +(this belonged to the wife of a hitherto monogamic husband, who had left +her alone in the dress-circle, while he was dancing with a chubby young +Mormoness, likely to be added to the family in a month or two,) but many +impassive ones; and though I saw multitudes of kindly, good-tempered +countenances, and a score which would have been called pretty anywhere, +I was obliged to confess, after a most impartial and anxious search, +that I had not met a single woman who looked high-toned, first-class, +capable of poetic enthusiasm or heroic self-devotion,—not a single +woman whom an artist would dream of and ask to sit for a study,—not one +to whom a finely constituted intellectual man could come for +companionship in his pursuits or sympathy in his yearnings. Because I +knew that this verdict would be received at the East with a "Just as you +might have expected!" I cast aside everything like prejudice, and forgot +that I was in Utah, as I threaded the great throng.</p> + +<p>I must condense greatly what I have to say about two other typical men +besides Brigham Young, or I shall have no room to speak of the Lake and +the Desert. Heber Kimball, second President, (<i>proximus longo +intervallo!</i>) Brigham's most devoted worshipper, and in all respects the +next most important man, although utterly incapable of keeping coherent +the vast tissue of discordant Mormon elements, in case he should survive +Brigham, is the latter's equal in years, but in all things else his +antipodes. His height is over six feet, his form of aldermanic +rotundity, his face large, plethoric, and lustrous with the stable red +of stewed cranberries, while his small, twinkling black beads of eyes +and a Satyric sensualism about the mouth would indicate a temperament +fatally in the way of any apostleship save that of polygamy, even +without the aid of an induction from his favorite topics of discourse +and his patriarchally unvarnished style of handling them. Men, +everywhere, unfortunately, tend little toward the error of bashfulness +in their chat among each other, but most of us at the East would feel +that we were insulting the lowest member of the <i>demi-monde</i>, if we +uttered before her a single sentence of the talk which forms the +habitual staple of all Heber Kimball's public sermons to the wives and +daughters who throng the Sunday Tabernacle.</p> + +<p>Heber took a vivid interest in Bierstadt's and my own eternal welfare. +He quite laid himself out for our conversion, coming to sit with us at +breakfast in our Mormon hotel, dressed in a black swallow-tail, buff +vest, and a stupendous truncate cone of Leghorn, which made him look +like an Italian mountebank-physician of the seventeenth century. I have +heard men who could misquote Scripture for their own ends, and talk a +long while without saying anything; but he so far surpassed in these +particulars the loftiest efforts within my former experience, that I +could think of no comparison for him but Jack Bunsby taken to exhorting. +Witness a sample:—</p> + +<p>"Seven women shall take a hold o' one man! There!" (with a slap on the +back of the nearest subject for conversion). "What d' ye think o' that? +Shall! <i>Shall</i> take a hold on him! That don't mean they <i>sha'n't</i>, does +it? No! God's word means what it says. And therefore means no +otherwise,—not in no way, shape, nor manner. Not in no <i>way</i>, for He +saith, 'I am the <i>way</i>—and the truth and the life.' Not in no <i>shape</i>, +for a man beholdeth his nat'ral <i>shape</i> in a glass; nor in no <i>manner</i>, +for he straightway forgetteth what manner o' man he was. Seven women +<i>shall</i> catch a hold <a name="Page_498" id="Page_498"></a>on him. And ef they <i>shall</i>, then they <i>will</i>! For +everything shall come to pass, and not one good word shall fall to the +ground. You who try to explain away the Scriptur' would make it +fig'rative. But don't come to ME with none o' your spiritooalizers! Not +<i>one</i> good word shall fall. Therefore <i>seven</i> shall not fall. And ef +seven shall catch a hold on him,—and, as I jist proved, seven <i>will</i> +catch a hold on him,—then seven <i>ought</i>,—and in the Latter-Day Glory, +<i>seven</i>, yea, as our Lord said un-tew Peter, 'Verily I say un-tew you, +not seven, but seventy times seven,' these seventy times seven shall +catch a hold and cleave. Blessed day! For the end shall be even as the +beginnin', and seventy-fold more abundantly. Come over into my garden."</p> + +<p>This invitation would wind up the homily. We gladly accepted it, and I +must confess, that, if there ever could be any hope of our conversion, +it was just about the time we stood in Brother Heber's fine orchard, +eating apples and apricots between exhortations, and having sound +doctrine poked down our throats with gooseberries as big as plums, to +take the taste out of our mouths, like jam after castor-oil.</p> + +<p>Porter Rockwell is a man whom my readers must have heard of in every +account of fearlessly executed massacre committed in Utah during the +last thirteen years. He is the chief of the Danites,—a band of saints +who possess the monopoly of vengeance upon Gentiles and apostates. If a +Mormon tries to sneak off to California by night, after converting his +property into cash, their knives have the inevitable duty of changing +his destination to another state, and bringing back his goods into the +Lord's treasury. Their bullets are the ones which find their unerring +way through the brains of external enemies. They are the Heaven-elected +assassins of Mormonism,—the butchers by divine right. Porter Rockwell +has slain his forty men. This is historical. His probable private +victims amount to as many more. He wears his hair braided behind, and +done up in a knot with a back-comb, like a woman's. He has a face full +of bull-dog courage,—but vastly good-natured, and without a bad trait +in it. I went out riding with him on the Fourth of July, and enjoyed his +society greatly,—though I knew that at a word from Brigham he would cut +my throat in as matter-of-fact a style as if I had been a calf instead +of an author. But he would have felt no unkindness toward me on that +account. I understood his anomaly perfectly, and found him one of the +pleasantest murderers I ever met. He was mere executive force, from +which the lever, conscience, had suffered entire disjunction, being in +the hand of Brigham. He was everywhere known as the Destroying Angel, +but he seemed to have little disagreement with his toddy, and took his +meals regularly. He has two very comely and pleasant wives. Brigham has +about seventy, Heber about thirty. The seventy of Brigham do not include +those spiritually married, or "sealed" to him, who may never see him +again after the ceremony is performed in his back-office. These often +have temporal husbands, and marry Brigham only for the sake of belonging +to his lordly establishment in heaven.</p> + +<p>Salt Lake City, Brigham told me, he believed to contain sixteen thousand +inhabitants. Its houses are built generally of adobe or wood,—a few of +stone,—and though none of them are architecturally ambitious, almost +all have delightful gardens. Both fruit- and shade-trees are plenty and +thrifty. Indeed, from the roof of the Opera-House the city looks fairly +embowered in green. It lies very picturesquely on a plain quite +embasined among mountains, and the beauty of its appearance is much +heightened by the streams which run on both sides of all the broad +streets, brought down from the snow-peaks for purposes of irrigation. +The Mormons worship at present in a plain, low building,—I think, of +adobe,—called the Tabernacle, save during the intensely hot weather, +when an immense booth of green branches, filled with benches, +accommodates them more comfortably.<a name="Page_499" id="Page_499"></a> Brigham is erecting a Temple of +magnificent granite, (much like the Quincy,) about two hundred feet long +by one hundred and twenty-five feet wide. If this edifice be ever +finished, it will rank among the most capacious religious structures of +the continent.</p> + +<p>The lake from which the city takes its name is about twenty miles +distant from the latter, by a good road across the level valley-bottom. +Artistically viewed, it is one of the loveliest sheets of water I ever +saw,—bluer than the intensest blue of the ocean, and practically as +impressive, since, looking from the southern shore, you see only a +water-horizon. This view, however, is broken by a magnificent +mountainous island, rising, I should think, seven or eight hundred feet +from the water, half a dozen miles from shore, and apparently as many +miles in circuit. The density of the lake-brine has been under- instead +of over-stated. I swam out into it for a considerable distance, then lay +upon my back <i>on</i>, rather than in, the water, and suffered the breeze to +waft me landward again. I was blown to a spot where the lake was only +four inches deep, without grazing my back, and did not know I had got +within my depth again until I depressed my hand a trifle and touched +bottom! It is a mistake to call this lake azoic. It has no fish, but +breeds myriads of strange little maggots, which presently turn into +troublesome gnats. The rocks near the lake are grandly castellated and +cavernous crags of limestone, some of it finely crystalline, but most of +it like our coarser Trenton and Black-River groups. There is a large +cave in this formation, ten minutes' climb from the shore.</p> + +<p>I must abruptly leap to the overland stage again.</p> + +<p>From Salt Lake City to Washoe and the Sierra Nevada Mountains, the road +lies through the most horrible desert conceivable by the mind of man. +For the sand of the Sahara we find substituted an impalpable powder of +alkali, white as the driven snow, stretching for ninety miles at a time +in one uninterrupted dazzling sheet, which supports not even that last +obstinate <i>vidette</i> of vegetation, the wild-sage brush. Its springs are +far between, and, without a single exception, mere receptacles of a +salt, potash, and sulphur hell-broth, which no man would drink, save <i>in +extremis</i>. A few days of this beverage within, and of wind-drifted +alkali invading every pore of the body without, often serve to cover the +miserable passenger with an erysipelatous eruption which presently +becomes confluent and irritates him to madness. Meanwhile he jolts +through alkali-ruts, unable to sleep for six days and nights together, +until frenzy sets in, or actual delirium comes to his relief. I look +back on that desert as the most frightful nightmare of my existence.</p> + +<p>As if Nature had not done her worst, we were doomed, on the second day +out from Salt Lake, to hear, at one station, where we stopped, horrid +rumors of Goshoots on the war-path, and, ere the day reached its noon, +to find their proofs irrefragable. Every now and then we saw in the +potash-dust moccasin-tracks, with the toes turned in, and presently my +field-glass revealed a hideous devil skulking in the mile-off ledges, +who was none other than a Goshoot spy. How far off were the scalpers and +burners?</p> + +<p>The first afternoon-stage that day was a long and terrible one. The poor +horses could hardly drag our crazy wagon, up to its hubs in potash; and +yet we knew our only safety, in case of attack, was a running fight. We +must fire from our windows as the horses flew.</p> + +<p>About four o'clock we entered a terrible defile, which seemed planned by +Nature for treachery and ambush. The great, black, barren rocks of +porphyry and trachyte rose three hundred feet above our heads, their +lower and nearer ledges being all so many natural parapets to fire over, +loop-holed with chinks to fire through. There were ten rifles in our +party. We ran them out, five on a side, ready to send the first red +villain who peeped over the breastworks to quick <a name="Page_500" id="Page_500"></a>perdition. Our +six-shooters lay across our laps, our bowie-knives were at our sides, +our cartouch-boxes, crammed with ready vengeance, swung open on our +breast-straps. We sat with tight-shut teeth,—only muttering now and +then to each other, in a glum undertone, "Don't get nervous,—don't +throw a single shot away,—take aim,—remember it's for <i>home</i>!" +Something of that sort, or a silent squeeze of the hand, was all that +passed, as we sat with one eye glued to the ledges and our guns +unswerving. None of us, I think, were cowards; but the agony of sitting +there, tugging along two miles an hour, expecting to hear a volley of +yells and musketry ring over the next ledge, drinking the cup of thought +to its miscroscopic dregs,—<i>that</i> was worse than fear!</p> + +<p>Only one consolation was left us. In the middle of the defile stood an +overland station, where we were to get fresh horses. The next stage was +twenty miles long. If we were attacked in force, we might manage to run +it, almost the whole way, unless the Indians succeeded in shooting one +of our team,—the <i>coup</i> they always attempt.</p> + +<p>I have no doubt we were ambushed at several points in that defile, but +our perfect preparation intimidated our foes. The Indian is cruel as the +grave, but he is an arrant coward. He will not risk being the first man +shot, though his band may overpower the enemy afterward.</p> + +<p>At last we turned the corner around which the station-house should come +in view.</p> + +<p>A thick, nauseous smoke was curling up from the site of the buildings. +We came nearer. Barn, stables, station-house,—all were a smouldering +pile of rafters. We came still nearer. The whole stud of horses—a dozen +or fifteen—lay roasting on the embers. We came close to the spot. +There, inextricably mixed with the carcasses of the beasts, lay six men, +their brains dashed out, their faces mutilated beyond recognition, their +limbs hewn off,—a frightful holocaust steaming up into our faces. I +must not dwell on that horror of all senses. It comes to me now at high +noonday with a grisly shudder.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>After that, we toiled on twenty miles farther with our nearly dying +horses; a hundred miles more of torturing suspense on top of that sight +branded into our brains before we gained Ruby Valley, at the foot of the +Humboldt Mountains, and left the last Goshoot behind us.</p> + +<p>The remainder of our journey was horrible by Nature only, without the +atrocious aid of man. But the past had done its work. We reached Washoe +with our very marrows almost burnt out by sleeplessness, sickness, and +agony of mind. The morning before we came to the silver-mining +metropolis, Virginia City, a stout, young Illinois farmer, whom we had +regarded as the stanchest of all our fellow-passengers, became +delirious, and had to be held in the stage by main force. (A few weeks +afterward, when the stage was changing horses near the Sink of Carson, +another traveller became suddenly insane, and blew his brains out.) As +for myself, the moment that I entered a warm bath, in Virginia City, I +swooned entirely away, and was resuscitated with great difficulty after +an hour and a half's unconsciousness.</p> + +<p>We stopped at Virginia for three days,—saw the California of '49 +reënacted in a feverish, gambling, mining town,—descended to the bottom +of the exhaustlessly rich "Ophir" shaft,—came up again, and resumed our +way across the Sierra. By the mere act of crossing that ridge and +stepping over the California line, we came into glorious forests of +ever-living green, a rainbow-affluence of flowers, an air like a draught +from windows left open in heaven.</p> + +<p>Just across the boundary, we sat down on the brink of glorious Lake +Tahoe, (once "Bigler," till the ex-Governor of that name became a +Copperhead, and the loyal Californians kicked him out of their +geography, as he had already been thrust out of their politics,)—a +crystal sheet of water fresh-distilled from the snow-peaks, <a name="Page_501" id="Page_501"></a>its granite +bottom visible at the depth of a hundred feet, its banks a celestial +garden, lying in a basin thirty-five miles long by ten wide, and nearly +seven thousand feet above the Pacific level. Geography has no superior +to this glorious sea, this chalice of divine cloud-wine held sublimely +up against the very press whence it was wrung. Here, virtually at the +end of our overland journey, since our feet pressed the green borders of +the Golden State, we sat down to rest, feeling that one short hour, one +little league, had translated us out of the infernal world into heaven.</p> + + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="ON_PICKET_DUTY" id="ON_PICKET_DUTY"></a>ON PICKET DUTY.</h2> + + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Within a green and shadowy wood,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Circled with spring, alone I stood:</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The nook was peaceful, fair, and good.</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The wild-plum blossoms lured the bees,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The birds sang madly in the trees,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Magnolia-scents were on the breeze.</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">All else was silent; but the ear</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Caught sounds of distant bugle clear,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And heard the bullets whistle near,—</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">When from the winding river's shore</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The Rebel guns began to roar,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And ours to answer, thundering o'er;</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And echoed from the wooded hill,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Repeated and repeated still,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Through all my soul they seemed to thrill.</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">For, as their rattling storm awoke,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And loud and fast the discord broke,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">In rude and trenchant <i>words</i> they spoke.</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"<i>We hate!</i>" boomed fiercely o'er the tide;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"We fear not!" from the other side;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"<i>We strike!</i>" the Rebel guns replied.</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Quick roared our answer, "We defend!"</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"<i>Our rights!</i>" the battle-sounds contend;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"The rights of <i>all</i>!" we answer send.</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"<i>We conquer!</i>" rolled across the wave;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"We persevere!" our answer gave;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"<i>Our chivalry!</i>" they wildly rave.</span><br /><a name="Page_502" id="Page_502"></a> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"Ours <i>are the brave</i>!" "Be <i>ours</i> the free!"</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"<i>Be ours the slave, the masters we</i>!"</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"On us their blood no more shall be!"</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">As when some magic word is spoken,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">By which a wizard spell is broken,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">There was a silence at that token.</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The wild birds dared once more to sing,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I heard the pine-bough's whispering,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And trickling of a silver spring.</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Then, crashing forth with smoke and din,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Once more the rattling sounds begin,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Our iron lips roll forth, "We win!"</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And dull and wavering in the gale</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">That rushed in gusts across the vale</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Came back the faint reply, "<i>We fail</i>!"</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And then a word, both stern and sad,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">From throat of huge Columbiad,—</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"Blind fools and traitors! ye are mad!"</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Again the Rebel answer came,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Muffled and slow, as if in shame,—</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"<i>All, all is lost</i>!" in smoke and flame.</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Now bold and strong and stern as Fate</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The Union guns sound forth, "We wait!"</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Faint comes the distant cry, "<i>Too late</i>!"</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"Return! return!" our cannon said;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And, as the smoke rolled overhead,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"<i>We dare not</i>!" was the answer dread.</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Then came a sound, both loud and clear,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">A godlike word of hope and cheer,—</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"Forgiveness!" echoed far and near;</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">As when beside some death-bed still</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">We watch, and wait God's solemn will,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">A blue-bird warbles his soft trill.</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I clenched my teeth at that blest word,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And, angry, muttered, "Not so, Lord!</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The only answer is the sword!"</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I thought of Shiloh's tainted air,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Of Richmond's prisons, foul and bare,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And murdered heroes, young and fair,—</span><br /><a name="Page_503" id="Page_503"></a> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Of block and lash and overseer,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And dark, mild faces pale with fear,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Of baying hell-hounds panting near.</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">But then the gentle story told</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">My childhood, in the days of old,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Rang out its lessons manifold.</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">O prodigal, and lost! arise</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And read the welcome blest that lies</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">In a kind Father's patient eyes!</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Thy elder brother grudges not</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The lost and found should share his lot,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And wrong in concord be forgot.</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Thus mused I, as the hours went by,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Till the relieving guard drew nigh,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And then was challenge and reply.</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And as I hastened back to line,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">It seemed an omen half divine</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">That "Concord" was the countersign.</span><br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="OUR_PROGRESSIVE_INDEPENDENCE" id="OUR_PROGRESSIVE_INDEPENDENCE"></a>OUR PROGRESSIVE INDEPENDENCE.</h2> + + +<p>It is among the possibilities of the future, that, in due course of +time, the United States of America shall become to England what England +has become to Saxony. We cannot be sure, it is true, that the +mother-country will live, a prosperous and independent kingdom, to see +the full maturity of her gigantic offspring. We have no right to assume +it as a matter of course, that the Western Autocracy will fill up, +unbroken, the outline traced for it by Nature and history. But England, +forced as her civilization must be considered ever since the Conquest, +has a reasonable chance for another vigorous century, and the Union, the +present storm once weathered, does not ask a longer time than this to +become, according to the prediction of the London "Times," the +master-power of the planet.</p> + +<p>The class that guides the destinies of Great Britain and her +dependencies is far-reaching in its anticipations as it is deep-rooted +in its recollections. <i>Quantum radice in Tartara, tantum vertice ad +auras</i>,—if we may invert the poet's words. An American millionnaire may +be anxious about the condition of his grandchildren, but a peer whose +ancestors came in with the Conqueror looks ahead at least as far as the +end of the twentieth century. The royal astrologers have cast the +horoscope of the nationality born beneath the evening-star, and report +it as being ominous for that which finds its nativity in the House of +Leo.</p> + +<p>Every dynasty sees a natural enemy in a self-governing state. Its dread +of that enemy is in exact proportion to the amount of liberty enjoyed by +its own people. Freedom is the ferment of Freedom. The moistened sponge +drinks up water greedily; the dry one sheds it. Russia has no popular +legislation, and her<a name="Page_504" id="Page_504"></a> Emperor almost, perhaps quite, loves us. England +boasts of her freeborn people, and her governing class, to say the +least, does not love us.</p> + +<p>An unexpected accident of situation startled us by the revelation of a +secret which had been, on the whole, very well kept. No play of mirrors +in a story, no falling of a screen in a comedy, no flash of +stage-lightning in a melodrama, ever betrayed a lover's or a murderer's +hidden thought and purpose more strikingly than the over-hasty +announcement that the Union was broken into warring fragments, never +again to be joined together, unveiled the cherished hope of its +Old-World enemies. The whispers of expectant heirs at the opening of a +miser's will are decorous and respectful, compared to the chuckle of the +leading English social and political organ and its echoes, when the +bursting of the Republican "bubble" was proclaimed as an accomplished +fact, and the hour was thought to have come when the "Disunited States" +could be held up as a spectacle to the people of Europe. A <i>Te Deum</i> in +Westminster Abbey would hardly have added emphasis to the expression of +what appeared to be the prevailing sentiment of the upper classes.</p> + +<p>If the comparative prudence of the British Government had not tempered +this exultant movement, the hopes of civilization would have been +blasted by such a war as it is sickening to think of: England in +alliance with an empire trying to spread and perpetuate Slavery as its +very principle of life, against a people whose watchwords were freedom, +education, and the dignity of labor. If the silent masses of the British +people had not felt that our cause was theirs, there would have been no +saying how far the passionate desire to see their predictions made facts +might have led the proud haters of popular government.</p> + +<p>Between these two forces the British Cabinet has found a diagonal which +has met with the usual success of compromises. The aristocracy, which +very naturally wishes to see the Union divided, is in a fair way of +being disappointed, because, as its partisans may claim, England did not +force herself into our quarrel. That portion of the middling classes +which could not tolerate the thought of a Slave Empire has been +compelled to witness a deliberate exposure in the face of the whole +world of the hollowness of those philanthropic pretensions which have +been so long the boast of British patriots. The people of the Union, who +expected moral support and universal indignant repudiation of the +slaveholding Rebel conspiracy, have been disgusted and offended. The +Rebels, who supposed Great Britain, and perhaps France also, would join +them in a war which was virtually a crusade against free institutions, +have been stung into a second paroxysm of madness. Western Europe failed +us in the storm; it leaves them in the moment of shipwreck.</p> + +<p>The recent action of the British Government, under the persuasive +influence of Mr. Seward's polite representation, that instant +hostilities would be sure to follow, if England did not keep her iron +pirates at home, has improved somewhat the tone of Northern feeling +towards her. The late neighborly office of the Canadian Government, in +warning us of the conspiracy to free our prisoners, has produced a very +favorable impression, so far as the effect of a single act is felt in +striking the balance of a long account.</p> + +<p>We can, therefore, examine some of our relations with Great Britain in a +better temper now than we could do some months ago, when we never went +to sleep without thinking that before morning we might be shelled out of +our beds by a fleet of British iron-clad steamers. But though we have +been soothed, and in some measure conciliated, by the change referred +to, there is no such thing possible as returning to the <i>status quo ante +bellum</i>. We can never feel in all respects to England as we felt of old. +This is a fact which finds expression in so many forms that it is +natural to wish to see how deep it lies: whether it is an effect of +accidental misunderstanding and collision <a name="Page_505" id="Page_505"></a>of interests, or whether it +is because the events of the last few years have served to bring to +light the organic, inherent, and irreconcilable antagonism of the two +countries.</p> + +<p>We are all of us in the habit of using words so carelessly, that it will +help us to limit their vagueness as here employed. We speak of "England" +for Great Britain, for the simple reason that Ireland is but a reluctant +alien she drags after her, and Scotland only her most thriving province. +We are not surprised, for instance, when "Blackwood" echoes the abusive +language of the metropolitan journals, for it is only as a village-cur +joins the hounds that pass in full cry. So, when we talk of "the +attitude of England," we have a tolerably defined idea, made up of the +collective aspect of the unsympathetic Government, of the mendacious and +insolent press, of the mercenary trading allies of the Rebels, of the +hostile armaments which have sailed from British ports, of the +undisguised enmity of many of her colonists, neighbors of the North as +well as neighbors of the South; all of which shape themselves into an +image having very much the look of representing the nation,—certainly +much more the look of it than the sum of all those manifestations which +indicate sympathy with the cause of the North.</p> + +<p>The attitude of England, then, has been such, since the Rebellion began, +as to alienate much of the affection still remaining among us for the +mother-country. It has gone far towards finishing that process of +separation of the child from the parent which two centuries of exile and +two long wars had failed to complete. But, looking at the matter more +clearly, we shall find that our causes of complaint must be very +unequally distributed among the different classes of the British people.</p> + +<p>The <i>Government</i> has carefully measured out to us, in most cases +certainly, strict, technical justice. It could not well do otherwise, +for it knows the force of precedents. But we have an unpleasing sense +that our due, as an ally and a Christian nation, striving against an +openly proclaimed heathen conspiracy, has been paid us grudgingly, +tardily, sparingly, while our debt, as in the case of the Rebel +emissaries, has been extorted fiercely, swiftly, and to the last +farthing. We have recognized a change, it is true, ever since Earl +Russell gave the hint that our cause was more popular in England than +that of the South. We have gratefully accepted the friendly acts already +alluded to. Better late than not at all. But the past cannot be undone. +British "neutrality" has strengthened the arms that have been raised +against our national life, and winged the bloody messengers that have +desolated our households. Still, every act of justice which has even a +show of good-will in it is received only too graciously by a people +which has known what it is to be deserted by its friends in the hour of +need. Whatever be the motives of the altered course of the British +Government,—an awakened conscience, or a series of "Federal" +successes,—Mr. Sumner's arguments, or General Gillmore's long-range +practice,—a more careful study of the statistics of Slavery, or of the +lists of American iron-clad steamers,—we welcome it at once; we take +the offered hand, if not with warm pressure, at least with decent +courtesy. We only regret that forbearance and good offices, and that +moral influence which would have been almost as important as an +offensive and defensive alliance, had not come before the flower of our +youth was cut down in the battle-field, and mourning and misery had +entered half the families of the land.</p> + +<p>The British <i>aristocracy</i>, with all its dependent followers, cannot help +being against us. The bearing which our success would have on its +interests is obvious enough, and we cannot wonder that the instinct of +self-preservation opens its eyes to the remote consequences which will +be likely to flow from the continued and prosperous existence of the +regenerated, self-governing Union. The privileged classes feel to our +labor- and money-saving <a name="Page_506" id="Page_506"></a>political machinery just as the hand-weavers +felt to the inventor and introducers of the power-loom. The simple fact +is, that, if a great nation like ours can govern itself, they are not +needed, and Nobility has a nightmare of Jews going about the streets +with half a dozen coronets on their heads, one over another, like so +many old beavers. What can we expect of the law-spinning heir-loom +owners, but that they should wish to break this new-fangled machine, and +exterminate its contrivers? The right to defend its life is the claim of +everything that lives, and we must not lose our temper because the +representatives of an hereditary ruling class wish to preserve those +privileges which are their very existence, nor because they have +foresight enough to know, that, if the Western Continent remains the +seat of a vast, thriving, irresistible, united republic, the days of +their life, as an order, are numbered.</p> + +<p>"The <i>people</i>," as Mr. Motley has said, in one of his official letters, +"everywhere sympathize with us; for they know that our cause is that of +free institutions,—that our struggle is that of the people against an +oligarchy." We have evidence that this is partially true of the British +people. But we know also how much they are influenced by their political +and social superiors, and we know, too, what base influences have been +long at work to corrupt their judgment and inflame their prejudices. We +have too often had occasion to see that the middle classes had been +reached by the passions of their superiors, or infected by the poison +instilled by traitorous emissaries. We have been struck with this +particularly in some of the British colonies. It is the livid gleam of a +reflected hatred they shed upon us; but the angle of reflection is equal +to the angle of incidence, and we feel sure that the British inhabitants +of an African cape or of a West-India islet would not have presumed to +sympathize with the Rebels, unless they had known that it was +respectable, if not fashionable, to do so at home. It is one of the most +painful illustrations of the influence of a privileged class that the +opinions and prejudices and interests of the English aristocracy should +have been so successfully imposed upon a large portion of the people, +for whom the North was fighting over again the battles of that long +campaign which will never end until the rightful Sovereigns have +dispossessed the whole race of Pretenders.</p> + +<p>The effect of this course on the part of the mother-country has been +like that of harsh treatment upon children generally. It chills their +affections, lessens their respect for the parental authority, interrupts +their friendly intercourse, and perhaps drives them from the +family-mansion. But it cannot destroy the ties of blood and the +recollections of the past. It cannot deprive the "old home" of its +charm. If there has been but a single member of the family beneath its +roof who has remained faithful and kind, all grateful memories will +cluster about that one, though the hearts of the rest were hard as the +nether millstone.</p> + +<p>The soil of England will always be dearer to us of English descent than +any except our own. The Englishman will always be more like one of +ourselves than any "foreigner" can be. We shall never cease to feel the +tenderest regard for those Englishmen who have stood by us like brothers +in the day of trial. They have hardly guessed in our old home how sacred +to us is the little island from which our fathers were driven into the +wilderness,—not saying, with the Separatists, "Farewell, Babylon! +farewell, Rome!" but "Farewell, <i>dear</i> England!" At that fearful thought +of the invasion of her shores,—a thought which rises among the spectral +possibilities of the future,—we seem to feel a dull aching in the bones +of our forefathers that lie beneath her green turf, as old soldiers feel +pain in the limbs they have left long years ago on the battle-field.</p> + +<p>But hard treatment often proves the most useful kind of discipline. One +good effect, so far as we are concerned, that will arise from the harsh +conduct of England, will be the promotion of our intellectual <a name="Page_507" id="Page_507"></a>and moral +independence. We declared our political independence a good while ago, +but this was as a small dividend is declared on a great debt. We owed a +great deal more to posterity than to insure its freedom from political +shackles. The American republic was to be emancipated from every +Old-World prejudice that might stand in the way of its entire fulness of +development according to its own law, which is in many ways different +from any precedent furnished by the earlier forms of civilization. There +were numerous difficulties in the way. The American talked the language +of England, and found a literature ready-made to his hands. He brought +his religion with him, shaped under English influences, whether he +called himself Dissenter or not. He dispensed justice according to the +common law of England. His public assemblies were guided by +Parliamentary usage. His commerce and industry had been so long in +tutelage that both required long exercise before they could know their +own capacities.</p> + +<p>The mother-country held her American colonies as bound to labor for her +profit, not their own, just as an artisan claims the whole time of his +apprentice. If we think the policy of England towards America in the +year 1863 has been purely selfish, looking solely to her own interest, +without any regard to the principles involved in our struggle, let us +look back and see whether it was any different in 1763, or in 1663. If +her policy has been uniform at these three periods, it is time for us to +have learned our lesson.</p> + +<p>Two hundred years ago, in the year 1663, an Act of Parliament was passed +to monopolize the Colonial trade for England, for the sake, as its +preamble stated, "of keeping them [the Colonies] in a firmer dependence +upon it, and rendering them yet more beneficial and advantageous unto +it, in the further employment and increase of English shipping and +seamen, vent of English woollens and other manufactures and +commodities," etc. This act had, of course, the effect of increasing and +perpetuating the naturally close dependence of the Colonies on the +mother-country for most of the products of industry. But in an infant +community the effect of such restrictions would be little felt, and it +required another century before an extension of the same system was +publicly recognized as being a robbery of the child by the parent. To +show how far the system was carried, and what was the effect on the +public mind of a course founded in pure, and, as it proved, +short-sighted selfishness, it will be necessary to recall some of the +details which help to account for the sudden change at last in the +disposition of the Colonists.</p> + +<p>One hundred years ago, on the tenth of February, 1763, a treaty of peace +between England and France, as the leading powers, was signed at Paris. +This was no sooner arranged than the Ministry began that system of +Colonial taxation which the Massachusetts House of Representatives +denounced as tending to give the Crown and Ministers "an absolute and +uncontrollable power of raising money upon the people, which by the wise +Constitution of Great Britain is and can be only lodged with safety in +the legislature." Part and parcel of this system was that comprehensive +scheme of tyranny by means of which England attempted to secure the +perpetual industrial dependence of the American Colonies, the principle +of which we have already seen openly avowed in the Act of Parliament of +1663, a hundred years earlier.</p> + +<p>It was her fixed policy, as is well known, to keep her skilled artisans +at home, and to discourage as far as possible all manufactures in the +Colonies. By different statutes, passed in successive reigns, persons +enticing artificers into foreign countries incur the penalty of five +hundred pounds and twelve months' imprisonment for the first offence, +and of one thousand pounds and two years' imprisonment for the second +offence. If the workmen did not return within six <a name="Page_508" id="Page_508"></a>months after warning, +they were to be deemed aliens, forfeit all their lands and goods, and be +incapable of receiving any legacy or gift. A similar penalty was laid so +late as the reign of George III. upon any person contracting with or +endeavoring to persuade any artificer concerned in printing calicoes, +cottons, muslins, or linens, or preparing any tools for such +manufacture, to go out of the kingdom.</p> + +<p>The same jealousy of the Colonies, lest they should by their success in +the different branches of industry interfere with the home monopoly, +shows itself in various other forms. There was, naturally enough, a +special sensitiveness to the practice of the art of printing. Sir Edmund +Andros, when he came out as Governor of the Northern Colonies, was +instructed "to allow of no printing-press"; and Lord Effingham, on his +appointment to the government of Virginia, was directed "to allow no +person to use a printing-press on any occasion whatever."</p> + +<p>The Board of Trade and Plantations made a report, in 1731, to the +British Parliament concerning the "trades carried on, and manufactures +set up, in the Colonies," in which it is recommended that "some +expedient be fallen upon to direct the thoughts of the Colonists from +undertakings of this kind; so much the rather, because these +manufactures in process of time may be carried on in a greater degree, +unless an early stop be put to their progress."</p> + +<p>In one of Franklin's papers, published in London in 1768, are enumerated +some instances of the way in which the Colonists were actually +interfered with by legislation.</p> + +<p>"Iron is to be found everywhere in America, and beaver are the natural +produce of that country: hats and nails and steel are wanted there as +well as here. It is of no importance to the common welfare of the empire +whether a subject of the king gets his living by making hats on this or +on that side of the water. Yet the hatters of England have prevailed to +obtain an act in their own favor restraining that manufacture in +America, in order to oblige the Americans to send their beaver to +England to be manufactured, and purchase back the hats, loaded with the +charges of a double transportation. In the same manner have a few +nail-makers, and a still smaller body of steel-makers, (perhaps there +are not half a dozen of these in England,) prevailed totally to forbid, +by an Act of Parliament, the erecting of slitting-mills or +steel-furnaces in America, that the Americans may be obliged to take all +their nails for their buildings, and steel for their tools, from these +artificers," etc.</p> + +<p>"It is an idle argument in the Americans," said Governor Pownall, "when +they talk of setting up manufactures <i>for trade</i>; but it would be +equally injudicious in Government here to force any measure that may +render the manufacturing for <i>home consumption</i> an object of prudence, +or even of pique, in the Americans."</p> + +<p>The maternal Government pressed this matter a little too fast and too +far. The Colonists became <i>piqued</i> at last, and resolved, in 1764, not +to purchase English stuffs for clothing, but to use articles of domestic +manufacture as far as possible. Boston, always a ringleader in these +mischiefs, diminished her consumption of British merchandise ten +thousand pounds and more in this one year. The Harvard-College youth +rivalled the neighboring town in their patriotic self-sacrifice, and the +whole graduating class of 1770, with the names of Hutchinson, +Saltonstall, and Winthrop at the head of the list, appeared at +Commencement in black cloth of home-manufacture. This act of defiance +only illustrates more forcibly the almost complete dependence of +Colonial industry at the time of its occurrence, the effect of a policy +which looked upon the Colonies with no reference to any other +consideration than the immediate profit to be derived from them.</p> + +<p>In spite, however, of the hard measures employed by England to cripple +the development of the Colonies in every direction, except such as might +be profitable <a name="Page_509" id="Page_509"></a>to herself, it was a very difficult matter to root out +their affection for the mother-country. Pownall, who was in this country +from 1753 to 1761, successively Governor of Massachusetts, +Lieutenant-Governor of New Jersey, and Governor of South Carolina, gives +us the most ample testimony on this point. His words are so strong that +none can fail to be impressed with the picture he draws of a people who +ten years later were in open revolt against the home authorities.</p> + +<p>"The duty of a colony is affection for the mother-country: here I may +affirm, that, in whatever form and temper this affection can lie in the +human breast, in that form, by the deepest and most permanent +impression, it ever did lie in the breast of the American people. They +have no other idea of this country [England] than as their home; they +have no other word by which to express it, and, till of late, it has +constantly been expressed by the name of home. That powerful affection, +the love of our native country, which operates in every heart, operates +in this people towards England, which they consider as their native +country; nor is this a mere passive impression, a mere opinion in +speculation,—it has been wrought up in them to a vigilant and active +zeal for the service of this country."</p> + +<p>And Franklin's testimony confirms that of the English Governor.</p> + +<p>"The true loyalists," he says, "were the people of America against whom +the royalists of England acted. No people were ever known more truly +loyal, and universally so, to their sovereigns.... They were +affectionate to the people of England, zealous and forward to assist in +her wars, by voluntary contributions of men and money, even beyond their +proportion."</p> + +<p>Such was the people whose love and obedience the greedy and grasping +policy of the British Government threw away, never to be regained. The +Revolution came at last, and the people reckoned up the long arrears of +oppression. "In the short space of two years," says a contemporary +writer, "nearly three millions of people passed over from the love and +duty of loyal subjects to the hatred and resentment of enemies."</p> + +<p>We have seen that our cautious parent had taken good care not to let her +American children learn the use of her tools any farther or faster than +she thought good for them—and herself. They no sooner got their hands +free than they set them at work on various new contrivances. One of the +first was the nail-cutting machinery which has been in use ever since. +All our old houses—the old gambrel-roofed Cambridge mansions, for +instance—are built with wrought nails, no doubt every one of them +imported from England. Many persons do not know the fact that the +screw-auger is another native American invention, having been first +manufactured for sale at Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in 1776, or a little +earlier. Eli Whitney contrived the cotton-gin in 1792, and some years +later the machinery for the manufacture of fire-arms, involving the +principle of absolute uniformity in the pattern of each part, so that +any injured or missing portion of a gun may be instantly supplied +without special fitting.</p> + +<p>We claim to have done our full share in the way of industrial inventions +since we have become a nation. The four elements have all accepted the +American as their master. The great harvests of the earth are gathered +by his mowing and reaping machines. The flame that is creeping from its +lair to spring at the roofs of the crowded city is betrayed to its +watchful guardians by the American telegraphic fire-alarm, and the +conflagration that reddens the firmament is subdued by the inundation +that flows upon it from an American steam-fire-engine. In the realm of +air, the Frenchman who sent a bubble of silk to the clouds must divide +his honors with the American who emptied the clouds themselves of their +electric fires. Water, the mightiest of all, which devours the earth +<a name="Page_510" id="Page_510"></a>and quenches the fire, and rides over the air in vaporous exhalations, +has been the chosen field of ingenious labor for our people. The great +American invention of <i>ice</i>,—perhaps there is a certain approach to its +own coolness in calling it an invention, though Sancho, it may be +remembered, considered sleep in that light,—this remarkable invention +of ice, as a tropical commodity, could have sprung only from a +republican and revolutionary brain. The steamboat has been claimed for +various inventors, for one so far back as 1543; but somehow or other it +happened, as it has so often happened, that "the chasm from mere +attempts to positive achievement was first bridged by an American." Our +wave-splitting clippers have changed the whole model of sailing-vessels. +One of them, which was to have been taken in tow by the steam-vessels of +the Crimean squadron, spread her wings, and sailed proudly by them all. +Our iron water-beetles would send any of the old butterfly three-deckers +to the bottom, as quickly as one of these would sink a Roman trireme.</p> + +<p>The Yankee whittling a shingle with his jack-knife is commonly accepted +as a caricature, but it is an unconscious symbolization of the plastic +instinct which rises step by step to the clothes-pin, the apple-parer, +the mowing-machine, the wooden truss-bridge, the clipper-ship, the +carved figure-head, the Cleopatra of the World's Exhibition.</p> + +<p>One American invention, or discovery, has gone far towards paying back +all that the new continent owes to the old civilizations. The cradle of +artificial <i>anæsthesia</i>—man's independence of the tyranny of pain—must +be looked for at the side of the Cradle of Liberty. Never was a greater +surprise than the announcement of this miraculous revelation to the +world. One evening in October, 1846, a professional brother called upon +the writer of this paper. He shut the door carefully, and looked +nervously around him. Then he spoke, and told of the wondrons results of +the experiment which had just been made in the operating-room. "In one +fortnight's time," he said, "all Europe will be ablaze with this +discovery." He then produced and read a paper that he had just drawn up +for a learned society of which we were both members, the first paper +ever written on this subject. On that day not a surgeon in the world, +out of a little New-England circle, made any profession of knowing how +to render a patient quickly, completely, pleasantly, safely insensible +to pain for a limited period. In a few weeks every surgeon in the world +knew how to do it, and the atmosphere of the planet smelt strong of +sulphuric ether. The discovery started from the Massachusetts General +Hospital, just as definitely as the cholera started from Jessore, to +travel round the globe.</p> + +<p>The advance of our civilization is still more strongly marked by the +number and excellence of musical instruments, especially pianos, which +are made in this country. It would hardly be an exaggeration to say that +the piano keeps pace with the plough, as our population advances. More +striking evidence than even this is found in the fact that the highest +grade of the highest instruments used for scientific research is +produced by our artisans. One of the two largest telescope-lenses in the +world is that made by Mr. Clark, of Cambridge, whose reputation is not +confined to our own country. The microscopes of Mr. Spencer, which threw +those of the Continent into the shade at once, and challenged +competition with the work of the three great London opticians, were made +in a half-cleared district of Central New York, where, in our +pilgrimages to that Mecca of microscopists, Canastota, we found the +shrine we sought in the midst of the charred stumps of the primeval +forest. While Mr. Quekett was quoting Andrew Ross, the most famous of +the three opticians referred to, as calling "135° the largest angular +pencil that can be passed through a microscopic object-glass," Mr. +Spencer was actually making twelfths with an angle of more than<a name="Page_511" id="Page_511"></a> 170°. +Those who remember the manner in which the record of his extraordinary +success was deliberately omitted from the second edition of a work which +records the minutest contrivance of any English amateur,—the first +edition having already mentioned the "young artist living in the +backwoods,"—will recognize in it something of the old style in which +the mother-country used to treat the Colonists.</p> + +<p>It may be fairly claimed that the alert and inventive spirit of the +American has lightened the cumbrous awkwardness of Old-World implements, +has simplified their traditional complexity, has systematized methods of +manufacture, and has shown a certain audacity in its innovations which +might be expected from a community where every mechanic is a voter, and +a maker of lawgivers, if not of laws. We are deficient principally in +patience of detail, and the skill which springs from minute subdivision +of labor and from hereditary training. All this will come +by-and-by,—all the sooner, if our ports are closed by foreign war. No +natural incapacity prevents us from making as good broadcloth, as fine +linen, as rich silks, as pure porcelain, as the Old World can send us. +If England wishes to hasten our complete industrial independence, she +has only to quarrel with us. We should miss many things at first which +we owe to her longer training, but they are mostly products of that kind +of industry which furnishes whatever the market calls for.</p> + +<p>The intellectual development of the Colonists was narrowed and limited +by the conditions of their new life. There was no need of legislation to +discourage the growth of an American literature. At the period of the +Revolution two books had been produced which had a right to live, in +virtue of their native force and freshness; hardly more than two; for we +need not count in this category the records of events, such as +Winthrop's Journal, or Prince's Annals, or even that quaint, garrulous, +conceited farrago of pedantry and piety, of fact and gossip, Mather's +"Magnalia." The two real American books were a "Treatise on the Will," +and "Poor Richard's Almanack." Jonathan Edwards and Benjamin Franklin +were the only considerable names in American literature in all that +period which, beginning with Milton and Dryden, and including the whole +lives of Newton and Locke, reached the time of Hume and Gibbon, of Burke +and Chatham, of Johnson and Goldsmith,—a period embracing five +generations, filled with an unbroken succession of statesmen, +philosophers, poets, divines, historians, who wrote for mankind and +immortality. The Colonies, in the mean time, had been fighting Nature +and the wild men of the forest, getting a kind of education as they went +along. Out of their religious freedom, such as it was, they were +rough-hewing the ground-sills of a free state: for religion and politics +always play into each other's hands, and the constitution is the child +of the catechism. Harvard College was dedicated to "Christ and the +Church," but already, in 1742, the question was discussed at +Commencement, "Whether it be lawful to resist the supreme magistrate, if +the Commonwealth cannot otherwise be preserved,"—Samuel Adams speaking +in the affirmative.</p> + +<p>Such was the condition of America at the period just preceding the +Revolutionary movement. Commercial and industrial dependence maintained +by Acts of Parliament, and only beginning to be openly rebelled against +under the irritation produced by oppressive enactments. Native +development in the fields of letters and science hardly advanced beyond +the embryonic stage; a literature consisting of a metaphysical treatise +and a popular almanac, with some cart-loads of occasional sermons, some +volumes of historical notes, but not yet a single history, such as we +should now hold worthy of that name, and an indefinite amount of painful +poetry. Not a line, that we can recall, had ever been produced in +America which <a name="Page_512" id="Page_512"></a>was fit to sparkle upon the "stretched forefinger" of +Time. Berkeley's "Westward the course of Empire" <i>ought</i> to have been +written here; but the curse of sterility was on the Western Muse, or her +offspring were too puny to live.</p> + +<p>The outbreak of the Revolution arrested what little growth there was in +letters and science. Franklin carried his reputation, the first one born +of science in the country, to the French court, and West and Copley +sought fame and success, and found them, in England. All the talent we +had was absorbed in the production of political essays and state-papers. +Patriotic poems, satires, <i>jeux d'esprit</i>, with more or less of the +<i>esprit</i> implied in their name, were produced, not sparingly; but they +find it hard work to live, except in the memory of antiquaries. Philip +Freneau is known to more readers from the fact that Campbell did him the +honor to copy a line from him without acknowledgment than by all his +rhymes. It is not gratifying to observe the want, so noticeable in our +Revolutionary period, of that inspiration which the passions of such a +struggle might have been expected to bring with them.</p> + +<p>If we are forced to put this estimate upon our earlier achievements in +the domain of letters, it is not surprising that they were held of small +account in the mother-country. It is not fair to expect the British +critics to understand our political literature, which was until these +later years all we had to show. They had to wait until De Lolme, a Swiss +exile, explained their own Constitution to them, before they had a very +clear idea of it. One British tourist after another visited this +country, with his glass at his eye, and his small vocabulary of "Very +odd!" for all that was new to him; his "Quite so!" for whatever was +noblest in thought or deed; his "Very clever!" for the encouragement of +genius; and his "All that sort of thing, you know!" for the less +marketable virtues and heroisms not to be found in the Cockney +price-current. They came, they saw, they made their books, but no man +got from them any correct idea of what the Great Republic meant in the +history of civilization. For this the British people had to wait until +De Tocqueville, a Frenchman, made it in some degree palpable to insular +comprehension.</p> + +<p>The true-born Briton read as far as the first sentence of the second +paragraph of the Declaration of Independence. There he stopped, and +there he has stuck ever since. That sentence has been called a +"glittering generality,"—as if there were some shallow insincerity +about it. But because "all that glitters is not gold," it does not +follow that nothing which glitters is gold. Because a statement is +general, it does not follow that it is either untrue or unpractical. +"Glittering generality" or not, the voice which proclaimed that the +birthright of equality belonged to all mankind was the <i>fiat lux</i> of the +new-born political universe. This, and the terrible series of logical +consequences that flowed from it, threatening all the dynasties, +menacing all the hierarchies, undermining the seemingly solid +foundations of all Old-World abuses,—this parent truth, and all to +which it gave birth, made up the literature of Revolutionary America, +and dwarfed all the lesser growths of culture for the time, as the +pine-tree dwarfs the herbage beneath the circle of its spreading +branches.</p> + +<p>As English policy had pursued the uniform course of provincializing our +industry during the colonial period, discouraging every form of native +ingenuity, so English criticism, naturally enough, after industry was +set free, discountenanced the growth of a native American literature. +That famous question of the "Quarterly Review," "Who reads an American +book?" was the key—note of the critical chorus. There were shortcomings +enough, no doubt, and all the faults that belong to an imperfectly +educated people. But there was something more than the feeling of +offended taste or unsatisfied scholarship in the <i>animus</i> of British +criticism. Mr. Tudor has expressed the effect it produced upon our own +writers very clearly in his account of the "North American Review," +written in 1820. He <a name="Page_513" id="Page_513"></a>recognizes the undue deference paid to foreign +critics, and, as its consequence, "a want, or rather a suppression, of +national feeling and independent judgment, that would sooner or later +have become highly injurious."</p> + +<p>It is not difficult to find examples, of earlier and of later date, +which illustrate the tone of British feeling towards this country, as it +has existed among leading literary men, and at times betrayed itself in +an insolence which amuses us after the first sense of irritation has +passed away.</p> + +<p>In 1775, Dr. Samuel Johnson, champion of the heavy-weights of English +literature, the "Great Moralist," the typical Englishman of his time, +wrote the pamphlet called "Taxation no Tyranny." It is what an +Englishman calls a "clever" production, smart, epigrammatic, +impertinent, the embodiment of all that is odious in British assumption. +No part of the Old World, he says, has reason to rejoice that Columbus +discovered the New. Its inhabitants—the countrymen of Washington and +Franklin, of Adams and Jefferson—multiply, as he tells us, "with the +fecundity of their own rattlesnakes." Of the fathers of our Revolution +he speaks in no more flattering terms:—"Probably in <i>America</i>, as in +other places, the chiefs are incendiaries, that hope to rob in the +tumults of a conflagration, and toss brands among a rabble passively +combustible." All these atrocities and follies amuse and interest us +now; they are the coprolites of a literary megatherium, once hateful to +gods and men, now inoffensive and curious fossilized specimens.</p> + +<p>In 1863, a Scotchman, whom Dr. Johnson would have hated for his birth, +and have knocked down with his Dictionary for his assaults upon the +English language, has usurped the chair of the sturdy old dogmatist. The +specious impertinence and shallow assumptions of the English sage find +their counterpart in the unworthy platitude of the Scottish seer, not +lively enough for "Punch," a mere disgrace to the page which admitted +it; whether a proof of a hardening heart or a softening brain is +uncertain, but charity hopes the latter is its melancholy apology.</p> + +<p>But in the interval between the cudgel-stroke of Johnson and the +mud-throwing of Carlyle, America had grown strong enough to bear the +assaults of literary bullies and mountebanks without serious annoyance. +The question which had been so superciliously asked was at last +answered. <i>Everybody</i> reads an American book. The morning-star of our +literature rose in the genius of IRVING. There was something in his +personal conditions which singularly fitted him to introduce the New +World in its holiday-dress to the polite company of the Old World. His +father was a Scotchman, his mother was an Englishwoman, and he was born +in America. "Diedrich Knickerbocker" is a near relation of some of +Scott's characters; "Bracebridge Hall" might have been written by an +Englishman; while "Ichabod Crane" and "Rip Van Winkle" are American to +their marrow. The English naturally found Irving too much like their own +writers in his English subjects, and they could not thoroughly relish +his purely American pictures and characters. Cooper, who did not love +the English, and showed it, a navy officer, too, who dwelt with delight +on the sea-fights of the War of 1812, was too American to please them. +Dr. Channing had a limited circle of admirers in Great Britain, but +could reach only a few even of the proscribed Dissenting class in any +effective way.</p> + +<p>Prescott, we believe, did more than any other one man to establish the +independence of American authorship. He was the first, so far as we +know, who worked with a truly adequate literary apparatus, and at the +same time brought the results of his extensive, long-continued, costly +researches into picture-like and popular forms. It was not the judgment +of England, but of Europe, that settled his claims in the world of +letters; and from the day when the verdict of the learned world awarded +him a place in the first rank of historians, the hereditary curse of +American authorship was removed, <a name="Page_514" id="Page_514"></a>and the insolent question of the +Quarterly was asked no more.</p> + +<p>From that time nearly to this the literary relations between England and +America have been growing more and more intimate, until every English +writer of repute reckoned upon his great circle of readers in the United +States, and every native author of a certain distinction depended upon a +welcome, more or less cordial, but still a welcome, from a British +reading constituency.</p> + +<p>Never had the mutual interchange of literary gifts from the one people +to the other been so active as during the years preceding the outbreak +of the Great Conspiracy. So close was the communication of thought and +feeling, that it seemed as if there were hardly need of a submarine +cable to stretch its nervous strands between two national brains that +were locked in Siamese union by the swift telegraph of thought. We +reprinted each other's books, we made new reputations for each other's +authors, we wrote in each other's magazines, and introduced each other's +young writers to our own several publics. Thought echoed to thought, +voice answered to voice across the Atlantic.</p> + +<p>But for one fatal stain upon our institutions,—a stain of which we were +constantly reminded, as the one thing that shamed all our +pretensions,—it seemed as if the peaceful and prosperous development of +the great nation sprung from the loins of England were accepted as a +gain to universal civilization. In the fulness of time the heir of Great +Britain's world-shadowing empire came among us to receive the wide and +cordial welcome which we could afford to give without compromising our +republicanism, and he to receive without lessening his dignity. It was +the seal upon the <i>entente cordiale</i> which seemed to have at last +established itself between the thinkers as well as the authorities of +the two countries.</p> + +<p>A few months afterwards came the great explosion which threatened the +eternal rending asunder of the Union. That the British people had but an +imperfect understanding of the quarrel, we are ready to believe. That +they were easily misled as to some of the motives and intentions of the +North is plain enough. But this one fact remains: Every one of them +knew, by public, official statements, that what <i>the South</i> meant to do +was to build a new social and political order on Slavery,—recognized, +proclaimed, boasted of, theoretically justified, and practically +incorporated with its very principle of existence. They might have their +doubts about the character of the North, but they could have none about +the principles or intentions of the South. That ought to have settled +the question for civilized Europe. It would have done so, but that +jealousy of the great self-governing state swallowed up every other +consideration.</p> + +<p>We will not be unjust nor ungrateful. We have as true friends, as brave +and generous advocates of our sacred cause, in Great Britain as our +fathers found in their long struggle for liberty. We have the +intelligent coöperation of a few leading thinkers, and the instinctive +sympathy of a large portion of the people,—may God be merciful to them +and to their children in the day of reckoning, which, sooner or later, +awaits a nation that is false to advancing civilization!</p> + +<p>But, with all our gratitude to the noble few who have pleaded our cause, +we are obliged to own that we have looked in vain for sympathy in many +quarters where we should assuredly have expected it. Where is the +English Church in this momentous struggle? Has it blasted with its +anathema the rising barbarism, threatening, or rather promising, to +nationalize itself, which, as a cardinal principle, denies the Word of +God and the sanctities of the marriage relation to millions of its +subjects? or does it save its indignation for the authors of "Essays and +Reviews" and the over-curious Bishop of Natal? Where are the men whose +voices ought to ring like clarions among the hosts of their brethren in +the Free States of the North? Where is Lord Brougham, ex-apostle of the +Diffusion<a name="Page_515" id="Page_515"></a> of Knowledge, while the question is of enforced perpetual +ignorance as the cement of that unhallowed structure with which this +nineteenth century is to be outraged, if treason has its way? Where is +Dickens, the hater of the lesser wrongs of Chancery Courts, the scourge +of tyrannical beadles and heartless schoolmasters? Has he no word for +those who are striving, bleeding, dying, to keep from spreading itself +over a continent a system which legalizes outrages almost too fearful to +be told even to those who know all that is darkest in the record of +English pauperism and crime? Where is the Laureate, so full of fine +indignations and high aspirations? Has he, who holds so cheap those who +waste their genius</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"To make old baseness picturesque,"</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>no single stanza for the great strife of this living century? is he too +busy with his old knights to remember that</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"One great clime....</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Yet rears her crest, unconquered and sublime,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Above the far Atlantic?"</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>has he a song for the six hundred, and not a line for the six hundred +thousand? Where is the London "Times," so long accepted as the true +index of English intelligence and enlightened humanity? Where are those +grave organs of thought which were always quarrelling with Slavery so +long as it was the thorn in the breast of our nation, but almost do +homage to it now that it is a poisoned arrow aimed at her life? Where is +the little hunchback's journal, whose wit was the dog-vane of +fashionable opinion, once pointing towards freedom as the prevailing +wind seemed to blow, now veered round to obey the poisoned breath of +Slavery? All silent or hostile, subject as they are themselves to the +overmastering influence of a class which dreads the existence of a +self-governing state, like this majestic Union, worse than falsehood, +worse than shame, worse than robbery, worse than complicity with the +foulest of rebellions, worse than partnership in the gigantic scheme +which was to blacken half a hemisphere with the night of eternal +Slavery!</p> + +<p>It is the miserable defection of so many of the thinking class, in this +time of the greatest popular struggle known to history, which impresses +us far more than the hostility of a few land-grasping nobles, or the +coldness of a Government mainly guided by their counsels. The natural +consequence has been the complete destruction of that undue deference to +foreign judgments which was so long a characteristic of our literature. +The current English talk about the affairs that now chiefly interest us +excites us very moderately. The leading organs of thought have lost +their hold upon the mind of most thinking people among us. We have +learned to distrust the responses of their timeserving oracles, and to +laugh at the ignorant pretensions of their literary artisans. These +"outsiders" have shown, to our entire satisfaction, that they are +thoroughly incompetent to judge our character as a community, and that +they have no true estimate of its spirit and its resources. The view +they have taken of the strife in which we have been and are engaged is +not only devoid of any high moral sympathy, but utterly shallow, and +flagrantly falsified by the whole course of events, political, +financial, and military.</p> + +<p>Perhaps we ought not to be surprised or disappointed. With a congenital +difference of organization, with a new theory of human rights involving +a virtual reconstruction of society, with larger views of human destiny, +with a virgin continent for them to be worked out in, the American +should expect to be misunderstood by the civilizations of the past, +based on a quagmire of pauperism and ignorance, or overhung by an +avalanche of revolution. Other peoples, emerging from, a condition of +serfdom, retaining many of the instincts of a conquered race, get what +liberty they have by extorting it piecemeal from their masters. Magna +Charta was forced from a weak monarch by a conspiracy of nobles, acting +from purely selfish motives, in behalf <a name="Page_516" id="Page_516"></a>of their own order. The Habeas +Corpus Act was unpalatable to the Lords, and was passed only by a trick +or a blunder. What is there in common between the states which recognize +the rule of any persons who happen to be descended from the bold or +artful men who obtained their power by violence or fraud, and a state +which starts with the assumption that the government belongs to the +governed, subject, we must remember, to the laws which make a people a +nation,—laws recognized just as unhesitatingly by the Rebel States as +applying to Western Virginia or East Tennessee, as the Union recognizes +their application to these same Rebel States?</p> + +<p>Of course, it is conceivable that we are all wrong in our theory of +human rights and our plan of government. It is possible that the true +principle of selecting the rulers of a nation is to take the descendants +of the cut-throat, the assassin, the poisoner, the traitor, who got his +foot upon a people's neck some centuries ago. It may be that there is an +American people which will hold itself fortunate, if it can be ruled +over by a descendant of Charles V.,—though Philip II. was the son of +that personage, and an American historian has made us familiar with his +doings, and those of his vicegerent, the Duke of Alva. If this is the +way that people should be governed, then we <i>are</i> wrong, and have no +right to look for sympathy from Old-World dynasties. The only question +is, How soon it will be safe to send a Grand Duke over to govern us.</p> + +<p>But if our theory of human rights and our plan of government are the +true ones, then our success is the inevitable downfall of every dynasty +on the face of the earth. It is not our fault that this must be so; the +blameless fact of our existence, prosperity, power, civilization, +culture, as they will show themselves on the supposition that we are +working in the divine parallels, will necessarily revolutionize all the +empirical and accidental systems which have come down to us from the +splendid semi-barbarism of the Middle Ages. What all good men desire, +here and everywhere, is that this necessary change may be effected +gradually and peaceably. We do not find fault with men for being born in +positions that confer powers upon them incommensurate with their rights. +We do not wish to cut a man's head off because he comes of a dull race +that has been taught for generations to think itself better than the +rest of mankind, and has learned to believe it and practise on it. But +if nations are fast becoming educated to a state in which they are +competent to manage their own interests, we wish these privileged +personages to recognize it, for their own sake, as well as for that of +the people.</p> + +<p>The spirit of republican America is not that of a wild propagandism. It +is not by war that we have sought or should ever seek to convert the Old +World to our theories and practice in government. If this young nation +is permitted, in the Providence of God, to unfold all its possibilities +into powers, the great lesson it will teach will be that of peaceful +development. Where the public wealth is mainly for the governing class, +the splendid machinery of war is as necessary as the jewels which a +province would hardly buy are to the golden circlet that is the mark of +sovereignty. Where the wealth of a country is for the people, this +particular form of pyrotechnics is too costly to be indulged in for +amusement. American civilization hates war, as such. It values life, +because it honors humanity. It values property, because property is for +the comfort and good of all, and not merely plunder, to be wasted by a +few irresponsible lawgivers. It wants all the forces of its population +to subdue Nature to its service. It demands all the intellect of its +children for construction, not for destruction. Its business is to build +the world's great temple of concord and justice; and for this it is not +Dahlgren and Parrott that are the architects, but men of thought, of +peace, of love.</p> + +<p>Let us not, therefore, waste our strength <a name="Page_517" id="Page_517"></a>in threats of vengeance +against those misguided governments who mistook their true interest in +the prospect of our calamity. We can conquer them by peace better than +by war. When the Union emerges from the battle-smoke,—her crest +towering over the ruins of traitorous cities and the wrecks of Rebel +armies, her eye flashing defiance to all her evil-wishers, her breast +heaving under its corselet of iron, her arm wielding the mightiest +enginery that was ever forged into the thunderbolts of war,—her triumph +will be grand enough without her setting fire to the stubble with which +the folly of the Old World has girt its thrones. No deeper humiliation +could be asked for our foreign enemies than the spectacle of our +triumph. If we have any legal claims against the accomplices of pirates, +they will be presented, and they will be paid. If there are any +uncomfortable precedents which have been introduced into international +law, the jealous "Mistress of the Seas" must be prepared to face them in +her own hour of trouble. Had her failings but leaned to Freedom's +side,—had she but been true to her traditions, to her professions, to +her pretended principles,—where could she have found a truer ally than +her own offspring, in the time of trial which is too probably preparing +for her? "If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the +things which belong unto thy peace!" No tardy repentance can efface the +record of the past. We may forgive, but history is inexorable.</p> + +<p>England was startled the other day by an earthquake. The fast-anchored +isle was astonished at such a tropical phenomenon. It was all very well +for Jamaica or Manila, but who would have thought of solid, +constitutional England shaking like a jelly? The London "Times" +moralized about it in these words:—"We see, afar off, a great empire, +that had threatened to predominate over all mankind, suddenly broken up +by moral agencies, and shattered into no one knows how many fragments. +We are safe from that fate, at least so we deem ourselves, for never +were we so united." "<i>A great empire, that had threatened to predominate +over all mankind</i>." That was the trouble. That was the reason the +"Times" was so pleased to say, a few months ago, "The bubble has burst." +How, if the great empire should prove not to have been shattered? how, +if the bubble has not burst?—nay, if that great system of intelligent +self-government which was taken for a bubble prove to be a sphere of +adamant, rounded in the mould of Divine Law, and filled with the pure +light of Heaven?</p> + +<p>England is happy in a virtuous queen; but what if another profligate +like George IV. should, by the accident of birth, become the heir of her +sovereignty? France is as strong as one man's life can make her; but +what if that man should run against some fanatic's idea which had taken +shape in a bullet-mould, or receive a sudden call from that pale visitor +who heeds no challenge from the guards at the gate of the Tuileries, and +stalks unannounced through antechambers and halls of audience?</p> + +<p>The "Times" might have found a moral for the earthquake nearer home. The +flame that sweeps our prairies is terrible, but it only scorches the +surface. What all the governments based on smothered pauperism, +tolerated ignorance, and organized degradation have to fear is the +subterranean fire, which finds its vent in blazing craters, or breaks up +all the ancient landmarks in earth-shattering convulsions. God forbid +that we should invoke any such catastrophe even for those who have been +hardest upon us in our bitter trial! Yet so surely as American society +founds itself upon the rights of civilized man, there is no permanent +safety for any nation but in the progressive recognition of the American +principle. The right of governing a nation belongs to the people of the +nation; and the urgent duty of those provisional governments which we +call monarchies, empires, aristocracies is to educate their people with +a view to the final surrender of all power into their hands. A little +<a name="Page_518" id="Page_518"></a>longer patience, a little more sacrifice, a little more vigorous, +united action, on the part of the Loyal States, and the Union will +behold herself mirrored in the Atlantic and the Pacific, the stateliest +of earthly empires,—not in her own aspiring language, but by the +confession of her most envious rival, <i>predominating over all mankind</i>. +No Tartar hordes pouring from the depths of Asia, no Northern barbarians +swarming out of the hive of nations, no Saracens sweeping from their +deserts to plant the Crescent over the symbol of Christendom, were more +terrible to the principalities and powers that stood in their way, than +the Great Republic, by the bare fact of its existence, will become to +every government which does not hold its authority from the people. +However our present conflict may seem at first sight to do violence, in +certain respects, to the principles of self-government, everybody knows +that it is a strife of democratic against oligarchic institutions, of a +progressive against a stationary civilization, of the rights of manhood +against the claims of a class, of a national order representing the will +of a people against a conspiracy organized by a sectional minority.</p> + +<p>Just so far as <i>the people</i> of Europe understand the nature of our armed +controversy, they will understand that we are pleading their cause. Nay, +if the mass of our Southern brethren did but know it, we are pleading +theirs just as much. The emancipation of industry has never taken effect +in the South, and never could until labor ceased to be degrading.</p> + +<p>We should be unreasonable to demand the sympathy of those classes which +have everything to lose from the extension of the self-governing +principle. What we have to thank them for is the frankness with which +they have betrayed their hostility to us and our cause, under +circumstances which showed that they would ruin us, if it could be done +safely and decently. We shall never be good friends again, it may be +feared, until we change our eagles into sovereigns, or they change their +sovereigns for a coin which bears the head of Liberty. But in the mean +time it is a great step in our education to find out that a new order of +civilization requires new modes of thought, which must, of necessity, +shape themselves out of our conditions. Thus it seems probable, that, as +the first revolution brought about our industrial independence of the +mother-country, not preventing us in any way from still availing +ourselves of the skill of her trained artisans, so this second civil +convulsion will complete that intellectual independence towards which we +have been growing, without cutting us off from whatever in knowledge or +art is the common property of Republics and Despotisms.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="REVIEWS_AND_LITERARY_NOTICES" id="REVIEWS_AND_LITERARY_NOTICES"></a>REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.</h2> + + +<p><i>Heat considered as a Mode of Motion</i>; being a Course of Twelve Lectures +delivered at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, by JOHN TYNDALL, +F.R.S., Professor of Natural Philosophy in the Royal Institution. New +York: D. Appleton & Co.</p> + +<p>The readers of the "Glaciers of the Alps" have made the acquaintance of +Professor Tyndall as an Alpine adventurer, with a passion for frost and +philosophy, and a remarkable ability both in describing his +mountain-experiences and in explaining the interesting phenomena which +he there encountered. All who have read this inimitable volume will +testify to its rare attractions. It is at once dramatic and philosophic, +poetic and scientific; and the author wins our admiration alike as a +daring and intrepid explorer, a keen observer, <a name="Page_519" id="Page_519"></a>a graphic delineator, +and an acute and original investigator.</p> + +<p>In the new work on Heat we are introduced to Professor Tyndall upon the +lecturing-platform, where he follows up some of the inquiries started in +the "Glaciers" in a systematic and comprehensive manner. His problem is, +the nature and laws of Heat, its relation to other forms of force, and +the part it plays in the vast scheme of the universe: an imposing task, +but executed in a manner worthy of the gifted young successor of Faraday +as Professor of Natural Philosophy in the Royal Institution of Great +Britain.</p> + +<p>A comparison of the volume before us with any of the previously +published treatises on Heat will afford a striking and almost startling +proof of the present activity of inquiry, and the rapid progress of +scientific research. The topics treated are the same. The first seven +lectures of the course deal with <i>thermometric</i> heat, expansion, +combustion, conduction, specific and latent heat, and the relation of +this force to mechanical processes; while the remaining five treat of +<i>radiant</i> heat, the law and conditions of its movement, its influence +upon matter, its relations to other forces, terrestrial and solar +radiation, and the thermal energies of the solar system. But these +subjects no longer wear their old aspect. Novel questions are presented, +starting fresh trains of experiment; facts assume new relationships, and +are interpreted in the light of a new and higher philosophy.</p> + +<p>The old view of the forces, which regarded them as material entities, +may now be regarded as abandoned. Light, Heat, Electricity, Magnetism, +etc., which have hitherto been considered under the self-contradictory +designation of "Imponderable Elements," or immaterial matter, are now, +by common consent, beginning to be ranked as pure forces; having passed +through their material stage, they are regarded as kindred and +convertible forms of motion in matter itself. The old notions, that +light consisted of moving corpuscles, and that heat, electricity, and +magnetism were produced by the agency of various fluids, have done good +service in times past; but their office was only provisional, and, +having served to advance the philosophy of forces beyond themselves, +they must now take rank among the outgrown and effete theories which +belong to the infantile period of science. This change, as will be seen, +involves the fundamental conceptions of science, and is nothing less +than the substitution of dynamical for material ideas in dealing with +the phenomena of Nature.</p> + +<p>The new views, of which Professor Tyndall is one of the ablest +expositors, are expressed by the terms "Conservation and Correlation of +Forces." The first term implies that force is indestructible, that an +impulse of power can no more be annihilated than a particle of matter, +and than the total amount of energy in the universe remains forever the +same. This principle has been well characterized by Faraday as "the +highest law in physical science which our faculties permit us to +perceive." The phrase "Correlation of Forces" is employed rather to +express their mutual convertibility, or change from one to the others. +Thus, heat excites electricity, and, through that force, magnetism, +chemical action, and light. Or, if we start with magnetism, this may +give rise to electricity, and this again to heat, chemical action, and +light. Or we can begin with chemical action, and obtain the same train +of effects.</p> + +<p>It has long been known that machines do not create force, but only +communicate, distribute, and apply that which has been imparted to them, +and also that a definite amount of fuel corresponds to a definite amount +of work performed by the steam-engine. This means simply that a fixed +quantity of the chemical force of combustion gives rise to a +corresponding quantity of heat, and this again to a determinate amount +of mechanical effect. Now this principle of equivalency is found to +govern the transmutations of all forms of energy. The doctrine of the +conservation and correlation of forces has been illustrated in various +ways, but nothing has so powerfully contributed to its establishment as +the investigation of the relations of heat to mechanical force. +Percussion and friction produce heat. A cold bullet, struck upon an +anvil by a cold sledge-hammer, is heated. Iron plates, ground against +each other by water-power, have yielded a large and constant supply of +heat for warming the air of a factory in winter; while water inclosed in +a box, which was made to revolve rapidly, rose to the boiling-point. +What, now, is the source of heat in these cases? <a name="Page_520" id="Page_520"></a>The old caloric +hypothesis utterly fails to explain it; for to suppose that there is an +indefinite and inexhaustible store of latent heat in the rubbing iron +plates is purely gratuitous. It is now established, that the heat of +collision, and of friction depends, not upon the nature of the bodies in +motion, but upon the force spent in producing it.</p> + +<p>When a moving body is stopped, its force is not annihilated, but simply +takes another form. When the sledge-hammer strikes the leaden bullet and +comes to rest, the mechanical force is not destroyed, but is simply +converted into heat; and if all the heat produced could be collected, it +would be exactly sufficient, when reconverted into mechanical force, to +raise the hammer again to the height from which it fell. So, when bodies +are rubbed together, their surface-particles are brought into collision, +mechanical force is destroyed, and heat appears,—the heat of friction. +The conversion of heat into mechanical motion, and of that motion back +again into heat, may be familiarly illustrated in the case of a +railway-train. The heat generated by combustion in the locomotive is +converted into motion of the cars. But when it is desired to stop the +train, what is to be done? Its mechanical force cannot be annihilated; +it can only be transmuted; and so the brakes are applied, and the train +brought to rest by reconverting its motion into heat, as is manifested +by the smoke and sparks produced by the friction. Now, as heat produces +mechanical motion, and mechanical motion heat, they must clearly have +some common quality. The dynamical theory asserts, that, as they are +both modes of motion, they must be mutually and easily convertible. When +a moving mass is checked or stopped, its force is not annihilated, but +the gross, palpable motion is infinitely subdivided and communicated to +the atoms of the body, producing increased vibrations, which appear as +heat. Heat is thus inferred to be, not a material fluid, but a motion +among the ultimate atoms of matter.</p> + +<p>The acceptance of this view led to the highly important inquiry, What is +the equivalent relation between mechanical force and heat? or, how much +heat is produced by a definite quantity of mechanical force? To Dr. +Joule, of Manchester, England, is due the honor of having answered this +question, and experimentally established the numerical relation. He +demonstrated that a one-pound weight, falling through seven hundred and +seventy-two feet and then arrested, produces sufficient heat to raise +one pound of water one degree. Hence this is known as the mechanical +equivalent of heat, or "Joule's Law."</p> + +<p>The establishment of the principle of correlation between mechanical +force and heat constitutes one of the most important events in the +progress of science. It teaches us that the movements we see around us +are not spontaneous or independent occurrences, but links in the eternal +chain of forces,—that, when bodies are put in motion, it is at the +expense of some previously existing energy, and that, when they come to +rest, their force is not destroyed, but lives on in other forms. Every +motion we see has its thermal value; and when it ceases, its equivalent +of heat is an invariable result. When a cannon-ball strikes the side of +an iron-plated ship, a flash of light shows that collision has converted +the motion of the ball into intense heat, or when we jump from the table +to the floor, the temperature of the body is slightly raised,—the +degree of heat produced in both cases being ascertainable by the +application of Joule's law.</p> + +<p>The principle thus demonstrated has given a new interest and a vast +impulse to the science of Thermotics. It is the fundamental and +organizing conception of Professor Tyndall's work, and in his last +chapter he carries out its application to the planetary system. The +experiments of Herschel and Pouillet upon the amount of solar heat +received upon the earth's surface form the starting-point of the +computations. The total amount of heat received by the earth from the +sun would be sufficient to boil three hundred cubic miles of ice-cold +water per hour, and yet the earth arrests but 1/2,300,000,000 of the +entire thermal force which the sun emits. The entire solar radiation +each hour would accordingly be sufficient to boil 700,000,000,000 cubic +miles of ice-cold water! Speculation has hardly dared venture upon the +source of this stupendous amount of energy, but the mechanical +equivalent of heat opens a new aspect of the question. All the celestial +motions are vast potential stores of heat, and if checked or arrested, +the heat would at once become manifest. Could we imagine brakes applied +to the <a name="Page_521" id="Page_521"></a>surface of the sun and planets, so as to arrest, by friction, +their motions upon their axes, the heat thus produced would be +sufficient to maintain the solar emission for a period of one hundred +and sixteen years. As the earth is eight thousand miles in diameter, +five and a half times heavier than water, and moves through its orbit at +the rate of sixty-eight thousand miles an hour, a sudden arrest of its +motion would generate a heat equal to the combustion of fourteen globes +of anthracite coal as large as itself. Should it fall into the sun, the +shock would produce a heat equal to the combustion of five thousand four +hundred earth-globes of solid coal,—sufficient to maintain the solar +radiation nearly a hundred years. Should all the planets thus come to +rest in the sun, it would cover his emission for a period of forty-five +thousand five hundred and eighty-nine years. It has been maintained that +the solar heat is actually produced in this way by the constant +collision upon his surface of meteoric bodies, but for the particulars +of this hypothesis we must refer to the book itself.</p> + +<p>Professor Tyndall opens the question in his volume respecting the share +which different investigators have had in establishing the new theory of +forces, and his observations have given rise to a sharp controversy in +the scientific journals. The point in dispute seems to have been the +relative claims of an Englishman and a German—Dr. Joule and Dr. +Mayer—to the honor of having founded the new philosophy. Tyndall +accords a high place to the German as having worked out the view in an +<i>a priori</i> way with remarkable precision and comprehensiveness, while he +grants to the Englishman the credit of being the first to experimentally +establish the law of the mechanical equivalent of heat. But his English +critics seem to be satisfied with nothing short of an entire monopoly of +the honor. The truth is, that, in this case, as in that of many others +furnished us in the history of science, the discovery belongs rather to +an epoch than to an individual. In the growth of scientific thought, the +time had come for the evolution of this principle, and it was seized +upon by several master-minds in different countries, who worked out +their results contemporaneously, but in ignorance of the efforts of +their fellow-laborers. But if individual claims are to be pressed, and +each man accorded his aliquot share of the credit, we apprehend that +America must be placed before either England or Germany, and for the +explicit evidence we need look no farther than the volume of Professor +Tyndall before us. The first clear connection and experimental proof of +the modern theory was made by our countryman Benjamin +Thompson,—afterwards knighted as Count Rumford by the Elector of +Bavaria. He went to Europe in the time of the American Revolution, and, +devoting himself to scientific investigations, became the founder of the +Royal Institution of Great Britain. Davy was his associate, and, so far +as the new views of heat are concerned, his disciple. He exploded the +notion of caloric, demonstrated experimentally the conversion of +mechanical force into heat, and arrived at quantitative results, which, +considering the roughness of his experiments, are remarkably near the +established facts. He revolved a brass cannon against a steel borer by +horse-power for two and one-half hours, thereby generating heat enough +to raise eighteen and three-fourths pounds of water from sixty to two +hundred and twelve degrees. Concerning the nature of heat he wrote as +follows, the Italics being his own:—"What is heat? Is there any such +thing as an <i>igneous fluid</i>? Is there anything that with propriety can +be called caloric? We have seen that a very considerable quantity of +heat may be excited by the friction of two metallic surfaces, and given +off in a constant stream, or flux, in <i>all directions</i>, without +interruption or intermission, and without any signs of <i>diminution</i> or +<i>exhaustion</i>. In reasoning on this subject, we must not forget that +<i>most remarkable circumstance</i>, that the source of the heat generated by +friction in these experiments appeared to be <i>inexhaustible</i>. It is +hardly necessary to add, that anything which any insulated body or +system of bodies can continue to furnish <i>without limitation</i> cannot +possibly be <i>a material substance</i>; and it appears to me to be extremely +difficult, if not quite impossible, to form any distinct idea of +anything capable of being excited and communicated in these experiments, +except it be MOTION."</p> + +<p>In style, Professor Tyndall's work is remarkably clear, spirited, and +vigorous, and many of its pages are eloquent with the <a name="Page_522" id="Page_522"></a>beautiful +enthusiasm and poetic spirit of its author. These attractions, combined +with the comprehensiveness and unity of the discussion, the range and +authenticity of the facts, and the delicacy, originality, and vividness +of the experiments, render the work at once popular and profound. It is +s classic upon the subject of which it treats.</p> + + +<p><i>My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field</i>. A Book for Boys. By +"CARLETON." Boston: Ticknor and Fields.</p> + +<p>The literature of the war has already reached the dimensions of a +respectable library. The public mind at the instant of the outbreak felt +an assurance that it was to be one of the memorable epochs of mankind. +However blinded to the significance of the previous conflicts in the +forum and at the ballot-box, there was a sudden and universal instinct +that their armed culmination was a world-era. The event instantly +assumed its true grandeur.</p> + +<p>The previous discussions seemed local and limited. They were squabbles, +we fancied, among ourselves, which did not touch the vitals of our +system, and in which the world without had neither lot nor interest. +Even when the fires of debate and division waxed hotter and hotter, and +began to break out in violent eruptions in Congress, Kansas, throughout +the South, and especially at Harper's Ferry, we still said, These are +political conflicts, mob-violences, raids, abnormal eccentricities, +which will pass quietly away, when the dynasty is changed, and the reins +of power are fairly grasped by the successful rival.</p> + +<p>Europe sends her doctors to witness our dissolution. They go South and +see the mustering of arms and the intensity of purpose, and coming North +find the whole community at their usual pursuits and pleasures, +regarding the controversy as a mere political breeze, and the results in +which it is beginning to issue as but the waves that ever for a short +season roll fiercely after the storm.</p> + +<p>This indifference was one of the best signs of our health. We felt such +confidence in ourselves, that we distrusted no future, however +cloud-cast. The Constitution, sold for a penny-ha'penny in New York, +suggested to the mildly sarcastic humor of Dr. Russell that it had +better be a little more valuable in tact, if not so cheap in form. He +did not see how the People were the rightful masters of the +Constitution, as Mr. Lincoln had said they were of Congress and the +Courts, and that they would take care of it and of themselves when the +hour really came.</p> + +<p>We did not see it. Blindness in part had happened unto the whole nation. +The shot at Sumter cleft the burdened head of Jove. A Nation was born in +a day. It saw instantly the length and the breadth, the height and the +depth of the conflict. It was not a struggle about Slavery and +Abolitionism, about the white race and the black, about union and +disunion; but it was a war for the rights of man, here and everywhere, +to-day and forever. The "glittering generalities" of our Declaration and +Constitution suddenly blazed with light, while the dull particularities +of mere routine faded as a waning moon before the glowing sun. These +were lost in the fiery splendors of the grand principles in which alone +they live and move and have their being. They will reappear, meekly +shining in their humbler sphere, when the great light shall withdraw its +intenser rays, the object of their blazing being accomplished. The body +of the war is Union, its soul Democracy: union for the sake of +democracy, and democracy for the sake of the world. Abolitionism is +simply a stepping-stone to the perfection of the Idea in our society.</p> + +<p>The instinct that apprehended the full significance of the struggle was +universal: Europe saw it in the same flash that revealed it to us. The +lightning of the opening gun, or ever its accompanying thunder could +follow, leaped, like the lightnings of the final judgment, in an instant +from west to east, and illumined the whole earth with its glare.</p> + +<p>In such an awakening it was inevitable but that literature should share. +And biographies, histories, pictorials, and juveniles, in Europe and +America, testify to the general consciousness. Into this last-named +class the little book at the head of this notice modestly essays to +enter. Had it put on airs and spread itself out into the broad-margined +and large-lettered octavo, it might have stood in libraries as a worthy +compeer of the ablest chronicles. Such a <a name="Page_523" id="Page_523"></a>presentation would not have +been beyond its desert, and would have been more consistent with the +author's type of mind. Yet his simplicity, fidelity, and +straightforwardness will make him a better guide to advanced youth than +the too prattling habits of mere child-writers. They ever incline to the +baby-talk style of composition,—"mumming," as the tavern-woman +proposed, the bread and milk which they set before their youthful +readers. "Carleton" ever treats his boy-readers as his intelligent +equals, and considers them capable of understanding the common language +of books and men. It is refreshing to read a book for boys that is not, +as most of this class are, while pretending to be juvenile, actually +senile.</p> + +<p>The work opens with the story of the causes of the war, in which the +author gives the old and new counterblasters a quid, or, as they will +doubtless prefer to call it, a crumb of comfort. He traces the origin of +the war, not to Slavery, but to Tobacco. The demand for the new drug was +general throughout Europe. Virginia was the main source of supply. The +vagabondish farmers would not labor. Negroes arrive, and European +appetite creates American Slavery. Two hundred years after, the +descendants of these slaveholders fancy that a like European demand for +another plant will insure this Slavery a national sovereignty. Tobacco +thus verifies Charles Lamb's unwilling execration. It is not Bacchus's +only, but Slavery's "black servant, negro fine," and belongs, after all, +to that Africa which he says "breeds no such prodigious poison." The +Union lovers of "the Great Plant" may be called to decide between their +country and their cigar. Will patriotism or the pipe then prevail? We +tremble for our country in that conflict of duty and desire. It is odd +that the two favorite plants of the South should thus be charged with +our war. These innocent leaves and blossoms, babes in the wood, are made +the bearers of our iniquities. Cotton and Tobacco are the white and +black representatives of the vegetable races. Perhaps some fanciful +theorist may show from this fact, that not only all the human races, but +those of the lower kingdoms, are involved in this struggle, and, as in +the greater warfare of Earth and Time, so in this, its condensed type, +the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in common with its head and +master.</p> + +<p>The anti-tobacco doctrine of the opening chapter gives place to a clear +statement of the gathering and organizing of the great army; which is +followed by descriptions of the Battles of Bull Run, Fort Henry, Fort +Donelson, Shiloh, the Siege of Island No. 10, and the capture of +Memphis. The narratives are illustrated with diagrams which set the +movements of the contending forces clearly before the eye. No +description of the first great battle of the war is superior to that +here given. It is a photographic view of the field and the combatants. +We see where the Rebels posted their divisions, how our forces were +stationed, how we attempted to outflank them, how they left their +original positions to protect the assailed outpost, how the battle raged +and was decided around that point, and how a single mistake caused our +first repulse, and, for lack of subsequent generalship, produced the +shameful and disastrous rout. Russell's description is far less clear +and concise. "Carleton" confirms McDowell's military scholarship, but +not his generalship. It is one thing to set squadrons in the field, it +is another to be equal to all the emergencies of the strife. He traces +our defeat to a single mistake, not alone nor chiefly to the arrival of +reinforcements. He puts it thus. Two regiments, the Second and Eighth +South Carolina, get in the rear of Griffin's and Rickett's batteries. +Griffin sees them, and turns his guns upon them. Major Barry declares +they are his supporters. Griffin says they are Rebels. The Major +persists in his opinion, and the Captain yields. The guns are turned +back, the South-Carolinians leap upon the batteries, and the panic +begins.</p> + +<p>The book is especially valuable as it describes from personal +observation the first battles of General Grant. It has no better +war-pictures than the taking of Fort Donelson and the Battle of Shiloh +or Pittsburg Landing. These were the beginnings of Grant's reputation. +In them are seen the elements of his character, writ larger in the more +renowned deeds of Vicksburg and Chattanooga. They are strangely alike. +In both he is surprised by the enemy at daybreak, and while his soldiers +are asleep. In both he is at first driven from his camp, losing largely +of men and guns. In both, after a repulse so <a name="Page_524" id="Page_524"></a>severe that the Rebel +generals fancy the day is theirs, and while their men give themselves up +to the spoiling of his tents, Grant, abating no jot of heart or hope, +rearranges his broken columns, and plants his guns in new positions, in +both cases on a hill rising from a ravine, whose opposite summit is +crowned with the Rebel artillery. In each case the Rebels cross the +ravine and attempt to scale the hill, and in each case are repulsed with +horrible slaughter. The parallel stops not here. Grant in both battles, +as soon as he has stayed the advance of the enemy, assumes the +offensive. The bugles sound the charge, and the Rebels are driven back +through our despoiled camp, and within their own intrenchments. These +first-fruits of the great general of the war show the difference between +him and the long-time pet of the nation, McClellan. The latter could not +move an inch without supplies as numerous and superfluous as those of a +summer sauntering lady at a watering-place. Grant does not wait for +Foote's gunboats to coöperate at Donelson, but begins the fight the +instant he reaches the fort. When the boats are disabled and retire, he +does not wait for them to refit and return; nor when the enemy fails to +rout him, does he rest on his well-earned laurels till reinforcements +arrive, but turns upon them instantly and drives them with headlong fury +from their spoils and defences. There is no Antietam or Williamshurg +procrastinating. That very afternoon his exhausted troops storm the +fort, and the night beholds him the master of the outer works, and with +his guns raking the innermost fortifications. This heroic treatment of +the disease of Rebellion, with all its loss, results in far less +fatality than the rose-water generalship of the Peninsula, as the +statistics of the Eastern and Western armies will show.</p> + +<p>The peculiar qualities of General Grant, as seen in these battles, are +coolness, readiness, and confidence. He is not embarrassed by reverses. +He seems the rather to court them. He prefers to take arms against a sea +of troubles. He thinks little of rations, ambulances, Sanitary, and, we +fear, Christian Commissions, but much of victory. These creature and +spiritual comforts are all well enough in their place, but they do not +take batteries and redoubts. McClellan is the pet of his soldiers, Grant +the pride of his. McClellan cares for their bodies, Grant for their +fame. McClellan kills by kindness, Grant by courage.</p> + +<p>This battle-book for boys will hold no unimportant place in the +war-library of the times. Its style is usually as limpid as the +camp-brooks by which much of it was written. In the heat of the contest +it becomes a succession of short, sharp sentences, as if the musketry +rang in the writer's brain and moulded and winged his thoughts. It is +calm in the midst of its intensity, and thus happily illustrates by its +popularity that self-control of the nation so well expressed by +Hawthorne,—that our movements are as cool and collected, if as noisy, +as that of a thousand gentlemen in a hall quietly rising at the same +moment from their chairs. The battle-grounds of Vicksburg, +Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, and Chattanooga, all of which he saw, or by +subsequent study of the field has made his own, and descriptions of +which are promised in a companion-volume, will find no truer nor +worthier chronicler.</p> + + +<p><i>A Compendious History of English Literature, and of the English +Language, from the Norman Conquest. With Numerous Specimens.</i> By GEORGE +L. CRAIK, LL.D., Professor of History and of English Literature in +Queen's College, Belfast. 2 vols. 8vo. New York: Charles Scribner.</p> + +<p>This is a thorough and an exhaustive work, having for its subject that +which must be of perpetual and increasing interest to all those +colonists who, in different parts of the world, are founding nations +which shall inherit the imperial language, and therefore will be +entitled to claim a share in the literary glories of the mother-land. +Professor Craik is favorably known as the author of works that depend +chiefly upon industry for their worth; and this elaborate production +must add to the esteem in which his learned labors have long been held +in many quarters. He has left no portion of his subject untouched, but +affords to his readers a full and lucid account of every part of it, +according to the materials that are at the command of scholars. If +defective on any points, it is owing to the want of authorities. His +survey of English literature includes not only all writers of the first +class, but all who can be regarded <a name="Page_525" id="Page_525"></a>as of any considerable distinction; +and he has noticed many names which have no pretension to be considered +as even of second-rate importance, but concerning which general readers +may be curious, though their curiosity may not carry them so far as to +induce them to hunt up their works. A book of reference, such as this +book must be to most of those who shall use it, is bound to make mention +of writers whose names are of rare occurrence, but who had their parts, +though they may have been insignificant ones, in building up their +country's literature. Of the great writers, Professor Craik devotes but +little space to Shakspeare and Milton, because their works are in +everybody's hands; while from Chaucer and Spenser, Swift and Burke, +ample specimens are given, the author assuming that their writings are +but little read. Indeed, he declares that the great poets and other +writers even of the last generation have already faded from the view of +the most numerous class of the educated and reading public,—and that +scarcely anything is generally read except the publications of the day. +He correctly remarks that no true cultivation can be acquired by reading +nothing but the current literature. This, he says, "is the extreme case +of that entire ignorance of history, or of what had been done in the +world before we ourselves came into it, which has been affirmed, not +with more point than truth, to leave a person always a child." No doubt; +but we think the learned Professor overrates the extent of that neglect +of the literature of the past of which he complains,—for the editions +of the works of writers long dead, published in the last twenty years, +are numerous, and we know that books are not printed for people who do +not care for them. The number of readers of contemporary works is small, +if we compare those readers with the population of any given country; +but there are more readers now than could be found in any other age, not +only of the books of the day, but of the books of the past.</p> + +<p>This work combines the history of English Literature with the history of +the English Language. The author's scheme of the course is, as described +by himself, extremely simple, and rests, not upon arbitrary, but upon +natural or real distinctions, giving us the only view of the subject +that can claim to be regarded as of a scientific character. This part of +his work will be found very valuable, as it popularizes a subject which +has few attractions for most readers.</p> + +<p>The volumes are printed with great beauty, and do credit to the +Riverside Press, from which they come.</p> + + +<p><i>The Fœderalist</i>: A Collection of Essays, written in Favor of the New +Constitution, as agreed upon by the Fœderal Convention, September 17, +1787. Reprinted from the Original Text. With an Historical Introduction +and Notes, by HENRY DAWSON. In Two Volumes. Volume I. 8vo. New York: +Charles Scribner.</p> + +<p>This volume contains the entire text of "The Federalist," with the notes +appended by the authors to their productions, preceded by an historical +and bibliographical Introduction, and an analytical Table of Contents; +in the second volume will appear the Notes prepared by Mr. Dawson, which +will embrace the more important of the alterations and corruptions of +the text, manuscript notes which have been found on the margins and +blank leaves of copies formerly owned by eminent statesmen, and other +illustrative matter, such as the author justly supposes will be useful +to those who may examine the text of the work, together with a complete +and carefully prepared Index. Mr. Dawson has devoted himself to the +preparation of this edition of "The Federalist," and labored diligently +to make it perfect, generally with success; but he is in error when he +says, in the Introduction, that there does not appear to be a copy of +the first edition of the work in any public library in Boston. There are +two copies of it in the Library of the Boston Athenaeum, both of which +we have seen. This mistake is an unhappy one, as it tends to shake our +faith in the accuracy of the editor's researches. Of "The Fœderalist" +itself it is not necessary to say more than that it has the position of +an American classic, and that the political principles which it +advocates are of peculiar importance at this time, when the loyal +portion of the American people are engaged in a terrible struggle to +maintain the existence of that government which<a name="Page_526" id="Page_526"></a> Hamilton and Madison +labored so diligently and successfully to establish. Mr. Dawson's +edition is one of rare excellence in everything that relates to +externals, and in this respect is beyond rivalry. An edition of "The +Fœderalist," edited by John C. Hamilton, Esq., son of General +Hamilton, is announced to appear, and will undoubtedly be welcomed +warmly by all who feel an interest in the fame of the chief author of +the work, the man, next to Washington, to whom we are most indebted for +the establishment of our constitutional system of government.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="RECENT_AMERICAN_PUBLICATIONS" id="RECENT_AMERICAN_PUBLICATIONS"></a>RECENT AMERICAN PUBLICATIONS</h2> + +<p>RECEIVED BY THE EDITORS OF THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY.</p> + + +<p>The Healing of the Nations. Second Series. By Charles Linton. +Philadelphia. Published by the Author. 8vo. pp. 363. $1.50.</p> + +<p>Report of the Superintendent of Common Schools of Pennsylvania, for the +Year ending June 4, 1863. Harrisburg. Singerly & Myers, State Printers. +8vo. pp. xxxii., 287.</p> + +<p>The Life and Services, as a Soldier, of Major-General Grant. +Philadelphia. T.B. Peterson & Brothers. 16mo. paper, pp. 66. 25 cts.</p> + +<p>Of the Imitation of Christ. Four Books. By Thomas à Kempis. Boston. E.P. +Dutton & Co. 16mo. pp. 347. $1.25.</p> + +<p>Redeemer and Redeemed. An Investigation of the Atonement and of Eternal +Judgment. By Charles Beecher, Georgetown, Mass. Boston. Lee & Shepard. +12mo. pp. xii., 357. $1.50.</p> + +<p>The Irish Sketch-Book. By W.M. Thackeray. Philadelphia. T.B. Peterson & +Brothers. 8vo. paper, pp. 179. 50 cts.</p> + +<p>A Text-Book of Geology. Designed for Schools and Academies. By James D. +Dana, LL.D., Silliman Professor of Geology and Natural History in Yale +College, Author of "A Manual of Geology," etc. Illustrated by 375 +Wood-Cuts. Philadelphia. Theodore Bliss & Co. 12mo. pp. vi., 354. $1.75.</p> + +<p>The Book of Praise, from the Best English Hymn-Writers. Selected and +arranged by Roundell Palmer. Cambridge. Sever & Francis. 16mo. pp. xx., +480. $1.50.</p> + +<p>Dream-Children. By the Author of "Seven Little People and their +Friends." Cambridge. Sever & Francis. 16mo. pp. 241. $1.00.</p> + +<p>Life of Edward Livingston. By Charles Havens Hunt. With an Introduction +by George Bancroft. New York. D. Appleton & Co. 8vo. pp. xxiv., 448. +$2.50.</p> + +<p>Poems. By Henry Peterson. Philadelphia. J.B. Lippincott & Co. 12mo. pp. +203. $1.00.</p> + +<p>Miscegenation. The Theory of the Blending of the Races, applied to the +American White Man and Negro. New York. H. Dexter, Hamilton, & Co. 12mo. +paper, pp. 72. 25 cts.</p> + +<p>Hand-Book of Calisthenics and Gymnastics. A Complete Drill-Book for +Schools, Families, and Gymnasiums. With Music to accompany the +Exercises. Illustrated from Original Designs. By J. Madison Watson. New +York and Philadelphia. Schermerhorn, Bancroft, & Co. 12mo. pp. 388. +$2.00.</p> + +<p>Rifled Ordnance. A Practical Treatise on the Application of the +Principle of the Rifle to Guns and Mortars of every Calibre. To which is +added a New Theory of the Initial Action and Force of Fired Gunpowder. +Read before the Royal Society, 16th December, 1858. First American, from +the Fifth English Edition, revised. By Lynall Thomas, F.R.S.L. New York. +D. Van Nostrand. 8vo. pp. 200. $2.00.</p> + +<p>Report of the Engineer and Artillery Operations of the Army of the +Potomac, from its Organization to the Close of the Peninsular Campaign. +By Brigadier-General J.G. Barnard, Chief Engineer, and Brigadier-General +W.F. Barry, Chief of Artillery. Illustrated by Eighteen Maps, Plans, +etc. New York. D. Van Nostrand. 8vo. pp. 230. $3.50.</p> + +<p>Poems in the Dorset Dialect. By William Barnes. Boston. Crosby & +Nichols. 16mo. pp. viii., 207. $1.00.</p> + +<p>Faith and Fancy. By John Savage, Author of "Sibyl, a Tragedy." New York. +J.B. Kirker. 16mo. pp. 114. 75 cts.</p> + +<p>The Great Consummation. The Millennial Rest; or, The World as it Will +Be. By the Rev. John Cumming, D.D., F.R.S.E., etc. Second Series. New +York. G.W. Carleton. 16mo. pp. 295. $1.00</p> + +<p>The Indian Chief. By Gustavo Aimard. Philadelphia. T.B. Peterson & +Brothers. 8vo. paper, pp. 164. 50 cents.</p> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_A_1" id="Footnote_A_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_A_1"><span class="label">[A]</span></a> There are three accounts as to the time of the birth of +"St. Arnaud, formerly Leroy." That which makes him oldest represents him +as being fifty-eight at the Battle of the Alma. The second makes him +fifty-six, and the third fifty-three. In either case he was not a young +man; but, though suffering from mortal illness, he showed no want of +vigor on almost every occasion when its display was required.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_B_2" id="Footnote_B_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_B_2"><span class="label">[B]</span></a> The advocates of youth in generals have never, that we are +aware, claimed Hamilcar Barcas as one of the illustrations of their +argument; yet he must have been a very young man when he began his +extraordinary career, if, as has been stated on good authority, he was +not beyond the middle age when he lost his life in battle. He was a +great man, perhaps even as great a man as his son Hannibal, who did but +carry out his father's designs.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_C_3" id="Footnote_C_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_C_3"><span class="label">[C]</span></a> At Fontenoy the Duke of Cumberland was but half the age of +the Comte de Saxe. In that battle an English soldier was taken prisoner, +after fighting with heroic bravery. A French officer complimented him, +saying, that, if there had been fifty thousand men like him on the other +side, the victory would have been theirs. "No," said the Englishman, "it +was not the fifty thousand brave men who were wanting, but a Marshal +Saxe." Cumberland was ever unlucky, save at Culloden. Saxe was old +beyond his years, being one of the fastest of the fast men of his time, +as became the son of Augustus the Strong and Aurora von Königsmark.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_D_4" id="Footnote_D_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_D_4"><span class="label">[D]</span></a> Henry V. was present, as Prince of Wales, at the Battle of +Shrewsbury, before he was sixteen; and there is some reason for +supposing that he commanded the royal forces in the Battle of Grosmont, +fought and won in his eighteenth year. He was but twenty-eight at +Agincourt. Splendid as was his military career, it was all over before +he had reached to thirty-six years. The Black Prince was but sixteen at +Crécy, and in his twenty-seventh year at Poitiers. Edward IV. was not +nineteen when he won the great Battle of Towton, and that was not his +first battle and victory. He was always successful. Richard III., as +Duke of Gloucester, was not nineteen when he showed himself to be an +able soldier, at Barnet; and he proved his generalship on other fields. +William I., Henry I., Stephen, Henry II., Richard I., Edward I., Edward +III., Henry IV., and William III. were all distinguished soldiers. The +last English sovereign who took part in a battle was George II., at +Dettingen.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_E_5" id="Footnote_E_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_E_5"><span class="label">[E]</span></a> See <i>Norfolk County Records</i>, 1657; <i>New England Historical +and Genealogical Register</i>, No. II. p. 192. The moral lapse of the first +minister of Hampton at the age of fourscore is referred to in the third +number of the same periodical. Goody Cole, the Hampton witch, was twice +imprisoned for the alleged practice of her arts.</p></div> + +</div> + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, +April, 1864, by Various + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY, VOL. *** + +***** This file should be named 15880-h.htm or 15880-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/5/8/8/15880/ + +Produced by Cornell University, Joshua Hutchinson, Josephine +Paolucci and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team. + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you +do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the +rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose +such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and +research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do +practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is +subject to the trademark license, especially commercial +redistribution. + + + +*** START: FULL LICENSE *** + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project +Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at +https://gutenberg.org/license). + + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy +all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. +If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the +terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or +entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement +and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" +or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the +collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an +individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are +located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from +copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative +works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg +are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project +Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by +freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of +this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with +the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by +keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project +Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in +a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check +the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement +before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or +creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project +Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning +the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United +States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate +access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently +whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, +copied or distributed: + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived +from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is +posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied +and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees +or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work +with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the +work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 +through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the +Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or +1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional +terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked +to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the +permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any +word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or +distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than +"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version +posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), +you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a +copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon +request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other +form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided +that + +- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is + owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he + has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the + Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments + must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you + prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax + returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and + sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the + address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to + the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or + destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium + and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of + Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any + money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days + of receipt of the work. + +- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set +forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from +both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael +Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the +Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm +collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain +"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual +property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a +computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by +your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with +your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with +the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a +refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity +providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to +receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy +is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further +opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO +WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. +If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the +law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be +interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by +the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any +provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance +with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, +promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, +harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, +that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do +or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm +work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any +Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. + + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers +including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists +because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from +people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. +To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 +and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org. + + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive +Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at +https://pglaf.org/fundraising. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent +permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. +Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered +throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at +809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email +business@pglaf.org. Email contact links and up to date contact +information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official +page at https://pglaf.org + +For additional contact information: + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To +SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any +particular state visit https://pglaf.org + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including including checks, online payments and credit card +donations. To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate + + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm +concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared +with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project +Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + https://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. + +*** END: FULL LICENSE *** + + + +</pre> + +</body> +</html> diff --git a/15880.txt b/15880.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c2c9026 --- /dev/null +++ b/15880.txt @@ -0,0 +1,8854 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, +April, 1864, by Various + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 + +Author: Various + +Release Date: May 23, 2005 [EBook #15880] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY, VOL. *** + + + + +Produced by Cornell University, Joshua Hutchinson, Josephine +Paolucci and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team. + + + + + + + + + + +THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY. + +A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS. + +VOL. XIII.--APRIL, 1864.--NO. LXXVIII. + +Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1864, by TICKNOR AND +FIELDS, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of +Massachusetts. + + * * * * * + +FIGHTING FACTS FOR FOGIES. + + +Young people are often charged with caring little for the past. The +charge is just; and the young are right. If they care little for the +past, then it is certain that it is in debt to them,--as for them the +past cared nothing. It is wonderful, considering how children used to be +treated, that the human race ever succeeded in getting established on +earth. Humanity should have died out, there was so little that was +humane in its bringing up. Because they had contrived to bring a +helpless creature into a world that every one wishes he had never known +at least twenty-four times a day, a father and mother of the very old +school indeed assumed that they had the right to make that creature a +slave, and to hold it in everlasting chains. They had much to say about +the duty of children, and very little about the love of parents. The +sacrificing of children to idols, a not uncommon practice in some +renowned countries of antiquity, the highest-born children being the +favorite victims,--for Moloch's appetite was delicate,--could never have +taken place in any country where the voice of Nature was heeded; and yet +those sacrifices were but so many proofs of the existence of a spirit of +pride, which caused men to offer up their offspring on the domestic +altar. Son and slave were almost the same word with the Romans; and your +genuine old Roman made little ado about cutting off the head of one of +his boys, perhaps for doing something of a praiseworthy nature. Old +Junius Brutus was doubly favored by Fortune, for he was enabled to kill +two of his sons in the name of Patriotism, and thereby to gain a +reputation for virtue that endures to this day,--though, after all, he +was but the first of the brutes. The Romans kept up the paternal rule +for many ages, and theoretically it long survived the Republic. It had +existed in the Kingdom, and it was not unknown to the Empire. We have an +anecdote that shows how strong was the supremacy of _paterfamilias_ at +the beginning of the eighth century, when Young Rome had already made +more than one audacious display of contempt for the Conscript Fathers. +When Pompeius was asked what he would do, if Caesar should resist the +requirements of the Senate, he answered,--"What if my son should raise +his stick against me?"--meaning to imply, that, in his opinion, +resistance from Caesar was something too absurd to be thought of. Yet +Caesar _did_ resist, and triumphed; and, judging from their after-lives, +we should say that the Young Pompeys would have had small hesitation in +raising their sticks against their august governor, had he proved too +disobedient. A few years earlier, according to Sallust, a Roman, one +Fulvius, had caused his son to be put to death, because he had sought to +join Catiline. The old gentleman heard what his son was about, and when +Young Hopeful was arrested and brought before him, he availed himself of +his fatherly privilege, and had him strangled, or disposed of after some +other of those charming fashions which were so common in the model +republic of antiquity. "This imitation of the discipline of the ancient +republic," says Merivale, "excited neither applause nor indignation +among the languid voluptuaries of the Senate." They probably voted +Fulvius a brute, but they no more thought of questioning the legality of +his conduct than they did of imitating it. Law was one thing, opinion +another. If he liked to play Lucius Junius, well and good; but they had +no taste for the part. They felt much as we used to feel in +Fugitive-Slave-Law times: we did not question the law, but we would have +nothing to do with its execution. + +Modern fathers have had no such powers as were held by those of Rome, +and if an Englishman of Red-Rose views had killed his son for setting +off to join Edward IV. when he had landed at Ravenspur, no one would +think of praising the act. What was all right in a Roman of the year 1 +of the Republic would be considered shocking in a Christian of the +fifteenth century, a time when Christianity had become much diluted from +the inter-mixture of blood. In the next century, poor Lady Jane Grey +spoke of the torments which she had endured at the hands of her parents, +who were of the noblest blood of Europe, in terms that ought to make +every young woman thankful that her lot was not cast in the good old +times. Roger Ascham was her confidant. He had gone to Brodegate, to take +leave of her, and "found her in her chamber alone, reading Phaedo +Platonis in Greek, and that with as much delight as some gentlemen would +read a merry tale of Boccace"; and as all the rest of the Greys were +hunting in the park, the schoolmaster inquired why she should lose such +pastime. The lady answered, that the pleasure they were having in the +park was but the shadow of that pleasure she found in Plato. The +conversation proceeding, Ascham inquired how it was that she had come to +know such true pleasure, and she answered,--"I will tell you, and tell +you a truth which perchance ye may marvel at. One of the greatest +benefits God ever gave me is that he sent me so sharp and severe parents +and so gentle a schoolmaster. For when I am in presence either of father +or mother, whether I speak, keep silence, sit, stand, or go, eat, drink, +be merry, or sad, be sewing, playing, dancing, or doing anything else, I +must do it as it were in such weight, number, and measure, even so +perfectly as God made the world, or else I am so sharply taunted, so +cruelly threatened, yea, presently, sometimes with pinches, nips, and +bobs, and other ways, (which I will not name for the honor I bear them,) +so without measure misordered, that I think myself in hell, till time +come that I must go to Mr. Elmer, who teacheth me so gently, so +pleasantly, with such fair allurements to learning, that I think all the +time nothing while I am with him. And when I am called from him, I fall +on weeping, because whatsoever I do else beside learning is full of +grief, trouble, fear, and whole misliking unto me. And thus my book hath +been so much my pleasure, and bringeth daily more pleasure and more, +that in respect of it all other pleasures, in very deed, be but trifles +and troubles to me." The Duke and Duchess of Suffolk were neither better +nor worse than other parents who tormented and tyrannized over their +children _temp._ Edward VI., and nothing but the prominence of the most +unfortunate of their unfortunate daughters has preserved the memory of +their domestic despotism. Throughout all England it was the same, from +palace to castle, and from castle to hovel; and father and tyrant were +convertible terms. Youth must have been but a dreary time in those old +days. Scott's Sir Henry Lee, according to his son, kept strict rule over +his children, and he was a type of the antique knight, not of the +debauched cavalier, and would be obeyed, with or without reason. The +letters and the literature of the seventeenth century show, that, how +loose soever became other ties, parents maintained their hold on their +children with iron hands. Even the license of the Restoration left +fatherly rule largely triumphant and undisputed. When even "husbands, of +decent station, were not ashamed to beat their wives," sons and +daughters were not spoiled by a sparing of the rod. Harshness was the +rule in every grade of life, and harsh indeed was parental rule, until +the reader wonders that there was not a general rebellion of women, +children, scholars, and apprentices against the savage ascendency of +husbands, fathers, pedagogues, and masters. + +But the fashions of this world, whether good or evil, pass away. In the +eighteenth century we find parents becoming more humane, though still +keeping their offspring pretty stiffly bitted. They shared in the +general melioration of the age. The father was "honored sir," and was +not too familiar with his boys. The great outbreak at the close of the +century did much for the emancipation of the young; and by the time that +the present century had advanced to a third of its years, youth had so +far got the best of the conflict, and treated their elders with so +little consideration, that it was thought the latter were rather +presumptuous in remaining on earth after fifty. Youth began to organize +itself. Young Germany, Young France, and Young England became powers in +the world. Young Germany was revolutionary and metaphysical, and +nourished itself on bad beer and worse tobacco. Young France was +full-bearded and decidedly dirty, and so far deferred to the past as to +look for models in '93; and it had a strong reverence for that antique +sentiment which exhibited itself in the assassination of kings. Young +England was gentlemanly and cleanly, its leaders being of the patrician +order; and it looked to the Middle Ages for patterns of conduct. Its +chiefs wore white waistcoats, gave red cloaks and broken meat to old +women, and would have lopped off three hundred years from Old England's +life, by pushing her back to the early days of Henry VIII., when the +religious houses flourished, and when the gallows was a perennial plant, +bearing fruit that was _not_ for the healing of the nations. Some of the +cleverest of the younger members of the aristocracy belonged to the new +organization, and a great genius wrote some delightful novels to show +their purpose, and to illustrate their manner of how-not-to-do-it in +grappling with the grand social questions of the age. In "Coningsby" +they sing canticles and carry about the boar's head; in "Sibyl" they +sing hymns to the Holy Virgin and the song of labor, and steal +title-deeds, after setting houses on fire to distract attention from +their immediate object; and in "Tancred" they go on pilgrimage to the +Holy Sepulchre, by way of reviving their faith. All this is so well +done, that Young England will survive in literature, and be the source +of edification, long after there shall be no more left of the dust of +its chiefs than there is of the dust of Cheops or Caesar. For all these +youths are already vanished, leaving no more traces than you would find +of the flowers that bloomed in the days of their lives. Young Germany +went out immediately after the failure of the revolutionists of 1848-9. +Young France thought it had triumphed in the fall of the Orleans +monarchy, but had only taken the first long step toward making its own +fall complete; and now some of its early members are of the firmest +supporters of the new phase of imperialism, the only result of the +Revolution of February that has given signs of endurance. Young England +went out as soberly and steadily as it had lived. The select few who +composed it died like gentlemen, and were as polite as Lord Chesterfield +in the article of death. Some of them turned Whigs, and have held office +under Lord Palmerston; and others are Tories, and expect to hold office +under Lord Derby, when he shall form his third ministry. Young America, +the worst of these youths, and the latest born, was never above an +assassin in courage, or in energy equal to more than the plundering of a +hen-roost. The fruits of his exertions are to be seen in some of the +incidents of the Secession War, and they were not worth the gathering. + +The world had settled down into the belief, that, after all, a man was +not much to be blamed for growing old, and liberal-minded people were +fast coming to the conclusion, that years, on the whole, were not +dishonorable, when the breaking out of a great war led to the return of +youth to consideration. The English found themselves at war with Russia, +much to their surprise; and, still more to their surprise, their part in +that war was made subordinate to that of the French, who acted with +them, in the world's estimate of the deeds of the members of the new +Grand Alliance. This is not the place to discuss the question whether +that estimate was a just one. We have to do only with the facts that +England was made to stand in the background and that she seemed at first +disposed to accept the general verdict. There was, too, much +mismanagement in the conduct of the war, some of which might easily have +been avoided; and there was not a little suffering, as the consequence +of that mismanagement. John Bull must have his scape-goat, like the rest +of us; and, looking over the field, he discovered that all his leaders +were old men, and forthwith, though the oldest of old fellows himself, +he laid all his mishaps to the account of the years of his upper +servants. Sir Charles Napier, who never got into St. Petersburg, was +old, and had been a dashing sailor forty years before. Admiral Dundas, +who did not destroy Sweaborg, but only burned a lot of corded wood there +in summer time, was another old sailor. Lord Raglan, who never saw the +inside of Sebastopol, was well stricken in years, having served in +Wellington's military family during the Peninsular War. General Simpson, +Sir C. Campbell, General Codrington, Sir G. Brown, Sir G. Cathcart, and +others of the leaders of the English army in the Crimea, were of the +class of gentlemen who might, upon meeting, furnish matter for a +paragraph on "united ages." What more natural than to attribute all that +was unpleasant in the war to the stagnated blood of men who had heard +the music of that musketry before which Napoleon I.'s empire had gone +down? The world went mad on the subject, and it was voted that old +generals were nuisances, and that no man had any business in active war +who was old enough to have much experience. Age might be venerable, but +it was necessarily weak; and the last place in which it should show +itself was the field. + +It was not strange that the English should have come to the conclusion +that the fogies were unfit to lead armies. They were in want of an +excuse for their apparent failure in the war, and they took the part +that was suggested to them,--therein behaving no worse than ourselves, +who have accounted for our many reverses in many foolish and +contradictory ways. But it was strange that their view was accepted by +others, whose minds were undisturbed, because unmistified,--and +accepted, too, in face of the self-evident fact that almost every man +who figured in the war was old. Marechal Pelissier,[A] to whom the chief +honor of the contest has been conceded, was but six years the junior of +Lord Raglan; and if the Englishman's sixty-six years are to count +against age in war, why should not the Frenchman's sixty years count for +it? Prince Gortschakoff, who defended Sebastopol so heroically, was but +four years younger than Lord Raglan; and Prince Paskevitch was more than +six years his senior. Muravieff, Menschikoff, Luders, and other Russian +commanders opposed to the Allies, were all old men, all past sixty years +when the war began. Prince Menschikoff was sixty-four when he went on +his famous mission to Constantinople, and he did not grow younger in the +eighteen months that followed, and at the end of which he fought and +lost the Battle of the Alma. The Russian war was an old man's war, and +the stubbornness with which it was waged had in it much of that ugliness +which belongs to age. + + "The young man's wrath is like light straw on fire. + But like red-hot steel is the old man's ire." + +What rendered the attacks that were made on old generals in 1854-6 the +more absurd was the fact, that the English called upon an old man to +relieve them from bad government, and were backed by other nations. Lord +Palmerston, upon whom all thoughts and all eyes were directed, was older +than any one of those generals to whose years Englishmen attributed +their country's failure. When, with the all but universal approbation of +Great Britain and her friends, he became Prime-Minister, he was in his +seventy-first year, and his action showed that his natural force was not +abated. He was called to play the part of the elder Pitt at a greater +age than Pitt reached; and he did not disappoint expectation. It is +strange indeed, considering that the Premiership was a more difficult +post to fill than that held by any English general, that the English +should rely upon the oldest of their active statesmen to retrieve their +fortunes, while they were condemning as unfit for service men who were +his juniors by several years. + +In truth, the position that youth is necessary to success in war is not +sustained by military history. It may he no drawback to a soldier's +excellence that he is young, but it is equally true that an old man may +possess every quality that is necessary in a soldier who would serve his +country well and win immortal fame for himself. The best of the Greek +commanders were men in advanced life, with a few exceptions. The precise +age of Miltiades at Marathon is unproven; but as he had become a noted +character almost thirty years before the date of that most memorable of +battles, he must have been old when he fought and won it. Even +Alcibiades, with whom is associated the idea of youth through his whole +career, as if Time had stood still in his behalf, did not have a great +command until he was approaching to middle age; and it was not until +some years more had expired that he won victories for the Athenians. The +date of the birth of Epaminondas--the best public man of all antiquity, +and the best soldier of Greece--cannot be fixed; but we find him a +middle-aged man when first he appears on that stage on which he +performed so pure and brilliant a part through seventeen eventful years. +Eight years after he first came forward he won the Battle of Leuctra, +which shattered the Spartan supremacy forever, and was the most perfect +specimen of scientific fighting that is to be found in classical +history, and which some of the greatest of modern commanders have been +proud merely to imitate. After that action, but not immediately after +it, he invaded the Peloponnesus, and led his forces to the vicinity of +Sparta, and then effected a revolution that bridled that power +perpetually. Nine years after Leuctra he won the Battle of Mantinea, +dying on the field. He must then have been an old man, but the last of +his campaigns was a miracle of military skill in all respects; and the +effect of his death was the greatest that ever followed the fall of a +general on a victorious field, actually turning victory into defeat. The +Spartan king, Agesilaus II., who was a not unworthy antagonist of the +great Theban, was an old man, and was over seventy when he saved Sparta +solely through his skill as a soldier and his energy as a statesman. As +a rule, the Greeks, the most intellectual of all races, were averse to +the employment of young men in high offices. The Spartan Brasidas, if it +be true that he fell in the flower of his age, as the historian asserts, +may have been a young man at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War, in +which he was eminently distinguished; but it was his good fortune to be +singularly favored by circumstances on more than one occasion, and his +whole career was eminently exceptional to the general current of +Hellenic life. + +The Romans, though not braver than the Greeks, were more fortunate in +their military career than the stayers of the march of Persia. Like the +Greeks, they had but few young generals of much reputation. Most of +their conquests, and, indeed, the salvation of their country, were the +work of old leaders. The grand crisis of Rome was in the years that +followed the arrival of Hannibal in Italy; and the two men who did most +to baffle the invader were Fabius and Marcellus, who were called, +respectively, Rome's shield and sword. They were both old men, though +Marcellus may have been looked upon as young in comparison with Fabius, +who was upward of seventy, and who, eight years after his memorable +pro-dictatorship, retook Tarentum and baffled Hannibal. The old +_Lingerer_ was, at eighty, too clever, slow as they thought him at Rome, +to be "taken in" by Hannibal, who had prepared a nice trap for him, into +which he would not walk. Marcellus was about fifty-two when he was +pitted against the victor of Cannae, and he met him on various occasions, +and sometimes with striking success. At the age of fifty-six he took +Syracuse, after one of the most memorable of sieges, in which he had +Archimedes for an opponent. At sixty he was killed in a skirmish, +leaving the most brilliant military name of the republican times, so +highly are valor and energy rated, though in the higher qualities of +generalship he was inferior to men whose names are hardly known. +Undoubtedly, Mommsen is right when he says that Rome was saved by the +Roman system, and not by the labors of this man or that; but it is +something for a country to have men who know how to work under its +system, and in accordance with its requirements; and such men were +Fabius and Marcellus, the latter old enough to be Hannibal's father, +while the former was the contemporary of his grandfather. + +The turning point in the Second Punic War was the siege of Capua by the +Romans. That siege Hannibal sought by all means in his power to raise, +well knowing, that, if the Campanian city should fall, he could never +hope to become master of Italy. He marched to Rome in the expectation of +compelling the besiegers to hasten to its defence; but without effect. +Two old Romans commanded the beleaguering army, and while one of them, +Q. Fulvius, hastened home with a small force, the other, Appius +Claudius, carried on the siege. Hannibal had to retreat, and Capua fell, +the effect of the tenacity with which ancient generals held on to their +prey. Had they been less firm, the course of history would have been +changed. At a later period of the war, Rome was saved from great danger, +if not from destruction, by the victory of the Metaurus, won by M. +Livius Salinator and C. Claudius Nero. Nero was an elderly man, having +been conspicuous for some years, and the consular age being forty. His +colleague was a very old man, having been consul before the war began, +and having long lived in retirement, because he had been unjustly +treated. The Romans now forced him to take office, against his wish, +though his actions and his language were of the most insulting +character. A great union of parties had taken place, for Hasdrubal was +marching to Italy, for the purpose of effecting a junction with his +brother Hannibal, and it was felt that nothing short of perfect union +could save the State. The State was saved, the two old consuls acting +together, and defeating and slaying Hasdrubal in the last great battle +of the war that was fought in Italy. The old fogies were too much for +their foe, a much younger man than either of them, and a soldier of high +reputation. + +It must be admitted, however, that the Second Punic War is fairly +quotable by those who insist upon the superiority of youthful generals +over old ones, for the two greatest men who appeared in it were young +leaders,--Hannibal, and Publius Cornelius Scipio, the first Africanus. +No man has ever exceeded Hannibal in genius for war. He was one of the +greatest statesmen that ever lived, and he was so because he was the +greatest of soldiers. He might have won pitched battles as a mere +general, but it was his statesmanship that enabled him to contend for +sixteen years against Rome, in Italy, though Rome was aided by +Carthaginian copperheads. But, though a young general, Hannibal was an +old soldier when he led his army from the Ebro to the Trebia, as the +avenging agent of his country's gods. His military as well as his moral +training began in childhood; and when his father, Hamilcar Barcas,[B] +was killed, Hannibal, though but eighteen, was of established reputation +in the Carthaginian service. Eight years later he took the place which +his father and brother-in-law had held, called to it by the voice of the +army. During those eight years he had been constantly employed, and he +brought to the command an amount and variety of experience such as it +has seldom been the lot of even old generals to acquire. Years brought +no decay to his faculties, and we have the word of his successful foe, +that at Zama, when he was forty-five, he showed as much skill as he had +displayed at Cannae, when he was but thirty-one. Long afterward, when an +exile in the East, his powers of mind shine as brightly as they did when +he crossed the Pyrenees and the Alps to fulfil his oath. Scipio, too, +though in a far less degree than Hannibal, was an old soldier. He had +been often employed, and was present at Cannae, before he obtained that +proconsular command in Spain which was the worthy foundation of his +fortunes. The four years that he served in that country, and his +subsequent services in Africa, qualified him to meet Hannibal, whose +junior he was by thirteen years. That he was Hannibal's superior, +because he defeated him at Zama, with the aid of Masinissa, no more +follows than that Wellington was Napoleon's superior, because, with the +aid of Bluecher, he defeated him at Waterloo. It would not be more +difficult to account for the loss of the African field than it is to +account for the loss of the Flemish field, by the superior genius. The +elder Africanus is the most exceptional character in all history, and it +is impossible to place him. He seems never to have been young, and we +cannot associate the idea of age with him, even when he is dying at +Liternum at upwards of fifty. He was a man at seventeen, when first he +steps boldly out on the historic page, and there is no apparent change +in him when we find him leading great armies, and creating a new policy +for the redemption of Italy from the evils of war. He was intended to be +a king, but he was born two centuries too early to be of any use to his +country in accordance with his genius, out of the field. Such a man is +not to be judged as a mere soldier, and we were inclined not to range +him on the side of youthful generals; but we will be generous, and, in +consideration of his years, permit him to be claimed by those who insist +that war is the business of youth. + +At later periods, Rome's greatest generals were men who were old. The +younger Africanus was fifty-one at Numantia, Marius did not obtain the +consulship until he was fifty; and he was fifty-five when he won his +first great victory over the Northern barbarians, and a year older when +he completed their destruction. Sulla was past fifty when he set out to +meet the armies of Mithridates, which he conquered; and he was fifty-six +when he made himself master of his country, after one of the fiercest +campaigns on record. Pompeius distinguished himself when very young, but +it is thought that the title of "the Great" was conferred upon him by +Sulla in a spirit of irony. The late Sir William Napier, who ought to +have been a good judge, said that he was a very great general, and in a +purely military sense perhaps greater than Caesar. He was fifty-eight in +the campaign of Pharsalia, and if he then failed, his failure must be +attributed to the circumstances of his position, which was rather that +of a party leader than of a general; and a party leader, it has been +truly said, must sometimes obey, in order that at other times he may +command. Pompeius delivered battle at Pharsalia against his own +judgment. The "Onward to Rome!" cry of the fierce aristocrats was too +strong to be resisted; and "their general yielded with a sigh to the +importunities of his followers, declaring that he could no longer +command, and must submit to obey." Not long before he had beaten Caesar +at Dyrrachium, with much loss to the vanquished, completely spoiling his +plans; and the great contest might have had a very different result, had +not political and personal considerations been permitted to outweigh +those of a military character. Politicians are pests in a camp. Caesar +was in his fifty-first year when he crossed the Rubicon and began his +wonderful series of campaigns in the Civil War,--campaigns characterized +by an almost superhuman energy. The most remarkable of his efforts was +that which led to his last appearance in the field, at the Battle of +Munda, where he fought for existence; he was then approaching +fifty-five, and he could not have been more active and energetic, had he +been as young as Alexander at Arbela. + +In modern days, the number of old generals who have gained great battles +is large, far larger than the number of young generals of the highest +class. The French claim to be the first of military peoples, and though +no other nation has been so badly beaten in battles, or so completely +crushed in campaigns, there is a general disposition to admit their +claim; and many of their best commanders were old men. Bertrand du +Gueselin performed his best deeds against the English after he was +fifty, and he was upward of sixty years when the commandant of Randon +laid the keys of his fortress on his body, surrendering, not to the +living, but to the dead. Turenne was ever great, but it is admitted that +his three last campaigns, begun when he was sixty-two, were his greatest +performances. Conde's victory at Rocroi was a most brilliant deed, he +being then but twenty-two; but it does not so strikingly illustrate his +genius as do those operations by which, at fifty-four, he baffled +Montecuculi, and prevented him from profiting from the fall of Turenne. +Said Conde to one of his officers, "How much I wish that I could have +conversed only two hours with the ghost of Monsieur de Turenne, so as to +be able to follow the scope of his ideas!" In these days, generals can +have as much ghostly talk as they please, but the privilege would not +seem to be much used, or it is not useful, for they do nothing that is +of consequence sufficient to be attributed to supernatural power. +Luxembourg was sixty-two when he defeated Prince Waldeck at Fleurus; and +at sixty-four and sixty-five he defeated William III. at Steinkirk and +Landen. Vendome was fifty-one when he defeated Eugene at Cassano; and at +fifty-six he won the eventful Battle of Villaviciosa, to which the +Spanish Bourbons owe their throne. Villars, who fought the terrible +Battle of Malplaquet against Marlborough and Eugene, was then fifty-six +years old; and he had more than once baffled those commanders. At sixty +he defeated Eugene, and by his successes enabled France to conclude +honorably a most disastrous war. The Comte de Saxe was in his +forty-ninth year when he gained the Battle of Fontenoy;[C] and later he +won other successes. Rochambeau was in his fifty-seventh year when he +acted with Washington at Yorktown, in a campaign that established our +existence as a nation. + +The Spanish army of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, down to the +date of the Battle of Rocroi, stood very high. Several of its best +generals were old men. Gonsalvo de Cordova, "the Great Captain," who may +be considered the father of the famous Spanish infantry, was fifty when +he completed his Italian conquests; and nine years later he was again +called to the head of the Spaniards in Italy, but the King of Aragon's +jealousy prevented him from going to that country. Alva was about sixty +when he went to the Netherlands, on his awful mission; and it must be +allowed that he was as great in the field as he was detestably cruel. At +seventy-four he conquered Portugal. Readers of Mr. Prescott's work on +Peru will remember his lively account of Francisco de Carbajal, who at +fourscore was more active than are most men at thirty. Francisco Pizarro +was an old man, about sixty, when he effected the conquest of Peru; and +his principal associate, Almagro, was his senior. Spinola, who died at +sixty-one, in the full possession of his reputation, was, perhaps, the +greatest military genius of his time, next to Gustavus Adolphus and +Wallenstein. + +The Austrian military service has become a sort of butt with those who +shoot their arrows at what is called slowness, and who delight to +transfix old generals. Since Bonaparte, in less than a year, tumbled +over Beaulieu, Wurmser, and Alvinczy, (whose united ages exceeded two +hundred years,) it has been taken for granted that the Austrians never +have generals under threescore-and-ten years, and that they are always +beaten. There have been many old generals in the Austrian service, it is +true, and most of them have been very good leaders. Montecuculi was +fifty-six when he defeated the Turks at St. Gothard, which is counted +one of the "decisive battles" of the seventeenth century. Daun was +fifty-three when he won the victory of Kolin, June 18, 1757, inflicting +defeat on the Prussian Frederick, next to Marlborough the greatest +commander of modern times who had then appeared. Melas was seventy when +he met Bonaparte at Marengo, and beat him, the victory being with the +Austrian while he remained on the field; but infirmities having +compelled him to leave before he could glean it, the arrival of Desaix +and the dash of the younger Kellermann turned the tide of battle in +favor of the French. General Zach, Melas's chief of the staff, was in +command in the latter part of the battle, and it is supposed, that, if +he had not been captured, the Austrians would have kept what they had +won. He was fifty-six years old, but was not destined to be the "Old +Zach" of his country, as _the_ "Old Zach" was always victorious. Marshal +Radelzky was eighty-two when, in 1848, he found himself compelled to +uphold the Austrian cause in Italy, without the hope of aid from home; +and not only did he uphold it, but a year later he restored it +completely, and was the virtual ruler of the Peninsula until he had +reached the age of ninety. Of all the military men who took part in the +wars of 1848-9, he, it is admitted, displayed the most talent and +energy. So well was his work done, that it required the united forces of +France and Sardinia to undo it, shortly after his death; and he died in +the conviction that it could not be undone. Haynau, who certainly +displayed eminent ability in 1848-9, was in his sixty-second year when +the war began, and stands next to Radetzky as the preserver of the +Austrian monarchy; and we should not allow detestation of his cruelties +to detract from his military merits. The Devil is entitled to justice, +and by consequence so are his imps. Austria has often seen her armies +beaten when led by old men, but other old men have won victories for +her. Even those of her generals who were so rapidly beaten by young +Bonaparte had been good soldiers elsewhere; and when the Archduke +Charles, who was two years the junior of Bonaparte, was sent to meet the +Frenchman, he had no better luck than had been found by Beaulieu and +Wurmser, though his reverses were not on the same extraordinary scale +that had marked the fall of his predecessors. Twelve years later, in +1809, Napoleon again met the Archduke Charles, and defeated him +repeatedly; and though the Archduke was victorious at Essling, he, the +younger commander, had not sufficient boldness so to improve his success +as should have given to Austria the credit of the deliverance of +Germany, which was to come from Russia. Those who dwell so +pertinaciously on the failures of old Austrian generals should in +justice to age remember that it was a young Austrian general, and a good +soldier too, who showed a most extraordinary want of energy in 1809, +immediately after the French under Napoleon had met with the greatest +reverse which their arms had then experienced since Bonaparte had been +spoiled into a despot. Prince Schwartzenberg, who had nominal command of +the Allied Armies in 1813-14, was of the same age as the Archduke +Charles, but it would be absurd to call him a great soldier. He was a +brave man, and he had seen considerable service; but as a general he did +not rank even as second-rate. His appointment to command in 1813 was a +political proceeding, meant to conciliate Austria; but though it was a +useful appointment in some respects, it was injurious to the Allies in +the field; and had the Prince's plan at Leipsic been adhered to, +Napoleon would have won decided successes there. The Czar wished for the +command, and his zeal might have enabled him to do something; but the +entire absence of military talent from the list of his accomplishments +would have greatly endangered the Allies' cause. Schwartzenberg's merit +consisted in this, that he had sufficient influence and tact to "keep +things straight" in the councils of a jarring confederacy, until others +had gained such victories as placed the final defeat of Napoleon beyond +all doubt. His first battle was Dresden, and there Napoleon gave him a +drubbing of the severest character; and the loss of that battle would +have carried with it the loss of the cause for which it was fought by +the Allies, had it not been that at the very same time were fought and +won a series of battles, at the Katzbach and elsewhere, which were due +to the boldness of Bluecher, who was old enough to be Schwartzenberg's +father, with more than a dozen years to spare. Bluecher was also the real +hero at Leipsie, where he gained brilliant successes; while on that part +of the field where Schwartzenberg commanded, the Allies did but little +beyond holding their original ground. Had Bluecher failed, Leipsie would +have been a French victory. + +England's best generals mostly have been old men, or men well advance in +life, the chief exceptions being found among her kings and princes.[D] +The Englishmen who have exhibited the greatest genius for war, in what +may be called their country's modern history, are Oliver Cromwell, +Marlborough, and Wellington. Cromwell was in his forty-fourth year when +he received the baptism of fire at Edgehill, as a captain; and he was in +his fifty-third year when he fought, as lord-general, his last battle, +at Worcester, which closed a campaign, as well as an active military +career, that had been conducted with great energy. It was as a military +man that he subsequently ruled the British islands, and to the day of +his death there was no abatement in ability. Marlborough had a good +military education, served under Turenne when he was but twenty-two, and +attracted his commander's admiration; but he never had an independent +command until he was forty, when he led an expedition to Ireland, and +captured Cork and Kinsale. He was fifty-two when he assumed command of +the armies of the Grand Alliance against Louis XIV., and in his +fifty-fifth year when he won the Battle of Blenheim. At fifty-six he +gained the victory of Ramillies, and at fifty-eight that of Oudenarde. +His last great battle, Malplaquet, was fought when he was in his +sixtieth year; and after that the French never durst meet him in the +field. He never knew what defeat meant, from experience, and was the +most successful even of those commanders who have never failed. He left +his command at sixty-two, with no one to dispute his title of the first +of living soldiers; and with him victory left the Alliance. Subsequently +he was employed by George I., and to his measures the defeat of the +rebels of 1715 was due, he having predicted that they would be +overthrown precisely where they were overthrown. The story that he +survived his mental powers is without foundation, and he continued to +perform his official duties to the last, the King having refused to +accept his proffered resignation. Wellington had a thorough military +training, received his first commission at eighteen, and was a +lieutenant-colonel in his twenty-fifth year. After showing that he was a +good soldier in 1794-5, against the French, he went to India, where he +distinguished himself in subordinate campaigns, and was made a +major-general in 1802. Assaye, the first battle in which he commanded, +was won when he was in his thirty-fifth year. He had just entered on his +fortieth year when he took command of that force with which he first +defeated the French in Portugal. He was in his forty-seventh year when +he fought at Waterloo. If he cannot be classed with old generals, +neither can he be placed in the list of youthful soldiers; and so little +confidence had he in his military talents, that at twenty-six he +petitioned to be transferred to the civil service. His powers were +developed by events and time. Some of his Peninsular lieutenants were +older than himself. Craufurd was five years his senior, and was a +capital soldier. Picton, who had some of the highest military qualities, +was almost eleven years older than his chief, and was little short of +fifty-seven when he fell at Waterloo. Lord Hopetoun was six years older +than Wellington. Lord Lynedoch (General Sir Thomas Graham) was in his +sixty-first year when he defeated Marechal Victor at Barrosa, and in his +sixty-third when he led the left wing of the Allies at Vittoria, which +was the turning battle of the long contest between England and France. A +few months later he took St. Sebastian, after one of the most terrible +sieges known to modern warfare. He continued to serve under Wellington +until France was invaded. Returning to England, he was sent to Holland, +with an independent command; and though his forces were few, so little +had his fire been dulled by time, that he carried the great fortress of +Bergen-op-Zoom by storm, but only to lose it again, with more than two +thousand men, because of the sense and gallantry of the French General +Bezanet, who, like our Rosecrans at Murfreesboro', would not accept +defeat under any circumstances. When Wellington afterward saw the place, +he remarked that it was very strong, and must have been extremely +difficult to enter; "but when once in," he added, "I wonder how the +Devil they suffered themselves to be beaten out again!" Though the old +Scotchman failed on this particular occasion, his boldness and daring +are to be cited in support of the position that energy in war is not the +exclusive property of youth. + +Some of the best of the English second-class generals were old men. Lord +Clyde began his memorable Indian campaigns at sixty-six, and certainly +showed no want of talent and activity in their course. He restored, to +all appearance, British supremacy in the East. Sir C.J. Napier was in +his sixty-second year when he conquered Sinde, winning the great Battles +of Meanee and Doobah; and six years later he was sent out to India, as +Commander-in-chief, at the suggestion of Wellington, who said, that, if +Napier would not go, he should go himself. He reached India too late to +fight the Sikhs, but showed great vigor in governing the Indian army. He +died in 1853; had he lived until the next spring, he would +unquestionably have been placed at the head of that force which England +sent first to Turkey and then to Southern Russia. Lord Raglan was almost +sixty-six when he was appointed to his first command, and though his +conduct has been severely criticized, and much misrepresented by many +writers, the opinion is now becoming common that he discharged well the +duties of a very difficult position. Mr. Kinglake's brilliant work is +obtaining justice for the services and memory of his illustrious friend. +Lord Hardinge and Lord Gough were old men when they carried on some of +the fiercest hostilities ever known to the English in India. Sir Ralph +Abercromby was sixty-three when he defeated the French in Egypt, in +1801. Lord Cornwallis was fifty-two when he broke the power of Tippoo +Saib, and prepared the way for his ultimate overthrow. Lord Peterborough +was forty-seven, and had never before held a command or seen much +service, when he set out on that series of extraordinary campaigns which +came so near replacing the Austrian house in possession of Spain and the +Indies. Peterborough has been called the last of the knights-errant; +but, in fact, no book on knight-errantry contains anything half so +wonderful as his deeds in the country of Don Quixote. Sir Eyre Coote, +who had so boldly supported that bold policy which led to the victory of +Plassey, nearly a quarter of a century later supported Hastings in the +field with almost as much vigor as he had supported Clive in council, +and saved British India, when it was assailed by the ablest of all its +foes. His last victories were gained in advanced life, and are ranked +with the highest of those actions to which England owes her wonderful +Oriental dominion. Lord Keane was verging upon sixty when he led the +British forces into Afghanistan, and took Ghuznee. Against all her old +and middle-aged generals, her kings and princes apart, England could +place but very few young commanders of great worth. Clive's case was +clearly exceptional; and Wolfe owed his victory on the Heights of +Abraham as much to Montcalm's folly as to his own audacity. The +Frenchman should have refused battle, when time and climate would soon +have wrought his deliverance and his enemy's ruin. + +It is generally held that the wars which grew out of the French +Revolution, and which involved the world in their flames, were chiefly +the work of young men, and that their history illustrates the +superiority of youth over age in the ancient art of human destruction. +But this belief is not well founded, and, indeed, bears a close +resemblance to that other error in connection with the French +Revolution, namely, that it proceeded from the advent of new opinions, +which obtained ascendency,--whereas those opinions were older than +France, and had more than once been aired in France, and there had +struggled for supremacy. The opinions before the triumph of which the +old monarchy went down were much older than that monarchy; but as they +had never before been able definitely to influence the nation's action, +it was not strange that they should be considered new, when there was +nothing new about them save their application. Young opinions, as they +are supposed to have been, are best championed by young men; and hence +it is assumed that the French leaders in the field were youthful heroes, +as were the civil leaders in many instances,--and a very nice mess the +latter made of the business they engaged in, doing little that was well +in it beyond getting their own heads cut off. There are some facts that +greatly help to sustain the position that France was saved from +partition by the exertions of young generals, the new men of the new +time. Hoche, Moreau, Bonaparte, Desaix, Soult, Lannes, Ney, and others, +who early rose to fame in the Revolutionary wars, were all young men, +and their exploits were so great as to throw the deeds of others into +the shade; but the salvation of France was effected before any one of +their number became conspicuous as a leader. Napoleon once said that it +was not the new levies that saved France, but the old soldiers of the +Bourbons; and he was right; and he might have added, that they were led +by old or elderly generals. Dumouriez was in his fifty-fourth year when, +in 1792, he won the Battles of Valmy and Jemmapes; and at Valmy he was +aided by the elder Kellermann, who was fifty-seven. Those two battles +decided the fate of Europe, and laid the foundation of that French +supremacy which endured for twenty years, until Napoleon himself +overthrew it by his mad Moscow expedition. Custine, who also was +successful in 1792, on the side of Germany, was fifty-two. Jourdan and +Pichegru, though not old men, were old soldiers, when, in 1794 and 1795, +they did so much to establish the power of the French Republic, the +former winning the Battle of Fleurus. It was in the three years that +followed the beginning of the war in 1792, that the French performed +those deeds which subsequently enabled Napoleon and his Marshals to +chain victory to their chariots, and to become so drunk from success +that they fell through their own folly rather than because of the +exertions of their enemies. Had the old French generals been beaten at +Valmy, the Prussians would have entered Paris in a few days, the +monarchy would have been restored, and the name of Bonaparte never would +have been heard; and equally unknown would have been the names of a +hundred other French leaders, who distinguished themselves in the +three-and-twenty years that followed the first successes of Dumouriez +and Kellermann. Let honor be given where it is due, and let the fogies +have their just share of it. There can be nothing meaner than to insist +upon stripping gray heads of green laurels. + +After the old generals and old soldiers of France had secured +standing-places for the new generation, the representatives of the +latter certainly did make their way brilliantly and rapidly. The school +was a good one, and the scholars were apt to learn, and did credit to +their masters. They carried the tricolor over Europe and into Egypt, and +saw it flying over the capital of almost every member of those +coalitions which had purposed its degradation at Paris. It was the flag +to which men bowed at Madrid and Seville, at Milan and Rome, at Paris +and at the Hague, at Warsaw and Wilna, at Dantzie and in Dalmatia, at +the same time that it was fast approaching Moscow; and it was thought +of with as much fear as hatred at Vienna and Berlin. No wonder that the +world forgot or overlooked the earlier and fewer triumphs of the first +Republican commanders, when dazzled by the glories that shone from +Arcola, the Pyramids, Zuerich, Marengo, Hohenlinden, Ulm, Austerlitz, +Jena, Eckmuehl, Wagram, Borodino, Luetzen, Bautzen, and Dresden. But those +young generals of the Republic and the Empire were sometimes found +unequal to the work of contending against the old generals of the +Coalitionists. Suvaroff was in his seventieth year when he defeated +Macdonald at the Battle of the Trebbia, the Frenchman being but +thirty-four; and a few months later he defeated Joubert, who was thirty, +at Novi. Joubert was one of Bonaparte's generals in his first Italian +wars, and was so conspicuous and popular that he had been selected to +command the Army of Italy by the moderate reactionists, in the hope that +he might there win such glory as should enable him to play the part +which Bonaparte played but a few months later,--Bonaparte being then in +the East, with the English fleets between him and France, so that he was +considered a lost man. "The striking similarity of situation between +Joubert and Bonaparte," says Madame d'Abrantes, "is most remarkable. +They were of equal age, and both, in their early career, suffered a sort +of disgrace; they were finally appointed to command, first, the +seventeenth military division, and afterward the Army of Italy. There is +in all this a curious parity of events; but death soon ended the career +of one of the young heroes. That which ought to have constituted the +happiness of his life was the cause of Joubert's death,--his marriage. +But how could he refrain from loving the woman he espoused? Who can +have forgotten Zaphirine de Montholon, her enchanting grace, her playful +wit, her good humor, and her beauty?" Like another famous soldier, +Joubert loved too well to love wisely. Bonaparte, who never was young, +had received the command of the Army of Italy as the portion of the +ex-mistress of Barras, who was seven years his senior, and, being a +matter-of-fact man, he reduced his _lune de miel_ to three days, and +posted off to his work. He knew the value of time in those days, and not +Cleopatra herself could have kept him from his men. Joubert, more of a +man, but an inferior soldier, took his honeymoon in full measure, +passing a month with his bride; and the loss of that month, if so sweet +a thirty days could be called a loss, ruined him, and perhaps prevented +him from becoming Emperor of the French. The enemy received +reinforcements while he was so lovingly employed, and when he at length +arrived on the scene of action he found that the Allies had obtained +mastery of the situation. It was no longer in the power of the French to +say whether they would fight or not. They had to give battle at Novi, +where the tough old Russian of seventy years asserted his superiority +over the _heros de roman_ who had posted from Paris to retrieve the +fortune of France, and to make his own. When he left Paris, he said to +his wife, "You will see me again, dead or victorious,"--and dead he was, +in less than a month. He fell early in the action, on the fifteenth of +August, 1799, the very day on which Bonaparte completed his thirtieth +year. Moreau took the command, but failed to turn the tide of disaster. +The French are unanimous in ascribing their defeat to Joubert's delay at +Paris, and it is certain that the enemy did take Alexandria and Mantua +during that month's delay, and thus were enabled to add the besieging +forces to their main army, so that Joubert was about to retreat to the +Apennines, and to assume a defensive position, when Suvaroff forced him +to accept battle. But something should be allowed for the genius of the +Russian general, who was one of the great master-spirits of war, and who +seldom fought without being completely victorious. He had mostly been +employed against the Turks, whose military reputation was then at the +lowest, or the Poles, who were too divided and depressed to do +themselves and their cause justice, and therefore his character as a +soldier did not stand so high as that of more than one man who was his +inferior; but when, in his seventieth year, he took command in Italy, +there to encounter soldiers who had beaten the armies of almost all +other European nations, and who were animated by a fanatical spirit as +strong as that which fired his own bosom, he showed himself to be more +than equal to his position. He was not at all at fault, though brought +face to face with an entirely new state of things, but acted with his +accustomed vigor, marching from victory to victory, and reconquering +Italy more rapidly than it had been conquered three years before by +Bonaparte. When Bonaparte was destroying the Austrian armies in Italy, +Suvaroff watched his operations with deep interest, and said that he +must go to the West to meet the new genius, or that Bonaparte would +march to the East against Russia,--a prediction, it has been said, that +was fulfilled to the Frenchman's ruin. Whether, had he encountered +Bonaparte, he would have beaten him, is a question for the ingenious to +argue, but which never can be settled. But one thing is certain, and +that is, that Bonaparte never encountered an opponent of that determined +and energetic character which belonged to Suvaroff until his latter +days, and then his fall was rapid and his ruin utter. That Suvaroff +failed in Switzerland, to which country he had been transferred from +Italy, does not at all impeach his character for generalship. His +failure was due partly to the faults of others, and partly to +circumstances. Switzerland was to him what Russia became to Napoleon in +1812. Massena's victory at Zuerich, in which half of Korsakoff's army was +destroyed, rendered Russian failure in the campaign inevitable. All the +genius in the world, on that field of action, could not have done +anything that should have compensated for so terrible a calamity. Zuerich +saved France far more than did Marengo, and it is to be noted that it +was fought and won by the oldest of all the able men who figure in +history as Napoleon's Marshals. There were some of the Marshals who were +older than Massena, but they were not men of superior talents. Massena +was forty-one when he defeated Korsakoff, and he was a veteran soldier +when the Revolutionary wars began. + +The three commanders who did most to break down Napoleon's power, and to +bring about his overthrow, namely,--Benningsen, and Kutusoff, and +Bluecher,--were all old men; and the two last-named were very old men. It +would be absurd to call either of them a great commander, but it is +indisputable that they all had great parts in great wars. Benningsen can +scarcely be called a good general of the second class, and he is mostly +spoken of as a foolish braggart and boaster; but it is a fact that he +did some things at an important time which indicated his possession of +qualities that were highly desirable in a general who was bound to act +against Napoleon. Having, in 1807, obtained command of the Russian army +in Poland, he had what the French considered the consummate impudence to +take the offensive against the Emperor, and compelled him to mass his +forces, and to fight in the dead of winter, and a Polish winter to boot, +in which all that is not ice and snow is mud. True, Napoleon would have +made him pay dear for his boldness, had there not occurred one or two of +those accidents which often spoil the best-laid plans of war; but as it +was, the butcherly Battle of Eylau was fought, both parties, and each +with some show of reason, claiming the victory. Had the Russians acted +on the night after Eylau as the English acted on the night after +Flodden, and remained on the field, the world would have pronounced them +victorious, and the French Empire might have been shorn of its +proportions, and perhaps have fallen, seven years in advance of its +time; but they retreated, and thus the French made a fair claim to the +honors of the engagement, though virtually beaten in the fight. +Benningsen boasted tremendously, and as there were men enough to believe +what he said to be true, because they wished it to be true, and as he +had behaved well on some previous occasions, his reputation was vastly +raised, and his name was in all mouths and on all pens. If the reader +will take the trouble to look over a file of some Federal journal of +1807, he will find Benningsen as frequently and as warmly praised as Lee +or Stonewall Jackson is (or was) praised by English journals in +1863,--for the Federalists hated Napoleon as bitterly as the English +hate us, and read of Eylau with as much unction as the English of to-day +read of the American reverses at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, +while Austerlitz and Friedland pleased our Federalists about as well as +Donelson and Pulaski please the English of these times. A few months +after Eylau, Benningsen repulsed an attack which Napoleon imprudently +made on his intrenched camp at Heilsberg, which placed another feather +in his cap; nor did the smashing defeat he met with four days later, at +Friedland, lessen his reputation. The world is slow to think poorly of a +man who has done some clever things. We have seen how it was with the +late Stonewall Jackson, concerning whom most men spoke as if he had +never known defeat, though it is, or it should be, notorious, that he +was as often beaten as successful, that more than once he had to fly +with wind-like swiftness to escape personal destruction, and that on one +occasion he was saved from ruin only because of an exhibition on our +side of more than a usual amount of stupidity. But he had repeatedly +showed some of the best qualities of a dashing general, and all else was +overlooked in admiration of the skill and the audacity with which he +then had done his evil work. So it was with Benningsen, and with more +justice. The man who had bearded Napoleon but a few months after Jena, +and not much more than a year after Austerlitz, and who had fought an +even battle with him, in which fifty thousand men fell, must have had +some high moral qualities that entitled him to respect; and he continued +to be much talked of until greater and more fruitful campaigns had +obscured his deeds. The pluck which he had exhibited tended to keep +alive the spirit of European resistance to Napoleon, as it showed that +the conqueror had only to be firmly met to be made to fight hardly for +victory; and that was much, in view of the rapidity with which Napoleon +had beaten both Austria and Russia in 1805, and Prussia in 1806. +Benningsen completed his sixty-second year two days after the Battle of +Eylau. He was employed in 1812, '13, '14, but not in the first line, and +his name is not of much mention in the histories of those eventful +years. + +Prince Kutusoff, though a good soldier in the Turkish and Polish wars, +did not have a command against the French until he had completed his +sixtieth year, in 1805, when he led a Russian army to the aid of +Austria. He checked the advance of the French after Ulm, and was in +nominal command of the Allies at Austerlitz; but that battle was really +fought in accordance with the plans of General Weyrother, for which +Kutusoff had a profound contempt. If thorough beating could make good +soldiers of men, the vanquished at Austerlitz ought to have become the +superiors of the victors. In 1812, when the Russians had become weary of +that sound policy which was drawing Napoleon to destruction, Kutusoff +assumed command of their army, and fought the Battle of Borodino, which +was a defeat in name, but a victory in its consequences, to the invaded +party. His conduct while the French were at Moscow had the effect of +keeping them in that trap until their fate was sealed; and his action +while following them on their memorable retreat was a happy mixture of +audacity and prudence, and completed the Russian triumph. Sir Robert +Wilson, who was with the Russian general, who must have found him a bore +of the first magnitude, is very severe on Kutusoff's proceedings; but +all that he says makes it clear that the stout old Russian knew what he +was about, and that he was determined not to be made a mere tool of +England. If success is a test of merit, Kutusoff's action deserves the +very highest admiration, for the French army was annihilated. He died +just after he had brought the greatest of modern campaigns to a +triumphant close, at the age of sixty-eight, and before he could hear +the world's applause. The Germans, who were to owe so much to his +labors, rejoiced at his removal, because he was supposed to belong to +the peace party, who were opposed to further action, and who thought +that their country was under no obligation to fight for the deliverance +of other nations. They feared, too, that, if the war should go on, his +"Muscovite hoof" would be too strong for the Fatherland to bear it; and +they saw in his death a Providential incident, which encouraged them to +move against the French. It is altogether probable, that, if he had +lived but three months longer, events would have taken quite a different +turn. Baron von Mueffling tells us that Kutusoff "would not hear a word +of crossing the Elbe; and all Scharnhorst's endeavors to make him more +favorably disposed toward Prussia were fruitless. The whole peace party +in the Russian army joined with the Field-Marshal, and the Emperor was +placed in a difficult position. On my arrival at Altenberg, I found +Scharnhorst deeply dejected, for he could not shut his eyes to the +consequences of this resistance. Unexpectedly, the death of the +obstinate old Marshal occurred on the twenty-eighth of April, and the +Emperor was thus left free to pursue his own policy." The first general +who had successfully encountered Napoleon, it would have been the +strangest of history's strange facts, if the Emperor had owed the +continuance of his reign to Kutusoff's influence, and that was the end +to which the Russian's policy was directed; for, though he wished to +confine French power within proper limits, he had no wish to strengthen +either England or any of the German nations, deeming them likely to +become the enemies of Russia, while he might well suppose that the +French had had enough of Russian warfare to satisfy them for the rest of +the century. Had his astute policy been adopted and acted on, there +never would have been a Crimean War, and Sebastopol would not now be a +ruin; and Russia would have been greater than she is likely to be in our +time, or in the time of our children. + +Bluecher, who completed the work which Kutusoff began, and in a manner +which the Russian would hardly have approved, was an older man than the +hero of Borodino. When called to the command of the Prussian army, in +March, 1813, he was in his seventy-first year; and he was in his +seventy-third year when his energy enabled him, in the face of +difficulties that no other commander could have overcome, to bring up +more than fifty thousand men to the assistance of Wellington at +Waterloo, losing more than an eighth of their number. He had no military +talent, as the term is generally used. He could not tell whether a plan +was good or bad. He could not understand the maps. He was not a +disciplinarian, and he was ignorant of all the details of preparing an +army, of clothing and feeding and arming it. In all those things which +it is supposed a commander should know, and which such commanders as +Napoleon and Wellington did know well, he was so entirely ignorant, that +he might have been raised to the head of an army of United States +Volunteers amid universal applause. He was vicious to an extent that +surprised even the fastest men of that vicious time,--a gambler, a +drunkard, and a loose liver every way, indulging in vices that are held +by mild moralists to be excusable in youth who are employed in sowing +wild oats, but which are universally admitted to be disgusting in those +upon whom age has laid its withering hand. Yet this vicious and ignorant +old man had more to do with bringing about the fall of Napoleon than all +the generals and statesmen of the Allies combined. He had energy, which +is the most valuable of all qualities in a military leader; and he +hated Napoleon as heartily as he hated Satan, and a great deal more +heartily than he hated sin. Mr. Dickens tells us that the vigorous +tenacity of love is always much stronger than hate, and perhaps he is +right, so far as concerns private life; but in public life hate is by +far the stronger passion. But for Bluecher's hatred of Napoleon the +campaign of 1813 would have terminated in favor of the Emperor, that of +1814 never would have been undertaken, and that of 1815, if ever +attempted, would have had a far different issue. The old German +disregarded all orders and suggestions, and set all military and +political principles at defiance, in his ardor to accomplish the one +purpose which he had in view; and as that purpose was accomplished, he +has taken his place in history as one of the greatest of soldiers. +Napoleon himself is not more secure of immortality. He was greatly +favored by circumstances, but he is a wise man who knows how to profit +from circumstances. Take Bluecher out of the wars of 1813-15, and there +is little left in them on the side of the Allies that is calculated to +command admiration. Next to Bluecher stands his celebrated chief of the +staff, General Count Gneisenau, who was the brains of the Army of +Silesia, Bluecher being its head. When Bluecher was made an LL.D. at +Oxford, he facetiously remarked, "If I am a doctor, here is my +pill-maker," placing his hand on Gneisenau's head,--which was a frank +acknowledgment that few men would have been able to make. Gneisenau was +fifty-three when he became associated with Bluecher, and he was +fifty-five when he acted with him in 1815. In 1831 he was appointed to +an important command, being then seventy-one. The celebrated +Scharnhorst, Gneisenau's predecessor, and to whom the Prussians owed so +much, was in his fifty-seventh year when he died of the wounds he had +received at the Battle of Luetzen. + +There are some European generals whom it is difficult to class, as they +showed great capacity and won great victories as well in age as in +youth. Prince Eugene was one of these, and Frederick of Prussia was +another. Eugene showed high talent when very young, and won the first of +his grand victories over the Turks at thirty-four; but it was not so +splendid an affair as that of Belgrade, which he won at fifty-four. He +was forty-three when he defeated the French at Turin, under +circumstances and with incidents that took attention even from +Marlborough, whom he subsequently aided to gain the victories of +Oudenarde and Malplaquet, as he had previously aided him at Blenheim. At +seventy-one Eugene led an Austrian army against the French; and though +no battle was fought, his conduct showed that he had not lost his +capacity for command. Frederick began his military life when in his +thirtieth year, and was actively engaged until thirty-three, showing +striking ability on several occasions, though he began badly, according +to his own admission. But it was in the Seven Years' War that his fame +as a soldier was won, and that contest began when he was in his +forty-fifth year. He was close upon forty-six when he gained the Battles +of Rossbach and Leuthen. Whatever opinion others may entertain as to his +age, it is certain that he counted himself an old man in those days. +Writing to the Marquis d'Argens, a few days before he was forty-eight, +he said, "In my old age I have come down almost to be a theatrical +king"; and not two years later he wrote to the same friend, "I have +sacrificed my youth to my father, and my manhood to my fatherland. I +think, therefore, I have acquired the right to my old age." He reckoned +by trials and events, and he had gone through enough to have aged any +man. Those were the days when he carried poison on his person, in order +that, should he be completely beaten, or captured, he might not adorn +Maria Theresa's triumph, but end his life "after the high Roman +fashion." When the question of the Bavarian succession threatened to +lead to another war with Austria, Frederick's action, though he was in +his sixty-seventh year, showed, to use the homely language of the +English soldier at St. Helena when Napoleon arrived at that famous +watering place, that he had many campaigns in his belly yet. The +youthful Emperor, Joseph II., would have been no match for the old +soldier of Liegnitz and Zorndorf. + +Some of Frederick's best generals were old men. Schwerin, who was killed +in the terrible Battle of Prague, was then seventy-three, and a soldier +of great reputation. Sixteen years before he had won the Battle of +Mollwitz, one of the most decisive actions of that time, from which +Frederick himself is said to have run away in sheer fright. General +Ziethen, perhaps the best of all modern cavalry commanders, was in his +fifty-eighth year when the Seven Years' War began, and he served through +it with eminent distinction, and most usefully to his sovereign. He +could not have exhibited more dash, if he had been but eight-and-twenty, +instead of eight-and-fifty, or sixty-five, as he was when peace was +made. Field-Marshal Keith, an officer of great ability, was sixty when +he fell at Hochkirchen, after a brilliant career. + +American military history is favorable to old generals. Washington was +in his forty-fourth year when he assumed command of the Revolutionary +armies, and in his fiftieth when he took Yorktown. Wayne and Greene were +the only two of our young generals of the Revolution who showed decided +fitness for great commands. Had Hamilton served altogether in the field, +his would have been the highest military name of the war. The absurd +jealousies that deprived Schuyler of command, in 1777, alone prevented +him from standing next to Washington. He was close upon forty-four when, +he gave way to Gates, who was forty-nine. The military reputation of +both Schuyler and Hamilton has been most nobly maintained by their +living descendants. Washington was called to the command of the American +forces at sixty-six, when it was supposed that the French would attempt +to invade the United States, which shows that the Government of that day +had no prejudice against old generals. General Jackson's great Louisiana +campaign was conducted when he was nearly forty-eight, and he was, from +almost unintermitted illness, older in constitution than in years. Had +General Scott had means at his disposal, we should have been able to +point to a young American general equal to any who is mentioned in +history; but our poverty forbade him an opportunity in war worthy of his +genius. It "froze the genial current of his soul." As a veteran leader, +he was most brilliantly distinguished. He was in his sixty-first year +when he set out on his memorable Mexican campaign, which was an unbroken +series of grand operations and splendid victories, such as are seldom to +be found in the history of war. The weight of years had no effect on +that magnificent mind. Of him, as it was of Carnot, it can be said that +he organized victory, and made it permanent. His deeds were all the +greater because of the feeble support he received from his Government. +Like Wellington, in some of his campaigns, he had to find within himself +the resources which were denied him by bad ministers. General Taylor was +in his sixty-second year when the Mexican War began, and in less than a +year he won the Battles of Palo Alto, Resaca de la Palma, Monterey, and +Buena Vista. He, too, was badly supported. The Secession War has been +conducted by elderly or middle-aged men. General Lee, whom the world +holds to have displayed the most ability in it, is about fifty-six. +General Rosecrans is forty-four, and General Grant forty-two. Stonewall +Jackson died at thirty-seven. General Banks is forty-eight, General +Hooker forty-five, General Beauregard forty-six, General Bragg +forty-nine, General Burnside forty, General Gillmore thirty-nine, +General Franklin forty-one, General Magruder fifty-three, General Meade +forty-eight, General Schuyler Hamilton forty-two, General Charles S. +Hamilton forty, and General Foster forty. General Lander, a man of +great promise, died in his fortieth year. General Kearney was killed at +forty-seven, and General Stevens at forty-five. General Sickles was in +his forty-first year when he was wounded at Gettysburg, and General Reno +was thirty-seven when he died so bravely at South Mountain. General +Pemberton lost Vicksburg at forty-five. General T.W. Sherman is +forty-six, and General W. T. Sherman forty-four. General McClellan was +in his thirty-fifth year when he assumed command at Washington in 1861. +General Lyon had not completed the first month of his forty-third year +when he fell at Wilson's Creek. General McDowell was in his forty-third +year when he failed at Bull Run, in consequence of the coming up of +General Joe Johnston, who was fifty-one. General Keyes is fifty-three, +General Kelley fifty-seven, General King forty, and General Pope +forty-one. General A.S. Johnston was fifty-nine when he was killed at +Shiloh. General Halleck is forty-eight. General Longstreet is forty. The +best of the Southern cavalry-leaders was General Ashby, who was killed +at thirty-eight. General Stuart is twenty-nine. On our side, General +Stanley is thirty, General Pleasonton forty, and General Averell about +thirty. General Phelps is fifty-one, General Polk fifty-eight, General +S. Cooper sixty-eight, General J. Cooper fifty-four, and General Blunt +thirty-eight. The list might be much extended, but very few young men +would be found in it,--or very few old men, either. The best of our +leaders are men who have either passed beyond middle life, or who may be +said to be in the enjoyment of that stage of existence. It is so, too, +with the Rebels. If the war does not afford many facts in support of the +position that old generals are very useful, neither does it afford many +to be quoted by those who hold that the history of heroism is the +history of youth. + + * * * * * + +THE WRECK OF RIVERMOUTH.[E] + +[1657.] + + + Rivermouth Rocks are fair to see, + By dawn or sunset shone across, + When the ebb of the sea has left them free + To dry their fringes of gold-green moss: + For there the river comes winding down + From salt sea-meadows and uplands brown, + And waves on the outer rocks afoam + Shout to its waters, "Welcome home!" + + And fair are the sunny isles in view + East of the grisly Head of the Boar, + And Agamenticus lifts its blue + Disk of a cloud the woodlands o'er; + And southerly, when the tide is down, + 'Twixt white sea-waves and sand-hills brown, + The beach-birds dance and the gray gulls wheel + Over a floor of burnished steel. + + Once, in the old Colonial days, + Two hundred years ago and more, + A boat sailed down through the winding ways + Of Hampton river to that low shore, + Full of a goodly company + Sailing out on the summer sea, + Veering to catch the land-breeze light, + With the Boar to left and the Rocks to right. + + In Hampton meadows, where mowers laid + Their scythes to the swaths of salted grass, + "Ah, well-a-day! our hay must be made!" + A young man sighed, who saw them pass. + Loud laughed his fellows to see him stand + Whetting his scythe with a listless hand, + Hearing a voice in a far-off song, + Watching a white hand beckoning long. + + "Fie on the witch!" cried a merry girl, + As they rounded the point where Goody Cole + Sat by her door with her wheel atwirl, + A bent and blear-eyed poor old soul. + "Oho!" she muttered, "ye're brave to-day! + But I hear the little waves laugh and say, + 'The broth will be cold that waits at home; + For it's one to go, but another to come!'" + + "She's curst," said the skipper; "speak her fair: + I'm scary always to see her shake + Her wicked head, with its wild gray hair, + And nose like a hawk, and eyes like a snake." + But merrily still, with laugh and shout, + From Hampton river the boat sailed out, + Till the huts and the flakes on Star seemed nigh, + And they lost the scent of the pines of Rye. + + They dropped their lines in the lazy tide, + Drawing up haddock and mottled cod; + They saw not the Shadow that walked beside, + They heard not the feet with silence shod. + But thicker and thicker a hot mist grew, + Shot by the lightnings through and through; + And muffled growls, like the growl of a beast, + Ran along the sky from west to east. + + Then the skipper looked from the darkening sea + Up to the dimmed and wading sun, + But he spake like a brave man cheerily, + "Yet there is time for our homeward run." + Veering and tacking, they backward wore; + And just as a breath from the woods ashore + Blew out to whisper of danger past, + The wrath of the storm came down at last! + + The skipper hauled at the heavy sail: + "God be our help!" he only cried, + As the roaring gale, like the stroke of a flail, + Smote the boat on its starboard side. + The Shoalsmen looked, but saw alone + Dark films of rain-cloud slantwise blown, + Wild rocks lit up by the lightning's glare, + The strife and torment of sea and air. + + Goody Cole looked out from her door: + The Isles of Shoals were drowned and gone, + Scarcely she saw the Head of the Boar + Toss the foam from tusks of stone. + She clasped her hands with a grip of pain, + The tear on her cheek was not of rain: + "They are lost," she muttered, "boat and crew! + Lord, forgive me! my words were true!" + + Suddenly seaward swept the squall; + The low sun smote through cloudy rack; + The Shoals stood clear in the light, and all + The trend of the coast lay hard and black. + But far and wide as eye could reach, + No life was seen upon wave or beach; + The boat that went out at morning never + Sailed back again into Hampton river. + + O mower, lean on thy bended snath, + Look from the meadows green and low: + The wind of the sea is a waft of death, + The waves are singing a song of woe! + By silent river, by moaning sea, + Long and vain shall thy watching be: + Never again shall the sweet voice call, + Never the white hand rise and fall! + + O Rivermouth Rocks, how sad a sight + Ye saw in the light of breaking day! + Dead faces looking up cold and white + From sand and sea-weed where they lay! + The mad old witch-wife wailed and wept, + And cursed the tide as it backward crept: + "Crawl back, crawl back, blue water-snake! + Leave your dead for the hearts that break!" + + Solemn it was in that old day + In Hampton town and its log-built church, + Where side by side the coffins lay + And the mourners stood in aisle and porch. + In the singing-seats young eyes were dim, + The voices faltered that raised the hymn, + And Father Dalton, grave and stern, + Sobbed through his prayer and wept in turn. + + But his ancient colleague did not pray, + Because of his sin at fourscore years: + He stood apart, with the iron-gray + Of his strong brows knitted to hide his tears. + And a wretched woman, holding her breath + In the awful presence of sin and death, + Cowered and shrank, while her neighbors thronged + To look on the dead her shame had wronged. + + Apart with them, like them forbid, + Old Goody Cole looked drearily round, + As, two by two, with their faces hid, + The mourners walked to the burying-ground. + She let the staff from her clasped hands fall: + "Lord, forgive us! we're sinners all!" + And the voice of the old man answered her: + "Amen!" said Father Bachiler. + + So, as I sat upon Appledore + In the calm of a closing summer day, + And the broken lines of Hampton shore + In purple mist of cloudland lay, + The Rivermouth Rocks their story told; + And waves aglow with sunset gold, + Rising and breaking in steady chime, + Beat the rhythm and kept the time. + + And the sunset paled, and warmed once more + With a softer, tenderer after-glow; + In the east was moon-rise, with boats off-shore + And sails in the distance drifting slow. + The beacon glimmered from Portsmouth bar, + The White Isle kindled its great red star; + And life and death in my old-time lay + Mingled in peace like the night and day! + + * * * * * + +THE SCHOOLMASTER'S STORY. + + +I was in the shop of my friend on the day of the great snow-storm, when +the plan was proposed which he mentions in the beginning of his story, +called "Pink and Blue," printed in this magazine in the month of May, +1861. Fears were entertained that some of the women might object. And +they did. My sister Fanny, Mrs. Maylie, said it was like being set in a +frame. Farmer Hill's wife hoped we shouldn't tell _exactly_ how much we +used to think of them, for "praise to the face was open disgrace." But +my wife, Mrs. Browne, thought the stories should be made as good as +possible, for praise could not hurt them so long as they knew +themselves, just what they were. It was suggested by some one, that, if +the married men told how they won their wives, there were a couple of +old bachelors belonging to our set who ought to tell how they came to be +without, which seemed very fair. + +When the lot fell upon me, my wife laughed, and declared that our +affairs ran so crooked, she didn't believe I could tell a straight +story. But Fanny said _that_ would make it seem more like a book; the +puzzle to her was what I should call myself, seeing that I was neither +one thing nor another. It was finally agreed, however, that, as I had +taught school one winter, and that an important one, I should call mine +"The Schoolmaster's Story." The truth is, my own calling would not look +well at the head of an article, for I am by profession a loafer. For +this vocation, which was my own deliberate choice, I was well prepared, +having graduated, with a moderate degree of honor, from Cambridge +College. I know of no profession requiring for its complete enjoyment a +more thorough and varied preparation. + +My sister Fanny and I were two poor orphans, brought up, fed, clothed, +and loved by our Aunt Huldah. If it had not been for her, I don't know +what we should have done. Our Aunt Huldah was a widow and a _manager_. +Nearly every person has among his acquaintances one individual, usually +a female, who is called _a good manager_. She knows what is to be done, +and who should do it,--picks out wives for the young men, husbands for +the maidens, and attends herself to the matter of bringing them +together. Sometimes these individuals become tyrannical, standing with +vials of wrath all ready to be poured forth upon the heads of the +unsubmissive, and it must be owned that our aunt was in this not wholly +unlike the rest; but then she was so good-natured, so reasonable, that, +although the aforesaid vials were often known to be well filled, yet her +kindness and good sense always kept the corks in. + +I think she took us partly from love, and partly to show how children +ought to be managed. We got on admirably together. I was by no means a +fiery youth. I was amiable, fond of books, had soft, light hair, fair +complexion, a quiet, persevering way, and never _ran_ after the girls. +Taking all these things into consideration, my aunt determined that I +should go to college, and become an honor to the family. + +Fanny, though not a bit like me, got along equally as well with the +reigning power. She was a smart, black-eyed maiden, full of life, and +had herself some of the managing blood in her veins. In fact, so bright +and so sly was my dear little sister, that she often succeeded in +managing the Grand Panjandra herself. I speak thus particularly of +Fanny, because, if it had not been for her, I might now have no story to +tell. I never, from childhood to manhood, worked myself into any tight +place, that her little scheming brain did not invent some way of getting +me out. + +When my collegiate labors were nearly finished, our aunt was taken +_poor_. She was subject to these attacks, under which she always +resorted to the heroic treatment, retrenching and economizing with the +greatest zeal. This attack of hers was the primary cause of my taking a +winter school in the little village of Norway, about twenty miles from +home. I was perfectly willing to keep school; it seemed the easiest +thing in the world. + +The night before leaving home, my aunt summoned me to her chamber. She +sat erect in her straight-backed chair, a tall, dark woman, in a +bombazine gown, with white muslin frill and turban. Her eyes were black +and deep. Her nose was rather above than below the usual height, and +eminently fitted to bear its spectacles. She was evidently a person who +thought before she acted, but who was sure to act after she had thought. + +Good advice was what she wanted to give me. The world was a snare. The +Devil was always on the lookout, and everywhere in a minute. She read +considerable portions from the "Boston Recorder," after which she +dropped some hints about the marriage-state,--said she had noticed, with +pleasure, my prudence in not hurrying these matters, adding, that it was +much safer to choose a wife from among our own neighbors and friends +than to run the risk of marrying a stranger. No names were mentioned, +but I knew she was thinking of Alice, the postmaster's daughter, a fair +young maiden, soft in speech, quiet in manners, and constant at +meeting,--a maiden, in fact, of whom I had long stood in dread. + +My school commenced the week after Thanksgiving. I had fancied myself +appearing among my scholars like a king surrounded by his subjects. But +these lofty notions soon melted down beneath the searching glances of +forty pairs of eyes. A sense of my incompetency came over me, and I felt +like saying,--"Young people, little children, what can I do for you, and +how shall I show you any good?" + +The first thing I did was to take the names. Ah! in what school-record +of modern times could be found such a catalogue of the Christian +virtues? Think of mending pens for Faith and Prudence!--of teaching +arithmetic to Love, Hope, and Charity!--of imparting general knowledge +to Experience! There were three of this last name, and it was only after +a long _experience_ of my own that I learned that the first was called +"Pelly," the second, "Exy," and the third, "Sperrence." Penelope was +rendered "Pep." + +It gave me peculiar sensations to find among my scholars so many large +girls. I have said that I had never been in the habit of running after +the girls, and I never had. I was one of those quiet young men who read +poetry, buy pictures and statues, and play the flute on still, moonlight +evenings. Not that I was indifferent to female charms, or let beauty +pass by unnoticed. In fact, I was keenly alive to the beautiful in all +its forms. I had seen, in the course of my life, a great many handsome +faces, which, in my quiet way, I had studied, when nobody was minding, +comparing beauties, or imagining alterations for the better, just as if +I had been studying a picture or a statue, and with no more fear of +being myself affected. Passing strange it was, that, exposed as I had +been, I should have remained so long unscathed. My time had not yet +come. But now dangers thickened around me, and I felt that Aunt Huldah +knew the world, when she said it was a _snare_. For, in glancing about +the room carelessly, while taking the names, I could not but perceive +that I was beset by perils on every side,--perils from which there +seemed no possible escape: for no sooner did I turn resolutely away from +a dove-like face in one corner than my eye was caught by a bright eye or +a sweet smile in another; and the admiring glance which with reluctance +I withdrew from a graceful figure was arrested by a well-shaped head or +a rosy cheek. One was almost a beauty, with her light curls and delicate +pink cheeks; another was quite such: her smile was bewitching, and her +eyes were roguish. But I soon found that there were other things to be +attended to besides picking out the prettiest flowers in my winter +bouquet. + +I have intimated that my ideas regarding school-keeping were exceedingly +vague. Nevertheless, I had in the course of my studies picked out and +put together a system for the instruction and management of youth. This +system I now proceeded to apply. + +It is curious, as we trace back the current of our lives, to discover +the multitude of whims, plans, and mighty resolves which lie wrecked +upon the shore. I cannot help smiling, as, in looking back upon my own +life-stream, I discern the remains of my precious system lying high and +dry among the rocks of that winter's experience. Yet I tried all ways to +make it go. I was like a boy with a new boat, who increases or lessens +his ballast, now tries her with mainsail, foresail, topsail, jib, flying +jib, and jibber jib, and now with bare poles,--_anything_ to make her +float. Each night I took my poor system home for repairs, and each +morning, full of hope, tried to launch it anew in my school-room. I have +always felt that I wronged those scholars, that I learned more than I +taught. I have no doubt of it. + +I, of course, as was then the custom, boarded round; and this method of +obtaining nourishment, though savoring somewhat of the Arab or the +common beggar, I, on the whole, enjoyed. It gave me a much stronger +interest in the children, seeing them thus in their own homes, where was +so much love, so much solicitude for even the dullest of them. Besides +this, I came in contact with all sorts of curious people, found new +faces to study. + +Another custom of the place I also fell in with, which was, to keep an +evening-school. All the schoolmasters had kept one from time immemorial. +This evening-school I really enjoyed. Plenty of charming girls, too big +or too busy to waste their daylight upon books, came from great +distances, bringing their brothers and their beaux, all intent upon +having a good time and getting on in their ciphering. Teaching them was +a pleasure, for they felt the need of knowledge. I feel bound to say, +however, that imparting knowledge was not my only pleasure. In intervals +of leisure, before or after school, or at recess, I found much that was +worthy attention. Seated at my desk, wrapped in my dignity, I watched, +with many a sidelong glance, the progress of rustic love-making. I only +mean by this, that from their general movements I constructed such +love-stories as seemed to me probable. I learned who went with whom, who +wished they could go with whom, who could and who couldn't, who did and +who didn't. + +Did I not go into the business on my own account? That is by no means an +improper question. In fact, I might have expected it. Some have, no +doubt, considered it a settled thing that I fell in love with the +bright-eyed beauty, before mentioned, or with the pink-cheeked; but I +beg that such fancies may be brushed away, that all may be in readiness +to receive the true queen, who in due time will come to take possession +of her kingdom. For I will be honest with you, and not, like most +story-tellers, try to pull wool over your eyes all the way through. I +will say openly, that I did first see the girl who was afterwards my +wife in that cold little village of Norway. Cold it seems not to me now, +in the light of so many warm, sunshiny memories! + +When my evening-school had been in operation a few weeks, I noticed, one +evening, at the end of the back-form on the girls' side a new face. The +owner of this new face was very quietly studying her book, a thin, +blue-covered book, Temple's Arithmetic. She was dressed in black,--not +fine, glossy black, but black that was gray, rusty, and well worn. A +very small silk handkerchief of the same color was drawn over her +shoulders and pinned where its two corners met her gown in front, making +a sort of triangle of whiteness,--some would say, "revealing a neck and +throat pure and white as a lily-leaf"; and they would say no more than +the truth, only I never like to put things in that way. Just so white +was her face. Her hair was black, soft, but not what the other girls +would have called smooth, or "slick." It was pulled away behind her +ears, and fixed up rather queerly in a great bunch behind, as if the +only aim were to get it out of the way. The upper part of her face was +the most striking,--the black eyebrows upon such a white, straight +forehead. I am rather particular in describing this new face, +because--well, perhaps because I remember it so distinctly. While I was +studying her as, I might perhaps say, a work of Art, she suddenly raised +her eyes, as people always do when they are watched. I looked away in a +hurry, though her eyes were just what I wanted to see more of, for they +were splendid eyes. "Splendid" is not the right word, though. Deep, +thoughtful, sorrowful, are the words which are floating about in my +mind. I wondered how she would look when animated, and watched, at +recess, for some of the others to talk to her. + +But she seemed one by herself. While other girls chatted with their +beaux, or whispered wonderful secrets, she remained sitting alone, now +looking at her book, and now glancing around in a pitiful sort of way, +that made me feel like going to speak to her. In fact, as her teacher, I +was bound to do this, and, true to the promptings of duty, I walked +slowly down the alley. As I paused by her side, she glanced up in my +face. I never forgot that look. I might say that I never recovered from +the effects of it. I asked about her studies, and very willingly +explained a sum over which she had stumbled. + +After this, she came every evening, and it usually happened that it was +most convenient for me to attend to her at recess. Helping her in her +sums was a pleasant thing to do, but in nothing was I more interested +than in the writing-exercise. I felt that I was indeed fortunate to be +in duty bound to follow the movement of her charming little hand across +the page, to teach her pretty fingers how to hold the pen; but then, if +pleasure and duty _would_ unite, how could I help it? Then I had a way, +all my own, of throwing looks sidelong at her face, while thus engaged; +but sometimes my eyes would get so entangled in her long lashes, that I +could hardly turn them away before she looked up. + +Yet I never thought then of being in love with the girl. Marriage was a +subject upon which I had never seriously reflected. Much as I liked to +watch, to criticize pretty faces, I never had thought of taking one for +my own. I was like a good boy in a flower-garden, who looks about him +with delight, admiring each beautiful blossom, but plucking none. Not +that I meant to live a bachelor; for, whenever I looked forward,--an +indefinite number of years,--I invariably saw myself sitting by my own +fireside, with a gentle-faced woman making pinafores near me, a cradle +close by, and one or two chaps reading stories, or playing checkers with +beans and buttons. But this gentle maker of pinafores had never yet +assumed a tangible shape. She had only floated before me, in my lonely +moments, enveloped in mist, and far too indistinct for revealing the +color of the eyes and hair. So I could not be in love with Rachel,--her +name was Rachel Lowe,--only a sort of magnetism, as it would be called +in these days, drew my eyes constantly that way. I soon found, however, +that it was impossible to watch her face with that indifference with +which, as I have before stated, it had been my custom to regard female +beauty. Its peculiar expression puzzled me, and I kept trying to study +it out. Interesting, but dangerous study! The difficulties of +school-keeping are by no means fully appreciated. + +One evening, after school, the young folks stopped to slide down-hill. +Rachel and a few little girls stood awhile, watching the sleds go by; +but it was cold standing still, and they soon moved homewards. I walked +along by the side of Rachel: this was the first time I ever went home +with her. I found she was living in the family of Squire Brewster, a +family in which I had not yet boarded. After this I frequently walked +home with her. Sometimes I would determine not to do so again, for I was +afraid I was getting--I didn't know where, but where I had never been +before; but when evening came, and I saw how handsome she looked, and +how all alone, I couldn't help it. It was not often I could get her to +talk much. She was bashful, different from any girl I had ever met. The +only friend she seemed to have was the young wife of the Doctor, Mrs. +James. The Doctor, she said, had attended her through a fever, and asked +no pay. His wife was kind, and lent her books to read. + +I was boarding at that time with a poor widow-woman, and one night I +asked her about Rachel. She warmed up immediately, said Rachel Lowe was +a good girl and ought to be "sot by," and not slighted on her parents' +account. + +"And who were her parents?" I asked. + +"Why, when her father was a poor boy, the Squire thought he would take +him and bring him up to learnin'; but when he came to be a man grown +almost, he ran away to sea; and long afterwards we heard of his marryin' +some outlandish girl, half English, half French,--but Rachel's no worse +for that. After his wife died,--and, as far as I can find out, the way +he carried on was what killed her,--he started to bring Rachel here; but +he died on the passage, and she came with only a letter. I suppose he +thought the ones that had been kind to him would be kind to her; but, +you see, the Squire is a-livin' with his second wife, and she isn't the +woman the first Miss Brewster was. In time folks will come round, but +now they sort of look down upon her; for, you see, everybody knows who +her father was, and how he didn't do any credit to his bringin' up, and +nobody knows who her mother was, only that she was a furrener, which was +so much agin her. But you are goin' right from here to the Squire's; and +mebby, if you make of her, and let folks see that you set store by her, +they'll begin to open their eyes." + +I thought I felt just like kissing the poor widow; anyway, I knew I felt +like kissing somebody. To be sure, the talk was all about Rachel, and it +might--But no matter; what difference does it make now who it was I +wanted to kiss forty or fifty years ago? + +The next day I went to board at the Squire's. It was dark when I reached +the house; the candles were just being lighted. The Squire, a kindly old +man, met me in the porch and took my bundle. I followed him into the +kitchen. There something more than common seemed to be going on, for +chairs were being arranged in rows, and Mrs. Brewster was putting out of +sight every article suggestive of work. There was to be an evening +meeting. I watched the people as they came in, still and solemn. Not +many of the women wore bonnets. All who lived within a moderate distance +just stepped in with a little homespun blanket over the head, or a +patchwork cradle-quilt. I noticed Rachel when she entered and took her +seat upon the settle. It will only take a minute to tell what a settle +is, or, rather, was. If you should take a low wooden bench and add to it +a high back and ends, you would make a settle. It usually stood near the +fireplace, and was a most luxurious seat,--its high back protecting you +from cold draughts and keeping in the heat of the fire. It was now +shoved back against the wall. This neighborhood-gathering was called a +conference-meeting, being carried on by the brethren. I liked to hear +them speak, because they were so much in earnest. The exercises closed +with singing "Old Hundred." I joined at first, but soon there fell upon +my ear such sweet strains from the other side of the room that I was +glad to stop and listen. They came from the settle. It was Rachel, +singing counter. Only those who have heard it know what counter is, and +how particularly beautiful it is in "Old Hundred." I think it has +already been intimated that I was somewhat poetical. It will not, +therefore, be considered strange, that, when I heard those clear tones, +rising high above the harsher ones around, above the grating bass of the +brethren and the cracked voices of elderly females, I thought of summer +days in the woods, when I had listened to the notes of the robin amid a +chorus of locusts and grasshoppers. + +Squire Brewster treated Rachel kindly; but women make the home, and Mrs. +Brewster was a hard woman. The neighbors said she was close, and would +have more of a cat than her skin. Miss Sarah had been out of town to +school, and was proud. Sam, the grown-up son, was coarse, but just as +proud as his sister. I disliked the way he looked at Rachel. Her +position in the family I soon understood. She was there to take the +drudgery from Mrs. Brewster, to be ordered about by Miss Sarah, +tormented by the younger children, and teased, if not insulted, by Sam. +What puzzled me was her manner towards them. She spoke but seldom, and, +it seemed to me, had a way of looking _down_ upon these people, who were +so bent upon making her look _up_ to them. The cross looks and words +seemed not to hit her. Her deep, dark eyes appeared as if they were +looking away beyond the scenes around her. I was very glad to see, +however, that she could notice Sam enough to avoid him; for to that +young man I had taken a dislike, and not, as it turned, without reason. + +One evening, during my second week at the Brewsters', I sat long at my +chamber-window, watching the fading twilight, the growing moonlight, and +the steady snow-light. Presently I saw Rachel come out to take in the +clothes. It seemed just right that she should appear then, for in her +face were all three,--the shadowy twilight, the soft moonlight, and the +white snow-light. + +She wore a little shawl, crossed in front, and tied behind at the waist, +and over her head a bright-colored blanket, just pinned under the chin. +This exposed her face, and while I watched it, as it showed front-view +or profile, not knowing which I liked best, admiring, meanwhile, the +grace with which she reached up, where the line was high, sometimes +springing from the ground, I saw Sam approaching, very slowly and +softly, from behind. When quite near, watching his opportunity, he +seized her by the waist. He was going to kiss her. I started up, as if +to do something, but there was nothing to be done. With a quick motion +she slid from his grasp, stepped back, and looked him in the face. Not a +word fell from her lips, only her silence spoke. "I despise you! There +is nothing in you that words can reach!" was the speech which I felt in +my heart she was making, though her lips never moved. Other things, too, +I felt in my heart,--rather perplexing, agitating, but still pleasing +sensations, which I did not exactly feel like analyzing. One of the +children came out to take hold one side of the basket, and Sam walked +away. + +I went down soon after and look my favorite seat upon the settle, which +was then in its own place by the fire. The children were in bed, the +older ones had gone to singing-school, and Mrs. Brewster was at an +evening-meeting. The Squire was at home with his rheumatism. + +I liked a nice chat with the Squire. He was a great reader, and +delighted to draw me into long talks, political or theological. My +remarks on this particular evening would have been more brilliant, had +not Rachel been sprinkling and folding clothes at the back of the room. +The Squire, in his roundabout, came exactly between us, so that, in +looking up to answer his questions, I could not help seeing a white arm +with the sleeve rolled above the elbow, could not help watching the +drops of water, as she shook them from her fingers. I wondered how it +was, that, while working so hard, her hands should be so white. My +sister Fanny told me, long afterwards, that some girls always have white +hands, no matter how hard they work. + +This question interested me more than the political ones raised by the +Squire, and I became aware that my answers were getting wild, by his +eying me over his spectacles. Rachel finished the clothes, and seated +herself, with her knitting-work, at the opposite corner of the +fireplace. I changed to the other end of the settle: sitting long in one +position is tiresome. She was knitting a gray woollen stocking. I think +she must have been "setting the heel," for she kept counting the +stitches. I had often noticed Fanny doing the same thing, at this +turning-point in the progress of a stocking; but then it never took her +half as long. After knitting so many feet of leg, though, any change +must have been pleasant. + +A mug of cider stood near one andiron; leaning against the other was a +flat stone,--the Squire's "Simon." It would soon be needed, for he was +already nodding,--nodding and brightening up,--nodding and brightening +up. While he slept, the room was still, unless the fire snapped, or a +brand fell down. I said within myself, "This is a pleasant time! It is +good to be here!" That cozy settle, that glowing fire, that good old +man, that pure-hearted girl,--how distinctly do they now rise before me! +It seems such a little, little while ago! For I feel young. I like to be +with young folks; I like what they like. Yet deep lines are set in my +forehead, the veins stand out upon my hands, and my shadow is the shadow +of a stooping old man; and when, from frequent weariness, I rest my head +on my hand, the fingers clasp only smoothness, or, at best, but a few +scattered locks,--_wisps_, I might as well say. If ever I took pride in +anything, it was in my fine head of hair. Well, what matters it? Since +_heart_ of youth is left me, I'll never mind the _head_. + +Many writers speak well of age, and it certainly is not without its +advantages, meeting everywhere, as it does, with respect and indulgence. +Neither is it, so the books say, without its own peculiar beauty. An old +man leaning upon his staff, with white locks streaming in the wind, they +call a picturesque object. All this may be; still, I have tried both, +and must say that my own leaning is towards youth. + +Remembering the desire of the poor widow, that Rachel should be "made +of," I continued to walk home with her from evening-school, and to pay +her many little attentions, even after I had left the Squire's. The +widow was right in saying, that, when folks saw that I "set store" by +her, they would open their eyes. They did,--in wonder that "the +schoolmaster should be so attentive to Rachel Lowe!" We were +"town-talk." I often, in the school-house entry, overheard the scholars +joking about us; and once I saw them slyly writing our names together on +the bricks of the fireplace. Everybody was on the look-out for what +might happen. + +One evening, in school-time, I stood a long while leaning over her desk, +working out for her a difficult sum. On observing me change my position, +to rest myself, she, very naturally, and almost unconsciously, moved for +me to sit down, and I took a seat beside her, going on, all the while, +with my ciphering. Happening to look up suddenly, I saw that half the +school were watching us. I kept my seat with calmness, though I knew I +turned red. I glanced at Rachel, and really pitied her, she looked so +distressed, so conscious. That night she hurried home before I had put +away my books, and for several evenings did not appear. + +But if she could do without me, I could not do without her. I missed her +face there at the end of the back-seat. I missed the walk home with her: +I had grown to depend upon it. She was just getting willing to talk, and +in what she said and the way she said it, in the tone of her voice and +in her whole manner, there was something to me extremely bewitching. She +had been strangely brought up, was familiar with books, but, having +received no regular education, fancied herself ignorant, and different +from everybody. + +Finding that she still kept away from the school, I resolved one night +to call at the Squire's. It was some time after dark when I reached +there; and as I stood in the porch, brushing the snow from my boots, I +became aware of loud talking in the kitchen. Poor Rachel! both Mrs. +Brewster and Sarah were upon her, laughing and sneering about her +"setting her cap" for the schoolmaster, and accusing her of trying to +get him to come home with her, of moving for him to sit down by her +side! Once I heard Rachel's voice,--"Oh, please don't talk so! I don't +do as you say. It is dreadful for you to talk so!" I judged it better to +defer my call, and walked slowly along the road. It was not very cold, +and I sat down upon the stone wall. I sat down to think. Presently +Rachel herself hurried by, carrying a pitcher. She was bound on some +errand up the road. I called out,-- + +"Rachel, stop!" + +She turned, in affright, and, upon seeing me, hurried the more. But I +overtook her, and placed her arm within mine in a moment, saying,-- + +"Rachel, you are not afraid of me, I hope!" + +"Oh, no, Sir! no, indeed!" she exclaimed. + +"And yet you run away from me." + +She made no answer. + +"Rachel," I said, at last, "I wish you would talk to me freely. I wish +you would tell what troubles you." + +She hesitated a moment; and when, at last, she spoke, her answer rather +surprised me. + +"I ought not to be so weak, I know," she replied; "but it is so hard to +stand all alone, to live my life just right, that sometimes I get +discouraged." + +I had expected complaints of ill treatment, but found her blaming no one +but herself. + +"And who said you must stand alone?" I asked. + +"That was one of the things my mother used to say." + +"And what other things did she say?" + +"Oh, Mr. Browne," she replied, "I wish I could tell you about my mother! +But I can't talk; I am too ignorant; I don't know how to say it. When +she was alive," she continued, speaking very slowly, "I never knew how +good she was; but now her words keep coming back to me. Sometimes I +think she whispers them,--for she is an angel, and you know the hymn +says, + + 'There are angels hovering round.' + +When we sing, + + 'Ye holy throng of angels bright,' + +I always sing to her, for I know she is listening." + +Here she stopped suddenly, as if frightened that she had said so much. +The house to which she was going was now close by. I waited for her to +come out, and walked back with her towards home. After proceeding a +little way in silence, I said, abruptly,-- + +"Rachel, do they treat you well at the house yonder?" + +She seemed reluctant to answer, but said, at last,-- + +"Not very well." + +"Then, why stay? Why not find some other home?" + +"I don't think it is time yet," she replied. + +"I don't understand you. I wish--Rachel, can't you make a friend of me, +since you have no other?" + +"I will tell you as well as I can," she replied, "what my mother used to +say. She said we must act rightly." + +"That is true," I replied; "and what else did she say?" + +"She said, that _that_ would only be the outside life, but the inside +life must be right too, must be pure and strong, and that the way to +make it pure and strong was to learn to _bear_." + +"Still," I urged, "I wish you would find a better home. You cannot learn +to bear any more patiently than you do." + +She shook her head. + +"That shows that you don't know," she answered. "It seems to me right to +remain. Why, you know they can't hurt me any. Suppose they scold me +when I am not to blame, and my temper rises,--for I am very +quick-tempered"-- + +"Oh, no, Rachel!" + +"Oh, yes, Mr. Browne! Suppose my temper rises, and I put it down, and +keep myself pleasant, do I not do myself good? And thinking about it in +this way, is not their unkindness a benefit to me,--to the real me,--to +the soul of Rachel Lowe?" + +I hardly knew what to say. Somehow, she seemed away up above me, while I +found that I had, in common with the Brewsters, only in a different way, +taken for granted my own superiority. + +"All this may be true," I remarked, after a pause, "but it is not the +common way of viewing things." + +"Perhaps not," she answered. "My mother was not like other people. My +father was a strong man, but he looked _up_ to her, and he loved her; +but he killed her at last,--with his conduct, he killed her. But when +she was dead, he grew crazy with grief, he loved her so. He talked about +her always,--talked in an absent, dreamy way about her goodness, her +beauty, her white hands, her long hair. Sometimes he would seem to be +whispering with her, and would say, softly,--'Oh, yes! I'll take care of +Rachel! pretty Rachel! your Rachel!'" + +I longed to have her go on; but we had now reached the bars, and she was +not willing to walk farther. + +"I have been talking a great deal about myself," she said; "but you know +you kept asking me questions." + +"Yes, Rachel, I know I kept asking you questions. Do you care? I may +wish to ask you others." + +"Oh, no," she replied; "but I could not answer many questions. I have +only a few thoughts, and know very little." + +I watched her into the house, and then walked slowly homewards, +thinking, all the way, of this strange young girl, striving thus to +stand alone, working out her own salvation. I passed a pleasant night, +half sleeping, half waking, having always before my eyes that white +face, earnest and beautiful, as it looked up to me in the winter +starlight, and in my ears her words, "Is not their unkindness a benefit +to me,--to the real me,--to the soul of Rachel Lowe?" + +But spring came; my school drew to a close; and I began to think of +home, Aunt Huldah, and Fanny. I wished that my sister could see Rachel. +I knew she would appreciate her, for there was depth in Fanny, with all +her liveliness. Sometimes I imagined, just imagined, myself married to +Rachel. But then there was Aunt Huldah,--what would she say to a +foreigner? And I was dependent upon Aunt Huldah. Besides, how did I know +that Rachel would have me? Was I equal to her? How worthless seemed my +little stock of book-learning by the side of that heart-wisdom which she +had coined, as it were, from her own sorrow! + +My last day came, and I had not spoken. In fact, we latterly had both +grown silent. I was to leave in the afternoon stage. I gave the driver +my trunk, telling him to call for me at the Squire's,--for I must bid +Rachel good-bye, and in some way let her know how I felt towards her. As +I drew near the house, I saw that she was drawing water. I stepped +quickly towards the well, but Sam appeared just then, and I could not +say one word. She walked into the house. I went behind with the +water-pail, and Sam followed us into the porch. Rachel was going +up-stairs, but I took her hand to bid her good-bye. Mrs. Brewster and +Sarah were in the kitchen, watching. "Quite a love-scene!" I heard them +whisper. "I do believe he'll marry her!" + +Now, although I was by nature quiet, yet I _could_ be roused. Bidding +good-bye to Rachel had stirred the very depths of my nature. I longed to +take her in my arms, and bear her away to my own quiet home. And when, +instead of this, I thought of the life to which I must leave her, it +needed but those sneering whispers to make me speak out,--and I did +speak out. Taking her by the hand, I stepped quickly forward, and stood +before them. + +"And so I _will_ marry her!" I exclaimed. "If she will accept me, I +shall be _proud_ to marry her!" + +"Rachel," said I, turning towards her, "this is strange wooing; but +before these people I ask, Will you be my wife?" + +The astonished spectators of our love-scene looked on in dismay. + +"Mr. Browne!" exclaimed Mrs. Brewster, "do you know what you are doing? +I have no ill-will to the girl; but I feel it my duty to tell you who +and what she is." + +"I know what Rachel Lowe is, Madam!" I cried, almost fiercely; "you +don't,--you can't!" + +Then, turning to the trembling girl, I said again,-- + +"Rachel, say, _will_ you be my wife?" + +At this moment Sam came forward. His face was pale, and he trembled. + +"No, Rachel," said he, "don't be his wife! Be mine! I haven't treated +you right, I know I haven't; but I love you, you don't know how much! +The very way you have tried to keep me off has made me love you!" + +"Sam! stop!" cried his mother, in a rage. "What do you mean? You _know_ +you won't marry that girl!" + +"Mother," exclaimed Sam, "you don't know anything about her! She is +worth every other girl in the place, and handsomer than all of them put +together!" + +"Sam!" began Miss Sarah. + +"Now, Sarah, you stop!" cried he. "I've begun, and now I'll _tell_. At +first I teased her for fun. Then I watched her to see how she bore +everything so well. And while I was watching, I--before I knew it--I +began to love her. You may talk, if you want to; but I shall never _be_ +anybody, if she won't have me!" + +"Stage coming!" said a little boy, running in. + +I took Rachel by the hand, and drew her with me into the porch. + +"Don't promise to marry him!" cried Sam, as we passed through the +door-way. "But she will,--I know she will!" he added, as I closed the +door. + +He spoke in a pitiful tone, and his voice trembled. I was surprised that +he showed so much feeling. + +"Rachel," said I, as soon as we were alone, "won't you answer me now? +You must know how much I love you. Will you be my wife?" + +"Oh, Mr. Browne, I cannot! I cannot!" she whispered. + +I was silent, for my fears came uppermost. Pressing one hand to my +forehead, I thought of a thousand things in a moment. Nothing seemed +more probable than that she should already have a lover across the sea. +Seeing my distress, she spoke. + +"Don't think, Mr. Browne," she began, earnestly, "that it is because I +do not"-- + +There she stopped. I gazed eagerly in her face. It was strangely +agitated. I should hardly have known my calm, white-faced Rachel. Just +then I heard the stage stop at the bars. + +"Oh, Rachel!" I cried, "go on! What mustn't I think? What shall I +think?" + +"Don't think me ungrateful,--you have been so kind," she said, softly. + +"And is that all?" I asked. + +"Stage ready!" called out the driver. + +I opened the door, to show that I was coming; then, taking her hand, I +said,-- + +"Good bye, Rachel! And so--you can't love me!" + +An expression of pain crossed her face. She leaned against the wall, but +did not speak. + +"Hurry up there!" shouted the driver. + +"Yes, yes!" I cried, impatiently. + +"If you can't speak," I went on to Rachel, "press my hand, if you can +love me,--now, for I am going. Good bye!" + +She did not press my hand, and I could not go. + +"You can't say you love me," I cried; "then say you don't. Anything +rather than this doubt." + +"Oh, Mr. Browne!" she replied, at last, "I can't say anything--but--good +bye!" + +"Good bye, then," I said, sadly. "But shall you still live here?" + +"Oh, no!" she exclaimed, earnestly; "you can't think that I"-- + +Here she stopped, and glanced towards the kitchen-door. + +"No," said I, "I won't think it. But where will you stay?" + +"With Mrs. James. You know her. I have already spoken with her." + +The tramp of the driver was now heard, approaching. + +"Any passenger here bound for Boston?" + +"Yes, Sir," I answered, and with one more whispered good-bye, one wring +of the hand, I passed out, gave my bundle to the driver, and entered the +coach. + +What a ride home that was! What a half-day of doubting, hoping, +despairing! I had not before realized how sure I had been of her +accepting me; and now that I felt how much I loved her, and thought of +the many causes which might separate us, I could not but say over in my +heart the sorrowful words of poor Sam,--"I shall never _be_ anybody, if +she won't have me." Still, though not accepted, I could not feel +refused; for what was it I read in her face? why so agitated? That she +struggled with some strong feeling was evident. The remembrance, +perhaps, of a former love. + +In this tumult, this miserable condition, I reached home, where, +spreading my old calmness over my new agitation, I received, as best I +might, the joyful greeting of Fanny, the heartfelt welcome of Aunt +Huldah. I tried hard to be my own old self, and could not but hope that +even my sharp-eyed sister was blinded. But no sooner had I entered my +room for the night, no sooner had I thrown myself into my deep-cushioned +arm-chair, than this lively sprite entered, on her way to bed. She +seated herself on the trunk close by me, laid her hand upon my arm, and +said,-- + +"What is it, Charley?" + +"What, Fanny?" I asked. + +"Now, Charley," said she, "you might as well speak out at once. Why was +I left, when all the rest were taken, but that you might have at least +_one_ that you loved to tell your troubles to? Come, now! Take off that +manner of yours; you might as well, for I can see right through it. You +will feel better to let everything out,--and then, who knows but I might +help you?" + +Sure enough. It was strange, considering what Fanny had always been to +me, that this had not occurred to my own mind. How natural it seemed now +to tell her all about it! What a relief it would be! But how should I +begin? I shrank from it. I began to come round to my first position. It +seemed as if the corner of my heart which held Rachel was a holy of +holies, too sacred to be entered even by my dear, good sister. While I +was thinking, she watched my face. + +"Ah!" said she, "I see you don't know how to begin, and that I must both +listen and talk. Give me your hand. Haven't I got gypsy eyes? I will +tell your fortune." + +Dear little bright-faced Fanny! I smiled a real smile when she took my +hand. + +"It is about a girl?" she said, half inquiringly. + +I colored, though it was only Fanny, and nodded,-- + +"Yes." + +"You love the girl?" she continued, after a pause. + +"I _do_ love the girl!" I said, earnestly,--for, now that the curtain +was lifted, she might see all she chose. + +"And she loves you?" + +"No,--I think so,--I don't know," was my satisfactory reply. + +"But why don't you ask her?" + +"I _have_ asked her." + +"And what did she say? I wish, Charley, you would begin at the beginning +and tell me all about it. How can I help you, if I don't know?" + +I was glad enough to do it. I began at the beginning, and told all there +was to tell. It was not much,--for the beauty, the goodness, the +patience of Rachel could not be told. When all was over, she said,-- + +"I am glad you have told me, for I can make you easy on one point. She +loves you. Ah, I can see! Women can always see, but men are stupid. Your +declaration was too sudden. She might have thought you were forced into +it. She is too high-minded to take advantage of a moment when your +feelings were all excited. Wait awhile. Let her see that you do not +change, and she will give you just such an answer as you will like to +hear. Why, Charley, I like her better for not accepting you than for +anything you have told about her." + +"Well, Fanny," I said, half sighing, "it may be so,--I hope it may be +so; but if it does turn out as you say, how shall we manage about Aunt +Huldah? You know how she feels; and then there is Alice." + +"What a brother you are!" exclaimed Fanny. "No sooner do I get you out +of one difficulty than you go beating against another! Perhaps _I_ +shan't like her; then how will you manage about _me_? It is not every +girl I will take for a sister! And as for Alice, do you think she is +waiting for you all this time, vain man? She's got another beau. But +now," she went on, as soon as she could stop laughing, "go to bed, and +sleep easy, knowing that Rachel loves you, for I have said it. She loves +you too well to take you at your word. I hope she isn't too good for +you. I will think it all over, and see what can be done. Good night! +Kiss me now for what I have told you, just as you would Rachel, if she +had told you herself." + +And I did, almost. + +The next afternoon Fanny and I went out for a long walk. Aunt Huldah +encouraged our going, for she was coloring, and wanted from the store +both indigo and alum. + +"Do you know the person with whom Rachel is staying?" asked Fanny, as +soon as we were fairly started. + +"Mrs. James? Yes, she is a nice young woman." + +"Do you think Rachel would like to learn the milliner's trade? It would +be a good thing for her." + +"So it would; but where?" + +"Does she know much of your friends, of how you are situated?" + +"No. In the few hours we were together I was too much occupied in +drawing her out to speak of my own affairs." + +"I suppose she knows where you live?" + +"I don't know; I think, if I spoke of any place, it was Cambridge,--I +hailed from there." + +"Well," said Fanny, thoughtfully, "perhaps it will make no difference. +Anyway, it will do to try it. There are many Brownes. Besides, Aunt +Huldah will be different. She will be Sprague, I shall be only Fanny, +and Charley will be Charley." + +"My dear Fanny!" I exclaimed, "what _are_ you saying?" + +"Why, you see, buddy,"--she often called me "buddy" for +"brother,"--"that, if Rachel loves you, and you love her, you will +_have_ each other. If Aunt Huldah is angry, and won't give you any of +her money, still you will be married, even if you both have to work by +the day. Does this seem clear?" + +I laughed, and said,-- + +"Very,--and right, too." + +"Still," she went on, "it will be better for all concerned to have Aunt +Huldah like her. Don't you remember that one summer a young girl from +the milliner's boarded with us, and helped us, to pay her board?" + +"Capital!" I said. "But can you manage it?" + +"I think I can. Mrs. Sampson is, I know, wanting a girl for the busy +season." + +"But Rachel wouldn't come here,--to my home!" + +"She need not know it is your home. I will write to Mrs. James, and tell +her all about it,--tell why I want Rachel here, and what a good +situation it will be for her at Mrs. Sampson's. She can find out whether +the plan is pleasing to her; and if it is, she can herself make all the +arrangements. Of course I shall charge her not to tell. Then, when +everything is settled, I can just say to the milliner that we should +like to make the same little arrangement that we did before." + +"And she live here with you, with Aunt Huldah?" + +"Why not? She needn't know that Mrs. Huldah Sprague is your aunt, or +that this is your home." + +"But she would find it out some way. People calling would mention me. +Aunt herself would." + +"I know it," said Fanny, not quite so hopefully; "and that is the weak +point of my plan. But then, you know, we are Charley and Fanny to +everybody. _She_ only thinks of you as Mr. Browne. Anyway, something +will be gained. I shall see her, and decide about liking her, which is +quite important; and it will be well for her to have the situation, even +if nothing else comes of it. I don't see any harm our scheme can do; do +you, Charley?" + +"No,--no harm; but still, things don't look--exactly clear." + +"Of course not; it is not to be expected. I have read in books that +lovers have always a mist before their eyes. Mine are clear yet; and I +will tell you what to do,--or, rather, what not to do. Don't write her +from here; wait till you are in Cambridge." + +By this time we reached the house. The moment we entered, Aunt Huldah +stretched out her hand for the dye-stuff. We had forgotten all about it! + +Those few days at home were pleasant. Aunt Huldah was unusually kind. It +was such a satisfaction to her to know that I had kept a school,--to +think that some of her own pluck was hid beneath my quiet seeming. She +proposed my becoming a lawyer, to which I made no objection,--for I knew +I could make a _dumb_ lawyer, one of the kind who only sit and write. + +I wrote to Rachel from Cambridge, and she answered my letter. It was +like herself. "How very kind you have been," she wrote, "to me, a poor +stranger-girl! If I knew how to write, I would try to let you know how +much I feel it. I can't understand your wanting to marry a girl like me. +I know so little, _am_ so little. I hope it will not offend you, but I +think I ought to say, even if it does, that you must not write any more. +Sometime you will thank me, in your heart, for not doing as you want me +to now." + +I saw that I had indeed a noble nature to deal with. Here was a girl, +all alone in the world, rejecting the sweetest offering that could be +made to a friendless one,--a loving heart,--lest that heart should be +made to suffer on her account! Of course I kept on writing, though my +letters were not answered. I sent her letter to Fanny, who wrote me to +keep up good courage, for she had already put her irons in the +fire,--that, although now fully convinced that Rachel was too good for +me, she had herself begun to love her, and was at work on her own +account. + +I always kept Fanny's letters. Here is a part of one I received after +having been a few weeks from home:-- + +"I have just got my answer from Mrs. James. She is just the woman to +help us along. Rachel wants to come! I have spoken to Aunt Huldah. It is +too bad, but I had to be a bit of a hypocrite, to hint that I was rather +poorly, and how nice it would be to have a little help. She had just got +in a new piece to weave, and so was quite ready to take up with my plan. +I shall get well as soon as it will do, for she seems anxious. Aunt has +a stiff way, I know, but there's a warm corner somewhere in her heart, +and we are in it, and you know there's always room for one more." + +It was a week, and more, before I got another letter from my scheming +sister. It began this way:-- + +"Your Rachel is a beauty! Just as sweet and modest as she can be! She is +sitting at the end-window of my room, watching the vessels. I am writing +at the front-window. She has just looked at me. What eyes she has! If +she _only_ knew whom I was writing to! When I see you, I shall tell you +the particulars. But don't come posting home now, and spoil everything. +You shall hear all that is necessary for you to know." + +Fanny need not have cautioned me about coming home. It was happiness +enough then to think of Rachel sitting in my sister's room,--of Aunt +Huldah's keen eyes watching her daily life. + +"My plan works," writes Fanny, a week afterwards. "Aunt seems to take a +liking to Rachel, which I, if anything, rather discourage, thinking she +will be more likely to stick to it. Rachel is a sister after my own +heart. I do like those people who, while they are so steady and calm, +show by their eyes and the tone of the voice what warm, delicate +feelings they are keeping to themselves! She is one of the real good +kind! What a way she has with her!--I saw her to-day, when she received +a letter from you. It came in one from Mrs. James. I was making believe +read, but peeped at her sideways, just as I have seen you do at the +girls in meeting-time. She slipped yours into her pocket, with such a +blush,--then looked up, sort of scared, to see if I noticed anything; +but I was reading my book. Then she stepped quickly out of the room, and +I saw her, a moment after, go through the garden into the apple-orchard, +and along the path to the low-branching apple-tree, to read it all +alone." + +This tree I knew well. It was an irregular old apple-tree, one of whose +branches formed of itself a nice seat, where Fanny and I had often sat +from childhood up. + +Afterwards she writes,-- + +"You have sent Rachel a ring,--a pearl ring; you didn't tell me, but I +know. I have seen her kiss it. (Does this please you?) I happened to +find it yesterday, while rummaging her box for the buttonhole scissors. +(She sent me there.) Said I,--'Oh, what a pretty ring! Why don't you +wear it?' I never thought till I had spoken; but then I knew in a +minute, by her looking so red. She said she'd a reason for thinking it +would not be quite right to wear it,--said perhaps she would tell +sometime. It was last night I saw her kiss it, when she thought I was +asleep,--we sleep in the same room. She tried it on her finger, but took +it right off again, sighing, and looking so sad that I don't know what I +should have done, had I not known how it was all coming out right pretty +soon.--Aunt Huldah is completely entangled in my web. She has come into +it with her sharp eyes wide open! She likes Rachel,--says she always +knows where to _take hold_, and makes no fuss about doing things. She +gets her to read the chapter, because she says she likes the sound of +her voice. There is not only _sound_, but _feeling_ in her voice, and +that is what aunt means; but you know she never says _all_ she +means,--she isn't one of the kind. Rachel is always doing little things +for her, and bringing home bunches of sweet-fern and everlasting. Even +if my plan upsets now, much will be gained,--for aunt can't get back her +liking, I have found a dear friend, and Rachel a good place. Your name +has been mentioned, but only as Charley. I am in daily fear that aunt +will allude to your school, though, to be sure, she is not at all +communicative, (girls having brothers in college should use a big word +now and then,) but we are getting so well acquainted that I begin to +shake in my shoes. But the mornings are busy, the noons are short, and +you know aunt always goes to bed with the hens. My dread is of +_callers_,--not just the neighbors running in, but the _regulars_. It is +so natural for them to say, 'How is your nephew?'--not that they care +for you, except as being something to talk about." + +Soon after, came the following:-- + +"Charley, my boy, what I feared has come to pass! Last night our new +young minister called. He is a good young man, I know, but so stiff! Not +too stiff, though, to take a good look at Rachel. We all sat up straight +in our chairs. His eyes were deep and black, his face pale and solemn. +He was all in black, but just the white about his throat. When the +weather, the prospects of the farmers, and of the church, were all over +with, then came an awful pause. _Then_ it was that I began to shiver, +and that the mischief was done. 'Mrs. Sprague.' he began, 'I understand +you have a nephew, not now at home, who taught school last winter in the +little village of Norway.' You may guess the rest. There was a long talk +about you. Rachel hasn't said a word, but I see by her face that she is +laying some desperate plan. Now, Charley, is your time! Hurry home! Come +and spend next Sunday. Aunt spoke of your coming in four weeks, but I +shall look for you next Saturday night. She gets through work earlier +then. The stage reaches here about sunset. Stop at the tavern, and run +home over the hills. You will come out behind the orchard, and Rachel +and I will be sitting on the branch of the low apple-tree." + +Now I had been getting uneasy for some time. All this while I had been +living on Fanny's letters. Now I wanted more. It was much to know that +Rachel loved me, but I longed to hear her say so. I depended upon her. +She seemed already a part of myself. My shadowy pinafore-maker had +assumed a living form of beauty, and was already more to me than I had +ever imagined woman could be to man, than one soul could be to another. +I had always, in common with other men, considered myself as an oak +destined in the course of Nature to support some clinging vine; but, if +I were an oak-tree, she was another, with an infinitude more of grace +and beauty. + +As may be supposed, I required no urging to take the Saturday's stage +for home. We arrived at sunset. I made for the hills with all speed, +rushing through bushes and briers, leaping brooks at a bound, until I +came out just behind the orchard. There I paused. My happiness seemed so +near that I would fain enjoy, before grasping it. I walked softly along +under the trees, until I came in sight of two girls sitting with their +arms around each other's waists upon the low branch of the apple-tree. +There was just room for two. The branch, after running parallel with the +ground for a little way, took a sudden turn upwards; and to this natural +seat I had myself, in my younger days, added a back of rough branches. I +came towards them, from behind, and hid myself awhile behind the trunk +of a tree. Fanny was making Rachel talk, making her laugh, in spite of +herself, as I could well see. Then she began to play with her dark hair, +twining it prettily about her head, and twisting among it damask roses +with their buds,--for it was June, and our damask rose-bush was then +always in full bloom. + +If Rachel had been beautiful in her rusty black dress, what could I say +of her now? She wore a gown of pink gingham, made after the fashion of +the day, short-waisted and low in the neck, with a--finishing-off--of +white muslin or lace, edged with a tucker. There was color in her +cheeks, and added to this was the glow from the roses, and from the pink +gown. When she smiled, her mouth was beautiful. I had not been used to +seeing her smile. As she threw her arm over the back of the seat, in +turning her face towards Fanny, laughing as I had never before seen her +laugh, I was so bewildered by the beauty of her face and figure that I +forgot my caution, and made a hasty step towards her. The grass was +soft, but they heard the noise and turned full upon me. + +"Why, Charley! you dear boy!" exclaimed Fanny; and she came running up, +throwing both arms around my neck. + +I kissed her; and then she drew me towards Rachel, who stood, like one +in despair, trembling, blushing, almost weeping. + +"Charley," cried Fanny, roguishly, "kiss me, kiss my friend. This is my +friend. Won't you kiss her, too?" + +"With pleasure," I answered, with too much of deep feeling to laugh. +"Rachel, I always mind Fanny; you will not, then, think it strange, if +I"-- + +I cannot finish the sentence on paper, because it had not a grammatical +ending. I kept hold of Rachel's hand, thus adding to her +distress,--telling her, all the while, how good it was to see her, and +to see her there. She tried to withdraw her hand, tried to speak, tried +to keep silent, and at last burst out with,-- + +"Oh, Fanny! do tell him that I didn't know,--that I had no idea,--that +you asked me,--that you never told me!" + +"Charley," said Fanny, laughing, "did you ever know me to tell a lie? To +my certain knowledge, this young woman came here to board, expecting to +find nothing worse than Aunt Huldah and myself; and it was at my +suggestion she came." + +Then taking Rachel by the hand, she said,-- + +"Be easy, my dear child. You need not feel so pained. Charley loves you, +and you love him, and we all love one another. Charley is a dear boy, +and you mustn't plague him. I will tell you all about it, dear. When +Charley came home, and I made him tell me about you, I know, from what +he said, that you were--But I won't praise you to your face. Hasn't +Charley seen plenty of girls, handsome girls, educated, accomplished? +And haven't I watched him these years, to see when Love would catch him? +Haven't I searched his face, time and again, for signs of love at his +heart? When he came home in the spring, I saw that his time had come, +and trouble with it. I made him _tell_, for I would not send him away +with a grief shut up in his heart. Then I contrived this plan of seeing +and knowing you, dear. I knew that Charley would never have been so +deeply moved, had you not been worthy; but, my dear child, I never +thought of loving you so! I shall be so proud, if you will be my +sister,--for you will, I know. You can't refuse such a dear boy as +Charley!" + +I still held Rachel by the hand; and while Fanny was speaking so +earnestly, my other hand, of itself, went creeping around her waist, and +drew her close to me. + +"You can't refuse," I whispered, reposting Fanny's words; and I knew by +the look in her face, and the way her heart beat, that she couldn't. + +But Fanny was one who never liked deep waters. Seeing that matters were +growing earnest, she rose quickly to the surface, and went rattling on, +in her lively way. + +"Now, come, you two, and sit down in this cozy seat. You have never had +a nice time all to yourselves, to make love in. Ah! how well you look +together! Just room enough! Rachel, dear, rest your head on Charley's +shoulder. You must. Charley always minds me, and you will have to. Now, +buddy, just drop your head on hers a minute. Capital! Your light curls +make her hair look more like black velvet than ever! That will do. Now I +leave you to your fate. I am rattle-headed, I know, but I hope I have +some consideration." + +And so she left us, sitting there in the twilight, in the solemn hush of +Saturday night. + +The next day we all went to meeting. It seemed good that I was only to +spend Sunday at home. The quiet, the air of solemnity all around us, +harmonized well with the song my own soul was singing. It was +Sabbath-day within, one long, blessed Sabbath, with which the bustle of +week-day life would ill accord. That perfect day I never forgot. Even +now I can scent its roses in the air. Even now I can almost feel the +daisies brushing against my feet, while walking up the narrow lane on +our way to church,--can see the sweetbrier by the red gate, and myself +giving Rachel one of its blossoms. + +During the rest of the term I had frequent letters from Fanny and +Rachel, telling how happy they both were, and what talks they had in the +apple-tree,--telling that Aunt Huldah _knew_, but wasn't angry, only +just a little at Fanny, for being so sly. Then came the long summer +vacation. The very day I got home, the solemn young minister called. +Fanny said that he came often, but she thought he would do so no longer, +for he would see that it was of no use to be looking at Rachel. He did, +however, and Rachel said he came to look at Fanny. I bestirred myself, +therefore, to become acquainted with him. His stiffness was only of the +manners. I found him a genial, cultivated, warm-hearted person; in fact, +I liked him. How cold the word sounds now, applied to one whom I +afterwards came to love as a brother, whose gentle heart sympathized in +all our troubles, whose tears were ever ready to mingle with our own! + +He gave us every opportunity of finding him out, joined us in our sunset +walks, and in our long sittings under the trees. I soon came to be well +satisfied that he should look at Fanny,--satisfied that she should watch +for his coming, and blush when he came. I was happy to see the mist she +once spoke of slowly gathering before her own eyes, and to know, from +the strange quiet which came over her, that some new influence was at +work within her heart. + +The beauty of Rachel seemed each day more brilliant. Amid such happy +influences, the lively, genial side of her nature expanded like a flower +in the sunshine. "The soul of Rachel Lowe," having no longer to stand +alone, bearing the weight of its own sorrows, brought its energies to +promote the happiness of us all. She contrived pleasant surprises, and +charmed Aunt Huldah with her constant acts of kindness. She sang +beautiful songs, and filled the house with flowers; and when we sat +long, in the cool of the evening, out under the trees, she would relate +strange, wild stories which she had heard from her mother,--stories of +other times and distant lands. + +Meanwhile Aunt Huldah was as kind as heart could wish, treating us +tenderly, and as if we were little children; and one stormy night, when +we four sat with her in the keeping-room, talking, until daylight faded, +and the short twilight left us nearly in darkness, she told us some +things about her own youth, things of which, by daylight, she would +never have spoken,--and told, too, of a dear, only brother, who was +ruined for all time, and, she feared, for eternity also, from being +crossed in love by the strong will of his father. Aunt Huldah had a +tender heart. Her voice grew thick and hoarse, while telling the story. +I was always glad we had that talk. It made us know her better. She +lived only a year after. She died in June, when the grass was green and +the roses were in bloom,--just a year from that Sabbath I spent at home, +that perfect day when I walked to meeting with Rachel up the grassy +lane. With sad hearts, we laid her to rest in a spot that she loved, +where the sweet-fern and wild-roses were growing,--with sad, grateful +hearts, for she had been to us as father, mother, and true friend. We +loved her for the affection she showed, and still more for that which we +knew she concealed within herself,--for the tenderness she would not let +be revealed. + +The next year Rachel and I were married, thus making the month of June +trebly sacred. We had a double wedding; for the young minister, finding +that he had looked at Fanny too long for his own tranquillity, proposed +to mend matters in a way which no one whose faculties were not strangely +betwisted by love would ever have thought of. And my sister must either +have secretly liked the plan, or else have lost her old faculty of +managing; for, when he said, "Come, Fanny, and let us dwell together in +the parsonage," she went, just as quiet as a lamb. + +Rachel and I remained, and do remain to this day, at the old house. +Fanny said we ought to go into the world,--that I might possibly become +brilliant, and Rachel would certainly be admired. But the first of these +suggestions had little weight with me; and Rachel said how nice it would +be to live here among the apple-trees, near Fanny, to read books, sing +songs, and so have a good time all our lives! + +"And have nobody but Charley see how handsome you are!" exclaimed Fanny. + +Rachel didn't color at this, but remarked, a little roguishly, that she +would rather have one of those sidelong looks I used to give her in the +old school-house than all the admiration in the world. + +This was the time when I chose my profession, as mentioned in the +beginning. And I may say that we _have_ had a good time all our lives. +Yet we have known sorrow. Four times has the dark shadow fallen upon our +hearts; four sad processions have passed up the narrow lane; four little +graves, by the side of Aunt Huldah's, show where, standing together, we +wept tears of agony! Yet we stood together; and Rachel, who knew so +well, taught me how to bear. In every hour of anguish I have found +myself leaning upon the strong, steadfast "soul of Rachel Lowe." I say +still, therefore, that we have had a good time, for we have loved one +another all our lives. And we have never been too much alone. Plenty of +friends have been glad to come and see us; and on Anniversary Week we +have usually made a journey to Boston, to wear off the rust, and get +stirred up generally. We attend most frequently the Anti-Slavery +Conventions. I know of no better place, whether for getting stirred up, +or wearing off the rust. That couple whom you may have noticed +sitting near the platform--that bald-headed old gentleman and +intelligent-looking elderly lady--are my wife and I. We met with the +early Abolitionists in a stable; we saw Garrison dragged through the +streets, and heard Phillips's first speech in Faneuil Hall. + +I have always kept my old habit of watching pretty faces; only I don't +look sideways now: for the girls never think that an old man cares to +see them; but he does. We have one son, who Fanny devoutly hopes will +turn out better than his father. May he go through life as happily! And +he is in a fair way for it. I like to see him with Jenny, the pretty +daughter of my friend the watchmaker. If my good friend thinks to keep +always with him that youngest one of his flock, he will find his +mistake; for it was only yesterday that I saw them sitting together on +the seat in the low-branching apple-tree. + + * * * * * + +PICTOR IGNOTUS. + + +Human nature is impatient of mysteries. The occurrence of an event out +of the line of common causation, the advent of a person not plastic to +the common moulds of society, causes a great commotion in this little +ant-hill of ours. There is perplexity, bewilderment, a running hither +and thither, until the foreign substance is assigned a place in the +ranks; and if there be no rank to which it can be ascertained to belong, +a new rank shall be created to receive it, rather than that it shall be +left to roam up and down, baffling, defiant, and alone. Indeed, so great +is our abhorrence of outlying, unclassified facts, that we are often +ready to accept classification for explanation; and having given our +mystery a niche and a name, we cease any longer to look upon it as +mysterious. The village-schoolmaster, who displayed his superior +knowledge to the rustics gazing at an eclipse of the sun by assuring +them that it was "only a phenomenon," was but one of a great host of +wiseacres who stand ready with brush and paint-pot to label every new +development, and fancy that in so doing they have abundantly answered +every reasonable inquiry concerning cause, character, and consequence. + +When William Blake flashed across the path of English polite society, +society was confounded. It had never had to do with such an apparition +before, and was at its wits' end. But some Daniel was found wise enough +to come to judgment, and pronounce the poet-painter mad; whereupon +society at once composed itself, and went on its way rejoicing. + +There are a few persons, however, who are not disposed to let this +verdict stand unchallenged. Mr. Arthur Gilchrist, late a barrister of +the Middle Temple, a man, therefore, who must have been accustomed to +weigh evidence, and who would not have been likely to decide upon +insufficient grounds, wrote a life of Mr. Blake, in which he strenuously +and ably opposed the theory of insanity. From this book, chiefly, we +propose to lay before our readers a slight sketch of the life of a man +who, whether sane or insane, was one of the most remarkable productions +of his own or of any age. + +One word, in the beginning, regarding the book before us. The death of +its author, while as yet but seven chapters of his work had been +printed, would preclude severe criticism, even if the spirit and purpose +with which he entered upon his undertaking, and which he sustained to +its close, did not dispose us to look leniently upon imperfections of +detail. Possessing that first requisite of a biographer, thorough +sympathy with his subject, he did not fall into the opposite error of +indiscriminate panegyric. Looking at life from the standpoint of the +"madman," he saw how fancies could not only appear, but be, facts; and +then, crossing over, he looked at the madman from the world's +standpoint, and saw how these soul-born facts could seem not merely +fancies, but the wild vagaries of a crazed brain. For the warmth with +which he espoused an unpopular cause, for the skill with which he set +facts in their true light, for the ability which he brought to the +defence of a man whom the world had agreed to condemn, for the noble +persistence with which he forced attention to genius that had hitherto +received little but neglect, we cannot too earnestly express our +gratitude. But the greater our admiration of material excellence, the +greater is our regret for superficial defects. The continued oversight +of the author would doubtless have removed many infelicities of style; +yet we marvel that one with so clear an insight should ever, even in the +first glow of composition, have involved himself in sentences so +complicated and so obscure. The worst faults of Miss Sheppard's worst +style are reproduced here, joined to an unthriftiness in which she had +no part nor lot. Not unfrequently a sentence Is a conglomerate in which +the ideas to be conveyed are heaped together with no apparent attempt at +arrangement, unity, or completeness. Surely, it need be no presumptuous, +but only a tender and reverent hand that should have organized these +chaotic periods, completing the work which death left unfinished, and +sending it forth to the world in a garb not unworthy the labor of love +so untiringly bestowed upon it by the lamented author. + +To show that our strictures are not undeserved, we transcribe a few +sentences, taken at random from the memoir:-- + +"Which decadence it was led this Pars to go into the juvenile +Art-Academy line, _vice_ Shipley retired." + +"The unusual notes struck by William Blake, in any case appealing but to +one class and a small one, were fated to remain unheard, even by the +Student of Poetry, until the process of regeneration had run its course, +and, we may say, the Poetic Revival gone to seed again: seeing that the +virtues of simplicity and directness the new poets began by bringing +once more into the foreground, are those least practised now." + +"In after years of estrangement from Stothard, Blake used to complain of +this mechanical employment as engraver to a fellow-designer, who (he +asserted) first borrowed from one that, in his servile capacity, had +then to copy that comrade's version of his own inventions--as to motive +and composition his own, that is." + +"And this imposing scroll of fervid truisms and hap-hazard generalities, +as often disputable as not, if often acute and striking, always +ingenuous and pleasant, was, like all his other writings, warmly +welcomed in this country." + +Let us now go back a hundred years, to the time when William Blake was a +fair-haired, smooth-browed boy, wandering aimlessly, after the manner of +boys, about the streets of London. It might seem at first a matter of +regret that a soul full of all glowing and glorious fancies should have +been consigned to the damp and dismal dulness of that crowded city; but, +in truth, nothing could be more fit. To this affluent, creative mind +dinginess and dimness were not. Through the grayest gloom golden palaces +rose before him, silver pavements shone beneath his feet, jewelled gates +unfolded on golden hinges turning, and he wandered forth into a fair +country. What need of sunshine and bloom for one who saw in the deepest +darkness a "light that never was on sea or land"? Rambling out into the +pleasant woods of Dulwich, through the green meadows of Walton, by the +breezy heights of Sydenham, bands of angels attended him. They walked +between the toiling haymakers, they hovered above him in the +apple-boughs, and their bright wings shone like stars. For him there was +neither awe nor mystery, only delight. Angels were no more unnatural +than apples. But the honest hosier, his father, took different views. +Never in all his life had that worthy citizen beheld angels perched on +tree-tops, and he was only prevented from administering to his son a +sound thrashing for the absurd falsehood by the intercession of his +mother. Ah, these mothers! By what fine sense is it that they detect the +nascent genius for which man's coarse perception can find no better name +than perverseness, and no wiser treatment than brute force? + +The boy had much reason to thank his mother, for to her intervention it +was doubtless largely due that he was left to follow his bent, and haunt +such picture-galleries as might be found in noblemen's houses and public +sale-rooms. There he feasted his bodily eyes on earthly beauty, as his +mental gaze had been charmed with heavenly visions. From admiration to +imitation was but a step, and the little hands soon began to shape such +rude, but loving copies as Raffaelle, with tears in his eyes, must have +smiled to see. His father, moved by motherly persuasions, as we can +easily infer, bought him casts for models, that he might continue his +drawing-lessons at home; his own small allowance of pocket-money went +for prints; his wistful child-face presently became known to dealers, +and many a cheap lot was knocked down to him with amiable haste by +friendly auctioneers. Then and there began that life-long love and +loyalty to the grand old masters of Germany and Italy, to Albrecht +Duerer, to Michel Angelo, to Raffaelle, which knew no diminution, and +which, in its very commencement, revealed the eclecticism of true +genius, because the giants were not the gods in those days. + +But there came a time when Pegasus must be broken in to drudgery, and +travel along trodden ways. By slow, it cannot be said by toilsome +ascent, the young student had reached the vestibule of the temple; but + + "Every door was barred with gold, and opened but to golden keys," + +which, alas! to him were wanting. Nothing daunted, his sincere soul +preferred to be a doorkeeper in the house of his worship rather than a +dweller in the tents of Mammon. Unable to be an artist, he was content +for the time to become an artisan, and chose to learn engraving,--a +craft which would keep him within sight and sound of the heaven from +which he was shut out. Application was first made to Ryland, then in the +zenith of his fame, engraver to the King, friend of authors and artists, +himself a graceful, accomplished, and agreeable gentleman. But the +marvellous eyes that pierced through mortal gloom to immortal glory saw +also the darkness that brooded behind uncanny light. "I do not like the +man's face," said young Blake, as he was leaving the shop with his +father; "it looks as if he will live to be hanged." The negotiation +failed; Blake was apprenticed to Basire; and twelve years after, the +darkness that had lain so long in ambush came out and hid the day: +Ryland was hanged. + +His new master, Basire, was one of those workmen who magnify their +office and make it honorable. The most distinguished of four generations +of Basires, engravers, he is represented as a superior, liberal-minded, +upright man, and a kind master. With him Blake served out his seven +years of apprenticeship, as faithful, painstaking, and industrious as +any blockhead. So great was the confidence which he secured, that, month +after month, and year after year, he was sent out alone to Westminster +Abbey and the various old churches in the neighborhood, to make drawings +from the monuments, with no oversight but that of his own taste and his +own conscience. And a rich reward we may well suppose his integrity +brought him, in the charming solitudes of those old-time sanctuaries. +Wandering up and down the consecrated aisles,--eagerly peering through +the dim, religious light for the beautiful forms that had leaped from +many a teeming brain now turned to dust,--reproducing, with patient +hand, graceful outline and deepening shadow,--his daring, yet reverent +heart held high communion with the ages that were gone. The Spirit of +the Past overshadowed him. The grandeur of Gothic symbolism rose before +him. Voices of dead centuries murmured low music down the fretted vault. +Fair ladies and brave gentlemen came up from the solemn chambers where +they had lain so long in silent state, and smiled with their olden +grace. Shades of nameless poets, who had wrought their souls into a +cathedral and died unknown and unhonored, passed before the dreaming +boy, and claimed their immortality. Nay, once the Blessed Face shone +through the cloistered twilight, and the Twelve stood roundabout. In +this strange solitude and stranger companionship many an old problem +untwined its Gordian knot, and whispered along its loosened length,-- + + "I give you the end of a golden string: + Only wind it into a ball, + It will lead you in at Heaven's gate, + Built in Jerusalem wall." + +To an engraving of "Joseph of Arimathea among the Rocks of Albion," +executed at this time, he appends,--"This is one of the Gothic artists +who built the Cathedrals in what we call the Dark Ages, wandering about +in sheepskins and goatskins; of whom the world was not worthy. Such were +the Christians in all ages." + +Yet, somewhere, through mediaeval gloom and modern din, another spirit +breathed upon him,--a spirit of green woods and blue waters, the +freshness of May mornings, the prattle of tender infancy, the gambols of +young lambs on the hill-side. From his childhood, Poetry walked hand in +hand with Painting, and beguiled his loneliness with wild, sweet +harmonies. Bred up amid the stately, measured, melodious platitudes of +the eighteenth century, that Golden Age of commonplace, he struck down +through them all with simple, untaught, unconscious directness, and +smote the spring of ever-living waters. Such wood-notes wild as trill in +Shakspeare's verse sprang from the stricken chords beneath his hand. The +little singing-birds that seem almost to have leaped unbidden into life +among the gross creations of those old Afreets who + + "Stood around the throne of Shakspeare, + Sturdy, but unclean," + +carolled their clear, pure lays to him, and left a quivering echo. Fine, +fleeting fantasies we have, a tender, heartfelt, heart-reaching pathos, +laughter that might at any moment tremble into tears, eternal truths, +draped in the garb of quaint and simple story, solemn fervors, subtile +sympathies, and the winsomeness of little children at their +play,--sometimes glowing with the deepest color, often just tinged to +the pale and changing hues of a dream, but touched with such coy grace, +modulated to such free, wild rhythm, suffused with such a delicate, +evanishing loveliness, that they seem scarcely to be the songs of our +tangible earth, but snatches from fairy-land. Often rude in form, often +defective in rhyme, and not unfrequently with even graver faults than +these, their ruggedness cannot hide the gleam of the sacred fire. "The +Spirit of the Age," moulding her pliant poets, was wiser than to meddle +with this sterner stuff. From what hidden cave in Rare Ben Jonson's +realm did the boy bring such an opal as this + + SONG. + + "My silks and fine array, + My smiles and languished air, + By Love are driven away; + And mournful, lean Despair + Brings me yew to deck my grave: + Such end true lovers have! + + "His face is fair as heaven, + Where springing buds unfold; + Oh, why to him was 't given, + Whose heart is wintry cold? + His breast is Love's all-worshipped tomb, + Where all Love's pilgrims come. + + "Bring me an axe and spade, + Bring me a winding-sheet; + When I my grave have made, + Let winds and tempests beat: + Then down I'll lie, as cold as clay. + True love doth pass away." + +What could the Spirit of the Age hope to do with a boy scarcely yet in +his teens, who dared arraign her in such fashion as is set forth in his +address + + TO THE MUSES. + + "Whether on Ida's shady brow, + Or in the chambers of the East, + The chambers of the Sun, that now + From ancient melody have ceased; + + "Whether in heaven ye wander fair, + Or the green corners of the earth, + Or the blue regions of the air, + Where the melodious winds have birth; + + "Whether on crystal rocks ye rove + Beneath the bosom of the sea, + Wandering in many a coral grove, + Fair Nine, forsaking Poetry; + + "How have you left the ancient love + That bards of old enjoyed in you! + The languid strings do scarcely move, + The sound is forced, the notes are few." + +Whereabouts in its Elegant Extracts would a generation that strung +together sonorous couplets, and compiled them into a book to Enforce the +Practice of Virtue, place such a ripple of verse as this?-- + + "Piping down the valleys wild, + Piping songs of pleasant glee, + On a cloud I saw a child, + And he, laughing, said to me: + + "'Pipe a song about a lamb!' + So I piped with merry cheer. + 'Piper, pipe that song again!' + So I piped; he wept to hear. + + "'Drop thy pipe, thy happy pipe; + Sing thy songs of happy cheer!' + So I sang the same again, + While he wept with joy to hear. + + "'Piper, sit thee down and write + In a book, that all may read!' + So he vanished from my sight. + And I plucked a hollow reed, + + "And I made a rural pen, + And I stained the water clear, + And I wrote my happy songs + Every child may joy to hear." + +A native of the jungle, leaping into the fine drawing-rooms of Cavendish +Square, would hardly create more commotion than such a poem as "The +Tiger," charging in among Epistles to the Earl of Dorset, Elegies +describing the Sorrow of an Ingenuous Mind, Odes innumerable to Memory, +Melancholy, Music, Independence, and all manner of odious themes. + + "Tiger, tiger, burning bright + In the forests of the night, + What immortal hand or eye + Framed thy fearful symmetry? + + "In what distant deeps or skies + Burned that fire within thine eyes? + On what wings dared he aspire? + What the hand dared seize the fire? + + "And what shoulder, and what art, + Could twist the sinews of thy heart? + When thy heart began to beat, + What dread hand formed thy dread feet? + + "What the hammer, what the chain, + Knit thy strength and forged thy brain? + What the anvil? What dread grasp + Dared thy deadly terrors clasp? + + "When the stars threw down their spears, + And watered heaven with their tears, + Did he smile his work to see? + Did He who made the lamb make thee?" + +Mrs. Montagu, by virtue of the "moral" in the last line, may possibly +have ventured to read the "Chimney-Sweeper" at her annual festival to +those swart little people; but we have not space to give the gem a +setting here; nor the "Little Black Boy," with its matchless, sweet +child-sadness. Indeed, scarcely one of these early poems--all written +between the ages of eleven and twenty--is without its peculiar, and +often its peerless charm. + +Arrived at the age of twenty-one, he finished his apprenticeship to +Basire, and began at once the work and worship of his life,--the latter +by studying at the Royal Academy, the former by engraving for the +booksellers. Introduced by a brother-artist to Flaxman, he joined him in +furnishing designs for the famous Wedgwood porcelain, and so one +dinner-set gave bread and butter to genius, and nightingales' tongues to +wealth. That he was not a docile, though a very devoted pupil, is +indicated by his reply to Moser, the keeper, who came to him, as he was +looking over prints from his beloved Raffaelle and Michel Angelo, and +said, "You should not study these old, hard, stiff, and dry, unfinished +works of Art: stay a little, and _I_ will show you what you should +study." He brought down Le Brun and Rubens. "How did I secretly rage!" +says Blake. "I also spake my mind! I said to Moser, 'These things that +you call finished are not even begun; how, then, can they be finished?'" +The reply of the startled teacher is not recorded. In other respects, +also, he swerved from Academical usage. Nature, as it appeared in models +artificially posed to enact an artificial part, became hateful to him, +seemed to him a caricature of Nature, though he delighted in the noble +antique figures. + +Nature soon appeared to him in another shape, and altogether charming. A +lively miss to whom he had paid court showed herself cold to his +advances; which circumstance he was one evening bemoaning to a +dark-eyed, handsome girl,--(a dangerous experiment, by the way,)--who +assured him that she pitied him from her heart. "_Do_ you pity me?" he +eagerly asked. "Yes, I do, most sincerely." "Then I love you for that," +replied the new Othello to his Desdemona; and so well did the wooing go +that the dark-eyed Catharine presently became his wife, the Kate of a +forty-five years' marriage. Loving, devoted, docile, she learned to be +helpmeet and companion. Never, on the one side, murmuring at the narrow +fortunes, nor, on the other, losing faith in the greatness to which she +had bound herself, she not only ordered well her small household, but +drew herself up within the range of her husband's highest sympathy. She +learned to read and write, and to work off his engravings. Nay, love +became for her creative, endowed her with a new power, the vision and +the faculty divine, and she presently learned to design with a spirit +and a grace hardly to be distinguished from her husband's. No children +came to make or mar their harmony; and from the summer morning in +Battersea that placed her hand in his, to the summer evening in London +that loosed it from his dying grasp, she was the true angel-vision, +Heaven's own messenger to the dreaming poet-painter. + +Being the head of a family, Blake now, as was proper, went into +"society." And what a society it was to enter! And what a man was Blake +to enter it! The society of President Reynolds, and Mr. Mason the poet, +and Mr. Sheridan the play-actor, and pompous Dr. Burney, and abstract +Dr. Delap,--all honorable men; a society that was dictated to by Dr. +Johnson, and delighted by Edmund Burke, and sneered at by Horace +Walpole, its untiring devotee: a society presided over by Mrs. Montagu, +whom Dr. Johnson dubbed Queen of the Blues; Mrs. Carter, borrowing, by +right of years, her matron's plumes; Mrs. Chapone, sensible, ugly, and +benevolent; the beautiful Mrs. Sheridan; the lively, absurd, incisive +Mrs. Cholmondeley; sprightly, witty Mrs. Thrale; and Hannah More, coiner +of guineas, both as saint and sinner: a most piquant, trenchant, and +entertaining society it was, and well might be, since the bullion of +genius was so largely wrought into the circulating medium of small talk; +but a society which, from sheer lack of vision, must have entertained +its angels unawares. Such was the current which caught up this +simple-hearted painter, this seer of unutterable things, this "eternal +child,"--caught him up only to drop him, with no creditable, but with +very credible haste. As a lion, he was undoubtedly thrice welcome in +Rathbone Place; but when it was found that the lion would not roar there +gently, nor be bound by their silken strings, but rather shook his mane +somewhat contemptuously at his would-be tamers, and kept, in their grand +saloons, his freedom of the wilderness, he was straightway suffered to +return to his fitting solitudes. One may imagine the consternation that +would be caused by this young fellow turning to Mrs. Carter, whose "talk +was all instruction," or to Mrs. Chapone, bent on the "improvement of +the mind," or to Miss Streatfield, with her "nose and notions _a la +Grecque_," and abruptly inquiring, "Madam, did you ever see a fairy's +funeral?" "Never, Sir!" responds the startled Muse. "I have," pursues +Blake, as calmly as if he were proposing to relate a _bon mot_ which he +heard at Lady Middleton's rout last night. "I was walking alone in my +garden last night: there was great stillness among the branches and +flowers, and more than common sweetness in the air. I heard a low and +pleasant sound, and knew not whence it came. At last I saw the broad +leaf of a flower move, and underneath I saw a procession of creatures of +the size and color of green and gray grasshoppers, bearing a body laid +out on a rose-leaf, which they buried with songs, and then disappeared. +It was a fairy funeral." Or they are discussing, somewhat pompously, +Herschel's late discovery of Uranus, and the immense distances of +heavenly bodies, when Blake bursts out uproariously, "'Tis false! I was +walking down a lane the other day, and at the end of it I touched the +sky with my stick." Truly, for this wild man, who obstinately refuses to +let his mind be regulated, but bawls out his mad visions the louder, the +more they are combated, there is nothing for it but to go back to his +Kitty, and the little tenement in Green Street. + +But real friends Blake found, who, if they could not quite understand +him, could love and honor and assist. Flaxman, the "Sculptor for +Eternity," and Fuseli, the fiery-hearted Swiss painter, stood up for him +manfully. His own younger brother, Robert, shared his talents, and +became for a time a loved and honored member of his family,--too much +honored, if we may credit an anecdote in which the brother appears to +much better advantage than the husband. A dispute having one day arisen +between Robert and Mrs. Blake, Mr. Blake, after a while, deemed her to +have gone too far, and bade her kneel down and beg Robert's pardon, or +never see her husband's face again. Nowise convinced, she nevertheless +obeyed the stern command, and acknowledged herself in the wrong. "Young +woman, you lie!" retorted Robert "_I_ am in the wrong!" This beloved +brother died at the age of twenty-five. During his last illness, Blake +attended him with the most affectionate devotion, nor ever left the +bedside till he beheld the disembodied spirit leave the frail clay and +soar heavenward, clapping its hands for joy! + +His brother gone, though not so far away that he did not often revisit +the old home,--friendly Flaxman in Italy, but more inaccessible there +than Robert in the heaven which lay above this man in his perpetual +infancy,--the _bas-bleus_ reinclosed in the charmed circle in which +Blake had so riotously disported himself, a small attempt at +partnership, shop-keeping, and money-making, wellnigh "dead before it +was born,"--the poet began to think of publishing. The verses of which +we have spoken had been seen but by few people, and the store was +constantly increasing. Influence with the publishers, and money to +defray expenses, were alike wanting. A copy of Lavater's "Aphorisms," +translated by his fellow-countryman, Fuseli, had received upon its +margins various annotations which reveal the man in his moods. "The +great art to love your enemy consists in never losing sight of _man_ in +him," says Lavater. "None _can_ see the man in the enemy," pencils +Blake. "If he is ignorantly so, he is not truly an enemy; if maliciously +so, not a man. I cannot love my enemy; for my enemy is not a man, but a +beast. And if I have any, I can love him as a beast, and wish to beat +him." No equivocation here, surely. On superstition he comments,--"It +has been long a bugbear, by reason of its having been united with +hypocrisy. But let them be fairly separated, and then superstition will +be honest feeling, and God, who loves all honest men, will lead the poor +enthusiast in the path of holiness." Herein lies the germ of a truth. +Again, Lavater says,--"A great woman not imperious, a fair woman not +vain, a woman of common talents not jealous, an accomplished woman who +scorns to shine, are four wonders just great enough to be divided among +the four corners of the globe." Whereupon Blake adds,--"Let the men do +their duty, and the women will be such wonders; the female life lives +from the life of the male. See a great many female dependents, and you +know the man." If this be madness, would that the madman might have +bitten all mankind before he died! To the advice, "Take here the grand +secret, if not of pleasing all, yet of displeasing none: court +mediocrity, avoid originality, and sacrifice to fashion," he appends, +with an evident reminiscence of Rathbone Place, "And go to hell." + +But this private effervescence was not enough; and long thinking +anxiously as to ways and means, suddenly, in the night, Robert stood +before him, and revealed to him a secret by which a facsimile of poetry +and design could be produced. On rising in the morning, Mrs. Blake was +sent out with a half-crown to buy the necessary materials, and with that +he began an experiment which resulted in furnishing his principal means +of support through life. It consisted in a species of engraving in +relief both of the words and the designs of his poems, by a process +peculiar and original. From his plates he printed off in any tint he +chose, afterwards coloring up his designs by hand. Joseph, the sacred +carpenter, had appeared in a vision, and revealed to him certain secrets +of coloring. Mrs. Blake delighted to assist him in taking impressions, +which she did with great skill, in tinting the designs, and in doing up +the pages in boards; so that everything, except manufacturing the paper, +was done by the poet and his wife. Never before, as his biographer +justly remarks, was a man so literally the author of his own book. If we +may credit the testimony that is given, or even judge from such proofs +as Mr. Gilchrist's book can furnish, these works of his hands were +exquisitely beautiful. The effect of the poems imbedded in their designs +is, we are told, quite different from their effect set naked upon a +blank page. It was as if he had transferred scenery and characters from +that spirit-realm where his own mind wandered at will; and from wondrous +lips wondrous words came fitly, and with surpassing power. Confirmation +of this we find in the few plates of "Songs of Innocence" which have +been recovered. Shorn of the radiant rainbow hues, the golden sheen, +with which the artist, angel-taught, glorified his pictures, they still +body for us the beauty of his "Happy Valley." Children revel there in +unchecked play. Springing vines, in wild exuberance of life, twine +around the verse, thrusting their slender coils in among the lines. +Weeping willows dip their branches into translucent pools. Heavy-laden +trees droop their ripe, rich clusters overhead. Under the shade of +broad-spreading oaks little children climb on the tiger's yielding back +and stroke the lion's tawny mane in a true Millennium. + +The first series, "Songs of Innocence," was succeeded by "Songs of +Experience," subsequently bound in one volume. Then came the book of +"Thel," an allegory, wherein Thel, beautiful daughter of the Seraphim, +laments the shortness of her life down by the River of Adona, and is +answered by the Lily of the Valley, the Little Cloud, the Lowly Worm, +and the Clod of Clay; the burden of whose song is-- + + "But how this is, sweet maid, I know not, and I cannot know, + I ponder, and I cannot ponder: yet I live and love!" + +The designs give the beautiful daughter listening to the Lily and the +Cloud. The Clod is an infant wrapped in a lily-leaf. The effect of the +whole poem and design together is as of an "angel's reverie." + +The "Marriage of Heaven and Hell" is considered one of the most curious +and original of his works. After an opening "Argument" comes a series of +"Proverbs of Hell," which, however, answer very well for earth: as, "A +fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees"; "He whose face gives +no light shall never become a star"; "The apple-tree never asks the +beech how he shall grow, nor the lion the horse how he shall take his +prey." The remainder of the book consists of "Memorable Fancies," half +dream, half allegory, sublime and grotesque inextricably commingling, +but all ornamented with designs most daring and imaginative in +conception, and steeped in the richest color. We subjoin a description +of one or two, as a curiosity. "A strip of azure sky surmounts, and of +land divides, the words of the title-page, leaving on each side scant +and baleful trees, little else than stem and spray. Drawn on a tiny +scale lies a corpse, and one bends over it. Flames burst forth below and +slant upward across the page, gorgeous with every hue. In their very +core, two spirits rush together and embrace." In the seventh design is +"a little island of the sea, where an infant springs to its mother's +bosom. From the birth-cleft ground a spirit has half emerged. Below, +with outstretched arms and hoary beard, an awful, ancient man rushes at +you, as it were, out of the page." The eleventh is "a surging of mingled +fire, water, and blood, wherein roll the volumes of a huge, +double-fanged serpent, his crest erect, his jaws wide open." "The +ever-fluctuating color, the spectral pigmies rolling, flying, leaping +among the letters, the ripe bloom of quiet corners, the living light and +bursts of flame, the spires and tongues of fire vibrating with the full +prism, make the page seem to move and quiver within its boundaries, and +you lay the book down tenderly, as if you had been handling something +sentient." + +We have not space to give a description, scarcely even a catalogue, of +Blake's numerous works. Wild, fragmentary, gorgeous dreams they are, +tangled in with strange allegoric words and designs, that throb with +their prisoned vitality. The energy, the might, the intensity of his +lines and figures it is impossible for words to convey. It is power in +the fiercest, most eager action,--fire and passion, the madness and the +stupor of despair, the frenzy of desire, the lurid depths of woe, that +thrill and rivet you even in the comparatively lifeless rendering of +this book. The mere titles of the poems give but a slight clue to their +character. Ideas are upheaved in a tossing surge of words. It is a +mystic, but lovely Utopia, into which "The Gates of Paradise" open. The +practical name of "America" very faintly foreshadows the Ossianic Titans +that glide across its pages, or the tricksy phantoms, the headlong +spectres, the tongues of flame, the folds and fangs of symbolic +serpents, that writhe and leap and dart and riot there. With a poem +named "Europe," we should scarcely expect for a frontispiece the Ancient +of Days, in unapproached grandeur, setting his "compass upon the face of +the Earth,"--a vision revealed to the designer at the top of his own +staircase. + +Small favor and small notice these works secured from the public, which +found more edification in the drunken courtship and brutal squabbles of +"the First Gentleman of Europe" than in Songs of Innocence or Sculptures +for Eternity. The poet's own friends constituted his public, and +patronized him to the extent of their power. The volume of Songs he sold +for thirty shillings and two guineas. Afterwards, with the delicate and +loving design of helping the artist, who would receive help in no other +way, five and even ten guineas were paid, for which sum he could hardly +do enough, finishing off each picture like a miniature. One solitary +patron he had, Mr. Thomas Butts, who, buying his pictures for thirty +years, and turning his own house into "a perfect Blake Gallery, often +supplied the painter with his sole means of subsistence." May he have +his reward! Most pathetic is an anecdote related by Mr. H.C. Robinson, +who found himself one morning sole visitor at an Exhibition which Blake +had opened, on his own account, at his brother James's house. In view of +the fact that he had bought four copies of the Descriptive Catalogue, +Mr. Robinson inquired of James, the custodian, if he might not come +again free. "Oh, yes! _free as long an you live_!" was the reply of the +humble hosier, overjoyed at having so munificent a visitor, or a visitor +at all. + +We have a sense of incongruity in seeing this defiant, but sincere +pencil employed by publishers to illustrate the turgid sorrow of Young's +"Night Thoughts." The work was to have been issued in parts, but got no +farther than the first. (It would have been no great calamity, if the +poem itself had come to the same premature end!) The sonorous mourner +could hardly have recognized himself in the impersonations in which he +was presented, nor his progeny in the concrete objects to which they +were reduced. The well-known couplet, + + "'Tis greatly wise to talk with our past hours + And ask them what report they've borne to heaven," + +is represented by hours "drawn as aerial and shadowy beings," some of +whom are bringing their scrolls to the inquirer, and others are carrying +their records to heaven. + + "Oft burst my song beyond the bounds of life" + +has a lovely figure, holding a lyre, and springing into the air, but +confined by a chain to the earth. Death puts off his skeleton, and +appears as a solemn, draped figure; but in many cases the clerical poet +is "taken at his word," with a literalness more startling than +dignified. + +Introduced by Flaxman to Hayley, friend and biographer of Cowper, +favorably known to his contemporaries, though now wellnigh forgotten, +Blake was invited to Felpham, and began there a new life. It is pleasant +to look back upon this period. Hayley, the kindly, generous, vain, +imprudent, impulsive country squire, not at all excepting himself in his +love for mankind, pouring forth sonnets on the slightest +provocation,--indeed, so given over to the vice of verse, that + + "he scarce could ope + His mouth but out there flew a trope,"-- + +floating with the utmost self-complacence down the smooth current of his +time; and Blake, sensitive, unique, protestant, impracticable, +aggressive: it was a rare freak of Fate that brought about such +companionship; yet so true courtesy was there that for four years they +lived and wrought harmoniously together,--Hayley pouring out his +harmless wish-wash, and Blake touching it with his fiery gleam. Their +joint efforts were hardly more pecuniarily productive than Blake's +single-handed struggles; but his life there had other and better fruits. +In the little cottage overlooking the sea, fanned by the pure breeze, +and smiled upon by sunshine of the hills, he tasted rare spiritual joy. +Throwing off mortal incumbrance,--never, indeed, an overweight to +him,--he revelled in his clairvoyance. The lights that shimmered across +the sea shone from other worlds. The purple of the gathering darkness +was the curtain of God's tabernacle. Gray shadows of the gloaming +assumed mortal shapes, and he talked with Moses and the prophets, and +the old heroes of song. The Ladder of Heaven was firmly fixed by his +garden-gate, and the angels ascended and descended. A letter written to +Flaxman, soon after his arrival at Felpham, is so characteristic that we +cannot refrain from transcribing it:-- + + "DEAR SCULPTOR OF ETERNITY,--We are safe arrived at our cottage, + which is more beautiful than I thought it, and more convenient. It + is a perfect model for cottages, and, I think, for palaces of + magnificence,--only enlarging, not altering, its proportions, and + adding ornaments, and not principles. Nothing can be more grand + than its simplicity and usefulness. Simple, without intricacy, it + seems to be the spontaneous expression of humanity, congenial to + the wants of man. No other formed house can ever please me so + well, nor shall I ever be persuaded, I believe, that it can be + improved, either in beauty or use. + + "Mr. Hayley received us with his usual brotherly affection. I have + begun to work. Felpham is a sweet place for study, because it is + more spiritual than London. Heaven opens here on all sides her + golden gates; her windows are not obstructed by vapors; voices of + celestial inhabitants are more distinctly heard, and their forms + more distinctly seen; and my cottage is also a shadow of their + houses. My wife and sister are both well, courting Neptune for an + embrace. + + "Our journey was very pleasant; and though we had a great deal of + luggage, no grumbling. All was cheerfulness and good-humor on the + road, and yet we could not arrive at our cottage before half-past + eleven at night, owing to the necessary shifting of our luggage + from one chaise to another; for we had seven different chaises, + and as many different drivers. We set out between six and seven in + the morning of Thursday, with sixteen heavy boxes and portfolios + full of prints. + + "And now begins a new life, because another covering of earth is + shaken off. I am more famed in heaven for my works than I could + well conceive. In my brain are studies and chambers filled with + books and pictures of old, which I wrote and painted in ages of + Eternity, before my mortal life, and those works are the delight + and study of archangels. Why, then, should I be anxious about the + riches or fame of mortality? The Lord our Father will do for us + and with us according to Ins Divine will, for our good. + + "You, O dear Flaxman, are a sublime archangel,--my friend and + companion from Eternity. In the Divine bosom is our + dwelling-place. I look back into the regions of reminiscence, and + behold our ancient days, before this earth appeared in its + vegetated mortality to my mortal vegetated eyes. I see our houses + of eternity, which can never be separated, though our mortal + vehicles should stand at the remotest corners of heaven from each + other. + + "Farewell, my best friend! Remember me and my wife in love and + friendship to our dear Mrs. Flaxman, whom we ardently desire to + entertain beneath our thatched roof of rusted gold. And believe me + forever to remain your grateful and affectionate + + "WILLIAM BLAKE." + +Other associations than spiritual ones mingle with the Felpham sojourn. +A drunken soldier one day broke into his garden, and, being great of +stature, despised the fewer inches of the owner. But between spirits of +earth and spirits of the skies there is but one issue to the conflict, +and Blake "laid hold of the intrusive blackguard, and turned him out +neck and crop, in a kind of inspired frenzy." The astonished ruffian +made good his retreat, but in revenge reported sundry words that +exasperation had struck from his conqueror. The result was a trial for +high treason at the next Quarter Sessions. Friends gathered about him, +testifying to his previous character; nor was Blake himself at all +dismayed. When the soldiers trumped up their false charges in court, he +did not scruple to cry out, "False!" with characteristic and convincing +vehemence. Had this trial occurred at the present day, it would hardly +be necessary to say that he was triumphantly acquitted. But fifty years +ago such a matter wore a graver aspect. In his early life he had been an +advocate of the French Revolution, an associate of Price, Priestley, +Godwin, and Tom Paine, a wearer of white cockade and _bonnet rouge_. He +had even been instrumental in saving Tom Paine's life, by hurrying him +to France, when the Government was on his track; but all this was +happily unknown to the Chichester lawyers, and Blake, more fortunate +than some of his contemporaries, escaped the gallows. + +The disturbance caused by this untoward incident, the repeated failures +of literary attempts, the completion of Cowper's Life, which had been +the main object of his coming, joined, doubtless, to a surfeit of +Hayley, induced a return to London. He feared, too, that his imaginative +faculty was failing. "The visions were angry with me at Felpham," he +used afterwards to say. We regret to see, also, that he seems not always +to have been in the kindest of moods towards his patron. Indeed, it was +a weakness of his to fall out occasionally with his best friends; but +when a man is waited upon by angels and ministers of grace, it is not +surprising that he should sometimes be impatient with mere mortals. Nor +is it difficult to imagine that the bland and trivial Hayley, +perpetually kind, patronizing, and obvious, should, without any definite +provocation, become presently insufferable to such a man as Blake. + +Returned to London, he resumed the production of his oracular +works,--"prophetic books," he called them. These he illustrated with his +own peculiar and beautiful designs, "all sanded over with a sort of +golden mist." Among much that is incoherent and incomprehensible may be +found passages of great force, tenderness, and beauty. The concluding +verses of the Preface to "Milton" we quote, as shadowing forth his great +moral purpose, and as revealing also the luminous heart of the cloud +that so often turns to us only its gray and obscure exterior:-- + + "And did those feet in ancient time + Walk upon England's mountain green? + And was the holy Lamb of God + On England's pleasant pastures seen? + + "And did the countenance Divine + Shine forth upon our clouded hills? + And was Jerusalem builded here + Among these dark, Satanic hills? + + "Bring me my bow of burning gold! + Bring me my arrows of desire! + Bring me my spear! O clouds, unfold! + Bring me my chariot of fire! + + "I will not cease from mental fight, + Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand, + Till we have built Jerusalem + In England's green and pleasant land." + +The same lofty aim is elsewhere expressed in the line,-- + + "I touch the heavens as an instrument to glorify the Lord!" + +Our rapidly diminishing space warns us to be brief, and we can only +glance at a few of the remaining incidents of this outwardly calm, yet +inwardly eventful life. In an evil hour--though to it we owe the +"Illustrations to Blair's Grave"--he fell into the hands of Cromek, the +shrewd Yorkshire publisher, and was tenderly entreated, as a dove in the +talons of a kite. The famous letter of Cromek to Blake is one of the +finest examples on record of long-headed worldliness bearing down upon +wrong-headed genius. Though clutching the palm in this case, and in some +others, it is satisfactory to know that Cromek's clever turns led to no +other end than poverty; and nothing worse than poverty had Blake, with +all his simplicity, to encounter. But Blake, in his poverty, had meat to +eat which the wily publisher knew not of. + +In the wake of this failure followed another. Blake had been engaged to +make twenty drawings to illustrate Ambrose Philips's "Virgil's +Pastorals" for schoolboys. The publishers saw them, and stood aghast, +declaring he must do no more. The engravers received them with derision, +and pronounced sentence, "This will never do." Encouraged, however, by +the favorable opinion of a few artists who saw them, the publishers +admitted, with an apology, the seventeen which had already been +executed, and gave the remaining three into more docile hands. Of the +two hundred and thirty cuts, the namby-pambyism, which was thought to be +the only thing adapted to the capacity of children, has sunk to the +level of its worthlessness, and the book now is valued only for Blake's +small contribution. + +Of an entirely different nature were the "Inventions from the Book of +Job," which are pronounced the most remarkable series of etchings on a +Scriptural theme that have been produced since the days of Rembrandt and +Albrecht Duerer. Of these drawings we have copies in the second volume of +the "Life," from which one can gather something of their grandeur, their +bold originality, their inexhaustible and often terrible power. His +representations of God the Father will hardly accord with modern taste, +which generally eschews all attempt to embody the mind's conceptions of +the Supreme Being; but Blake was far more closely allied to the ancient +than to the modern world. His portraiture and poetry often remind us of +the childlike familiarity--not rude in him, but utterly reverent--which +was frequently, and sometimes offensively, displayed in the old miracle +and moral plays. + +These drawings, during the latter part of his life, secured him from +actual want. A generous friend, Mr. Linnell, himself a struggling young +artist, gave him a commission, and paid him a small weekly stipend: it +was sufficient to keep the wolf from the door, and that was enough: so +the wolf was kept away, his lintel was uncrossed 'gainst angels. It was +little to this piper that the public had no ear for his piping,--to this +painter, that there was no eye for his pictures. + + "His soul was like a star, and dwelt apart." + +He had but to withdraw to his inner chamber, and all honor and +recognition awaited him. The pangs of poverty or coldness he never +experienced, for his life was on a higher plane:-- + + "I am in God's presence night and day, + He never turns his face away." + +When a little girl of extraordinary beauty was brought to him, his +kindest wish, as he stood stroking her long ringlets, was, "May God make +this world to you, my child, as beautiful as it has been to me!" His own +testimony declares,-- + + "The angel who presided at my birth + Said,--'Little creature, formed of joy and mirth, + Go, love without the help of anything on earth!'" + +But much help from above came to him. The living lines that sprung +beneath his pencil were but reminiscences of his spiritual home. +Immortal visitants, unseen by common eyes, hung enraptured over his +sketches, lent a loving ear to his songs, and left with him their legacy +to Earth. There was no looking back mournfully on the past, nor forward +impatiently to the future, but a rapturous, radiant, eternal now. Every +morning came heavy-freighted with its own delights; every evening +brought its own exceeding great reward. + +So, refusing to the last to work in traces,--flying out against +Reynolds, the bland and popular President of the Royal Academy, yet +acknowledging with enthusiasm what he deemed to be excellence,--loving +Fuseli with a steadfast love through all neglect, and hurling his +indignation at a public that refused to see his worth,--flouting at +Bacon, the great philosopher, and fighting for Barry, the restorer of +the antique, he resolutely pursued his appointed way unmoved. But the +day was fast drawing on into darkness. The firm will never quailed, but +the sturdy feet faltered. Yet, as the sun went down, soft lights +overspread the heavens. Young men came to him with fresh hearts, and +drew out all the freshness of his own. Little children learned to watch +for his footsteps over the Hampstead hills, and sat on his knee, sunning +him with their caresses. Men who towered above their time, reverencing +the god within, and bowing not down to the _daemon a la mode_, gathered +around him, listened to his words, and did obeisance to his genius. They +never teased him with unsympathetic questioning, or enraged him with +blunt contradiction. They received his visions simply, and discussed +them rationally, deeming them worthy of study rather than of ridicule or +vulgar incredulity. To their requests the spirits were docile. Sitting +by his side at midnight, they watched while he summoned from unknown +realms long-vanished shades. William Wallace arose from his "gory bed," +Edward I. turned back from the lilies of France, and, forgetting their +ancient hate, stood before him with placid dignity. The man who built +the Pyramids lifted his ungainly features from the ingulfing centuries; +souls of blood--thirsty men, duly forced into the shape of fleas, lent +their hideousness to his night; and the Evil One himself did not disdain +to sit for his portrait to this undismayed magician. That these are +actual portraits of concrete object? is not to be affirmed. That they +are portraits of what Blake saw is as little to be denied. We are +assured that his whole manner was that of a man copying, and not +inventing, and the simplicity and sincerity of his life forbid any +thought of intentional deceit. No criticism affected him. Nothing could +shake his faith. "It must be right: I saw it so," was the beginning and +end of his defence. The testimony of these friends of his is that he was +of all artists most spiritual, devoted, and single-minded. One of them +says, if asked to point out among the intellectual a happy man, he +should at once think of Blake. One, a young artist, finding his +invention flag for a whole fortnight, had recourse to Blake. + +"It is just so with us," he exclaimed, turning to his wife, "is it not, +for weeks together, when the visions forsake us? What do we do then, +Kate?" + +"We kneel down and pray, Mr. Blake." + +To these choice spirits, these enthusiastic and confiding friends, his +house was the House of the Interpreter. The little back-room, kitchen, +bedroom, studio, and parlor in one, plain and neat, had for them a kind +of enchantment. That royal presence lighted up the "hole" into a palace. +The very walls widened with the greatness of his soul. The windows that +opened on the muddy Thames seemed to overlook the river of the water of +life. Among the scant furnishings, his high thoughts, set in noble +words, gleamed like apples of gold in pictures of silver. Over the gulf +that yawns between two worlds he flung a glorious arch, and walked +tranquilly back and forth. Heaven was as much a matter-of-fact to him as +earth. Of sacred things he spoke with a familiarity which, to those who +did not understand him, seemed either madness or blasphemy; but his +friends never misunderstood. With one exception, none who knew him +personally ever thought of calling his sanity in question. To them he +was a sweet, gentle, lovable man. They felt the truth of his life. They +saw that + + "Only that fine madness still he did retain + Which rightly should possess a poet's brain." + +Imagination was to him the great reality. The external, that which makes +the chief consciousness of most men, was to him only staging, an +incumbrance, and uncouth, but to be endured and made the most of. The +world of the imagination was the true world. Imagination _bodied_ forth +the forms of things unknown in a deeper sense, perhaps, than the great +dramatist meant. His poet's pen, his painter's pencil turned them to +shapes, and gave to airy nothings a local habitation and a name. Nay, he +denied that they were nothings. He rather asserted the actual existence +of his visions,--an existence as real, though not of the same nature, as +those of the bed or the table. Imagination was a kind of sixth sense, +and its objects were as real as the objects of the other senses. This +sense he believed to exist, though latent, in every one, and to be +susceptible of development by cultivation. This is surely a very +different thing from madness. Neither is it the low superstition of +ghosts. He recounted no miracle, nothing supernatural. It was only that +by strenuous effort and untiring devotion he had penetrated beyond the +rank and file--but not beyond the possibilities of the rank and +file--into the unseen world. Undoubtedly this power finally assumed +undue proportions. In his isolation it led him on too unresistingly. His +generation knew him not. It neglected where it should have trained, and +stared where it should have studied. He was not wily enough to conceal +or gloss over his views. Often silent with congenial companions, he +would thrust in with boisterous assertion in the company of captious +opponents. Set upon by the unfriendly and the conventional, he wilfully +hurled out his wild utterances, exaggerating everything, scorning all +explanation or modification, goading peculiarities into reckless +extravagance, on purpose to puzzle and startle, and so avenging himself +by playing off upon those who attempted to play off upon him. To the +gentle, the reverent, the receptive, the simple, he, too, was gentle and +reverent. + +Nearest and dearest of all, the "beloved Kate" held him in highest +honor. The ripples that disturbed the smooth flow of their early life +had died away and left an unruffled current. To the childless wife, he +was child, husband, and lover. No sphere so lofty, but he could come +quickly down to perform the lowliest duties. The empty platter, silently +placed on the dinner-table, was the signal for his descent from +Parnassus to the money-earning graver. No angel-faces kept him from +lighting the morning fire and setting on the breakfast-kettle before his +Kitty awoke. Their life became one. Her very spirit passed into his. By +day and by night her love surrounded him. In his moments of fierce +inspiration, when he would arise from his bed to sketch or write the +thoughts that tore his brain, she, too, arose and sat by his side, +silent, motionless, soothing him only by the tenderness of her presence. +Years and wintry fortunes made havoc of her beauty, but love renewed it +day by day for the eyes of her lover, and their hands only met in firmer +clasp as they neared the Dark River. + +It was reached at last. No violent steep, but a gentle and gracious +slope led to the cold waters that had no bitterness for him. Shining +already in the glory of the celestial city, his eyes rested upon the +dear form that had stood by his side through all these years, and with +waning strength he cried, "Stay! Keep as you are! _You_ have been ever +an angel to me: I will draw you." And, summoning his forces, he sketched +his last portrait of the fond and faithful wife. Then, comforting her +with the shortness of their separation, assuring her that he should +always be about her to take care of her, he set his face steadfastly +towards the Beautiful Gate. So joyful was his passage, so triumphant his +march, that the very sight was to them that could behold it as if heaven +itself were come down to meet him. Even the sorrowing wife could but +listen enraptured to the sweet songs he chanted to his Maker's praise; +but, "They are _not_ mine, my beloved!" he tenderly cried; "_No!_ they +are _not_ mine!" The strain he heard was of a higher mood; and +continually sounding as he went, with melodious noise, in notes on high, +he entered in through the gates into the City. + + * * * * * + +THE FIRST VISIT TO WASHINGTON. + + +One chill morning in the autumn of 1826, in the town of Keene, New +Hampshire, lights might have been seen at an unusually early hour in the +windows of a yellow one-story-and-a-half house, that stood--and still +stands, perhaps--on the corner of the main street and the Swanzey road. + +There was living in that house a blind widow, the mother of a large +family of children, now mostly scattered; and the occasion of the +unseasonable lights was the departure from home of a son yet left to +her, upon a long and uncertain adventure. + +He was a young man, eighteen years old, just out of college. Graduating +at Dartmouth, he had brought away from that institution something better +than book-learning,--a deep religious experience, which was to be his +support through trials now quickly to come, and through a subsequent +prosperity more dangerous to the soul than trials. He had been bred a +farmer's boy. He was poor, and had his living to get. And he was now +going out into the world, he scarcely knew whither, to see what prizes +were to be won. In person he was tall, slender, slightly bent; shy and +diffident in his manners; in his appearance a little green and awkward. +He had an impediment in his speech also. His name--it is an odd one, but +you may perhaps have heard it--was Salmon. + +He had been up long before day, making preparations for the journey. His +mother was up also, busily assisting him, though blind,--her intelligent +hands placing together the linen that was to remind him affectingly of +her, when unpacked in a distant city. + +A singular hush was upon the little household, though all were so +active. The sisters moved about noiselessly by candle-light, their pale +cheeks and constrained lips betraying the repressed emotion. The early +breakfast was eaten in silence,--anxious eyes looking up now and then at +the clock. It was only when the hour for the starting of the stage +struck that all seemed suddenly to remember that there were a thousand +things to be said; and so the last moments were crowded with last words. + +"Your blessing, mother!" said Salmon, (for we shall call the youth by +the youth's name,) bending before her with his heart chokingly full. + +She rose up from her chair. Her right hand held his; the other was laid +lovingly over his neck. Her blind eyes were turned upward prayerfully, +and tears streamed from them as she spoke and blessed him. Then a last +embrace; and he hurried forth from the house, his checks still wet,--not +with his own tears. + +The stage took him up. He climbed to the driver's seat. Then again the +dull clank of the lumbering coach-wheels was heard,--a heavy sound to +the mother's ears. In the dim, still light of the frosty morning he +turned and waved back his farewell to her who could not see, took his +last look at the faces at the door, and so departed from that home +forever. The past was left behind him, with all its dear associations; +and before him rose the future, chill, uncertain, yet not without gleams +of rosy brightness, like the dawn then breaking upon Monadnock's misty +head. + +Thus went forth the young man into the world, seeking his fortune. +Conscious of power, courageous, shrinking from no hardship, palpitating +with young dreams, he felt that he had his place off yonder somewhere, +beneath that brightening sky, beyond those purple hills,--but where? + +In due time he arrived in New York; but something within assured him +that here was not the field of his fortunes. So he went on to +Philadelphia. There he made a longer stop. He had a letter of +introduction to the Rev. Mr. ----, who received him with hospitality, +and used his influence to assist him in gaining a position. But the door +of Providence did not open yet: Philadelphia was not that door: his path +led farther. + +So he kept on, still drawn by that magnet which we call Destiny. He went +to Frederick: still the invisible finger pointed on. At last there was +but one more step. He secured a seat in the stage going down the +Frederick road to Washington. + +Years after he was to approach the capital of the nation with far +different prospects! But this was his first visit. It was at the close +of a bleak day, late in November, that he came in sight of the city. The +last tint of daylight was fading from a sullen sky. The dreary twilight +was setting in. Cold blew the wind from over the Maryland hills. The +trees were leafless; they shook and whistled in the blast. Gloom was +shutting down upon the capital. The city wore a dismal and forbidding +aspect; and the whole landscape was desolate and discouraging in the +extreme. Here was mud, in which the stage-coach lurched and rolled as it +descended the hills. Yonder was the watery spread of the Potomac, gray, +cold, dimly seen under the shadow of coming night. Between this mud and +that water what was there for him? Yet here was his destination. + +Years after there dwelt in Washington a man high in position, wielding a +power that was felt not only throughout this nation, but in Europe +also,--his hand dispensing benefits, his door thronged by troops of +friends. But now it was a city of strangers he was entering, a youth. Of +all the dwellers there he knew not a living soul. There was no one to +dispense favors to _him_,--to receive _him_ with cheerful look and +cordial grasp of the hand. A heavy foreboding settled upon his spirit, +as the darkness settled upon the hills. Here he was, alone and +unknown,--a bashful boy as yet, utterly wanting in that ready audacity +by means of which persons of extreme shallowness often push themselves +into notice. Well might he foresee days of gloom, long days of waiting +and struggle, stretching like the landscape before him! + +But he was not disheartened. From the depths of his spirit arose a hope, +like a bubble from a deep spring. That spring was FAITH. There, in that +dull, bleak November twilight, he seemed to feel the hand of Providence +take hold of his. And a prayer rose to his lips,--a prayer of earnest +supplication for guidance and support. Was that prayer answered? + +The stage rumbled through the naked suburbs and along the unlighted +streets. + +"Where do you stop?" asked the driver. + +"Set me down at a boarding-house, if you know of a good one." For Salmon +could not afford to go to a hotel. + +"What sort of a boarding-house? I know of a good many. Some 's right +smart,--'ristocratic, and 'ristocratic prices. Then there's some good +enough in every way, only not quite so smart,--and with this advantage, +you don't have the smartness to pay for." + +"I prefer to go to a good house, where there are nice people, without +too much smartness to be put into the bill." + +"I know jest the kind of place, I reckon!"--and the driver whipped up +his jaded horses. + +He drew up before a respectable-looking wooden tenement on Pennsylvania +Avenue, the windows of which, just lighted up, looked warm and inviting +to the chilled and weary traveller. + +"Good evening, Mrs. Markham!" said the driver to a kindly-looking lady +who came to the door at his knock. "Got room for a boarder?" + +"I don't know, I'm sure. I'm afraid not," said the lady, loud enough for +Salmon to hear and be discouraged. "There's only half a room +unoccupied,--if he would be content with that, and if he's the right +sort of person"-- + +Here she said something in a whisper to the driver, who apparently +pointed out Salmon to her inspection. + +But it was too dark for her to decide whether he would do to put into +the room with Williams; so Salmon had to get down and show himself. She +examined him, and he inquired her terms. They appeared mutually +satisfied. Accordingly the driver received directions to deposit +Salmon's baggage in the entry; and the hungry and benumbed young +traveller had the comfort of feeling that he had reached a home. + +Grateful at finding a kind woman's face to welcome him,--glad of the +opportunity to economize his slender means by sharing a room with +another person, strongly-recommended as "very quiet" by Mrs. +Markham,--Salmon washed his face, combed his hair, and ate his first +supper in Washington. He has eaten better suppers there since, no +doubt,--but not many, I fancy, that have been sweetened by a more devout +sense of reliance upon Providence. + +"Williams was a companionable person, who had a place in the Treasury +Department, and talked freely about the kind of work he had to do, and +the salary. + +"Eight hundred a year!" thought Salmon, deeming that man enviable who +had constant employment, an assured position, and eight hundred a year. +_His_ ambition was to get a living simply,--to place his foot upon some +certainty, however humble, with freedom from this present gnawing +anxiety, and with a prospect of rising, he cared not how slowly, to the +place which he felt belonged to him in the future. Little did he dream +what that place was, when he questioned Williams so curiously as to what +sort of thing the Treasury Department might be. + +"If I could be sure of half that salary,--or even of three, or two +hundred, just enough to pay my expenses, the first year,--I should be +perfectly happy!" + +"Haven't you any idea what you are going to do?" + +"None whatever." + +"What _can_ you do?" + +"For one thing, I can teach. I think I shall try that." + +"You'll find it a mighty hard place to get pupils!" said Williams, with +a dubious smile. + +Which rather gloomy prediction Salmon had to think of before going to +bed. + +But soon another subject, which he deemed of far greater importance, +occupied his mind. He had of late been seriously considering whether it +was his duty to continue his private devotions openly, or in +secret,--and had concluded, that, when occasion seemed to require it, he +ought to make an open manifestation of his faith. Here now was a test +for his conscience. His room-mate showed no signs of going out again +that night: he had pulled off his boots, put on his slippers, and +lighted his pipe. Salmon had already inferred, from the tone of his +conversation, that he was not a person who could sympathize with him in +his religious sentiments. Yet he must kneel there in his presence, if he +knelt at all. It was not the fear of ridicule, but a certain +sensitiveness of spirit, which caused him to shrink from the act. He did +not hesitate long, however. He turned, and knelt by his chair. Williams +took the pipe out of his mouth, and looked at him over his shoulder with +curious amazement. Not a word was spoken. Salmon, feeling that he had no +right to intrude his devotions upon the ear of another, prayed silently; +and Williams, compelled to respect the courageous, yet quiet manner in +which he performed what he regarded as a solemn duty, kept his +astonishment to himself. + +Then Salmon arose, and went to bed for that first time in Washington +under Mrs. Markham's roof. + +On the twenty-third of December, 1826, the following advertisement +appeared in the columns of the "National Intelligencer":-- + + "SELECT CLASSICAL SCHOOL. + + "The Subscriber intends opening a Select Classical School, in the + Western part of the City, to commence on the second Monday in + January. His number of pupils will be limited to twenty, which + will enable him to devote a much larger portion of his time and + attention than ordinary to each individual student. Instruction + will be given in all the studies preparatory to entering College, + or, if desired, in any of the higher branches of a classical + education. The subscriber pledges himself that no effort shall be + wanting on his part to promote both the moral and intellectual + improvement of those who may be confided to his care. He may be + found at his room, three doors west of Brown's Hotel. Reference + may be made to the Hon. Henry Clay; Hon. D. Chase and Hon. H. + Seymour, of the Senate; Hon. I. Bartlett and Hon. William C. + Bradley, of the House of Representatives; Rev. Wm. Hawley and Rev. + E. Allen. + + "SALMON ----. + + "Dec. 23--3td & eotJ8." + +The "Hon. Henry Clay" was then Secretary of State. The "Hon. D. Chase" +referred to was Salmon's uncle Dudley, then United States Senator from +Vermont. Congress was now in session, and he had arrived in town. He was +a man of great practical sagacity, and kept a true heart beating under +an exterior which appeared sometimes austere and eccentric. He had the +year before been a second time elected to the Senate; and when he was on +his way to Washington, Salmon had gone over from Hanover to Woodstock to +meet him. They occupied the same room at the tavern, and the uncle had +given the nephew some very good advice. What he said of the human +passions was characteristic of the man; and it made a strong impression +upon the mind of the youth:-- + +"A man's passions are given him for good, and not evil. They are not to +be destroyed, but controlled. If they get the mastery, they destroy the +man; but kept in their place, they are sources of power and happiness." + +And he used this illustration, which, though the same thing has been +said by others, remains, nevertheless, fresh as truth itself:-- + +"The passions are the winds that fill our sails; but the helmsman must +be faithful, if we would avoid shipwreck, and reach the happy port at +last." + +Salmon had remembered well these words of his uncle, and the night spent +with him at the Woodstock inn. Hearing of his arrival in Washington, he +had called on him at his boarding-house. The Senator received him +kindly, listened to his plans, approved them, and helped him to procure +the references named in the advertisement. + +Day after day the advertisement appeared; and day after day Salmon +waited for pupils. But his room, "three doors west of Brown's Hotel," +remained unvisited. Sometimes, at first, when there came a knock at Mrs. +Markham's door, his heart gave a bound of expectation; but it was never +a knock for him. + +So went out the old year, drearily enough for Salmon. He had made the +acquaintance of several people; but friends he had none. There was +nobody to whom he could open his heart,--for he was not one of those +persons "of so loose soul" that they hasten to pour out their troubles +and appeal for sympathy to the first chance-comer. In the mean time the +advertisement was to be paid for, barren of benefit though it had been +to him. There was also his board-bill to be settled at the end of each +week; and Salmon saw his slender purse grow lank and lanker than ever, +with no means within his reach of replenishing it. + +The new year came; but it brought no brightening skies to him. Lonely +enough those days were! When tired of waiting in his room, he would go +out and walk,--always alone. He strolled up and down the Potomac, and +sometimes crossed over to the Virginia shore, and climbed the brown, +wooded banks there, and listened to the clamor of the crows in the +leafless oak-trees. There was something in their wild cawing, in the +desolateness of the fields, in the rush of the cold river, that suited +his mood. It was winter in his spirit too, just then. + +Sometimes he visited the halls of Congress, and saw the great +legislators of those days. There was something here that fed his heart. +Wintry as his prospects were, the sun still shone overhead; his courage +never failed him; he never gave way to weak repining; and when he +entered those halls,--when he saw the deep fire in the eyes of Webster, +and heard the superb thunder of his voice,--when he listened to the +witty and terrible invectives of Randolph, that "meteor of Congress," as +Benton calls him, and watched the electric effect of the "long and +skinny forefinger" pointed and shaken,--when charmed by this speaker, or +convinced by that, or roused to indignation by another,--there was +kindled a sense of power within his own breast, a fire prophetic of his +future. + +On returning home, he would look on his table for communications, or he +would ask, "Has anybody called for me to-day?" But there was never any +letter; and Mrs. Markham's gentle response always was, "No one, Sir." + +The thirteenth of January passed,--his birthday. He was now nineteen. +When the world is bright before us, birthdays are not so unpleasant. But +to feel that your time is slipping away from you, with nothing +accomplishing,--to see no rainbow of promise in the clouds,--to walk the +streets of a lonely city, and think of home,--these things make a +birthday sad and solitary. + +At last his money was all gone. The prospect was more than dismal,--it +was appalling. What was he to do? + +Should he borrow of his uncle? "Not unless it be to keep me from +starvation!" was his proud resolve. + +Should he apply to his mother? The remembrance of what she had already +done for him was as much as his heart could bear. Her image, venerable, +patient, blind, was before him: he recalled the sacrifices she had made +for his sake, postponing her own comfort, and accepting pain and +privation, in order that her boy might have an education; and he was +filled with remorse at the thought that he had never before fully +appreciated all that love and devotion. For so it is: seldom, until too +late, comes any true recognition of such sacrifices. But when she who +made them is no longer with us,--too often, alas, when she has passed +forever beyond the reach of filial gratitude and affection,--we awake at +once to a realization of her worth and of our loss. + +What Salmon did was to make a confidant of Mrs. Markham; for he felt +that she at least ought to know his resources. + +"This is all _I_ have for the present," he said to her one day, when +paying his week's bill. "I thought you ought to know. I do not wish to +appear a swindler,"--with a gloomy smile. + +"You a swindler!" exclaimed the good woman, with glistening eyes. "I +would trust you as far as I would trust myself. If you haven't any +money, never mind. You shall stay, and pay me when you can. Don't worry +yourself at all. It will turn out right, I am sure. You'll have pupils +yet." + +"I trust so," said Salmon, touched by her kindness. "At all events, if +my life is spared, you shall be paid some day. Now you know how I am +situated; and if you choose to keep me longer on an uncertainty, I shall +be greatly obliged to you." + +His voice shook a little as he spoke. + +"As long as you please," she replied. + +Just then there was a knock. + +"Maybe that is for you!" + +And she hastened away, rather to conceal her emotion, I suspect, than in +the hope of admitting a patron for her boarder. + +She returned in a minute with shining countenance. + +"A gentleman and his little boy, to see Mr. ----! I have shown them into +the parlor." + +Salmon was amazed. Could it be true? A pupil at last! He gave a hurried +glance at himself In the mirror, straightened his shirt-collar, gave his +hair a touch, and descended, with beating heart, to meet his visitor. + +He was dignified enough, however, on entering the parlor, and so cool +you would never have suspected that he almost felt his fate depending +upon this gentleman's business. + +He was a Frenchman,--polite, affable, and of a manner so gracious, you +would have said he had come to beg a favor, rather than to grant one. + +"This is Mr. ----? My name is Bonfils. This is my little boy. We have +come to entreat of you the kindness to take him into your school." + +"I will do so most gladly!" said Salmon, shaking the boy's hand. + +"You are very good. We shall be greatly indebted to you. When does your +school commence?" + +"As soon, Sir, as I shall have engaged a sufficient number of pupils." + +"All! you have not a great number, then?" + +"I have none," Salmon was obliged to confess. + +"None? You surprise me! I have seen your advertisement, I hear good +things said of you,--why, then, no pupils?" + +"I am hardly known yet. Allow me to count your son here my first, and I +have no doubt but others will soon come in." + +"Assuredly! Make your compliments to Mr. ----, my son. I shall interest +myself. I think I shall send you some pupils. In mean time, my son will +wait." + +And with many expressions of good-will the cheerful Monsieur Bonfils +withdrew. + +This was a gleam of hope. The door of Providence had opened just a +crack. + +It opened no farther, however. No more pupils came. Salmon waited. Day +after day glided by like sand under his feet. He could not afford even +to advertise now. He was getting fearfully in debt; and debt is always a +nightmare to a generous and upright mind. + +"Any pupils yet?" asked Monsieur Bonfils, meeting him, one day, in the +street. + +"Not one!" said Salmon, with gloomy emphasis. + +"Ah, that is unfortunate!" + +He expected nothing less than that the Frenchman would add,--"Then I +must place my son elsewhere." But no; he was polite as ever; he was +charming. + +"You should have many before now. I have spoken for you to my friends. +But patience, my dear Sir. You will succeed. In mean time we will wait." + +And with a cordial hand-shake, and a Parisian flourish, he smilingly +passed on, leaving a gleam of sunshine on the young man's path. + +Now Salmon was one who would never, if he could help it, abandon an +undertaking in which he had once embarked. But when convinced that +persistence was hopeless, then, however reluctantly, he would give it +up. On the present occasion, he was not only spending his time and +exhausting his energies in a pursuit which grew each day more and more +dubious, but his conscience was stung with the thought that he was +wronging others. Kind as Mrs. Markham was to him, he did not like to +look her in the face and feel that he owed her a debt which was always +increasing, and which he knew not how he should ever pay. + +"Why don't you get a place in the Department?" said Williams, that +enviable fellow, who had light duties, several hours each day to +himself, and eight hundred a year! + +"That's more easily said than done!" And Salmon shook his head. + +"No, it isn't!" The fortunate Williams sat with his legs upon the table, +one foot on the other, a pipe in his mouth, and a book in his hand, +enjoying himself. "You have an uncle in the Senate. Ask him to use his +influence for you. He can get you a place." And puffing a fragrant cloud +complacently into the air, he returned to his pleasant reading. + +Salmon walked the room. He went out and walked the street. A sore +struggle was taking place in his breast. Should he give up the school? +Should he go and ask this thing of his uncle? Oh, for somebody to whom +he could go for counsel and sympathy! + +"Williams is perhaps right I may wait a year, and not get another pupil. +Meanwhile I am growing shabby. I need a new pair of boots. My +washerwoman must be paid. Why not get a clerkship as a temporary thing, +if nothing more? My uncle can get it for me, without any trouble to +himself. It is not like asking him for money." + +Yet he dreaded to trouble the Senator even thus much. Proud and +sensitive natures do not like to beg favors, any way. + +"I'll wait one day longer. Then, if not a pupil applies, I'll go to my +uncle--" + +He waited twenty-four hours. Not a pupil. Then, desperate and +discouraged at last, Salmon buttoned his coat, and walked fast through +the streets to his uncle's boarding-house. + +It was evening. The Senator was at home. + +"Well, Salmon?" inquiringly. "How do you get on?" + +"Poorly," said Salmon, sitting down, with his hat on his knee. + +"You must have patience, boy!" said the Senator, laying down a pamphlet +open at the page where he was reading when his nephew came in. "Pluck +and patience,--those are the two oars that pull the boat." + +"I have patience enough, and I don't think I'm lacking in pluck," +replied Salmon, coldly. "But one thing I lack, and am likely to +lack,--pupils, I've only one, and I expect every day to lose him." + +"Well, what can I do for you?" said the Senator, perceiving that his +nephew had come for something. + +"I would like to have you get me a place in the Treasury Department." + +It was a minute before Dudley Chase replied. He took up the pamphlet, +rolled it together, then threw it abruptly upon the table. + +"Salmon," said he, "listen. I once got an appointment for a nephew of +mine, and it ruined him. If you want half-a-dollar with which to buy a +spade, and go out and dig for your living, I'll give it to you +cheerfully. But I will not get you a place under Government." + +Salmon felt a choking sensation in his throat. He knew his uncle did not +mean it for unkindness; but the sentence seemed hard. He arose, +speechless for a moment, mechanically brushing his hat. + +"Thank you. I will not trouble you for the half-dollar. I shall try to +get along without the appointment. Good night, uncle." + +"Good night, Salmon." Dudley accompanied him to the door. He must have +seen what a blow he had given him. "You think me harsh," he added; "but +the time will come when you will see that this is the best advice I +could give you." + +"Perhaps," said Salmon, stiffly; and be walked away, filled with +disappointment and bitterness. + +"Well, did he promise it?" asked Williams, who sat up awaiting his +return. + +He had been thinking he would like to have Salmon in his own room at the +Department; but now, seeing how serious he looked, his own countenance +fell. + +"What! Didn't he give you any encouragement?" + +"On the other hand," said Salmon, "he advised me to buy a spade and go +to digging for my living! And I shall do it before I ask again for an +appointment." + +Williams was astonished. He thought the Senator from Vermont must be +insane. + +But, after the lapse of a few years, perhaps he, too, saw that the uncle +had given his nephew good advice indeed. Williams remained a clerk in +the Department, and was never anything else. Perhaps, if Salmon had got +the appointment he sought, he would have become a clerk like him, and +would never have been anything else. + +In a little more than twenty years Salmon was himself a Senator, and had +the making of such clerks. And what happened a dozen years later? This: +he who had once sought in vain a petty appointment was called to +administer the finances of the nation. Instead of a clerk grown gray in +the Department, to whom the irreverent youngsters might be saying +to-day, "----, do this," or, "----, do that," and he doeth it, he is +himself the supreme ruler there. He could never have got _that_ place by +promotion in the Department itself. I mention this, not to speak +slightingly of clerkships,--for he who does his duty faithfully in any +calling, however humble, is worthy of honor,--but to show that the ways +of Providence are not our ways, and that often we are disappointed for +our own good. Had a clerkship been what was in store for Salmon, he +would have obtained it; but since, had he got it, he would probably have +never been ready to give it up, how fortunate that he received instead +the offer of fifty cents wherewith to purchase a spade! + +It may be, when the new Secretary entered upon his duties, Williams was +there still; for there were men in the Treasury who had been there a +much longer term than from 1826 to 1861. I should like to know. I can +fancy him, gray now, slightly bald, and rather round-shouldered, but +cheerful as a cricket, introducing himself to the chief. + +"My name is Williams. Don't you remember Williams,--boarded at Mrs. +Markham's in '26 and '27, when you did?" + +"What! David Williams? Are you here yet?" + +"Yes, your Honor." (These old clerks all say, "Your Honor," in +addressing the Secretary. The younger ones are not so respectful.) "I +was never so lucky as to be turned out, and I was never quite prepared +to leave. You have got in at last, I see! But it was necessary for you +to make a wide circuit first, in order to come in at the top!" + +Did such an interview ever take place, I wonder? + +But we are talking of that evening so long ago, when Williams seemed the +lucky one, and things looked so black to Salmon, after he had asked of +his uncle bread, and received (as he then thought) a stone. + +"Well, then I don't know what the deuse you _will_ do!" said Williams, +knocking the ashes out of his pipe. + +You would have said that his hopes of Salmon were likewise ashes: he had +entertained himself with them a little while; now they were burnt out; +and he seemed to knock them out of his pipe, too, into the fire. He got +up, yawned, said he pitied ----, and went to bed. + +In a little while his breathing denoted that he was fast asleep. + +Salmon went to bed, too; but did he sleep? + +Do not think, after all this, that he gave way to weak despondency. +Something within him seemed to say, "What you have you must obtain +through earnest struggle and endeavor. It is only commonplace people and +weaklings who find the hinges of life all smoothly oiled. Great doors do +not open so easily. Be brave, be strong, be great." It was the voice of +Faith speaking within him. + +The next morning he arose, more a man than he had ever felt before. This +long and severe trial had been necessary to develop what was in him. His +self-reliance, his strength of character, his faith in God's +providence,--these were tried, and not found wanting. + +Still the veil of the future remained impenetrable. Not a gleam of light +shone through its sable folds. He could only watch for its uplifting, +and sit still. + +"A bad beginning makes a good ending," said Williams, one evening, to +comfort him. + +"Yes,--and a good beginning sometimes makes a bad ending. I had a lesson +on that subject once. When I was about eleven years old, I started from +Keene, with one of my sisters, to go and visit another sister, who was +married and living at Hookset Falls, over on the Merrimac. It was in +winter, and we set out in a sleigh with one horse. I was driver. My idea +of sleighing was bells and fast driving; and I put the poor beast up to +all he knew. We intended to reach a friend's house, at Peterborough, +before night; but I found I had used up our horse-power before we had +made much more than half the journey. Then came on a violent +snow-squall, which obliterated the track. It grew dark; we were blinded +by the storm; we got into drifts, and finally quite lost our way. Not a +house was in sight, and the horse was tired out. The prospect of a night +in the storm, and only a winding-sheet of snow to cover us, made me +bitterly regret the foolish ambition with which I had set out. At last +my sister, whose eyes were better than mine, saw a light. We went +wallowing through the drifts towards it, and discovered a house. Here we +got a boy to guide us; and so at last reached our friend's, in as sad a +plight as ever two such mortals were in. Since which time," added +Salmon, "I have rather inclined to the opinion that slow beginnings, +with steady progress, are best." + +"That's first-rate philosophy!" said Williams, secretly congratulating +himself, however, on having made what he considered a brisk start in +life. + +One day Salmon passed a store where some spades were exposed for sale. +He stopped to look at them. There was a strange smile on his face. + +"Perhaps, after all, digging is my vocation! Well, it is an honorable +one. I only wish to know what God would have me to do. If to dig, then I +will undertake it cheerfully." + +However, there was one great objection to his lifting a spade. It would +first have been necessary to apply to his uncle for the once-rejected +half-dollar. He was determined never to do that. + +He walked home, very thoughtful. He could not see how it was possible +that any good fortune should ever happen to him in Washington. The +sights of the city had become exceedingly distasteful to him, associated +as they were with his hopes deferred and his heart-sickness. He reached +his door. Mrs. Markham met him with beaming countenance. + +"There is a gentleman waiting for you! I reckon it's another pupil!" + +His face brightened for an instant. But it was clouded again quickly, as +be reflected,-- + +"_One_ more pupil! Very likely! That makes two! At this rate, I shall +have four in the course of a year!" + +He was inclined to be sarcastic with himself. But he checked the +ungrateful thoughts at once. + +"What Providence sends me, that let me cheerfully and thankfully +accept!" + +He entered the parlor. A gentlemanly person, with an air of culture, +advanced to meet him. + +"This is Mr. ----?" + +"That is my name, Sir." + +"Mrs. Markham said you would be in in a minute; so I have waited." + +"You are very kind to do so, Sir. Sit down." + +"I have seen your advertisement in the 'Intelligencer.' You still think +of establishing a school?" + +"That is my intention." + +"May I ask if you have been successful in obtaining pupils?" + +"Not very. I have one engaged. I would like a dozen more, to begin +with." + +The gentleman took his hat. "Of course he will go, now he knows what my +prospects are!" But Salmon was mistaken. The visitor seemed to have +taken his hat merely for the sake of having something in his hands, to +occupy them. + +"Then perhaps you will be pleased to listen to my proposition? + +"Certainly, Sir." + +"My name is Plumley. I have established a successful classical school, +as you may be aware. It is in G-Street." + +"I have heard of you, Sir." And Salmon might have added, "I have envied +you!" + +"Well, Mrs. Phimley has recently opened a young ladies' school, which +has succeeded beyond all our expectations." + +"I congratulate you sincerely!" + +"But it is found that the two schools are more than we can attend to. I +propose to give up one. Now, if you choose to take the boys' school off +my hands, I will make over my entire interest in it to you. Perhaps you +may know the character the school sustains. We have, as pupils, sons of +the Honorable Henry Clay, William Wirt, Southard, and other eminent men. +The income amounts to something like eight hundred a year. You can go in +next Monday, if you like." + +Thus suddenly the door, so long mysteriously closed, flew open wide, "on +golden hinges turning." What Salmon saw within was heaven. He was +dazzled. He was almost stunned with happiness. His lips quivered, his +voice failed him as he spoke. + +"Mr. Plumley, this is--you are--too kind!" + +"You accept?" + +"Most gratefully!" + +The young man was regaining possession of himself. He grasped the +other's hand. + +"You do not know what this is to me, Sir! You cannot know from what you +have saved me! Providence has surely sent you to me! I cannot thank you +now; but some day--perhaps--it may be in my power to do you a service." + +He was not the only one happy. Mr. Plumley felt the sweetness of doing a +kind action for one who was truly worthy and grateful. From that moment +they were friends. Salmon engaged to see him again, and make +arrangements for entering the school the next Monday; and they parted. + +His benefactor gone, Salmon hastened to tell the good news to Mrs. +Markham. But he could not remain in the house. His joy was too great to +be thus confined. Again he went out,--but how different now the world +looked to his eyes! He had not observed before that it was such a lovely +spring day. The sky overhead was of heaven's deepest hue. The pure, +sweet air was like the elixir of life. The hills were wondrously +beautiful, all about the city; and it seemed, that, whichever way he +turned, there were birds singing in sympathy with his joy. The Potomac, +stretching away with soft and misty glimmer between its hazy banks, was +like the river of some exquisite dream. + +It was no selfish happiness he felt. He thought of his mother and +sisters at home,--of all those to whom he was indebted; and in the +lightness of his spirit, after its heavy burden had been taken away, he +lifted up his heart in thanksgiving to the Giver of all blessings. + +The school, transferred to his charge, continued successful; and it +opened the way to successes of greater magnitude. Through all his +subsequent career he looked back to this as the beginning; and he ever +retained for Mr. Plumley the feeling we cherish for one whom we regard +as a Heaven-appointed agent of some great benefaction. Were it not for +trenching upon ground too private and personal, we might here complete +the romance, by relating how the young man's vaguely uttered +presentiment, that he might some day render him a service, was, long +afterwards, touchingly realized. But enough. All we promised ourselves +at the start was a glance at the Secretary's first visit to Washington. + + * * * * * + +HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS. + +BY CHRISTOPHER CROWFIELD. + +IV. + + +Talking to you in this way once a month, O my confidential reader, there +seems to be danger, as in all intervals of friendship, that we shall not +readily be able to take up our strain of conversation, just where we +left off. Suffer me, therefore, to remind you that the month past left +us seated at the fireside, just as we had finished reading of what a +home was, and how to make one. + +The fire had burned low, and great, solid hickory coals were winking +dreamily at us from out their fluffy coats of white ashes,--just as if +some household sprite there were opening now one eye and then the other, +and looking in a sleepy, comfortable way at us. + +The close of my piece, about the good house-mother, had seemed to tell +on my little audience. Marianne had nestled close to her mother, and +laid her head on her knee; and though Jennie sat up straight as a pin, +yet her ever-busy knitting was dropped in her lap, and I saw the glint +of a tear in her quick, sparkling eye,--yes, actually a little bright +bead fell upon her work; whereupon she started up actively, and declared +that the fire wanted just one more stick to make a blaze before bedtime; +and then there was such a raking among the coals, such an adjusting of +the andirons, such vigorous arrangement of the wood, and such a brisk +whisking of the hearth-brush, that it was evident Jennie had something +on her mind. + +When all was done, she sat down again and looked straight into the +blaze, which went dancing and crackling up, casting glances and flecks +of light on our pictures and books, and making all the old, familiar +furniture seem full of life and motion. + +"I think that's a good piece," she said, decisively. "I think those are +things that should be thought about." + +Now Jennie was the youngest of our flock, and therefore, in a certain +way, regarded by my wife and me as perennially "the baby"; and these +little, old-fashioned, decisive ways of announcing her opinions seemed +so much a part of her nature, so peculiarly "Jennyish," as I used to +say, that my wife and I only exchanged amused glances over her head, +when they occurred. + +In a general way, Jennie, standing in the full orb of her feminine +instincts like Diana in the moon, rather looked down on all masculine +views of women's matters as "_tolerabiles ineptiae_"; but towards her +papa she had gracious turns of being patronizing to the last degree; and +one of these turns was evidently at its flood-tide, as she proceeded to +say,-- + +"_I_ think papa is right,--that keeping house and having a home, and all +that, is a very serious thing, and that people go into it with very +little thought about it. I really think those things papa has been +saying there ought to be thought about." + +"Papa," said Marianne, "I wish you would tell me exactly how _you_ would +spend that money you gave me for house-furnishing. I should like just +your views." + +"Precisely," said Jennie, with eagerness; "because it is just as papa +says,--a sensible man, who has thought, and had experience, can't help +having some ideas, even about women's affairs, that are worth attending +to. I think so, decidedly." + +I acknowledged the compliment for my sex and myself with my best bow. + +"But then, papa," said Marianne, "I can't help feeling sorry that one +can't live in such a way as to have beautiful things around one. I'm +sorry they must cost so much, and take so much care, for I am made so +that I really want them. I do so like to see pretty things! I do like +rich carpets and elegant carved furniture, and fine china and cut-glass +and silver. I can't bear mean, common-looking rooms. I should so like to +have my house look beautiful!" + +"Your house ought not to look mean and common,--your house ought to look +beautiful," I replied. "It would be a sin and a shame to have it +otherwise. No house ought to be fitted up for a future home without a +strong and a leading reference to beauty in all its arrangements. If I +were, a Greek, I should say that the first household libation should be +made to beauty; but, being an old-fashioned Christian, I would say that +he who prepares a home with no eye to beauty neglects the example of the +great Father who has filled our earth-home with such elaborate +ornament." + +"But then, papa, there's the money!" said Jennie, shaking her little +head wisely. "You men don't think of that. You want us girls, for +instance, to be patterns of economy, but we must always be wearing +fresh, nice things; you abhor soiled gloves and worn shoes: and yet how +is all this to be done without money? And it's just so in housekeeping. +You sit in your arm-chairs and conjure up visions of all sorts of +impossible things to be done; but when mamma there takes out that little +account-book, and figures away on the cost of things, where do the +visions go?" + +"You are mistaken, my little dear, and you talk just like a +woman,"--(this was my only way of revenging myself,)--"that is to say, +you jump to conclusions, without sufficient knowledge. I maintain that +in house-furnishing, as well as woman-furnishing, there's nothing so +economical as beauty." + +"There's one of papa's paradoxes!" said Jennie. + +"Yes," said I, "that is my thesis, which I shall nail up over the +mantel-piece there, as Luther nailed his to the church-door. It is time +to rake up the fire now; but to-morrow night I will give you a paper on +the Economy of the Beautiful." + + * * * * * + +"Come, now we are to have papa's paradox," said Jennie, as soon as the +teachings had been carried out. + +_Entre nous_, I must tell you that insensibly we had fallen into the +habit of taking our tea by my study-fire. Tea, you know, is a mere +nothing in itself, its only merit being its social and poetic +associations, its warmth and fragrance,--and the more socially and +informally it can be dispensed, the more in keeping with its airy and +cheerful nature. + +Our circle was enlightened this evening by the cheery visage of Bob +Stephens, seated, as of right, close to Marianne's work-basket. + +"You see, Bob," said Jennie, "papa has undertaken to prove that the most +beautiful things are always the cheapest." + +"I'm glad to hear that," said Bob,--"for there's a carved antique +bookcase and study-table that I have my eye on, and if this can in any +way be made to appear"-- + +"Oh, it won't be made to appear," said Jennie, settling herself at her +knitting, "only in some transcendental, poetic sense, such as papa can +always make out. Papa is more than half a poet, and his truths turn out +to be figures of rhetoric, when one comes to apply them to matters of +fact." + +"Now, Miss Jennie, please remember my subject and thesis," I +replied,--"that in house-furnishing there is nothing so economical as +beauty; and I will make it good against all comers, not by figures of +rhetoric, but by figures of arithmetic. I am going to be very +matter-of-fact and commonplace in my details, and keep ever in view the +addition-table. I will instance a case which has occurred under my own +observation." + + * * * * * + +THE ECONOMY OF THE BEAUTIFUL. + +Two of the houses lately built on the new land in Boston were bought by +two friends, Philip and John. Philip had plenty of money, and paid the +cash down for his house, without feeling the slightest vacancy in his +pocket. John, who was an active, rising young man, just entering on a +flourishing business, had expended all his moderate savings for years in +the purchase of his dwelling, and still had a mortgage remaining, which +he hoped to clear off by his future successes. Philip begins the work of +furnishing as people do with whom money is abundant, and who have simply +to go from shop to shop and order all that suits their fancy and is +considered 'the thing' in good society. John begins to furnish with very +little money. He has a wife and two little ones, and he wisely deems +that to insure to them a well-built house, in an open, airy situation, +with conveniences for warming, bathing, and healthy living, is a wise +beginning in life; but it leaves him little or nothing beyond. + +Behold, then, Philip and his wife, well pleased, going the rounds of +shops and stores in fitting up their new dwelling, and let us follow +step by step. To begin with the wall-paper. Imagine a front and back +parlor, with folding-doors, with two south windows on the front, and two +looking on a back court, after the general manner of city houses. We +will suppose they require about thirty rolls of wall-paper. Philip buys +the heaviest French velvet, with gildings and traceries, at four dollars +a roll. This, by the time it has been put on, with gold mouldings, +according to the most established taste of the best paper-hangers, will +bring the wall-paper of the two rooms to a figure something like two +hundred dollars. Now they proceed to the carpet-stores, and there are +thrown at their feet by obsequious clerks velvets and Axminsters, with +flowery convolutions and medallion-centres, as if the flower-gardens of +the tropics were whirling in waltzes, with graceful lines of +arabesque,--roses, callas, lilies, knotted, wreathed, twined, with blue +and crimson and golden ribbons, dazzling marvels of color and tracery. +There, is no restraint in price,--four or six dollars a yard, it is all +the same to them,--and soon a magic flower-garden blooms on the floors, +at a cost of five hundred dollars. A pair of elegant rugs, at fifty +dollars apiece, complete the inventory, and bring our rooms to the mark +of eight hundred dollars for papering and carpeting alone. Now come the +great mantel-mirrors for four hundred more, and our rooms progress. Then +comes the upholsterer, and measures our four windows, that he may +skilfully barricade them from air and sunshine. The fortifications +against heaven, thus prepared, cost, in the shape of damask, cord, +tassels, shades, laces, and cornices, about two hundred dollars per +window. To be sure, they make the rooms close and sombre as the grave; +but they are of the most splendid stuffs; and if the sun would only +reflect, he would see, himself, how foolish it was for him to try to +force himself into a window guarded by his betters. If there is anything +cheap and plebeian, it is sunshine and fresh air! Behold us, then, with +our two rooms papered, carpeted, and curtained for two thousand dollars; +and now are to be put in them sofas, lounges, etageres, centre-tables, +screens, chairs of every pattern and device, for which it is but +moderate to allow a thousand more. We have now two parlors furnished at +an outlay of three thousand dollars, without a single picture, a single +article of statuary, a single object of Art of any kind, and without any +light to see them by, if they were there. We must say for our Boston +upholsterers and furniture-makers that such good taste generally reigns +in their establishments that rooms furnished at hap-hazard from them +cannot fail of a certain air of good taste, so far as the individual +things are concerned. But the different articles we have supposed, +having been ordered without reference to one another or the rooms, have, +when brought together, no unity of effect, and the general result is +scattering and confused. If asked how Philip's parlors look, your reply +is,--"Oh, the usual way of such parlors,--everything that such people +usually get,--medallion-carpets, carved furniture, great mirrors, bronze +mantel-ornaments, and so on." The only impression a stranger receives, +while waiting in the dim twilight of these rooms, is that their owner +is rich, and able to get good, handsome things, such as all other rich +people get. + +Now our friend John, as often happens in America, is moving in the same +social circle with Philip, visiting the same people,--his house is the +twin of the one Philip has been furnishing, and how shall he, with a few +hundred dollars, make his rooms even presentable beside those which +Philip has fitted up elegantly and three thousand? + +Now for the economy of beauty. Our friend must make his prayer to the +Graces,--for, if they cannot save him, nobody can. One thing John has to +begin with, that rare gift to man, a wife with the magic cestus of +Venus,--not around her waist, but, if such a thing could be, in her +finger-ends. All that she touches falls at once into harmony and +proportion. Her eye for color and form is intuitive: let her arrange a +garret, with nothing but boxes, barrels, and cast-off furniture in it, +and ten to one she makes it seem the most attractive place in the house. +It is a veritable "gift of good faerie," this tact of beautifying and +arranging, that some women have,--and, on the present occasion, it has a +real material value, that can be estimated in dollars and cents. Come +with us and you can see the pair taking their survey of the yet +unfurnished parlors, as busy and happy as a couple of blue-birds picking +up the first sticks and straws for their nest. + +"There are two sunny windows to begin with," says the good fairy, with +an appreciative glance. "That insures flowers all winter." + +"Yes," says John; "I never would look at a house without a good sunny +exposure. Sunshine is the best ornament of a house, and worth an extra +thousand a year. + +"Now for our wall-paper," says she. "Have you looked at wall-papers, +John?" + +"Yes; we shall get very pretty ones for thirty-seven cents a roll; all +you want of a paper, you know, is to make a ground-tint to throw out +your pictures and other matters, and to reflect a pleasant tone of +light." + +"Well, John, you know Uncle James says that a stone-color is the +best,--but I can't bear those cold blue grays." + +"Nor I," says John. "If we must have gray, let it at least be a gray +suffused with gold or rose-color, such as you see at evening in the +clouds." + +"So I think," responds she; "but better, I should like a paper with a +tone of buff,--something that produces warm yellowish reflections, and +will almost make you think the sun is shining in cold gray weather; and +then there is nothing that lights up so cheerfully in the evening. In +short, John, I think the color of a _zafferano_ rose will be just about +the shade we want." + +"Well, I can find that, in good American paper, as I said before, at +from thirty-seven to forty cents a roll. Then, our bordering: there's an +important question, for that must determine the carpet, the chairs, and +everything else. Now what shall be the ground-tint of our rooms?" + +"There are only two to choose between," says the lady,--"green and +maroon: which is the best for the picture?" + +"I think," says John, looking above the mantel-piece, as if he saw a +picture there,--"I think a border of maroon velvet, with maroon +furniture, is the best for the picture." + +"I think so too," said she; "and then we will have that lovely maroon +and crimson carpet that I saw at Lowe's;--it is an ingrain, to be sure, +but has a Brussels pattern, a mossy, mixed figure, of different shades +of crimson; it has a good warm, strong color, and when I come to cover +the lounges and our two old arm-chairs with a pretty maroon _rep_, it +will make such a pretty effect." + +"Yes," said John; "and then, you know, our picture is so bright, it will +light up the whole. Everything depends on the picture." + +Now as to "the picture," it has a story must be told. John, having been +all his life a worshipper and adorer of beauty and beautiful things, +had never passed to or from his business without stopping at the +print-shop windows, and seeing a little of what was there. + +On one of these occasions he was smitten to the heart with the beauty of +an autumn landscape, where the red maples and sumachs, the purple and +crimson oaks, all stood swathed and harmonized together in the hazy +Indian-summer atmosphere. There was a great yellow chestnut-tree, on a +distant hill, which stood out so naturally that John instinctively felt +his fingers tingling for a basket, and his heels alive with a desire to +bound over on to the rustling hill-side and pick up the glossy brown +nuts. Everything was there of autumn, even to the golden-rod and purple +asters and scarlet creepers in the foreground. + +John went in and inquired. It was by an unknown French artist, without +name or patrons, who had just come to our shores to study our scenery, +and this was the first picture he had exposed for sale. John had just +been paid a quarter's salary; he bethought him of board-bill and +washerwoman, sighed, and faintly offered fifty dollars. + +To his surprise he was taken up at once, and the picture became his. +John thought himself dreaming. He examined his treasure over and over, +and felt sure that it was the work of no amateur beginner, but of a +trained hand and a true artist-soul. So he found his way to the studio +of the stranger, and apologized for having got such a gem for so much +less than its worth. "It was all I _could_ give, though," he said; "and +one who paid four times as much could not value it more." And so John +took one and another of his friends, with longer purses than his own, to +the studio of the modest stranger; and now his pieces command their full +worth in the market, and he works with orders far ahead of his ability +to execute, giving to the canvas the traits of American scenery as +appreciated and felt by the subtile delicacy of the French mind,--our +rural summer views, our autumn glories, and the dreamy, misty delicacy +of our snowy winter landscapes. Whoso would know the truth of the same, +let him inquire for the modest studio of Morvillier, at Malden, scarce a +bow-shot from our Boston. + +This picture had always been the ruling star of John's house, his main +dependence for brightening up his bachelor-apartments; and when he came +to the task of furbishing those same rooms for a fair occupant, the +picture was still his mine of gold. For a picture, painted by a real +artist, who studies Nature minutely and conscientiously, has something +of the charm of the good Mother herself,--something of her faculty of +putting on different aspects under different lights. John and his wife +had studied their picture at all hours of the day: they had seen how it +looked when the morning sun came aslant the scarlet maples and made a +golden shimmer over the blue mountains, how it looked toned down in the +cool shadows of afternoon, and how it warmed up in the sunset, and died +off mysteriously into the twilight; and now, when larger parlors were to +be furnished, the picture was still the tower of strength, the +rallying-point of their hopes. + +"Do you know, John," said the wife, hesitating, "I am really in doubt +whether we shall not have to get at least a few new chairs and a sofa +for our parlors? They are putting in such splendid things at the other +door that I am positively ashamed of ours; the fact is, they look almost +disreputable,--like a heap of rubbish." + +"Well," said John, laughing, "I don't suppose all together sent to an +auction-room would bring us fifty dollars, and yet, such as they are, +they answer the place of better things for us; and the fact is, Mary, +the hard impassable barrier in the case is, that there really _is no +money to get any more_." + +"Ah, well, then, if there isn't, we must see what we can do with these, +and summon all the good fairies to our aid," said Mary. "There's your +little cabinet-maker, John, will look over the things, and furbish them +up; there's that broken arm of the chair must be mended, and everything +revarnished; then I have found such a lovely _rep_, of just the richest +shade of maroon, inclining to crimson, and when we come to cover the +lounges and arm-chairs and sofas and ottomans all alike, you know they +will be quite another thing." + +"Trust you for that, Mary! By-the-by, I've found a nice little woman, +who has worked on upholstery, who will come in by the day, and be the +hands that shall execute the decrees of your taste." + +"Yes, I am sure we shall get on capitally. Do you know that I'm almost +glad we can't get new things? it's a sort of enterprise to see what we +can do with old ones." + +"Now, you see, Mary," said John, seating himself on a lime-cask which +the plasterers had left, and taking out his memorandum-book, "you see, +I've calculated this thing all over; I've found a way by which I can +make our rooms beautiful and attractive without a cent expended on new +furniture." + +"Well, let's hear." + +"Well, my way is short and simple. We must put things into our rooms +that people will look at, so that they will forget to look at the +furniture, and never once trouble their heads about it. People never +look at furniture so long as there is anything else to look at; just as +Napoleon, when away on one of his expeditions, being told that the +French populace were getting disaffected, wrote back, 'Gild the _dome +des Invalides_' and so they gilded it, and the people, looking at that, +forgot everything else." + +"But I'm not clear yet," said Mary, "what is coming of this rhetoric." + +"Well, then, Mary, I'll tell you. A suit of new carved black-walnut +furniture, severe in taste and perfect in style, such as I should choose +at David and Saul's, could not be got under three hundred dollars, and I +haven't the three hundred to give. What, then, shall we do? We must fall +back on our resources; we must look over our treasures. We have our +proof cast of the great glorious head of the Venus di Milo; we have +those six beautiful photographs of Rome, that Brown brought to us; we +have the great German lithograph of the San Sisto Mother and Child, and +we have the two angel-heads, from the same; we have that lovely golden +twilight sketch of Heade's; we have some sea-photographs of Bradford's; +we have an original pen-and-ink sketch by Billings; and then, as before, +we have 'our picture.' What has been the use of our watching at the +gates and waiting at the doors of Beauty all our lives, if she hasn't +thrown us out a crust now and then, so that we might have it for time of +need? Now, you see, Mary, we must make the toilet of our rooms just as a +pretty woman makes hers when money runs low, and she sorts and freshens +her ribbons, and matches them to her hair and eyes, and, with a bow +here, and a bit of fringe there, and a button somewhere else, dazzles us +into thinking that she has an infinity of beautiful attire. Our rooms +are new and pretty of themselves, to begin with; the tint of the paper, +and the rich coloring of the border, corresponding with the furniture +and carpets, will make them seem prettier. And now for arrangement. Take +this front-room. I propose to fill those two recesses each side of the +fireplace with my books, in their plain pine cases, just breast-high +from the floor: they are stained a good dark color, and nobody need +stick a pin in them to find out that they are not rosewood. The top of +these shelves on either side to be covered with the same stuff as the +furniture, finished with a crimson fringe. On top of the shelves on one +side of the fireplace I shall set our noble Venus di Milo, and I shall +buy at Cicci's the lovely Clytie and put it the other side. Then I shall +get of Williams and Everett two of their chromo-lithographs, which give +you all the style and charm of the best English water-color school. I +will have the lovely Bay of Amalfi over my Venus, because she came from +those suns and skies of Southern Italy, and I will hang Lake Como over +my Clytie. Then, in the middle, over the fireplace, shall be 'our +picture.' Over each door shall hang one of the lithographed angel-heads +of the San Sisto, to watch our going-out and coming-in; and the glorious +Mother and Child shall hang opposite the Venus di Milo, to show how +Greek and Christian unite in giving the noblest type to womanhood. And +then, when we have all our sketches and lithographs framed and hung here +and there, and your flowers blooming as they always do, and your ivies +wandering and rambling as they used to, and hanging in the most graceful +ways and places, and all those little shells and ferns and vases, which +you are always conjuring with, tastefully arranged, I'll venture to say +that our rooms will be not only pleasant, but beautiful, and that people +will oftener say, 'How beautiful!' when they enter, than if we spent +three times the money on new furniture." + +In the course of a year after this conversation, one and another of my +acquaintances were often heard speaking of John Merton's house. "Such +beautiful rooms,--so charmingly furnished,--you must go and see them. +What does make them so much pleasanter than those rooms in the other +house, which have everything in them that money can buy?" So said the +folk,--for nine people out of ten only feel the effect of a room, and +never analyze the causes from which it flows: they know that certain +rooms seem dull and heavy and confused, but they don't know why; that +certain others seem cheerful, airy, and beautiful, but they know not +why. The first exclamation, on entering John's parlors, was so often, +"How beautiful!" that it became rather a by-word in the family. +Estimated by their mere money-value, the articles in the rooms were of +very trifling worth; but as they stood arranged and combined, they had +all the effect of a lovely picture. Although the statuary was only +plaster, and the photographs and lithographs such as were all within the +compass of limited means, yet every one of them was a good thing of its +own kind, or a good reminder of some of the greatest works of Art. A +good plaster cast is a daguerrotype, so to speak, of a great statue, +though it may be bought for five or six dollars, while its original is +not to be had for any nameable sum. A chromo-lithograph of the best sort +gives all the style and manner and effect of Turner or Stanfield, or any +of the best of modern artists, though you buy it for five or ten +dollars, and though the original would command a thousand guineas. The +lithographs from Raphael's immortal picture give you the results of a +whole age of artistic culture, in a form within the compass of very +humble means. There is now selling for five dollars at Williams and +Everett's a photograph of Cheney's crayon drawing of the San Sisto +Madonna and Child, which has the very spirit of the glorious original. +Such a picture, hung against the wall of a child's room, would train its +eye from infancy; and yet how many will freely spend five dollars in +embroidery on its dress, that say they cannot afford works of Art! + +There was one advantage which John and his wife found in the way in +which they furnished their house, that I have hinted at before: it gave +freedom to their children. Though their rooms were beautiful, it was not +with the tantalizing beauty of expensive and frail knick-knacks. +Pictures hung against the wall, and statuary safely lodged on brackets, +speak constantly to the childish eye, but are out of reach of childish +fingers, and are not upset by childish romps. They are not like china +and crystal, liable to be used and abused by servants; they do not wear +out; they are not spoiled by dust, nor consumed by moths. The beauty +once there is always there; though the mother be ill and in her chamber, +she has no fears that she shall find it all wrecked and shattered. And +this style of beauty, inexpensive as it is, compared with luxurious +furniture, is a means of cultivation. No child is ever stimulated to +draw or to read by an Axminster carpet or a carved centre-table; but a +room surrounded with photographs and pictures and fine casts suggests a +thousand inquiries, stimulates the little eye and hand. The child is +found with its pencil, drawing; or he asks for a book on Venice, or +wants to hear the history of the Roman Forum. + +But I have made my article too long. I will write another on the moral +and intellectual effects of house-furnishing. + + * * * * * + +"I have proved my point, Miss Jennie, have I not? _In house-furnishing, +nothing is more economical than beauty_." + +"Yes, papa," said Jennie; "I give it up." + + * * * * * + +THE BLACK PREACHER. + +A BRETON LEGEND. + + + At Carnac in Brittany, close on the bay, + They show you a church, or rather the gray + Ribs of a dead one, left there to bleach + With the wreck lying near on the crest of the beach; + Roofless and splintered with thunder-stone, + 'Mid lichen-blurred gravestones all alone, + 'Tis the kind of ruin strange sights to see + That may have their teaching for you and me. + + Something like this, then, my guide had to tell, + Perched on a saint cracked across when he fell. + But since I might chance give his meaning a wrench, + He talking his _patois_ and I English-French, + I'll put what he told me, preserving the tone, + In a rhymed prose that makes it half his, half my own. + + An abbey-church stood here, once on a time, + Built as a death-bed atonement for crime: + 'Twas for somebody's sins, I know not whose; + But sinners are plenty, and you can choose. + Though a cloister now of the dusk-winged bat, + 'Twas rich enough once, and the brothers grew fat, + Looser in girdle and purpler in jowl, + Singing good rest to the founder's lost soul. + But one day came Northmen, and lithe tongues of fire + Lapped up the chapter-house, licked off the spire, + And left all a rubbish-heap, black and dreary, + Where only the wind sings _miserere_. + Of what the monks came by no legend runs, + At least they were lucky in not being nuns. + + No priest has kneeled since at the altar's foot, + Whose crannies are searched by the nightshade's root, + Nor sound of service is ever heard, + Except from throat of the unclean bird, + Hooting to unassoiled shapes as they pass + In midnights unholy his witches' mass, + Or shouting "Ho! ho!" from the belfry high + As the Devil's sabbath-train whirls by; + But once a year, on the eve of All-Souls, + Through these arches dishallowed the organ rolls, + Fingers long fleshless the bell-ropes work, + The chimes peal muffled with sea-mists mirk, + The skeleton windows are traced anew + On the baleful flicker of corpse-lights blue, + And the ghosts must come, so the legend saith, + To a preaching of Reverend Doctor Death. + + Abbots, monks, barons, and ladies fair + Hear the dull summons and gather there: + No rustle of silk now, no clink of mail, + Nor ever a one greets his church-mate pale; + No knight whispers love in the _chatelaine's_ ear, + His next-door neighbor this five hundred year; + No monk has a sleek _benedicite_ + For the great lord shadowy now as he; + Nor needeth any to hold his breath, + Lest he lose the least word of Doctor Death. + + He chooses his text in the Book Divine, + Tenth verse of the Preacher in chapter nine:-- + "'Whatsoever thy hand shall find thee to do, + That do with thy whole might, or thou shalt rue; + For no man is wealthy or wise or brave + In that quencher of might-bes and would-bes, the grave.' + Bid by the Bridegroom, 'To-morrow,' ye said, + And To-morrow was digging a trench for your bed; + Ye said, 'God can wait; let us finish our wine'; + Ye had wearied Him, fools, and that last knock was mine!" + + But I can't pretend to give you the sermon, + Or say if the tongue were French, Latin, or German; + Whatever he preached in, I give you my word + The meaning was easy to all that heard; + Famous preachers there have been and be, + But never was one so convincing as he; + So blunt was never a begging friar, + No Jesuit's tongue so barbed with fire, + Cameronian never, nor Methodist, + Wrung gall out of Scripture with such a twist. + + And would you know who his hearers must be? + I tell you just what my guide told me: + Excellent teaching men have, day and night, + From two earnest friars, a black and a white, + The Dominican Death and the Carmelite Life; + And between these two there is never strife, + For each has his separate office and station, + And each his own work in the congregation; + Whoso to the white brother deafens his ears, + And cannot be wrought on by blessings or tears, + Awake in his coffin must wait and wait, + In that blackness of darkness that means _too late_, + And come once a year, when the ghost-bell tolls, + As till Doomsday it shall on the eve of All-Souls, + To hear Doctor Death, whose words smart with the brine + Of the Preacher, the tenth verse of chapter nine. + + * * * * * + +FOUQUET THE MAGNIFICENT. + + +Modern times began in France with the death of Mazarin. Spain, Austria, +and Italy no longer led the world in politics, literature, and +refinement. The _grande nation_, delivered from _Ligue_ and _Fronde_, +took her position with England at the head of civilized Europe. This +great change had been going on during eighty years of battle, murder, +anarchy, and confusion. As always, the new grew up unnoticed, until it +overtopped the old. The transformation was complete in 1661, when Louis +XIV. appeared upon the scene, and gave his name to this brilliant +period, with not much better claim to the distinction than had Vespucci +to America. + +There had been a prodigious yield of brains in France. A host of clever +men developed the new ideas in every direction. Philosophy and science, +literature and language, manners, habits, dress, assumed the forms with +which we are so familiar. Then commenced the _grand siecle_, the era +Frenchmen date from. They look upon those gallant ancestors almost as +contemporaries, and still admire their feats in war, and laugh over +their strokes of wit. The books they wrote became classics, and were in +all hands until within the last twenty or thirty years. Latterly, +indeed, they have been less read, for thought is turning to fresh +fields, and society seems to be entering upon a new era. + +No man more fully recognized the great change that was going on, or did +more to help it forward, than Nicolas Fouquet, Vicomte de Vaux, and +Marquis de Belleile,--but better known as the _Surintendant_. In the +pleasant social annals of France, Fouquet is the type of splendor, and +of sudden, hopeless ruin. "There was never a man so magnificent, there +was never a man so unfortunate," say the lively gentlemen and ladies in +their _Memoires_. His story is told to point the old and dreary moral of +the instability of human prosperity. It is, indeed, like a tale of the +"Arabian Nights." The Dervish is made Grand Vizier. He marries the +Sultan's daughter. His palace owes its magical beauty to the Genies. The +pillars are of jasper, the bases and capitals of massive gold. The +Sultan frowns, waves his hand, and the crowd, who kissed the favorite's +slipper yesterday, hoot and jeer as they see him pass by to his dungeon, +disgraced, stripped, and beaten, Fouquet was of good family, the son of +a Councillor of State in Louis XIII.'s time. Educated for the +magistracy, he became a _Maitre des Requetes_ (say Master in Chancery) +at twenty, and at thirty-five _Procureur-General_ (or Attorney-General) +of the Parliament of Paris, which was only a court of justice, although +it frequently attempted to usurp legislative, and even executive +functions. During the rebellious troubles of the Fronde, the Procureur +and his brother, the Abbe Fouquet, remained faithful to Mazarin and to +the throne. The Abbe, in the ardor of his zeal, once offered the Queen +his services to kill De Retz and salt him, if she would give her +consent. It was at the request of the Queen that the Cardinal made the +trusty Procureur _Surintendant des Finances_, the first position in +France after the throne and the prime-ministership. + +Pensions, and the promise of comfortable places, had collected about the +Surintendant talent, fashion, and beauty. Some of the ablest men in the +kingdom were in his employ. Pellisson, famous for ugliness and for wit, +the _Acanthe_ of the Hotel de Rambouillet, the beloved of Sappho +Scudery, was his chief clerk. Pellisson was then a Protestant; but +Fouquet's disgrace, and four years in the Bastille, led him to reexamine +the grounds of his religious faith. He became, luckily, enlightened on +the subject of his heresies at a time when the renunciation of +Protestantism led to honors and wealth. Change of condition followed +change of doctrine. The King attached him to his person as Secretary and +Historiographer, and gave him the management of the fund for the +conversion of Huguenots. Gourville, whom Charles II., an excellent +judge, called the wisest of Frenchmen, belonged to Fouquet, as a +receiver-general of taxes. Moliere wrote two of his earlier plays for +the Surintendant. La Fontaine was an especial favorite. He bound himself +to pay for his quarterly allowance in quarterly madrigals, ballads, or +sonnets. If he failed, a bailiff was to be sent to levy on his stanzas. +He paid pretty regularly, but in a depreciated currency. The verses have +not the golden ring of the "Contes" and the "Fables." + + "Le Roi, l'Etat, la Patrie, + Partagent toute votre vie." + +That is a sample of their value. Quack-medicine poets often do as well. +He wrote "Adonis" for Fouquet, and had worked three years at the "Songe +de Vaux," when the ruin of his patron caused him to lay it aside. It is +a dull piece. Four fairies, _Palatiane, Hortesie, Apellanire, and +Calliopee_, make long speeches about their specialty in Art, as seen at +Vaux. Their names sufficiently denote it. A fish comes as ambassador +from Neptune to Vaux, the glory of the universe, where Oronte (Fouquet's +_alias_, in the affected jargon of the period) + + "fait batir un palais magnifique, + Ou regne l'ordre Ionique + Avec beaucoup d'agrement." + +Apollo comes and promises to take charge of the live-stock, and of the +picture-gallery. The Muses, too, are busy. + + "Pour lui Melpomene medite, + Thalie en est jalouse,"-- + +and soon-- + +Fouquet's physician, Pecquet, is well known to physiologists by his +treatise, "_De Motu Chyli_," and by "Pecquet's reservoir." His patron +was warmly interested in the new discoveries in circulation, which were +then, and so long after, violently opposed by the _Purgons_ and the +_Diafoirus_ of the old school. The Surintendant's judgment was equally +good in Art. Le Brun, the painter, owed fame and fortune to him. He gave +him twelve thousand livres a year, besides paying a fixed price for each +of his works. With the exception of Renaudot's journal, Loret's weekly +gazette, published in the shape of a versified letter to Mademoiselle de +Longueville, was the only newspaper in France. Fouquet furnished the +editor with money and with items. He allowed Scarron sixteen hundred +livres a year, when Mazarin struck his name from the pension-list, as +punishment for a "_Mazarinade_," the only squib of the kind the Cardinal +had ever noticed. Poor Scarron was hopelessly paralyzed, and bedridden. +He had been a comely, robust fellow in his youth, given to dissipated +courses. In a Carnival frolic, he appeared in the streets with two +companions in the character of bipeds with feathers,--a scanty addition +to Plato's definition of man. This airy costume was too much for French +modesty, proverbially shrinking and sensitive. The mob hooted and gave +chase. The maskers fled from the town and hid themselves in a marsh to +evade pursuit. The result of this venturesome _travestissement_ was the +death of both his friends, and an attack of inflammatory rheumatism +which twisted Scarron for life into the shape of the letter Z. + +The Surintendant's _hotel_, at St. Mande, was a marvel of art, his +library the best in France. The number and value of his books was urged +against him, on his trial, as evidence of his peculations. His +country-seat, at Vaux, cost him eighteen millions of livres. Three +villages were bought and razed to enlarge the grounds. Le Vau built the +_chateau_. Le Brun painted the ceilings and panels. La Fontaine and +Michel Gervaise furnished French and Latin mottoes for the allegorical +designs. Le Notre laid out the gardens in the style which may still be +seen at Versailles. Torelli, an Italian engineer, decorated them with +artificial cascades and fountains, a wonder of science to Frenchmen in +the seventeenth century. Puget had collected the statues which +embellished them. There was a collection of wild animals, a rare +spectacle before the days of zoological gardens,--an aviary of foreign +birds,--tanks as large as ponds, in which, among other odd fish, swam a +sturgeon and a salmon taken in the Seine. Everything was magnificent, +and everything was new,--so original and so perfect, that Louis XIV., +after he had crushed the Surintendant, could find no plans so good and +no artists so skilful as these _pour embellir son regne_. He was obliged +to imitate the man he hated. Even Fouquet's men of letters were soon +enrolled in the service of the King. + +In March, 1661, Mazarin died, full of honor. His favorite saying, "_Il +tiempo e un galantuomo_," was fulfilled for him. In spite of many +desperate disappointments and defeats, _Messer Tiempo_ had made him +rich, powerful, and triumphant. The young King, who had already +announced his theory of government in the well-known speech, "_L'Etat, +c'est moi_," waited patiently, and with respect, (filial, some have +said,) for the old man to depart. He put on mourning, a compliment never +paid but once before by a French sovereign to the memory of a +subject,--by Henry IV. to Gabrielle d'Estrees. When the Council came +together, the King told them, that hitherto he had permitted the late +Cardinal to direct the affairs of State, but that in future he should +take the duty upon himself,--the gentlemen present would aid him with +their advice, if he should see fit to ask for it. It was a "neat little +speech," and very much to the point: Louis XIV. had the talent of making +neat little speeches. But the Surintendant, who presided in the Council, +did not believe him. A prince, he thought, two-and-twenty years of age, +fond of show and of pleasure, of moderate capacity, and with no +education, might undertake for a while the cares of government, but, +when the novelty wore off, would tire of the labor. And then, whose +pretensions to shoulder the burden were so well founded as Fouquet's? He +was almost a king, and had the political patronage of a president. The +revenue of the nation passed through his hands. _Fermiers_ and +_traitants_, those who farmed the taxes and those who gathered them for +a consideration, obeyed his nod and laid their offerings at his feet. A +judicious mixture of presents and promises had given him the control of +judges enough in the different Parliaments to fortify his views of the +public business by legal decisions. In his own Parliament he was +supreme. Clever agents, stationed in important places, both at home and +abroad, watched over his interests, and kept him informed of all that +transpired, by faithful couriers. But he misunderstood his position, and +was mistaken in his King. Louis XIV. had, indeed, little talent and less +education. He could never learn Latin, at that time as much a part of a +gentleman's training as French is now with us; but he had what for want +of a more distinctive word we may call character,--that +well-proportioned mixture of sense, energy, and self-reliance which +obtains for its possessor more success in life, and more respect from +those about him, than brilliant mental endowments. It was the moral side +of his nature which was deficient. He was selfish, envious, and cruel; +and he had not that noble hatred of the crooked, the mean, and the +dishonorable which becomes a gentleman. Mazarin once said,--"There is +stuff enough in him to make four kings and one worthy man." Divide this +favorable opinion by four, and the result will be an approximation to +the value of Louis XIV. as a monarch and a man. There was a king in +him,--a determination to be master, and to bear no rival near the +throne, no matter of how secondary or trifling a nature the rivalry +might be. + +Fouquet had been deep in Mazarin's confidence, his agent and partner in +those sharp financial operations which had brought so much profit to the +Cardinal and so little to the Crown. One of their jobs was to buy up, at +an enormous discount, old and discredited claims against the Treasury, +dating from the Fronde, which, when held by the right parties, were paid +in full,--a species of fraud known by various euphemisms in the purest +of republics. All the checks and balances of our enlightened system of +administration, whether federal, state, or municipal, do not prevent +skilful officials from perverting vast sums of money to their own uses. +In France, demoralized by years of civil war, the official facilities +for plundering were concentrated in the hands of one clever man. We can +easily understand that his wealth was enormous, and his power +correspondingly great. + +When the late Cardinal, surfeited with spoils, was drawing near his end, +scruples of conscience, never felt before, led him to advise the King to +keep a strict watch upon the Surintendant. He recommended for that +purpose his steward, Colbert, of whose integrity and knowledge of +business he had the highest opinion. Colbert was made Under-Secretary of +State, and Fouquet's dismissal from office determined upon from that +time. + +The Surintendant had no previsions of danger. With his usual boldness, +he laid the financial "situation" of the kingdom before his new master, +confessed frankly what it was impossible to conceal, laid the blame of +all irregularities upon Mazarin, or upon the exigencies of the times, +and ended by imploring an amnesty for the past, and promising thrift and +economy for the future. The King appeared satisfied, and granted a full +pardon. Fouquet, more confident than ever, dashed on in the old way, +while Colbert and his clerks were quietly digging the pit into which he +was soon to fall. Colbert was reinforced by Seguier, the Chancellor, and +by Le Tellier, a Secretary of State, who had an energetic son, Louvois, +in the War Department. All three hated the Surintendant, and each hoped +to succeed him. Fouquet's ostentation and haughtiness had made him +enemies among the old nobility. Many of them were eager to see the proud +and prosperous man humiliated,--merely to gratify that wretched feeling +of envy and spite so inherent in poor human nature, and one of the +strongest proofs of that corruption "which standeth in the following of +Adam." + +Louis XIV. had reasons of his own for his determination to destroy the +Surintendant. First of all, he was afraid of him. The Fronde was fresh +in the royal memory. Fouquet had enormous wealth, an army of friends and +retainers; he could command Brittany from his castle of Belleile, which +he had fortified and garrisoned. Why might he not, if his ambition were +thwarted, revive rebellion, and bring back misery upon France? The +personal reminiscences of the King's whole life must have made him feel +keenly the force of this apprehension. He was ten years old, when, to +escape De Retz and Beaufort, the Queen-Mother fled with him to St. +Germain, and slept there upon straw, in want of the necessaries of life. +After their return to Paris, the mob broke into the Louvre, and +penetrated to the royal bedchamber. He could not well forget the night +when his mother placed him upon his knees to pray for the success of the +attempt to arrest Conde, who thought himself the master. He was twelve +when Mazarin marched into France with seven thousand men wearing green +scarfs, the Cardinal's colors, and in the Cardinal's pay. After the +young King had joined them, the Parliament of Paris offered fifty +thousand crowns for the Cardinal's head. He was thirteen when Conde, in +command of Spanish troops, surprised the royalists at Bleneau, and would +have captured King and Court, had it not been for the skill of Turenne. +A few years before, Turenne had served against France, under the Spanish +flag. The boy-King had witnessed the battle of St. Antoine,--had seen +the gates of Paris closed against him, and the cannon of the Bastille +firing upon his army, by order of his cousin, _Mademoiselle_, the +grand-daughter of Henry IV. He had known a Parliament at Paris, and an +Anti-Parliament at Pontoise. In 1651, Conde, De Retz, and La +Rochefoucauld fought in the Palais Royal, almost in the royal presence. +In 1652 he had been compelled to exile Mazarin again; and it was not +until 1658 that Turenne finally defeated Conde and Don John of Austria, +and opened the way to the Peace of the Pyrenees, and the marriage with +the Infanta. Oliver Cromwell aided the King with six thousand of his +soldiers in this battle, and seized upon Dunkirk to repay himself,--only +three years before. No wonder Louis was anxious to place the throne +beyond the reach of danger and insult, and to crush the only man who +seemed to have the power to rekindle a civil war. + +A stronger and a meaner motive he kept to himself. He was small-minded +enough to think that a subject overshadowed him, _nec pluribus impar_. +He hated Fouquet because he was so much admired,--because he was called +the Magnificent,--because his _chateaux_ and gardens were incomparably +finer than St. Germain or Fontainebleau,--because he was surrounded by +the first wits and artists,--no trifling matter in that bright morning +of French literature, when every gentleman of station in Paris aspired +to be a _bel-esprit_, or, if that was impossible, to keep one in his +employ. "_Le Roi s'abaissa jusqu'a se croire humilie par un sujet_." His +"_gloire_" as he called it, was his passion, not only in war and in +government, where it meant something, but in buildings and furniture, +dress and dinners, madrigals and _bon-mots_. The monopoly of _gloire_ he +must and would have,--nobly, if possible, but at any rate, and in every +kind, _gloire_. + +And the unlucky Surintendant had sinned against the royal feelings in a +still more unpardonable way. The King was in love with La Valliere. He +had surrounded his attachment with the mystery the young and sentimental +delight in. Fouquet, quite unconscious of the royal fancy, had cast eyes +of favor upon the same lady. Proceeding according to the custom of men +of middle age and of abundant means, he had wasted no time in _petits +soins_ and sighs, but, Jupiter-like, had offered to shower two hundred +thousand livres upon the fair one. This proposition was reported to the +King, and was the cause of the _acharnement_, the relentless fury, he +showed in persecuting Fouquet. He would have dealt with him as Queen +Christina had dealt with Monaldeschi, if he had dared. The hatred +survived long after he had dismissed the fair cause of it from his +affections, and from his palace. + +Such was the Surintendant's position when he issued his invitation to +the King, Court, and _bel-air_ for the seventeenth of August, 1661,--the +_fete de Vaux_, which fills a paragraph in every history of France. In +June, he had entertained the Queen of England in a style which made +Mazarin's pageants for the Infanta Queen seem tasteless and +old-fashioned. The present festival cast the preceding one into the +shade. It began in the early afternoon, like a _dejeuner_ of our day. +The King was there, the Queen-Mother, Monsieur, brother to the King, and +Madame, daughter of Charles I. of England, attended by Princes, Dukes, +Marquises, and Counts, with their quick-witted, sharp-tongued, and +independent spouses. The highest and noblest of France came to stare at +Fouquet's magnificence, to wonder at the strange birds and beasts, and +to admire the fountains and cascades. After a walk about the grounds, +the august company were served with supper in the _chateau_. Vatel was +the _maitre d'hotel_. The King could not conceal his astonishment at the +taste and luxury of the Surintendant, nor his annoyance when he +recognized the portrait of La Valliere in a mythological panel. Over +doors and windows were carved and painted Fouquet's arms,--a squirrel, +with the motto, "_Quo non ascendam_?" The King asked a chamberlain for +the translation. When the device was interpreted, the measure of his +wrath was full. He was on the point of ordering Fouquet's instant +arrest; but the Queen-Mother persuaded him to wait until every +precaution had been taken. + +After supper, the guests were conducted to the play. The theatre was at +the end of an alley of pines, almost _al fresco_. The stage represented +a garden decorated with fountains and with statues of Terminus. Scenery +by Le Brun; machinery and transmutations by Torelli; stage-manager, +Moliere; the comedy, "_Les Facheux_," "The Bores," composed, written, +and rehearsed expressly for this occasion, in the short space of fifteen +days. This piece was put upon the stage in a new way. The ballet, +introduced by Mazarin a few years before, was the fashion, and +indispensable. As Moliere had only a few good dancers, he placed the +scenes of the ballet between the acts of the comedy, in order to give +his artists time to change their dresses and to take three or four +different parts. To avoid awkwardness in these transitions, the plot of +the comedy was carried over into the pantomime. This arrangement proved +so successful that Moliere made use of it in many of his later plays. + +The curtain rises upon a man in citizen's-dress (Moliere). He expresses +amazement and dismay at seeing so large and so distinguished an +audience, and implores His Majesty to pardon him for being there without +actors enough and without time enough to prepare a suitable +entertainment. While he is yet speaking, twenty jets of water spring +into the air,--a huge rock in the foreground changes into a shell,--the +shell opens,--forth steps a Naiad (pretty Mademoiselle Bejart, a +well-known actress,--too well known for Moliere's domestic comfort) and +declaims verses written by Pellisson for the occasion. Here is a part of +this prologue in commonplace prose; Pellisson's verses are of a kind +which loses little by translation. The flattery is heavy, but Louis XIV. +was not dainty; he liked it strong, and probably swallowed more of it +with pleasure and comfort during fifty years than any other man. + +"Mortals," said _la Bejart_, "I come from my grotto to look upon the +greatest king in the world. Shall the land or the water furnish a new +spectacle for his amusement? He has only to speak,--to wish; nothing is +impossible to him. Is he not himself a miracle? And has he not the right +to demand miracles of Nature? He is young, victorious, wise, valiant, +and dignified,--as benevolent and just as he is powerful. He governs his +desires as well as his subjects; he unites labor and pleasure; always +busy, never at fault, seeing all, hearing all. To such a prince Heaven +can refuse nothing. If Louis commands, these Termini shall walk from +their places, these trees shall speak better than the oaks of Dodona. +Come forth, then, all of you! Louis commands it. Come forth to amuse +him, and transform yourselves upon this novel stage!" Trees and Termini +fly open. Dryads, Fauns, and Satyrs skip out. Then the Naiad invokes +Care, the goddess whose hand rests heavily upon monarchs, and implores +her to grant the great King an hour's respite from the business of +State and from his anxiety for his people. "Let him give his great heart +up to pleasure. To-morrow, with strength renewed, he will take up his +burden, sacrifice his own rest to give repose to mankind and maintain +peace throughout the universe. But to-night let all _facheux_ stand +back, except those who can make themselves agreeable to him." The Naiad +vanishes. The Fauns dance to the violins and hautboys, until the play +begins. + +After the comedy, the spectators walked slowly to the _chateau_. A _feu +d'artifice_, ending in a bouquet of a thousand rockets from the dome, +lighted them on their way back. Another repast followed, which lasted +until the drums of the royal _mousquetaires_, the King's escort, were +heard in the courtyard. This was the signal for breaking up. + +The Surintendant seemed to be on the highest pinnacle of prosperity, +beyond the reach of Fate. There was at Rome a Sire de Maucroix, sent +thither by Fouquet on his private business. To him his friend La +Fontaine wrote a full description of the day, and of the effect Vaux had +produced upon the fashionable world. "You would think that Fame [_la +Renommee_] was made only for him, he gives her so much to do at once. + + 'Plein d'eclat, plein de gloire, adore des mortels, + Il recoit des honneurs qu'on ne doit qu'aux autels.'" + +A few days later, the Surintendant arrived at Angers, on his way to +Nantes. Arnauld writes, that the Bishop of Angers and himself waited +upon the great man to pay their respects. "From the height upon which he +stood, all others seemed so far removed from him that he could not +recognize them. He scarcely looked at us, and Madame, his wife, seemed +neither less frigid nor more civil." On the fifth of September, nineteen +days after the _fete_, the thunderbolt fell upon him. + +A _Procureur-General_ could be tried only by the Parliament to which he +belonged. To make Fouquet's destruction more certain, Colbert had +induced him, by various misrepresentations, to sell out. He received +fourteen hundred thousand livres for the place, and presented the +enormous sum to the Treasury. This act of munificence, or of +restitution, did not save him. If he had been backed by fifty thousand +men, the King could hardly have taken greater precautions. His Majesty's +manner was more gracious than ever. To prevent a rising in the West, +Louis journeyed to Nantes, which is near Belleile. Fouquet accompanied +the progress with almost equal state. He had his court, his guards, his +own barge upon the Loire,--and travelled brilliantly onward to ruin. The +palace in Nantes was the scene of the arrest. Fouquet, suspecting +nothing, waited upon the King. Louis kept him engaged in conversation, +until he saw D'Artagnau, a name famous in storybooks, and the +_mousquetaires_ in the courtyard. Then he gave the signal. The +Surintendant was seized and taken to Angers, thence to Amboise, +Vincennes, and finally to the Bastille. He was confined in a room +lighted only from above, and allowed no communication with family or +friends. The mask was now thrown off, and the blow followed up with a +malignant energy which showed the determination to destroy. The King was +very violent, and said openly that he had matter in his possession which +would hang the Surintendant. His secretaries and agents were arrested. +His friends, not knowing how much they might be implicated, either fled +the kingdom, or kept out of the way in the provinces. Pellisson and Dr. +Pecquet were sent to the Bastille; Guenegaud lost half his fortune; the +Bishop of Avranches had to pay twelve thousand francs; Gourville fled to +England; Pomponne was ordered to reside at Verdun. Fouquet's papers were +examined in the presence of the King. Letters were there from persons in +every class of life,--a very large number from women, for the prisoner +had charms which the fair sex have always found it difficult to resist. +Madame Scarron had written to thank him for his bounty to the poor +cripple whose name and roof protected her. The King had probably never +before heard of this lady, who was to be the wife and ruler of his old +age. The portfolio contained specimens of the gayest and brightest of +letter-writers. In the course of his career, the gallant Surintendant +had attempted to add the charming widow Sevigne to his conquests. She +refused the temptation, but always remained grateful for the compliment. +Le Tellier told her cousin, Bussy-Rabutin, that the King liked her +letters,--"very different," he said, "from the _douceurs fades_"--the +insipid sweet things--"of the other feminine scribes." Nevertheless, she +thought it prudent to reside for a time upon her estate in Brittany. A +copy of a letter by St. Evremond was found, written three years before +from the Spanish frontier. It was a sarcastic pleasantry at the expense +of Mazarin and the _Paix des Pyrenees_, St. Evremond was a soldier, a +wit, and the leader of fashion; Colbert hated him, and magnified a _jeu +d'esprit_ into a State-crime. He was exiled, and spent the rest of his +long life in England. Of the baser sort, hundreds were turned out of +their places and thrown penniless upon the world. It was a _coup +d'etat_, a revolution, and most people were against Fouquet. It is such +a consolation for the little to see the mighty fall! + +The instinct which impels friends and servants to fly from sinking +fortunes is a well-established fact in human natural history; but +Fouquet's hold upon his followers was extraordinary: it resisted the +shock of ruin. They risked court-favor, purse, and person, to help him. +Gourville, before he thought of his own safety, carried a hundred +thousand livres to Madame Fouquet, to be used in defending the +Surintendant, or in bribing a judge or a jailer. The rest of his +property he divided, intrusting one half to a devout friend, the other +to a sinful beauty, Ninon de l'Enclos, and fled the country. The +"professor" absorbed all that was left in his hands; Ninon returned her +trust intact. This little incident was made much use of at a later day +by the _Philosophes_, and Voltaire worked it up into "Le Depositaire." +From the Bastille, Pellisson addressed to the King three papers in +defence of his chief: "masterpieces of prose, worthy of Cicero," +Voltaire says,--"_ce que l'eloquence a produit de plus beau_." And +Sainte-Beuve thinks that Louis must have yielded to them, if he had +heard them spoken, instead of reading them in his closet. The faithful +La Fontaine fearlessly sang the sorrows of his patron, and accustomed +"_chacun a plaindre ses malheurs_." He begged to the King for mercy, in +an ode full of feeling, if not of poetry. "Has not Oronte been +sufficiently punished by the withdrawal of thy favor? Attack Rome, +Vienna, but be merciful to us. _La Clemence est fille des Dieux_." A +copy of this ode found its way to the prisoner. He protested against +these lines:-- + + "Mais, si tu crois qu'il est coupable, + Il ne veut point etre innocent." + +Two years of prison had not broken him down to this point of +self-abasement. Could any Sultan, or even the "Oriental Despot" of a +radical penny-a-liner, be implored in more abject terms? Madame de +Sevigne, Madame de Scudery, Le Fevre, talked, wrote, and spared no +expense for their dear friend. Brebeuf, the poet, who had neither +influence nor money, took to his bed and died of grief. Hesnault, author +of the "Avorton," a sonnet much admired in those days, and translated +with approval into English verse, as, + + "Frail spawn of nought and of existence mixed," + +eased his feelings by insulting Colbert in another sonnet, beginning +thus:-- + + "Ministre avare et lache, esclave malheureux." + +The poet escaped unpunished. His affront gave Colbert the chance for a +_mot_,--an opportunity which Frenchmen seldom throw away. When the +injurious verses were reported to the Minister, he asked,--"Is there +anything in them offensive to the King?" "No." "Then there can be +nothing in them offensive to me." Loret, of the Gazette, was not so +lucky. A gentle appeal in his journal for less severity was punished by +striking the editor from the pension-list,--a fine of fifteen hundred +livres a year. Fouquet heard of it, and found means to send, by the +hands of Madame Scudery, a year's allowance to the faithful newsman. + +The Government was not ready to proceed to trial until 1664. For three +years the sharpest lawyers in France had been working on the Act of +Accusation. It was very large even for its age. The accompanying +_Pieces_ were unusually voluminous. The accused had not been idle. His +_Defenses_ may be seen in fourteen closely printed Elzevir 18mos. + +The unabated rigor of Fouquet's prison had convinced his friends that it +was useless to hope for clemency, and that it might be difficult to save +his life. The King was as malignant as at first; Colbert and Le Tellier +as venomous, as if it had been a question of Fouquet's head or their +own. They talked about justice, affected moderation, and deceived +nobody. Marshal Turenne, speaking of their respective feelings in the +matter, said a thing which was considered good by the _bel-esprits_:--"I +think that Colbert is the more anxious to have him hanged, and Le +Tellier the more afraid he will not be." + +But meantime the Parisians had changed their minds about the +Surintendant. Now, they were all for him. His friends had done much to +bring this about; time, and the usual reaction of feeling, had done +more. His haughtiness and his pomp were gone and forgotten; there +remained only an unfortunate gentleman, crushed, imprisoned, threatened +with death, attacked by his enemies with a bitterness which showed they +were seeking to destroy the man rather than to punish the criminal,--yet +bearing up against his unexampled afflictions with unshaken courage. The +great Public has strong levelling propensities, both upward and +downward. If it delights to see the prosperous humbled, it is always +ready to pity the unfortunate; and even in 1664 the popular feeling in +Paris was powerful enough to check the ministers of an absolute king, +and to save Fouquet's life. His persecutors were so eager to run down +their prey that they overran it "In their anxiety to hang him," some one +said, "they have made their rope so thick that they cannot tighten it +about his neck." + +In November, 1664, Fouquet was brought before a commission of twenty-two +judges, selected from the different Parliaments of the kingdom. After +protesting against the jurisdiction of the court, he took his seat upon +the _sellette_, although a chair had been prepared for him beside it. +The interrogatories commenced. There were two principal charges against +him. First, diversion of the public funds to his own use,--embezzlement +or defalcation we should call it. Proof: his great expenditure, too +large for any private fortune. Answer: that his expenses were within the +income he derived from his salaries, pensions, and the property of +himself and wife. He was questioned closely upon his administration of +the finances. He was invariably self-possessed and ready with an answer, +and he eluded satisfactorily every attempt of the judges to entrap him, +although, as one of his best friends confessed, "some places were very +slippery." The second charge, treason against the State, was based upon +a paper addressed to his wife, and found in his desk. Fifteen years +before, after a quarrel with Mazarin, he had drawn up a plan of the +measures to be taken by his family and adherents in case of an attack +upon his life or liberty. It was a mere rough draught, incomplete, which +had remained unburned because forgotten. The fortifications of Belleile +and the number of his retainers were brought up as evidence of his +intention to carry out the "_projet_," as it was called, if it became +necessary. Fouquet's explanations, and the date of the paper, were +satisfactory to the majority of the Commission. At last even the +Chancellor admitted that the proof was insufficient to sustain this part +of the accusation. Fouquet's answer to Seguier, during the examination +on the "_projet_," was much admired, and repeated out-of-doors. Seguier +asserted more than once, "This is clearly treason." "No," retorted +Fouquet, "it is not treason; but I will tell you what is treason. To +hold high office, to be in the confidence of the King; then suddenly to +desert to the enemies of that King, to carry over relatives, with the +regiments and the fortresses under their command, and to betray the +secrets of State: that is treason." And that was exactly what Chancellor +Seguier had done in the Fronde. + +In French criminal jurisprudence, the theory seems to be that the +accused is guilty until he has proved his innocence, and those +conversant with French trials need not be told that the judges assist +the public prosecutor. In this case, they sought by cross-examinations +to confuse Fouquet, and to entrap him into dangerous admissions. Seguier +sternly repressed any leanings in his favor; he even reproved some of +the judges for returning the salutation of the prisoner, as he entered +the court-room. + +The trial lasted five weeks. All Paris looked on absorbed, as at a drama +of the most exciting interest. Fouquet never appeared so admirable as +then, at bay, firmly facing king, ministers, judges, eager for his +blood, excited by the ardor of pursuit, and embittered by the roar of +applause with which his masterly defence was received out-of-doors. Even +those who knew the Surintendant best were astonished at his courage and +his presence of mind. He seemed greater in his adversity than in his +magnificence. Some of the judges began to waver. Renard, J., said,--"I +must confess that this man is incomparable. He never spoke so well when +he was _Procureur_; he never showed so much self-possession." Another, +one Nesmond, died during the trial, and regretted openly on his +death-bed that he had lent himself to this persecution. The King ordered +that this dying speech and confession should not be repeated, but it +circulated only the more widely. + +"No public man," Voltaire says, "ever had so many personal friends"; and +no friends were ever more faithful and energetic. They repeated his +happy answers in all quarters, praised his behavior, pitied his +sufferings, and reviled and ridiculed his enemies. They managed to meet +him, as he walked to and from the Arsenal, where the Commission sat, and +cheered him with kind looks. Madame de Sevigne tells us how she and +other ladies of the same faith took post at a window to see "_notre +pauvre ami_" go by. "M. d'Artagnau walked by his side, followed by a +guard of fifty _mousquetaires_. He seemed sad. D'Artagnau touched him to +let him know that we were there. He saluted us with that quiet smile we +all knew so well." She says that her heart beat and her knees trembled. +The lively lady was still grateful for that compliment. + +The animosity which the King did not conceal made an acquittal almost +hopeless, but great efforts were made to save the life of the +Surintendant. Money was used skilfully and abundantly. Several judges +yielded to the force of this argument; others were known to incline to +mercy. Fouquet himself thought the result doubtful. He begged his +friends to let him know the verdict by signal, that he might have half +an hour to prepare himself to receive his sentence with firmness. + +The Commission deliberated for one week,--an anxious period for +Fouquet's friends, who trembled lest they had not secured judges enough +to resist the pressure from above. At last the court was reopened. +D'Ormesson, a man of excellent family and social position, who had +favored the accused throughout the trial, delivered his opinion at +length. He concluded for banishment. The next judge voted for +decapitation, but with a recommendation to mercy. Next, one Pussort, a +malignant tool of the Chancellor, inveighed against Fouquet for four +hours, so violently that he injured his case. His voice was for the +gallows,--but, in consideration of the criminal's rank, he would consent +to commute the cord for the axe. After him, four voted for death; then, +five for banishment. Six to six. Anxiety had now reached a distressing +point. The Chancellor stormed and threatened; but in vain. On the +twenty-fifth of December the result was known. Nine for death, thirteen +for banishment. Saved! "I am so glad," Sevigne wrote to Simon Arnauld, +"that I am beside myself." She exulted too soon. The King was not to be +balked of his vengeance. He refused to abide by the verdict of the +Commission he himself had packed, and arbitrarily changed the decree of +banishment to imprisonment for life in the Castle of Pignerol,--to +solitary confinement,--wife, family, friends, not to be permitted to see +the prisoner, or to write to him; even his valet was taken away. + +Thus the magnificent Surintendant disappeared from the world +forever,--buried alive, but indomitable and cheerful. His last message +to his wife was, "I am well. Keep up your courage; I have enough for +myself, and to spare." + +"We still hope for some relaxation," Sevigne writes again; but none ever +came from the narrow-hearted, vindictive King. He exiled Roquesante, the +judge who had shown the most kindness to Fouquet, and turned an +_Avocat-General_ out of office for saying that Pussort was a disgrace to +the Parliament he belonged to. Madame Fouquet, the mother, famous for +her book of prescriptions, "Recueil de Recettes Choisies," who had +cured, or was supposed to have cured, the Queen by a plaster of her +composition, threw herself at the King's feet, with her son's wife and +children. Their prayer was coldly refused, and they soon received an +order to reside in remote parts of France. Time seemed to have no +mollifying effect upon the animosity of the King. Six years later, a +young man who attempted to carry a letter from Fouquet to his wife was +sent to the galleys; and in 1676, fifteen years after the arrest, Madame +de Montespan had not influence enough to obtain permission for Madame +Fouquet and her children to visit the prisoner. + +This cruel and illegal punishment lasted for twenty years, until an +attack of apoplexy placed the Surintendant beyond the reach of his +torturer. So lost had he been in his living tomb, that it is a debated +point whether he died in Piguerol or not. He has even been one of the +candidates for the mysterious dignity of the Iron Mask. In his dungeon +he could learn nothing of what was passing in the world. Lauzun, whose +every-day life seemed more unreal and romantic than the dreams of +ordinary men, was confined in Pignerol. Active and daring as Jack +Sheppard, he dug through the wall of his cell, and discovered that his +next neighbor was Fouquet. When he told his fellow-prisoner of his +adventures and of his honors, how he had lost the place of Grand Master +of the Artillery through Louvois, and had only missed being the +acknowledged husband of the grand-daughter of Henry IV. because Madame +de Montespan persuaded the King to withdraw his consent, Fouquet, who +recollected him as a poor _cadet de famille_, thought him crazy, and +begged the jailer to have him watched and properly cared for. + +The Surintendant had twice wounded the vanity of his King. He had +presumed to have a more beautiful _chateau_ than his master, and had +unluckily fancied the same woman. Louis revenged himself by burying his +rival alive for twenty years. That Fouquet had plotted rebellion nobody +believed. He was too wise a politician not to know that the French were +weary of civil war and could not be tempted to exchange one master for +half a dozen military tyrants. That he had taken the public money for +his own use was not denied, even by his friends; and banishment would +have been a just punishment, although, perhaps, a harsh one. For it is +hardly fair to judge Fouquet by our modern standard of financial +honesty, low as that may be. We, at least, try to cover up jobs, +contracts, and defalcations by professions or appearances. The +difficulty of raising money for the expenses of Government in a state +impoverished by years of internal commotions had accustomed public men +to strange and irregular expedients, and unscrupulous financiers catch +fine fish in troubled waters. Mazarin openly put thousands of livres +into his pocket; the Surintendant imitated him on a smaller scale. But, +if he paid himself liberally for his services, he also showed energy and +skill in his attempts to restore order and economy in the administration +of the revenue. After his disgrace money was not much more plenty. +France, it is true, tranquil and secure within her borders, again showed +signs of wealth, and was able to pay heavier taxes; but the King wasted +them on his wars, his _chateaux_, and his mistresses, as recklessly as +the Surintendant. He had no misgivings as to his right to spend the +people's money. From his principle, "_L'Etat, c'est moi_," followed the +corollary, "The income of the State is mine." From 1664 to 1690 one +hundred and sixteen millions of livres were laid out in unnecessary +_hotels, chateaux_, and gardens. His ministers imitated him at a humble +distance. Louvois boasted that he had reached his fourteenth million at +Meudon. "I like," said Louis, "to have those who manage my affairs +skilfully do a good business for themselves." + +Before many years had passed, it was evident that Colbert, with all his +energy and his systems, did not make both the financial ends meet any +better than the Surintendant. A merchant of Paris, with whom he +consulted, told him,--"You found the cart upset on one side, and you +have upset it on the other." Colbert had tried to lighten it by striking +eight millions of _rentes_ from the funded debt; but it was too deeply +imbedded in the mire; the shoulder of Hercules at the wheel could not +have extricated it. After Colbert was removed, times grew harder. Long +before the King's death the financial distress was greater than in the +wars and days of the Fronde. Every possible contrivance by which money +could be raised was resorted to. Lotteries were drawn, tontines +established, letters of nobility offered for sale at two thousand crowns +each. Those who preferred official rank could buy the title of +Councillor of State or of Commissioner of Police. New and +profitable offices were created and disposed of to the highest +bidder,--inspectorships of wood, of hay, of wine, of butter. Arbitrary +power, no matter whether we call it sovereign prince or sovereign +people, falls instinctively into the same ways in all times and +countries. The Demos of a neighboring State, absolute and greedy as any +monarch, have furnished us with plenty of examples of this last +imposition upon industry. Zealous servants are rewarded and +election-expenses paid by similar inspectorships and commissionerships, +not only useless, but injurious, to every one except those who hold +them. + +When these resources became exhausted, a capitation-tax was laid, +followed by an assessment of one tenth, and the adulteration of the +currency. The King cut off the pension-list, sold his plate, and +dismissed his servants. Misery and starvation laid waste the realm. At +last, the pompous, "stagy" old monarch died, full of infirmities and of +humiliations; and the road from the Boulevard to St. Denis was lined +with booths as for a _fete_, and the people feasted, sang, and danced +for joy that the tyrant was in his coffin. Time, the _galantuomo_, amply +avenged Fouquet. + + * * * * * + +AMONG THE MORMONS. + + +The approach to Salt Lake City from the east is surprisingly harmonious +with the genius of Mormonism. Nature, usually so unpliant to the spirit +of people who live with her, showing a bleak and rugged face, which +poetically should indicate the abode of savages and ogres, to Hans +Christian Andersen and his hospitable countrymen, but lavishing the +eternal summer of her tropic sea upon barbarians who eat baked enemy +under her palms, or throw their babies to her crocodiles,--this stiff, +unaccommodating Nature relents into a little expressiveness in the +neighborhood of the Mormons, and you feel that the grim, tremendous +_canons_ through which your overland stage rolls down to the City of the +Saints are strangely fit avenues to an anomalous civilization. + +We speak of crossing the Rocky Mountains from Denver to Salt Lake; but, +in reality, they reach all the way between those places. They are not a +chain, as most Eastern people imagine them, but a giant ocean caught by +petrifaction at the moment of maddest tempest. For six hundred miles the +overland stage winds over, between, and around the tremendous billows, +lying as much as may be in the trough, and reaching the crest at +Bridger's Pass, (a sinuous gallery, walled by absolutely bare yellow +mountains between two and three thousand feet in height at the +road-side,) but never getting entirely out of the Rocky-Mountain system +till it reaches the Desert beyond Salt Lake. Even there it runs +constantly among mountains; in fact, it never loses sight of lofty +ranges from the moment it makes Pike's Peak till its wheels +(metaphorically) are washed by the Pacific Ocean; but the mountains of +the Desert may legitimately set up for themselves, belonging, as I +believe, to a system independent of the Rocky Mountains on the one side +and the Sierra Nevada on the other. At a little _plateau_ among snowy +ridges a few miles east of Bridger's Pass, the driver leans over and +tells his insiders, in a matter-of-fact manner, through the window, that +they have reached the summit-level. Then, if you have a particle of true +cosmopolitanism in you, it is sure to come out. There is something +indescribably sublime, a conception of universality, in that sense of +standing on the water-shed of a hemisphere. You have reached the secret +spot where the world clasps her girdle; your feet are on its granite +buckle; perhaps there sparkles in your eyes that fairest gem of her +cincture, a crystal fountain, from which her belt of rivers flows in two +opposite ways. Yesterday you crossed the North Platte, almost at its +source (for it rises out of the snow among the Wind-River Mountains, and +out of your stage-windows you can see, from Laramie Plains, the Lander's +Peak which Bierstadt has made immortal); that stream runs into the sea +from whose historic shores you came; you might drop a waif upon its +ripples with the hope of its reaching New Orleans, New York, Boston, or +even Liverpool. To-morrow you will be ferried over Green River, as near +its source,--a stream whose cradle is in the same snow-peaks as the +Platte,--whose mysterious middle-life, under the new name of the +Colorado, flows at the bottom of those tremendous fissures, three +thousand feet deep, which have become the wonder of the +geologist,--whose grave, when it has dribbled itself away into the +dotage of shallows and quicksands, is the desert-margined Gulf of +California and the Pacific Sea. Between Green River and the Mormon city +no human interest divides your perpetually strained attention with +Nature. Fort Bridger, a little over a day's stage-ride east of the city, +is a large and quite a populous trading-post and garrison of the United +States; but although we found there a number of agreeable officers, +whose acquaintance with their wonderful surroundings was thorough and +scientific, and though at that period the fort was a rendezvous for our +only faithful friend among the Utah Indians, Washki, the Snake chief, +and that handful of his tribe who still remained loyal to their really +noble leader and our Government, Fort Bridger left the shadowiest of +impressions on my mind, compared with the natural glories of the +surrounding scenery. + +Mormondom being my theme, and my space so limited, I must resist the +temptation to give detailed accounts of the many marvellous masterpieces +of mimetic art into which we find the rocks of this region everywhere +carved by the hand of Nature. Before we came to the North Platte, we +were astonished by a ship, equalling the Great Eastern in size, even +surpassing it in beauty of outline, its masts of columnar sandstone +snapped by a storm, its prodigious hulk laboring in a gloomy sea of +hornblendic granite, its deck-houses, shapen with perfect accuracy of +imitation, still remaining in their place, and a weird-looking demon at +the wheel steering it on to some invisible destruction. This naval +statue (if its bulk forbid not the name) was carved out of a coarse +millstone-grit by the chisel of the wind, with but slight assistance +from the infrequent rain-storms of this region. In Colorado I first +began to perceive how vast an omission geologists had been guilty of in +their failure to give the wind a place in the dynamics of their science. +Depending for a year at a time, as that Territory sometimes does, upon +dews and meltings from the snow-peaks for its water, it is nevertheless +fuller than any other district in the world of marvellous architectural +simulations, vast cemeteries crowded with monuments, obelisks, castles, +fortresses, and natural colossi from two to five hundred feet high, done +in argillaceous sandstone or a singular species of conglomerate, all of +which owe their existence almost entirely to the agency of wind. The +arid plains from which the conglomerate crops out rarefy the +superincumbent air-stratum to such a degree that the intensely chilled +layers resting on the closely adjoining snow-peaks pour down to +reestablish equilibrium, with the wrathful force of an invisible +cataract, eight, ten, even seventeen thousand feet in height. These +floods of cold wind find their appropriate channels in the +characteristic _canons_ which everywhere furrow the whole Rocky-Mountain +system to its very base. Most of these are exceedingly tortuous, and the +descending winds, during their passage through them, acquire a spiral +motion as irresistible as the fiercest hurricane of the Antilles, which, +moreover, they preserve for miles after they have issued from the mouth +of the _canon_. Every little cold gust that I observed in the Colorado +country had this corkscrew character. The moment the spiral reaches a +loose sand-bed, it sweeps into its vortex all the particles of grit +which it can hold. The result is an auger, of diameter varying from an +inch to a thousand feet, capable of altering its direction so as to bore +curved holes, revolving with incalculable rapidity, and armed with a +cutting edge of silex. Is it possible to conceive an instrument more +powerful, more versatile? Indeed, practically, there is no description +of surface, no kind of cut, which it is not capable of making. I have +repeatedly seen it in operation. One day, while riding from Denver to +Pike's Peak, I saw it (in this instance, one of the smaller diameters) +burrow its way six or seven feet into a sand-bluff, making as smooth a +hole as I could cut in cheese with a borer, of the equal diameter of six +inches throughout, all in less time than I have taken to describe it. +Repeatedly, on the same trip, I saw it gouge out a circular groove +around portions of a similar bluff, and leave them standing as isolated +columns, with heavy base and capital, presently to be solidified into +just such rock pillars as throng the cemeteries or aid in composing the +strange architectural piles mentioned above. Surveyor-General Pierce of +Colorado, (a man whose fine scientific genius and culture have already +done yeoman's service in the study of that most interesting Territory,) +on a certain occasion, saw one of these wind-and-silex augers meet at +right angles a window-pane in a settler's cabin, which came out from the +process, after a few seconds, a perfect opaque shade, having been +converted into ground-glass as neatly and evenly as could have been +effected by the manufacturer's wheel. It is not a very rare thing in +Colorado to be able to trace the spiral and measure the diameter of the +auger by rocks of fifty pounds' weight and tree-trunks half as thick as +an average man's waist, torn up from their sites, and sent revolving +overhead for miles before the windy turbine loses its impetus. The +efficiency of an instrument like this I need not dwell upon. After some +protracted examination and study of many of the most interesting +architectural and sculpturesque structures of the Rocky-Mountain system, +I am convinced that they are mainly explicable on the hypothesis of the +wind-and-silex instrument operating upon material in the earthy +condition, which petrified after receiving its form. Indeed, this same +instrument is at present nowise restricted by that condition in +Colorado, and is not only, year by year, altering the conformation of +all sand and clay bluff's on the Plains, but is tearing down, +rebuilding, and fashioning on its facile lathe many rock-strata of the +solidity of the more friable grits, wherever exposed to its action. +Water at the East does hardly more than wind at the West. + +Before we enter the City of the Saints, let me briefly describe the +greatest, not merely of the architectural curiosities, but, in my +opinion, the greatest natural curiosity of any kind which I have ever +seen or heard of. Mind, too, that I remember Niagara, the Cedar-Creek +Bridge, and the Mammoth Cave, when I speak thus of the _Church Buttes_. + +They are situated a short distance from Fort Bridger; the overland road +passes by their side. They consist of a sandstone bluff, reddish-brown +in color, rising with the abruptness of a pile of masonry from the +perfectly level plain, carved along its perpendicular face into a series +of partially connected religious edifices, the most remarkable of which +is a cathedral as colossal as St. Peter's, and completely relieved from +the bluff on all sides save the rear, where a portico joins it with the +main precipice. The perfect symmetry of this marvellous structure would +ravish Michel Angelo. So far from requiring an effort of imagination to +recognize the propriety of its name, this church almost staggers belief +in the unassisted naturalness of its architecture. It belongs to a style +entirely its own. Its main and lower portion is not divided into nave +and transept, but seems like a system of huge semi-cylinders erected on +their bases, and united with reentrant angles, their convex surfaces +toward us, so that the ground-plan might be called a species of +quatre-foil. In each of the convex faces is an admirably proportioned +door-way, a Gothic arch with deep-carved and elaborately fretted +mouldings, so wonderfully perfect in its imitation that you almost feel +like knocking for admittance, secure of an entrance, did you only know +the "Open sesame." Between and behind the doors, alternating with +flying-buttresses, are a series of deep-niched windows, set with +grotesque statues, varying from the pigmy to the colossal size, +representing demons rather than saints, though some of the figures are +costumed in the style of religious art, with flowing sacerdotal +garments. + +The structure terminates above in a double dome, whose figure may be +imagined by supposing a small acorn set on the truncated top of a large +one, (the horizontal diameter of both being considerably longer in +proportion to the perpendicular than is common with that fruit,) and +each of these domes is surrounded by a row of prism-shaped pillars, half +column, half buttress in their effect, somewhat similar to the exquisite +columnar _entourage_ of the central cylinder of the leaning tower of +Pisa. The result of this arrangement is an aerial, yet massive beauty, +without parallel in the architecture of the world. I have not conveyed +to any mind an idea of the grandeur of this pile, nor could I, even with +the assistance of a diagram. I can only say that the Cathedral Buttes +are a lesson for the architects of all Christendom,--a purely novel and +original creation, of such marvellous beauty that Bierstadt and I +simultaneously exclaimed,--"Oh that the master-builders of the world +could come here even for a single day! The result would be an entirely +new style of architecture,--an American school, as distinct from all the +rest as the Ionic from the Gothic or Byzantine." If they could come, the +art of building would have a regeneration. "Amazing" is the only word +for this glorious work of Nature. I could have bowed down with awe and +prayed at one of its vast, inimitable doorways, but that the mystery of +its creation, and the grotesqueness of even its most glorious statues, +made one half dread lest it were some temple built by demon-hands for +the worship of the Lord of Hell, and sealed in the stone-dream of +petrifaction, with its priests struck dumb within it, by the hand of +God, to wait the judgment of Eblis and the earthquakes of the Last Day. + +After leaving Church Buttes and passing Fort Bridger, our attention +slept upon what it had seen until we entered the region of the _canons_. +These are defiles, channelled across the whole breadth of the Wahsatch +Mountains almost to the level of their base, walled by precipices of red +sandstone or sugar-loaf granite, compared with which the Palisades of +the Hudson become insignificant as a garden-fence. The least poetical +man who traverses these giant fissures cannot help feeling their fitness +as the avenues to a paradoxical region, an anomalous civilization, and a +people whose psychological problem is the most unsolvable of the +nineteenth century. During the Mormon War, Brigham Young made some rude +attempts at a fortification of the great Echo Canon, half a day's +journey from his city, and this work still remains intact. He need not +have done it; a hundred men, ambushed among the ledges at the top of the +canon-walls, and well provided with loose rocks and Minie-rifles, could +convert the defile into a new Thermopylae, without exposure to +themselves. In an older and more superstitious age, the unassisted +horrors of Nature herself would have repelled an invading host from the +passage of this grizzly _canon_, as the profane might have been driven +from the galleries of Isis or Eleusis. + +About forty miles from Salt Lake City we began to find Nature's +barrenness succumbing to the truly marvellous industry of the Mormon +people. To understand the exquisite beauty of simple green grass, you +must travel through eight hundred miles of sage-brush and _grama_,--the +former, the homely gray-leaved plant of our Eastern goose-stuffing, +grown into a dwarf tree six feet high, with a twisted trunk sometimes as +thick as a man's body; the latter, a stunted species of herbage, growing +in ash-tinted spirals, only two inches from the ground, and giving the +Plains an appearance of being matted with curled hair or gray +corkscrews. Its other name is "buffalo-grass"; and in spite of its +dinginess, with the assistance of the sage, converting all the Plains +west of Fort Kearney into a model Quaker landscape, it is one of the +most nutritious varieties of cattle-fodder, and for hundreds of miles +the emigrant-drover's only dependence. + +By incredible labor, bringing down rivulets from the snow-peaks of the +Wahsatch range and distributing them over the levels by every ingenious +device known to artificial irrigation, the Mormon farmers have converted +the bottoms of the _canons_ through which we approached Salt Lake into +fertile fields and pasture-lands, whose emerald sweep soothed our eyes +wearied with so many leagues of ashen monotony, as an old home-strain +mollifies the ear irritated by the protracted rhythmic clash or the +dull, steady buzz of iron machinery. Contrasting the Mormon settlements +with their surrounding desolation, we could not wonder that their +success has fortified this people in their delusion. The superficial +student of rewards and punishments might well believe that none but +God's chosen people could cause this horrible desert, after such +triumphant fashion, to blossom like the rose. + +The close observer soon notices a painful deficiency in these green and +smiling Mormon settlements. Everything has been done for the +farm,--nothing for the home. That blessed old Anglo-Saxon idea seems +everywhere quite extinct. The fields are billowing over with dense, +golden grain, the cattle are wallowing in emerald lakes of juicy grass, +the barns are substantial, the family-windmill buzzes merrily on its +well-oiled pivot, drawing water or grinding feed, the fruit-trees are +thrifty,--but the house is desolate. Even where its owner is +particularly well off, and its architecture somewhat more ambitious than +the average, (though, as yet, this superiority is measured by little +more than the difference between logs and clapboards,) there is still no +air about it of being the abode of happy people, fond of each other, and +longing after it in absence. It looks like a mere inclosure to eat and +sleep in. Nobody seems to have taken any pride in it, to feel any +ambition for it. Woman's tender little final touches, which make a dear +refuge out of a mud-cabin, and without which palatial brownstone is only +a home in the moulding-clay,--those dexterous ornamentations which make +so little mean so much,--the brier-rose-slip by the doorstep, growing +into the fragrant welcome of many Junes,--the trellised +Madeira-vines,--the sunny spot of chrysanthemums, charming summer on to +the very brink of frost,--all these things are utterly and everywhere +lacking to the Mormon inclosure. Sometimes we passed a fence which +guarded three houses instead of one. Abundant progeny played at their +doors, or rolled in their yard, watched by several unkempt, bedraggled +mothers owning a common husband,--and we could easily understand how +neither of these should feel much interest in the looks of a demesne +held by them in such unhappy partnership. The humblest New-England +cottage has its climbing flowers at the door-post, or its garden-bed in +front; but how quickly would these wither, if the neat, brisk +house-mistress owned her husband in common with Mrs. Deacon Pratt next +door! + +The first Mormon household I ever visited belonged to a son of the +famous Heber Kimball, Brigham Young's most devoted follower, and next to +him in the Presidency. It was the last stage-station but one before we +entered Salt Lake, situated at the bottom of a green valley in Parley's +Canon (named after the celebrated Elder, Parley Pratt); and as it looked +like the residence of a well-to-do farmer, I went in, and asked for a +bowl of bread and milk,--the greatest possible luxury after a life of +bacon and salt-spring water, such as we had been leading in the +mountains. A fine-looking, motherly woman, with a face full of +character, gray-haired, and about sixty years old, rose promptly to +grant my request, and while the horses were changing I had ample time to +make the acquaintance of two pretty young girls, hardly over twenty, +holding two infants, of ages not more than three months apart. Green as +I was to saintly manners, I supposed that one of these two young mothers +had run in from a neighbor's to compare babies with the mistress of the +house, after our Eastern fashion, universal with the owners of juvenile +phenomena. When the old lady came back with the bread and milk, and both +of the young girls addressed her as "mother," I was emboldened to tell +her that her daughters had a pretty pair of children. + +"They _are_ pretty," said the old lady, demurely; "but they are the +children of my son"; then, as if resolved to duck a Gentile head and +heels into Mormon realities at once, she added,--"Those young ladies are +the wives of my son, who is now gone on a mission to Liverpool,--young +Mr. Kimball, the son of Heber Kimball; and I am Heber Kimball's wife." + +A cosmopolitan, especially one knowing beforehand that Utah was not +distinguished for monogamy, might well be ashamed to be so taken off +his feet as I was by my first view of Mormonism in its practical +workings. I stared,--I believe I blushed a little,--I tried to stutter a +reply; and the one dreadful thought which persistently kept uppermost, +so that I felt they must read it in my face, was, "How _can_ these young +women sit looking at each other's babies without flying into each +other's faces with their fingernails, and tearing out each other's +hair?" Heber Kimball afterwards solved the question for me, by saying +that it was a triumph of grace. + +Such another triumph was Mrs. Heber Kimball herself. She was a woman of +remarkable presence, in youth must have been very handsome, would have +been the oracle of tea-fights, the ruling spirit of donation-visits, in +any Eastern village where she might have lived, and, had her home been +New York, would have fallen by her own gravity into the Chief +Directress's chair of half a dozen Woman's Aid Societies and +Associations for Moral Reform. Yet here was this strong-minded woman, as +her husband afterward acknowledged to me, his best counsellor and +right-hand helper through a married life reaching into middle-age, +witnessing her property in that husband's affections subdivided and +parcelled out until she owned but a one-thirtieth share, not only +without a pang, but with the acquiescence of her conscience and the +approbation of her intellect. Though few first wives in Utah had learned +to look concubinage in the face so late in life as this emphatic and +vigorous-natured woman, I certainly met none whose partisanship of +polygamy was so unquestioning and eloquent. She was one of the strangest +psychological problems I ever met. Indeed, I am half inclined to think +that she embraced Mormonism earlier than her husband, and, by taking the +initiative, secured for herself the only true wifely place in the +harem,--the marital after-thoughts of Brother Heber being her servants +rather than her sisters. She was most unmistakably his favorite. + +One day in the Opera-House at Salt Lake, when the carpenters were laying +the floor for the Fourth-of-July-Eve Ball, Heber and I got talking of +the _pot-pourri_ of nationalities assembled in Utah. Heber waxed +unctuously benevolent, and expressed his affection for each succeeding +race as fast as mentioned. + +"I love the Danes dearly! I've got a Danish wife." Then turning to a +rough-looking carpenter, hammering near him,--"You know Christiny,--eh, +Brother Spudge?" + +"Oh, yes! know her very well!" + +A moment after,--"The Irish are a dear people. My Irish wife is among +the best I've got." + +Again,--"I love the Germans! Got a Dutch wife, too! Know Katrine, +Brother Spudge? Remember she couldn't scarcely talk a word o' English +when she come,--eh, Brother Spudge?" + +Brother Spudge remembered,--and Brother Heber continued to trot out the +members of his marital stud for discussion of their points with his more +humble fellow-polygamist of the hammer; but when I happened to touch +upon the earliest Mrs. Heber, whom I naturally thought he would by this +time regard as a forgotten fossil in the Lower Silurian strata of his +connubial life, and referred to the interview I had enjoyed with her on +the afternoon before entering the city, his whole manner changed to a +proper husbandly dignity, and, without seeking corroboration from the +carpenter, be replied, gravely,-- + +"Yes! that is my first wife, and the best woman God ever made!" + +The ball to which I have referred was such an opportunity for studying +Mormon sociology as three months' ordinary stay in Salt Lake might not +have given me. Though Mormondom is disloyal to the core, it still +patronizes the Fourth of July, at least in its phase of festivity, +omitting the patriotism, but keeping the fireworks of our Eastern +celebration, substituting "Utah" for "Union" in the Buncombe speeches, +and having a ball instead of the Declaration of Independence. All the +saints within half a day's ride of the city come flocking into it to +spend the Fourth. A well-to-do Mormon at the head of his wives and +children, all of whom are probably eating candy as they march through +the metropolitan streets in solid column, looks to the uninitiated like +the principal of a female seminary, weak in its deportment, taking out +his charge for an airing. + +Last Fourth of July, it may be remembered, fell on a Saturday. In their +ambition to reproduce ancient Judaism (and this ambition is the key to +their whole puzzle) the Mormons are Sabbatarians of a strictness which +would delight Lord Shaftesbury. Accordingly, in order that their +festivities might not encroach on the early hours of the Sabbath, they +had the ball on Fourth-of-July eve, instead of the night of the Fourth. +I could not realize the risk of such an encroachment when I read the +following sentence printed on my billet of invitation:-- + +"_Dancing to commence at_ 4 P.M." + +Bierstadt, myself, and three gentlemen of our party were the only +Gentiles whom I found invited by President Young to meet in the +neighborhood of three thousand saints. Under these circumstances I felt +like the three-thousandth homoeopathic dilution of monogamy. Morality in +this world is so mainly a matter of convention that I dreaded to appear +in decent polygamic society, lest respectable women, owning their +orthodox tenth of a husband, should shrink from the pollution of my +presence, whispering, with a shudder, "Ugh! Well, I never! How that +one-wifed reprobate can dare to show his face!" But they were very +polite, and received me with as skilfully veiled disapprobation as is +shown by fashionable Eastern belies to brilliant seducers immoral in +_our_ sense. Had I been a woman, I suppose there would have been no +mercy for me. + +I sought out our entertainer, Brigham Young, to thank him for the +flattering exception made in our Gentile favor. He was standing in the +dress-circle of the theatre, looking down on the dancers with an air of +mingled hearty kindness and feudal ownership. I could excuse the latter, +for Utah belongs to him of right. He may justly say of it, "Is not this +great Babylon which I have built?" His sole executive tact and personal +fascination are the key-stone of the entire arch of Mormon society. +While he remains, eighty thousand (and increasing) of the most +heterogeneous souls that could be swept together from the by-ways of +Christendom will continue builded up into a coherent nationality. The +instant he crumbles, Mormondom and Mormonism will fall to pieces at +once, irreparably. His individual magnetism, his executive tact, his +native benevolence, are all immense; I regard him as Louis Napoleon, +_plus_ a heart; but these advantages would avail him little with the +dead-in-earnest fanatics who rule Utah under him, and the entirely +persuaded fanatics whom they rule, were not his qualities all +coordinated in this one,--_absolute sincerity of belief and motive_. +Brigham Young is the farthest remove on earth from a hypocrite; he is +that grand, yet awful sight in human nature, a man who has brought the +loftiest Christian self-devotion to the altar of the Devil,--who is +ready to suffer crucifixion for Barabbas, supposing him Christ. Be sure, +that, were he a hypocrite, the Union would have nothing to fear from +Utah. When he dies, at least four hostile factions, which find their +only common ground in deification of his person, will snatch his mantle +at opposite corners. Then will come such a rending as the world has not +seen since the Macedonian generals fought over the coffin of +Alexander,--and then Mormonism will go out of Geography into the History +of Popular Delusions. There is not a single chief, apostle, or bishop, +except Brigham, who possesses any catholicity of influence. I found this +tacitly acknowledged in every quarter. The people seem like citizens of +a beleaguered town, who know they have but a definite amount of bread, +yet have made up their minds to act while it lasts as if there were no +such thing as starvation. The greatest comfort you can afford a Mormon +is to tell him how young Brigham looks; for the quick, unconscious +sequence is, "Then Brigham may last out my time." Those who think at all +have no conjecture of any Mormon future beyond him, and I know that many +Mormons (Heber Kimball included) would gladly die to-day rather than +survive him and encounter that judgment-day and final perdition of their +faith which must dawn on his new-made grave. + +Well, we may give them this comfort without any insincerity. Let us +return to where he stands gazing down on the _parquet_. Like any Eastern +party-goer, he is habited in the "customary suit of solemn black," and +looks very distinguished in this dress, though his daily homespun +detracts nothing from the feeling, when in his presence, that you are +beholding a most remarkable man. He is nearly seventy years old, but +appears very little over forty. His height is about five feet ten +inches; his figure very well made and slightly inclining to portliness. +His hair is a rich curly chestnut, formerly worn long, in supposed +imitation of the apostolic coiffure, but now cut in our practical +Eastern fashion, as accords with the man of business, whose _metier_ he +has added to apostleship with the growing temporal prosperity of Zion. +Indeed, he is the greatest business-man on the continent,--the cashier +of a firm of eighty thousand silent partners, and the only auditor of +that cashier, besides. If I to-day signified my conversion to Mormonism, +to-morrow I should be baptized by Brigham's hands. The next day I should +be invited to appear at the Church-Office (Brigham's) and exhibit to the +Church (Brigham) a faithful inventory of my entire estate. I am a +cabinet-maker, let us say, and have brought to Salt Lake the entire +earnings of my New-York shop,--twenty thousand dollars. The Church +(Brigham sole and simple) examines and approves my inventory. It +(Brigham alone) has the absolute decision of the question whether any +more cabinet-makers are needed in Utah. If the Church (Brigham) says, +"No," it (Brigham again) has the right to tell me where labor is wanted, +and set me going in my new occupation. If the Church (Brigham) says, +"Yes," it further goes on to inform me, without appeal, exactly what +proportion of the twenty thousand dollars on my inventory can be +properly turned into the channels of the new cabinet-shop. I am making +no extraordinary or disproportionate supposition when I say that the +Church (Brigham) permits me to retain just one-half of my property. The +remaining ten thousand dollars goes into the Church-Fund, (Brigham's +Herring-safe,) and from that portion of my life's savings I never hear +again, in the form either of capital, interest, bequeathable estate, or +dower to my widow. Except for the purposes of the Church, (Brigham's +unquestionable will,) my ten thousand dollars is as though it had not +been. I am a sincere believer, however, and go home light-hearted, with +a certified check written by the Recording Angel on my conscience for +that amount, passed to my credit in the bank where thieves break not +through nor steal,--it being no more accessible to them than to the +depositor, which is a comfort to the latter. The first year I net from +my chairs and tables two thousand dollars. The Church (Brigham) sends me +another invitation to visit it, make a solemn averment of the sum, and +pay over to that ecclesiastical edifice, the Herring-safe, two hundred +dollars. Or suppose I have not sold any of my wares as yet, but have +only imported, to be sold by-and-by, five hundred Boston rockers. On +learning this fact, the Church (Brigham) graciously accepts fifty for +its own purposes.--Being founded upon a rock, it does not care, in its +collective capacity, to sit upon rockers, but has an immense series of +warehouses, omnivorous and eupeptic, which swallow all manner of tithes, +from grain and horseshoes to the less stable commodities of fresh fish +and melons, assimilating them by admirable processes into coin of the +realm. These warehouses are in the Church (Brigham's own private) +inclosure.--If success in my cabinet-making has moved me to give a +feast, and I thereat drink more healths than are consistent with my own, +the Church surely knows that fact the very next day; and as Utah +recognizes no impunitive "getting drunk in the bosom of one's family," I +am again sent for, on this occasion to pay a fine, probably exceeding +the expenses of my feast. A second offence is punished with imprisonment +as well as fine; for no imprisonment avoids fine,--this comes in every +case. The hand of the Church holds the souls of the saints by inevitable +purse-strings. But I cannot waste time by enumerating the multitudinous +lapses and offences which all bring revenue to the Herring-safe. + +Over all these matters Brigham Young has supreme control. His power is +the most despotic known to mankind. Here, by the way, is the +constitutionally vulnerable point of Mormonism. If fear of establishing +a bad precedent hinder the United States at any time from breaking up +that nest of all disloyalty, because of its licentious +marriage-institutions, Utah is still open to grave punishment, and the +Administration inflicting it would have duty as well as vested right +upon its side, on the ground that it stands pledged to secure to each +of the nation's constituent sections a republican form of +government,--something which Utah has never enjoyed any more than +Timbuctoo. I once asked Brigham if Dr. Bernhisel would be likely to get +to Congress again. "No," he replied, with perfect certainty; "_we_ shall +send ---- as our Delegate." (I think he mentioned Colonel Kinney, but do +not remember absolutely.) Whoever it was, when the time came, Brigham +would send in his name to the "Deseret News,"--whose office, like +everything else valuable and powerful, is in his inclosure. It would be +printed as a matter of course; a counter-nomination is utterly unheard +of; and on election-day ---- would be Delegate as surely as the sun +rose. The mountain-stream that irrigates the city, flowing to all the +gardens through open ditches on each side of the street, passes through +Brigham's inclosure: if the saints needed drought to humble them, he +could set back the waters to their source. The road to the only _canon_ +where firewood is attainable runs through the same close, and is barred +by a gate of which he holds the sole key. A family-man, wishing to cut +fuel, must ask his leave, which is generally granted on condition that +every third or fourth load is deposited in the inclosure, for +Church-purposes. Thus everything vital, save the air he breathes, +reaches the Mormon only through Brigham's sieve. What more absolute +despotism is conceivable? Here lies the _pou-sto_ for the lever of +Governmental interference. The mere fact of such power resting in one +man's irresponsible hands is a crime against the Constitution. At the +same time, this power, wonderful as it may seem, is practically wielded +for the common good. I never heard Brigham's worst enemies accuse him of +peculation, though such immense interests are controlled by his one pair +of hands. His life is all one great theoretical mistake, yet he makes +fewer practical mistakes than any other man, so situated, whom the world +ever saw. Those he does make are not on the side of self. He merges his +whole personality in the Church, with a self-abnegation which would +establish in business a whole century of martyrs having a worthy cause. + +The cut of Brigham's hair led me away from his personal description. To +return to it: his eyes are a clear blue-gray, frank and straightforward +in their look; his nose a finely chiselled aquiline; his mouth +exceedingly firm, and fortified in that expression by a chin almost as +protrusive beyond the rest of the profile as Charlotte Cushman's, though +less noticeably so, being longer than hers; and he wears a narrow ribbon +of brown beard, meeting under the chin. I think I have heard Captain +Burton say that he had irregular teeth, which made his smile unpleasant. +Since the Captain's visit, our always benevolent President, Mr. Lincoln, +has altered all that, sending out as Territorial Secretary a Mr. Fuller, +who, besides being a successful politician, was an excellent dentist. +He secured Brigham's everlasting gratitude by making him a very handsome +false set, and performing the same service for all of his favorite, but +edentate wives. Several other apostles of the Lord owe to Mr. Fuller +their ability to gnash their teeth against the Gentiles. The result was +that he became the most popular Federal officer (who didn't turn Mormon) +ever sent to Utah. The man who obtains ascendency over the mouths of the +authorities cannot fail ere-long to get their ears. + +Brigham's manners astonish any one who knows that his only education was +a few quarters of such common-school experience as could be had in +Ontario County, Central New York, during the early part of the century. +There are few courtlier men living. His address is a fine combination of +dignity with the desire to confer happiness,--of perfect deference to +the feelings of others with absolute certainty of himself and his own +opinions. He is a remarkable example of the educating influence of +tactful perception, combined with entire singleness of aim, considered +quite apart from its moral character. His early life was passed among +the uncouth and illiterate; his daily associations, since he embraced +Mormonism, have been with the least cultivated grades of human +society,--a heterogeneous peasant-horde, looking to him for erection +into a nation: yet he has so clearly seen what is requisite in the man +who would be respected in the Presidency, and has so unreservedly +devoted his life to its attainment, that in protracted conversations +with him I heard only a single solecism, ("a'n't you" for "aren't you,") +and saw not one instance of breeding which would be inconsistent with +noble lineage. + +I say all this good of him frankly, disregarding any slur that maybe +cast on me as his defender by those broad-effect artists who always +paint the Devil black,--for I think it high time that the Mormon enemies +of our American Idea should be plainly understood as far more dangerous +antagonists than hypocrites or idiots can ever hope to be. Let us not +twice commit the blunder of underrating our foes. + +Brigham began our conversation at the theatre by telling me I was +late,--it was after nine o'clock. I replied, that this was the time we +usually set about dressing for an evening party in Boston or New York. + +"Yes," said he, "you find us an old-fashioned people; we are trying to +return to the healthy habits of patriarchal times." + +"Need you go back so far as that for your parallel?" suggested I. "It +strikes me that we might have found four-o'clock balls among the _early_ +Christians." + +He smiled, without that offensive affectation of some great men, the air +of taking another's joke under their gracious patronage, and went on to +remark that there were, unfortunately, multitudinous differences between +the Mormons and Americans at the East, besides the hours they kept. + +"You find us," said he, "trying to live peaceably. A sojourn with people +thus minded must be a great relief to you, who come from a land where +brother hath lifted hand against brother, and you hear the confused +noise of the warrior perpetually ringing in your ears." + +Despite the courtly deference and Scriptural dignity of this speech, I +detected in it a latent crow over that "perished Union" which was the +favorite theme of every saint I met in Utah, and hastened to assure the +President that I had no desire for relief from sympathy with my +country's struggle for honor and existence. + +"Ah!" he replied, in a voice slightly tinged with sarcasm. "You differ +greatly, then, from multitudes of your countrymen, who, since the draft +began to be talked of, have passed through Salt Lake, flying westward +from the crime of their brothers' blood." + +"I do indeed." + +"Still, they are excellent men. Brother Heber Kimball and myself are +every week invited to address a train of them down at Emigrant Square. +They are honest, peaceful people. You call them 'Copperheads,' I +believe. But they are real, true, good men. We find them very +truth-seeking, remarkably open to conviction. Many of them have stayed +with us. Thus the Lord makes the wrath of man to praise Him. The +Abolitionists--the same people who interfered with our institutions, and +drove us out into the wilderness--interfered with the Southern +institutions till they broke up the Union. But it's all coming out +right,--a great deal better than we could have arranged it for +ourselves. The men who flee from Abolitionist oppression come out here +to our ark of refuge, and people the asylum of God's chosen. You'll all +be out here before long. Your Union's gone forever. Fighting only makes +matters worse. When your country has become a desolation, we, the saints +whom you cast out, will forget all your sins against us, and give you a +home." + +There was something so preposterous in the idea of a mighty and +prosperous people abandoning, through abject terror of a desperate set +of Southern conspirators, the fertile soil and grand commercial avenues +of the United States, to populate a green strip in the heart of an +inaccessible desert, that, until I saw Brigham Young's face glowing with +what he deemed prophetic enthusiasm, I could not imagine him in earnest. +Before I left Utah, I discovered, that, without a single exception, all +the saints were inoculated with a prodigious craze, to the effect that +the United States was to become a blighted chaos, and its inhabitants +Mormon proselytes and citizens of Utah within the next two years,--the +more sanguine said, "next summer." + +At first sight, one point puzzled me. Where were they to get the +orthodox number of wives for this sudden accession of converts? My +gentlemen-readers will feel highly nattered by a solution of this +problem which I received from no leaser light of the Latter-Day Church +than that jolly apostle, Heber Kimball. + +"Why," said the old man, twinkling his little black eyes like a godly +Silenus, and nursing one of his fat legs with a lickerish smile, "isn't +the Lord Almighty providin' for His beloved heritage jist as fast as He +anyways kin? This war's a-goin' on till the biggest part o' you male +Gentiles hez killed each other off, then the leetle handful that's left +and comes a-fleein' t' our asylum 'll bring all the women o' the nation +along with 'em, so we shall hev women enough to give every one on 'em +all they want, and hev a large balance left over to distribute round +among God's saints that hez been here from the beginnin' o' the +tribulation." + +The sweet taste which this diabolical reflection seemed to leave in +Heber Kimball's mouth made me long to knock him down worse than I had +ever felt regarding either saint or sinner. But it is costly to smite an +apostle of the Lord in Salt Lake City; and I merely retaliated by +telling him I wished I could hear him say that in a lecture-room full of +Sanitary-Commission ladies scraping lint for their husbands, +sweethearts, and brothers in the Union army. I didn't know whether +saints made good lint, but I thought I knew one who'd get scraped a +little. + +To resume Brigham for the last time. After a conversation about the +Indians, in which he denounced the military policy of the Government, +averring that one bale of blankets and ten pounds of beads would go +farther to protect the mails from stoppage and emigrants from massacre +than a regiment of soldiers, he discovered that we crossed swords on +every war-question, and tactfully changed the subject to the beauty of +the Opera-House. + +As to the Indians, let me remark by-the-by, I did not tell him that I +understood the reason of his dislike to severe measures in that +direction. Infernally bestial and cruel as are the Goshoots, Pi-Utes, +and other Desert tribes, still they have never planned any extensive +raid since the Mormons entered Utah. In every settlement of the saints +you will find from two to a dozen young men who wear their black hair +cut in the Indian fashion, and speak all the surrounding dialects with +native fluency. Whenever a fatly provided wagon-train is to be attacked, +a fine herd of emigrants' beeves stampeded, the mail to be stopped, or +the Gentiles in any way harassed, these desperadoes stain their skin, +exchange their clothes for a breech-clout, and rally a horde of the +savages, whose favor they have always propitiated, for the ambush and +massacre, which in all but the element of brute force is their work in +plan, leadership, and execution. I have multitudes of most interesting +facts to back this assertion, but am already in danger of overrunning my +allowed limits. + +The Opera-House was a subject we could agree upon. I was greatly +astonished to find in the desert heart of the continent a place of +public amusement which for capacity, beauty, and comfort has no superior +in America, except the opera-houses of New York, Boston, and +Philadelphia. It is internally constructed somewhat like the first of +these, seats twenty-five hundred people, and commodiously receives five +hundred more, when, as in the present instance, the stage is thrown into +the _parquet_, and the latter boarded up to the level of the former for +dancing. Externally the building is a plain, but not ungraceful +structure, of stone, brick, and stucco. My greatest surprise was excited +by the really exquisite artistic beauty of the gilt and painted +decorations of the great arch over the stage, the cornices, and the +moulding about the _proscenium_-boxes. President Young, with a proper +pride, assured me that every particle of the ornamental work was by +indigenous and saintly hands. + +"But you don't know yet," he added, "how independent we are of you at +the East. Where do you think we got that central chandelier, and what d' +ye suppose we paid for it?" + +It was a piece of workmanship which would have been creditable to any +New York firm,--apparently a richly carved circle, twined with gilt +vines, leaves, and tendrils, blossoming all over with flaming +wax-lights, and suspended by a massive chain of golden lustre. So I +replied that he probably paid a thousand dollars for it in New York. + +"Capital!" exclaimed Brigham. "I made it myself! That circle is a +cartwheel which I washed and gilded; it hangs by a pair of gilt +ox-chains; and the ornaments of the candlesticks were all cut after my +patterns out of sheet-tin!" + +I talked with the President till a party of young girls, who seemed to +regard him with idolatry, and whom, in return, he treated with a sage +mixture of gallantry and fatherliness, came to him with an invitation to +join in some old-fashioned contra-dance long forgotten at the East. I +was curious to see how he would acquit himself in this supreme ordeal of +dignity; so I descended to the _parquet_, and was much impressed by the +aristocratic grace with which he went through his figures. + +After that I excused myself from numerous kind invitations by the +ball-committee to be introduced to a partner and join in the dances. The +fact was that I greatly wished to make a thorough physiognomical study +of the ball-room, and I know that my readers will applaud my self-denial +in not dancing, since it enables me to tell them how Utah good society +_looks_. + +After spending an hour in a circuit and survey of the room as minute as +was compatible with decency, I arrived at the following results. + +There was very little ostentation in dress at the ball, but there was +also very little taste in dressing. Patrician broadcloth and silk were +the rare exceptions, generally ill-made and ill-worn, but they cordially +associated with the great mass of plebeian tweed and calico. Few ladies +wore jewelry or feathers. There were some pretty girls swimming about in +tasteful whip-syllabub of puffed tarlatan. Where saintly gentlemen came +with several wives, the oldest generally seemed the most elaborately +dressed, and acted much like an Eastern chaperon toward her younger +sisters. (Wives of the same man habitually besister each other in Utah. +Another triumph of grace!) Among the men I saw some very strong and +capable faces; but the majority had not much character in their +looks,--indeed, differed little in that regard from any average crowd of +men anywhere. Among the women, to my surprise, I found no really +degraded faces, though many stolid ones,--only one deeply dejected, +(this belonged to the wife of a hitherto monogamic husband, who had left +her alone in the dress-circle, while he was dancing with a chubby young +Mormoness, likely to be added to the family in a month or two,) but many +impassive ones; and though I saw multitudes of kindly, good-tempered +countenances, and a score which would have been called pretty anywhere, +I was obliged to confess, after a most impartial and anxious search, +that I had not met a single woman who looked high-toned, first-class, +capable of poetic enthusiasm or heroic self-devotion,--not a single +woman whom an artist would dream of and ask to sit for a study,--not one +to whom a finely constituted intellectual man could come for +companionship in his pursuits or sympathy in his yearnings. Because I +knew that this verdict would be received at the East with a "Just as you +might have expected!" I cast aside everything like prejudice, and forgot +that I was in Utah, as I threaded the great throng. + +I must condense greatly what I have to say about two other typical men +besides Brigham Young, or I shall have no room to speak of the Lake and +the Desert. Heber Kimball, second President, (_proximus longo +intervallo!_) Brigham's most devoted worshipper, and in all respects the +next most important man, although utterly incapable of keeping coherent +the vast tissue of discordant Mormon elements, in case he should survive +Brigham, is the latter's equal in years, but in all things else his +antipodes. His height is over six feet, his form of aldermanic +rotundity, his face large, plethoric, and lustrous with the stable red +of stewed cranberries, while his small, twinkling black beads of eyes +and a Satyric sensualism about the mouth would indicate a temperament +fatally in the way of any apostleship save that of polygamy, even +without the aid of an induction from his favorite topics of discourse +and his patriarchally unvarnished style of handling them. Men, +everywhere, unfortunately, tend little toward the error of bashfulness +in their chat among each other, but most of us at the East would feel +that we were insulting the lowest member of the _demi-monde_, if we +uttered before her a single sentence of the talk which forms the +habitual staple of all Heber Kimball's public sermons to the wives and +daughters who throng the Sunday Tabernacle. + +Heber took a vivid interest in Bierstadt's and my own eternal welfare. +He quite laid himself out for our conversion, coming to sit with us at +breakfast in our Mormon hotel, dressed in a black swallow-tail, buff +vest, and a stupendous truncate cone of Leghorn, which made him look +like an Italian mountebank-physician of the seventeenth century. I have +heard men who could misquote Scripture for their own ends, and talk a +long while without saying anything; but he so far surpassed in these +particulars the loftiest efforts within my former experience, that I +could think of no comparison for him but Jack Bunsby taken to exhorting. +Witness a sample:-- + +"Seven women shall take a hold o' one man! There!" (with a slap on the +back of the nearest subject for conversion). "What d' ye think o' that? +Shall! _Shall_ take a hold on him! That don't mean they _sha'n't_, does +it? No! God's word means what it says. And therefore means no +otherwise,--not in no way, shape, nor manner. Not in no _way_, for He +saith, 'I am the _way_--and the truth and the life.' Not in no _shape_, +for a man beholdeth his nat'ral _shape_ in a glass; nor in no _manner_, +for he straightway forgetteth what manner o' man he was. Seven women +_shall_ catch a hold on him. And ef they _shall_, then they _will_! For +everything shall come to pass, and not one good word shall fall to the +ground. You who try to explain away the Scriptur' would make it +fig'rative. But don't come to ME with none o' your spiritooalizers! Not +_one_ good word shall fall. Therefore _seven_ shall not fall. And ef +seven shall catch a hold on him,--and, as I jist proved, seven _will_ +catch a hold on him,--then seven _ought_,--and in the Latter-Day Glory, +_seven_, yea, as our Lord said un-tew Peter, 'Verily I say un-tew you, +not seven, but seventy times seven,' these seventy times seven shall +catch a hold and cleave. Blessed day! For the end shall be even as the +beginnin', and seventy-fold more abundantly. Come over into my garden." + +This invitation would wind up the homily. We gladly accepted it, and I +must confess, that, if there ever could be any hope of our conversion, +it was just about the time we stood in Brother Heber's fine orchard, +eating apples and apricots between exhortations, and having sound +doctrine poked down our throats with gooseberries as big as plums, to +take the taste out of our mouths, like jam after castor-oil. + +Porter Rockwell is a man whom my readers must have heard of in every +account of fearlessly executed massacre committed in Utah during the +last thirteen years. He is the chief of the Danites,--a band of saints +who possess the monopoly of vengeance upon Gentiles and apostates. If a +Mormon tries to sneak off to California by night, after converting his +property into cash, their knives have the inevitable duty of changing +his destination to another state, and bringing back his goods into the +Lord's treasury. Their bullets are the ones which find their unerring +way through the brains of external enemies. They are the Heaven-elected +assassins of Mormonism,--the butchers by divine right. Porter Rockwell +has slain his forty men. This is historical. His probable private +victims amount to as many more. He wears his hair braided behind, and +done up in a knot with a back-comb, like a woman's. He has a face full +of bull-dog courage,--but vastly good-natured, and without a bad trait +in it. I went out riding with him on the Fourth of July, and enjoyed his +society greatly,--though I knew that at a word from Brigham he would cut +my throat in as matter-of-fact a style as if I had been a calf instead +of an author. But he would have felt no unkindness toward me on that +account. I understood his anomaly perfectly, and found him one of the +pleasantest murderers I ever met. He was mere executive force, from +which the lever, conscience, had suffered entire disjunction, being in +the hand of Brigham. He was everywhere known as the Destroying Angel, +but he seemed to have little disagreement with his toddy, and took his +meals regularly. He has two very comely and pleasant wives. Brigham has +about seventy, Heber about thirty. The seventy of Brigham do not include +those spiritually married, or "sealed" to him, who may never see him +again after the ceremony is performed in his back-office. These often +have temporal husbands, and marry Brigham only for the sake of belonging +to his lordly establishment in heaven. + +Salt Lake City, Brigham told me, he believed to contain sixteen thousand +inhabitants. Its houses are built generally of adobe or wood,--a few of +stone,--and though none of them are architecturally ambitious, almost +all have delightful gardens. Both fruit- and shade-trees are plenty and +thrifty. Indeed, from the roof of the Opera-House the city looks fairly +embowered in green. It lies very picturesquely on a plain quite +embasined among mountains, and the beauty of its appearance is much +heightened by the streams which run on both sides of all the broad +streets, brought down from the snow-peaks for purposes of irrigation. +The Mormons worship at present in a plain, low building,--I think, of +adobe,--called the Tabernacle, save during the intensely hot weather, +when an immense booth of green branches, filled with benches, +accommodates them more comfortably. Brigham is erecting a Temple of +magnificent granite, (much like the Quincy,) about two hundred feet long +by one hundred and twenty-five feet wide. If this edifice be ever +finished, it will rank among the most capacious religious structures of +the continent. + +The lake from which the city takes its name is about twenty miles +distant from the latter, by a good road across the level valley-bottom. +Artistically viewed, it is one of the loveliest sheets of water I ever +saw,--bluer than the intensest blue of the ocean, and practically as +impressive, since, looking from the southern shore, you see only a +water-horizon. This view, however, is broken by a magnificent +mountainous island, rising, I should think, seven or eight hundred feet +from the water, half a dozen miles from shore, and apparently as many +miles in circuit. The density of the lake-brine has been under- instead +of over-stated. I swam out into it for a considerable distance, then lay +upon my back _on_, rather than in, the water, and suffered the breeze to +waft me landward again. I was blown to a spot where the lake was only +four inches deep, without grazing my back, and did not know I had got +within my depth again until I depressed my hand a trifle and touched +bottom! It is a mistake to call this lake azoic. It has no fish, but +breeds myriads of strange little maggots, which presently turn into +troublesome gnats. The rocks near the lake are grandly castellated and +cavernous crags of limestone, some of it finely crystalline, but most of +it like our coarser Trenton and Black-River groups. There is a large +cave in this formation, ten minutes' climb from the shore. + +I must abruptly leap to the overland stage again. + +From Salt Lake City to Washoe and the Sierra Nevada Mountains, the road +lies through the most horrible desert conceivable by the mind of man. +For the sand of the Sahara we find substituted an impalpable powder of +alkali, white as the driven snow, stretching for ninety miles at a time +in one uninterrupted dazzling sheet, which supports not even that last +obstinate _vidette_ of vegetation, the wild-sage brush. Its springs are +far between, and, without a single exception, mere receptacles of a +salt, potash, and sulphur hell-broth, which no man would drink, save _in +extremis_. A few days of this beverage within, and of wind-drifted +alkali invading every pore of the body without, often serve to cover the +miserable passenger with an erysipelatous eruption which presently +becomes confluent and irritates him to madness. Meanwhile he jolts +through alkali-ruts, unable to sleep for six days and nights together, +until frenzy sets in, or actual delirium comes to his relief. I look +back on that desert as the most frightful nightmare of my existence. + +As if Nature had not done her worst, we were doomed, on the second day +out from Salt Lake, to hear, at one station, where we stopped, horrid +rumors of Goshoots on the war-path, and, ere the day reached its noon, +to find their proofs irrefragable. Every now and then we saw in the +potash-dust moccasin-tracks, with the toes turned in, and presently my +field-glass revealed a hideous devil skulking in the mile-off ledges, +who was none other than a Goshoot spy. How far off were the scalpers and +burners? + +The first afternoon-stage that day was a long and terrible one. The poor +horses could hardly drag our crazy wagon, up to its hubs in potash; and +yet we knew our only safety, in case of attack, was a running fight. We +must fire from our windows as the horses flew. + +About four o'clock we entered a terrible defile, which seemed planned by +Nature for treachery and ambush. The great, black, barren rocks of +porphyry and trachyte rose three hundred feet above our heads, their +lower and nearer ledges being all so many natural parapets to fire over, +loop-holed with chinks to fire through. There were ten rifles in our +party. We ran them out, five on a side, ready to send the first red +villain who peeped over the breastworks to quick perdition. Our +six-shooters lay across our laps, our bowie-knives were at our sides, +our cartouch-boxes, crammed with ready vengeance, swung open on our +breast-straps. We sat with tight-shut teeth,--only muttering now and +then to each other, in a glum undertone, "Don't get nervous,--don't +throw a single shot away,--take aim,--remember it's for _home_!" +Something of that sort, or a silent squeeze of the hand, was all that +passed, as we sat with one eye glued to the ledges and our guns +unswerving. None of us, I think, were cowards; but the agony of sitting +there, tugging along two miles an hour, expecting to hear a volley of +yells and musketry ring over the next ledge, drinking the cup of thought +to its miscroscopic dregs,--_that_ was worse than fear! + +Only one consolation was left us. In the middle of the defile stood an +overland station, where we were to get fresh horses. The next stage was +twenty miles long. If we were attacked in force, we might manage to run +it, almost the whole way, unless the Indians succeeded in shooting one +of our team,--the _coup_ they always attempt. + +I have no doubt we were ambushed at several points in that defile, but +our perfect preparation intimidated our foes. The Indian is cruel as the +grave, but he is an arrant coward. He will not risk being the first man +shot, though his band may overpower the enemy afterward. + +At last we turned the corner around which the station-house should come +in view. + +A thick, nauseous smoke was curling up from the site of the buildings. +We came nearer. Barn, stables, station-house,--all were a smouldering +pile of rafters. We came still nearer. The whole stud of horses--a dozen +or fifteen--lay roasting on the embers. We came close to the spot. +There, inextricably mixed with the carcasses of the beasts, lay six men, +their brains dashed out, their faces mutilated beyond recognition, their +limbs hewn off,--a frightful holocaust steaming up into our faces. I +must not dwell on that horror of all senses. It comes to me now at high +noonday with a grisly shudder. + + * * * * * + +After that, we toiled on twenty miles farther with our nearly dying +horses; a hundred miles more of torturing suspense on top of that sight +branded into our brains before we gained Ruby Valley, at the foot of the +Humboldt Mountains, and left the last Goshoot behind us. + +The remainder of our journey was horrible by Nature only, without the +atrocious aid of man. But the past had done its work. We reached Washoe +with our very marrows almost burnt out by sleeplessness, sickness, and +agony of mind. The morning before we came to the silver-mining +metropolis, Virginia City, a stout, young Illinois farmer, whom we had +regarded as the stanchest of all our fellow-passengers, became +delirious, and had to be held in the stage by main force. (A few weeks +afterward, when the stage was changing horses near the Sink of Carson, +another traveller became suddenly insane, and blew his brains out.) As +for myself, the moment that I entered a warm bath, in Virginia City, I +swooned entirely away, and was resuscitated with great difficulty after +an hour and a half's unconsciousness. + +We stopped at Virginia for three days,--saw the California of '49 +reenacted in a feverish, gambling, mining town,--descended to the bottom +of the exhaustlessly rich "Ophir" shaft,--came up again, and resumed our +way across the Sierra. By the mere act of crossing that ridge and +stepping over the California line, we came into glorious forests of +ever-living green, a rainbow-affluence of flowers, an air like a draught +from windows left open in heaven. + +Just across the boundary, we sat down on the brink of glorious Lake +Tahoe, (once "Bigler," till the ex-Governor of that name became a +Copperhead, and the loyal Californians kicked him out of their +geography, as he had already been thrust out of their politics,)--a +crystal sheet of water fresh-distilled from the snow-peaks, its granite +bottom visible at the depth of a hundred feet, its banks a celestial +garden, lying in a basin thirty-five miles long by ten wide, and nearly +seven thousand feet above the Pacific level. Geography has no superior +to this glorious sea, this chalice of divine cloud-wine held sublimely +up against the very press whence it was wrung. Here, virtually at the +end of our overland journey, since our feet pressed the green borders of +the Golden State, we sat down to rest, feeling that one short hour, one +little league, had translated us out of the infernal world into heaven. + + + * * * * * + +ON PICKET DUTY. + + + Within a green and shadowy wood, + Circled with spring, alone I stood: + The nook was peaceful, fair, and good. + + The wild-plum blossoms lured the bees, + The birds sang madly in the trees, + Magnolia-scents were on the breeze. + + All else was silent; but the ear + Caught sounds of distant bugle clear, + And heard the bullets whistle near,-- + + When from the winding river's shore + The Rebel guns began to roar, + And ours to answer, thundering o'er; + + And echoed from the wooded hill, + Repeated and repeated still, + Through all my soul they seemed to thrill. + + For, as their rattling storm awoke, + And loud and fast the discord broke, + In rude and trenchant _words_ they spoke. + + "_We hate!_" boomed fiercely o'er the tide; + "We fear not!" from the other side; + "_We strike!_" the Rebel guns replied. + + Quick roared our answer, "We defend!" + "_Our rights!_" the battle-sounds contend; + "The rights of _all_!" we answer send. + + "_We conquer!_" rolled across the wave; + "We persevere!" our answer gave; + "_Our chivalry!_" they wildly rave. + + "Ours _are the brave_!" "Be _ours_ the free!" + "_Be ours the slave, the masters we_!" + "On us their blood no more shall be!" + + As when some magic word is spoken, + By which a wizard spell is broken, + There was a silence at that token. + + The wild birds dared once more to sing, + I heard the pine-bough's whispering, + And trickling of a silver spring. + + Then, crashing forth with smoke and din, + Once more the rattling sounds begin, + Our iron lips roll forth, "We win!" + + And dull and wavering in the gale + That rushed in gusts across the vale + Came back the faint reply, "_We fail_!" + + And then a word, both stern and sad, + From throat of huge Columbiad,-- + "Blind fools and traitors! ye are mad!" + + Again the Rebel answer came, + Muffled and slow, as if in shame,-- + "_All, all is lost_!" in smoke and flame. + + Now bold and strong and stern as Fate + The Union guns sound forth, "We wait!" + Faint comes the distant cry, "_Too late_!" + + "Return! return!" our cannon said; + And, as the smoke rolled overhead, + "_We dare not_!" was the answer dread. + + Then came a sound, both loud and clear, + A godlike word of hope and cheer,-- + "Forgiveness!" echoed far and near; + + As when beside some death-bed still + We watch, and wait God's solemn will, + A blue-bird warbles his soft trill. + + I clenched my teeth at that blest word, + And, angry, muttered, "Not so, Lord! + The only answer is the sword!" + + I thought of Shiloh's tainted air, + Of Richmond's prisons, foul and bare, + And murdered heroes, young and fair,-- + + Of block and lash and overseer, + And dark, mild faces pale with fear, + Of baying hell-hounds panting near. + + But then the gentle story told + My childhood, in the days of old, + Rang out its lessons manifold. + + O prodigal, and lost! arise + And read the welcome blest that lies + In a kind Father's patient eyes! + + Thy elder brother grudges not + The lost and found should share his lot, + And wrong in concord be forgot. + + Thus mused I, as the hours went by, + Till the relieving guard drew nigh, + And then was challenge and reply. + + And as I hastened back to line, + It seemed an omen half divine + That "Concord" was the countersign. + + * * * * * + +OUR PROGRESSIVE INDEPENDENCE. + + +It is among the possibilities of the future, that, in due course of +time, the United States of America shall become to England what England +has become to Saxony. We cannot be sure, it is true, that the +mother-country will live, a prosperous and independent kingdom, to see +the full maturity of her gigantic offspring. We have no right to assume +it as a matter of course, that the Western Autocracy will fill up, +unbroken, the outline traced for it by Nature and history. But England, +forced as her civilization must be considered ever since the Conquest, +has a reasonable chance for another vigorous century, and the Union, the +present storm once weathered, does not ask a longer time than this to +become, according to the prediction of the London "Times," the +master-power of the planet. + +The class that guides the destinies of Great Britain and her +dependencies is far-reaching in its anticipations as it is deep-rooted +in its recollections. _Quantum radice in Tartara, tantum vertice ad +auras_,--if we may invert the poet's words. An American millionnaire may +be anxious about the condition of his grandchildren, but a peer whose +ancestors came in with the Conqueror looks ahead at least as far as the +end of the twentieth century. The royal astrologers have cast the +horoscope of the nationality born beneath the evening-star, and report +it as being ominous for that which finds its nativity in the House of +Leo. + +Every dynasty sees a natural enemy in a self-governing state. Its dread +of that enemy is in exact proportion to the amount of liberty enjoyed by +its own people. Freedom is the ferment of Freedom. The moistened sponge +drinks up water greedily; the dry one sheds it. Russia has no popular +legislation, and her Emperor almost, perhaps quite, loves us. England +boasts of her freeborn people, and her governing class, to say the +least, does not love us. + +An unexpected accident of situation startled us by the revelation of a +secret which had been, on the whole, very well kept. No play of mirrors +in a story, no falling of a screen in a comedy, no flash of +stage-lightning in a melodrama, ever betrayed a lover's or a murderer's +hidden thought and purpose more strikingly than the over-hasty +announcement that the Union was broken into warring fragments, never +again to be joined together, unveiled the cherished hope of its +Old-World enemies. The whispers of expectant heirs at the opening of a +miser's will are decorous and respectful, compared to the chuckle of the +leading English social and political organ and its echoes, when the +bursting of the Republican "bubble" was proclaimed as an accomplished +fact, and the hour was thought to have come when the "Disunited States" +could be held up as a spectacle to the people of Europe. A _Te Deum_ in +Westminster Abbey would hardly have added emphasis to the expression of +what appeared to be the prevailing sentiment of the upper classes. + +If the comparative prudence of the British Government had not tempered +this exultant movement, the hopes of civilization would have been +blasted by such a war as it is sickening to think of: England in +alliance with an empire trying to spread and perpetuate Slavery as its +very principle of life, against a people whose watchwords were freedom, +education, and the dignity of labor. If the silent masses of the British +people had not felt that our cause was theirs, there would have been no +saying how far the passionate desire to see their predictions made facts +might have led the proud haters of popular government. + +Between these two forces the British Cabinet has found a diagonal which +has met with the usual success of compromises. The aristocracy, which +very naturally wishes to see the Union divided, is in a fair way of +being disappointed, because, as its partisans may claim, England did not +force herself into our quarrel. That portion of the middling classes +which could not tolerate the thought of a Slave Empire has been +compelled to witness a deliberate exposure in the face of the whole +world of the hollowness of those philanthropic pretensions which have +been so long the boast of British patriots. The people of the Union, who +expected moral support and universal indignant repudiation of the +slaveholding Rebel conspiracy, have been disgusted and offended. The +Rebels, who supposed Great Britain, and perhaps France also, would join +them in a war which was virtually a crusade against free institutions, +have been stung into a second paroxysm of madness. Western Europe failed +us in the storm; it leaves them in the moment of shipwreck. + +The recent action of the British Government, under the persuasive +influence of Mr. Seward's polite representation, that instant +hostilities would be sure to follow, if England did not keep her iron +pirates at home, has improved somewhat the tone of Northern feeling +towards her. The late neighborly office of the Canadian Government, in +warning us of the conspiracy to free our prisoners, has produced a very +favorable impression, so far as the effect of a single act is felt in +striking the balance of a long account. + +We can, therefore, examine some of our relations with Great Britain in a +better temper now than we could do some months ago, when we never went +to sleep without thinking that before morning we might be shelled out of +our beds by a fleet of British iron-clad steamers. But though we have +been soothed, and in some measure conciliated, by the change referred +to, there is no such thing possible as returning to the _status quo ante +bellum_. We can never feel in all respects to England as we felt of old. +This is a fact which finds expression in so many forms that it is +natural to wish to see how deep it lies: whether it is an effect of +accidental misunderstanding and collision of interests, or whether it +is because the events of the last few years have served to bring to +light the organic, inherent, and irreconcilable antagonism of the two +countries. + +We are all of us in the habit of using words so carelessly, that it will +help us to limit their vagueness as here employed. We speak of "England" +for Great Britain, for the simple reason that Ireland is but a reluctant +alien she drags after her, and Scotland only her most thriving province. +We are not surprised, for instance, when "Blackwood" echoes the abusive +language of the metropolitan journals, for it is only as a village-cur +joins the hounds that pass in full cry. So, when we talk of "the +attitude of England," we have a tolerably defined idea, made up of the +collective aspect of the unsympathetic Government, of the mendacious and +insolent press, of the mercenary trading allies of the Rebels, of the +hostile armaments which have sailed from British ports, of the +undisguised enmity of many of her colonists, neighbors of the North as +well as neighbors of the South; all of which shape themselves into an +image having very much the look of representing the nation,--certainly +much more the look of it than the sum of all those manifestations which +indicate sympathy with the cause of the North. + +The attitude of England, then, has been such, since the Rebellion began, +as to alienate much of the affection still remaining among us for the +mother-country. It has gone far towards finishing that process of +separation of the child from the parent which two centuries of exile and +two long wars had failed to complete. But, looking at the matter more +clearly, we shall find that our causes of complaint must be very +unequally distributed among the different classes of the British people. + +The _Government_ has carefully measured out to us, in most cases +certainly, strict, technical justice. It could not well do otherwise, +for it knows the force of precedents. But we have an unpleasing sense +that our due, as an ally and a Christian nation, striving against an +openly proclaimed heathen conspiracy, has been paid us grudgingly, +tardily, sparingly, while our debt, as in the case of the Rebel +emissaries, has been extorted fiercely, swiftly, and to the last +farthing. We have recognized a change, it is true, ever since Earl +Russell gave the hint that our cause was more popular in England than +that of the South. We have gratefully accepted the friendly acts already +alluded to. Better late than not at all. But the past cannot be undone. +British "neutrality" has strengthened the arms that have been raised +against our national life, and winged the bloody messengers that have +desolated our households. Still, every act of justice which has even a +show of good-will in it is received only too graciously by a people +which has known what it is to be deserted by its friends in the hour of +need. Whatever be the motives of the altered course of the British +Government,--an awakened conscience, or a series of "Federal" +successes,--Mr. Sumner's arguments, or General Gillmore's long-range +practice,--a more careful study of the statistics of Slavery, or of the +lists of American iron-clad steamers,--we welcome it at once; we take +the offered hand, if not with warm pressure, at least with decent +courtesy. We only regret that forbearance and good offices, and that +moral influence which would have been almost as important as an +offensive and defensive alliance, had not come before the flower of our +youth was cut down in the battle-field, and mourning and misery had +entered half the families of the land. + +The British _aristocracy_, with all its dependent followers, cannot help +being against us. The bearing which our success would have on its +interests is obvious enough, and we cannot wonder that the instinct of +self-preservation opens its eyes to the remote consequences which will +be likely to flow from the continued and prosperous existence of the +regenerated, self-governing Union. The privileged classes feel to our +labor- and money-saving political machinery just as the hand-weavers +felt to the inventor and introducers of the power-loom. The simple fact +is, that, if a great nation like ours can govern itself, they are not +needed, and Nobility has a nightmare of Jews going about the streets +with half a dozen coronets on their heads, one over another, like so +many old beavers. What can we expect of the law-spinning heir-loom +owners, but that they should wish to break this new-fangled machine, and +exterminate its contrivers? The right to defend its life is the claim of +everything that lives, and we must not lose our temper because the +representatives of an hereditary ruling class wish to preserve those +privileges which are their very existence, nor because they have +foresight enough to know, that, if the Western Continent remains the +seat of a vast, thriving, irresistible, united republic, the days of +their life, as an order, are numbered. + +"The _people_," as Mr. Motley has said, in one of his official letters, +"everywhere sympathize with us; for they know that our cause is that of +free institutions,--that our struggle is that of the people against an +oligarchy." We have evidence that this is partially true of the British +people. But we know also how much they are influenced by their political +and social superiors, and we know, too, what base influences have been +long at work to corrupt their judgment and inflame their prejudices. We +have too often had occasion to see that the middle classes had been +reached by the passions of their superiors, or infected by the poison +instilled by traitorous emissaries. We have been struck with this +particularly in some of the British colonies. It is the livid gleam of a +reflected hatred they shed upon us; but the angle of reflection is equal +to the angle of incidence, and we feel sure that the British inhabitants +of an African cape or of a West-India islet would not have presumed to +sympathize with the Rebels, unless they had known that it was +respectable, if not fashionable, to do so at home. It is one of the most +painful illustrations of the influence of a privileged class that the +opinions and prejudices and interests of the English aristocracy should +have been so successfully imposed upon a large portion of the people, +for whom the North was fighting over again the battles of that long +campaign which will never end until the rightful Sovereigns have +dispossessed the whole race of Pretenders. + +The effect of this course on the part of the mother-country has been +like that of harsh treatment upon children generally. It chills their +affections, lessens their respect for the parental authority, interrupts +their friendly intercourse, and perhaps drives them from the +family-mansion. But it cannot destroy the ties of blood and the +recollections of the past. It cannot deprive the "old home" of its +charm. If there has been but a single member of the family beneath its +roof who has remained faithful and kind, all grateful memories will +cluster about that one, though the hearts of the rest were hard as the +nether millstone. + +The soil of England will always be dearer to us of English descent than +any except our own. The Englishman will always be more like one of +ourselves than any "foreigner" can be. We shall never cease to feel the +tenderest regard for those Englishmen who have stood by us like brothers +in the day of trial. They have hardly guessed in our old home how sacred +to us is the little island from which our fathers were driven into the +wilderness,--not saying, with the Separatists, "Farewell, Babylon! +farewell, Rome!" but "Farewell, _dear_ England!" At that fearful thought +of the invasion of her shores,--a thought which rises among the spectral +possibilities of the future,--we seem to feel a dull aching in the bones +of our forefathers that lie beneath her green turf, as old soldiers feel +pain in the limbs they have left long years ago on the battle-field. + +But hard treatment often proves the most useful kind of discipline. One +good effect, so far as we are concerned, that will arise from the harsh +conduct of England, will be the promotion of our intellectual and moral +independence. We declared our political independence a good while ago, +but this was as a small dividend is declared on a great debt. We owed a +great deal more to posterity than to insure its freedom from political +shackles. The American republic was to be emancipated from every +Old-World prejudice that might stand in the way of its entire fulness of +development according to its own law, which is in many ways different +from any precedent furnished by the earlier forms of civilization. There +were numerous difficulties in the way. The American talked the language +of England, and found a literature ready-made to his hands. He brought +his religion with him, shaped under English influences, whether he +called himself Dissenter or not. He dispensed justice according to the +common law of England. His public assemblies were guided by +Parliamentary usage. His commerce and industry had been so long in +tutelage that both required long exercise before they could know their +own capacities. + +The mother-country held her American colonies as bound to labor for her +profit, not their own, just as an artisan claims the whole time of his +apprentice. If we think the policy of England towards America in the +year 1863 has been purely selfish, looking solely to her own interest, +without any regard to the principles involved in our struggle, let us +look back and see whether it was any different in 1763, or in 1663. If +her policy has been uniform at these three periods, it is time for us to +have learned our lesson. + +Two hundred years ago, in the year 1663, an Act of Parliament was passed +to monopolize the Colonial trade for England, for the sake, as its +preamble stated, "of keeping them [the Colonies] in a firmer dependence +upon it, and rendering them yet more beneficial and advantageous unto +it, in the further employment and increase of English shipping and +seamen, vent of English woollens and other manufactures and +commodities," etc. This act had, of course, the effect of increasing and +perpetuating the naturally close dependence of the Colonies on the +mother-country for most of the products of industry. But in an infant +community the effect of such restrictions would be little felt, and it +required another century before an extension of the same system was +publicly recognized as being a robbery of the child by the parent. To +show how far the system was carried, and what was the effect on the +public mind of a course founded in pure, and, as it proved, +short-sighted selfishness, it will be necessary to recall some of the +details which help to account for the sudden change at last in the +disposition of the Colonists. + +One hundred years ago, on the tenth of February, 1763, a treaty of peace +between England and France, as the leading powers, was signed at Paris. +This was no sooner arranged than the Ministry began that system of +Colonial taxation which the Massachusetts House of Representatives +denounced as tending to give the Crown and Ministers "an absolute and +uncontrollable power of raising money upon the people, which by the wise +Constitution of Great Britain is and can be only lodged with safety in +the legislature." Part and parcel of this system was that comprehensive +scheme of tyranny by means of which England attempted to secure the +perpetual industrial dependence of the American Colonies, the principle +of which we have already seen openly avowed in the Act of Parliament of +1663, a hundred years earlier. + +It was her fixed policy, as is well known, to keep her skilled artisans +at home, and to discourage as far as possible all manufactures in the +Colonies. By different statutes, passed in successive reigns, persons +enticing artificers into foreign countries incur the penalty of five +hundred pounds and twelve months' imprisonment for the first offence, +and of one thousand pounds and two years' imprisonment for the second +offence. If the workmen did not return within six months after warning, +they were to be deemed aliens, forfeit all their lands and goods, and be +incapable of receiving any legacy or gift. A similar penalty was laid so +late as the reign of George III. upon any person contracting with or +endeavoring to persuade any artificer concerned in printing calicoes, +cottons, muslins, or linens, or preparing any tools for such +manufacture, to go out of the kingdom. + +The same jealousy of the Colonies, lest they should by their success in +the different branches of industry interfere with the home monopoly, +shows itself in various other forms. There was, naturally enough, a +special sensitiveness to the practice of the art of printing. Sir Edmund +Andros, when he came out as Governor of the Northern Colonies, was +instructed "to allow of no printing-press"; and Lord Effingham, on his +appointment to the government of Virginia, was directed "to allow no +person to use a printing-press on any occasion whatever." + +The Board of Trade and Plantations made a report, in 1731, to the +British Parliament concerning the "trades carried on, and manufactures +set up, in the Colonies," in which it is recommended that "some +expedient be fallen upon to direct the thoughts of the Colonists from +undertakings of this kind; so much the rather, because these +manufactures in process of time may be carried on in a greater degree, +unless an early stop be put to their progress." + +In one of Franklin's papers, published in London in 1768, are enumerated +some instances of the way in which the Colonists were actually +interfered with by legislation. + +"Iron is to be found everywhere in America, and beaver are the natural +produce of that country: hats and nails and steel are wanted there as +well as here. It is of no importance to the common welfare of the empire +whether a subject of the king gets his living by making hats on this or +on that side of the water. Yet the hatters of England have prevailed to +obtain an act in their own favor restraining that manufacture in +America, in order to oblige the Americans to send their beaver to +England to be manufactured, and purchase back the hats, loaded with the +charges of a double transportation. In the same manner have a few +nail-makers, and a still smaller body of steel-makers, (perhaps there +are not half a dozen of these in England,) prevailed totally to forbid, +by an Act of Parliament, the erecting of slitting-mills or +steel-furnaces in America, that the Americans may be obliged to take all +their nails for their buildings, and steel for their tools, from these +artificers," etc. + +"It is an idle argument in the Americans," said Governor Pownall, "when +they talk of setting up manufactures _for trade_; but it would be +equally injudicious in Government here to force any measure that may +render the manufacturing for _home consumption_ an object of prudence, +or even of pique, in the Americans." + +The maternal Government pressed this matter a little too fast and too +far. The Colonists became _piqued_ at last, and resolved, in 1764, not +to purchase English stuffs for clothing, but to use articles of domestic +manufacture as far as possible. Boston, always a ringleader in these +mischiefs, diminished her consumption of British merchandise ten +thousand pounds and more in this one year. The Harvard-College youth +rivalled the neighboring town in their patriotic self-sacrifice, and the +whole graduating class of 1770, with the names of Hutchinson, +Saltonstall, and Winthrop at the head of the list, appeared at +Commencement in black cloth of home-manufacture. This act of defiance +only illustrates more forcibly the almost complete dependence of +Colonial industry at the time of its occurrence, the effect of a policy +which looked upon the Colonies with no reference to any other +consideration than the immediate profit to be derived from them. + +In spite, however, of the hard measures employed by England to cripple +the development of the Colonies in every direction, except such as might +be profitable to herself, it was a very difficult matter to root out +their affection for the mother-country. Pownall, who was in this country +from 1753 to 1761, successively Governor of Massachusetts, +Lieutenant-Governor of New Jersey, and Governor of South Carolina, gives +us the most ample testimony on this point. His words are so strong that +none can fail to be impressed with the picture he draws of a people who +ten years later were in open revolt against the home authorities. + +"The duty of a colony is affection for the mother-country: here I may +affirm, that, in whatever form and temper this affection can lie in the +human breast, in that form, by the deepest and most permanent +impression, it ever did lie in the breast of the American people. They +have no other idea of this country [England] than as their home; they +have no other word by which to express it, and, till of late, it has +constantly been expressed by the name of home. That powerful affection, +the love of our native country, which operates in every heart, operates +in this people towards England, which they consider as their native +country; nor is this a mere passive impression, a mere opinion in +speculation,--it has been wrought up in them to a vigilant and active +zeal for the service of this country." + +And Franklin's testimony confirms that of the English Governor. + +"The true loyalists," he says, "were the people of America against whom +the royalists of England acted. No people were ever known more truly +loyal, and universally so, to their sovereigns.... They were +affectionate to the people of England, zealous and forward to assist in +her wars, by voluntary contributions of men and money, even beyond their +proportion." + +Such was the people whose love and obedience the greedy and grasping +policy of the British Government threw away, never to be regained. The +Revolution came at last, and the people reckoned up the long arrears of +oppression. "In the short space of two years," says a contemporary +writer, "nearly three millions of people passed over from the love and +duty of loyal subjects to the hatred and resentment of enemies." + +We have seen that our cautious parent had taken good care not to let her +American children learn the use of her tools any farther or faster than +she thought good for them--and herself. They no sooner got their hands +free than they set them at work on various new contrivances. One of the +first was the nail-cutting machinery which has been in use ever since. +All our old houses--the old gambrel-roofed Cambridge mansions, for +instance--are built with wrought nails, no doubt every one of them +imported from England. Many persons do not know the fact that the +screw-auger is another native American invention, having been first +manufactured for sale at Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in 1776, or a little +earlier. Eli Whitney contrived the cotton-gin in 1792, and some years +later the machinery for the manufacture of fire-arms, involving the +principle of absolute uniformity in the pattern of each part, so that +any injured or missing portion of a gun may be instantly supplied +without special fitting. + +We claim to have done our full share in the way of industrial inventions +since we have become a nation. The four elements have all accepted the +American as their master. The great harvests of the earth are gathered +by his mowing and reaping machines. The flame that is creeping from its +lair to spring at the roofs of the crowded city is betrayed to its +watchful guardians by the American telegraphic fire-alarm, and the +conflagration that reddens the firmament is subdued by the inundation +that flows upon it from an American steam-fire-engine. In the realm of +air, the Frenchman who sent a bubble of silk to the clouds must divide +his honors with the American who emptied the clouds themselves of their +electric fires. Water, the mightiest of all, which devours the earth +and quenches the fire, and rides over the air in vaporous exhalations, +has been the chosen field of ingenious labor for our people. The great +American invention of _ice_,--perhaps there is a certain approach to its +own coolness in calling it an invention, though Sancho, it may be +remembered, considered sleep in that light,--this remarkable invention +of ice, as a tropical commodity, could have sprung only from a +republican and revolutionary brain. The steamboat has been claimed for +various inventors, for one so far back as 1543; but somehow or other it +happened, as it has so often happened, that "the chasm from mere +attempts to positive achievement was first bridged by an American." Our +wave-splitting clippers have changed the whole model of sailing-vessels. +One of them, which was to have been taken in tow by the steam-vessels of +the Crimean squadron, spread her wings, and sailed proudly by them all. +Our iron water-beetles would send any of the old butterfly three-deckers +to the bottom, as quickly as one of these would sink a Roman trireme. + +The Yankee whittling a shingle with his jack-knife is commonly accepted +as a caricature, but it is an unconscious symbolization of the plastic +instinct which rises step by step to the clothes-pin, the apple-parer, +the mowing-machine, the wooden truss-bridge, the clipper-ship, the +carved figure-head, the Cleopatra of the World's Exhibition. + +One American invention, or discovery, has gone far towards paying back +all that the new continent owes to the old civilizations. The cradle of +artificial _anaesthesia_--man's independence of the tyranny of pain--must +be looked for at the side of the Cradle of Liberty. Never was a greater +surprise than the announcement of this miraculous revelation to the +world. One evening in October, 1846, a professional brother called upon +the writer of this paper. He shut the door carefully, and looked +nervously around him. Then he spoke, and told of the wondrons results of +the experiment which had just been made in the operating-room. "In one +fortnight's time," he said, "all Europe will be ablaze with this +discovery." He then produced and read a paper that he had just drawn up +for a learned society of which we were both members, the first paper +ever written on this subject. On that day not a surgeon in the world, +out of a little New-England circle, made any profession of knowing how +to render a patient quickly, completely, pleasantly, safely insensible +to pain for a limited period. In a few weeks every surgeon in the world +knew how to do it, and the atmosphere of the planet smelt strong of +sulphuric ether. The discovery started from the Massachusetts General +Hospital, just as definitely as the cholera started from Jessore, to +travel round the globe. + +The advance of our civilization is still more strongly marked by the +number and excellence of musical instruments, especially pianos, which +are made in this country. It would hardly be an exaggeration to say that +the piano keeps pace with the plough, as our population advances. More +striking evidence than even this is found in the fact that the highest +grade of the highest instruments used for scientific research is +produced by our artisans. One of the two largest telescope-lenses in the +world is that made by Mr. Clark, of Cambridge, whose reputation is not +confined to our own country. The microscopes of Mr. Spencer, which threw +those of the Continent into the shade at once, and challenged +competition with the work of the three great London opticians, were made +in a half-cleared district of Central New York, where, in our +pilgrimages to that Mecca of microscopists, Canastota, we found the +shrine we sought in the midst of the charred stumps of the primeval +forest. While Mr. Quekett was quoting Andrew Ross, the most famous of +the three opticians referred to, as calling "135 deg. the largest angular +pencil that can be passed through a microscopic object-glass," Mr. +Spencer was actually making twelfths with an angle of more than 170 deg.. +Those who remember the manner in which the record of his extraordinary +success was deliberately omitted from the second edition of a work which +records the minutest contrivance of any English amateur,--the first +edition having already mentioned the "young artist living in the +backwoods,"--will recognize in it something of the old style in which +the mother-country used to treat the Colonists. + +It may be fairly claimed that the alert and inventive spirit of the +American has lightened the cumbrous awkwardness of Old-World implements, +has simplified their traditional complexity, has systematized methods of +manufacture, and has shown a certain audacity in its innovations which +might be expected from a community where every mechanic is a voter, and +a maker of lawgivers, if not of laws. We are deficient principally in +patience of detail, and the skill which springs from minute subdivision +of labor and from hereditary training. All this will come +by-and-by,--all the sooner, if our ports are closed by foreign war. No +natural incapacity prevents us from making as good broadcloth, as fine +linen, as rich silks, as pure porcelain, as the Old World can send us. +If England wishes to hasten our complete industrial independence, she +has only to quarrel with us. We should miss many things at first which +we owe to her longer training, but they are mostly products of that kind +of industry which furnishes whatever the market calls for. + +The intellectual development of the Colonists was narrowed and limited +by the conditions of their new life. There was no need of legislation to +discourage the growth of an American literature. At the period of the +Revolution two books had been produced which had a right to live, in +virtue of their native force and freshness; hardly more than two; for we +need not count in this category the records of events, such as +Winthrop's Journal, or Prince's Annals, or even that quaint, garrulous, +conceited farrago of pedantry and piety, of fact and gossip, Mather's +"Magnalia." The two real American books were a "Treatise on the Will," +and "Poor Richard's Almanack." Jonathan Edwards and Benjamin Franklin +were the only considerable names in American literature in all that +period which, beginning with Milton and Dryden, and including the whole +lives of Newton and Locke, reached the time of Hume and Gibbon, of Burke +and Chatham, of Johnson and Goldsmith,--a period embracing five +generations, filled with an unbroken succession of statesmen, +philosophers, poets, divines, historians, who wrote for mankind and +immortality. The Colonies, in the mean time, had been fighting Nature +and the wild men of the forest, getting a kind of education as they went +along. Out of their religious freedom, such as it was, they were +rough-hewing the ground-sills of a free state: for religion and politics +always play into each other's hands, and the constitution is the child +of the catechism. Harvard College was dedicated to "Christ and the +Church," but already, in 1742, the question was discussed at +Commencement, "Whether it be lawful to resist the supreme magistrate, if +the Commonwealth cannot otherwise be preserved,"--Samuel Adams speaking +in the affirmative. + +Such was the condition of America at the period just preceding the +Revolutionary movement. Commercial and industrial dependence maintained +by Acts of Parliament, and only beginning to be openly rebelled against +under the irritation produced by oppressive enactments. Native +development in the fields of letters and science hardly advanced beyond +the embryonic stage; a literature consisting of a metaphysical treatise +and a popular almanac, with some cart-loads of occasional sermons, some +volumes of historical notes, but not yet a single history, such as we +should now hold worthy of that name, and an indefinite amount of painful +poetry. Not a line, that we can recall, had ever been produced in +America which was fit to sparkle upon the "stretched forefinger" of +Time. Berkeley's "Westward the course of Empire" _ought_ to have been +written here; but the curse of sterility was on the Western Muse, or her +offspring were too puny to live. + +The outbreak of the Revolution arrested what little growth there was in +letters and science. Franklin carried his reputation, the first one born +of science in the country, to the French court, and West and Copley +sought fame and success, and found them, in England. All the talent we +had was absorbed in the production of political essays and state-papers. +Patriotic poems, satires, _jeux d'esprit_, with more or less of the +_esprit_ implied in their name, were produced, not sparingly; but they +find it hard work to live, except in the memory of antiquaries. Philip +Freneau is known to more readers from the fact that Campbell did him the +honor to copy a line from him without acknowledgment than by all his +rhymes. It is not gratifying to observe the want, so noticeable in our +Revolutionary period, of that inspiration which the passions of such a +struggle might have been expected to bring with them. + +If we are forced to put this estimate upon our earlier achievements in +the domain of letters, it is not surprising that they were held of small +account in the mother-country. It is not fair to expect the British +critics to understand our political literature, which was until these +later years all we had to show. They had to wait until De Lolme, a Swiss +exile, explained their own Constitution to them, before they had a very +clear idea of it. One British tourist after another visited this +country, with his glass at his eye, and his small vocabulary of "Very +odd!" for all that was new to him; his "Quite so!" for whatever was +noblest in thought or deed; his "Very clever!" for the encouragement of +genius; and his "All that sort of thing, you know!" for the less +marketable virtues and heroisms not to be found in the Cockney +price-current. They came, they saw, they made their books, but no man +got from them any correct idea of what the Great Republic meant in the +history of civilization. For this the British people had to wait until +De Tocqueville, a Frenchman, made it in some degree palpable to insular +comprehension. + +The true-born Briton read as far as the first sentence of the second +paragraph of the Declaration of Independence. There he stopped, and +there he has stuck ever since. That sentence has been called a +"glittering generality,"--as if there were some shallow insincerity +about it. But because "all that glitters is not gold," it does not +follow that nothing which glitters is gold. Because a statement is +general, it does not follow that it is either untrue or unpractical. +"Glittering generality" or not, the voice which proclaimed that the +birthright of equality belonged to all mankind was the _fiat lux_ of the +new-born political universe. This, and the terrible series of logical +consequences that flowed from it, threatening all the dynasties, +menacing all the hierarchies, undermining the seemingly solid +foundations of all Old-World abuses,--this parent truth, and all to +which it gave birth, made up the literature of Revolutionary America, +and dwarfed all the lesser growths of culture for the time, as the +pine-tree dwarfs the herbage beneath the circle of its spreading +branches. + +As English policy had pursued the uniform course of provincializing our +industry during the colonial period, discouraging every form of native +ingenuity, so English criticism, naturally enough, after industry was +set free, discountenanced the growth of a native American literature. +That famous question of the "Quarterly Review," "Who reads an American +book?" was the key--note of the critical chorus. There were shortcomings +enough, no doubt, and all the faults that belong to an imperfectly +educated people. But there was something more than the feeling of +offended taste or unsatisfied scholarship in the _animus_ of British +criticism. Mr. Tudor has expressed the effect it produced upon our own +writers very clearly in his account of the "North American Review," +written in 1820. He recognizes the undue deference paid to foreign +critics, and, as its consequence, "a want, or rather a suppression, of +national feeling and independent judgment, that would sooner or later +have become highly injurious." + +It is not difficult to find examples, of earlier and of later date, +which illustrate the tone of British feeling towards this country, as it +has existed among leading literary men, and at times betrayed itself in +an insolence which amuses us after the first sense of irritation has +passed away. + +In 1775, Dr. Samuel Johnson, champion of the heavy-weights of English +literature, the "Great Moralist," the typical Englishman of his time, +wrote the pamphlet called "Taxation no Tyranny." It is what an +Englishman calls a "clever" production, smart, epigrammatic, +impertinent, the embodiment of all that is odious in British assumption. +No part of the Old World, he says, has reason to rejoice that Columbus +discovered the New. Its inhabitants--the countrymen of Washington and +Franklin, of Adams and Jefferson--multiply, as he tells us, "with the +fecundity of their own rattlesnakes." Of the fathers of our Revolution +he speaks in no more flattering terms:--"Probably in _America_, as in +other places, the chiefs are incendiaries, that hope to rob in the +tumults of a conflagration, and toss brands among a rabble passively +combustible." All these atrocities and follies amuse and interest us +now; they are the coprolites of a literary megatherium, once hateful to +gods and men, now inoffensive and curious fossilized specimens. + +In 1863, a Scotchman, whom Dr. Johnson would have hated for his birth, +and have knocked down with his Dictionary for his assaults upon the +English language, has usurped the chair of the sturdy old dogmatist. The +specious impertinence and shallow assumptions of the English sage find +their counterpart in the unworthy platitude of the Scottish seer, not +lively enough for "Punch," a mere disgrace to the page which admitted +it; whether a proof of a hardening heart or a softening brain is +uncertain, but charity hopes the latter is its melancholy apology. + +But in the interval between the cudgel-stroke of Johnson and the +mud-throwing of Carlyle, America had grown strong enough to bear the +assaults of literary bullies and mountebanks without serious annoyance. +The question which had been so superciliously asked was at last +answered. _Everybody_ reads an American book. The morning-star of our +literature rose in the genius of IRVING. There was something in his +personal conditions which singularly fitted him to introduce the New +World in its holiday-dress to the polite company of the Old World. His +father was a Scotchman, his mother was an Englishwoman, and he was born +in America. "Diedrich Knickerbocker" is a near relation of some of +Scott's characters; "Bracebridge Hall" might have been written by an +Englishman; while "Ichabod Crane" and "Rip Van Winkle" are American to +their marrow. The English naturally found Irving too much like their own +writers in his English subjects, and they could not thoroughly relish +his purely American pictures and characters. Cooper, who did not love +the English, and showed it, a navy officer, too, who dwelt with delight +on the sea-fights of the War of 1812, was too American to please them. +Dr. Channing had a limited circle of admirers in Great Britain, but +could reach only a few even of the proscribed Dissenting class in any +effective way. + +Prescott, we believe, did more than any other one man to establish the +independence of American authorship. He was the first, so far as we +know, who worked with a truly adequate literary apparatus, and at the +same time brought the results of his extensive, long-continued, costly +researches into picture-like and popular forms. It was not the judgment +of England, but of Europe, that settled his claims in the world of +letters; and from the day when the verdict of the learned world awarded +him a place in the first rank of historians, the hereditary curse of +American authorship was removed, and the insolent question of the +Quarterly was asked no more. + +From that time nearly to this the literary relations between England and +America have been growing more and more intimate, until every English +writer of repute reckoned upon his great circle of readers in the United +States, and every native author of a certain distinction depended upon a +welcome, more or less cordial, but still a welcome, from a British +reading constituency. + +Never had the mutual interchange of literary gifts from the one people +to the other been so active as during the years preceding the outbreak +of the Great Conspiracy. So close was the communication of thought and +feeling, that it seemed as if there were hardly need of a submarine +cable to stretch its nervous strands between two national brains that +were locked in Siamese union by the swift telegraph of thought. We +reprinted each other's books, we made new reputations for each other's +authors, we wrote in each other's magazines, and introduced each other's +young writers to our own several publics. Thought echoed to thought, +voice answered to voice across the Atlantic. + +But for one fatal stain upon our institutions,--a stain of which we were +constantly reminded, as the one thing that shamed all our +pretensions,--it seemed as if the peaceful and prosperous development of +the great nation sprung from the loins of England were accepted as a +gain to universal civilization. In the fulness of time the heir of Great +Britain's world-shadowing empire came among us to receive the wide and +cordial welcome which we could afford to give without compromising our +republicanism, and he to receive without lessening his dignity. It was +the seal upon the _entente cordiale_ which seemed to have at last +established itself between the thinkers as well as the authorities of +the two countries. + +A few months afterwards came the great explosion which threatened the +eternal rending asunder of the Union. That the British people had but an +imperfect understanding of the quarrel, we are ready to believe. That +they were easily misled as to some of the motives and intentions of the +North is plain enough. But this one fact remains: Every one of them +knew, by public, official statements, that what _the South_ meant to do +was to build a new social and political order on Slavery,--recognized, +proclaimed, boasted of, theoretically justified, and practically +incorporated with its very principle of existence. They might have their +doubts about the character of the North, but they could have none about +the principles or intentions of the South. That ought to have settled +the question for civilized Europe. It would have done so, but that +jealousy of the great self-governing state swallowed up every other +consideration. + +We will not be unjust nor ungrateful. We have as true friends, as brave +and generous advocates of our sacred cause, in Great Britain as our +fathers found in their long struggle for liberty. We have the +intelligent cooeperation of a few leading thinkers, and the instinctive +sympathy of a large portion of the people,--may God be merciful to them +and to their children in the day of reckoning, which, sooner or later, +awaits a nation that is false to advancing civilization! + +But, with all our gratitude to the noble few who have pleaded our cause, +we are obliged to own that we have looked in vain for sympathy in many +quarters where we should assuredly have expected it. Where is the +English Church in this momentous struggle? Has it blasted with its +anathema the rising barbarism, threatening, or rather promising, to +nationalize itself, which, as a cardinal principle, denies the Word of +God and the sanctities of the marriage relation to millions of its +subjects? or does it save its indignation for the authors of "Essays and +Reviews" and the over-curious Bishop of Natal? Where are the men whose +voices ought to ring like clarions among the hosts of their brethren in +the Free States of the North? Where is Lord Brougham, ex-apostle of the +Diffusion of Knowledge, while the question is of enforced perpetual +ignorance as the cement of that unhallowed structure with which this +nineteenth century is to be outraged, if treason has its way? Where is +Dickens, the hater of the lesser wrongs of Chancery Courts, the scourge +of tyrannical beadles and heartless schoolmasters? Has he no word for +those who are striving, bleeding, dying, to keep from spreading itself +over a continent a system which legalizes outrages almost too fearful to +be told even to those who know all that is darkest in the record of +English pauperism and crime? Where is the Laureate, so full of fine +indignations and high aspirations? Has he, who holds so cheap those who +waste their genius + + "To make old baseness picturesque," + +no single stanza for the great strife of this living century? is he too +busy with his old knights to remember that + + "One great clime.... + Yet rears her crest, unconquered and sublime, + Above the far Atlantic?" + +has he a song for the six hundred, and not a line for the six hundred +thousand? Where is the London "Times," so long accepted as the true +index of English intelligence and enlightened humanity? Where are those +grave organs of thought which were always quarrelling with Slavery so +long as it was the thorn in the breast of our nation, but almost do +homage to it now that it is a poisoned arrow aimed at her life? Where is +the little hunchback's journal, whose wit was the dog-vane of +fashionable opinion, once pointing towards freedom as the prevailing +wind seemed to blow, now veered round to obey the poisoned breath of +Slavery? All silent or hostile, subject as they are themselves to the +overmastering influence of a class which dreads the existence of a +self-governing state, like this majestic Union, worse than falsehood, +worse than shame, worse than robbery, worse than complicity with the +foulest of rebellions, worse than partnership in the gigantic scheme +which was to blacken half a hemisphere with the night of eternal +Slavery! + +It is the miserable defection of so many of the thinking class, in this +time of the greatest popular struggle known to history, which impresses +us far more than the hostility of a few land-grasping nobles, or the +coldness of a Government mainly guided by their counsels. The natural +consequence has been the complete destruction of that undue deference to +foreign judgments which was so long a characteristic of our literature. +The current English talk about the affairs that now chiefly interest us +excites us very moderately. The leading organs of thought have lost +their hold upon the mind of most thinking people among us. We have +learned to distrust the responses of their timeserving oracles, and to +laugh at the ignorant pretensions of their literary artisans. These +"outsiders" have shown, to our entire satisfaction, that they are +thoroughly incompetent to judge our character as a community, and that +they have no true estimate of its spirit and its resources. The view +they have taken of the strife in which we have been and are engaged is +not only devoid of any high moral sympathy, but utterly shallow, and +flagrantly falsified by the whole course of events, political, +financial, and military. + +Perhaps we ought not to be surprised or disappointed. With a congenital +difference of organization, with a new theory of human rights involving +a virtual reconstruction of society, with larger views of human destiny, +with a virgin continent for them to be worked out in, the American +should expect to be misunderstood by the civilizations of the past, +based on a quagmire of pauperism and ignorance, or overhung by an +avalanche of revolution. Other peoples, emerging from, a condition of +serfdom, retaining many of the instincts of a conquered race, get what +liberty they have by extorting it piecemeal from their masters. Magna +Charta was forced from a weak monarch by a conspiracy of nobles, acting +from purely selfish motives, in behalf of their own order. The Habeas +Corpus Act was unpalatable to the Lords, and was passed only by a trick +or a blunder. What is there in common between the states which recognize +the rule of any persons who happen to be descended from the bold or +artful men who obtained their power by violence or fraud, and a state +which starts with the assumption that the government belongs to the +governed, subject, we must remember, to the laws which make a people a +nation,--laws recognized just as unhesitatingly by the Rebel States as +applying to Western Virginia or East Tennessee, as the Union recognizes +their application to these same Rebel States? + +Of course, it is conceivable that we are all wrong in our theory of +human rights and our plan of government. It is possible that the true +principle of selecting the rulers of a nation is to take the descendants +of the cut-throat, the assassin, the poisoner, the traitor, who got his +foot upon a people's neck some centuries ago. It may be that there is an +American people which will hold itself fortunate, if it can be ruled +over by a descendant of Charles V.,--though Philip II. was the son of +that personage, and an American historian has made us familiar with his +doings, and those of his vicegerent, the Duke of Alva. If this is the +way that people should be governed, then we _are_ wrong, and have no +right to look for sympathy from Old-World dynasties. The only question +is, How soon it will be safe to send a Grand Duke over to govern us. + +But if our theory of human rights and our plan of government are the +true ones, then our success is the inevitable downfall of every dynasty +on the face of the earth. It is not our fault that this must be so; the +blameless fact of our existence, prosperity, power, civilization, +culture, as they will show themselves on the supposition that we are +working in the divine parallels, will necessarily revolutionize all the +empirical and accidental systems which have come down to us from the +splendid semi-barbarism of the Middle Ages. What all good men desire, +here and everywhere, is that this necessary change may be effected +gradually and peaceably. We do not find fault with men for being born in +positions that confer powers upon them incommensurate with their rights. +We do not wish to cut a man's head off because he comes of a dull race +that has been taught for generations to think itself better than the +rest of mankind, and has learned to believe it and practise on it. But +if nations are fast becoming educated to a state in which they are +competent to manage their own interests, we wish these privileged +personages to recognize it, for their own sake, as well as for that of +the people. + +The spirit of republican America is not that of a wild propagandism. It +is not by war that we have sought or should ever seek to convert the Old +World to our theories and practice in government. If this young nation +is permitted, in the Providence of God, to unfold all its possibilities +into powers, the great lesson it will teach will be that of peaceful +development. Where the public wealth is mainly for the governing class, +the splendid machinery of war is as necessary as the jewels which a +province would hardly buy are to the golden circlet that is the mark of +sovereignty. Where the wealth of a country is for the people, this +particular form of pyrotechnics is too costly to be indulged in for +amusement. American civilization hates war, as such. It values life, +because it honors humanity. It values property, because property is for +the comfort and good of all, and not merely plunder, to be wasted by a +few irresponsible lawgivers. It wants all the forces of its population +to subdue Nature to its service. It demands all the intellect of its +children for construction, not for destruction. Its business is to build +the world's great temple of concord and justice; and for this it is not +Dahlgren and Parrott that are the architects, but men of thought, of +peace, of love. + +Let us not, therefore, waste our strength in threats of vengeance +against those misguided governments who mistook their true interest in +the prospect of our calamity. We can conquer them by peace better than +by war. When the Union emerges from the battle-smoke,--her crest +towering over the ruins of traitorous cities and the wrecks of Rebel +armies, her eye flashing defiance to all her evil-wishers, her breast +heaving under its corselet of iron, her arm wielding the mightiest +enginery that was ever forged into the thunderbolts of war,--her triumph +will be grand enough without her setting fire to the stubble with which +the folly of the Old World has girt its thrones. No deeper humiliation +could be asked for our foreign enemies than the spectacle of our +triumph. If we have any legal claims against the accomplices of pirates, +they will be presented, and they will be paid. If there are any +uncomfortable precedents which have been introduced into international +law, the jealous "Mistress of the Seas" must be prepared to face them in +her own hour of trouble. Had her failings but leaned to Freedom's +side,--had she but been true to her traditions, to her professions, to +her pretended principles,--where could she have found a truer ally than +her own offspring, in the time of trial which is too probably preparing +for her? "If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the +things which belong unto thy peace!" No tardy repentance can efface the +record of the past. We may forgive, but history is inexorable. + +England was startled the other day by an earthquake. The fast-anchored +isle was astonished at such a tropical phenomenon. It was all very well +for Jamaica or Manila, but who would have thought of solid, +constitutional England shaking like a jelly? The London "Times" +moralized about it in these words:--"We see, afar off, a great empire, +that had threatened to predominate over all mankind, suddenly broken up +by moral agencies, and shattered into no one knows how many fragments. +We are safe from that fate, at least so we deem ourselves, for never +were we so united." "_A great empire, that had threatened to predominate +over all mankind_." That was the trouble. That was the reason the +"Times" was so pleased to say, a few months ago, "The bubble has burst." +How, if the great empire should prove not to have been shattered? how, +if the bubble has not burst?--nay, if that great system of intelligent +self-government which was taken for a bubble prove to be a sphere of +adamant, rounded in the mould of Divine Law, and filled with the pure +light of Heaven? + +England is happy in a virtuous queen; but what if another profligate +like George IV. should, by the accident of birth, become the heir of her +sovereignty? France is as strong as one man's life can make her; but +what if that man should run against some fanatic's idea which had taken +shape in a bullet-mould, or receive a sudden call from that pale visitor +who heeds no challenge from the guards at the gate of the Tuileries, and +stalks unannounced through antechambers and halls of audience? + +The "Times" might have found a moral for the earthquake nearer home. The +flame that sweeps our prairies is terrible, but it only scorches the +surface. What all the governments based on smothered pauperism, +tolerated ignorance, and organized degradation have to fear is the +subterranean fire, which finds its vent in blazing craters, or breaks up +all the ancient landmarks in earth-shattering convulsions. God forbid +that we should invoke any such catastrophe even for those who have been +hardest upon us in our bitter trial! Yet so surely as American society +founds itself upon the rights of civilized man, there is no permanent +safety for any nation but in the progressive recognition of the American +principle. The right of governing a nation belongs to the people of the +nation; and the urgent duty of those provisional governments which we +call monarchies, empires, aristocracies is to educate their people with +a view to the final surrender of all power into their hands. A little +longer patience, a little more sacrifice, a little more vigorous, +united action, on the part of the Loyal States, and the Union will +behold herself mirrored in the Atlantic and the Pacific, the stateliest +of earthly empires,--not in her own aspiring language, but by the +confession of her most envious rival, _predominating over all mankind_. +No Tartar hordes pouring from the depths of Asia, no Northern barbarians +swarming out of the hive of nations, no Saracens sweeping from their +deserts to plant the Crescent over the symbol of Christendom, were more +terrible to the principalities and powers that stood in their way, than +the Great Republic, by the bare fact of its existence, will become to +every government which does not hold its authority from the people. +However our present conflict may seem at first sight to do violence, in +certain respects, to the principles of self-government, everybody knows +that it is a strife of democratic against oligarchic institutions, of a +progressive against a stationary civilization, of the rights of manhood +against the claims of a class, of a national order representing the will +of a people against a conspiracy organized by a sectional minority. + +Just so far as _the people_ of Europe understand the nature of our armed +controversy, they will understand that we are pleading their cause. Nay, +if the mass of our Southern brethren did but know it, we are pleading +theirs just as much. The emancipation of industry has never taken effect +in the South, and never could until labor ceased to be degrading. + +We should be unreasonable to demand the sympathy of those classes which +have everything to lose from the extension of the self-governing +principle. What we have to thank them for is the frankness with which +they have betrayed their hostility to us and our cause, under +circumstances which showed that they would ruin us, if it could be done +safely and decently. We shall never be good friends again, it may be +feared, until we change our eagles into sovereigns, or they change their +sovereigns for a coin which bears the head of Liberty. But in the mean +time it is a great step in our education to find out that a new order of +civilization requires new modes of thought, which must, of necessity, +shape themselves out of our conditions. Thus it seems probable, that, as +the first revolution brought about our industrial independence of the +mother-country, not preventing us in any way from still availing +ourselves of the skill of her trained artisans, so this second civil +convulsion will complete that intellectual independence towards which we +have been growing, without cutting us off from whatever in knowledge or +art is the common property of Republics and Despotisms. + + * * * * * + +REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES. + + +_Heat considered as a Mode of Motion_; being a Course of Twelve Lectures +delivered at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, by JOHN TYNDALL, +F.R.S., Professor of Natural Philosophy in the Royal Institution. New +York: D. Appleton & Co. + +The readers of the "Glaciers of the Alps" have made the acquaintance of +Professor Tyndall as an Alpine adventurer, with a passion for frost and +philosophy, and a remarkable ability both in describing his +mountain-experiences and in explaining the interesting phenomena which +he there encountered. All who have read this inimitable volume will +testify to its rare attractions. It is at once dramatic and philosophic, +poetic and scientific; and the author wins our admiration alike as a +daring and intrepid explorer, a keen observer, a graphic delineator, +and an acute and original investigator. + +In the new work on Heat we are introduced to Professor Tyndall upon the +lecturing-platform, where he follows up some of the inquiries started in +the "Glaciers" in a systematic and comprehensive manner. His problem is, +the nature and laws of Heat, its relation to other forms of force, and +the part it plays in the vast scheme of the universe: an imposing task, +but executed in a manner worthy of the gifted young successor of Faraday +as Professor of Natural Philosophy in the Royal Institution of Great +Britain. + +A comparison of the volume before us with any of the previously +published treatises on Heat will afford a striking and almost startling +proof of the present activity of inquiry, and the rapid progress of +scientific research. The topics treated are the same. The first seven +lectures of the course deal with _thermometric_ heat, expansion, +combustion, conduction, specific and latent heat, and the relation of +this force to mechanical processes; while the remaining five treat of +_radiant_ heat, the law and conditions of its movement, its influence +upon matter, its relations to other forces, terrestrial and solar +radiation, and the thermal energies of the solar system. But these +subjects no longer wear their old aspect. Novel questions are presented, +starting fresh trains of experiment; facts assume new relationships, and +are interpreted in the light of a new and higher philosophy. + +The old view of the forces, which regarded them as material entities, +may now be regarded as abandoned. Light, Heat, Electricity, Magnetism, +etc., which have hitherto been considered under the self-contradictory +designation of "Imponderable Elements," or immaterial matter, are now, +by common consent, beginning to be ranked as pure forces; having passed +through their material stage, they are regarded as kindred and +convertible forms of motion in matter itself. The old notions, that +light consisted of moving corpuscles, and that heat, electricity, and +magnetism were produced by the agency of various fluids, have done good +service in times past; but their office was only provisional, and, +having served to advance the philosophy of forces beyond themselves, +they must now take rank among the outgrown and effete theories which +belong to the infantile period of science. This change, as will be seen, +involves the fundamental conceptions of science, and is nothing less +than the substitution of dynamical for material ideas in dealing with +the phenomena of Nature. + +The new views, of which Professor Tyndall is one of the ablest +expositors, are expressed by the terms "Conservation and Correlation of +Forces." The first term implies that force is indestructible, that an +impulse of power can no more be annihilated than a particle of matter, +and than the total amount of energy in the universe remains forever the +same. This principle has been well characterized by Faraday as "the +highest law in physical science which our faculties permit us to +perceive." The phrase "Correlation of Forces" is employed rather to +express their mutual convertibility, or change from one to the others. +Thus, heat excites electricity, and, through that force, magnetism, +chemical action, and light. Or, if we start with magnetism, this may +give rise to electricity, and this again to heat, chemical action, and +light. Or we can begin with chemical action, and obtain the same train +of effects. + +It has long been known that machines do not create force, but only +communicate, distribute, and apply that which has been imparted to them, +and also that a definite amount of fuel corresponds to a definite amount +of work performed by the steam-engine. This means simply that a fixed +quantity of the chemical force of combustion gives rise to a +corresponding quantity of heat, and this again to a determinate amount +of mechanical effect. Now this principle of equivalency is found to +govern the transmutations of all forms of energy. The doctrine of the +conservation and correlation of forces has been illustrated in various +ways, but nothing has so powerfully contributed to its establishment as +the investigation of the relations of heat to mechanical force. +Percussion and friction produce heat. A cold bullet, struck upon an +anvil by a cold sledge-hammer, is heated. Iron plates, ground against +each other by water-power, have yielded a large and constant supply of +heat for warming the air of a factory in winter; while water inclosed in +a box, which was made to revolve rapidly, rose to the boiling-point. +What, now, is the source of heat in these cases? The old caloric +hypothesis utterly fails to explain it; for to suppose that there is an +indefinite and inexhaustible store of latent heat in the rubbing iron +plates is purely gratuitous. It is now established, that the heat of +collision, and of friction depends, not upon the nature of the bodies in +motion, but upon the force spent in producing it. + +When a moving body is stopped, its force is not annihilated, but simply +takes another form. When the sledge-hammer strikes the leaden bullet and +comes to rest, the mechanical force is not destroyed, but is simply +converted into heat; and if all the heat produced could be collected, it +would be exactly sufficient, when reconverted into mechanical force, to +raise the hammer again to the height from which it fell. So, when bodies +are rubbed together, their surface-particles are brought into collision, +mechanical force is destroyed, and heat appears,--the heat of friction. +The conversion of heat into mechanical motion, and of that motion back +again into heat, may be familiarly illustrated in the case of a +railway-train. The heat generated by combustion in the locomotive is +converted into motion of the cars. But when it is desired to stop the +train, what is to be done? Its mechanical force cannot be annihilated; +it can only be transmuted; and so the brakes are applied, and the train +brought to rest by reconverting its motion into heat, as is manifested +by the smoke and sparks produced by the friction. Now, as heat produces +mechanical motion, and mechanical motion heat, they must clearly have +some common quality. The dynamical theory asserts, that, as they are +both modes of motion, they must be mutually and easily convertible. When +a moving mass is checked or stopped, its force is not annihilated, but +the gross, palpable motion is infinitely subdivided and communicated to +the atoms of the body, producing increased vibrations, which appear as +heat. Heat is thus inferred to be, not a material fluid, but a motion +among the ultimate atoms of matter. + +The acceptance of this view led to the highly important inquiry, What is +the equivalent relation between mechanical force and heat? or, how much +heat is produced by a definite quantity of mechanical force? To Dr. +Joule, of Manchester, England, is due the honor of having answered this +question, and experimentally established the numerical relation. He +demonstrated that a one-pound weight, falling through seven hundred and +seventy-two feet and then arrested, produces sufficient heat to raise +one pound of water one degree. Hence this is known as the mechanical +equivalent of heat, or "Joule's Law." + +The establishment of the principle of correlation between mechanical +force and heat constitutes one of the most important events in the +progress of science. It teaches us that the movements we see around us +are not spontaneous or independent occurrences, but links in the eternal +chain of forces,--that, when bodies are put in motion, it is at the +expense of some previously existing energy, and that, when they come to +rest, their force is not destroyed, but lives on in other forms. Every +motion we see has its thermal value; and when it ceases, its equivalent +of heat is an invariable result. When a cannon-ball strikes the side of +an iron-plated ship, a flash of light shows that collision has converted +the motion of the ball into intense heat, or when we jump from the table +to the floor, the temperature of the body is slightly raised,--the +degree of heat produced in both cases being ascertainable by the +application of Joule's law. + +The principle thus demonstrated has given a new interest and a vast +impulse to the science of Thermotics. It is the fundamental and +organizing conception of Professor Tyndall's work, and in his last +chapter he carries out its application to the planetary system. The +experiments of Herschel and Pouillet upon the amount of solar heat +received upon the earth's surface form the starting-point of the +computations. The total amount of heat received by the earth from the +sun would be sufficient to boil three hundred cubic miles of ice-cold +water per hour, and yet the earth arrests but 1/2,300,000,000 of the +entire thermal force which the sun emits. The entire solar radiation +each hour would accordingly be sufficient to boil 700,000,000,000 cubic +miles of ice-cold water! Speculation has hardly dared venture upon the +source of this stupendous amount of energy, but the mechanical +equivalent of heat opens a new aspect of the question. All the celestial +motions are vast potential stores of heat, and if checked or arrested, +the heat would at once become manifest. Could we imagine brakes applied +to the surface of the sun and planets, so as to arrest, by friction, +their motions upon their axes, the heat thus produced would be +sufficient to maintain the solar emission for a period of one hundred +and sixteen years. As the earth is eight thousand miles in diameter, +five and a half times heavier than water, and moves through its orbit at +the rate of sixty-eight thousand miles an hour, a sudden arrest of its +motion would generate a heat equal to the combustion of fourteen globes +of anthracite coal as large as itself. Should it fall into the sun, the +shock would produce a heat equal to the combustion of five thousand four +hundred earth-globes of solid coal,--sufficient to maintain the solar +radiation nearly a hundred years. Should all the planets thus come to +rest in the sun, it would cover his emission for a period of forty-five +thousand five hundred and eighty-nine years. It has been maintained that +the solar heat is actually produced in this way by the constant +collision upon his surface of meteoric bodies, but for the particulars +of this hypothesis we must refer to the book itself. + +Professor Tyndall opens the question in his volume respecting the share +which different investigators have had in establishing the new theory of +forces, and his observations have given rise to a sharp controversy in +the scientific journals. The point in dispute seems to have been the +relative claims of an Englishman and a German--Dr. Joule and Dr. +Mayer--to the honor of having founded the new philosophy. Tyndall +accords a high place to the German as having worked out the view in an +_a priori_ way with remarkable precision and comprehensiveness, while he +grants to the Englishman the credit of being the first to experimentally +establish the law of the mechanical equivalent of heat. But his English +critics seem to be satisfied with nothing short of an entire monopoly of +the honor. The truth is, that, in this case, as in that of many others +furnished us in the history of science, the discovery belongs rather to +an epoch than to an individual. In the growth of scientific thought, the +time had come for the evolution of this principle, and it was seized +upon by several master-minds in different countries, who worked out +their results contemporaneously, but in ignorance of the efforts of +their fellow-laborers. But if individual claims are to be pressed, and +each man accorded his aliquot share of the credit, we apprehend that +America must be placed before either England or Germany, and for the +explicit evidence we need look no farther than the volume of Professor +Tyndall before us. The first clear connection and experimental +proof of the modern theory was made by our countryman Benjamin +Thompson,--afterwards knighted as Count Rumford by the Elector of +Bavaria. He went to Europe in the time of the American Revolution, and, +devoting himself to scientific investigations, became the founder of the +Royal Institution of Great Britain. Davy was his associate, and, so far +as the new views of heat are concerned, his disciple. He exploded the +notion of caloric, demonstrated experimentally the conversion of +mechanical force into heat, and arrived at quantitative results, which, +considering the roughness of his experiments, are remarkably near the +established facts. He revolved a brass cannon against a steel borer by +horse-power for two and one-half hours, thereby generating heat enough +to raise eighteen and three-fourths pounds of water from sixty to two +hundred and twelve degrees. Concerning the nature of heat he wrote as +follows, the Italics being his own:--"What is heat? Is there any such +thing as an _igneous fluid_? Is there anything that with propriety can +be called caloric? We have seen that a very considerable quantity of +heat may be excited by the friction of two metallic surfaces, and given +off in a constant stream, or flux, in _all directions_, without +interruption or intermission, and without any signs of _diminution_ or +_exhaustion_. In reasoning on this subject, we must not forget that +_most remarkable circumstance_, that the source of the heat generated by +friction in these experiments appeared to be _inexhaustible_. It is +hardly necessary to add, that anything which any insulated body or +system of bodies can continue to furnish _without limitation_ cannot +possibly be _a material substance_; and it appears to me to be extremely +difficult, if not quite impossible, to form any distinct idea of +anything capable of being excited and communicated in these experiments, +except it be MOTION." + +In style, Professor Tyndall's work is remarkably clear, spirited, and +vigorous, and many of its pages are eloquent with the beautiful +enthusiasm and poetic spirit of its author. These attractions, combined +with the comprehensiveness and unity of the discussion, the range and +authenticity of the facts, and the delicacy, originality, and vividness +of the experiments, render the work at once popular and profound. It is +s classic upon the subject of which it treats. + + +_My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field_. A Book for Boys. By +"CARLETON." Boston: Ticknor and Fields. + +The literature of the war has already reached the dimensions of a +respectable library. The public mind at the instant of the outbreak felt +an assurance that it was to be one of the memorable epochs of mankind. +However blinded to the significance of the previous conflicts in the +forum and at the ballot-box, there was a sudden and universal instinct +that their armed culmination was a world-era. The event instantly +assumed its true grandeur. + +The previous discussions seemed local and limited. They were squabbles, +we fancied, among ourselves, which did not touch the vitals of our +system, and in which the world without had neither lot nor interest. +Even when the fires of debate and division waxed hotter and hotter, and +began to break out in violent eruptions in Congress, Kansas, throughout +the South, and especially at Harper's Ferry, we still said, These are +political conflicts, mob-violences, raids, abnormal eccentricities, +which will pass quietly away, when the dynasty is changed, and the reins +of power are fairly grasped by the successful rival. + +Europe sends her doctors to witness our dissolution. They go South and +see the mustering of arms and the intensity of purpose, and coming North +find the whole community at their usual pursuits and pleasures, +regarding the controversy as a mere political breeze, and the results in +which it is beginning to issue as but the waves that ever for a short +season roll fiercely after the storm. + +This indifference was one of the best signs of our health. We felt such +confidence in ourselves, that we distrusted no future, however +cloud-cast. The Constitution, sold for a penny-ha'penny in New York, +suggested to the mildly sarcastic humor of Dr. Russell that it had +better be a little more valuable in tact, if not so cheap in form. He +did not see how the People were the rightful masters of the +Constitution, as Mr. Lincoln had said they were of Congress and the +Courts, and that they would take care of it and of themselves when the +hour really came. + +We did not see it. Blindness in part had happened unto the whole nation. +The shot at Sumter cleft the burdened head of Jove. A Nation was born in +a day. It saw instantly the length and the breadth, the height and the +depth of the conflict. It was not a struggle about Slavery and +Abolitionism, about the white race and the black, about union and +disunion; but it was a war for the rights of man, here and everywhere, +to-day and forever. The "glittering generalities" of our Declaration and +Constitution suddenly blazed with light, while the dull particularities +of mere routine faded as a waning moon before the glowing sun. These +were lost in the fiery splendors of the grand principles in which alone +they live and move and have their being. They will reappear, meekly +shining in their humbler sphere, when the great light shall withdraw its +intenser rays, the object of their blazing being accomplished. The body +of the war is Union, its soul Democracy: union for the sake of +democracy, and democracy for the sake of the world. Abolitionism is +simply a stepping-stone to the perfection of the Idea in our society. + +The instinct that apprehended the full significance of the struggle was +universal: Europe saw it in the same flash that revealed it to us. The +lightning of the opening gun, or ever its accompanying thunder could +follow, leaped, like the lightnings of the final judgment, in an instant +from west to east, and illumined the whole earth with its glare. + +In such an awakening it was inevitable but that literature should share. +And biographies, histories, pictorials, and juveniles, in Europe and +America, testify to the general consciousness. Into this last-named +class the little book at the head of this notice modestly essays to +enter. Had it put on airs and spread itself out into the broad-margined +and large-lettered octavo, it might have stood in libraries as a worthy +compeer of the ablest chronicles. Such a presentation would not have +been beyond its desert, and would have been more consistent with the +author's type of mind. Yet his simplicity, fidelity, and +straightforwardness will make him a better guide to advanced youth than +the too prattling habits of mere child-writers. They ever incline to the +baby-talk style of composition,--"mumming," as the tavern-woman +proposed, the bread and milk which they set before their youthful +readers. "Carleton" ever treats his boy-readers as his intelligent +equals, and considers them capable of understanding the common language +of books and men. It is refreshing to read a book for boys that is not, +as most of this class are, while pretending to be juvenile, actually +senile. + +The work opens with the story of the causes of the war, in which the +author gives the old and new counterblasters a quid, or, as they will +doubtless prefer to call it, a crumb of comfort. He traces the origin of +the war, not to Slavery, but to Tobacco. The demand for the new drug was +general throughout Europe. Virginia was the main source of supply. The +vagabondish farmers would not labor. Negroes arrive, and European +appetite creates American Slavery. Two hundred years after, the +descendants of these slaveholders fancy that a like European demand for +another plant will insure this Slavery a national sovereignty. Tobacco +thus verifies Charles Lamb's unwilling execration. It is not Bacchus's +only, but Slavery's "black servant, negro fine," and belongs, after all, +to that Africa which he says "breeds no such prodigious poison." The +Union lovers of "the Great Plant" may be called to decide between their +country and their cigar. Will patriotism or the pipe then prevail? We +tremble for our country in that conflict of duty and desire. It is odd +that the two favorite plants of the South should thus be charged with +our war. These innocent leaves and blossoms, babes in the wood, are made +the bearers of our iniquities. Cotton and Tobacco are the white and +black representatives of the vegetable races. Perhaps some fanciful +theorist may show from this fact, that not only all the human races, but +those of the lower kingdoms, are involved in this struggle, and, as in +the greater warfare of Earth and Time, so in this, its condensed type, +the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in common with its head and +master. + +The anti-tobacco doctrine of the opening chapter gives place to a clear +statement of the gathering and organizing of the great army; which is +followed by descriptions of the Battles of Bull Run, Fort Henry, Fort +Donelson, Shiloh, the Siege of Island No. 10, and the capture of +Memphis. The narratives are illustrated with diagrams which set the +movements of the contending forces clearly before the eye. No +description of the first great battle of the war is superior to that +here given. It is a photographic view of the field and the combatants. +We see where the Rebels posted their divisions, how our forces were +stationed, how we attempted to outflank them, how they left their +original positions to protect the assailed outpost, how the battle raged +and was decided around that point, and how a single mistake caused our +first repulse, and, for lack of subsequent generalship, produced the +shameful and disastrous rout. Russell's description is far less clear +and concise. "Carleton" confirms McDowell's military scholarship, but +not his generalship. It is one thing to set squadrons in the field, it +is another to be equal to all the emergencies of the strife. He traces +our defeat to a single mistake, not alone nor chiefly to the arrival of +reinforcements. He puts it thus. Two regiments, the Second and Eighth +South Carolina, get in the rear of Griffin's and Rickett's batteries. +Griffin sees them, and turns his guns upon them. Major Barry declares +they are his supporters. Griffin says they are Rebels. The Major +persists in his opinion, and the Captain yields. The guns are turned +back, the South-Carolinians leap upon the batteries, and the panic +begins. + +The book is especially valuable as it describes from personal +observation the first battles of General Grant. It has no better +war-pictures than the taking of Fort Donelson and the Battle of Shiloh +or Pittsburg Landing. These were the beginnings of Grant's reputation. +In them are seen the elements of his character, writ larger in the more +renowned deeds of Vicksburg and Chattanooga. They are strangely alike. +In both he is surprised by the enemy at daybreak, and while his soldiers +are asleep. In both he is at first driven from his camp, losing largely +of men and guns. In both, after a repulse so severe that the Rebel +generals fancy the day is theirs, and while their men give themselves up +to the spoiling of his tents, Grant, abating no jot of heart or hope, +rearranges his broken columns, and plants his guns in new positions, in +both cases on a hill rising from a ravine, whose opposite summit is +crowned with the Rebel artillery. In each case the Rebels cross the +ravine and attempt to scale the hill, and in each case are repulsed with +horrible slaughter. The parallel stops not here. Grant in both battles, +as soon as he has stayed the advance of the enemy, assumes the +offensive. The bugles sound the charge, and the Rebels are driven back +through our despoiled camp, and within their own intrenchments. These +first-fruits of the great general of the war show the difference between +him and the long-time pet of the nation, McClellan. The latter could not +move an inch without supplies as numerous and superfluous as those of a +summer sauntering lady at a watering-place. Grant does not wait for +Foote's gunboats to cooeperate at Donelson, but begins the fight the +instant he reaches the fort. When the boats are disabled and retire, he +does not wait for them to refit and return; nor when the enemy fails to +rout him, does he rest on his well-earned laurels till reinforcements +arrive, but turns upon them instantly and drives them with headlong fury +from their spoils and defences. There is no Antietam or Williamshurg +procrastinating. That very afternoon his exhausted troops storm the +fort, and the night beholds him the master of the outer works, and with +his guns raking the innermost fortifications. This heroic treatment of +the disease of Rebellion, with all its loss, results in far less +fatality than the rose-water generalship of the Peninsula, as the +statistics of the Eastern and Western armies will show. + +The peculiar qualities of General Grant, as seen in these battles, are +coolness, readiness, and confidence. He is not embarrassed by reverses. +He seems the rather to court them. He prefers to take arms against a sea +of troubles. He thinks little of rations, ambulances, Sanitary, and, we +fear, Christian Commissions, but much of victory. These creature and +spiritual comforts are all well enough in their place, but they do not +take batteries and redoubts. McClellan is the pet of his soldiers, Grant +the pride of his. McClellan cares for their bodies, Grant for their +fame. McClellan kills by kindness, Grant by courage. + +This battle-book for boys will hold no unimportant place in the +war-library of the times. Its style is usually as limpid as the +camp-brooks by which much of it was written. In the heat of the contest +it becomes a succession of short, sharp sentences, as if the musketry +rang in the writer's brain and moulded and winged his thoughts. It is +calm in the midst of its intensity, and thus happily illustrates by its +popularity that self-control of the nation so well expressed by +Hawthorne,--that our movements are as cool and collected, if as noisy, +as that of a thousand gentlemen in a hall quietly rising at the same +moment from their chairs. The battle-grounds of Vicksburg, +Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, and Chattanooga, all of which he saw, or by +subsequent study of the field has made his own, and descriptions of +which are promised in a companion-volume, will find no truer nor +worthier chronicler. + + +_A Compendious History of English Literature, and of the English +Language, from the Norman Conquest. With Numerous Specimens._ By GEORGE +L. CRAIK, LL.D., Professor of History and of English Literature in +Queen's College, Belfast. 2 vols. 8vo. New York: Charles Scribner. + +This is a thorough and an exhaustive work, having for its subject that +which must be of perpetual and increasing interest to all those +colonists who, in different parts of the world, are founding nations +which shall inherit the imperial language, and therefore will be +entitled to claim a share in the literary glories of the mother-land. +Professor Craik is favorably known as the author of works that depend +chiefly upon industry for their worth; and this elaborate production +must add to the esteem in which his learned labors have long been held +in many quarters. He has left no portion of his subject untouched, but +affords to his readers a full and lucid account of every part of it, +according to the materials that are at the command of scholars. If +defective on any points, it is owing to the want of authorities. His +survey of English literature includes not only all writers of the first +class, but all who can be regarded as of any considerable distinction; +and he has noticed many names which have no pretension to be considered +as even of second-rate importance, but concerning which general readers +may be curious, though their curiosity may not carry them so far as to +induce them to hunt up their works. A book of reference, such as this +book must be to most of those who shall use it, is bound to make mention +of writers whose names are of rare occurrence, but who had their parts, +though they may have been insignificant ones, in building up their +country's literature. Of the great writers, Professor Craik devotes but +little space to Shakspeare and Milton, because their works are in +everybody's hands; while from Chaucer and Spenser, Swift and Burke, +ample specimens are given, the author assuming that their writings are +but little read. Indeed, he declares that the great poets and other +writers even of the last generation have already faded from the view of +the most numerous class of the educated and reading public,--and that +scarcely anything is generally read except the publications of the day. +He correctly remarks that no true cultivation can be acquired by reading +nothing but the current literature. This, he says, "is the extreme case +of that entire ignorance of history, or of what had been done in the +world before we ourselves came into it, which has been affirmed, not +with more point than truth, to leave a person always a child." No doubt; +but we think the learned Professor overrates the extent of that neglect +of the literature of the past of which he complains,--for the editions +of the works of writers long dead, published in the last twenty years, +are numerous, and we know that books are not printed for people who do +not care for them. The number of readers of contemporary works is small, +if we compare those readers with the population of any given country; +but there are more readers now than could be found in any other age, not +only of the books of the day, but of the books of the past. + +This work combines the history of English Literature with the history of +the English Language. The author's scheme of the course is, as described +by himself, extremely simple, and rests, not upon arbitrary, but upon +natural or real distinctions, giving us the only view of the subject +that can claim to be regarded as of a scientific character. This part of +his work will be found very valuable, as it popularizes a subject which +has few attractions for most readers. + +The volumes are printed with great beauty, and do credit to the +Riverside Press, from which they come. + + +_The Foederalist_: A Collection of Essays, written in Favor of the New +Constitution, as agreed upon by the Foederal Convention, September 17, +1787. Reprinted from the Original Text. With an Historical Introduction +and Notes, by HENRY DAWSON. In Two Volumes. Volume I. 8vo. New York: +Charles Scribner. + +This volume contains the entire text of "The Federalist," with the notes +appended by the authors to their productions, preceded by an historical +and bibliographical Introduction, and an analytical Table of Contents; +in the second volume will appear the Notes prepared by Mr. Dawson, which +will embrace the more important of the alterations and corruptions of +the text, manuscript notes which have been found on the margins and +blank leaves of copies formerly owned by eminent statesmen, and other +illustrative matter, such as the author justly supposes will be useful +to those who may examine the text of the work, together with a complete +and carefully prepared Index. Mr. Dawson has devoted himself to the +preparation of this edition of "The Federalist," and labored diligently +to make it perfect, generally with success; but he is in error when he +says, in the Introduction, that there does not appear to be a copy of +the first edition of the work in any public library in Boston. There are +two copies of it in the Library of the Boston Athenaeum, both of which +we have seen. This mistake is an unhappy one, as it tends to shake our +faith in the accuracy of the editor's researches. Of "The Foederalist" +itself it is not necessary to say more than that it has the position of +an American classic, and that the political principles which it +advocates are of peculiar importance at this time, when the loyal +portion of the American people are engaged in a terrible struggle to +maintain the existence of that government which Hamilton and Madison +labored so diligently and successfully to establish. Mr. Dawson's +edition is one of rare excellence in everything that relates to +externals, and in this respect is beyond rivalry. An edition of "The +Foederalist," edited by John C. Hamilton, Esq., son of General +Hamilton, is announced to appear, and will undoubtedly be welcomed +warmly by all who feel an interest in the fame of the chief author of +the work, the man, next to Washington, to whom we are most indebted for +the establishment of our constitutional system of government. + + * * * * * + +RECENT AMERICAN PUBLICATIONS + +RECEIVED BY THE EDITORS OF THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY. + + +The Healing of the Nations. Second Series. By Charles Linton. +Philadelphia. Published by the Author. 8vo. pp. 363. $1.50. + +Report of the Superintendent of Common Schools of Pennsylvania, for the +Year ending June 4, 1863. Harrisburg. Singerly & Myers, State Printers. +8vo. pp. xxxii., 287. + +The Life and Services, as a Soldier, of Major-General Grant. +Philadelphia. T.B. Peterson & Brothers. 16mo. paper, pp. 66. 25 cts. + +Of the Imitation of Christ. Four Books. By Thomas a Kempis. Boston. E.P. +Dutton & Co. 16mo. pp. 347. $1.25. + +Redeemer and Redeemed. An Investigation of the Atonement and of Eternal +Judgment. By Charles Beecher, Georgetown, Mass. Boston. Lee & Shepard. +12mo. pp. xii., 357. $1.50. + +The Irish Sketch-Book. By W.M. Thackeray. Philadelphia. T.B. Peterson & +Brothers. 8vo. paper, pp. 179. 50 cts. + +A Text-Book of Geology. Designed for Schools and Academies. By James D. +Dana, LL.D., Silliman Professor of Geology and Natural History in Yale +College, Author of "A Manual of Geology," etc. Illustrated by 375 +Wood-Cuts. Philadelphia. Theodore Bliss & Co. 12mo. pp. vi., 354. $1.75. + +The Book of Praise, from the Best English Hymn-Writers. Selected and +arranged by Roundell Palmer. Cambridge. Sever & Francis. 16mo. pp. xx., +480. $1.50. + +Dream-Children. By the Author of "Seven Little People and their +Friends." Cambridge. Sever & Francis. 16mo. pp. 241. $1.00. + +Life of Edward Livingston. By Charles Havens Hunt. With an Introduction +by George Bancroft. New York. D. Appleton & Co. 8vo. pp. xxiv., 448. +$2.50. + +Poems. By Henry Peterson. Philadelphia. J.B. Lippincott & Co. 12mo. pp. +203. $1.00. + +Miscegenation. The Theory of the Blending of the Races, applied to the +American White Man and Negro. New York. H. Dexter, Hamilton, & Co. 12mo. +paper, pp. 72. 25 cts. + +Hand-Book of Calisthenics and Gymnastics. A Complete Drill-Book for +Schools, Families, and Gymnasiums. With Music to accompany the +Exercises. Illustrated from Original Designs. By J. Madison Watson. New +York and Philadelphia. Schermerhorn, Bancroft, & Co. 12mo. pp. 388. +$2.00. + +Rifled Ordnance. A Practical Treatise on the Application of the +Principle of the Rifle to Guns and Mortars of every Calibre. To which is +added a New Theory of the Initial Action and Force of Fired Gunpowder. +Read before the Royal Society, 16th December, 1858. First American, from +the Fifth English Edition, revised. By Lynall Thomas, F.R.S.L. New York. +D. Van Nostrand. 8vo. pp. 200. $2.00. + +Report of the Engineer and Artillery Operations of the Army of the +Potomac, from its Organization to the Close of the Peninsular Campaign. +By Brigadier-General J.G. Barnard, Chief Engineer, and Brigadier-General +W.F. Barry, Chief of Artillery. Illustrated by Eighteen Maps, Plans, +etc. New York. D. Van Nostrand. 8vo. pp. 230. $3.50. + +Poems in the Dorset Dialect. By William Barnes. Boston. Crosby & +Nichols. 16mo. pp. viii., 207. $1.00. + +Faith and Fancy. By John Savage, Author of "Sibyl, a Tragedy." New York. +J.B. Kirker. 16mo. pp. 114. 75 cts. + +The Great Consummation. The Millennial Rest; or, The World as it Will +Be. By the Rev. John Cumming, D.D., F.R.S.E., etc. Second Series. New +York. G.W. Carleton. 16mo. pp. 295. $1.00 + +The Indian Chief. By Gustavo Aimard. Philadelphia. T.B. Peterson & +Brothers. 8vo. paper, pp. 164. 50 cents. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote A: There are three accounts as to the time of the birth of +"St. Arnaud, formerly Leroy." That which makes him oldest represents him +as being fifty-eight at the Battle of the Alma. The second makes him +fifty-six, and the third fifty-three. In either case he was not a young +man; but, though suffering from mortal illness, he showed no want of +vigor on almost every occasion when its display was required.] + +[Footnote B: The advocates of youth in generals have never, that we are +aware, claimed Hamilcar Barcas as one of the illustrations of their +argument; yet he must have been a very young man when he began his +extraordinary career, if, as has been stated on good authority, he was +not beyond the middle age when he lost his life in battle. He was a +great man, perhaps even as great a man as his son Hannibal, who did but +carry out his father's designs.] + +[Footnote C: At Fontenoy the Duke of Cumberland was but half the age of +the Comte de Saxe. In that battle an English soldier was taken prisoner, +after fighting with heroic bravery. A French officer complimented him, +saying, that, if there had been fifty thousand men like him on the other +side, the victory would have been theirs. "No," said the Englishman, "it +was not the fifty thousand brave men who were wanting, but a Marshal +Saxe." Cumberland was ever unlucky, save at Culloden. Saxe was old +beyond his years, being one of the fastest of the fast men of his time, +as became the son of Augustus the Strong and Aurora von Koenigsmark.] + +[Footnote D: Henry V. was present, as Prince of Wales, at the Battle of +Shrewsbury, before he was sixteen; and there is some reason for +supposing that he commanded the royal forces in the Battle of Grosmont, +fought and won in his eighteenth year. He was but twenty-eight at +Agincourt. Splendid as was his military career, it was all over before +he had reached to thirty-six years. The Black Prince was but sixteen at +Crecy, and in his twenty-seventh year at Poitiers. Edward IV. was not +nineteen when he won the great Battle of Towton, and that was not his +first battle and victory. He was always successful. Richard III., as +Duke of Gloucester, was not nineteen when he showed himself to be an +able soldier, at Barnet; and he proved his generalship on other fields. +William I., Henry I., Stephen, Henry II., Richard I., Edward I., Edward +III., Henry IV., and William III. were all distinguished soldiers. The +last English sovereign who took part in a battle was George II., at +Dettingen.] + +[Footnote E: See _Norfolk County Records_, 1657; _New England Historical +and Genealogical Register_, No. II. p. 192. The moral lapse of the first +minister of Hampton at the age of fourscore is referred to in the third +number of the same periodical. Goody Cole, the Hampton witch, was twice +imprisoned for the alleged practice of her arts.] + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, +April, 1864, by Various + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY, VOL. *** + +***** This file should be named 15880.txt or 15880.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/5/8/8/15880/ + +Produced by Cornell University, Joshua Hutchinson, Josephine +Paolucci and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team. + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you +do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the +rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose +such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and +research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do +practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is +subject to the trademark license, especially commercial +redistribution. + + + +*** START: FULL LICENSE *** + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project +Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at +https://gutenberg.org/license). + + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy +all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. +If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the +terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or +entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement +and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" +or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the +collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an +individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are +located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from +copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative +works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg +are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project +Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by +freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of +this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with +the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by +keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project +Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in +a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check +the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement +before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or +creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project +Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning +the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United +States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate +access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently +whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, +copied or distributed: + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived +from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is +posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied +and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees +or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work +with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the +work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 +through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the +Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or +1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional +terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked +to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the +permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any +word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or +distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than +"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version +posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), +you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a +copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon +request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other +form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided +that + +- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is + owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he + has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the + Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments + must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you + prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax + returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and + sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the + address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to + the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or + destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium + and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of + Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any + money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days + of receipt of the work. + +- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set +forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from +both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael +Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the +Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm +collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain +"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual +property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a +computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by +your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with +your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with +the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a +refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity +providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to +receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy +is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further +opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO +WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. +If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the +law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be +interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by +the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any +provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance +with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, +promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, +harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, +that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do +or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm +work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any +Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. + + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers +including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists +because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from +people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. +To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 +and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org. + + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive +Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at +https://pglaf.org/fundraising. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent +permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. +Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered +throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at +809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email +business@pglaf.org. Email contact links and up to date contact +information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official +page at https://pglaf.org + +For additional contact information: + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To +SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any +particular state visit https://pglaf.org + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including including checks, online payments and credit card +donations. To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate + + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm +concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared +with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project +Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + https://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. + +*** END: FULL LICENSE *** + diff --git a/15880.zip b/15880.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..96b6f4c --- /dev/null +++ b/15880.zip diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..2a7b869 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #15880 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/15880) |